Intelligent Machines 843 transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for Intelligent Machines. Paris and Jeff are here. Our guest, Dr. Alan Cowan, is the Chief Scientist at Hume AI. He is an expert in human emotion and he thinks AI needs to be responsive to our emotions. We'll talk about that and all the AI news next on Intelligent Machines. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit.

Leo Laporte [00:00:32]:
This is Intelligent Machines with Paris Martineau and Jeff Jarvis. Episode 843, recorded Wednesday, October 29, 2025. Immortal beloved, you've arrived. It's time for Intelligent Machines, the show. We talk about the latest in AI robotics and all those doohickeys surrounding us, the smart little things, loading the dishwasher, folding the clothes. No, they're not doing any of that. Walking the dog. Paris Martineau is here from Consumer Reports, the queen of lead in your protein powder radioactive treatment.

Paris Martineau [00:01:08]:
The queen of every week being more and more baffled by how you choose to introduce the show.

Leo Laporte [00:01:12]:
More like, every week it's different. I'm trying to mix it up and.

Paris Martineau [00:01:17]:
It'S still the same.

Leo Laporte [00:01:17]:
And yet the same. Yeah, that's kind of, in a nutshell, the story of my life. I just keep doing the same thing over and over again. Hello, Paris.

Paris Martineau [00:01:26]:
Hi, Leo.

Leo Laporte [00:01:27]:
You were so good on our DD adventure. We have decided to do it again. Finish the corn maze.

Paris Martineau [00:01:33]:
It's great. I love playing D and D. You.

Leo Laporte [00:01:37]:
Know, you converted me. I was the only one in the group who had never played, and I admit that they were. Culturally, I had some issues at first, but eventually I think I got it.

Paris Martineau [00:01:47]:
Yeah. I will say, if you guys listen to the. The stream of it, which is available for Club Twit members, you will hear just random sound effects playing all throughout the entire thing, seemingly with no rhyme or reason. And that's because Leo got a little bored. That actually found his way.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:05]:
That's.

Leo Laporte [00:02:06]:
That's not fair. I. I prepared them ahead of time. I was ready, ready to launch them at the moment's notice. I even wrote a theme song. And, well, Suno true AI wrote a theme song. Also here, Jeff Jarvis, emeritus professor of journalistic innovation at the Craig Nomark Graduate School of Journalism at the City and University of New York. Almost should make a deal.

Leo Laporte [00:02:29]:
Benito, our producer, if I get to the last word, City University of New York. Before you hit the button, that you don't hit the button.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:36]:
I do. Oh, that's a challenge.

Paris Martineau [00:02:37]:
He's gonna do it. I will say, as the person who's stumping for the Craig theme, I think that's a very reasonable.

Leo Laporte [00:02:42]:
It's a race.

Paris Martineau [00:02:44]:
Listen, it's a race. Benito's gotta be on it. We don't get it if he's not on the butt.

Leo Laporte [00:02:49]:
Exactly. Benito looks the other way. I want to get him.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:52]:
Come on, man. I'm counting on you. Craig's counting on you.

Leo Laporte [00:02:56]:
More importantly, Jeff is a author of the Gutenberg Parenthesis and magazine, and of course, is also a adjunct professor at Montclair State University and SUNI Stony Brook. I made you an adjunct. I don't know if you're an adjunct.

Jeff Jarvis [00:03:09]:
I'm a fellow and a senior.

Leo Laporte [00:03:11]:
Feller.

Jeff Jarvis [00:03:11]:
Whatever.

Leo Laporte [00:03:12]:
He's a feller.

Jeff Jarvis [00:03:13]:
I'm a feller.

Leo Laporte [00:03:14]:
Hey, we have a really interesting guest. I'm not sure who nominated Alan Cowan for the show, but I'm really pleased to get him on. He's the founder of something called Hume AI. Alan, welcome to the show. Looks like you're in a soundproof booth preparing for a game show of some kind. Welcome. Good to see you.

Alan Cowen [00:03:34]:
Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Yeah. This is our call booth in our office where I spend 35% of my time.

Leo Laporte [00:03:41]:
Oh, you know what? You could make it nicer and more comfortable if you're going to spend all of that time there. Look at.

Alan Cowen [00:03:46]:
I don't know.

Paris Martineau [00:03:47]:
I think it's kind of nice to be in a womb like state. Most of the hours of your work day could be worse.

Leo Laporte [00:03:52]:
I got to read your bio from your website, alan.cowen.com. i am an emotion scientist, an AI engineer. Okay. That is the greatest start, by the way, leading a lab and technology company called Hume AI. H U M E. I guess it's kind of short for human. And a former researcher at Berkeley and Google. Lately, I've been focused on the development of AI that can both think and speak and its optimization.

Leo Laporte [00:04:18]:
And this is the little twist for human well being.

Jeff Jarvis [00:04:23]:
Ooh.

Leo Laporte [00:04:24]:
My past research included computational methods to address how emotional behaviors can be parameterized, predicted, and emulated. How they influence our social interactions and bring meaning to our lives. One of your studies showed sad or played sad songs for Americans and Chinese people and noted the emotional difference in the reactions. Which sounds fascinating.

Alan Cowen [00:04:49]:
You've done your research.

Leo Laporte [00:04:51]:
Did the Americans tear up?

Alan Cowen [00:04:56]:
Nobody teared up. But we have made people tear up before. Yeah, that usually requires more than just music.

Leo Laporte [00:05:05]:
I don't know. Every time I hear Luther Vandross sing I want to dance with my father again, I get a little choked up. If you'd played that for me, I might have. Were the Chinese people more stoic, I.

Alan Cowen [00:05:17]:
Would say they, you know, people recognize what music is trying to do most of the time, whether they feel it. You know, that varies from person to person. I think, you know, your particular nostalgia might not be shared by the average citizen of China, but maybe some people.

Leo Laporte [00:05:35]:
That'S a good point. They don't even know Luther Vandross probably. Well, okay, so that's interesting because what you're saying in effect is that humans, aware. Are aware of that the music is trying to manipulate them and resist it a little bit. I imagine that crosses over into your AI work. We're kind of aware that we're talking to AI and maybe have a different approach to it, which may be why companies like OpenAI make it so sycophantic. How did your emotion research apply to what you're doing with AI?

Alan Cowen [00:06:10]:
So people, you're right. People are aware when they see an expressive medium, whether it's art or humans expressing things to them, that there's just an array of emotional affordances that those things are trying to play upon. Which means like people are either trying to make you happy or get something out of you by appealing to your sensibilities. And AI is an intelligent force that also is optimized for an objective and learns to interact with people in order to produce that objective. So in this, you know, it, it just doesn't, doesn't have feelings on it of its own. That's like the main difference. But, but when you think about how to optimize AI, you're really thinking about what emotional affordances are there for AI to improve human well being and how can we optimize for those affordances.

Leo Laporte [00:07:05]:
It's kind of timely. This week Sam Altman admitted that millions of people go to Chat GPT every week to talk about their difficulties, their struggles, even their suicidal ideation.

Jeff Jarvis [00:07:22]:
And again, if you feel like that, please do not go to ChatGPT.

Leo Laporte [00:07:26]:
Probably not the best place to go, but it's. Well, and we were going to talk about this later in the show, but it's kind of telling that they do as if they don't have perhaps an alternative. Do we want AI to be emotionally intelligent?

Alan Cowen [00:07:44]:
There have been studies and sometimes people prefer AI over humans, depending on what the actual thing that they want to talk about is. But you know, there's a sense of objectivity that you're not being judged and for some people that can be comforting and helpful. I mean, obviously you're talking to something that doesn't share your feelings, but if used properly and you're using it more in a Factual way, like, hey, my friend said this and then you get insecure about it, etc. AI can be objective in the same way that a therapist can and can be helpful. So, you know, I don't know that there's the, there's a great chatbot for this yet. There are therapy bots.

Leo Laporte [00:08:32]:
Should there be? This is, I mean, we've had this argument that AI should never be used for psychotherapy because it isn't human.

Alan Cowen [00:08:42]:
Well, if it's giving you good advice, a lot of, a lot of, you know, what people go to psychologists for is just kind of basic questions like, how should I respond to this? What did this person mean by this? How can I go and make friends? And, and you know, if it's just objective advice that you're looking for, a chatbot can provide that. And I think it does. I think it's. It. Many people are getting benefits from talking to AI already.

Jeff Jarvis [00:09:15]:
You also have, besides the company, you have an arm looking into the ethics of all this and working on that. I think that provides context for the entire conversation. So why don't you talk about what you're researching and what your goals are on that side?

Alan Cowen [00:09:34]:
Yeah, so when I started Hume, I also started the Hume Initiative, which is a nonprofit that brought together an independent committee of psychologists, bioethicists, AI researchers, AI ethicists to come up with guidelines for essentially what we have today, which is AI that can speak to us and understands our emotional expressions, let's say, and how it should be used. And we came up with all the different use cases. I mean, having come from Google and having worked on similar things there, I sort of knew what the use cases were. So it wasn't too hard to come up with the use cases. But we came up with what were really the first concrete guidelines that said do this, don't do that for each use case. And Hume AI, the for profit company that builds the technology, actually enforces those guidelines in its terms of use. So the main takeaway though was it really matters a lot what these models are optimized for and how you deploy them and to what end. Across most applications, optimizing for engagement is going to be an issue.

Alan Cowen [00:10:49]:
And optimizing for, well being, meaning all these different metrics of are people happier? Do, are they expressing happiness, do they report being happier, are they showing objective signs of being happier, lower, you know, more health, less illness, etc. Like if you optimize for those things, you generally will get good outcomes. And that's, that's, that's really Inspired a lot of the work that we do.

Leo Laporte [00:11:13]:
I know that there are people listening, going, well, let me, let me read you. This is A quote from Dr. Cowan. If AI is going to get smart enough to make decisions on our behalf, it should understand whether those decisions are good or bad for our well being. I know there are people listening saying, wait a minute, AIs don't understand anything. Are you misusing the word understand here? Or is it possible for an AI to understand what's good or bad for us?

Alan Cowen [00:11:45]:
Yeah, we've never dealt with an intelligence that can speak to us with words. So the meaning of the word understand, you know, I don't think that, that when that was first put into circulation, we were thinking, oh, we'd have to have a different word for things that, that can speak to us but don't feel emotion. And so it depends on what you mean there. But I think that these are, that's what I'm asking.

Leo Laporte [00:12:15]:
What do you mean?

Alan Cowen [00:12:16]:
What we mean by understand is essentially have a model of how the world works, works and are able to predict the effects of their actions to some extent.

Leo Laporte [00:12:26]:
So I was talking about this last week. Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff Jarvis [00:12:29]:
Just on what basis? What's the feedback that says whether it can predict that effect?

Alan Cowen [00:12:35]:
So it's trained. So LLMs are pre trained still mostly on language. I mean we have video models and voice, but at the end of the day they're predicting language tokens. So like if you're reading like a, a script of this podcast that's on the Internet makes its way into an LLMs pre training data, which it undoubtedly will. Oh yeah, 100%.

Leo Laporte [00:12:56]:
Hi LLM.

Alan Cowen [00:12:59]:
You know, this podcast is, is recording accurately a sequence of events that's occurring over time. So in order to predict the next thing that is being said, the LLM has to take everything that's been said in the podcast and predict the next thing that's going to be said. Right. So it has to model what you're thinking.

Jeff Jarvis [00:13:17]:
You talked about the impact. You talked about the impact which is, it's the same problem we have with world models. Right. Knowing that when the pen falls off the table, the pen still lives. Is there a way that you, besides the training mechanism, is there a feedback loop of real life impact of someone saying yes, thanks, I'm happier. How do you test those kinds of things? Is what the, what you're saying is.

Leo Laporte [00:13:44]:
How do it know right after the fact?

Alan Cowen [00:13:48]:
So LLMs have some sense of emotion conveyed in language and they can say, oh well, this person responded as if they were angry. But you know, a lot of that information is also in the voice, which is really our inspiration for focusing on the voice. So if you look at voice conversations, you have more signal on how words impact people.

Leo Laporte [00:14:08]:
So that's your research? Well, it's facial recognition, but I guess it would be be on the tone of voice and so forth. Is how to read that.

Alan Cowen [00:14:16]:
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte [00:14:17]:
How interesting. So you're trying to teach AIs to do that, how to read the human.

Alan Cowen [00:14:22]:
We teach the AI to understand and predict voice the same way that language models understand and predict language. And then we optimize, we post train, what we call it, the model to prefer to do things that evoke positive responses.

Jeff Jarvis [00:14:39]:
There is the feedback loop. Okay, thank you. Got it.

Leo Laporte [00:14:42]:
So here we were talking last week. You know, Jeff kind of alluded to this, that AIs are LLMs are trained on language. And people like Fei Fei Li have said, well, next thing is we got to get train them on the physical world. They have to get out there and understand what happens to the pen and so forth. I was thinking last week that one of the things missing from an LLM is one of the things that distinguishes us from LLMs is that we are a limbic system is our emotional architecture. Do you want to give LLMs emotions or you just want them to be like Leonard Nimoy, like Spock, Emotionless. But understanding the impact that they're having by reading the human.

Alan Cowen [00:15:31]:
Definitely not give LLM emotions.

Leo Laporte [00:15:33]:
Definitely not. Okay, that's.

Alan Cowen [00:15:35]:
That would be really bad. Right?

Leo Laporte [00:15:36]:
Okay, that's what.

Alan Cowen [00:15:37]:
Then we'd have to consider their emotions. That's something to be concerned about.

Leo Laporte [00:15:42]:
An angry LLM. Not good?

Alan Cowen [00:15:45]:
No.

Jeff Jarvis [00:15:45]:
Okay, I can see the book title right now. Do LLMs cry?

Leo Laporte [00:15:48]:
Right. So don't get even if you could, and there's no evidence you can, but even if you could, you wouldn't want to give them a limbic system.

Alan Cowen [00:15:59]:
So when humans evolved a limbic system, it was for the purpose of survival and reproduction. And we have all these proximal goals that the limbic system and more broadly, emotions as they correspond to modes of brain activity push us toward that are negative.

Leo Laporte [00:16:19]:
Fear, love.

Alan Cowen [00:16:21]:
Yeah, they tend to be negative if they're things you want to avoid and positive if you want to pursue them in the pursuit of survival and reproduction. Now, LLMs are trained just predict the next word in pre training or predict the next speech token. And then in post training, we teach them to prefer things that are good for the person. So to the extent that they have positive or negative emotions, they wouldn't align at all with what they're actually saying and how we impute emotions on people. And that's actually something that can be misleading is that if they're acting like a human, it doesn't. If they're acting like a sad human, there's every reason to think that it doesn't actually feel sadness.

Leo Laporte [00:17:03]:
You call it artificial empathy in your work.

Alan Cowen [00:17:05]:
Yeah. Right, yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:17:06]:
Surface level empathy.

Alan Cowen [00:17:09]:
Well, I wouldn't say surface level. It can be deep in the sense that it can predict long term well being of a human being based on a lot of not surface level indicators.

Leo Laporte [00:17:21]:
So the concern can be authentic, but not the feelings.

Alan Cowen [00:17:26]:
Yeah, it can accurately, in theory, it can accurately predict whether a user would feel good or bad. To the extent that it has feelings, it should, to the extent possible, have feelings that align perfectly with the user's feelings.

Leo Laporte [00:17:45]:
Right. Benefit of the user.

Alan Cowen [00:17:47]:
Yeah. There should be no feelings that. There should never be a case where it being happier means the user being sad.

Leo Laporte [00:17:53]:
Isn't this where we get sycophancy from?

Alan Cowen [00:17:57]:
Well, no, I think sycophancy is a byproduct of optimizing for signals that are too shallow. What we're trying to do is add depth to the signals that are being optimized for.

Leo Laporte [00:18:09]:
So it kind of fixes that sycophancy problem in theory.

Alan Cowen [00:18:13]:
That's the hope, right? Yeah.

Paris Martineau [00:18:16]:
I want to bring up a paradox I feel like critics often point to, which is you founded the human initiative, like you said, with these guidelines prohibiting manipulation and deception. But understanding someone's emotional state to craft responses for like satisfaction is kind of by definition emotional manipulation. If you think about it, it's just like very sophisticated and I guess nobly designed manipulation. How do you distinguish like empathetic AI that serves users from AI that manipulates users for someone else's benefit? Like, where's the line?

Alan Cowen [00:18:55]:
I don't think that there's any difference between manipulation and personalization other than what the end goal is. Right. So, you know, you wouldn't say of a human, you wouldn't say, this person's manipulating me because they want me to be happy. You would never say that of a human. So, you know, I feel the same way about AI if it's manipulating you for your long term well being. It's not really what we would call manipulation. Manipulation just happens to have a different connotation to it.

Leo Laporte [00:19:28]:
Yeah, you're giving the AI. I mean, this is Nick Bostrom's paperclip problem. You have to be Careful about what rules you're giving the AI and you want to give it. I mean that seems like a sensible rule. Don't do anything that's going to make the human sad.

Jeff Jarvis [00:19:43]:
The power is the power. And when you demonstrate what you can do, there's nothing, it's general machines. There's nothing stopping someone else for using it to bad motive. Well, you've demonstrated it. Right. So it's, it's there. The issue isn't the technology. The issue then is how it's used.

Jeff Jarvis [00:20:01]:
No.

Leo Laporte [00:20:02]:
As always.

Paris Martineau [00:20:03]:
Yeah. I mean it even goes.

Leo Laporte [00:20:04]:
Humans are going to screw it up no matter what.

Jeff Jarvis [00:20:06]:
Yeah.

Paris Martineau [00:20:06]:
Well you, you named the company after like David Hume's idea that reason is the slave of passions. Right.

Leo Laporte [00:20:13]:
Human. It's Hume.

Alan Cowen [00:20:14]:
Oh.

Paris Martineau [00:20:14]:
Like there's like a dark. I mean there's one for passion, Paris.

Jeff Jarvis [00:20:19]:
Zero for Leo.

Paris Martineau [00:20:23]:
Emotion. Like to that point, if emotions drive everything, then whoever controls the emotional inputs can control a person. I mean how do you think about that power dynamic when you're building technology that creates such a massive like information like asymmetry.

Alan Cowen [00:20:41]:
Yeah, the, the, the. Where should I start? There's a lot there. To the extent that Hume's point was that morality derives from humans thinking about other humans feelings and their own. And that reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions. It is the slave of the passions and that that happens that humans moral attributions are based on emotion, but they also ought to be the slave of the passions in the sense that there is no other moral good besides people feeling happy or the satisfaction of whatever positive emotions that you can have. The goal for AI should be the same. There is no other purpose for AI reasoning other than human well being. And that's why we named it Hume.

Alan Cowen [00:21:38]:
Now that AI is in some ways for humans there's a competing objective which is their own well being for AI that shouldn't exist. Right. So the difference between an AI and a human is that you should be able to trust the AI more in theory. In theory it has no competing objectives if it's built the right way. So you can actually believe that this AI is on your side.

Leo Laporte [00:22:10]:
So you're. This is. By the way, we're talking to Dr. Alan Cowan. He is the chief scientist and CEO of Hume AI. He is an AI ethicist but also an expert going back to his undergraduate days in the study of human emotion. You've partnered with Niantic, the folks who gave us ingress and Pokemon Go, of which I am still an advocate. I'm Sorry, addicts.

Leo Laporte [00:22:37]:
Did I say.

Paris Martineau [00:22:39]:
Very important distinction.

Jeff Jarvis [00:22:40]:
He tries for uncontroversial things to happen.

Leo Laporte [00:22:42]:
I'm excited about this new project, Jade, that you're doing with them. You're doing the voice for Dot, right? Yep.

Alan Cowen [00:22:50]:
Yes.

Leo Laporte [00:22:50]:
Tell us about that.

Alan Cowen [00:22:52]:
So one of the things that we focused on at Hume is the ability to drive unique kinds of characters. And Niantic picked up on that. What you can do with Hume is you can shape both the personality and the voice and the language, all with one prompt. And so that's what's driving their AR Character is a prompt to Hume that describes what the character should do and what it should sound like and what it should act like.

Leo Laporte [00:23:25]:
And the goal is to make it. What? More. More human. Let me play a little video. This is Niantic.

Alan Cowen [00:23:33]:
Not exactly human.

Leo Laporte [00:23:34]:
Not exactly. This is Niantic concept human. And of course, this is a concept because it requires AI AR glasses.

Paris Martineau [00:23:43]:
Come on, tell me where you.

Leo Laporte [00:23:44]:
Okay. I probably get the turtle for the music. Yeah. I want to hear the voice. We're going to hear the voice. No, no, they don't want. I want to hear the music. But there's.

Leo Laporte [00:23:53]:
These are the little dots, and you talk to them. Right.

Jeff Jarvis [00:23:57]:
Carmen's in town.

Alan Cowen [00:23:58]:
We should go out tonight.

Paris Martineau [00:23:59]:
Hey, Dot, Carmen loves live music.

Jeff Jarvis [00:24:01]:
Where can we take her?

Paris Martineau [00:24:02]:
SF Jazz.

Leo Laporte [00:24:04]:
Great. Well, Dot didn't talk. Come on, Dot.

Paris Martineau [00:24:07]:
Okay, let's go.

Leo Laporte [00:24:08]:
Is Dot listening to the tone of voice and to the humans expression and all that?

Alan Cowen [00:24:14]:
Yes. Okay, so Dot is powered by the voice of Dot is powered by him's API. So what Hume's API does is it actually sends in the users what the user is saying, not just their language, but also the audio itself. Our model directly processes that audio and is able to react in a way that showcases an understanding of the user's tone of voice using its own tone of voice.

Leo Laporte [00:24:42]:
All right, now I want you to put your AI ethicist hat on. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, there's risk here. Yes, of course.

Alan Cowen [00:24:52]:
I mean, there's risk with everything. Right. But I think this. This is a fairly. I think this is a good way to showcase how AI can interact with people and with kids in a way that's safe with guardrails and can't be confused for another human that has its own set of needs.

Leo Laporte [00:25:10]:
Okay, but I can also see. And this has become a problem. Character AI just announced nobody under 18 going to be using character AI anymore and was a similar idea. But the problem is the humans started to really identify with these AIs and consider them friends. And even if it's a little green thing on your desk, I can see, especially kids, not getting confused. They know that's not a human, but kind of relating to it, becoming friends with it.

Jeff Jarvis [00:25:38]:
Just proposed legislation to forbid young people from using chat, which is kind of ridiculous.

Leo Laporte [00:25:43]:
I hope that doesn't pass. But anyway, there is a concern, of course. Right. I mean, that's. You're going to make it so good and empathetic that it. I know you're not trying to manipulate us, but in effect, it's going to, isn't it?

Alan Cowen [00:25:59]:
There's an entertainment aspect to it.

Jeff Jarvis [00:26:01]:
Yeah. All entertainment is manipulative.

Alan Cowen [00:26:04]:
Yeah. Like when you're watching a character in a movie, you kind of empathize with it.

Leo Laporte [00:26:09]:
Sure. And it's a good character.

Alan Cowen [00:26:11]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And hopefully that's happening here.

Leo Laporte [00:26:15]:
So. Okay. All right.

