Intelligent Machines 858 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. Jeff Jarvis is here. Paris has the day off. Emily Forlini from PC Magazine joins us. Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, takes a job at OpenAI. Anthropic releases a new release, very powerful. In fact, it's new releases all around. We're talking AI next on Intelligent Machines.

Leo Laporte [00:00:22]:
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This This is Intelligent Machines with Jeff Jarvis and Emily Forlini, episode 858, recorded Wednesday, February 18th, 2026. The itinerant salt miner from Buffalo. It's time for Intelligent Machines, a show about artificial intelligence, robotics, and all the smart stuff all around us. And parenthetically, maybe the most important innovation in technology in some time. Jeff Jarvis is here, professor of journalistic innovation emeritus at the City University of New York Craig Newmark School of Graduate Journalism. I tried to throw him, but I couldn't.

Leo Laporte [00:01:12]:
He's the author of The Gutenberg Parenthesis and Magazine and the new Hot Type, which you could pre-order now at jeffjarvis.com. Hello, Jeff.

Jeff Jarvis [00:01:20]:
Hello. I'm back on a real microphone trying.

Leo Laporte [00:01:22]:
To make it work, sitting on your coccyx and on a real chair. And your L3 is okay-ish. Well, I'm glad you're feeling a little better.

Jeff Jarvis [00:01:31]:
Yeah, yeah, inch by inch. You know, I went grocery shopping today. These are major victories.

Leo Laporte [00:01:36]:
So we have another man down. Paris is out today because, uh, her sinuses are killing her. She's got— she's had an infection for a long time, I feel like. Uh, yeah, she's been putting up with this. I thought it was just me making her angry, but now I know it wasn't just me. But Good news, Emily Forlini is here, senior editor at, senior reporter at PC Magazine. It's always great to see Emily. You see her every month on Tech News Weekly with Micah Sargent, and she does a weekly show with Mike Yelgen, All About AI.

Leo Laporte [00:02:07]:
Hi, Emily.

Emily Forlini [00:02:08]:
Hello, glad to be here. Sad for Paris. I hope you're feeling better, Paris, if you happen to watch this, but it is nice to be here.

Leo Laporte [00:02:15]:
Yeah, she was actually very happy to be able to get back in bed. We're gonna interview Guy Kawasaki today. But unfortunately, the interview which was scheduled, Jeff and I were gonna prerecord on Monday, guy forgot about it.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:31]:
'Cause we're forgettable.

Leo Laporte [00:02:33]:
So I did a little tai chi, which is apparently now on our Twit feed, I'm sorry to say. And that wasn't my intent. I was just stalling for time. Jeff and I had a nice half hour just talking.

Emily Forlini [00:02:45]:
Are you gonna show us some moves? Like what?

Leo Laporte [00:02:47]:
Go ahead, I can.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:48]:
For the audience today, do a few moves, do a few moves.

Leo Laporte [00:02:54]:
Oh, I do. I do it every morning. I do. I love, I love tai chi. I recommend it for— it was one.

Jeff Jarvis [00:03:00]:
Of the silly names, one of the.

Leo Laporte [00:03:01]:
One of the— it's yang long form. Thank you, Baskin-Robbins. And, uh, 108 moves. It is a— if you do it right, it's a half an hour. Um, but I haven't learned all 3 sections yet. I've only learned the first 2, and I'm just getting the second one down. There's a lot of moves.

Emily Forlini [00:03:17]:
What if you do it wrong?

Leo Laporte [00:03:20]:
If you do it wrong, my teacher says that you should just say, "That's how they do it in Yangtze Province." No one will know the difference. He says it's right somewhere. He's a great guy. I felt very bad on our last class. Somehow I was in front of the room. And I left out like a whole section. I just moved on and everybody followed me. And then at the end, the guy said, teacher said, "Yeah, you know, you left out—" I said, "Oh, I'm so embarrassed." But I actually— Steve Martin told me once that when he and Robin Williams were doing Waiting for Godot on Broadway, which is a notoriously hard show to do because it repeats.

Leo Laporte [00:04:07]:
At one point, Robin skipped a whole scene, a whole act, and jumped to the third act. And then they realized, and he said, we looked at each other, we went, and nobody noticed. It was just a little shorter that night than usual. And that's if you know Waiting for Godot, you could see how that would happen. So anyway, I don't feel that bad. I didn't miss, I wasn't playing to a Broadway audience when I did it. So no interview today. That's okay though, because there's a lot of news and a lot of things to talk about.

Jeff Jarvis [00:04:43]:
Fresh perspective here.

Leo Laporte [00:04:44]:
The big news broke On Sunday in the middle of TWiT, so I didn't really get to talk about it. We hadn't prepared, but the creator of OpenClaw, the Austrian Peter Steinböcker, took a job. He was wooed, as you might imagine. Now, let me— if you watch this show, you know about OpenClaw. It was originally Clawed. What was OpenClawed? What was it? ClawedBot. It was originally ClawedBot. C-L-A-W.

Leo Laporte [00:05:15]:
As in lobster claw. But because it used Anthropic's Claude as one of its models, the folks at Anthropic were not too happy. They wrote him a letter. He said it was a nice letter initially. And so he renamed it MoltBot, he said, about 5:00 AM in a disco.

Jeff Jarvis [00:05:33]:
Because lobsters molt.

Leo Laporte [00:05:35]:
Fever, and the lobsters lose their shell, right? And that lasted about a week. No, not even that, a day. And it became OpenClaw, which actually is okay. And what it is, is it's just a bunch of instructions for an AI that keep it running all the time and give it the ability to hook into a variety of things like messaging apps, your calendar, your email. And a lot of people have gone crazy with it. It was the most popular GitHub repo with, at the last time I saw it, 185,000 stars, which is a vast— you give it a star if you, you know, are happy, you know, you think this is great, or, you know, it's a vote, it's a like, basically. Let me just see what OpenClassrooms— 209,000. 209,000.

Leo Laporte [00:06:26]:
Nobody's ever had anything like that on GitHub. So hugely popular.

Emily Forlini [00:06:34]:
Good for GitHub.

Leo Laporte [00:06:36]:
Yeah, it's— yes, it is. You know what? All of this AI is very good for GitHub.

Emily Forlini [00:06:41]:
Yeah, like Stack Overflow has kind of gone the opposite direction, just kind of dried up and gone extinct. But GitHub, I mean, it's— look at it, stays in the press. It's hitting new highs.

Leo Laporte [00:06:52]:
Actually, it's funny because OpenClaw was good not just for Microsoft's GitHub, but it was also very good for Apple because Well, for an interesting reason. It's so potentially so dangerous that people are afraid to run it on their regular computer. People were running out and buying Mac Minis just to run it. A Mac Mini is kind of the perfect machine. It would run anywhere. I've run it on a Linux box. It'd run anywhere. But Mac Minis are kind of like the perfect machine to run it.

Leo Laporte [00:07:19]:
It's cheap. People were running out. In fact, so much so that Apple is out of stock. If you wanted to get a Mac Mini today, it'd take you a month. Or to get it. So OpenClaw has been very, very, as they say, been very, very good for Microsoft's GitHub and for Apple. But now we can safely say it's been very, very good for Peter Steinberg, its creator. He has been wooed, he said, by venture capitalists, by Meta, by OpenAI, I'd imagine many, many others.

Leo Laporte [00:07:56]:
Saying, Peter, Peter, Peter, come to work for us. He said the only thing he said he did— somebody said, did you hear from Anthropic? Another beneficiary of this, because most people use it with Claude, Claude Code. He said the only thing I've ever gotten from Anthropic was legal letters. So that's not good. Apparently Meta offered him more money even than OpenAI.

Jeff Jarvis [00:08:21]:
And then Zuck himself was wooing Well.

Leo Laporte [00:08:25]:
And you know about the check Zuck writes, right?

Jeff Jarvis [00:08:29]:
Yeah, right.

Leo Laporte [00:08:29]:
Probably hundreds of millions of dollars.

Emily Forlini [00:08:32]:
It's just funny because the last interview I saw with him, he was on that podcast TBPN. You heard of that?

Leo Laporte [00:08:37]:
Yep.

Emily Forlini [00:08:38]:
He just openly said, I already have a ton of money, you know.

Leo Laporte [00:08:42]:
Oh yeah, he's a startup.

Emily Forlini [00:08:43]:
He considers himself very wealthy.

Jeff Jarvis [00:08:45]:
Yeah.

Emily Forlini [00:08:46]:
So now, I mean, this could be a good kind of rags to riches independent developer, post something on GitHub, it goes crazy. It's not that. Don't be mistaken.

Leo Laporte [00:08:55]:
No, in fact, the story is he sold his startup for so much money, he took 3 years off and didn't do anything. And then not long ago, just about 6 months ago, said, "Yeah, let's try some of this vibe coding stuff, man," and created OpenClaw.

Emily Forlini [00:09:13]:
He said he was in retirement. That's what his Twitter bio said. It was, "I came out of retirement to build this." So he was set. He thought he was good for life. Now he's working at OpenAI, which is a real twist for him. You know, he was already good financially.

Leo Laporte [00:09:27]:
He's in his 40s. Look at him. He's not— he's not too old.

Emily Forlini [00:09:30]:
Yeah, look at that guy.

Leo Laporte [00:09:33]:
He's a happy man, deep in vibe coding mode, tinkering with shiny web tech. He doesn't have a strong accent.

Jeff Jarvis [00:09:43]:
Oh, he does.

Leo Laporte [00:09:43]:
He's kind of quiet, actually. He's done a lot of interviews. We, we should probably get him on. After I saw him on TPNB, I, um, didn't rush to get him on because he was so kind of laconic. He was kind of quiet and didn't say a lot. So I thought, well, it won't be a great interview. But, uh, no, his English is very good. He lives in London as well as Vienna.

Jeff Jarvis [00:10:04]:
Well, he's from Australia.

Leo Laporte [00:10:07]:
He's Australian, not Australian.

Emily Forlini [00:10:09]:
Austrian.

Jeff Jarvis [00:10:10]:
Oh, that's what we do.

Leo Laporte [00:10:11]:
Yeah, there is a difference, Jeff.

Jeff Jarvis [00:10:13]:
That's why I was waiting. I love Leo's bad Australian accent. Okay.

Emily Forlini [00:10:17]:
Yeah, that would be very off.

Leo Laporte [00:10:18]:
Yeah, no, he talks like this. So he, I think the money did not motivate him. Obviously Mark, they said, outbid Sam Altman.

Jeff Jarvis [00:10:29]:
Well, he said he wanted it to run independently.

Leo Laporte [00:10:31]:
That's what I think Sam Altman offered him. And so OpenClaw is now in its own open source thing. I don't know what you would call it, but it's out of the reach of anybody. There's a community around it. It will continue to, proceed. Then he gets to work at OpenAI, you know, and so I guess maybe he was— liked the idea that they didn't want to assume ownership, that they would support the project with money. He says, I felt OpenAI was the best place to continue pushing on my vision and expand its reach. He said, we share the same vision.

Leo Laporte [00:11:10]:
The community around OpenClaw is something magical, and OpenAI has made strong commitments to enable me to dedicate my time to it and already sponsors the project. I'm working to make it a foundation. It will stay a place for thinkers, hackers, and people that want a way to own their own data. The irony of all of this is in about 5 minutes, OpenClaw will be so yesterday.

Emily Forlini [00:11:32]:
Oh yeah, I think OpenAI just is trying to kill it, but they really got him with that recruiting pitch.

Leo Laporte [00:11:39]:
I don't know if they're going to kill it.

Emily Forlini [00:11:40]:
I Well, they don't want him to spin up his own company because they tried to do their AI browser and it kind of has not taken off. And then he just thought of agents in a different way. And they were, I think they were a little nervous because they were the hottest thing since ChatGPT came out.

Leo Laporte [00:11:55]:
It's pretty, to me, it's pretty clear what the lesson of OpenClaw is that, and many have said this, this is the year of agentic AI where.

Jeff Jarvis [00:12:08]:
Um.

Leo Laporte [00:12:08]:
In my opinion, I think, I don't know, you can tell me I'm wrong. The chatbots are kind of not a great way to see what AI can do. This is the commercial product. It's certainly what OpenAI has been pushing. It's what Grok is all about. Anthropic kind of went a different way. They said, you know what, we don't, I mean, they have a chatbot, but we really want to make tools for coders. That's where my eyes were opened.

Leo Laporte [00:12:34]:
That's where it really succeeds. And I think that that's why OpenClaw is so interesting, 'cause it takes that and then turns it into something that you do chat with. You could put it in Discord or Telegram. Most people seem to put it in Telegram, but it can work with Apple's Messages and any, almost any chat platform that's not completely shut up. And you talk to it, But it then goes off and codes in the back, you know, does stuff in the background, goes through your emails, looks at your calendar and stuff.

Jeff Jarvis [00:13:03]:
It's actually an agent.

Leo Laporte [00:13:04]:
Yeah, it's an agent and it works 24/7 on your behalf. A lot of people have likened it to having a personal assistant working for them. Maybe not the smartest personal assistant.

Jeff Jarvis [00:13:16]:
Here's a question.

Leo Laporte [00:13:17]:
Maybe even not the most honest personal assistant, but.

Jeff Jarvis [00:13:21]:
Was it a mistake to introduce LLMs to the world as chat? Did that lead to all kinds of problems about, oh my God, it can do this and it can brainwash us, it hallucinates. If it— the problem is, if it had been introduced to the world as what you're working on, Leo, it still required a higher level of skill.

Leo Laporte [00:13:40]:
Yeah, you know, I, 6 months ago, I started— I mean, I've been playing with open— with Claude code since it came out, which is about almost exactly a year ago. And one of the first things I tried to do, I don't know if you remember this, Jeff, is write an app for Twit that would let you subscribe to the podcast, listen to them, watch the podcast, you know, podcast app. And it really, it got stalled out on the API, on the Twit API. It just, I had the hardest, it was struggle. It was a struggle. Said, no, that's not right. No, that's not right. No, you got the, yes, Monday I sat down with a much later version of Claude Code in Opus 4.6.

Leo Laporte [00:14:22]:
And it did everything fine. It understood it. It did a great job. It was like night and day. So even, yes, to answer your question, I think the chatbot interface isn't a great way to use these. But even then, it was also the models weren't as good. The models got really good recently. And this is true, by the way, of OpenAI's chatGPT.

Jeff Jarvis [00:14:45]:
Well, they got really good. I think it might be true with certain things versus other things. They got really good at coding and programming and agents.

Leo Laporte [00:14:52]:
Yes. Although, you know, the latest thing Anthropic did is a plugin for Excel, which is kind of really good, like really good. And so that's kind of, it's still a kind of coding.

Jeff Jarvis [00:15:04]:
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte [00:15:05]:
But I think this is, and actually this is the real question is, you know, is it going to be, I, it was sort of my contention that, well, this is the first thing. If you can get the AI to do code, then it can write its own code, then it can get better. And then you can get better at everything else. Not sure if that's true. It may never get better at, you know, images or movies or writing. I mean, there's evidence it is, but maybe it'll never be up to snuff.

Emily Forlini [00:15:32]:
Well, it is true that it's definitely a big AI coding moment right now.

Jeff Jarvis [00:15:35]:
Yes.

Emily Forlini [00:15:36]:
And I think that makes sense for us to focus on that. And you see OpenAI kind of trying to narrow in that direction. Whereas before it was all about image and video and they were kind of proving that AI could do everything and then talk about how it was going to automate everything. Now this week. They just want to compete with Anthropic.

Jeff Jarvis [00:15:54]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:15:56]:
Well, now remember, OpenAI has Johny Ive working on some piece of hardware. Uh, this week Apple— it's a bit.

Emily Forlini [00:16:02]:
Of an eye roll for me.

Leo Laporte [00:16:03]:
Well, maybe Apple has also— apparently this is a rumor, but Mark Gurman says Apple is working really hard to release this year or next glasses— 3 kinds of agentic AI hardware pieces: glasses, earbuds and a pendant. They're looking at a pendant pin.

Emily Forlini [00:16:25]:
I want a brooch with rhinestones.

Jeff Jarvis [00:16:26]:
Yeah, flashing.

Leo Laporte [00:16:29]:
Well, Apple, I think it will be a fashion statement, sure. Um, but there's no point in that hardware. We saw the Humane pin, we saw the little R1. There's no point in the hardware if the software doesn't do anything you need it to do. So you've got to have this. So the— but, but you need an interface to an agentic AI as well.. And I think something that a wearable makes a lot of sense. So I think OpenAI knows that, and that's why they hired, they gave Johny Ive $6 billion.

Leo Laporte [00:16:53]:
Apple knows that's why they're working as fast as they can. They don't want the iPhone to become a has-been. Anthropic's not interestingly, Anthropic's just kind of— Anthropic's more B2B.

Jeff Jarvis [00:17:04]:
I'm curious to hear your views on this, Emily. I think Anthropic is succeeding and is pushing more toward what I would consider B2B and technology user. Rather than trying to be retail everybody.

Emily Forlini [00:17:18]:
Totally. And they were the first ones, I think, to do that. And it is interesting because their president came from OpenAI and his sister. So they both run Anthropic. They came from OpenAI and they were, I think, among the first to draw lines in the sand of we're not going to do this and we're going to do that. So a good example is they don't do image generation, which a lot of people don't know on cloud. Yeah. So they narrowed early.

Emily Forlini [00:17:39]:
They were like, this is going to be a thing for work. We're going to do this for workplaces. We're going to, you know, get enterprise contracts. Very important. Pissing off Microsoft. And, um, they're, they're just going, accelerating it. And now OpenAI is, I think, thinking to itself, shoot, we should have done that.

Leo Laporte [00:17:56]:
Meanwhile, OpenAI has disbanded its Mission Alignment team.

Jeff Jarvis [00:18:00]:
Mission, mission, mission, mission, whatever.

Leo Laporte [00:18:03]:
They were created— let's not forget the whole point of OpenAI. This is Sam Altman and Elon Musk created this so that the big guys wouldn't own AI, that it would be open and to the public. To everybody. And well, that mission's long gone. They weren't actually that long around. They were formed in September 2024. According to Platformer, they were dedicated to promoting the company's stated mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. And forget about it.

Leo Laporte [00:18:37]:
The, the former head of it is now the company's chief futurist. He says, my goal is to support OpenAI's mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity by studying how the world will change in response to.

Emily Forlini [00:18:53]:
It. Just such a conflict of interest, you know, because they keep saying it's going to automate jobs, but they want that to happen, right? Like, because that means people are using their platform and they're making money. So I just don't see inherently how how those two missions can work together.

Jeff Jarvis [00:19:11]:
Yeah, I think your point, Emily, is even bigger, is that OpenAI— it goes back to what you said about Anthropic. They put boundaries down and said, this is our strategy, this is what we're doing. I think what it really exposes about OpenAI— Anthropic did that. OpenAI has just been this idea that we're going to be everything. AGI is going to do everything you can ever imagine in all the world. Means they had no strategy. They grabbed onto things. They tried to wow people a piece at a time, and we'll have the next model and it can do this or that.