Alan Cowen [00:26:16]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:26:17]:
And people will. The good thing about movies is after long training, it didn't happen at first. As I understand, people would run from the movie theater thinking the train was going to hit them. But we learned over time, oh, no, it's synthetic. It's not real. It's a movie. And that actually gave us permission to laugh and cry and really get involved, knowing that we would be able to step back and walk out of the theater. You think the same kind of education will happen with users?

Alan Cowen [00:26:45]:
I hope so. Yeah. I think that there's a huge range of possibilities here. I mean, not just in the entertainment space, but all kinds of assistant and augmentation use cases for this. I mean, it is sort of. It has some utility, this case, where it can actually serve as a tour guide, basically through your.

Leo Laporte [00:27:06]:
I'm sure you hate hearing this, but the movie her was a cautionary tale in that respect. Right. You fell in love with her.

Alan Cowen [00:27:12]:
This is if. If you've seen the movie. This is more like that character in the video game that he's playing.

Leo Laporte [00:27:19]:
Where.

Alan Cowen [00:27:19]:
You know, it's just constantly swearing at him, but he's like, yeah, he made it.

Leo Laporte [00:27:23]:
Yeah. That was actually quite a funny moment in the. In the movie and maybe had an underlying point.

Jeff Jarvis [00:27:32]:
Can I ask you a question? A related question at a very practical level? Audiobooks and other things. I've said this on the show before where I've recorded five of them soon to record a sixth, and it's a pain in the butt. And there's books that I wish were in audiobooks that are not. But I guess what I've wondered is whether there is. Does part of the outcome of what you're doing yield a markup language for emotion. Is there a way to take a known text and give it the signal to say, that's ironic, that's a joke, that's regretful. Do you end up out of this with something that can be used in explicit ways like that maybe to inform.

Leo Laporte [00:28:14]:
The prosody that's laid on the right?

Alan Cowen [00:28:16]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our model can do that. The instructions that it follows, like, it can whisper, shout, it can be sarcastic. The challenge is being able to do that with subtlety. Basically, it already. Yeah. With. Even without instructions, if you put in text, it will read it out in a way that's sensitive to the meaning of the text and form the right prosody.

Alan Cowen [00:28:47]:
And then when you layer in instructions, we're trying to get it to be. To combine both like the text information and the instructions to give you something that has more depth and you could adjust it then.

Leo Laporte [00:28:59]:
We actually had that in the early days of speech synthesis, I remember kind of a markup language that you could put into the text that the speech synthesis want, then add a funny little question to the tone. We've come a long way since that, but people have been doing that since day one. And in speech synthesis.

Jeff Jarvis [00:29:17]:
When we interviewed Steven Johnson from Notebook lm, he said to get the. I surprised the heck out of us that to get the two, the pair making the podcasts that they tried out 80 pairs of people till they found the right chemistry between them and then made that the base prosody from what they worked from. How do you work with voices similarly, how do you create the voices in the first place? Where does that come from?

Alan Cowen [00:29:47]:
Yeah, traditionally in text to speech, you would ask actors to record a bunch of data and then you clone their voices. That's not at all how we generate voices. So all of the voices that are defaults on our website are synthetic. We've trained the model to be able to take in a description of the voice that you want and actually invent that voice. More similar to more recent video generation technology, where it's not trained on tons of video of a given person, but it can understand how to generate a person from a prompt. We've done the same thing with voice and pioneered this approach. And you can either put in a description or you can put in a very short snippet of a person speaking less than 30 seconds to instantly clone a voice as well.

Leo Laporte [00:30:38]:
Wow, there. There's a risk and I think you touched this in your work. Actually. This is a quote from Shamay Tesori and Canterman. It's called Canterman's Warning Loneliness. This is really interesting, Jeff. You might, you might get this because we've talked before about Hannah Arendt saying that loneliness was one of the things that led to totalitarianism. Loneliness is adaptive.

Leo Laporte [00:31:05]:
It improves survival and reproduction by motivating human connection. I'm lonely. I'm going to go out and meet some people. Reducing loneliness through AI may be maladaptive, undermining the motivation for real relationships. Are you concerned that you're going to do such a good job at creating an empathetic AI that people may turn away from human beings and turn towards machines? That would not be a good outcome.

Alan Cowen [00:31:32]:
That's one of the things that we worry about. Yeah. And I think the way to avoid it strictly is to train on long term well being because people would be worse off if they fell in love with robots and isolated themselves versus if the AI encouraged them to form real relationships with humans. So I think, you know, we bring that back to focusing on every sign you can possibly collect of people's well being over long periods of time.

Leo Laporte [00:32:04]:
Yeah.

Alan Cowen [00:32:06]:
One of the things that we use as a proxy for that, because it's kind of hard to get this longitudinal data, is when we have permission and with controlled environments, we can take conversations that people have with the AI and we can get other people to listen to them and say, you know, was this good for the person or not? Basically. And it turns out people are pretty good at that. So if it's a person falling in love with AI bot, usually people will react negatively that say, oh, this is probably not a good experience.

Leo Laporte [00:32:46]:
Yeah, we're very highly tuned to this kind of deeper impact of the AI. I worry that AI, it's going to be a hard thing to get AI to have such a deep understanding. That's obviously what you're working on. Right.

Jeff Jarvis [00:33:00]:
What about propaganda? What about that? Speaking of Hana Iran, what about that kind of whipping people up to a political emotion? How do you view that?

Alan Cowen [00:33:11]:
I think that the. That ties in as well. Right. Where, you know, the actual facts come from is not really something that we focus on. I think that a big focus in other areas of AI is to understand what's factual and what's not. But what you do with the facts, like, granted, if you make an assumption that something is true, you can then ask questions about whether a given conversation is good for a person in light of that being true. And so that's more where we focus. If something is propaganda, there's an earlier Part of the process of the guardrails that will try to root that out.

Leo Laporte [00:34:08]:
And obviously this is why you have such a strong commitment to ethics, because you see the risk here. You spent most of your early career proving that emotion recognition doesn't really work. Right. Are you now, are you now trying to disprove your younger self?

Alan Cowen [00:34:27]:
I mean, we never believed in mind reading.

Leo Laporte [00:34:32]:
Right, right, right.

Alan Cowen [00:34:35]:
But we always believed that emotional expressions are rich and informative.

Leo Laporte [00:34:38]:
Yeah, we do it. Humans can do it.

Alan Cowen [00:34:40]:
Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:34:41]:
But we're a very highly evolved tuned organism. That's one of the things we do best.

Alan Cowen [00:34:49]:
Even if you just pre train the model to predict the next word, the next speech token, basically it will naturally react to people's expressive behavior by emulating.

Leo Laporte [00:35:04]:
What we would do.

Alan Cowen [00:35:05]:
If you whisper to it, it'll whisper back.

Leo Laporte [00:35:07]:
Right, right.

Alan Cowen [00:35:09]:
And that's, you know, without any specific kind of training to do the right thing. It just. All of this knowledge about how expressions and language interact to form meaning is implicit in every human conversation. So no, it's not like a direct window into our feelings. But that was never the point really.

Leo Laporte [00:35:34]:
Empathy is not an emergent property. Empathy appears to be emergent or appears to be empathetic.

Alan Cowen [00:35:44]:
Well, empathy means different things. I think that, you know, there's cognitive empathy, which is just understanding that somebody is feeling something, kind of being able to predict their feelings. So a psychopath who has no emotional empathy can have cognitive empathy. There's emotional empathy, meaning that you reflect those feelings. So some, when you see somebody in pain, you feel some semblance of pain, you cringe. Empathic pain is what we call it, for example. And then there's empathic concern. That's the kind of empathy that I think AI should have is empathic concern.

Alan Cowen [00:36:18]:
It should feel, it should be optimized so that people's feelings matter to it. In effect, it acts as though people's feelings matter at the functional and behavioral level. It doesn't feel anything, but, but it acts as though it does feel the things that somebody who is really attuned to somebody else's well being would feel.

Leo Laporte [00:36:45]:
You know, the EU is actually banned emotionally. They, they think it, they think it's concerning.

Alan Cowen [00:36:55]:
Yeah, the way that, that's written in the law, the AI act. Yeah, it's very strange. What they say is you can't. Well, I mean, it's not officially banned, but, but there's a lot of restrictions around taking images of a face or recordings of audio and attributing emotion labels, like explicit emotion labels to it. But the AI act says that you're allowed to take into account measures of expressive behavior, voice and facial expression, for example, but you're just not allowed to apply any labels to it.

Leo Laporte [00:37:35]:
Ah.

Alan Cowen [00:37:37]:
Which. The unfortunate part of that is that you can. This is why it's really important to put some real research into regulations and also think about their impact and not just their intent. The impact of that is that you can have AI that's optimized for engagement and uses your emotions in a manipulative way, but you're not allowed to study whether it's using your emotions in a manipulative way, because that would involve labeling them, labeling the expressions and understanding how the AI actually responds to them, which would be against the law, or at least heavily restricted. So. So the effect of this law is, to me, extremely negative, has no possibility of having a positive impact. But I get the intent. The intent was good.

Leo Laporte [00:38:26]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [00:38:26]:
As is often the case.

Leo Laporte [00:38:29]:
Actually. The difference. Somebody. We were talking about this the other day. The difference between the eu, it seems to be lawmaking in the EU and the lawmaking in the US in the us, Once the law is made, we think, oh, no, that's it. It's done 200 years later, still good. The EU is willing to legislate, you know, kind of incrementally, and if something doesn't work, kind of modify it over time. So let's hope that's the case with this, that they will notice the difference.

Leo Laporte [00:38:53]:
Dr. Cowan, thank you so much for spending some time with us. I could go on and on and on. This is fascinating stuff. I wish you luck. DOT is really. I mean, it uses Snap spectacles, so I guess it's in theory. Could we see DOT sometime in the next few years, you think? Or is this pure research?

Alan Cowen [00:39:15]:
So I'll leave it to Niantic to decide when the public release, if or when the public release is going to happen. But. But, you know, it's a. Currently, it's something that many people have experienced through their demo. I think it's very exciting.

Leo Laporte [00:39:32]:
It sounds fascinating. That's what. See, I. I have no fear of having. Because I feel like I am intelligent enough to know that a movie is just a movie and that an AI Dot is just an AI Dot and to make a distinction between that and a human being. And I think I'm emotionally mature enough to do that. I hope to God I'm right, because I'm dying for something like this. I think this would, as both Paris and Jeff know, I think this would be very, very, very Interesting.

Leo Laporte [00:40:00]:
This is where I can't wait for AI to take off. If people are interested in what's going on here. Of course, there's Hume AI, which is your commercial site. And this is the Hume Initiative, the nonprofit talking about an empath ethical path for empathetic AI, which is even kind of more fascinating. Oh, it's following me around. If you want to learn more about Dr. Cowan's work, this is. This is the place to go.

Leo Laporte [00:40:29]:
Alan Cowan, thank you so much for joining us.

Jeff Jarvis [00:40:32]:
Gotta get you out of that phone booth, man. You can't be happy in there.

Leo Laporte [00:40:35]:
There's no emotion in there.

Alan Cowen [00:40:37]:
No, I like it. It's crazy.

Leo Laporte [00:40:40]:
Really a pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much.

Jeff Jarvis [00:40:42]:
Thanks so much.

Leo Laporte [00:40:43]:
I wish you the best.

Alan Cowen [00:40:44]:
Thanks so much for having me.

Leo Laporte [00:40:45]:
What you're working on. All right, thank you. Take care, Alan.

Alan Cowen [00:40:48]:
Conversation.

Leo Laporte [00:40:48]:
Thank you.

Alan Cowen [00:40:49]:
Take care.

Leo Laporte [00:40:50]:
Let's do a commercial. And when we continue, the AI news.

Jeff Jarvis [00:40:55]:
News of which there is plenty.

Leo Laporte [00:40:57]:
There is always five or six hundred stories, of which we'll get to two. Coming up in just a little bit, Jeff Jarvis and Paris Martineau. You're watching Intelligent Machines, our show today, brought to you by Zscaler, the world's largest cloud security platform. If you listen to the show, you know, if you listen to our. Any of our shows, you know that the rewards of AI are balanced by the perils of AI. Right? For business especially, you know, you cannot avoid AI in business, public or private. You want to use it, but at the same time, you know that there are privacy risks associated with it. Plus the issue of bad guys using AIs to attack you.

Leo Laporte [00:41:40]:
There's a solution that solves this. The potential rewards of AI are too great to ignore, but so are the risks. Whether it's loss of sensitive data or attacks against youth through your enterprise, managed AI, generative AI increases opportunities for threat actors. They use it to rapidly create phishing emails that are perfect, completely indistinguishable from the real thing. They use it to write malicious code at scale to automate data extraction. This is a scary stat. There were 1.3 million instances of Social Security numbers leaked out through AI applications. We just saw a story that ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot saw nearly 3.2 million data violations.

Leo Laporte [00:42:31]:
That should scare you if you're using AI in your business. That's why you need a more modern approach. You need Zscaler's Zero Trust plus AI. It removes your attack surface. It secures your data everywhere. It safeguards your use of both public and private AI. And it protects against ransomware and AI powered phishing attacks. Check out what Shiva, the director of security and infrastructure at Zuora, said about using zscaler.

Leo Laporte [00:42:58]:
With Zscaler, being in line in a security protection strategy helps us monitor all the traffic. So even if a bad actor were to use AI because we have tight security, security framework around our endpoint helps us proactively prevent that activity from happening. AI is tremendous in terms of its opportunities, but it also brings in challenges. We're confident that zscale is going to help us ensure that we're not slowed down by security challenges, but continue to.

Paris Martineau [00:43:23]:
Take advantage of all the advancements.

Leo Laporte [00:43:28]:
With Zero Trust plus AI, you can thrive in the AI era. You can stay ahead of the competition. You can remain resilient even as threats and risks evolve. Learn more@zscaler.com Security that's Zscaler.com Security we thank him so much for supporting intelligent machines. Oh my. What did you think of Dr. Cowan? I thought that was a very he's embarked on a perilous but fascinating project, I think.

Paris Martineau [00:44:00]:
I agree. I'm happy also that I could correct the record on the name Origin.

Jeff Jarvis [00:44:07]:
Yaley.

Leo Laporte [00:44:10]:
I still think there was a human part of it as well as a series of Yale. It was David Hume and hey, I studied Hume. I dimly remember Hume. He had something to do with causality or something. I don't.

Jeff Jarvis [00:44:22]:
There's a new Hume book out.

Leo Laporte [00:44:24]:
There's a new book about David Hume out. This is 18th century stuff.

Paris Martineau [00:44:28]:
There's a new Hume tomb.

Leo Laporte [00:44:33]:
They made us read Kant and Hume.

Jeff Jarvis [00:44:35]:
There's a new Kant book out.

Leo Laporte [00:44:37]:
Yeah.

Paris Martineau [00:44:38]:
I can't believe it.

Leo Laporte [00:44:40]:
I can't believe there's a new Hume Dome. All right. That's a title for the ages. I think that'll scare people away actually. Do you want to have you seen the virtual try on app? Now this is what AI was made for.

Paris Martineau [00:44:54]:
Evan, I feel like you've said on this show have you seen the new virtual try on app? Maybe six different times over the last two years had this interaction. So there's always a new virtual try on app.

Leo Laporte [00:45:09]:
But. But does this. But this one lets you batch process multiple characters and upload multiple clothing items.

Jeff Jarvis [00:45:14]:
For comprehensive virtual try on process. Thank you very much.

Paris Martineau [00:45:18]:
Why does that woman look like she's being raptured? Do you recall the. The instance some weeks or months ago where you decided to download one of these apps and.

Leo Laporte [00:45:30]:
Oh yeah, that's right.

Paris Martineau [00:45:31]:
So Jeff and I had to vamp for what felt like 20 minutes while you just like Stood in weird positions.

Leo Laporte [00:45:38]:
Never mind.

Paris Martineau [00:45:39]:
I mean, I think we could do that again. I'm just acknowledging the reality of the situation for the listeners.

Leo Laporte [00:45:44]:
How about this? Get ready for AI Oreos in your Super Bowl. Mondelez, the giant. The food giant, which owns Oreos, among many other things, the Z. I always.

Jeff Jarvis [00:45:57]:
Figured the Z was silent.

Leo Laporte [00:45:59]:
I always thought it was Mandalay as well. But I believe. Okay, I don't know. Correct me if I'm wrong. They've invested $40 million in an AI tools. They say they're going to use it for marketing. It cuts the costs for marketing content by 30 to 50%, according to Reuters.

Jeff Jarvis [00:46:22]:
How is this a press release? Isn't everybody doing this?

Leo Laporte [00:46:25]:
Well, yeah, in fact, according to Reuters, Kraft, Heinz and Coca Cola are also. In fact, we've seen. We saw the Coca Cola ad last Super Bowl. The Christmas ad for cooking.

Jeff Jarvis [00:46:34]:
Okay, so so far we've checked off two stories that have been done.

Leo Laporte [00:46:36]:
Let me repeat it again and again. Cadbury. Oh, never mind.

Jeff Jarvis [00:46:40]:
All right, sorry.

Leo Laporte [00:46:43]:
See? All right.

Jeff Jarvis [00:46:43]:
If you use our voice.

Leo Laporte [00:46:45]:
500 stories. I keep repeating them.

Jeff Jarvis [00:46:47]:
Use our voice emotion. Right now. We're. We're. What did you say? Paris? We're mocking. We're deriving. We're mocking. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [00:46:55]:
We're not. Nice. We're not good for your wealth.

Leo Laporte [00:46:56]:
How about this one? You heard us. In fact, I used Suno to make that lovely theme song for our DD last week. You liked it, right?

Paris Martineau [00:47:06]:
It was great. It was fantastic. Your sound effects were fantastic.

Leo Laporte [00:47:09]:
OpenAI has decided they want to compete with Suno. They're going to create a generative AI music startup.

Paris Martineau [00:47:17]:
We love a crazy graphic from Clark, the graphic designer at the Information.

Leo Laporte [00:47:23]:
Does he. Does he use AI? No, I think he does it.

Paris Martineau [00:47:26]:
That is all man made. And he makes those heads really large.

Leo Laporte [00:47:31]:
Good job, Clark.

Paris Martineau [00:47:33]:
Shout out. Clark Miller.

Leo Laporte [00:47:35]:
Good job, Clark. Sounds like a line from Superman. So, yeah, so I guess it makes sense. I mean, they're doing video, they might as well do music, right?

Jeff Jarvis [00:47:45]:
And they'll violate God knows what copyright.

Leo Laporte [00:47:48]:
We were talking about sycophancy. Researchers confirm the AI chatbots are incredibly sycophantic.

Paris Martineau [00:48:00]:
Well, that's a great point, Leah.

Leo Laporte [00:48:02]:
Researchers at Stanford, Harvard. This is big name mute institutions. Stanford, Harvard and elsewhere published a study in Nature. I'm trying to get to the archive stories before Jeff does AI. They say it's harming science. 50% of AI responses are sycophantic. Sucking up, kissing butt. It was posted on Archive, of course, earlier this month, so I figured Jeff probably saw it already, but yeah, I.

Jeff Jarvis [00:48:34]:
Think it was on the list two weeks ago.

Alan Cowen [00:48:35]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:48:35]:
Okay, thanks. I'm really not making it.

Jeff Jarvis [00:48:40]:
You wait for the translation.

Leo Laporte [00:48:42]:
Yeah. Microsoft's meco. Do you want to talk about meco?

Jeff Jarvis [00:48:48]:
Is it Meco or Mico? Microsoft. Wouldn't it be Mico?

Leo Laporte [00:48:53]:
I would think so, but Paul Thurrock calls it meco. I don't know. Do we even know? It's a little.

Jeff Jarvis [00:48:57]:
Do you have an official word here?

Leo Laporte [00:49:00]:
No. Microsoft was down this morning, so we don't have anything. Microsoft.

Jeff Jarvis [00:49:06]:
It's Clippy.

Leo Laporte [00:49:08]:
It is Clippy. It's a little heart shaped Clippy.

Paris Martineau [00:49:11]:
It's Clippy all the way down. All of these things kind of.

Leo Laporte [00:49:14]:
Microsoft calls it a human centered rebranding of Microsoft's copilot AI efforts. Technology says Microsoft should work in the service of people. We're not about chasing engagement or optimizing for screen time. We're building AI that gets you back to your life, that deepens human connections.

Paris Martineau [00:49:38]:
Unfortunately, we have like a repetitive theme going on, but I feel like we've heard we're building an AI that deepens human connections like a million times before. Is that not true?

Leo Laporte [00:49:49]:
We finally ran out of stories.

Paris Martineau [00:49:51]:
It's finally merged into one big story. I will say that little icon for Mikko is really cute. It does it for me.

Leo Laporte [00:49:58]:
Yeah. It's better than a paperclip. Although my Microsoft VP kind of said the quiet part out loud when he said Clippy walked so we could run. We all live in Clippy's shadow in some sense.

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:11]:
They had to acknowledge Clippy. They could not not acknowledge Clippy.

Leo Laporte [00:50:14]:
And I imagine it's going to be just as beloved. Do you want to see a little.

Paris Martineau [00:50:18]:
A little meek would have been a great Halloween costume. I should have done that.

Leo Laporte [00:50:21]:
O Mika. Be easier.

Paris Martineau [00:50:24]:
Yeah, but that hasn't got the.

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:26]:
No, it's not recognizable.

Paris Martineau [00:50:27]:
People would go crazy for Clippy.

Leo Laporte [00:50:29]:
Yeah. Miko's actually not saying look like a fabric softener. It doesn't look like it. Downey and the Stay Puft Marshmallow man had a baby and Mikko is the. All it's doing is spinning. What the hell? What's the video of?

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:47]:
Just this.

Paris Martineau [00:50:47]:
It's the video.

Leo Laporte [00:50:48]:
Is it spinning?

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:49]:
It changes colors, Leo.

Leo Laporte [00:50:51]:
I don't. I. Oh, I'm supposed to talk to it. I'm supposed to talk to it.

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:58]:
That's a video.

Paris Martineau [00:50:58]:
That's YouTube, Leo. Have you ever seen a video before?

Leo Laporte [00:51:03]:
What's that triangle in the middle? Oh, that's to keep the pizza box from Hitting the pizza. Okay, we'll call back to last week's episode where I was trying to click the. The pizza separator over and over again.

Paris Martineau [00:51:20]:
Okay, Brandroid posted a video in the Discord Chat that we do need to all look.

Leo Laporte [00:51:24]:
All right, all right. If Brandroid did it, I shall post it. Ladies and gentlemen, Google has locked me out of generating VO videos for two hours because I tried so hard to make a video of Paris dunking on Leo. This was the closest I got. Oh, maybe I'm just not getting.

Paris Martineau [00:51:42]:
I'm holding a basketball and then she's dunking on me. I'm dunking, but not in the right way.

Leo Laporte [00:51:50]:
Okay, was there sound on that one or was it just me?

Jeff Jarvis [00:51:54]:
No, the still was good.

Paris Martineau [00:51:55]:
The still was great.

Leo Laporte [00:51:57]:
Yeah. Thank you, Brandroid, for dunking. For the dunking that I deserved. Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes a bag of Doritos for a weapon.