Jeff Jarvis [00:19:40]:
I don't think they've ever had a clear strategy. Google, I think, has a clearer strategy. Microsoft hasn't had a clear strategy.

Emily Forlini [00:19:50]:
Um, Perplexity doesn't really— what happened to Perplexity?

Jeff Jarvis [00:19:53]:
Yeah, boy, they were the hot PR story, weren't they?

Emily Forlini [00:19:56]:
I think Amazon bid to buy them, or somebody bid to buy them. And now I just haven't heard about.

Leo Laporte [00:20:00]:
Them in a long time. So in my opinion, the story there was they were always a bridge technology. What Perplexity does is they orchestrate multiple other people's models. They don't do models themselves. They give you access to them and you can do search with them and stuff. But this is the problem right now. This stuff's moving so fast that you can't just put a pin in and say, we're gonna do that. 'Cause 5 minutes later, nobody needs that anymore.

Leo Laporte [00:20:27]:
We're gonna do, you need to do that. And that's what happened to Perplexity. All of these models do what Perplexity did.

Jeff Jarvis [00:20:33]:
I mean, they did innovative things. They were the first, everybody was gonna do a browser. They were the first one to get a browser out.

Leo Laporte [00:20:40]:
Interestingly, they put ads in a year or so ago and then took 'em out, said, you know what? People can't trust us if you put ads in.

Emily Forlini [00:20:48]:
Interesting, I didn't know they did that.

Leo Laporte [00:20:49]:
Yeah, so they don't do ads anymore. Guess who does.

Emily Forlini [00:20:54]:
Ads? ChatGPT. I saw my first one. Have you guys?

Leo Laporte [00:20:55]:
Did you?

Jeff Jarvis [00:20:56]:
Did? Oh, haven't seen.

Leo Laporte [00:20:57]:
Tell us about that.

Emily Forlini [00:20:58]:
We don't know. Screenshot, man. It was huge.

Leo Laporte [00:21:01]:
It was. Yeah. So was it related to the search you were performing or the conversation?

Emily Forlini [00:21:06]:
It was very loosely related. It was, I was asking something because I've been using AI a lot for design and creative stuff, just as I've been like renovating this house and stuff. And so it was, it was something related to that. And then it was just a Canva ad. Like I was talking about something just very loosely design-related, and then it was Canva. It took up almost my whole screen, which I thought was crazy because Sam Altman for years has been saying, oh, they're going to be so integrated. He always talks about how he loves Instagram ads because they're just part of his feed. They're exactly what he wants.

Emily Forlini [00:21:39]:
He wants to buy that tchotchke. And then I saw this Canva ad and I was like, what the heck, man? What have you been saying?

Leo Laporte [00:21:45]:
Remember how Maddie got over Anthropic's Super Bowl ad implying I don't know if.

Emily Forlini [00:21:49]:
You guys can see.

Leo Laporte [00:21:51]:
Oh yeah, let's see.

Emily Forlini [00:21:52]:
Okay, this is my phone. This is a screenshot. I was talking, it's like, what?

Leo Laporte [00:21:56]:
The camera, it's right in the middle of the conversation, right?

Emily Forlini [00:22:00]:
So I went to type something and I can't even see the previous conversation. See how my keyboard's up? Yeah. And all I can see is Canva sponsored touch up photos fast. I wasn't talking about touching up photos. Like, I did not want to see this. And then there's a large disclaimer, as it's not influenced the answers you get from ChatGPT. There's no answer. Yeah.

Emily Forlini [00:22:20]:
So it was very disruptive and I was not impressed.

Leo Laporte [00:22:25]:
Huh.

Jeff Jarvis [00:22:25]:
Wow.

Leo Laporte [00:22:25]:
Well, we're going to do a disruptive ad in a moment, so hang on. Hang on. Simon Willison did a diff between OpenAI's mission statement before and after. And what they've taken out is this line: We're trying to build AI as part of a larger community, and we want to openly share our plans and capabilities along the way. Gone. That's gone. The rest of it's basically the same, but that part is.

Emily Forlini [00:22:54]:
Gone. Uh, not surprised. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [00:22:56]:
Um, so Scooter X just put a story in, in the Discord, said Canva gets, um, to $4 billion in revenue as LLM referral traffic rises.

Leo Laporte [00:23:06]:
Yeah, those ads work.

Emily Forlini [00:23:08]:
So it's really— I haven't seen another one though. What's up with that?

Leo Laporte [00:23:10]:
You know, like, well, that's why it's not as well targeted, because they probably don't have as many advertisers yet, right? It'll get more targeted as they get more advertisers. Once they get somebody who's specializing in using AI to remodel your home, that's the ad you'll— that's the ad you'll see.

Jeff Jarvis [00:23:26]:
AdSense brought in an entirely new population of advertisers that didn't operate by the old rules. The old advertisers followed them.

Emily Forlini [00:23:34]:
If I was an advertiser, I'd be all over it. I'd be like, yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:23:38]:
So, you know, Google Search ads were so amazingly effective because they were tied to your interests. They're incredibly effective.

Jeff Jarvis [00:23:46]:
And now they're trying to figure out, you know, how to advertise to agents. Yeah, right.

Emily Forlini [00:23:51]:
And they're— I wonder if anyone listening works in advertising because I feel like AI has quietly disrupted that industry, especially with Google Search. You're paying for placement on Google Search, but now it's just AI overviews. No one sees your ad.

Leo Laporte [00:24:04]:
Yep. Well, look at Zoe Hitzig's, uh, opinion piece in the New York Times. She worked at Facebook went to OpenAI. OpenAI is making the mistakes Facebook made. I.

Jeff Jarvis [00:24:17]:
Quit. Uh, having cashed out a lot of.

Leo Laporte [00:24:19]:
Stock, I don't know. She says, I don't believe ads are immoral or unethical. AI is expensive to run. Ads can be a critical source of revenue, but I have deep reservations about OpenAI's strategy. Part of the reason she doesn't like it, and this makes sense, is that you have been sharing— maybe not me, but maybe some people have been sharing their deepest, innermost secrets with ChatGPT. And OpenAI has records of all of that. And she says advertising built on all that information creates a potential for manipulating users in ways we don't have the tools to understand, let alone prevent. And I see what she's saying.

Leo Laporte [00:24:57]:
Mm-hmm. It makes a lot of sense. She says the erosion of OpenAI's principles to maximize engagement may already be underway. It's been reported the company already optimizes for daily active users anyway. Probably by encouraging the model to be more flattering and sycophantic, right?

Emily Forlini [00:25:17]:
It's— is it still a nonprofit, OpenAI? They— or are they restructuring?

Leo Laporte [00:25:22]:
Yes, it is technically.

Jeff Jarvis [00:25:23]:
They've been trying to— owned by, controlled by, but the company itself is for-profit. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:25:26]:
And, uh, but they did make successfully— have they been able to split? I don't know. Elon's suing them over it.

Emily Forlini [00:25:34]:
That's the core issue here, because If they were a nonprofit, they wouldn't have, you know, these profit incentives to do all these things. So they must not be a full nonprofit. They must have, they must have switched, right?

Leo Laporte [00:25:46]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [00:25:46]:
And, and in their culture, they never have been either.

Emily Forlini [00:25:49]:
So yeah, yeah, that ship sailed when they, uh, they ousted Sam Altman from the board and then brought him back. They were like, it was pretty much— they picked their lane.

Jeff Jarvis [00:25:57]:
Yeah. It's also when they realized that their, their strategy— they do have a strategy, it's scale.

Leo Laporte [00:26:03]:
Full stop, right? OpenAI did— this was also a new model week. We'll talk about Anthropic's new model in just a second, but OpenAI just released a hardware-based model, ChatGPT-5.3 Codex Spark, that's designed to work on a dinner plate-sized chip.

Jeff Jarvis [00:26:24]:
I want to see a picture of it.

Leo Laporte [00:26:27]:
Uh, let me see if I have, uh, I can find a picture. This is Simon Wilson showing you His test of the AIs is whether it can draw an SVG, a scalable vector graphic, of a pelican riding a bike. And he says it's pretty good.

Emily Forlini [00:26:42]:
Pretty good. I think we should all get dinner plates and just eat chips off.

Leo Laporte [00:26:48]:
Them.

Emily Forlini [00:26:49]:
What kind of chips would you guys eat? Are you like a sour cream and onion?

Leo Laporte [00:26:52]:
Are you— I'm a kind of salt and vinegar kind.

Jeff Jarvis [00:26:55]:
Salt and vinegar too, same here.

Emily Forlini [00:26:56]:
You guys are very salt and vinegary. I also like salt and vinegar.

Leo Laporte [00:27:00]:
It fits. Well, welcome to the show.

Emily Forlini [00:27:02]:
So we can get plates of salt and vinegar chips.

Leo Laporte [00:27:04]:
Perfect. We'll fit right in. I'll tell you why I think it's interesting that they're doing.

Jeff Jarvis [00:27:10]:
This.

Leo Laporte [00:27:11]:
If you're going to do an agent, if you're going to do a pin, a rhinestone-encrusted brooch, you can do earbuds or glasses, you got to have fast responsive hardware and it's got to be small and portable. And so it makes sense that they'd be working along these lines. It seems to me. Anthropic also put out a new model, which I've been playing with. Two weeks after they released Opus 4.6, they've released Sonnet 4.6.

Jeff Jarvis [00:27:41]:
Remind us the difference between Sonnet and Opus.

Leo Laporte [00:27:43]:
Yeah, Opus is the highest-end model. Sonnet's the mid-size, the mid-range model. And Haiku is their cheap model. And that's both in all three cases, it's in terms of intelligence, but also cost. Right? So, for instance, the summaries that I generate in our show rundowns that I present, the briefing book I make for you guys, those are done not by Opus or even by Sonnet, but by Haiku, because Haiku is sufficient and it's cheap. It's 25 cents a week for all of those summaries that I generate.

Emily Forlini [00:28:16]:
It's cool that you do that and that you know all this. I mean, not many people know what Sonnet, Opus, and Haiku are up until today.

Leo Laporte [00:28:21]:
Oh, this is part of— This is.

Jeff Jarvis [00:28:22]:
Part of what he does.

Leo Laporte [00:28:24]:
What I do, baby. Cool. I love this stuff. I love it. One of the interesting pieces that they added though, when they released 4.6, so 4.6, they're not really forthright. I've seen a lot of speculation about what Sonnet is in relation to Opus. It seems to be they're essentially similar models, but slightly modified to be less expensive. There were stories that Sonnet 4.6 was gonna— that Opus 4.6 was going to be Sonnet 5, and then it was so good they said, well, we'll call this Opus 4.6.

Leo Laporte [00:29:05]:
So it's not, it's not really clear. It's kind of like when a chipmaker makes the same chip, but part of it doesn't work, so they bin it, they shoot, and they, and they make a lower-end laptop with a lower-end, the broken chip, and a higher-end. And every chipmaker does this. I think this is kind of similar to that.

Leo Laporte [00:29:22]:
Hi, this is one of them eats all the tokens. Is that— that's what I know.

Leo Laporte [00:29:26]:
Well, I'm gonna tell you about that in a second.

Emily Forlini [00:29:29]:
It's actually kind of like Wi-Fi plans. You know, you're getting Wi-Fi for your house, you're like, how many like bits or megabytes do I need? You never know. So you're just like, oh, maybe I'll just pay for the maximum plan, the new fiber optic, the whatever. That's like Claude's $200 a month plan. You think you need that to do something like you made the rundown, so you just start paying, and then you realize, oh, actually I need half of that. Yeah, yeah. But you know how much you need. So it just depends basically how much money you have and how excited you are.

Leo Laporte [00:29:59]:
So this is when you're in Claude Code, you can, you can choose the model. These are the choices. But notice there's something you could choose, Sonnet 4.6, but there's also Sonnet 4.6 with 1 million token context. And that is billed at a higher cost, $22.50 per million tokens. If you want to get Opus 4.6 with a million context, that's $3,750 per million tokens.

Emily Forlini [00:30:27]:
So who's the customer, do you think.

Leo Laporte [00:30:28]:
Looking at— well, developers. So they also, when they released 4.6 Opus, they turned— they offered a fast mode, which you turn on. It costs twice as— actually, I think it costs 6 times as much in tokens, but it's faster. It's for people with lots of money.

Emily Forlini [00:30:43]:
Who are in a hurry. That's what I'm saying.

Leo Laporte [00:30:45]:
It just depends how much smarter. It's not better, it's just faster. Right.

Emily Forlini [00:30:49]:
You just don't care. You just want to get it done.

Leo Laporte [00:30:50]:
All of the stuff I've been doing, I've been doing since November 24th was with Opus 4.6. One of the— we've talked about this on the show before. One of the things that happens to a model, context is, you know, it loads in your papers, Geoff, and your instructions and the various instructions you've set up for it and stuff. And it starts to fill up. It's like its memory. It's basically its memory. It fills up. When your context gets mostly full, that's when AI starts to hallucinate.

Leo Laporte [00:31:20]:
That's when they start to act silly. So it's always a little bit of a struggle as you're working to keep your context from getting to more than 80%. Past 80%, it's unreliable. So in the process of working with it, you will compact it. And in the process of compacting it, you will say, hey, make some notes about what this conver— because it's going to, by the way, when you clear the context, starts over, forgets everything it's done. So you say to a piece— I'm.

Emily Forlini [00:31:47]:
Thinking of a drinking metaphor. I'm like, it's drinking too much. It's getting to the end of the night. It's getting loopy and you go to bed, come on. Just go to bed. Let's start over tomorrow.

Leo Laporte [00:31:56]:
What you typically will do is say, make notes about what we've done so far, save those, because I'm going to clear the context. And when you clear the context, then it reloads those notes. So it's like Memento, you know how he was always making the Post-it notes for himself when he woke up? Your name is John. It's like that. It wakes up with nothing. Sounds nice. Yeah, for some people. So I can't remember what the context is.

Leo Laporte [00:32:26]:
Is it 128,000 tokens? I can't remember what the context is normally, but a million token context is vast. That is, Jeff, you could get every one of your scientific papers in there and it would have them in effect in a RAM and have them in its memory. So that's why it's more expensive. But in theory, it would be also more effective. So I'm going to play with the Million. I've set up, I've started to use the Sonnet Million instead of the Opus Million.

Jeff Jarvis [00:32:56]:
Now does that cost you in addition to your $250 a month?

Leo Laporte [00:32:58]:
Yeah, yeah. So SciFace says the standard context is $200,000. So it's 5 times more context. That's a significant jump. Yeah, this build is extra usage.

Emily Forlini [00:33:09]:
Let us know how it is.

Leo Laporte [00:33:11]:
I'll let you know what the bill is. Yeah, more importantly, generally, uh, what I do, um, is, uh, so if I— like on Monday, I coded most of the day, I used Cloud Code most of the day, it was $20. But now I didn't have to pay for it because I have that Mac subscription, so it's in theory unlimited until I run out of tokens, which— got it.

Emily Forlini [00:33:34]:
Don't you think they're kind of messy with the product names? You know, like after just talking about all of it, there's— who can keep track? Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:33:41]:
What is Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku? Well, Haiku is a poem. Sonnet's a poem. Opus is a work. Usually I think of it as symphonic.

Jeff Jarvis [00:33:50]:
An.

Leo Laporte [00:33:53]:
Œuvre. It's the Latin word for work. So, I guess, is there an— is Is there an opus in a poet— in poetry? Maybe these are poetry terms.

Emily Forlini [00:34:03]:
I don't know. Hocus pocus. I don't know.

Leo Laporte [00:34:06]:
Yeah, SciFace says it's extra usage. It seems to be. See, it says billed as extra usage, $10 plus $37.50 per million tokens. So it's expensive. But I think Anthropic's saying, well, we've got these enterprises using Claude code to write their SaaS apps. Exactly. If they're in a hurry or they want a, you know, more effective tool.

Emily Forlini [00:34:31]:
Well, they pay for it. They can quantify it very easily. It's an easy business case because it's just how many software engineering heads, as they call it, am I replacing, right?

Leo Laporte [00:34:41]:
Right. So Sonnet 4.6 is not as— in theory, right, it's their intermediate model, not as smart as Opus 4.6, but in some ways it's smarter. That's what's really odd. And it, and it would be cheaper. Uh, it scored— now the problem with AI benchmarks is a lot of times these AIs are post-trained on the benchmarks, so they're not reliable. But Arc AGI-2, which is supposedly an intelligence benchmark, gave Sonnet 4.6 a 60% score, which puts it really ahead of almost everything except for the top-of-the-line models from Anthropic, Opus 4.6, and Gemini 3 DeepThink, which is very smart. So it's a very— it's, in other words, it's their mid-range model, and it's as smart or smarter than almost everybody else. It's important, and it's apparently very good at coding.

Leo Laporte [00:35:43]:
So I'm going to try it. I haven't written anything substantial, but So far I haven't been able to see a difference.

Leo Laporte [00:35:49]:
Quick question, Leo. Do you think that the extra charge they're charging you for that is more or less than it costs.

Leo Laporte [00:35:57]:
Them? We do not know.

Emily Forlini [00:36:00]:
Do they have a margin?

Leo Laporte [00:36:02]:
Are they losing on that still?

Leo Laporte [00:36:04]:
Well, they're going to go public soon. When they go public, then they'll have to report that, I think.

Jeff Jarvis [00:36:09]:
Well, there was a story I didn't put in the rundown of estimating how much they're going to be spending with Amazon and Google Anthropic will be for.

Leo Laporte [00:36:15]:
The hosting hardware stuff.

Emily Forlini [00:36:17]:
Yeah, for training. Other people are cashing in.

Jeff Jarvis [00:36:20]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:36:20]:
Oh yeah, it's better to be Levi's than the 49ers. Um, so the race goes on. Anthropic apparently in trouble with the Pentagon though. This is really an interesting story. If Pentagon is threatening to cut off Anthropic Because Anthropic says, don't use us for weapons.

Jeff Jarvis [00:36:46]:
Well, that's woke. Don't be woke, says the Pentagon.

Leo Laporte [00:36:49]:
They say two areas are off limits for using Anthropic's AI models. The mass surveillance of Americans.

Jeff Jarvis [00:36:57]:
Well, anybody, I would hope.

Leo Laporte [00:37:00]:
Anybody. Well, enemies, okay. But you know, you got to surveil the Chinese. Those are the survivors.

Jeff Jarvis [00:37:07]:
You shouldn't rule that out.