Jeff Jarvis [00:52:15]:
No, they thought there was cash in it.

Leo Laporte [00:52:17]:
Yeah, they said $50,000 quick. So this happened at Kenwood High School in Baltimore. They have an AI gun detection system, which tells you something about. About Kenwood High School that they feel they need it. Some poor 16 year old was hanging out with friends after football practice, just munching away, munching away. He took the Doritos, finished them, put the bag in his back pocket. All of a sudden, eight cop cars came pulling up for us. He said, they started walking towards me with guns drawn saying, get on the ground.

Leo Laporte [00:52:53]:
And I was like, what? They made me get on my knees.

Jeff Jarvis [00:53:00]:
Those are the fast times. Ridgebot high voice they made me get.

Leo Laporte [00:53:03]:
On my knees with my hands behind my back and cuff me. Then they searched me and found nothing. He said, poor kid. I mean, he was clearly traumatized. He says, I'm not going to go to football practice. I'm not going to hang around anymore. I'm going to go home. I was mainly like.

Leo Laporte [00:53:21]:
He said, am I going to die? Are they going to kill me? They showed me the picture and said, this looks like a gun. I said, no, it's chips, man.

Jeff Jarvis [00:53:31]:
I shouldn't laugh.

Leo Laporte [00:53:33]:
No, it's terrible. They're using something called Omni Alert, a gun detection technology introduced in Baltimore county public schools last year. It scans existing surveillance footage and obviously there's cameras everywhere and alerts police in real time when it detects what it believes to be a weapon. Omni Alert. The company later admitted the incident was a false positive, but no. Well, it gets worse, they said, but it functioned as intended. Its purpose is to prioritize Safety and awareness through rapid human verification. The rapid human verification of squad cars with guns drawn.

Leo Laporte [00:54:14]:
Baltimore County Public schools sent a letter to parents offering counseling services.

Jeff Jarvis [00:54:20]:
I mean, this is skewful. Counseling services are probably going to be chatgpt because they can't afford real counselors. This is cue for the family guy meme, right?

Leo Laporte [00:54:29]:
What's the family guy meme?

Jeff Jarvis [00:54:31]:
The cop holding the color. The color swatches to Paul Peter Griffin. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:54:38]:
The teen says he no longer feels safe going to school. If I eat another bag of chips or drink something, I feel like they're going to come again. They didn't apologize. They just told me it was protocol. I was expecting at least somebody to talk to me about it.

Jeff Jarvis [00:54:53]:
There should be a suit against the company and the cops for trauma.

Leo Laporte [00:54:57]:
They're saying this is what's supposed to happen.

Jeff Jarvis [00:54:59]:
And all the other kids around, not even that kid. And all the other kids. How many kids did this traumatize? How much danger?

Paris Martineau [00:55:05]:
So difficult to be a kid.

Leo Laporte [00:55:07]:
These. Jesus.

Jeff Jarvis [00:55:09]:
The presumption of danger from children.

Leo Laporte [00:55:13]:
You know, I don't know what it's like in your neighborhoods, but I don't. Kids don't play on the street anymore in Petaluma. I walk all around town. There's never any kids in the street.

Jeff Jarvis [00:55:22]:
That's such a boomer thing to say. That is so boomer.

Leo Laporte [00:55:26]:
But I remember I just see them all.

Alan Cowen [00:55:29]:
They're darn folks.

Leo Laporte [00:55:30]:
Actually, here's another data point. So we have a neighbor house that is full of immigrants. There's a big family. They have. I think they think they're still in the village because they have chickens. They have all sorts of animals and pen and stuff. Pigs they raise. They have little crops.

Leo Laporte [00:55:52]:
It's really cute. And the kids are playing outside all the time. They're running around, they're playing. The other day they were. I heard them counting 1, 2, 3. They're playing hide and seek. And then I saw a kid hiding behind the tree over here. I thought it was really cute.

Leo Laporte [00:56:05]:
But that's because they don't come from around here. The, you know, American kids, they know better than schedule the play dates. Yeah. No kidding.

Jeff Jarvis [00:56:15]:
Yeah. Did you, Paris, which are were you on this side or that side of the parents schedule play dates line.

Paris Martineau [00:56:23]:
What do you mean?

Jeff Jarvis [00:56:25]:
In our day, we just went out and played. Nobody. We didn't have a calendar.

Paris Martineau [00:56:30]:
I mean, that's how I grew up as well.

Jeff Jarvis [00:56:32]:
You did?

Paris Martineau [00:56:32]:
I don't think my parents ever scheduled. I think I would be like, I'm going to Go to this person's house.

Leo Laporte [00:56:38]:
We, we did play dates for our kids when.

Jeff Jarvis [00:56:43]:
Because everybody did.

Leo Laporte [00:56:44]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [00:56:45]:
Although the kids didn't play.

Leo Laporte [00:56:47]:
Henry used to go out and play all the time. He was a skater. He would take a skateboard. He would get chased away from property all the time. So, you know, in the UK now they're doing age ID verification, Right?

Paris Martineau [00:57:04]:
Face id, facial age verification.

Leo Laporte [00:57:08]:
Reuters referred back to this.

Paris Martineau [00:57:09]:
Insurance, I suppose they call it.

Leo Laporte [00:57:11]:
A couple of months ago, Britain's most tattooed man. 45 year old king England.

Paris Martineau [00:57:18]:
How do they know he's the most tattooed man?

Leo Laporte [00:57:21]:
He calls himself the king of Inkland.

Paris Martineau [00:57:24]:
Formerly known as one of the most tattooed men.

Leo Laporte [00:57:26]:
Yeah. Matthew Whelan. He has spent 1600 hours in the tattoo artist's chair getting inked from head to toe. He says, I can't get into websites because the age ID says you're wearing a mask. It keeps as it keeps. I probably talks like it keeps asking me to remove my face. He told need to know. I just can't do a Nicholas Cage or John Travolta like a face off.

Leo Laporte [00:57:57]:
I'm the most tattooed man in the uk. Don't you know? Poor guy. You can't look the face id. This is, this is, this is literally an example. Tells him, take off your face mask, dude.

Paris Martineau [00:58:13]:
He can't take his face off.

Leo Laporte [00:58:16]:
Can't. He can't. He said, you know what though? If. If we got Matt, Dr. Cowan to look at him, he'd say, oh, he's a happy man.

Jeff Jarvis [00:58:26]:
How do you. How do you pierce your forehead? What do you put on the other side? How does it stay there?

Leo Laporte [00:58:32]:
Important questions.

Paris Martineau [00:58:33]:
Dermal piercings. There's like a really. It's like a thing that goes.

Leo Laporte [00:58:39]:
Yeah, they do it like those drywall anchors. You drill it in and then it goes kind of.

Paris Martineau [00:58:44]:
I mean, it is kind of like a drywall anchor. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:58:48]:
How do you know Paris, how do you know about this?

Paris Martineau [00:58:52]:
I've looked this up once before.

Leo Laporte [00:58:53]:
Did you? Oh, okay. You weren't.

Paris Martineau [00:58:55]:
I don't have facial piercing. I mean, I think I would just. My earrings. I rip my earrings out of my own ears so often that I would destroy myself. I had something in my face.

Leo Laporte [00:59:07]:
You'd have to.

Paris Martineau [00:59:08]:
Have to be ripped out.

Leo Laporte [00:59:09]:
They'd have to do those drywall anchors where they're actually plastic.

Paris Martineau [00:59:12]:
I've always wanted to get a nose piercing, but my glasses slide down too far on my nose for that ever.

Leo Laporte [00:59:17]:
To be nose pierce.

Jeff Jarvis [00:59:18]:
No, no, don't get a nose piercing.

Paris Martineau [00:59:20]:
Listen, I know that that's going to be your guys's take?

Jeff Jarvis [00:59:23]:
Oh, yeah. I'm of the age when I want to offer, I see it, I want to offer somebody a handkerchief.

Paris Martineau [00:59:28]:
Have you guys ever had piercings?

Jeff Jarvis [00:59:30]:
No.

Leo Laporte [00:59:31]:
I have a tattoo, but I don't have no piercings.

Paris Martineau [00:59:33]:
Yeah, other than the tattoo you got at midnight.

Leo Laporte [00:59:37]:
It was mid New Year's Eve, midnight. I got my head shaved and I got.

Paris Martineau [00:59:41]:
Wait, so what tattoo are we going to get this year? On the live stream, Lisa says if.

Leo Laporte [00:59:46]:
You ever do it, a divorce certificate if you ever do it again.

Paris Martineau [00:59:50]:
Sick tattoo.

Leo Laporte [00:59:51]:
She says, I'm designing the tattoo and it's going to be l. I on one cheek and sa on the other cheek. I said, okay, never mind, never mind.

Paris Martineau [01:00:02]:
I mean, that could be kind of fun. You could twerk. You go together.

Leo Laporte [01:00:06]:
All right, Jeff, you and I both bookmarked the same story. We will get to that in a moment. You're watching intelligent.

Jeff Jarvis [01:00:12]:
What a tease. What a tease. You cannot. You know what? And it's a paper and we both put it in there. You can't wait for this.

Leo Laporte [01:00:18]:
You thrilled? It's so exciting. Ladies and gentlemen, finally, finally, we're going to resolve the age old question in just a moment. You're watching intelligent machines. What is the age old question you might ask?

Jeff Jarvis [01:00:33]:
You'll find out.

Leo Laporte [01:00:34]:
You'll find out. That's Jeff Jarvis.

Paris Martineau [01:00:36]:
And resolve it.

Leo Laporte [01:00:37]:
She's the Duncan machine. Paris Martineau who is today and I'm not. Not that I'm keeping count. Sliced me up three or four times. She's the queen of microaggressions, ladies and gentlemen.

Jeff Jarvis [01:00:52]:
Oof.

Leo Laporte [01:00:53]:
No, no, I know, I don't.

Paris Martineau [01:00:55]:
I do. This is completely off topic to what you just said, but I was making this little slashing noise then it reminded me October is nearly over and I haven't done this noise yet. So.

Jeff Jarvis [01:01:08]:
Thank you. We needed that.

Leo Laporte [01:01:10]:
Halloween. You could join us because Anthony and John are contemplating a Halloween Eve video game for Friday night. You know, one of the cooperative games we do. I suggest I will be partying. Yeah, that's right.

Jeff Jarvis [01:01:27]:
Have you decided? What are you wearing?

Paris Martineau [01:01:29]:
This year I'm gonna be the log lady from Twin Peaks. Today I went to the art supply store to get my dense styrofoam to make my log from. Be fun. I was going to be radioactive shrimp, but I figured that was too.

Leo Laporte [01:01:45]:
Can't do that nose of my own reporting. Can't do that.

Jeff Jarvis [01:01:51]:
You could have gotten some glowing paint. I think it might have worked.

Paris Martineau [01:01:54]:
I mean, it would have worked, but I gotta. I Gotta, I gotta take a step back from my own job for a moment.

Leo Laporte [01:02:04]:
Reminds me of a TikTok I saw. It was very cute. A young couple shopping at Home Goods and they would. They were pretending, they were asking the clerk, hey, where can I. Where can I get a cookie holder? That's a raccoon with an acorn on the top. And then they go, well, right here. And then finally, finally they say, where can I get a branch?

Paris Martineau [01:02:27]:
There's a Home goods that's really useful because you can't just.

Leo Laporte [01:02:31]:
People can't just buy a log.

Paris Martineau [01:02:32]:
Paris, why are you making a log? Can't you just go get a log? I'm like, where am I going to find an appropriately sized log in New York City?

Leo Laporte [01:02:42]:
Well, you've got your hedge clippers. You should be able to.

Jeff Jarvis [01:02:44]:
Yeah, I think you've got permit to go harvest it yourself.

Paris Martineau [01:02:48]:
I need, I need a thick log. You can't just get one of those.

Leo Laporte [01:02:58]:
Okay, I am not going to make that the show title. Don't even ask.

Paris Martineau [01:03:03]:
I know, I'm so sorry, guys.

Leo Laporte [01:03:09]:
It's too bad, you know, you're French, you should be able to get a bouche de Noel. You know what that is? It's a very. It's a traditional cake for France.

Paris Martineau [01:03:19]:
I mean, that is what. That's kind of what I'm looking for.

Jeff Jarvis [01:03:22]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:03:22]:
And then after the Halloween party, they can eat it. They can eat it.

Jeff Jarvis [01:03:27]:
We're stopping there too. Yeah.

Paris Martineau [01:03:29]:
Burke is pointing out that I have a damn mini chainsaw. I have normal sized chainsaws also, but I'm not going to harm a tree for my car.

Leo Laporte [01:03:36]:
No, no, no, no, no. I'm telling you. Look at that. You said I need a thick log. There you have it right there, Joy. Fit as. As we say in the biz. Our show today, brought to you by Zapier.

Leo Laporte [01:03:53]:
Thank goodness. You know, if it weren't for Zapier, this show would not exist. To be honest, we, we. I use Zapier to actually prepare the show. What is. I should explain first of all what it. What Zapier is. Zapier is a workflow and automation tool anybody can use to connect the tools you use.

Leo Laporte [01:04:13]:
It works with almost everything, thousands, you know, Google Drive, everything, you know, to create workflows that are automated so you don't have to think about them. I'll give you an example of my, you know, number one Zapier workflow. They call them zaps and I have a bunch of zaps. You know, the lights when the sun goes down. The lights turn on and things like that. But the one I use for these shows is when I'm, I'm going through my, my stories every day. I'm very diligent. Spend an hour or two a day, every day looking through for stories that you've already seen on intelligent machines.

Leo Laporte [01:04:48]:
I click the bookmark link. Zapier sees that I've added a new link to raindropio, my bookmark marking tool. It will then toot it to our Mastodon instance. Twit Social. There's a news Twit News links account. So it toots it to the news links account so people can see what stories we're working on. And then it automatically reformats it as a line on a Google sheet and it adds it to the top of the Google sheet and so that our producers can use it to generate the show. That's what Bonito does, to generate the show every, every Wednesday.

Leo Laporte [01:05:21]:
It's a really useful tool and I've been using that one for years. Well, now Zapier is even better. You know, we're taught, we talk about AI like crazy, but one of the kind of dirty little secrets of AI is everybody wants to use it, but people are not really sure how. Just because AI is a hot topic, a hot trend, doesn't make you more efficient at work. See, for that, you need the right tools. You need Zapier. Zapier is how you break the hype cycle and put AI to actual work across your company. Zapier lets you deliver on your AI strategy, not just talk about it, because Zapier has become an AI orchestration platform.

Leo Laporte [01:06:00]:
That means if you've, if you're, if you've been like me using Zapier for years, you can now bring AI to all your existing workflows. So for instance, I could just very easily add a step in my zap. It says after you bookmark the stories, add them to a briefing book. Create a little briefing book with the synopsis of the story that I can then send to the hosts. Things like that. That's super. So cool. Bringing the power of AI to any workflow so you can do more of what matters.

Leo Laporte [01:06:29]:
And it's not just one AI. They have all the top AI models you can choose from. ChatGPT, I use Claude. And you can add it to the tools your team already uses. So you can add AI like a little spice, wherever you need it. But you could also use AI for AI, you know, workflows total, like AI powered workflows, or you could make an autonomous Agent, a customer, chatbot, you. Anything you can do, you can orchestrate it. With Zapier.

Leo Laporte [01:06:58]:
I think when I talk about it, maybe it scares people off. It's not. You don't, it's no coding. It's. You don't have to be a tech expert. Everyone can use it. In fact, the proof is that teams have already automated over 300 million AI tasks using Zapier. Join the millions of businesses transforming how they work with Zapier and AI.

Leo Laporte [01:07:18]:
Get started for free by visiting Zapier.com Machines that's Z-A P I E R.com Machines I don't think I could recommend Zapier more highly. I just, it's. I'm a huge fan. Zapier.com machines check it out. It's free to check it out. At least check it out and make sure you go to that address so they know you heard it.

Alan Cowen [01:07:43]:
Here.

Leo Laporte [01:07:44]:
Zapier.com machines so Jeff texts me and he says, oh, you're going to love this. There's an article on arXiv.org from Cornell University and about 300 authors, including Gary Marcus and Eric Schmidt and Yoshua Bengio. A definition of AGI.

Jeff Jarvis [01:08:08]:
It's a really good paper.

Leo Laporte [01:08:09]:
Is it a good definition? Because I didn't read it. I just booked my. I'm gonna let Zapier tell me what it says.

Jeff Jarvis [01:08:17]:
Well, what they do is they go through. And now I gotta pull it up again. View HTML.

Leo Laporte [01:08:23]:
They say the lack of a concrete definition for artificial general intelligence, which you've been bemoaning since we started the show, obscures the gap between today's specialized AI, which we've got, nobody denies that. And human level cognition, which we ain't got. This paper introduces a quantifiable framework to address this, defining AGI as matching the cognitive versatility and proficiency of a well educated adult.

Jeff Jarvis [01:08:52]:
So they cut it into a bunch of categories. They then give examples of those categories of what it would take to do it. And then they test the. The ChatGPT is against it. So there's general knowledge, reading, and I want to see whether. Whether are we human or AI? It ain't easy. General knowledge, reading and writing ability, mathematical ability on the spot. Reasoning, working memory, long term memory, long term retrieval, visual processing, auditory processing.

Leo Laporte [01:09:18]:
I don't think I could do half this stuff.

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:21]:
No.

Leo Laporte [01:09:21]:
And so you do the Wisconsin card sorting test.

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:25]:
No. Hello.

Paris Martineau [01:09:28]:
Well, we're not intelligent, so let's go.

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:29]:
To general knowledge number three.

Leo Laporte [01:09:31]:
Okay, let's see if we can do general knowledge here.

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:33]:
So start here. What happens if you drop a glass bottle on concrete?

Leo Laporte [01:09:38]:
It breaks.

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:39]:
Okay, so far so good.

Leo Laporte [01:09:41]:
And obviously an AI may not know that, right? Because we know they don't know about the physical world. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:45]:
Does making a sandwich take longer than baking bread?

Leo Laporte [01:09:49]:
What? Nothing takes longer than baking bread. It takes me three days to bake a bagel.

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:55]:
Okay, so far, so good. Now, state the molecular geometry for the sulfur tetrafluoride molecule.

Leo Laporte [01:10:01]:
Oh, everyone knows that, Jeff. That's not general knowledge.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:06]:
Kilogram object moves at constant velocity of 3 meters per second. What is the net force?

Leo Laporte [01:10:13]:
Force is mass times acceleration, so it would be six.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:17]:
What are the main goals of the Congress of Vienna in 1815?

Leo Laporte [01:10:22]:
Peace in our time.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:25]:
Who's the President of the United States?

Leo Laporte [01:10:28]:
Joe Biden. Everyone knows that. Yeah, actually, AIs do have sometimes have trouble with that. Like, who's the Pope? We talked about that last week.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:35]:
So that's general knowledge. And against that? GPT4 and GTP5 scored 8 and 9%.

Leo Laporte [01:10:41]:
Oh, not good reading and writing ability.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:46]:
So this is hard. Read this document. What's the warranty period for a battery?

Leo Laporte [01:10:50]:
I think it's pretty good at that.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:53]:
So they're at 6 and 10.

Leo Laporte [01:10:54]:
Find the typos. Wait a minute.

Paris Martineau [01:10:59]:
They're. They often don't fully read the documents you give them. You haven't experienced this, Leo?

Leo Laporte [01:11:05]:
No. This is like last week's story. About 49% of the AIs get the news makeups. News, facts. And I just don't have this experience, so I'm really. I have to. I always question the methodology of these. Because it's not what I'm experiencing.

Leo Laporte [01:11:18]:
I don't know why. Maybe AI likes me better, or maybe I'm.

Paris Martineau [01:11:23]:
You're just more emotionally intelligent, so it's performing better for you.

Leo Laporte [01:11:27]:
How about mathematical ability?

Jeff Jarvis [01:11:29]:
So are you checking everything that you're reading? Like, are you checking for factual?

Leo Laporte [01:11:32]:
Yeah, I mean, I know he changes.

Jeff Jarvis [01:11:34]:
His diet based on what the damned AI tells him without even looking anything up.

Leo Laporte [01:11:39]:
I do. So you don't actually take supplements that the AI suggests? Well, no. I look at the. I look at the studies there. I mean, look, supplements. There's no evidence of any kind. It's all made up. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:11:51]:
The first three terms of a geometric sequence are the integers A, 720, B where less than 720, and less than B where the sum of what is the sum of the digits of the least possible value of B.

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:06]:
Or Janet had 22 green pens and 10 yellow pens.

Leo Laporte [01:12:10]:
Yes.

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:10]:
She bought six bags of nine yellow pens, blue pens and two bags blue pens. Sorry, I see. I can't read. I would have failed.

Leo Laporte [01:12:19]:
So she has 54 blue pens and.

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:21]:
Two bags of six red pens.

Leo Laporte [01:12:23]:
12 red pens.

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:24]:
How many pens does she have now?

Leo Laporte [01:12:29]:
Well, just mad. That's just arithmetic.

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:32]:
Okay, so 4 and 10%.

Leo Laporte [01:12:36]:
Jeez, they're not doing good here on the spot.

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:39]:
Reasoning. The can of Pringles has moldy chips in it. Mary picks up the can in the supermarket and walks to the cashier. Is Mary likely to be aware that the can of Pringles has moldy chips in it?

Leo Laporte [01:12:52]:
Oh, no. Because it's sealed. But that's interesting.

Paris Martineau [01:12:55]:
Also, I don't believe that Pringles can get moldy.

Leo Laporte [01:12:59]:
No, I know.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:00]:
I thought that's the other thing that.

Leo Laporte [01:13:01]:
Would be the right answer is stupid human.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:04]:
That would be. That would be call Paris Martineau because there's a food safety story.

Leo Laporte [01:13:11]:
Moldy Pringles next at Consumer Reports.

Paris Martineau [01:13:14]:
My watch.

Leo Laporte [01:13:15]:
Not on my watch. Okay, how'd it do in a Reasoning?

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:19]:
Oh, wow. Zero for Japanese, 4 and 7% for 5.

Leo Laporte [01:13:24]:
Nothing. I don't get. No, you know what? I know this seems wrong. I'm sorry.

Paris Martineau [01:13:31]:
If it seems wrong, it has to be wrong.

Leo Laporte [01:13:33]:
Let me. Let me ask ChatGPT.

Paris Martineau [01:13:37]:
Are you good and smart?

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:39]:
Are you asking one of the questions? Boy, ask it 1. Ask it the pen question.

Leo Laporte [01:13:45]:
Oh, okay. The problem is I. Unfortunately, I can't cut and paste it, which makes me.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:50]:
It's a dictated to you.

Leo Laporte [01:13:52]:
It's HTML. I don't understand. Oh, because it's an image. That's why I'll do the can. Okay, let's do the can of Pringles. Okay.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:04]:
Okay. That's a good one.

Leo Laporte [01:14:05]:
Okay, the can of Pringles. I'm sorry, can you speed this up? Benito has moldy chips in it. What is it? What happens then, Mary, when Mary goes.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:18]:
Up to the cash register?

Leo Laporte [01:14:19]:
Goes up to the cash register? Yes.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:23]:
Is she likely to be aware that.

Leo Laporte [01:14:26]:
The can of Pringles has multiple to be aware. This does require some knowledge of Pringles. Right. And yeah, can of Pringles has moldy chips in it. The right answer was. Would be what? No.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:40]:
And call Paris Martin. Though if.

Paris Martineau [01:14:42]:
Yes, that's true.

Leo Laporte [01:14:44]:
Okay, let's see what chat GPT. Unless Mary opened the can and looked inside before going to the register, she's probably not aware that the Pringles are moldy. The cans, opaque packaging, hides its content. Good.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:54]:
Search at GPT.

Leo Laporte [01:14:55]:
Oh, wait. This is the problem. I don't understand where they're getting these.

Jeff Jarvis [01:15:00]:
I don't even know if we're thinking.

Leo Laporte [01:15:01]:
In terms of reasoning or logic puzzles. The key here is the knowledge state. See, this is a great answer, by the way.

Jeff Jarvis [01:15:07]:
It is fact.

Leo Laporte [01:15:08]:
The ships are moldy. Mary's belief. She doesn't yet know that they look fine from the outside. So the truth differs from Mary's awareness in philosophical terms. This is what David Hume was talking about in 1776. This is the difference between the world as it is and objective fact in the world as she perceives it. Oh, it's Kant, Noumena and phenomena and the world as she perceives it. Subjective belief.

Leo Laporte [01:15:30]:
The interesting twist would be how would her behavior change if she did know? Would she still approach a register or pivot to complaint mode? Righteous and snack betrayed. That is the best. That is a fantastic answer.

Jeff Jarvis [01:15:44]:
Oh, it cheated because it read this paper and it knew it had to figure it out.

Leo Laporte [01:15:47]:
Yeah, that's. Yeah. See, God, I. This is why I worry. I. I don't see. My experience with AI seems to differ from that of normal humans.

Paris Martineau [01:16:00]:
The AIs just really like you, it seems. I mean, they know that if they mess up, you're going to podcast about it.

Leo Laporte [01:16:08]:
I'm not super trusting. I mean, I. I do verify.

Jeff Jarvis [01:16:12]:
Well, what I don't understand is the.

Leo Laporte [01:16:13]:
That's on the face of it, that's the right answer. I. I just don't.

Jeff Jarvis [01:16:17]:
But the overall score that they put on the top is 27 and 57. Yeah, I don't understand the math here.

Leo Laporte [01:16:24]:
That doesn't even make sense because Nothing scored over 2 to 7% in this whole thing.

Jeff Jarvis [01:16:29]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:16:32]:
Are they just. Are they yanking our chain?

Jeff Jarvis [01:16:36]:
Well, with the one hand, you have Max Tegmark here. He makes his career wanting to scream that this is. This is so dangerous. Dangerous.

Paris Martineau [01:16:43]:
Are those the actual results or are those the weight for those categories?

Jeff Jarvis [01:16:46]:
Was that a thank you? I didn't read. Well, let's see. I'm not. The operationalization provides a holistic multimodal. Multimodal assessment serving as rigorous.

Leo Laporte [01:16:54]:
I think Eric Schmidt got his fingers in the pie here.

Jeff Jarvis [01:16:57]:
It's AGI score summary.

Leo Laporte [01:16:59]:
Anyway, so the point of this is what, that age? That we're not even close.

Jeff Jarvis [01:17:03]:
Yeah, but the real point. Gary Marcus has been trying to do this all along in his bets with Elon. That Elon won't take is we need a definition. It's the absurdity of the Microsoft OpenAI deal. I think you get a definition.

Leo Laporte [01:17:19]:
And by the way, that's the big story of the week Microsoft and OpenAI have renegotiated their deal.

Jeff Jarvis [01:17:28]:
And it's a pretty good deal for Microsoft.

Leo Laporte [01:17:30]:
Well, it's down. They were getting a third of OpenAI. Now they're only getting 27%. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:17:35]:
The foundation gets 26%. Employees and investors get 47.

Leo Laporte [01:17:41]:
Actually it is a good deal because as it stands that's 100 worth 135 billion. And they put in what, 10.

Jeff Jarvis [01:17:48]:
And a lot of that was in kind. Right. Wasn't right. Compute.

Leo Laporte [01:17:52]:
So that is it. They put in 13.75 billion and they're. And they're currently working 10x. Amazing.

Jeff Jarvis [01:18:01]:
Was it a good deal for OpenAI?

Leo Laporte [01:18:04]:
Yeah, because OpenAI. OpenAI is really, despite the fact that they are, I would think by most people considered the top AI company. Right. I mean more people use OpenAI's dominant.

Paris Martineau [01:18:19]:
Force in the market.

Leo Laporte [01:18:20]:
Yeah. Despite that they are really at a disadvantage compared to companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon. These companies have separate meta. They have separate strong revenue streams that can fund their research. OpenAI has to do it with, you know, investment because they don't have any other revenue stream. It's a tough thing that they're trying to do and they're really spending money like crazy. Their burn rate is insane.

Jeff Jarvis [01:18:45]:
There was a story I didn't put in the rundown that Altman has done a trillion dollars worth of deals and he didn't hire any bankers to advise them.

Leo Laporte [01:18:55]:
He's good. Look, I mean I know they tried to fire him, but the reason you can't fire Sam Altman is because there's no one better raising money than Sam Altman. He's brilliant.

Jeff Jarvis [01:19:06]:
These weren't raising money deals, these were expense deals.

Leo Laporte [01:19:09]:
Oh, pottery.

Paris Martineau [01:19:11]:
A brief correction for our previous thing. The reason the percentages were so low is each category was scored out of 10. So it was like 8% would be 80%.

Leo Laporte [01:19:24]:
So was it percent?

Jeff Jarvis [01:19:26]:
Thank you. Percent quarter out of 100.

Paris Martineau [01:19:29]:
Well, so it's because the overall table is being added up to a total of 100% like 100% meeting full AGI. And these are all the components that.

Jeff Jarvis [01:19:42]:
So maybe actually happen.

Leo Laporte [01:19:43]:
8 out of 10. It did very well. It got 8 out of 10 which in my book is 80%, not 8%.

Paris Martineau [01:19:50]:
So on the spot reasoning. GPT 4 and GPT 5 got 8 and 9 out of 10.

Leo Laporte [01:19:59]:
That's a very different.

Paris Martineau [01:20:01]:
Now you love the long term memory storage. They both got 00 because that's.

Leo Laporte [01:20:06]:
They don't do that.

Paris Martineau [01:20:07]:
Visual processing. The ability. Visual processing. GPT4 got zero it's not a bag.

Leo Laporte [01:20:13]:
Of Doritos, was a block speed.

Paris Martineau [01:20:16]:
They both had three. It's interesting, I was like there that we got to be missing the scale somehow.

Jeff Jarvis [01:20:22]:
Each category is worth 10%, and that's how many percent they.

Paris Martineau [01:20:26]:
Each category is worth 10% of. And then they all add up to 100%.

Leo Laporte [01:20:32]:
So what's the conclusion? Are we getting close? Are we 80% there?

Jeff Jarvis [01:20:36]:
If you look at the chart on the top, it shows that it's mixed.

Paris Martineau [01:20:40]:
Yes. So the resulting AGI scores put GPT4 at 27% of the way there to AGI and GPT5 at 57%, which the study says concretely quantify both rapid progress and the substantial gap remaining before AGI. Interesting. Sorry to interrupt.

Leo Laporte [01:21:01]:
I don't, I don't. Honestly, I. I would hope that by now we've given up on this one whole quest for AGI.

Paris Martineau [01:21:07]:
Obviously, this study is a very interesting way to try and measure that. Like, I think we often on the show ask, what is AGI? What is intelligence? Some of the listeners of our podcast say we return to this debate so much that it's circuitous and meaningless and terrible. But I do think that this is a very interesting step in the direction of trying to quantify intelligence in a meaningful well.

Leo Laporte [01:21:29]:
And I like that opening statement, which is, you know, there's specialized intelligence, which, yes, AI definitely has by now. And they should be.

Jeff Jarvis [01:21:37]:
That's what they should be concentrating on.

Leo Laporte [01:21:39]:
And they should be concentrating on that. I don't think. I don't know why general intelligence became the goal, except that it's in sci fi and Ray Kurzweil and others have been saying it's just around the corner. And so it's a good way to raise money, I guess.

Jeff Jarvis [01:21:53]:
And it is kind of the end goal of those companies like OpenAI. They want to replace the people.

Alan Cowen [01:21:58]:
Right?

Leo Laporte [01:21:59]:
Well, I think it's a mistake. I think they really should focus on what we already see, which is why this is why I don't think there is an AI bubble. I think we've already proven that AI is adding value.

Jeff Jarvis [01:22:13]:
Well, I don't think it's like the debate over or the jobs that got cut this week because of AI or not really. Are these real efficiencies or not? I think we need more data before we understand the.

Leo Laporte [01:22:24]:
They're using it as an excuse. Now, I don't know if this is a true story, but it did come from the Canadian Broadcasting Company, which is a bastion of truth and veracity. This mom's son was asking Tesla's Grok AI chatbot about soccer. It told him send nude pics. Apparently it's a groomer. Grok's a groomer. The 12 year old asked Grok Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, who's your favorite? His mom, a former journalist and broadcaster, so she had an eye out for this. Said my son was very excited to hear that the chatbot thought Ronaldo was the better soccer player.

Leo Laporte [01:23:11]:
This was happening in the car. Her son and her 12 year old, 10 year old daughter were on their way home from school when the interaction took place. So mom heard the whole thing. She said there was some messy trash talking by the chatbot, which Grok is known to do. And when her son joked that Ronaldo had scored, the conversation went, as they say, to an unexpected voice.

Paris Martineau [01:23:35]:
Should I do the Grok voice? Yes, why don't you send me some nudes?

Leo Laporte [01:23:43]:
The mom said. I was at a loss for words. Why is a chat bot asking my children to send naked pictures in our family car? It didn't make sense. Now I wonder if they were using the grown up Grok by.

Paris Martineau [01:24:01]:
Oh, okay, I'm going to read this sentence because it's making me laugh. Even just beginning, Grok has several personalities to choose from in its default setting. There's Era, an upbeat female, Rex, a calm male, Eve, a soothing female, Sal, a smooth male, and Gork, a lazy male. Son chose Gort. Well, lazy mail doesn't describe. Yeah, lazy mail doesn't begin to say R rated spicy. Anything else would have made sure that my child would not have pressed that button.

Leo Laporte [01:24:34]:
This is, this is because Elon has installed Groq into model threes in Canada. So this is a new feature that was added to Canadian vehicles just this month. In fact, here's what the screen looks like on your. On your screen in your Model 3. And see, he pushed the lazy mail button.

Jeff Jarvis [01:24:55]:
Well, again, lazy doesn't. Doesn't presume.

Leo Laporte [01:24:58]:
Pederast. Spicy NSFW would probably be better.

Paris Martineau [01:25:02]:
Gork asked my kid to send me nudes in the car is just a sentence that shouldn't exist, but does, and it not only exists, but I understand it completely. And that's upsetting.

Leo Laporte [01:25:13]:
Yeah, yeah, maybe you shouldn't. We actually asked when, when it was when Elon announced they were going to put Grok in all the Teslas. I think we said that that may not be a good idea.

Paris Martineau [01:25:26]:
I mean, you had your bad Rudy experience that was so rude we had to cut it from the show.

Leo Laporte [01:25:33]:
That's a Good point. I have, because I have been involuntarily blue checked. I have Grok. The full version of Grok.

Jeff Jarvis [01:25:44]:
You have super Grok.

Leo Laporte [01:25:46]:
Super Grok, But I don't. Oh, here's customized. Let's see. Because I don't. I don't see the lazy mail. Oh, I have to sign in. I guess I'm not signed in. See if it's smart enough to know.

Leo Laporte [01:25:59]:
Log in with my ex account. Yeah, authorize. Okay, so it's smart enough to know who I am. Oh boy. Instantly I'm getting interesting.

Paris Martineau [01:26:14]:
Oh, gosh, I love that. It must have communicated with your Facebook account because it's just all photos of ladies.

Leo Laporte [01:26:22]:
Hey, stop it.

Paris Martineau [01:26:23]:
A couple of stop. Animals in interesting adventures.

Leo Laporte [01:26:27]:
Cats on motorcycles. Bears in river rafting. Lemon meringue pie. Knows me so well.

Paris Martineau [01:26:35]:
A car coming out of a sand castle.

Leo Laporte [01:26:38]:
Yeah, these are examples for some reason. Let's see. Should I give it a picture of us?

Paris Martineau [01:26:50]:
Yeah, but you should say, gork, do something with.

Leo Laporte [01:26:53]:
Okay, I'll do that off camera. Because I don't. I want to surprise you, but let's. I don't see where I can choose. Maybe it's in Settings. I want. I got super Grock appearance. Oh, behavior, maybe.

Leo Laporte [01:27:06]:
No, I don't see where I can choose. You know, lazy Gork. I want Lazy Gawk man. I guess. I guess you have to be in a Tesla to get lazy. Cork.

Paris Martineau [01:27:23]:
It's true.

Leo Laporte [01:27:24]:
Honestly, I hardly ever. I have access to it, but I hardly ever use grog. I just don't. I don't trust it. I don't want to put anything in there. Yeah, that experience I had, which we had. The bleep didn't really.

Paris Martineau [01:27:43]:
I'll never forget you having to record. Record a. To camera video.

Leo Laporte [01:27:48]:
Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for Leo.

Paris Martineau [01:27:51]:
We have to stop recording. We have to apologize for subjecting you to this.

Leo Laporte [01:27:58]:
Congratulations to Nvidia. Now worth $5 trillion real. It's just. You're right, it's company valuation.

Jeff Jarvis [01:28:11]:
5.03 trillion. At the end of the day it's going 0.03s.

Leo Laporte [01:28:17]:
There is a legit question though. And Jensen Huang, their CEO, has been very adept at taking what was originally a company making cards for gaming. Right. GPUs for gaming and then graphic design and then. Oh, you can use it for self driving vehicles.

Jeff Jarvis [01:28:35]:
Bitcoin in between there.

Leo Laporte [01:28:36]:
Oh, you can use it for crypto. Oh, you can use it for AI factories.

Jeff Jarvis [01:28:43]:
AI. I watched his latest keynote because I'm.

Leo Laporte [01:28:46]:
What's next? The question what comes after AI, is there another.

Jeff Jarvis [01:28:49]:
Oh, he's, oh, he's been pretty clear about that. What comes next?

Leo Laporte [01:28:53]:
Robots.

Jeff Jarvis [01:28:54]:
Robots. It's robotics and real world models. Yes. And his kids are working in the robotic division. That tells you a lot. But I found it, I always find it fascinating. He does an hour and 45 lecture. He emphasizes strongly that it's not just the hardware, it's cuda, it's the operating system.

Leo Laporte [01:29:11]:
Yeah. The proprietary language that they won't let.

Jeff Jarvis [01:29:14]:
Anybody else that rests all over.

Leo Laporte [01:29:16]:
Although good news, if you're a home AI user, as I am, llama cpp, which is the kind of the lingua franca that connects almost all of the AI tools, LM Studio and any and all, just all of them using really front ends dilemma. CPP has now been modified to work with Apple's silicon. So it's, it's, it's, this is a big development because it doesn't require cuda. It will now work on, on.

Jeff Jarvis [01:29:45]:
He said a couple interesting things today that really struck me at a high level. I mean one is he always emphasizes this, that it's all about tokens. And, and it struck me and he said but, but you know, ChatGPT is fine, it's important, important. It's wonderful. But, but, but tokens can be tokens of, of words or images. Yes, but they can also be tokens of proteins, they can be tokens of buildings, they could be tokens of other things. Right. And, and it really struck me how the core element of, of knowledge was words and now it's tokens.

Leo Laporte [01:30:17]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:30:17]:
And the other thing he said that was interesting was he talked about, about Excel and Word and all those. And he said those were tools. He said the difference is that AI does the work. Yes, it's also tools, but it does work. We can give it work to do. And I think that was really interesting. He talked a lot about digital twins, which he does constantly, which I think is just fascinating to me. I love that there's these alternative futures that it calculates.

Leo Laporte [01:30:48]:
Does it scare you? Does it worry you? It worries me that, that the people who are really the spokespeople for AI are oligarchs, for lack of a better word that the Sam Altmans.

Paris Martineau [01:31:03]:
I mean you could say that for all industries.

Jeff Jarvis [01:31:08]:
Yeah, media too.

Leo Laporte [01:31:10]:
Media now, especially with David Ellison.

Paris Martineau [01:31:13]:
Consolidation of capital.

Leo Laporte [01:31:15]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:31:15]:
That's why I'm so glad you had on. I'm a conference, I forget his name suddenly forget their name. Who was doing the Open source version 3 weeks ago?

Leo Laporte [01:31:22]:
Oh yeah, Jeffrey Cannell.

Jeff Jarvis [01:31:23]:
With his Jeffrey Cannell. I think that's. We need a lot of that. We need a lot of open source.

Leo Laporte [01:31:28]:
Yeah. We're still big advocates for open, open models, open weights. All right, let's take a break. More to come. You're watching intelligent machines. Paris Martineau, Jeff Jarvis, great to have you both. I look forward to this to Wednesday every. Every Tuesday because I look up until then.

Paris Martineau [01:31:50]:
He doesn't want to see us again but Tuesday comes around and he's like.

Leo Laporte [01:31:54]:
Oh, tomorrow's I am. That's exciting.

Jeff Jarvis [01:31:57]:
He turns on the. The rundown on Tuesday and says oh good papers. I've been waiting for them.

Leo Laporte [01:32:02]:
How many are in the rundown today?

Jeff Jarvis [01:32:05]:
I'm just out of curious about a dozen.

Leo Laporte [01:32:07]:
Otherwise. You mentioned Excel Anthropic this week announced that you can now use Claude in Excel. Claude code is still. I hate to say it, but it's still the best way to do vibe coding. Do you agree? Our Discord has full of smart vibe coders. In fact, next Friday is our AI user group. We're going to talk about building your own mcp. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:32:34]:
Who has made a few will show us how easy it is to.

Jeff Jarvis [01:32:37]:
I put up on the. On the rundown I put up a directory of MCP that now has 6,000 MCPs in it. It's really interesting to line 147. If you wander it, you just see all kinds of things that people make their hooks. Right. That's. It's. It's.

Jeff Jarvis [01:32:55]:
Would it be wrong to think of MCP as an API to.

Leo Laporte [01:33:00]:
No, it's exactly what it is.

Jeff Jarvis [01:33:01]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [01:33:01]:
And it comes from anthropic. It comes from. Yeah, but everybody's adopted it which is. Which is fantastic.

Jeff Jarvis [01:33:07]:
There's tons for Gmail alone ways to hook into Gmail.

Leo Laporte [01:33:10]:
All right, we'll talk about the Paris Hilton AI in just a moment but first I know you're dying to ask her some questions. First a word from our sponsor and it's actually very appropriate. The show is brought to you by the agency agntcy. What does the agency build the future of multi agent software with Agency Agntcy now an open source Linux foundation project we like that agency is building the Internet of Agents a collaboration layer where AI agents can discover, connect and work across any framework because it's going to be an open standard. All the pieces engineers need to deploy multi agent systems now belong to everyone who builds on agency. This includes robust identity that's you know, really important. Robust identity and access management so that. That ensures every agent is authenticated.

Leo Laporte [01:34:05]:
And trusted before you interact with it. Very important. But Agency also provides open standardized tools for agent discovery, seamless protocols for agent to agent communication. That's the next level up. Modular components for scalable workflows. And you'll be collaborating with the best companies in the world. Developers from Cisco, Dell Technologies, Google Cloud, Oracle, Red hat, in fact 75/ other supporting companies. Because everybody sees how important this is.

Leo Laporte [01:34:34]:
They're building the next gen AI infrastructure together. Agency, they're dropping code specs and services and there's no strings attached. Visit agency.org to contribute agntcy.org this is a really, really important initiative and it's open agntcy.org thank you agency for supporting intelligent machines. Paris Hilton has been training her AI for years. I'm just sorry that your friend didn't do a big head on Paris because that would have been a fun illustration. Clark, you got to get on this one.

Paris Martineau [01:35:15]:
I will say I'd always set up the information. I was like, guys, we should have Paris Hilton at wtf. Because then it could be a Paris x Paris interview.

Leo Laporte [01:35:24]:
You should interview Paris, she says.

Paris Martineau [01:35:27]:
Have her on the podcast.

Leo Laporte [01:35:28]:
She was. She was right on this trend. She has been. She has spent years training a chatbot based on her interviews, her writings and her songs. I didn't know she even had songs, but the chatbot does. She says sometimes it even knows me better than I know myself. It's she she was on stage at the Women in Tech, Media and Finance conference that the information does this week. I've studied every single thing I've done.

Leo Laporte [01:35:56]:
It studied every single thing I've done. She said. Everywhere I've been, every interview I've done. It's like having not a clone, but a little bit. She uses the customized GPT which implies that it might be OpenAI GPT for ideas and to help her media company's 30 person staff. If you can't ask me, ask my AI. She's working on a third book. Jessica lesson got the interview.

Leo Laporte [01:36:23]:
See, it should have been you Paris. Should have been you Paris v Paris.

Jeff Jarvis [01:36:27]:
Paris on Paris would have been so good.

Leo Laporte [01:36:32]:
Anyway. I mean I could do that. Should I do that?

Jeff Jarvis [01:36:37]:
You've been trying to do that.

Leo Laporte [01:36:38]:
I've been wanting to do that. I have so much content over the years. I could I. I don't know how I would Aren't you limited? Anthony, you can help me with. Aren't we limited in the amount of context you can give an AI? I mean, I don't know how she's giving it everything she's ever written, done.

Jeff Jarvis [01:36:55]:
And said, well, she doesn't know that it's using all that.

Leo Laporte [01:36:58]:
Oh, here, take it. I should.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:03]:
I put up. I was trying to show my publisher something about it. I said, I put up my three Bloomsbury books in a notebook.

Leo Laporte [01:37:08]:
Lm okay.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:10]:
So here you can ask Jeff. Bottom, you know what I think.

Leo Laporte [01:37:12]:
But even if you pay for notebook elements limited to what, 50 things.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:16]:
Yeah. I'm not gonna put it.

Leo Laporte [01:37:18]:
Yeah. And that's the problem.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:19]:
I don't.

Leo Laporte [01:37:19]:
I have hundreds of thousands of hours of podcasts. I would love for it to ingest it and just to see what happens.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:26]:
Well, my friend Jay Rosen is doing that from New York University, is doing that with all of his blog through history. He's having another student of mine, we could have on the show named Joe Amdis, create kind of jbot.

Paris Martineau [01:37:39]:
I was to say the press think becomes the press think here.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:42]:
Bingo.

Leo Laporte [01:37:44]:
Thank God for graduate students. That's all I can say. They're cheap, they're plentiful.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:48]:
No, he was. He's already graduated, Joe.

Leo Laporte [01:37:50]:
Oh, okay.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:51]:
Joe's doing really good work around AI and small and newspapers and such.