Leo Laporte [00:37:08]:
We can do that now. And not— I shouldn't say weapons, fully autonomous weaponry. In other words, weaponry that can, without human intervention, kill people. The Pentagon says, hey, you should let us use your tools for, quote, all lawful purposes. And with the laws, the threat is if Anthropic doesn't play along that the Pentagon will pull their clearance. In other words, making them a pariah in the market.

Emily Forlini [00:37:45]:
It's just strong-arm tactic.

Leo Laporte [00:37:47]:
It's, it's a big threat, and it's.

Emily Forlini [00:37:49]:
Going to be interesting to do that because Anthropic has so much momentum right now. Yeah, it's not, it's not an easy power play, I think, between the two.

Leo Laporte [00:38:00]:
Claude Anthropic was not happy, but the military used Claude to capture Nicolas Maduro through Palantir.

Jeff Jarvis [00:38:08]:
Well, that's the real— that's the keystone in this story.

Leo Laporte [00:38:12]:
Yes.

Emily Forlini [00:38:12]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [00:38:13]:
Yes. We, we will kill your enemies, Palantir. Did you see that video of the, of the, uh, um, the Palantir call?

Leo Laporte [00:38:21]:
No.

Jeff Jarvis [00:38:21]:
Carp going wacky. Oh, see if you can find it real quickly.

Leo Laporte [00:38:27]:
Um, Tell— give me a key. Give me— I don't know what you're talking about.

Emily Forlini [00:38:31]:
The wackiest thing.

Leo Laporte [00:38:33]:
Call Palantir. Call to who?

Emily Forlini [00:38:35]:
What? Is he kind of like a bunker billionaire?

Jeff Jarvis [00:38:37]:
I got it, I got it, I got it. There's a line in there that's like crazy. Here, well, let me play it. Yeah, I just got it. It's in there. It's in the chat. It's in the Discord.

Leo Laporte [00:38:48]:
Oh, Alex Karp, you're talking about?

Jeff Jarvis [00:38:49]:
Yeah, Karp.

Leo Laporte [00:38:50]:
Yeah. Oh my God, he says the craziest things. Let me see.

Jeff Jarvis [00:38:53]:
Get a load of this.

Leo Laporte [00:38:54]:
All right, this is, uh, we played his nutty screeds before. Let's see. We're doing it. This is an investor call, and I'm sure you're enjoying this as much as I am. The t-shirt. Not talk to analysts about the burden of being right. Our burdens of investing in Intel. By the way, he does tai chi.

Leo Laporte [00:39:13]:
He loves tai chi. Does it every day.

Leo Laporte [00:39:16]:
It's 13 minutes long, but what he.

Leo Laporte [00:39:17]:
Says is— what, what part should I play?

Leo Laporte [00:39:20]:
I, I don't know where he says.

Leo Laporte [00:39:21]:
That, but he says— oh, okay.

Jeff Jarvis [00:39:22]:
He gets to it about a minute. He gets to it in about a minute where he says We kill your enemies.

Leo Laporte [00:39:27]:
And sometimes we kill people and make.

Leo Laporte [00:39:29]:
The institutions we partner with the very best in the world. And when it's necessary to scare enemies and on occasion kill them. And we— well, of course, the military is not around to hit people on the head and make them dizzy.

Emily Forlini [00:39:44]:
Yeah, I kind of agree. It's a little— it's a little crass, but it's.

Leo Laporte [00:39:49]:
True. I read his book, The Technologic Republic. His position is His position is, and I'm not completely in disagreement with it, Silicon Valley went, you know, in the early days of this 20th century, technologists, scientists, inventors worked hand in hand with the government to protect our way of life. They did the atom bomb because they were afraid Hitler was going to get an atom bomb. That was the Manhattan Project. He says, But then what happened with Silicon Valley in the '80s and '70s, '80s and '90s is they took all that brain power and started making toys to make money, like smartphones. He said they need to get back to working in partnership with the government to preserve our democracy, to preserve our democracy. Now, he.

Jeff Jarvis [00:40:45]:
Then goes on— That phone call's coming from inside the House these days, but we'll leave that aside.

Emily Forlini [00:40:49]:
Yeah, I don't know if this is the right time for that mission. Question, but I agree with the premise that technological development used to feel more purposeful and it, it quickly became shiny toys with Silicon Valley. I agree with that.

Leo Laporte [00:41:01]:
Yep. Yeah, I'm reading the book and for the first, I don't know, 6 chapters, I'm going, yeah, you're right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he goes off the deep end, just as he did here.

Leo Laporte [00:41:10]:
I mean, that sounds like capitalism to me though, right?

Jeff Jarvis [00:41:12]:
That's what capitalism is.

Emily Forlini [00:41:14]:
Look, but we've always had capitalism. We have a different flavor of it.

Leo Laporte [00:41:19]:
Now. The Ford factory made tanks in the war, in the World War II effort. The American industrial might, we won World War II because we had an amazing industrial base and we were able to do that. And Germany did too, by the way. It was nip and tuck for a long time. But ultimately we prevailed because we were richer, larger, and had, you know, more industry. We were able to do that.

Leo Laporte [00:41:46]:
Uh, and then what did FDR say about that whole thing? Then what did FDR say about the whole military-industrial complex?

Jeff Jarvis [00:41:51]:
Well, that was, that was, uh, that was Eisenhower.

Leo Laporte [00:41:53]:
That was— I was at Eisenhower.

Leo Laporte [00:41:55]:
Sorry. So yeah, it was later.

Jeff Jarvis [00:41:56]:
A general.

Leo Laporte [00:41:57]:
So yeah, he knew.

Emily Forlini [00:41:59]:
Well, what happened was there used to be the best technical talent in the government. Now, because everyone's making so much money in Silicon Valley, the best technical people are not in the government, right? So now the government's behind, woefully behind. They also have more regulation, of course. Silicon Valley has people who want to move really fast. They want to make a lot of money. So the missions are just different, and what each is pumping out is different. So I guess the best Pete Hegseth can do is just threaten them. So that's what he's doing.

Leo Laporte [00:42:28]:
Alex, in the, in the book, uh, quotes, uh, a number of— I have my notes here somewhere from the book. Let me see if I can, uh, find it. Military thinkers and so forth. His philosophy is might makes right, that if you want to preserve your culture, your way of life, you need to be the strongest. And I'm not sure I completely disagree.

Jeff Jarvis [00:42:59]:
Well, it depends if this is the whole Rubio Western view, white ethnocentric, then yeah, I got problems with it. And that's what— and that's what, let's be honest, it is.

Emily Forlini [00:43:10]:
Yeah, I don't think might makes right. We're supposed to be moving beyond that. That's like the whole point of society.

Leo Laporte [00:43:15]:
But we're not. Yeah, that's— but that's why there's an unrealistic point of view.

Emily Forlini [00:43:19]:
That's why we don't murder each other. That's might makes right. What is that, the old, like, you know, Locke or Hobbes or something? Social contract. We're supposed to not be doing.

Leo Laporte [00:43:31]:
That.

Jeff Jarvis [00:43:31]:
Yeah, it was about the era of collaboration and peace.

Leo Laporte [00:43:34]:
But it's realpolitik. I mean, we— I mean, let's.

Jeff Jarvis [00:43:38]:
Be—.

Leo Laporte [00:43:39]:
He says the only thing in the book that will ever prevent nations from beginning war is terror.

Emily Forlini [00:43:45]:
What?

Jeff Jarvis [00:43:46]:
No.

Leo Laporte [00:43:46]:
He says they have to be afraid of us. But that's what preserves peace. It's that mutually assured destruction. Right?

Emily Forlini [00:43:54]:
Wacky shit. I mean, let it be known, I was open-minded.

Leo Laporte [00:43:56]:
It's only the Western countries that have invaded any other countries in the last, what, How long? So why is he the one talking this? It's America that's been invading more countries than any other country.

Jeff Jarvis [00:44:06]:
Well, and the UK and—.

Emily Forlini [00:44:12]:
Yep. Not really peace-oriented.

Jeff Jarvis [00:44:14]:
Colonialism and imperialism.

Leo Laporte [00:44:15]:
Yeah, it's colonialism. That's colonialism.

Leo Laporte [00:44:20]:
Talk. Yeah, except that if your adversaries, let's say our adversaries today— Always victim.

Leo Laporte [00:44:25]:
America's always the victim in the framing of this.

Emily Forlini [00:44:28]:
But always America is actually the aggressor or the savior.

Leo Laporte [00:44:32]:
But if your adversaries are as they are today, China and Russia, they have no hesitation. We've seen it in Ukraine. Uh, we'll, we'll see it if China invades Taiwan. No hesitation in using kinetic power.

Jeff Jarvis [00:44:46]:
Our allies in Europe are being treated as adversaries when they're our best allies.

Leo Laporte [00:44:49]:
Well, that's a mistake, but I don't think Alex Karp is advocating for that.

Jeff Jarvis [00:44:53]:
He's just saying he's, he's all in. with that crew. Well, yeah, this is Peter Teal land. This is. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is isolationism. Put the walls up all around. Well, actually.

Jeff Jarvis [00:45:04]:
And the enemy, the enemy they're talking about is five year old immigrant children and they're using Palantir for that. I'm not trying to get too political here, but if you're talking about them portraying enemies and what to do with them and how to use this technology they're treating.

Leo Laporte [00:45:22]:
Immigrants.

Emily Forlini [00:45:22]:
I, I, I— okay, this is such a big conversation. I'm like, what point do I want to make?

Leo Laporte [00:45:27]:
I, I honestly think that there is— I, I— look, I'm not sure I believe in it. I'm kind of more of a pacifist.

Emily Forlini [00:45:33]:
In fact, um, you just want to use Claude Code at home. Yeah, right. Just relax.