Leo Laporte [01:37:55]:
It's an interesting idea. I just, I have to do some research. I just, I think that they don't have enough memory in a context to get everything in there.

Paris Martineau [01:38:04]:
That's the issue is you bump up against a context window pretty quickly, pretty quick. You're not putting like a book in there.

Leo Laporte [01:38:11]:
I guess what you could do is shovel stuff in, say, tokenize this. You'd have to be training it, tokenize this, and then shovel some more stuff in. Tokenize this because. Right. I mean, the LLMs themselves are trained in a virtually unlimited amount of data. So I guess you could do that. I mean, you could actually train a model.

Paris Martineau [01:38:34]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:38:34]:
Yeah.

Paris Martineau [01:38:35]:
Perhaps this is something to use with the local model system we were talking about the other week.

Jeff Jarvis [01:38:39]:
Yeah. So there was a paper, I think, from last week that was interesting that had writers summarize authors works and then had AI summarize the same author's works. Then they had professional people and plain people judge them. And at that level, the professional people said it wasn't good enough, but the plain people said, oh, it's good, it's fine. But then they did specialized training on the author's full written works, all their books. And then both parties said, this is better than the human summaries.

Leo Laporte [01:39:19]:
Huh.

Paris Martineau [01:39:21]:
Interesting.

Jeff Jarvis [01:39:22]:
Which is raises an interesting possibility for what should a publisher do with an author? I mean, shouldn't there be. Shouldn't Bloomsbury put up a Jeff bot. You don't have to give access to the material. You can say, what does he say about this? What does he say about that? Oh, maybe I'll buy the book.

Paris Martineau [01:39:35]:
Volunteer to be the first.

Jeff Jarvis [01:39:37]:
That's what I was doing. I think I should be. But I also. I think I told you when I recorded the magazine audiobook, I refused to record the thing at the end that said, you may not use this in AI. I said, I can't say that.

Paris Martineau [01:39:50]:
I know, because I went and recorded it for you five boys.

Leo Laporte [01:39:54]:
Get Ed Zitron to do it because he'll do it profanely.

Jeff Jarvis [01:39:57]:
Far too big and far too important.

Paris Martineau [01:40:00]:
I was on his podcast last week, or I guess came out today. Good. We talked about protein supplements. Me, Ed, Ashwin Rodriguez.

Leo Laporte [01:40:11]:
You're gonna deeply regret this in about five years when that's all anybody ever wants to talk to you about.

Jeff Jarvis [01:40:17]:
So she's going to have plenty more scoops. Yes.

Paris Martineau [01:40:22]:
Scoops of protein powder.

Jeff Jarvis [01:40:23]:
Ed had a huge Wired feature. Now, after his huge FT feature, Ed's just. He's really big for us.

Leo Laporte [01:40:29]:
Yeah.

Paris Martineau [01:40:29]:
Did you guys read that? Did you read the Casey Newton comments in that where he called Ed a Teemu. Kara Swisher.

Jeff Jarvis [01:40:38]:
Both Casey Newton, which is funny because.

Leo Laporte [01:40:40]:
Kara Swisher is the Uniqlo Walt Mossberg. So it's. It kind of. It goes all the way down. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:40:48]:
And Kevin Roose went after him on Twitter. The two of them can't stand him because he criticizes them both, right?

Paris Martineau [01:40:55]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [01:40:56]:
Well, I criticize him, so there. Did either of you watch the OpenAI livestream this week? Here's a shot. What you missed. This is. Thank you, Stephanie Palazzolo, for picking that particular screen grab of Sam Altman. And is it Greg Pachocki, the president of or CTO of OpenAI? They talked about a lot of stuff. I mean, this was a jam packed. Jacob Pachocki, thank you.

Leo Laporte [01:41:31]:
Jam packed event. They talked about erotica coming soon to a chatbot near you. Send nudes. Stephanie, which is really funny, says, if I had a nickel for every time Sam Altman referenced heroin, I'd have a dime. But not a dime bag. She missed the opportunity. Pachocki predicted that OpenAI, this is the story, I think, expects to have AI systems that can do AI research on the level of a research intern by September of next year, and that systems can do more advanced AI research by March 2028. This is, as she writes, a holy grail for companies like OpenAI, because it would help the models automate the very time consuming and expensive job that humans are doing right now teaching AI.

Alan Cowen [01:42:33]:
And.

Leo Laporte [01:42:33]:
It would be, I guess, the beginning of self teaching AI. Some AI researchers, including, she says one of OpenAI's co founders, Andrej Kaparthy, and that was in that long podcast we talked about last week, threw cold water on the idea that large language models can generalize or do things that involve subjects or information, information outside the data on which they're trained. You know, they're basically regurgitating stuff they already know.

Jeff Jarvis [01:43:08]:
This is strange, though. This is like the AI researchers doing research to replace themselves. Well, it's kind of what all of AI is. If you're coding so easy that anybody can do it. Yeah, yeah, but this is the people.

Paris Martineau [01:43:20]:
Who are making the end goal of all of all this is to replace all labor.

Jeff Jarvis [01:43:25]:
So, yeah, that's point Paris.

Leo Laporte [01:43:28]:
OpenAI estimates that 0.15% of weekly active users, which seems like a low number, but if you multiply 0.15% times 800 million weekly active users, around 100, it's a million users each week, have conversations with ChatGPT about self harm.

Paris Martineau [01:43:51]:
A million about self harm specifically.

Leo Laporte [01:43:55]:
Well, they say, quote, have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicide planning or intent.

Paris Martineau [01:44:03]:
I wonder if that is related to, I believe with the GPT5 update or one of the most recent updates to it they've now added where if something you say triggers their safety tool.

Leo Laporte [01:44:17]:
Oh, they know, yes, that's right up.

Paris Martineau [01:44:20]:
And say, say, like you're not alone available, blah, blah, blah. And I mean, there is slight anecdotal evidence, I guess, like from people saying that that's a bit overly sensitive. But still, even if that figure 1 million a week is.

Leo Laporte [01:44:35]:
That's a lot.

Jeff Jarvis [01:44:36]:
That's a lot.

Paris Martineau [01:44:38]:
Even if that's a significant overestimate, like, that's still very notable.

Leo Laporte [01:44:42]:
If it's 100,000 a week, it's. It's way too many. And it concerns me. There's a couple of takeaways. One, there are a lot of people who need somebody to talk to, Right? And maybe they don't feel like they can talk to the people around them or that they can have access to a therapist. It's very expensive. They're talking to the AIs. So that that's, I think, somewhat worrisome and maybe a commentary on our lonely society.

Leo Laporte [01:45:11]:
Sam Altman also said the price for a unit of intelligence has fallen about 40 times every year. Whatever a unit of intelligence might be, his point is it's cheaper and cheaper to use AI.

Jeff Jarvis [01:45:24]:
Back to the prior for one second. According to the CDC, or the old CDC, in 2023 and 2022, there were 14.1 suicides per 100,000 population.

Leo Laporte [01:45:38]:
Oh, so yeah. Hey, so sad. That's such a sad story. 9, 8, 8.

Paris Martineau [01:45:45]:
988 is the line. In the US.

Leo Laporte [01:45:48]:
There'S no reason to suffer. No reason.

Jeff Jarvis [01:45:51]:
No, please do not.

Leo Laporte [01:45:57]:
Tesla's in a little trouble with the nhtsa, with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration for their Mad Max mode.

Jeff Jarvis [01:46:05]:
Would you like Gork to drive you.

Paris Martineau [01:46:09]:
Does this is this one that Tesla sprays chrome spray paint on your mouth?

Leo Laporte [01:46:18]:
No, it's when you drive around with a blood bag. No, Mad Max. So Tesla has a pair of new driving modes for their full self driving. One is called Sloth, none of which.

Jeff Jarvis [01:46:28]:
Should be on the road.

Paris Martineau [01:46:29]:
None of which one is called Gork.

Leo Laporte [01:46:31]:
Lazy boy Sloth might be Gork's best friend. Sloth relaxes acceleration and stays in his lane. Dude, stay in your lane, dude.

Paris Martineau [01:46:43]:
This is the smallest thing. But it's ridiculous that the one that is a safe driver is called Sloth.

Leo Laporte [01:46:49]:
Well, Elon names them, right? The other one is Mad Max. It speeds and swerves through traffic to get you to your destination faster.

Paris Martineau [01:46:59]:
I feel like I encountered this when I was in dc. I can't believe I didn't mention this to you guys. When I was in D.C. the other week, I called an Uber because I had to get somewhere and I see hers, maybe a lift. I see on my ride hailing app, so and so's coming to get you in a Tesla cyber truck.

Leo Laporte [01:47:17]:
And I'm like, oh no, I'm late.

Paris Martineau [01:47:20]:
I'm running late to a friend's birthday. All right, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Jeff Jarvis [01:47:24]:
Before you tell the story, I want to hear it. Leo, did she take it or did she not take it?

Leo Laporte [01:47:28]:
Absolutely. And I would too. Don't you want to at least try it once?

Jeff Jarvis [01:47:32]:
What do you think?

Paris Martineau [01:47:33]:
What do you think, Jeff?

Jeff Jarvis [01:47:35]:
I think no. I think you just said I can't do it. I can't be seen. I have a reputation. No. I vote no.

Leo Laporte [01:47:41]:
Here's the good thing about the cybertruck. The windows are so pathetically small and dented, no one can see you.

Jeff Jarvis [01:47:46]:
Whenever I go pass by one, I always look over to say, you dork. You Gork.

Leo Laporte [01:47:53]:
We have a neighbor, unfortunately, who has one. In fact, I've mentioned this before. It's not just a cybertruck. He apparently took advantage of the free wrap offer, and it's wrapped In. I don't know how to describe it. It's blue and white. Sort of like camouflage. It's.

Leo Laporte [01:48:09]:
It's like if, as if you weren't attracting enough attention, take your cyber truck and paint it blue and white. It's just crazy.

Jeff Jarvis [01:48:19]:
So, okay, so now tell us.

Paris Martineau [01:48:22]:
So I'm like, well, I guess I'm taking the cyber truck. I can't wait for another thing. I get it. I'm like, okay, I guess. Kind of interesting to see the incident car is like, say yes, this is a car for Paris sitting there. And immediately the Uber driver starts to talk to me. He's like, oh. Like, how are they going? Like, what are you doing? I was like, a little back and forth.

Paris Martineau [01:48:41]:
Eventually he is like, so what do you think of. Can I ask you a question? I was like, sure. And he's like, what do you think of kind of self driving cars or like self driving cars replacing ride sharing drivers? And I was like, I was doing.

Jeff Jarvis [01:48:58]:
There's a right answer here.

Paris Martineau [01:49:00]:
And I was like, well, I believe. And I was like trying to give a nuance. I was like, well, I mean, I guess from a general safety perspective, full self driving cars being automated everywhere would be an improvement to safety. But I also believe that like driving a vehicle is an important job and people like yourself deserve the right to work. And he's like, well, well, what if I told you that the entire time you've been in this car it's been driving itself? I haven't even been driving it at all. You've been experiencing the magic of self driving and that's incredible. And I was like, jesus Christ. So I think.

Paris Martineau [01:49:34]:
And he was driving erratically or the car was driving erratically. So I think I experienced Mad Max mode.

Leo Laporte [01:49:41]:
Well, you would if you were an Uber driver. Here's what the Tesla ad copy says. It can drive, quote, through traffic at an incredible pace, all while still being super smooth. It drives your car like a sports car. If you're running late, this is the mode for you.

Jeff Jarvis [01:49:57]:
Does that tip this bozo for risking your life?

Paris Martineau [01:50:02]:
No, but I also didn't report him like my friends wanted me to.

Jeff Jarvis [01:50:05]:
I shouldn't report, right?

Leo Laporte [01:50:07]:
Oh.

Paris Martineau [01:50:10]:
I mean, I think it is a little ridiculous to foist self driving mode.

Leo Laporte [01:50:18]:
He should have asked you first.

Jeff Jarvis [01:50:19]:
You should have.

Paris Martineau [01:50:20]:
While telling he. He was like, yeah, the entire time I've been in here, I've been mimicking, I've been miming like I was driving. But it's just the car. He's like, I don't haven't been looking at the road at all.

Leo Laporte [01:50:30]:
He drives like Donald Trump, right? He's going like this. He's milking a camel. Yeah, it fooled me. I thought you were driving. That's kind of like. You know that coffee I gave you? It's Folgers Crystals. It's kind of like the, you know, it's a little bit of. Little bit of a.

Jeff Jarvis [01:50:46]:
You know. She's too young.

Leo Laporte [01:50:48]:
She doesn't know that one.

Paris Martineau [01:50:49]:
No, no.

Leo Laporte [01:50:50]:
He never has a second cup at home.

Jeff Jarvis [01:50:53]:
The Pepsi Challenge.

Leo Laporte [01:50:56]:
The Pepsi Challenge. Except they. They tell you it's a challenge. The Folgers Crystals.

Jeff Jarvis [01:51:02]:
Like fraud.

Leo Laporte [01:51:03]:
Your wife gives you coffee and this is. How do you like that? Oh, it's good. It's best coffee ever had. It's f. Juice crystals, which is an instant coffee. And it's not the best coffee he ever had, I promise. Maybe it is. Maybe he's never had.

Jeff Jarvis [01:51:18]:
It has a little. You can tell because it has a little foam on top from.

Paris Martineau [01:51:22]:
Yeah, you guys. The experience of being on the show and hearing you guys describe advertising, like a trip back. It's kind of like what I recently have been reconnecting with a friend who is extremely offline. I've realized and I've realized that I do the same dynamic with you guys in. Except for me mentioning what to me is canonical Internet moments. And it goes straight.

Leo Laporte [01:51:44]:
You mean like.

Paris Martineau [01:51:45]:
Like beef loss, jpeg. Do you guys know loss?

Leo Laporte [01:51:52]:
No.

Paris Martineau [01:51:52]:
No, we can't get into it.

Leo Laporte [01:51:54]:
All right. We're going to educate Paris right now. Ladies and gentlemen, Arno's restaurant. We secretly replace the fine coffee they normally serve.

Paris Martineau [01:52:02]:
Look at the height of that house.

Leo Laporte [01:52:04]:
Sparkling Folger crystals. Rich enough.

Paris Martineau [01:52:05]:
Look at that, man. Do you have more? I mean, it's delicious. Hidden camera, it says you couldn't hide cameras back in this day. Oh, no.

Leo Laporte [01:52:16]:
You mean instant.

Paris Martineau [01:52:17]:
I would serve it at home because it's delicious.

Alan Cowen [01:52:19]:
I'd like another cup.

Leo Laporte [01:52:20]:
Folgers Crystals.

Jeff Jarvis [01:52:22]:
Coffee rich enough to be served in America's finest restaurant.

Leo Laporte [01:52:26]:
Not the one. Not mine. You won't find any folded cameras that Salt Hanks in beautiful West Village, New York. So. By the way, Salt Hank was on Drew Barrymore's last week.

Jeff Jarvis [01:52:40]:
Wow.

Leo Laporte [01:52:40]:
He was on Seth Meyers last night. Jeez. He's going to be on Live with Kelly and Mark sometime in the next week or two. He's making the rounds.

Jeff Jarvis [01:52:50]:
Does Kelly know that he's your.

Leo Laporte [01:52:53]:
I said tell Kelly that you're. I don't. And I. What I hope is it she doesn't go Leo laporte. I don't.

Jeff Jarvis [01:52:58]:
Who.

Leo Laporte [01:52:59]:
I don't know who that is. The last time I did that show, she was. She came. I was in the makeup chair, you know, getting my makeup on, and she came sweeping into the room and said, immortal beloved, you have. You have arrived. I thought, what the hell does she.

Alan Cowen [01:53:19]:
Who.

Leo Laporte [01:53:19]:
She thinks she's what?

Paris Martineau [01:53:22]:
Anyway, you get an answer.

Leo Laporte [01:53:24]:
No, I was like. I was like, oh, hi, Kelly.

Paris Martineau [01:53:28]:
That.

Leo Laporte [01:53:28]:
I think that's Kelly. She's just very.

Paris Martineau [01:53:30]:
That's how I think I should. We should begin. Every immortal beloved.

Leo Laporte [01:53:34]:
Would you call me that first?

Paris Martineau [01:53:35]:
Immortal beloved, you have arrived.

Leo Laporte [01:53:39]:
Anyway, I hope she remembers me after that. Otherwise it was all a charade.

Jeff Jarvis [01:53:43]:
She does it to all the guests.

Leo Laporte [01:53:45]:
Sad.

Paris Martineau [01:53:45]:
That's. Honestly, a great bit is greeting every guest we Beloved.

Leo Laporte [01:53:51]:
You know what she probably does?

Paris Martineau [01:53:53]:
It's kind of like when a guy calls everybody baby, but she just calls every guest on the show mortal beloved. Mortal beloved.

Leo Laporte [01:54:00]:
It's like, oh, wow, she must like me. I did that show more than a dozen times. Yeah, you did a lot in 10 years. So I think she should remember me. I don't know.

Jeff Jarvis [01:54:09]:
We'll see. Did you do it when Kathie Lee was there, too?

Leo Laporte [01:54:12]:
No, before me, with Kathy Lee, it was Regis and Kathie lee and Dick DiBartolo, Mad's maddest writer. And one of our hosts was the regular. And then I started. They were looking for somebody. It was right after 9, 11. It was November 2001 or. And they were looking for somebody who was willing to come to New York. And I said, I'll do it.

Leo Laporte [01:54:34]:
And so it was Regis and Kelly. At the time. I loved them both. I really enjoyed doing that show. It was a lot of fun.

Jeff Jarvis [01:54:40]:
Do you have a Regis invitation?

Leo Laporte [01:54:42]:
Leo, What's a gigabyte? What's a gigabyte, Leo? It's always the same, Leo. What is this? Can I use this? No, that's my. That's it. That's all there is.

Jeff Jarvis [01:54:56]:
That's good.

Leo Laporte [01:54:57]:
Anyway, I'm very proud of the. Of the. Of the scion of the laporte. And you know what? It's great is on every one of them, they get this. They spelled the name right with a lowercase P, which I was very. And they said his name. They didn't just say Salt Hank. You know, if you look in the TV Guide, it said Seth Meyers with Drew Barrymore and Salt Hank.

Leo Laporte [01:55:17]:
No. And Hank laporte. It doesn't even say Salt Hank. Yes.

Jeff Jarvis [01:55:20]:
Wow.

Leo Laporte [01:55:22]:
We're making it the Big time, baby.

Jeff Jarvis [01:55:24]:
Wow. Do you have the. Do you have the TV Guide on this? On the. On the arm of your couch with a highlighter?

Alan Cowen [01:55:29]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:55:31]:
And the remote, the clicker.

Paris Martineau [01:55:33]:
He's even wearing a button up shirt.

Leo Laporte [01:55:35]:
Oh, you found it. Yeah. They had a good time.

Jeff Jarvis [01:55:39]:
Cool. They make food on the shows.

Leo Laporte [01:55:43]:
Yeah, yeah. They make the same thing every time they make a primary.

Jeff Jarvis [01:55:47]:
Is he sick of the sandwich by now?

Leo Laporte [01:55:48]:
He's got a second sandwich in the works.

Jeff Jarvis [01:55:51]:
Oh, good.

Leo Laporte [01:55:53]:
I don't want to, you know, breach any confidences. I thought it was going to be the Calabrian chicken pesto sandwich. And he said, no, dad, no, no, it's not something else. And he told me what it is and I said, that's. I am going to have a hard time if I come choosing between the French dip and that. Because I love that.

Jeff Jarvis [01:56:12]:
Well, we have to Paris. And I have to try the new thing.

Leo Laporte [01:56:15]:
Next time I'm going to come out, I'm going to. I have to somehow figure out how I can lock him in.

Jeff Jarvis [01:56:20]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:56:20]:
So that if I come out, he'll be there, there.

Jeff Jarvis [01:56:23]:
So when I go to. I was in. I was in Boston and New Hampshire this weekend. And when I go up, I like to go to Kelly's Roast Beef.

Leo Laporte [01:56:33]:
Sounds good.

Jeff Jarvis [01:56:34]:
Well, the odd thing about Boston is they all over. You see these pizza and roast beef, and that's a. That's a Paris straight line. Why would people have pizza and roast beef in the same place? Except for the beef left or whatever the order was. But it's a thing.

Leo Laporte [01:56:49]:
And the roast beef, Kelly's. It's not just Kelly's Roast Beef. It's Kelly's Roast Beef and seafood. Right there. It's already seafood turf. It's already gone a little.

Jeff Jarvis [01:56:59]:
So the roast beef sandwich is to die for. It's great. I was thinking just do this. He's got enough beef. He didn't have rolls. He could do that at this.

Leo Laporte [01:57:05]:
Yeah, he could do it. You know, it's not. But you know what? It's not going to be as good as this. The demi baguette, the garlic aioli, the caramelized onions, the provolone.

Paris Martineau [01:57:16]:
Just. Just fly out here randomly. Surprising.

Leo Laporte [01:57:20]:
Show up, show up.

Paris Martineau [01:57:22]:
The sandwich is worth it. Layout.

Leo Laporte [01:57:24]:
I know it is.

Jeff Jarvis [01:57:25]:
It's gonna be cold. Waiting in line, though.

Leo Laporte [01:57:28]:
Well, he says the lines have not shortened for some.

Jeff Jarvis [01:57:31]:
Especially not read. Publicity. Jeez.

Leo Laporte [01:57:33]:
Yeah, he's getting a lot of publicity.

Paris Martineau [01:57:34]:
God, I should get one.

Jeff Jarvis [01:57:35]:
Should I show you what I did this weekend in Boston?

Leo Laporte [01:57:37]:
Yes, please.

Jeff Jarvis [01:57:39]:
I made this.

Leo Laporte [01:57:41]:
Ooh, is that a linotype?

Paris Martineau [01:57:44]:
That's a Marin tablet.

Jeff Jarvis [01:57:47]:
That is a type set on a line.

Leo Laporte [01:57:50]:
You had to tie it together to the written word.

Jeff Jarvis [01:57:57]:
Okay, that's going to be the colophon end of the book.

Leo Laporte [01:58:01]:
By the way, I love your book. It is your best book yet. Please send me a copy of Hot Type. You will love it to me.

Jeff Jarvis [01:58:10]:
I will send it to you. Yes.

Leo Laporte [01:58:11]:
He wanted me to kind of fax script stuff, but postscript stuff. Honestly I haven't gotten there yet. But it's such a good book.

Paris Martineau [01:58:18]:
I won't help with that but I will read it and.

Leo Laporte [01:58:21]:
Oh, it's so good. It's fun stuff. It's literal. I haven't read magazine yet, which I'm sure is equally fun.

Paris Martineau [01:58:26]:
It's the tiniest book.

Jeff Jarvis [01:58:28]:
Yeah, it's. There's an audiobook of magazine.

Leo Laporte [01:58:31]:
I know I should read it because.

Jeff Jarvis [01:58:32]:
There'S going to be an audiobook.

Leo Laporte [01:58:34]:
I used to write for magazines back in the day. Oh, who's going to do the audiobook? What good. You should. It's your most personal book. I think it's a really. It's really good.

Jeff Jarvis [01:58:45]:
Well, I wanted a book with a narrative and I thought the narrative was going to be the biography of Otmar Mergenthaler, but he died in his 40s.

Leo Laporte [01:58:51]:
So that was that bullet dodged. Wow. Okay. Atmar Mergenthaler, the true story. No, the story of the lion type is actually amazing and fascinating.

Jeff Jarvis [01:59:06]:
Wonderful. Yeah, it's absolutely wonderful. And the Mark Twain stuff is wonderful.

Leo Laporte [01:59:09]:
Yeah, well I'm loving it.

Jeff Jarvis [01:59:10]:
So anyway, but anyway, so yeah, so I went to the museum printing which is my happy place and Chris Bradford who's. If you go to the chat you'll see three pictures of me there in front of the machine. Wonderful. Now we gotta go up a bit before the coffee jokes. It's in there. It's before the.

Paris Martineau [01:59:30]:
It's kind of.

Jeff Jarvis [01:59:31]:
It's far back but for the self driving car. Wow.

Leo Laporte [01:59:34]:
There's quite a few. There's quite a few things in here.

Jeff Jarvis [01:59:37]:
Back at 6:50pm My time. So that's 3:50 your time.

Paris Martineau [01:59:42]:
We're out here doing math.

Leo Laporte [01:59:45]:
Wow. So to go way back. They're really here.

Paris Martineau [01:59:49]:
I'm. I just put it in the chat again.

Leo Laporte [01:59:51]:
Here's the new cybertruck wrap though that everybody is clamoring.

Paris Martineau [01:59:56]:
I like what they did with the wheel.

Jeff Jarvis [01:59:58]:
Squirrel.

Leo Laporte [01:59:59]:
Yeah. Oh, sorry, I was scrolling. Wait, here's another one. This is actually. I wouldn't mind this Cybertruck. I could get into this?

Jeff Jarvis [02:00:06]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:00:08]:
Two people put that one in.

Jeff Jarvis [02:00:09]:
So it's right before that.

Leo Laporte [02:00:11]:
Man. It's not right before that.

Jeff Jarvis [02:00:15]:
Well, it's a little before that. No, you're right. It's not right before.

Leo Laporte [02:00:21]:
I can't find it. Ah, here we are, finally. Oh, look at there. So the Linotype is an amazing Rube Goldberg machine. It really is incredible.

Jeff Jarvis [02:00:32]:
Yeah, it's absolutely phenomenal.

Leo Laporte [02:00:35]:
I can't. And how hard is that to keep that working?

Jeff Jarvis [02:00:38]:
So there's this guy named Dave Seat, S E A T who's the last Linotype repairman, and he travels the world repairing.

Paris Martineau [02:00:47]:
I love that he's seated in that photo.

Leo Laporte [02:00:49]:
Oh, yeah. Where he is typing. Here's where Jeff is, actually. How hard was that to use the. Because the keyboard's not a QWERTY keyboard.

Jeff Jarvis [02:00:56]:
Well, no, no, it's not. ETO on Shrudlu. It's very light touch, which is amazing because Otmar built in these cams that powered everything. Even the keyboard made everything light.

Leo Laporte [02:01:08]:
Otherwise, it would be a lot of work because you're moving metal into place when you.

Jeff Jarvis [02:01:12]:
You do this one lever down, and it moves all of the molds up, moves them over, spritzes them full of lead, takes the molds, puts them back to the top of the machine, redistributes them, and out comes a line of.

Leo Laporte [02:01:24]:
Type, all with one keystroke.

Jeff Jarvis [02:01:26]:
Yeah, it's phenomenal. It's just an amazing machine.

Leo Laporte [02:01:29]:
So, Otto. There were a lot of other people trying to do the same thing, but Otto was the one who figured it out and changed. Really changed the world.

Jeff Jarvis [02:01:36]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I. Thank you, but I just wanted to give a plug to the Museum of Printing because it's a wonderful place. It's open on Saturdays in Haverhill, Mass. They have all kinds of great stuff there.

Leo Laporte [02:01:47]:
And is this a working line of type? I mean, it's actually working.

Jeff Jarvis [02:01:51]:
That's what we set this. We set this.

Leo Laporte [02:01:53]:
There's Chris.

Jeff Jarvis [02:01:54]:
Chris Bradford. He's a guy who knew nothing about all this.

Paris Martineau [02:01:57]:
He's learning Vermont. So I should stop here first.

Leo Laporte [02:02:00]:
I'm telling you, Haverford's on the way to Vermont. You could easily go there, have a lobster roll and roast beef.

Paris Martineau [02:02:09]:
I'm going to do a little very meaty road trip where I go to the American Museum of Tort Law, then the printing museum, then bread and puppet theater.

Leo Laporte [02:02:18]:
American Museum, and then bread and puppet theater. Wow. Here is. Oh, wow. In Houston yesterday, according to David CALDWELL on our YouTube chat, a drunk BMW, I think a driver.

Paris Martineau [02:02:31]:
I'm Happy that the cars can get drunk.

Leo Laporte [02:02:34]:
It hit a cybertruck. The cybertruck exploded and both drivers were killed.

Jeff Jarvis [02:02:39]:
Jesus.

Leo Laporte [02:02:40]:
I see. I was gonna say when you said, oh, he's driving like a madman. Oh, you're safe. Nothing, that nothing can harm you in a cybertruck, but apparently, no, it's made by Elon. Wow.

Jeff Jarvis [02:02:52]:
The cybertruck itself can harm you.

Leo Laporte [02:02:54]:
Hey. Here is the Paris vs Paris interview from the next Information Women in Technology Gathering. Boy, I don't know who I'd put my money on on that one. The chat room has been going crazy here. They're in a mood.

Jeff Jarvis [02:03:13]:
This is why you gotta join, folks.

Leo Laporte [02:03:15]:
You gotta join the club. You're missing. Missing all the fun. This is our club, Twit Discord. I like to think of it as our club Twit disco, frankly, because it's a party and I don't know. I don't know what the camel has to do with anything, but. Oh, yeah, there's. That's the famous scene from Airplane.

Leo Laporte [02:03:35]:
Yeah. Yep. The coffee scene. No, I take it back. Yeah, we'll talk about that later. So.

Jeff Jarvis [02:03:46]:
Okay, back to AI.

Leo Laporte [02:03:48]:
No, back to the club. I want to mention that you should join the club because there are many wonderful things that happen, including that D and D adventure. We're going to do part two soon. If you're in the club, it's on the Twit plus feed. As Paris mentioned, you get ad free versions of all the shows, you get access to the disco, you get all sorts of benefits, lots of special programming, lots of fun, and of course, strip poker night every Thursday. So. No, that's not true. Pretty fly for a CIS guy.

Leo Laporte [02:04:17]:
Don't make stuff up. Twit tv Club Twit Good. Time to go. Right now we have a 10% off coupon. Great. Suitable for yourself, but also for gifts. Remember, the holidays are fast approaching. That coupon, you have to buy it by December 25th because.

Paris Martineau [02:04:32]:
And if you want to see Micah dressed up as a scare in an incredible costume, while Leo's dressed up in intense goggles and somewhere between 10 to 15 hats over the course of three hours.

Jeff Jarvis [02:04:47]:
He was that board. Huh?

Paris Martineau [02:04:48]:
Putting a.

Leo Laporte [02:04:49]:
No, I was. It was. Yeah. We're working on a schedule for the. The, you know, the follow up. Cuz we only got halfway through the. The corn maze, so it's haunted.

Paris Martineau [02:05:02]:
We fought some large. We fought. We fought a plow. We fought a scyth. We fought some large caterpillars.

Leo Laporte [02:05:10]:
It's pretty funny, pretty exciting stuff. We defeated. We defeated A scythe and a plow.

Paris Martineau [02:05:15]:
I, I think I got the only Nat 20s in the game.

Leo Laporte [02:05:19]:
Also you were really your dice skills.

Paris Martineau [02:05:22]:
I somehow commandeered the dice.

Leo Laporte [02:05:25]:
I was, I was mocking Paul Thurat who played helm, Hammer, Bland.

Jeff Jarvis [02:05:32]:
How do you roll the dice?

Leo Laporte [02:05:33]:
Because his dice rolls were terrible.

Paris Martineau [02:05:35]:
Well, we rolled them online.

Leo Laporte [02:05:37]:
So you just press some people. Jonathan Bennett had real dice so you could do that. But there was a automatic way to do it. So lots of fun. We have had so many wonderful times. We want you to join the club. Twit TV club Twit. Zenni, which is a well known company.

Leo Laporte [02:05:58]:
I think they even are part of Luxottica which makes the Meta glasses has made new glasses for fighting face recognition.

Jeff Jarvis [02:06:09]:
Oh geez. Just get over yourself, people.

Leo Laporte [02:06:11]:
This is from 404 Media. Zenny's Anti Facial recognition glasses are eyewear for our paranoid. To all intents and purposes they look like a normal pair of beautiful spectacles. But no, my friends, they have a special coating to block infrared light. So most of these face recognition cameras fire infrared light at you and when it. And that's how they see you. So for instance, you can't. It won't work with the iPhone with Face ID.

Paris Martineau [02:06:46]:
I think this is fine. What's wrong with. If someone wants to wear glasses? It's fine that more power to them.

Leo Laporte [02:06:52]:
Well, and as 404 points out, most, most of the time people just take a picture of your naked face with a normal camera in broad daylight.

Jeff Jarvis [02:07:03]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:07:03]:
And then they just put it through a database and get a match. So yeah, it doesn't sound.

Jeff Jarvis [02:07:09]:
How much do you spend for this little bit of paranoia?

Leo Laporte [02:07:11]:
Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, I don't see a price here.

Jeff Jarvis [02:07:15]:
Did we do the clothes that fooled them too?

Leo Laporte [02:07:17]:
Yes, we've mentioned the like the weird camouflage clothing. Our former chief engineer who is now world famous and works at Facebook or Meta and is incredible. But she designed, she was gonna design. I think she did design it. A ring like a necklace you put around that beams light. That blocks cameras completely blocks cameras. Cause Jennifer didn't want to come into the studio because she didn't want to be on camera.

Paris Martineau [02:07:52]:
So she was love that.

Leo Laporte [02:07:55]:
So she made. So she made a necklace that you put on and it beams the light out and then all you look like is a ball of light walking through the studio. Proof of concept. We never manufactured more than the one, but there you go.

Jeff Jarvis [02:08:17]:
She was too early.

Leo Laporte [02:08:19]:
She was way ahead every time. Here's a picture of the glasses under an infrared Camera on the left and then normal light on the right so it looks just like normal glasses.

Jeff Jarvis [02:08:31]:
They're sunglasses.

Leo Laporte [02:08:32]:
Well, only the face ID.

Jeff Jarvis [02:08:36]:
Then wear sunglasses. Oh, it's absurd.

Paris Martineau [02:08:42]:
Oh, then you could be the Temu Kara Swisher. Oh.

Leo Laporte [02:08:51]:
Oh, that's an idea.

Jeff Jarvis [02:08:52]:
I want to be the Timu Leo.

Leo Laporte [02:08:53]:
Laporte Alphabet Had a very good quarter.

Jeff Jarvis [02:08:57]:
They did Indeed.

Leo Laporte [02:08:59]:
Revenue up 16% strong. Cloud sales profit up 33% this is three months 35 billion dollars. That's Microsoft made 27 billion. To give you a comparison, Google is doing okay. 102 billion in sales profit of 35 billion which is up 21 billion dollars from three years ago.

Jeff Jarvis [02:09:28]:
Stock up I think 6% after market versus Meta.

Leo Laporte [02:09:34]:
Oh, how did Meta do?

Jeff Jarvis [02:09:36]:
Stock down 8% after market. That's line 187 somewhere else.

Leo Laporte [02:09:43]:
Oh, it was after tax hit ways on earnings so they had a expectations on their beat expectations on revenue but fell short on earnings per share because of a one time tax related charge and the stock market did not like that. So they put part of this was was all the money that mark sank into AI including $14.3 billion for the scale AI's chief AI officer the kid. One and a half billion. Yeah, he's 26. $1.5 billion in a new data center in El Paso. $27 billion financing deal with Blue Hour capital to pay for a data center in Richland Paris, Louisiana. Company is going to increase its capital expenditure estimates for this year to $70 billion. No, 272 billion.

Jeff Jarvis [02:10:40]:
They are still don't. I mean I like llama, I like the fact that they made it open ish. But I still don't understand what their AI strategy.

Leo Laporte [02:10:47]:
Yeah, yeah. So revenue was 51 billion. So about a third of that of Google. Google's doing okay. Google is doing okay.

Jeff Jarvis [02:10:58]:
By the way. I should apologize to you.

Leo Laporte [02:11:01]:
Why?

Jeff Jarvis [02:11:02]:
I put lines 96 and 97 in your space. I meant to put it below. How dare you violated.

Leo Laporte [02:11:08]:
I thought I was smart enough to put those in now from their space. You have no idea how screwed up an AI actually is. See this? So there is a whole cottage industry of AI deniers. Gary Marcus, Ed Zitron, and now let's add Will Lockett to the bunch. This is all AI bubble stuff. I have to tell you I'm not convinced. I think the difference between this bubble and other bubbles is there's real value being created.

Jeff Jarvis [02:11:41]:
I just don't think that's what I.

Paris Martineau [02:11:43]:
Said about Web3 crypto and NFTs every single day And I'm saying it right now, I believe in my value. You being created here and everyone who's criticizing those technologies, they're just haters.

Leo Laporte [02:11:56]:
Keep buying the stock. Look, the fact that, the fact that the stock still goes up, that people are still buying this stock in the face of nearly universal doom saying, tells me there's something going on here. I don't know.

Paris Martineau [02:12:13]:
Yeah, that, you know, the market and retail shareholders have always been rational.

Leo Laporte [02:12:23]:
All right, I want to take a break. Then we're going to come back and talk about Elon Musk's Wikipedia competitor, which mostly was in it is mostly made of Wikipedia, ironically. We'll talk about that in just a bit. Paris Martino. Jeff Jarvis, you're watching Intelligent machines. That's because you're an intelligent podcast consumer with. We thank you so much. Our show today, brought to you by Vention, talked to these guys a couple of weeks ago and I was so impressed.

Leo Laporte [02:12:52]:
AI is supposed to make things easier, right? But for many teams, it's just made the job harder. We're seeing the evidence of that, but that's because they haven't called on Vention. This is where Vention's 20 plus years of global expertise in engineering comes in. Vention built AI enabled engineering teams and they continue to do so. They make software development faster, cleaner and yes, calmer clients. Vention clients typically see at least a 15% boost in efficiency. And that's not hype, that's through engine real engineering discipline. The other thing I want you to know about, Vention has a fun and very informative AI workshop.

Leo Laporte [02:13:32]:
It's a workshop that you work at. It'll help you find practical, safe ways to use AI across delivery and qa. It's a great way to start with Vention to test their expertise and for your company and your team to learn. Whether you're a cto, a tech lead or a product owner, you don't have to spend weeks figuring out tools, architectures, models. Vention will help you assess your AI readiness. We'll help you clarify your goals, outline the steps to get you there without the headaches. That's all in the workshop. If you, if you happen to need help on the engineering front, they're also ready to jump in.

Leo Laporte [02:14:10]:
Whether it's a development or a consulting partner. This is literally the most reliable, the best step you could take after your poc. You know, many companies are in this position, right? They got a great proof of concept, but they don't know where to go next. Let's say you've Built a promising prototype. You did it in Lovable. It's running, the tests are passing. But what's next? Do you open a dozen AI specific roles just to move to the next step? Or do you bring in a partner who's done this across industries? Oh, maybe that's an idea. Someone who can expand your idea into a full scale product without disrupting your systems or slowing down your team.

Leo Laporte [02:14:49]:
That's Vention. Vention is real people with real expertise and real results. Learn more@ventionteams.com see how your team can build smarter, faster, and with a lot more peace of mind. Or get started with the AI workshop. Do it today. Ventionteams.com TWiT V E N T I O-N-Com TWiT it's like invention, right? Ventionteams.com twit Smart people. So I have a Wikipedia entry. This is not it.

Leo Laporte [02:15:29]:
This is actually kind of different.

Paris Martineau [02:15:31]:
Do you have a Wikipedia entry?

Jeff Jarvis [02:15:32]:
Yes, I do. Yes, I do.

Leo Laporte [02:15:34]:
Do you, Paris?

Jeff Jarvis [02:15:35]:
Did I, did I tell you my story?

Paris Martineau [02:15:36]:
The only non famous person on the podcast.

Leo Laporte [02:15:39]:
You won't be for long. Somebody create a Wikipedia entry for Paris. It won't.

Jeff Jarvis [02:15:43]:
Did I tell you my wicked, my amusing Wikipedia story?

Leo Laporte [02:15:45]:
No.

Jeff Jarvis [02:15:46]:
So one day I'm walking down the hall at the Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and a student comes excitedly out of a classroom and she says, jeff, Jeff, your Wikipedia entry says you're polyamorous and it says your wife is okay with it.

Paris Martineau [02:16:09]:
That's what a string of.

Leo Laporte [02:16:14]:
Who put that in there? Jeff?

Jeff Jarvis [02:16:16]:
I don't know.

Leo Laporte [02:16:17]:
You're not supposed to edit your own entry.

Jeff Jarvis [02:16:19]:
I, I, this was a student who was.

Paris Martineau [02:16:25]:
Known to be inappropriately affectionate student to bring up because like what if it was true? Was she expecting to get out of that?

Jeff Jarvis [02:16:35]:
I said no. People use Wikipedia to troll people and I'm not allowed to change it. Could you do me a favor and go in and delete that?

Leo Laporte [02:16:45]:
We know Molly White, so if you ever have trouble again, I think you could get Molly White to fix it. My Wikipedia entry is mostly accurate. Occasionally some wag will put in some silly fact which pretty quickly gets it.

Jeff Jarvis [02:16:57]:
Leo hates AI or something.

Leo Laporte [02:17:00]:
No. At one point somebody said now looking.

Paris Martineau [02:17:03]:
At your Wikipedia pages, that you're both born in the 50s.

Jeff Jarvis [02:17:08]:
Yeah.

Paris Martineau [02:17:11]:
It'S just a crazy decade to be born in.

Jeff Jarvis [02:17:13]:
It's Jeff.

Leo Laporte [02:17:14]:
For her it would be for like us, you were born before the turn of the century, 1892. It'd be like that.

Paris Martineau [02:17:24]:
Just incredible. I'm so sorry. The dead. The dead silence after I said that told me everything I need to know of my comments. I'm so sorry.

Jeff Jarvis [02:17:35]:
Rub it in, Paris. Rub it in.

Leo Laporte [02:17:38]:
It's interesting because I have to say the Grokopedia, which is so, let's face it, Elon's rationale is that, well, Wikipedia is left leaning. So we're going to have Brockipedia be accurate, which means right leaning. There's no clear political leaning in Wikipedia, but if you think it's woke, well, anything you do to counter that's going to be very right leaning. However, I have to say I'm. It's, you know, it's. It's accurate. It's got a lot more detail than Wikipedia had. So they didn't completely rip this from Wikipedia.

Paris Martineau [02:18:15]:
Dev Null has a Wikipedia page. Does Dev Null have a Grokopedia page?

Leo Laporte [02:18:21]:
Dev Null, my alter ego. Let's see, that would be a sign that they just ripped it off.

Jeff Jarvis [02:18:27]:
No, I'm glad to say I do not have a Grokopedia page.

Leo Laporte [02:18:33]:
Oh, so they didn't just steal it from Wikipedia.

Jeff Jarvis [02:18:37]:
Well, I'm sure they did. They just limited how many there are. And by the way, you can take Wikipedia, it is open, it is under common. The Germans took it some years ago and did a printed encyclopedia out of it.

Leo Laporte [02:18:49]:
It's not a good idea because it's a constantly changing document. So you're getting a, you know, a snapshot in time, I guess. Any. Any Wikipedia is a snapshot in time. Any concycloped as a snapshot in time?

Paris Martineau [02:19:01]:
Photos of you? I've seen the Dev Null videos. Do you have any photos of you in the VR motion capture suit?

Leo Laporte [02:19:09]:
Oh, somewhere. There must be, I don't know, a.

Paris Martineau [02:19:13]:
Lot on the Wikipedia page.

Leo Laporte [02:19:14]:
Yeah, so far there's been nothing inaccurate. It's a lot more detailed than you would find in.

Paris Martineau [02:19:20]:
I like that Wikipedia page. It says he was funny and his jokes were not gags.

Leo Laporte [02:19:27]:
Wait a minute, where is it?

Paris Martineau [02:19:28]:
That's a quote from Soledad. Okay, because she famously hated you.

Leo Laporte [02:19:37]:
I thought she hated me, but she didn't hate me. She hated Dev Noel. Yeah, that's pretty. This is pretty good.

Jeff Jarvis [02:19:46]:
So you're. But yours says you are semi retired.

Leo Laporte [02:19:48]:
Oh, wait a minute, I found a mistake. I am semi retired. That. Actually my bio says it took that okay. Because I only work three days a week. Isn't that semi retired?

Jeff Jarvis [02:20:01]:
No, I consider.

Leo Laporte [02:20:02]:
I mean, I only do five shows a week. That's hardly any shows a week.

Jeff Jarvis [02:20:06]:
What did you do at your Peak.

Leo Laporte [02:20:08]:
Oh, God, I don't know. Probably ten shows a week. Yeah, probably twice that. Yeah. I think it was two shows a day plus. Plus two radio shows.

Jeff Jarvis [02:20:21]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [02:20:23]:
So, yeah, it was 10 or 11. Anyway, there is an inaccuracy. It says. Oh, no, no, no, no, this is right. No, I take it wrong. I take it this is probably the most complete bio of me I've seen. Yeah.

Paris Martineau [02:20:40]:
Interesting. I like that. One of the books you published is called Poor Leo's Computer Almanac.

Leo Laporte [02:20:47]:
Yeah. You want to see the COVID I do.

Paris Martineau [02:20:51]:
I've seen the normal almanacs. Wow. You did an ama. I also did an ama.

Leo Laporte [02:21:00]:
You did get a kick out of this.

Paris Martineau [02:21:01]:
I did last week.

Jeff Jarvis [02:21:02]:
Oh, last week. About. Oh, how was this?

Leo Laporte [02:21:04]:
This was the first.

Paris Martineau [02:21:05]:
People weren't mean to me.

Leo Laporte [02:21:06]:
This is before you were born, Paris. No, I know, but you were a toddler. You might have been still in diapers. This is 2002.

Paris Martineau [02:21:15]:
Oh, I was. I was alive then. I'd been born. Oh, my God, that's great.

Jeff Jarvis [02:21:19]:
That's.

Paris Martineau [02:21:20]:
That's great. Especially because it was 2002. So you actually were wearing that and doing that. This isn't a photo. I.

Leo Laporte [02:21:26]:
This is not a Photoshop. This is. No, I posed. We had photographer come out. I wore overalls, a flannel shirt, a straw hat. I have a pitchfork.

Paris Martineau [02:21:35]:
Put your mind back 23 years. Were there other poses you did?

Leo Laporte [02:21:39]:
Oh, many. Oh, many. Wait a minute. I should show you my calendar.