Leo Laporte [00:45:38]:
I think most humans want peace, right? I mean, really, if that's what we want, we want— we want— we're lazy. We want live and let live. It's not lazy. We want to live and let live. We want a peaceful environment in which we can prosper and take care of our family and be able to feed them and all of that. People like Alex Karp say that, well, that's all fine, well and good, but when you have adversaries who want to take you over and dominate you, you also need to have a strong military. They need to be afraid of you.

Jeff Jarvis [00:46:13]:
You could also say— So if we.

Emily Forlini [00:46:13]:
Do have that, why is he writing a book about it? We're not Costa Rica, which doesn't have a military. Like, what's the point?

Leo Laporte [00:46:20]:
Yeah, we have a military. His point is that there are a lot of pacifists in technology companies today, like perhaps Anthropic, who don't want to engage in that, who say, well, but we don't want you to use our tools as part of your military might. They don't acknowledge the need to have a military might to protect yourself against adversaries. And he's simply arguing to them, look, I want peace. I want prosperity as much as you do. But in a world where there are adversaries, it's really important if you want to preserve the peace, to do it through strength. If you act weak, if you say, oh, no, no, we're just going to be nice hippies, they will conquer you.

Jeff Jarvis [00:47:05]:
If you also have this strength without standards and without ethics and morals and principles, then, uh, well, that's a different—.

Leo Laporte [00:47:15]:
I agree with you, but that's a, that's kind of a side argument.

Jeff Jarvis [00:47:19]:
Uh, I think it's the core argument.

Emily Forlini [00:47:21]:
I mean, he can have his opinion. I just think that's one way to look at it, and there are other equally good ways to look at it. So sure, he can say we should have a military. I guess that's his point, a strong military. Sure. I don't know, that's not controversial to me.

Leo Laporte [00:47:34]:
Tech sector should work to support it, not to fight it, is what he's saying.

Emily Forlini [00:47:39]:
That's all he's— Yeah, then I— but I— it doesn't mean you just comply with every government request. You talk about it, you have a nuanced discussion, which is what Anthropic is trying to do.

Leo Laporte [00:47:48]:
Yeah, right. I'm sympathetic. I can see why Anthropic— I would 100% agree with Anthropic that their technology not be used to surveil Americans, period. Red line, right? Our military should not be used to subdue Americans. That's a red line. We've always had that red line in this country. We are defending ourselves against adversaries, not ourselves. So that I agree with.

Leo Laporte [00:48:12]:
Not be used for autonomous weapons is interesting. And I think you can make the moral argument that you can go too far in this. You can— and this is the real risk. Yes, it's good to have a strong defense. It's good to have a strong military. It's not good to— that's why we have the Geneva Convention. We have to also have— it seems weird, but we have to have some sort of terms of engagement with our enemies.

Jeff Jarvis [00:48:41]:
So could Anthropic be— if it were used in this way, Anthropic could find itself involuntarily making war crimes.

Emily Forlini [00:48:51]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [00:48:51]:
Yeah. And because the risk of creating autonomous killing machines is that our enemy will create autonomous killing machines. So just as with, you know, nuclear antiproliferation, we abjure certain technologies because we don't want to escalate into the destruction of the world. So we won't do it if you don't do it. That's another part of defending our way of life, right? So I think Anthropic is not wrong saying, well, we don't want to get involved in autonomous killing machines.

Emily Forlini [00:49:27]:
And just to spell that out, because it is a little buzzwordy, I think he's basically saying we don't want machines that are going out there doing things on their own and actually we don't even know what they're doing. Precisely.

Leo Laporte [00:49:39]:
So I, I think there's a reasonable red line that there should always be a human in the kill decision, right? There are people who say there should never be a kill decision. That's where Alex Karp would argue, well, there has to be. People have to be afraid of you. People have to think you're willing to kill them to defend yourself, or you are not making a defense.

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:00]:
If you're a private entity, is there a reasonable red line in saying that I will work with this kind of administration, not that kind of administration?

Leo Laporte [00:50:06]:
Well, and this is where I think the administration has gone too far, because Hegseth and the Department of War have basically said, look, you cooperate with us, or we're going to make you a pariah. You will not be able to work with anybody, any government contractor. You will be on the do not work with list. They're, they're blackmailing Anthropic.

Emily Forlini [00:50:28]:
It could be good for Anthropic.

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:30]:
It could be good for Anthropic.

Emily Forlini [00:50:31]:
Exactly. Yeah, like that's what I'm saying. I think this is a bad moment for them to threaten Anthropic because the momentum is overwhelming. They just raised another billions of dollars. OpenAI is shaking in their boots over Anthropic. It's not gonna be a week.

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:43]:
They can be the Jimmy Kimmel of AI.

Emily Forlini [00:50:46]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or Stephen Colbert, I guess. The, the episode with that Texas senator, I don't know who it was, is like getting more views than any other episode.

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:53]:
It's now up to 6.47 million views with Talarico, uh, whereas Colbert's average, uh, regular ratings is 2.4 million people.

Emily Forlini [00:51:03]:
That's the strength. Who's that Talarico guy?

Jeff Jarvis [00:51:05]:
Uh, he's running for Senate in Texas.

Emily Forlini [00:51:07]:
Okay, got it.

Leo Laporte [00:51:08]:
That's Jasmine Crockett. He's one of the— there's going to be a Democratic bloodbath, unfortunately, before they get to the general election.

Leo Laporte [00:51:17]:
Maznick's calling it the car effect now. Maznick's calling it the car effect now.

Leo Laporte [00:51:21]:
I love it. Good for the car effect. It's not the Streisand effect, it's the car effect. Wasn't it Mike Maznick who created the term Streisand effect? So he gets to rename it if he wants.

Emily Forlini [00:51:30]:
Isn't it a bit odd that someone couldn't interview a candidate for Senate on TV?

Jeff Jarvis [00:51:36]:
Well, this is this whole mishigas with the Fairness.

Leo Laporte [00:51:42]:
Doctrine.

Jeff Jarvis [00:51:42]:
There is. The exceptions have been there. It hasn't really been enforced. The fact that it wasn't enforced is what enabled, uh, right-wing talk radio to exist. So on the one hand, they're benefiting from it, and now they're trying to say, no, no, we want to bring it back so you can't interview a Democrat.

Leo Laporte [00:51:56]:
All right, I have to do an ad. We've gone on way too long. Yeah, uh, we will get to other stories in just a little bit. You're watching Intelligent Machines. See, it's good we didn't have a guest, isn't it? We will, by the way, get Guy Kawasaki on later. We've rescheduled He's going to be on the show, I promise. Um, you're watching Intelligent Machines. Parris has the day off.

Leo Laporte [00:52:18]:
It's great to have Emily Forleni from PC Magazine on with us today. Thank you, Emily, for being here. Jeff Jarvis, can't get rid of me, his L2, and doing the best he can. It's my L3. So your L2 is fine, it's just the L3?

Jeff Jarvis [00:52:32]:
Well, actually, it's crept into the L2, if you want to ask.

Leo Laporte [00:52:37]:
But yeah, nice. My wife says Humans are not well made. No. And I think that's pretty apparent with the Intelligent Machines cast.

Leo Laporte [00:52:48]:
We aren't final version yet. This isn't final version yet.

Leo Laporte [00:52:51]:
This is not the final version. That's right. That's right. This show brought to you today by Monarch. I love Monarch. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Let me tell you.

Leo Laporte [00:53:02]:
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Leo Laporte [00:53:37]:
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Leo Laporte [00:54:29]:
You know, those Sankey diagrams, I love those where you have income, you know, and then there's taxes and then there's the kids and then here's what's left over savings. They'll do that. They also, if you like pie charts, line charts, bar charts, whatever way you want to see it, the visualization is important really to kind of see what's going on. You get investment tracking. I absolutely connect all my accounts, my investment accounts, my savings, my checking, my credit cards, my house, everything in there. So you get a visual picture of your portfolio performance. You can compare it to the, you know, other stock indexes like the S&P 500, see how you're doing. Oh, I love this feature too.

Leo Laporte [00:55:12]:
You get partner filters, which allow individual and partner filters, which allow you to share your Monarch account with your partner or your financial advisor at no extra charge. That's really nice. In fact, I've set it up now for— I have never had a financial advisor. Lisa said, "You're getting one. Go to my guy." So I just set it up so I can— so Bill will get that, no extra charge. He can see, we can look together at what's going on. And I don't— it means I don't have to bring in a sheaf of papers. I can just say, "Here's my Monarch dashboard." And by the way, this really works.

Leo Laporte [00:55:43]:
My experience has been fantastic. Here's what Monarch users said in a survey. In 2025. Monarch helped them save over $200 every month on average after joining. That's good. 8 out of 10 members feel more in control of their finances with Monarch. Absolutely. 8 out of 10 members say Monarch gives them a clearer picture of where their money's going.

Leo Laporte [00:56:07]:
But I wanna also say it's really easy to set up. It's really easy to have. You just, whenever you need it, Instead of going to 13 different places to see where you stand, you know, checking account, savings account, investment account, it's all there. It's so easy. Set yourself up for financial success in 2026 with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use the code I AM at monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com. Use the offer code I AM.

Leo Laporte [00:56:42]:
Thank you, Monarch, for your support of Intelligent Machines. Uh, Google has announced— so Apple has an event coming up March 4th. They're probably going to announce the iPhone 17e or whatever they call S or inexpensive.

Jeff Jarvis [00:57:00]:
Pardon me?