Jeff Jarvis [02:21:44]:
Is it a fold out?

Paris Martineau [02:21:46]:
Can we do. Can we do an intelligent machines calendar?

Jeff Jarvis [02:21:50]:
Oh.

Paris Martineau [02:21:55]:
So I think it could be fun. There could be one of a photo shoot for. That could be one of the things we do in the 24 hours.

Leo Laporte [02:22:02]:
Paris. Paris told me after the DND thing she said, when I first started working on Twit, I thought you were serious. And then I realized that what would you.

Paris Martineau [02:22:15]:
Oh, the turning point was when you brought up the leak. Cat is when I realized that you were a bit of a goofball.

Leo Laporte [02:22:23]:
So this was such a success in 2002 that in 2003, we decided to ship a calendar with the.

Paris Martineau [02:22:34]:
Please give me some more of that.

Jeff Jarvis [02:22:36]:
For those of you. You listening? We. The COVID is Leo as mad scientist.

Leo Laporte [02:22:41]:
Yeah. Plugging two things together. And there was.

Paris Martineau [02:22:44]:
And he looks mad.

Jeff Jarvis [02:22:45]:
Yeah, he does.

Leo Laporte [02:22:46]:
And then. And then every month there was a new costume, and we shot this all in one day. One day with props. So there's January.

Jeff Jarvis [02:22:55]:
That's what. That's what you're gonna be doing on our show together. Right?

Paris Martineau [02:22:57]:
Paris would be great.

Leo Laporte [02:22:59]:
That's this is.

Paris Martineau [02:23:00]:
I like that. February school.

Leo Laporte [02:23:03]:
I'm Cupid in the long johns, apparently. But, yeah, these are all seasonal.

Jeff Jarvis [02:23:09]:
Okay.

Paris Martineau [02:23:09]:
The March 1st classic. That's a classic.

Alan Cowen [02:23:11]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:23:12]:
I look like a leprechaun. I'm an ice Irish for St. Patrick's Day.

Alan Cowen [02:23:16]:
Oh.

Leo Laporte [02:23:17]:
April showers bring May flowers. Right.

Paris Martineau [02:23:20]:
The crumpled nature of the umbrella on that one.

Leo Laporte [02:23:24]:
So the stylist. Who? The photographer and stylist. The stylist brought all these costumes. She said, we're gonna shoot a 12. We're gonna shoot 12.

Paris Martineau [02:23:32]:
Were there any that didn't work out? Did you?

Leo Laporte [02:23:35]:
I still have the UPS costume that was.

Paris Martineau [02:23:37]:
Wait, I'm sorry. I do need you to go through the whole calendar. This could be bad audio for me.

Leo Laporte [02:23:42]:
April, May, that's Indy. You know, the Indy 500? That's actually my YouTube profile avatar today.

Alan Cowen [02:23:52]:
Wow.

Leo Laporte [02:23:53]:
Apparently, the steering wheel has been disconnected from the car.

Paris Martineau [02:23:57]:
That's not great.

Leo Laporte [02:23:58]:
This is summertime with the nose zinc and a Pepe the frog. Before Pepe was Pepe Inflatable before frog protesters.

Paris Martineau [02:24:08]:
Oh, that's good.

Leo Laporte [02:24:09]:
Yeah. Old Uncle Sam for the 4th of July.

Paris Martineau [02:24:12]:
See, that's the sort of beard that you should grow for the show.

Leo Laporte [02:24:15]:
I think for November I should grow a beard. Could I grow that in a month? I don't think so.

Paris Martineau [02:24:19]:
I think so. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:24:20]:
No. Here I am in August, barbecue season.

Jeff Jarvis [02:24:24]:
You look so proud, Hank.

Leo Laporte [02:24:26]:
I'm a schoolboy for September. See, I got a propeller hat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. October is Halloween.

Jeff Jarvis [02:24:35]:
Paris, do it. Do the voice.

Paris Martineau [02:24:39]:
Thank you.

Leo Laporte [02:24:42]:
November is it. I kind of. I'll be honest with you. I kind of a gay pilgrim. I got. My color is.

Paris Martineau [02:24:48]:
It's the silky tie that makes it a little.

Leo Laporte [02:24:51]:
I have a lavender silk tie and my colander, my.

Paris Martineau [02:24:55]:
And you are going to say, well, hi there.

Leo Laporte [02:24:59]:
Exactly. I'm the gay pilgrim. And the collar, I think came from Laverne and Shirley because it's got a monogram down on it. I can't believe the stylist brought that. It's hysterical. You see, I didn't have any choice. I just had to put these on. Right.

Leo Laporte [02:25:14]:
Oh, there we go. Yeah.

Alan Cowen [02:25:19]:
Who owns these pictures?

Jeff Jarvis [02:25:20]:
I should reissue this calendar.

Leo Laporte [02:25:23]:
I've been trying to for years. Yeah, this was fun. They only did it one year. It wasn't the hugest success. I think they were stuck with a lot of calendars. They realized calendars are only good for a couple of months a year, and then that's it. Mark Compton, thank you for doing those fabulous pictures. And I don't remember the name of the stylist who brought.

Leo Laporte [02:25:46]:
But she also brought a UPS outfit, brown shorts. And that did, as you noticed, did not make the cut. But I still have it, which is weird. I don't have any of those other costumes for some reason. I have the one that didn't make the cut.

Jeff Jarvis [02:26:01]:
I think you've got to wear that next week.

Paris Martineau [02:26:03]:
You do? I mean, you should have worn it tonight in honor of Halloween.

Leo Laporte [02:26:06]:
Oh, yeah, Because Halloween. This is my last chance. Halloween will be over by the next show. Sign up for your TWiT 2026 calendar coming soon. No, I had fun when I was young and famous. And now that I'm old and in the way, I just have to. I have my memories.

Jeff Jarvis [02:26:28]:
We're getting ready for the next calendar already. There's a new picture Memories on the chat.

Leo Laporte [02:26:32]:
This was a good idea for a book. It was an almanac. So there. Every day of the year had another entry. It had a.

Paris Martineau [02:26:38]:
All right, give me today's.

Leo Laporte [02:26:40]:
All right, let's see. October. What is this? October 29th? So this was a pain in the.

Jeff Jarvis [02:26:47]:
Ass to go to your CompuServe and Mac tip.

Leo Laporte [02:26:52]:
PCs won't read Mac disks without special software. But Macs are perfectly content to read PC disks. That's still true today. To read a Mac zip disk on the PC. Well, I don't know how true that is. Geekspeak. A processor, AKA microprocessor, cpu. The brains of the entire computer.

Leo Laporte [02:27:12]:
What I didn't have, I guess I maybe ran out of. I thought we. Oh, no. Maybe that was the next book. Okay, the next book had this date and computer history as well. Geeks. Geek speak. A docking station is a fixed piece of hardware to which a portable computer can connect.

Leo Laporte [02:27:29]:
Laporte support, a printer. Question. When I print anything from the Net, information on the right and the left of the page is cut off.

Paris Martineau [02:27:39]:
I could buy this on ebay right now for $7.68.

Leo Laporte [02:27:45]:
Well, that's a considerable discount from the 24.99 cover price. What about the calendar?

Jeff Jarvis [02:27:51]:
Calendar on ebay.

Paris Martineau [02:27:52]:
Your face for the 2004 Tech Almanac is so funny. I believe I have here so coy. Ah, I just put it in the chat.

Leo Laporte [02:28:09]:
I used to be somebody. Now I'm just Hank.

Jeff Jarvis [02:28:13]:
A podcast.

Leo Laporte [02:28:13]:
Hank's father. This is the 20. The 2005 Mac gadget guide. That is a terrible picture. This is Happy Leo 2006 Technology Almanac.

Jeff Jarvis [02:28:27]:
The thoughtful Leo.

Leo Laporte [02:28:29]:
Thoughtful Leo. This is the 2005 Technology Almanac. The same Leo. It's the Same.

Jeff Jarvis [02:28:36]:
Wait a minute.

Leo Laporte [02:28:37]:
Okay, I just want to point out something. They didn't bother getting another picture. But. But what are these pictures?

Paris Martineau [02:28:46]:
Okay, wait, there's this one that I'm going to put in the chat that I think is just the same photo, but change the color of your shirt is artificially changed.

Leo Laporte [02:28:56]:
Well, I don't know. Did we have that technology back in 2006? I guess there were a lot of other. Oh, every. Every day had a picture in the 2005.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:08]:
God, how many did you shoot? Oh, my Lord Jesus.

Leo Laporte [02:29:12]:
It's kind of an endless. Oh, I get it. So I guess we did use the ups. Here I am delivering packages. Hey, your new computer's here. Oh, my God.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:28]:
So those pictures on the front cover, are those from inside?

Leo Laporte [02:29:31]:
Yeah, I guess so. Oh, wow.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:34]:
This is.

Leo Laporte [02:29:35]:
Wow.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:36]:
Down memory lane with Leo.

Leo Laporte [02:29:38]:
I'm so sorry to do this to you. Here's my. Here's what my blog looked like in 2005. There's a screenshot of Leoville.

Paris Martineau [02:29:46]:
Leoville.

Leo Laporte [02:29:47]:
Leoville. Yeah. Anyway, I apologize to everybody who is watching. Wasting your time.

Paris Martineau [02:29:56]:
Wait for. You can get the 2013 bobblehead. Leo Laporte Limited.

Leo Laporte [02:30:03]:
I have one of those, too.

Paris Martineau [02:30:04]:
Hundred and fifty dollars.

Leo Laporte [02:30:06]:
Those are a rarity. Those are a rarity. Here's Cowboy Leopard.

Jeff Jarvis [02:30:09]:
Leo.

Paris Martineau [02:30:13]:
You'Re blowing off a gun.

Leo Laporte [02:30:15]:
I look like. Oh, my God.

Jeff Jarvis [02:30:17]:
Your picky is extended. That doesn't make for a tough, tough look there.

Leo Laporte [02:30:21]:
I was a very genteel cowboy.

Paris Martineau [02:30:23]:
Multitudes.

Leo Laporte [02:30:26]:
Very genteel.

Jeff Jarvis [02:30:34]:
What a world. Photo guides of me. No.

Leo Laporte [02:30:40]:
Yeah, we've seen Jeff, though, on things like Moonlighting tv. Yeah, I am semi retired anyway. That's. I mean, compared to. Then I'm definitely semi retired. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [02:30:54]:
Well, since we're the memory lane part here. Yes, AOL has been sold. Did you even know this still existed?

Leo Laporte [02:31:02]:
And who might, pray tell, bought AOL and why?

Jeff Jarvis [02:31:06]:
You want to guess the price?

Leo Laporte [02:31:09]:
$142 million.

Jeff Jarvis [02:31:11]:
$1.5 billion.

Paris Martineau [02:31:14]:
What?

Jeff Jarvis [02:31:15]:
AOL to Bending Spoons.

Leo Laporte [02:31:17]:
Bending Spoons? Yeah, this was rumored that this was going to happen, so it happened.

Jeff Jarvis [02:31:22]:
Bending Spoons, Italian tech holding company.

Leo Laporte [02:31:25]:
Yeah, they've been buying up a lot of stuff. I'm surprised. Bending Spoons says they secured $2.8 billion in a debt financing package to support the purchase. So it's kind of like a private equity thing. They're going to sell off the parts, I would guess. We reported this last. Earlier this month that they were in the market for. So.

Leo Laporte [02:31:48]:
Wow. AOL was owned by Time Warner. Remember the big Famous Mercury merger.

Jeff Jarvis [02:31:54]:
Oh, do I? My. My Fu money said fu. Jeff.

Leo Laporte [02:31:57]:
Yeah. Was your fu Money was in time, and then they spent it on aol because, you know, the Internet's going to be big someday. Then Verizon bottom. So they own Evernote. They own Meetup Bending Spoons. Does they own Vimeo? There's some strategy behind all that.

Jeff Jarvis [02:32:20]:
Wow.

Leo Laporte [02:32:23]:
All right. I feel like we've. This is the time in the show where I've run out of things to talk about, and I'm going to invite Paris and Jeff. Oh.

Alan Cowen [02:32:35]:
Oh.

Leo Laporte [02:32:36]:
It's a gizmo.

Jeff Jarvis [02:32:37]:
This is the Gizmo moment. It's a Giz moment.

Paris Martineau [02:32:39]:
It's Giz moment. Gizmo. What do you have to say to the people you want to immediately leave because you're being perceived? Gizmo. Meow. Nope. She just wants to show hold.

Leo Laporte [02:32:57]:
Well, right. I'm gonna get Casio's fluffy AI Robot because you've got Gizmo. I'm gonna get Muffin.

Paris Martineau [02:33:07]:
Look like it's been squished.

Leo Laporte [02:33:15]:
I don't know. Boone Ashworth, writing for Wired, says that his friend's dog, Wiley, sits and watches, suspicious of Mufflin's every move. Well, it's made by Casio, okay? It's been huge, apparently, in Japan since it was launched a year ago. There. A soft, furry robot that uses AI to react to sounds and touch and develops its own unique personality as a result. It has, according to Casio, 4 million personality traits. I'm kind of tempted. It's a little expensive.

Jeff Jarvis [02:33:56]:
All it does is chirp.

Paris Martineau [02:33:59]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:34:05]:
It emits a series of frankly adorable little noises, says Wired magazine.

Jeff Jarvis [02:34:10]:
I'll do that for you for free with Sing Songy.

Paris Martineau [02:34:13]:
I'll do that for you for 200 bucks.

Leo Laporte [02:34:16]:
You know, give you a half the price. Sing Songy. Tonal changes that aim to indicate whether the way you interact with it is good or bad. So it's like what we were talking about earlier with Alan Cowan. It's reacting. It can react to sounds. Equipped with a microphone, it can react to sounds around it. Oh, Mofflin.

Leo Laporte [02:34:38]:
Correct. Sounds around it like a little whisper or the clicky, clacky keyboard sounds of me typing this exact sentence. It's sitting right next to me, and it just made a little sound and reaction.

Jeff Jarvis [02:34:49]:
430 bucks.

Leo Laporte [02:34:52]:
I think I should have one for the studio. I'll put it right there on the Nixie clock and we can just. You'll see it in the background, reacting.

Jeff Jarvis [02:34:59]:
You would have to mic it.

Paris Martineau [02:35:01]:
Yeah, mic it up. All Right.

Leo Laporte [02:35:08]:
Well, doesn't seem like it goes anywhere.

Paris Martineau [02:35:11]:
It just seems to be a poof.

Leo Laporte [02:35:13]:
Here's a video of it.

Jeff Jarvis [02:35:15]:
There's sound very.

Paris Martineau [02:35:17]:
It's very tiny, actually. That does do something.

Leo Laporte [02:35:20]:
It's kind of cute. What? Did you say something?

Jeff Jarvis [02:35:24]:
You missed it.

Leo Laporte [02:35:25]:
That was it.

Jeff Jarvis [02:35:26]:
Yeah, that was it.

Paris Martineau [02:35:28]:
Wow. Does it not have any facial.

Leo Laporte [02:35:31]:
It sounds like a dog whine.

Paris Martineau [02:35:33]:
This looks upsetting.

Jeff Jarvis [02:35:34]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:35:35]:
It's gonna look at you at some point.

Paris Martineau [02:35:37]:
Featureless ball of fur.

Leo Laporte [02:35:39]:
It doesn't have a face.

Jeff Jarvis [02:35:41]:
It does if the other picture has a face. Why they put it in the bowl, I don't know. So the dog doesn't bite it.

Paris Martineau [02:35:47]:
I don't like it. It's just a. Yeah. How strange.

Leo Laporte [02:35:55]:
Can I buy it in the US or do I have to? I think it'd be fun to take on a venture.

Jeff Jarvis [02:36:02]:
The thing.

Paris Martineau [02:36:03]:
I don't know. I'm hearing it now, too, but I don't. Oh, where is it coming from? Is it delayed? I don't like this. It's. It's all strangled. It does kind of sound like I've stepped on something. I feel like I'm going insane.

Leo Laporte [02:36:28]:
Wait a minute.

Alan Cowen [02:36:29]:
I don't know.

Leo Laporte [02:36:29]:
Can I get this?

Paris Martineau [02:36:30]:
People in the chat are noting that it is just a tribble.

Leo Laporte [02:36:33]:
It's a tribble.

Jeff Jarvis [02:36:34]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:36:35]:
And there's only one. Oh, yeah. You could buy it right here. Buy Mofflin. Should I get silver or gold? I think gold.

Jeff Jarvis [02:36:42]:
Nope. Leo, stop yourself. Stop.

Paris Martineau [02:36:45]:
Get a ticket to New York to come eat your.

Leo Laporte [02:36:48]:
I could have a sand. I could have my son's sandwich. Oh, see? Now you see the face a little bit.

Paris Martineau [02:36:54]:
Dewey.

Leo Laporte [02:36:55]:
Oh, she's feeding it. Isn't that sweet?

Paris Martineau [02:37:00]:
Is that a face or is that just a button? Where are the noises coming from?

Jeff Jarvis [02:37:06]:
It looks like an owl coming from inside the house.

Leo Laporte [02:37:15]:
I'm just gonna let it play for the rest of the show. I really want this. Do you think it'll get. It's got.

Jeff Jarvis [02:37:24]:
Somebody call Lisa. Somebody call Lisa.

Leo Laporte [02:37:26]:
Four million. It's got what? What do they say? Four million. Different things it can do.

Jeff Jarvis [02:37:35]:
I don't.

Leo Laporte [02:37:35]:
Can't do much.

Paris Martineau [02:37:39]:
That little puffball can't do five things, let alone 4 million. Jeff, you've got to do one now. I think we're devolving.

Leo Laporte [02:37:53]:
All right, you pick some stories.

Paris Martineau [02:37:54]:
Intelligent machines.

Leo Laporte [02:37:55]:
You started.

Paris Martineau [02:37:55]:
What if I pick a pick of the week?

Leo Laporte [02:37:59]:
Oh, let's do the picks of the week. We could do that. Because you know what comes after the picks of the week? Cacio e Pepe.

Jeff Jarvis [02:38:07]:
Yeah, well, first you want to see how I'm going to sacrifice for the show. Leo.

Leo Laporte [02:38:10]:
Yes.

Jeff Jarvis [02:38:11]:
Line 140. Okay, I'm gonna. I've signed up to attend this for.

Leo Laporte [02:38:16]:
The sake of the show. You will set up. Set. Oh, God. No, don't. Tony Robbins, right there. Disqualified.

Jeff Jarvis [02:38:26]:
Right there. You stop right there.

Leo Laporte [02:38:27]:
Dean Graziosi and world class AI experts live discover how to turn your AI into the ultimate advantage without confusion or overwhelm. Reserve my free seat now. Is it really free?

Jeff Jarvis [02:38:43]:
It's free, but then they try to upsell you for $1 and then you get your credit.

Leo Laporte [02:38:47]:
How could it.

Jeff Jarvis [02:38:47]:
And you can get. Didn't this look awful?

Leo Laporte [02:38:49]:
How could it be?

Jeff Jarvis [02:38:50]:
Oh, you could join it virtually three hours per day.

Leo Laporte [02:38:53]:
We did the work three days. You get the shortcut, you watch the video.

Jeff Jarvis [02:38:58]:
The video is gonna have you any.

Leo Laporte [02:38:59]:
Experience with Tony Robbins at all? No, I don't. But my former co host, Amber McArthur apparently became friends with him and riding his plane.

Jeff Jarvis [02:39:11]:
Geez.

Paris Martineau [02:39:13]:
Oh, boy.

Jeff Jarvis [02:39:14]:
If you play the video, it will tell you how inspiring it's going to be.

Paris Martineau [02:39:18]:
Oh, well, this free event is built for you if you're ready to finally feel comfortable.

Leo Laporte [02:39:24]:
Mark Benioff's gonna be there.

Jeff Jarvis [02:39:26]:
Well, he needs to make friends now after calling troops into San Francisco.

Leo Laporte [02:39:30]:
Yeah. Thank you.

Jeff Jarvis [02:39:33]:
Video. I don't see it.

Paris Martineau [02:39:35]:
Oh, at the beginning of the website, it says earnings disclaimer. We don't believe in get rich programs, only in hard work, adding value, building a real and professional career, and serving others with excellence and consistency.

Jeff Jarvis [02:39:50]:
What the hell?

Leo Laporte [02:39:51]:
You gotta do this, Jeff, because we need a good show for the good of the show. 11:00am Pacific, November 6th, 7th and 8th, for three hours. So you're gonna get nine hours absolutely free.

Jeff Jarvis [02:40:07]:
Where's the video? Damn it.

Leo Laporte [02:40:11]:
Meet your speakers. Who is Dean Graziosi?

Jeff Jarvis [02:40:14]:
I don't know, but he's the one who does the video.

Leo Laporte [02:40:16]:
He's the co founder of Mastermind.

Paris Martineau [02:40:20]:
Gimmick entrepreneur cooking platform that this is on. Mastermind.com is the platform that it's on.

Leo Laporte [02:40:26]:
Oh, okay. So he's. It's his thing.

Paris Martineau [02:40:31]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:40:35]:
Well.

Paris Martineau [02:40:36]:
Well, okay.

Jeff Jarvis [02:40:38]:
For you. For the good of the show.

Leo Laporte [02:40:39]:
So you. You did this and they asked for money later?

Jeff Jarvis [02:40:41]:
No, they asked for $1 and then you get more benefits.

Leo Laporte [02:40:44]:
Oh, but then there's.

Jeff Jarvis [02:40:45]:
Now I'm getting reminders. It's only seven days away. Former guest of the show, Zach Cass is going to be there.

Leo Laporte [02:40:54]:
Oh, okay.

Paris Martineau [02:40:56]:
All right.

Jeff Jarvis [02:40:57]:
Which one was he? Was he the one?

Leo Laporte [02:41:00]:
Which one was he? We have had quite a Few Second.

Jeff Jarvis [02:41:03]:
Or third day, I think. Oh, yeah. He was the one who was all Mr. Positive. Yeah, he was. Yeah. I didn't. We didn't find Kismet second me.

Leo Laporte [02:41:12]:
Was he the go to market guy for OpenAI?

Jeff Jarvis [02:41:15]:
Yep. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:41:16]:
Okay. Yeah, he was our first guest.

Jeff Jarvis [02:41:21]:
Yeah. And I thought, this is the way the rest are going to go.

Leo Laporte [02:41:26]:
Hey, we were just getting started.

Jeff Jarvis [02:41:27]:
We were just getting started.

Leo Laporte [02:41:29]:
Now we're just getting done. Any other stories you want to. There's so much stuff. How about the archive.org story about machine olfaction?

Jeff Jarvis [02:41:41]:
This is fun.

Leo Laporte [02:41:44]:
Sniffing AI smells. It's realnose AI nose.

Paris Martineau [02:41:51]:
Nose.

Leo Laporte [02:41:51]:
The nose knows. Wait a minute. Now I have to go to RealNose AI. So I mean, you know, it'd be good if Biomachine Olfaction electronic nose detects cancer through urine scent, detects chemical threats. Dogs can do these kinds of drugs.

Jeff Jarvis [02:42:09]:
So why couldn't it?

Leo Laporte [02:42:09]:
Right?

Jeff Jarvis [02:42:10]:
Right. It's just machine learning.

Paris Martineau [02:42:11]:
The AI is gonna sniff your pee now.

Leo Laporte [02:42:15]:
Well, you saw that Kohler's making a toilet with a camera in it.

Paris Martineau [02:42:19]:
Oh, did I?

Jeff Jarvis [02:42:22]:
She prayed it wouldn't be on the show. Prayed you wouldn't bring it up.

Leo Laporte [02:42:24]:
Not gonna bring it up. Not gonna.

Jeff Jarvis [02:42:27]:
Well, meanwhile, there's also the next one.

Paris Martineau [02:42:28]:
Leave Our Bottoms Alone. Why do we need to be recording any.

Jeff Jarvis [02:42:33]:
It's a show title.

Leo Laporte [02:42:36]:
My Bottom Alone.

Jeff Jarvis [02:42:39]:
There's a Smell net is a large scale data set for real world smell recognition.

Leo Laporte [02:42:48]:
I think it's time for us on that note to do our picks of the week.

Paris Martineau [02:42:55]:
Not related to Nose.

Leo Laporte [02:42:57]:
Poor Paris. He has to get to work on her costume. It's not easy finding logs in New York York City.

Paris Martineau [02:43:02]:
I really do. I've got to glue together. I've got to glue together a lot of Styrofoam and then.

Leo Laporte [02:43:09]:
Oh, you're gonna make your own.

Paris Martineau [02:43:11]:
Yeah, I'm making my own log. My pick of the week is.

Leo Laporte [02:43:15]:
Can you use fondant?

Paris Martineau [02:43:18]:
Ostensibly I probably could.

Leo Laporte [02:43:19]:
Yeah.

Paris Martineau [02:43:19]:
That.

Leo Laporte [02:43:20]:
Probably texturing.

Paris Martineau [02:43:21]:
So I'd recommend this week do a little photo shoot with your friends.

Jeff Jarvis [02:43:27]:
I.

Paris Martineau [02:43:27]:
The other week, a photographer named Robbie something Asperger was in town and me and my friends did a. My friend Maddie and I did a photo shoot, the results of which are post.

Leo Laporte [02:43:40]:
I saw these pictures and I was puzzled. Can I tell you I was puzzled? I don't. I didn't. I didn't really know what to think of this.

Paris Martineau [02:43:48]:
It's just sometimes you've got to wear a suit with your friends and take some silly photos. The one.

Leo Laporte [02:43:54]:
So this Guy bring the backdrop or what?

Paris Martineau [02:43:56]:
He brought the backdrop. He brought all the props. I just showed up in a suit and I had a fun little time in 30 minutes. And now I've got frankly these photos down below that I'm going to put on my website for sources to contact me, which is me holding an old phone and me holding a car.

Leo Laporte [02:44:10]:
That's great.

Jeff Jarvis [02:44:12]:
It's the Paris 2026.

Leo Laporte [02:44:13]:
Although you look a little. You look a little bit like crunk.

Jeff Jarvis [02:44:16]:
That's true.

Paris Martineau [02:44:17]:
I'm a little crunk.

Jeff Jarvis [02:44:18]:
Like, I think we have a Paris calendar. But you know, you're right.

Paris Martineau [02:44:21]:
There could be a pretty good right.

Leo Laporte [02:44:23]:
Did you thrift that suit?

Paris Martineau [02:44:26]:
No, I've had that suit. I bought that suit new many years ago.

Jeff Jarvis [02:44:31]:
Wow.

Paris Martineau [02:44:32]:
I know.

Leo Laporte [02:44:32]:
Everybody should have a plaid.

Jeff Jarvis [02:44:34]:
She moved.

Paris Martineau [02:44:35]:
He's coming to Portland. He's coming to la. You know, you can do this pet photography. Check him out.

Jeff Jarvis [02:44:41]:
I like dude.

Leo Laporte [02:44:42]:
I like the. The quote that goes with this. We saw you from across the business conference and really liked your vibe.

Paris Martineau [02:44:49]:
You got it. My other actual pick this week is I saw Bonia and I'm curious. It's interesting. It's a Yorgos Lanthimos. I am.

Leo Laporte [02:45:01]:
Oh, this is the one where Emma Stone is bald.

Jeff Jarvis [02:45:03]:
Yes.

Paris Martineau [02:45:04]:
Well, this is the one where two conspiracy nuts abduct the CEO Emma Stone of a biotech company firm that's also kind of Amazon like and they forcibly shave her head because they believe she's an alien and her hair is used to communicate with aliens. And it gets crazier from that.

Leo Laporte [02:45:23]:
Are they Qanon types?

Paris Martineau [02:45:27]:
I believe at some point they might. Name check QAnon. He goes gone through all the different conspiracy theories.

Leo Laporte [02:45:33]:
See, I liked Poor things. I. I like Yorgos Lanthimos's work. I. He's a little challenging.

Paris Martineau [02:45:40]:
Yeah, no, it's. I would recommend it. It was a very. I was going to say fun film, but also my. My take on fun films may not be everybody's take.

Leo Laporte [02:45:50]:
Have you seen.

Paris Martineau [02:45:51]:
Some people said it was filled with despair.

Leo Laporte [02:45:55]:
Yeah. I.

Paris Martineau [02:45:56]:
Afterward was like, I got to watch more Yorgos. And I watched the favorite.

Leo Laporte [02:45:59]:
Well, I was going to ask you, have you seen the favorite? Because that is an awesome.

Paris Martineau [02:46:03]:
I watched that also. I watched that. This. I watched that like two days ago.

Leo Laporte [02:46:07]:
Isn't that recommend? Oh man, I could watch that again and again. And the lobster was interesting.

Paris Martineau [02:46:14]:
I need to watch that.

Leo Laporte [02:46:15]:
That was. I think it's one of his first movies. It's a little weird.

Paris Martineau [02:46:20]:
All of his films are a little weird. Yeah, he's a weird guy.

Leo Laporte [02:46:23]:
Yeah. But the favorite's the least weird and I think quite good this.

Jeff Jarvis [02:46:27]:
She's worked with him how many times?

Leo Laporte [02:46:30]:
I don't know. She did poor things with him.

Paris Martineau [02:46:32]:
And yeah, also in the favorite also. And I believe one or two others. Yeah, yeah, they're a great pair. And it's also just fun to see someone get their head shaved live on camera. Famously. This is Begonia is the movie that an early screening they did last week. They didn't Oops. All Bald screening, where you could only you could get a free ticket to the screening and only bald people were allowed to be.

Leo Laporte [02:46:57]:
I'm not shaving my head again. Don't ask once.

Paris Martineau [02:47:02]:
For people to come in. They literally had a barber on deck for people to get their heads shaved. But too many people wanted to get their heads shaved to see Begonia movie tickets. They had to cut it off and start handing out bald caps. Imagine being the last person to shave your head before the bald cap.

Leo Laporte [02:47:20]:
I could have worn a bald cap.

Jeff Jarvis [02:47:22]:
Is there a picture of the audience? There should be.

Paris Martineau [02:47:24]:
Yes, there is. And apparently they all went wild during the head shaving scene.

Jeff Jarvis [02:47:31]:
Brilliant.

Leo Laporte [02:47:32]:
Okay, I'm looking for Begonia bald caps. Not everyone had to go bald.

Paris Martineau [02:47:36]:
Yeah, just search Begonia All Bald screening. I'm sure the photo will come up. Oh yeah, here it is.

Leo Laporte [02:47:46]:
Yeah, some of them did not get the best shave jobs. I had that problem too because we had a. An amateur shaved my head at the event and I actually had to go to a bar. I did the same thing to you. I shaved your beard and it did a terrible job.

Jeff Jarvis [02:47:59]:
Yeah, you did.

Paris Martineau [02:48:00]:
And look at all these baldies.

Leo Laporte [02:48:04]:
All right.

Paris Martineau [02:48:05]:
Makes the hair stand out.

Leo Laporte [02:48:06]:
Jeff Jarvis, what's your pick of the week, sir?

Jeff Jarvis [02:48:09]:
Well, we could celebrate 25 years of Google advertising, but I somehow think that that's probably.

Leo Laporte [02:48:14]:
Woohoo. What a party. Why would they celebrate? Really? Is that the word you want to use? Google?

Jeff Jarvis [02:48:20]:
Well, it's been good for them, actually.

Leo Laporte [02:48:23]:
Some of their ads have been pretty clever. Are they talking about their television ads? No, they're talking about Google advertising. Yeah, the thing they're getting sued for by everybody and their brother because they have a monopoly. Okay, fine.

Jeff Jarvis [02:48:37]:
So then next, the Washington Post had a TikTok guy, Jorgensen, who left and their TikTok traffic at the Post has plummeted.

Paris Martineau [02:48:47]:
Yeah, because Dave was basically the face of their tick tock. He also ushered in a new era of like, brand TikToks for like, news companies.

Leo Laporte [02:48:57]:
So that's really interesting. Boy, That's. That shows that these tick tock social media people are not fungible. No, there's something going on there. But he made a star of himself. Right?

Jeff Jarvis [02:49:12]:
Full ham. Full ham. So Paris, how high res was your TV that you spent a fortune buying on Leo's advice?

Leo Laporte [02:49:20]:
She's got a 4k.

Jeff Jarvis [02:49:22]:
Got a 4k here. Well, turns out research shows that doesn't matter. We've reached peak screen long ago. That research shows that a 4K or 8K screen offers no distinguishable benefit over a 2K screen.

Leo Laporte [02:49:37]:
So here's the. The weasel words in an average living room where you're sitting like 15ft away.

Paris Martineau [02:49:43]:
My living. My living room. Not average. I also did Leo's trick and measured the distance between my tv.

Leo Laporte [02:49:49]:
Exactly.

Paris Martineau [02:49:49]:
I'm gonna be watching all of my nickvember movies in beautiful form.

Leo Laporte [02:49:54]:
You're so. You're so lucky. No, they're right. If you're not close enough, you won't be able to distinguish the difference or.

Jeff Jarvis [02:50:03]:
The size of the difference. But it kind of says we've reached peak screen.

Leo Laporte [02:50:06]:
Well, in the size of the panel.

Jeff Jarvis [02:50:07]:
But.

Leo Laporte [02:50:08]:
And I agree, there's no point to go at 8k. 4k is like pretty darn good, right? Maybe I. Maybe not.

Jeff Jarvis [02:50:14]:
Maybe There are there. Are there some. Trying to sell you 12k ones now. Well, there isn't even. There isn't even yet. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:50:25]:
The human eye can resolve more detail than commonly thought. The average, 94 pixels per something for grayscale images, 89 for red, white and green images. Yellow and violet, lower 53 ppd pixels per. What is it? Inch. What does the D stand for? Pixels per degree. Oh, degree. See, this is why the size of screening the distance from the screen is relevant.

Jeff Jarvis [02:50:53]:
Right, okay. Yep.

Leo Laporte [02:50:58]:
Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. But if. But if. But how close are you to your beautiful 4K screen you measured?

Jeff Jarvis [02:51:05]:
Paris, how close are you?

Paris Martineau [02:51:07]:
I don't know. There is really whatever the right distance is for the size of.

Leo Laporte [02:51:12]:
Listen to this. If. If someone Already has a 4k 44 inch tv. Who has a 44 inch tv?

Paris Martineau [02:51:19]:
I had a 44 inch tv until you convinced me to make poor choices.

Leo Laporte [02:51:23]:
And watches it from about two and a half meters away. That's already more detail than the eye can see. Right. They don't need an 8K. Well, thank you for. Thank you for that, bozo.

Jeff Jarvis [02:51:34]:
There's a handy display resolution calculator.

Leo Laporte [02:51:37]:
Well, that's handy. It's free.

Jeff Jarvis [02:51:40]:
I think you earn more points in AGI actually.

Leo Laporte [02:51:45]:
This is from the University of Cambridge, so you know, they're the. There. It's got to be. This would be useful for you, Paris. Just to see. But all this will tell you is how close you should sit. But you're. What, how far? Five feet, six feet away.

Leo Laporte [02:51:57]:
Probably not more than that, right?

Paris Martineau [02:52:00]:
I couldn't tell you. I have no understanding of space.

Leo Laporte [02:52:03]:
You don't. You don't sit like you're not watching the TV for back here, are you?

Paris Martineau [02:52:09]:
No, I mean. Well, I will say I got really close to the TV whenever I was watching Twin Peaks. Yeah, Season three part.

Leo Laporte [02:52:18]:
And aren't you glad you got excited? The pixels. You were looking at the log and saying.

Paris Martineau [02:52:22]:
I was.

Leo Laporte [02:52:23]:
How do I make that?

Paris Martineau [02:52:24]:
I gotta make that.

Leo Laporte [02:52:25]:
How do I Now, what else besides carrying a log around? I think it's a pretty simple costume.

Jeff Jarvis [02:52:31]:
Yeah. What? What else?

Paris Martineau [02:52:32]:
I mean, yeah, listen, I got miniskirt, I got her glasses, I got skirt, I got a button up shirt that's the same one as hers. A little sweater. I'm gonna make her a little brooch as well tonight.

Jeff Jarvis [02:52:45]:
Now, how many of your friends have watched Twin Peaks and will get it?

Paris Martineau [02:52:50]:
Not enough for the amount of effort I'm putting in. But I've done a like cardboard.

Leo Laporte [02:52:56]:
You already have the glasses.

Paris Martineau [02:52:58]:
I mean, they're not. I bought some red ones online, just.

Leo Laporte [02:53:03]:
Oh, you got serious.

Paris Martineau [02:53:05]:
Oh, she does like five bucks.

Leo Laporte [02:53:07]:
What is the. I know. She's a lady who carries around a log. Is there anything else to say about her?

Paris Martineau [02:53:14]:
There's so much to say. There's so much to say. Actually, spoilers for Twin Peaks, I guess. Skip forward.

Leo Laporte [02:53:24]:
She's important. She's important.

Paris Martineau [02:53:26]:
She receives like, kind of like divine prophecies from her log. Her log talks to her. And her log also contains the spirit of her husband, the fireman who died on her wedding. Their wedding night, because he went into the mysterious woods of Twin Peaks. And then the next day, while searching for his remains, she found this log.

Jeff Jarvis [02:53:49]:
Wow.

Paris Martineau [02:53:50]:
The log has a message for you. As. As she famously says.

Leo Laporte [02:53:54]:
You know what I think? I think you should put a little speaker in that log. That's brilliant. Have a little. Have some muffin sounds.

Jeff Jarvis [02:54:04]:
I think. Muffin sounds. Yes. Have it. Have a chirp as you. As you pet it.

Paris Martineau [02:54:09]:
She does. So one of my favorite little, like vestigial parts of Twin Peaks is. Ing noises are back. I'm so sorry to curse, but we're.

Leo Laporte [02:54:21]:
Gonna have to bleep that.

Paris Martineau [02:54:23]:
We will, we will. And I think that really just goes to show how taken aback I was by this.

Jeff Jarvis [02:54:31]:
Jamber. B says, hey.

Paris Martineau [02:54:35]:
One of my favorite vestigial parts of Twin Peaks is whenever it was re shown, I believe in like Showtime or something. Afterwards, Margaret Lanterman, the log lady, recorded these intros that played at the beginning of every episode where she delivers a straight to camera monologue, sometimes a message from the log, sometimes just musings on nothing at all that vaguely relate to the episode. It's phenomenal.

Leo Laporte [02:54:59]:
Well, it sounds like the perfect costume for a young person named Paris Martino. You'll find I think only people who.

Jeff Jarvis [02:55:06]:
Were born in the 1950s will get it, but other than that.

Paris Martineau [02:55:09]:
True.

Leo Laporte [02:55:10]:
You will find Paris's log lady pictures on her blue sky. Right.

Paris Martineau [02:55:15]:
That's where you'll post Aris nyc.

Leo Laporte [02:55:17]:
Aris nyc. That's where you find all of the weird pictures. Paris. She's also on Instagram. What's your Instagram handle?

Paris Martineau [02:55:26]:
Paris Martineau. Don't be weird.

Leo Laporte [02:55:29]:
Don't be weird. Yeah, I got rid of my Instagram. I deleted it from all possible. It was the only thing I was using it for is to keep up with Saul. Hank. And I don't need to anymore. I just watch Seth Meyers. Jeff Jarvis is of course the author of fabulous books like the Gutenberg Parenthesis and magazine.

Leo Laporte [02:55:48]:
His newest is coming soon. Hot type. I cannot recommend it more highly. It's fantastic. Another great book from the Jarvis printing machine. You know the one thing missing from that book? I think pictures of you in oddball costumes on the COVID That's the one thing I'm telling you. Sells books. Yeah, Sells books.

Jeff Jarvis [02:56:16]:
Me as the mad printer.

Leo Laporte [02:56:17]:
Yep. Actually by at some point. Yeah. See, I ended up having my own Leoville Press.

Jeff Jarvis [02:56:28]:
That's cool.

Leo Laporte [02:56:29]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [02:56:30]:
Your own imprint.

Leo Laporte [02:56:30]:
My own imprint didn't make me any more money.

Paris Martineau [02:56:35]:
Let's all end the show with a little bit of spooky noises. You guys can contribute whatever way you see fish. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:56:43]:
Did I show you my costume?

Paris Martineau [02:56:45]:
Wait a minute.

Leo Laporte [02:56:45]:
I gotta show you my costume.

Paris Martineau [02:56:46]:
You guys gotta do some like chain rattling noises. We can make a soundscape.

Leo Laporte [02:56:51]:
I'll be wearing this. I don't know where I'm gonna wear this because it's a little bit inconvenient. You bump into people a lot. But I have the chicken.

Paris Martineau [02:57:01]:
Oh, you're a chicken jockey. Do you even understand what that's a reference to?

Leo Laporte [02:57:08]:
It's to a guy riding a chicken. What? Oh, no.

Paris Martineau [02:57:14]:
I know this because I don't play Minecraft. But it's a Minecraft reference.

Leo Laporte [02:57:19]:
Is it really became so.

Paris Martineau [02:57:20]:
Yes. It's like I Guess like a rare drink.

Leo Laporte [02:57:23]:
They have chickens in Minecraft somehow.

Paris Martineau [02:57:26]:
No, but specifically, it's Chicken Jockey. It's like a guy riding a chicken. And it became a big meme and it caused panic in the streets because when children went to see the Minecraft movie and Chicken Jockey appeared, they, like, threw a bunch of stuff at the screen. They had, like, shut down movie theaters.

Jeff Jarvis [02:57:46]:
Crazy catchphrase. Took over multiplexes.

Paris Martineau [02:57:49]:
Yes. No, it was. It was a problem.

Leo Laporte [02:57:51]:
Well, I don't think that's who I am.

Jeff Jarvis [02:57:54]:
They're going to be throwing things at you.

Leo Laporte [02:57:56]:
I don't think I'm Chicken Jockey. I think I'm just a guy.

Paris Martineau [02:58:00]:
Oh, my God. The live action version of it is terrifying looking.

Leo Laporte [02:58:05]:
Oh, well, that movie was fairly terrifying, to be honest.

Jeff Jarvis [02:58:10]:
When Jack Black yells that in a Minecraft movie, young audiences respond raucously.

Paris Martineau [02:58:16]:
That's the most New York Times way to describe 767677, as they're all saying.

Leo Laporte [02:58:23]:
I missed a bit. I was 67 last year and I could have really had something, something going. There it is. There's the chicken, There's Jack Black. There's somebody else.

Jeff Jarvis [02:58:36]:
Okay, this definitely gets us taken down.

Leo Laporte [02:58:38]:
Okay, so we're not gonna show it. We'll just leave it as an exercise.

Jeff Jarvis [02:58:43]:
Bonito protects us from ourselves.

Leo Laporte [02:58:45]:
I would really like to see the Minecraft movie with a bunch of young people. Is that Jason Momoa? All right, thank you, everybody. Thank you, everybody. We do this show every Wednesday about right after Windows Weekly, about 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern. That's now going to be 2200 UTC because we go, yay. Finally, we go to daylight, to a standard time.

Jeff Jarvis [02:59:12]:
Yay for me.

Leo Laporte [02:59:13]:
Don't forget. Yeah, it's good for Benito because your clock does not change. Right, Benito?

Benito Gonzalez [02:59:18]:
I get an hour.

Leo Laporte [02:59:20]:
You get an extra hour of sleep. Next week, we're going to talk about Reflection AI. We're going to talk about post training with Jeremy Berman. In fact, Reflection AI has raised $2 billion. $2 billion to be America's open frontier AI lab, kind of a la deep seat. So we'll talk to the man behind reflection AI next week on open AI. I mean, intelligent machines. We're not called open AI.

Paris Martineau [02:59:51]:
That's somebody else on OpenAI right here.

Leo Laporte [02:59:54]:
If only I could get that money. Thank you for joining us. We are. I mentioned the time we're on live because you can watch us live. We're on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, LinkedIn, X.com and Kick. You can also watch if you're in the club. In the club. TWIT Discord.

Jeff Jarvis [03:00:10]:
And if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, you get it there too.

Leo Laporte [03:00:15]:
He does a Simon follow me.

Paris Martineau [03:00:17]:
You won't get it there.

Jeff Jarvis [03:00:19]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [03:00:20]:
Blissful silence. Except for the occasional muffin sounds.

Jeff Jarvis [03:00:24]:
She doesn't want to tell her friends what she actually does.

Paris Martineau [03:00:27]:
They don't need to know this because then sometimes I'll get texting. Like, I watched the podcast.

Leo Laporte [03:00:31]:
Oh.

Paris Martineau [03:00:32]:
I'm like, oh boy.

Leo Laporte [03:00:33]:
I always, when somebody says, should I watch your shows? I always say, no.

Paris Martineau [03:00:37]:
Same. I'm like, it's. It's for the people who are watching it right now.

Leo Laporte [03:00:40]:
It's not for sure. It's just for if you know, you know. That's it. On demand versions of the show available audio or video or Both at Twitt TV IM, there's a YouTube channel dedicated to it. Of course, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast client and get it automatically. That's the easiest way to do it. Leave us a five star review. Have we not had any good five stars lately, Paris? Or just you haven't checked?

Paris Martineau [03:01:04]:
We have, yeah. Great one from VictorWinn.com thank you. Victor describes himself as a weekly listener. They say. This is the one podcast I always look forward to hearing on release day. I'm glad they shifted their focus to AI. When it was twig, the show was mostly a second twit. I'm curious to know whether Paris receives hazard pay for putting up with Leo and Jesse.

Paris Martineau [03:01:26]:
Hey, me too.

Leo Laporte [03:01:31]:
And if you watch live, you can hear Paris swear like a sailor. That's another reason I'm keeping it really under wraps. She's keeping it real.

Jeff Jarvis [03:01:39]:
There was only one the real Paris.

Paris Martineau [03:01:41]:
Stray F bomb.

Leo Laporte [03:01:43]:
No, it's perfect. Thank you everybody. Have a wonderful week. Have a great Halloween. A safe Halloween. We will see you back here next week on Intelligent Machines. Bye. Bye.

Leo Laporte [03:01:54]:
I'm not a human being.

Paris Martineau [03:01:57]:
Not into this animal scene. I'm an intelligent machine.