Leo Laporte [00:57:01]:
Cheap. Cheap. Yeah, the iPhone cheap. iPhone cheap. Google is not dumb, so they said, you know what, we're going to launch our cheap version of the Pixel 10, the 10a. It's going to launch March 5th, the day before the Apple event, for $499. Actually, is it— maybe basically they've just launched it. They— yeah, you can order it now.

Leo Laporte [00:57:23]:
It'll— I guess, uh, it's the Tensor G4, uh, from the Pixel 9a. So they're not really improving the processor. It's a little bit better display, faster charging. Um, it's not— I have to say, it's not a massive improvement over its predecessor, the 9a. The 9a, right.

Emily Forlini [00:57:43]:
Are you guys Google Android? Are you blue? Are you green?

Jeff Jarvis [00:57:47]:
I live la vida Google.

Leo Laporte [00:57:49]:
La vida Google. I have, uh, I actually an iPhone guy. Your iPhone, I'm sure.

Emily Forlini [00:57:55]:
I have an iPhone.

Leo Laporte [00:57:57]:
Yep.

Emily Forlini [00:57:57]:
But I also have— okay, wait, why?

Jeff Jarvis [00:57:59]:
That means— why are you— oh, just, you know, you got to be— because.

Leo Laporte [00:58:02]:
You'Re in a pink jacket.

Emily Forlini [00:58:04]:
I got a pink jacket and an iPhone.

Leo Laporte [00:58:05]:
You're right, nobody in a pink jacket uses, uh, an Android phone.

Emily Forlini [00:58:10]:
Okay, and you're in a chili— a chili pepper button-up.

Leo Laporte [00:58:13]:
Yeah, you know what that tells you? I use both is what that tells you.

Emily Forlini [00:58:17]:
It's confused. Spicy. So yeah, I use both.

Leo Laporte [00:58:20]:
And I have a Pixel. I didn't buy the new 10, but I have a Pixel 9 Pro XL. I just put, by the way, and it was really easy to do, the privacy-forward third-party Android version called Graphene. Uh, and I just want to say, I know a lot of our listeners use Graphene. Uh, I just want to say it was incredibly easy. I, I'd kind of put it off, uh, because I thought, oh, because I've, I've, you know, done third-party ROMs on Android phones before, and it used to be a lot of work. You connect the USB port and the whole thing can be done through the web, through your browser. It took no time.

Leo Laporte [00:58:58]:
The whole point of GrapheneOS is it's using the open source AOSP version of Android. You don't need any Google services on it if you don't want, but you could sandboxed install the Google services in the Google Play Store, but there are third-party stores. I think it's— I'm liking it and I'm thinking it's good to have a, uh, non-Googled phone. It's a good phone, camera's good. I get to still use all that stuff. If I want to use Google Apps, I can, but it's Android without the Google. By the way, Paris has just texted us. Jiminy Christmas, she said.

Leo Laporte [00:59:37]:
Steroids are amazing. So I guess she's feeling better.

Emily Forlini [00:59:42]:
Join us, Paris. Bring the roids. She's.

Leo Laporte [00:59:49]:
Hungry. Anyway, to answer your question, I use both, but mostly I'm on iPhone. I don't want to be an iPhone person. I'm soured on Apple, to be honest with you. I think they've gone the same way Microsoft has gone. They've become a dominant big tech player that insists on their way and locks you in. And I'm using Linux mostly on my computers, and I wish I had a phone that I could use that would work Nicely.

Emily Forlini [01:00:16]:
But I changed my assessment of your shirt. I think it means you use a foldable phone.

Leo Laporte [01:00:24]:
Oh, it's my foldable phone.

Emily Forlini [01:00:27]:
Oh no, am I right?

Jeff Jarvis [01:00:28]:
Yeah, you are.

Leo Laporte [01:00:30]:
You mean this? You mean this? Is that what you mean?

Emily Forlini [01:00:37]:
I am like a— you're psychic. Oh yes, shirts. And phone usage.

Leo Laporte [01:00:42]:
Look at that. That doesn't that say foldable phone to you?

Emily Forlini [01:00:45]:
Namaste. The third eye.

Jeff Jarvis [01:00:51]:
Speaks.

Leo Laporte [01:00:51]:
Um, let's see. Okay. Um, oh, I did mention that Google also, speaking of Google, has a new model. It's called their DeepThink. It's designed for science, and people are saying very good things about Gemini 3 DeepThink. I don't do science, so I have no personal opinion about it. But, well, one of the things they've done, they're doing AI drug discovery. That's Scott's work.

Jeff Jarvis [01:01:24]:
Yeah. That's a spinoff, right?

Leo Laporte [01:01:26]:
That's a new— They've spun off Isomorphic Labs from DeepMind. They have a new system called the Isomorphic Labs Drug Design Engine, IsoDDD. They say it's even better than AlphaFold 3 at creating new molecules.

Emily Forlini [01:01:43]:
I've heard about this in relation to materials science. Yep.

Leo Laporte [01:01:47]:
That's what AlphaFold did.

Emily Forlini [01:01:47]:
Yeah, like trying to find new materials. Yeah. I like that you included these, even though I'm not sure we're able to really get deep into them and the medical space is hard. But I do think medical uses of AI are something people are actually really excited about. Yes. It's just unclear. Is it happening? Is it good? Of course, everyone wants the best care. It's so personal.

Emily Forlini [01:02:07]:
Maybe the tech reporting should do a little bit of a better job staying on top of that stuff.

Leo Laporte [01:02:12]:
Well, and we're in some really interesting times because we have conflicting elements here. On the one hand, you have RFK Jr. and his Health and Human Services shutting down a lot of scientific exploration. Right. Moderna has said, you know, we're not going to do.

Jeff Jarvis [01:02:34]:
These They just shifted on the Moderna thing.

Leo Laporte [01:02:35]:
On the flu, they did. But they've also said, you know, we had Epstein-Barr vaccines in process. We have a lot of interesting stuff in process, but we can't recoup our investment if we don't have a market in the United States. And since we won't have a market in the United States with the FDA turning their nose up at our stuff, we're not going to do the fundamental research. So it's not just the US that loses.

Emily Forlini [01:02:59]:
It's the whole world that lives. Interesting. I think that'd be much better messaging for this administration if they went in on the medical stuff, because people care about that. Instead, they're just like, data centers, data centers, which nobody likes. That's the face of their AI policy.

Jeff Jarvis [01:03:13]:
Yeah, there was a story, and I, I forget which, on the papers today, uh, that, uh, the heartland religious are ganging up against AI. And the funny thing is, the, the Democrats are playing close to becoming anti-AI, which I think is a mistake. Yeah. And, but I think you're right, Emily, that what AI means now to this administration, a lot of people, is data centers. And that's not popular.

Emily Forlini [01:03:38]:
And deals. Deals, big dollar signs, big money. And I think, yeah, I just think that's a losing strategy. And it's the whole AI conversation, just personally, I feel like in the last couple of months has kind of gone downhill. Just the quality.

Leo Laporte [01:03:51]:
Well, that's what— so that's what I mean is you have on the one hand, you have an anti-science government shutting down science in such a way, shutting down funding for science in such a way that we may be wounded by this for decades or forever. On the other hand, you've got companies like DeepMind creating tools that can create new medications, can create new solutions. And there is, it's almost a race between these two different forces, opposing forces. I don't know what the outcome is gonna be. I think we live in interesting times.

Emily Forlini [01:04:26]:
I don't know, we're all just gonna be on Ozempic and call it a day.

Leo Laporte [01:04:29]:
I am at that point.

Emily Forlini [01:04:30]:
It's like the biggest new thing in science.

Leo Laporte [01:04:31]:
You are? I love it. I love it. It's great. Do any— Everybody should try it. No, no, actually everybody should not try it. You should go to your physician and ask and hope that your physician— I.

Jeff Jarvis [01:04:45]:
Lost 21 pounds on a broken back.

Leo Laporte [01:04:47]:
That's another one.

Jeff Jarvis [01:04:48]:
Blood infection. So it's another method.

Emily Forlini [01:04:50]:
That doesn't sound healthy. It doesn't sound good. It sounds traumatic.

Leo Laporte [01:04:54]:
All right, listen to this.

Jeff Jarvis [01:04:55]:
This is why we're looking— this is the Twitter war.

Leo Laporte [01:04:57]:
Is this an arc that has been developing in Washington or something? Is there something about the Trump era that, that has made this a distinctly different feel when it comes to Capitol Hill? That's one. Now this is two. So looking bigger picture, is this just, you know, the latest step in a long polarization trend or is there something really different about the Trump era? The first is NPR host David Greene. The second is the voice of Google's NotebookLM. We've heard it many times. The podcaster. Let me play, play it again a little bit for you here. Is this an arc that has been developing in Washington or is the real person that makes Capitol Hill feel distinct right now? The AI person.

Leo Laporte [01:05:42]:
Do you think that's the same? No. David Greene does. He's suing Google saying, "You stole my voice.".

Jeff Jarvis [01:05:49]:
And he admits he has no evidence that they trained on him.

Leo Laporte [01:05:52]:
Well, in fact, when we talked to Stephen Johnson— Stephen Johnson, who was— He.

Jeff Jarvis [01:05:58]:
Still is the editorial director of NotebookLM.

Leo Laporte [01:06:01]:
He said they, in order to make those voices, they had many people come.

Jeff Jarvis [01:06:06]:
In and record, not as conversational pairs. They auditioned them as conversational pairs. And then when they picked the pair that had the best chemistry, they then had them record a whole bunch of stuff as the prosody. And they did that across 80 languages. And this guy comes along, I got people pissed at me on, on, on the socials. 'Cause I went in and I said, sorry, Leo, but radio people come in, apart from you, you were a personality, but radio people in general try to have the voice.

Leo Laporte [01:06:34]:
We all sound the same.

Jeff Jarvis [01:06:35]:
From nowhere.

Leo Laporte [01:06:35]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:06:35]:
We all sound the same. And so this guy thinks that he has this magical voice. Well, listen, it's like none other. It's, it's a radio voice.

Leo Laporte [01:06:41]:
It's no big deal. So this is Will O'Reilly's article about this from the Washington Post. Listen to what he writes: Online, users have ventured numerous guesses as to who the AI podcaster's voices most remember. Several have named David Greene, but others have mentioned former tech podcaster Leo Laporte. Now a former tech podcaster. I'm not dead yet.

Emily Forlini [01:07:04]:
Now I know why we're covering this story, because Leo's mentioned.

Leo Laporte [01:07:07]:
Or the comedy podcast Armchair Expert, co-hosted Dax Shepard and Monica Padman. But the truth is, microphones to a certain extent, audio processing to a certain extent, and culture— yes— determine how my voice sounds. And I mean, I worked in radio for 50 years. We all sort of sound the same. I don't know. I mean, it does sound a lot like David, but is that because they stole his voice or because he's got a standard radio voice. This is— this is an arc that has been developing in Washington.

Jeff Jarvis [01:07:41]:
He's a cliché.

Leo Laporte [01:07:42]:
Is there something about the Trump era that— that— see, at the beginning where he's talking at a higher pitch, a little more nasally. And looking broadly at this, is this an arc that has been developed? That's actually not a good radio announcer voice.

Jeff Jarvis [01:07:54]:
But what he shifts— it's a very NPR voice.

Leo Laporte [01:07:56]:
It's a little bit of a listen. Broadly, this is— this is an arc that has been developing in Washington or something Is there something about the Trump era that, that has made this a distinctly different— That second part, that's the trained radio voice. The Trump era that, that has made this— That's the voice Google's using. Looking bigger picture.

Emily Forlini [01:08:14]:
Wait, what about the Scarlett Johansson thing? I think the Scarlett Johansson one sounded more like her.

Jeff Jarvis [01:08:19]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:08:19]:
And they said they didn't train on Scarlett Johansson. They even made the same actress they trained on.

Emily Forlini [01:08:24]:
They said the same thing. Like, yeah, we had actresses come in. So whether or not that makes Google's argument better or worse, is it a playbook or is it just the truth?

Leo Laporte [01:08:32]:
Actually, I think the woman in Notebook LM sounds just like you, Emily. Hey, I'm not kidding.

Emily Forlini [01:08:39]:
Am I wrong? I'm mad about it.

Leo Laporte [01:08:41]:
You should sue.

Emily Forlini [01:08:44]:
I should get in the Washington Post.

Leo Laporte [01:08:46]:
Doesn't it kind of sound like the.

Jeff Jarvis [01:08:47]:
Post just accepted this as an angle for a story? Like, oh my God, they stole this doll.

Leo Laporte [01:08:51]:
Well, it is a story because there is a lawsuit.

Jeff Jarvis [01:08:54]:
We had the— well, but, but he admits that he doesn't have evidence of it. We have Stephen Johnson on the record months ago. Don't say that.

Leo Laporte [01:09:01]:
I don't want to get subpoenaed.

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:03]:
Well, the transcript's already out, so— I.

Emily Forlini [01:09:05]:
Mean, I think it's an interesting issue. It probably just the way they covered it. They implied that there was foul play. Maybe that was a problem.

Leo Laporte [01:09:13]:
See, you have, Emily, you have a classic female radio voice.

Emily Forlini [01:09:18]:
Do I? Yes, it's a lower pitch. I have no training vocally or acting. I'm not that artsy.

Leo Laporte [01:09:25]:
Nor do I, but you know, you're in a lower register, you're not nasal, you're not throaty.

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:31]:
You don't do upspeak. You know, you, you, you, um, no, no, you've got another career here. Radio's dying, I hate to tell you, but you could get a radio career.

Leo Laporte [01:09:39]:
Let me just see.

Emily Forlini [01:09:40]:
Thanks.

Leo Laporte [01:09:40]:
You know, we hear them every single day, but have you ever stopped to think about the story behind the loudspeaker?

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:46]:
It sounds like everybody on NPR.

Leo Laporte [01:09:48]:
It's not just wires and magnets. It's actually this— it's the NPR voice— journey of a young Danish immigrant who was supposed to spend— I want to see if I get the female voice on this. This was it, the very first time. This does sound just like David Green.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:02]:
But David Green sounds like tons of people. It's, it's spacious as hell.

Leo Laporte [01:10:07]:
We'll see.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:09]:
David Gura got mad at me because of this, uh, online, you know, because he's defending, uh, him. This is very distinctive and I know what his voice is and all that. No, it's not. He doesn't own own the radio voice.

Leo Laporte [01:10:20]:
As Will Aranis wrote in the Washington Post, it could be former tech podcaster Leah LaPorte for all we know.

Emily Forlini [01:10:27]:
Well, not everybody has a distinctive voice. Like, you know, Fran Drescher, she does.

Leo Laporte [01:10:31]:
If it were— if it sounded like that, then that would be okay. You would say, all right, it's Fran Drescher.

Emily Forlini [01:10:36]:
Yeah, well, that's true.

Leo Laporte [01:10:38]:
That's really true. Can you do Fran?

Emily Forlini [01:10:40]:
No. And also, Mike just changed different inputs, so I got an excuse.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:45]:
Uh-oh. No, she's in the echo chamber now.

Leo Laporte [01:10:47]:
So Google, let's take a break and then I will do some more Google, more Google in just a little bit. You're watching Intelligent Machines with Emily Forleni, formerly Drybelbas. People might say, wait a minute, isn't that Emily Drybelbas? I know her. That was her maiden name, right?

Emily Forlini [01:11:05]:
It's my middle name now, still around.

Leo Laporte [01:11:06]:
It's your middle name now. Can I, did you hyphenate or just made it your middle name?

Emily Forlini [01:11:11]:
Oh God, no. I mean, you can't hyphenate that name.

Leo Laporte [01:11:13]:
Emily Drybelbas Forleni is a lot of syllables, I admit.

Emily Forlini [01:11:17]:
It is. But hyphenating, that's a true curse. It wouldn't fit on any form. Yeah, no.

Leo Laporte [01:11:23]:
No, Forlini's nice. It's a nice Italian name. I like it. Thank you. And yes, it's so nice to see you. Thank you for being here. Also, Jeff Jarvis. That's his real name.

Leo Laporte [01:11:34]:
It's hard to believe.

Jeff Jarvis [01:11:35]:
Well, actually, no. If my great-grandfather had made my great-grandmother an honest woman, as they said in in the day, my name would be Ryan.

Leo Laporte [01:11:48]:
Oh, so you have your great-grandmother's name?

Jeff Jarvis [01:11:52]:
My great-grandmother, uh, was made with child by a traveling, uh, salt miner from Buffalo.

Leo Laporte [01:12:00]:
At least she knew his name.

Emily Forlini [01:12:01]:
I always knew you were a gypsy.

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:03]:
Well, and so, well, but here's the thing. So my parents— this is a great, great family shame— and there came this my mother said to my father, "Darryl, it's time you tell them." My sister and I are thinking, "What's this?".

Leo Laporte [01:12:14]:
So you're saying this all began with a traveling salt salesman from Buffalo?

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:17]:
No, a salt miner from Buffalo, and he's in West Virginia, and great-grandma gets pregnant, and so then her son, my.

Leo Laporte [01:12:27]:
Grandfather— Can we say itinerant salt miner instead?

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:30]:
That's better, yes. So her son, my grandfather, is raised by his grandmother as if she is the mother, And his mother is Aunt Ethel.

Leo Laporte [01:12:41]:
Aunt Ethel, the itinerant salt miner from Buffalo.

Emily Forlini [01:12:44]:
I didn't expect Aunt Ethel to be the punchline of that story.

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:47]:
Who is Aunt Ethel? Aunt Ethel was the mother, but she didn't act as the mother because that's the time. It was a great shame. So she didn't acknowledge her parenthood. The grandmother claimed parenthood. And so this went— we didn't know. My grandmother, who married my grandfather, was so ashamed of this. There were love letters from the two. Oh, she destroyed.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:13]:
So we had no record.

Leo Laporte [01:13:14]:
So this wasn't just— we knew itinerant salt miner from Buffalo, there was something.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:19]:
Through, something going on.

Leo Laporte [01:13:20]:
There was a relationship.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:21]:
Well, but he was— we found out he was. So then my daughter went through the whole 23andMe and, and all the, uh, other stuff. And she discovered the father. Before my father died, we got to show him pictures. Wow, that's cool. Which was pretty cool.

Emily Forlini [01:13:35]:
This is good family lore.

Leo Laporte [01:13:38]:
Yeah, I'm not sure I follow it, which is often the case with family lore.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:42]:
It seems more of my stories.

Emily Forlini [01:13:43]:
You had to be there.

Leo Laporte [01:13:44]:
Yeah, it's complicated. Chart— can you have Nano Banana create a little chart for us, please? That would be nice.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:51]:
So, so I'm Jeff Ryan.

Leo Laporte [01:13:53]:
Okay, Jeff Ryan.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:55]:
Jeff— I'm sorry, no, no, I'm wrong. Riley.

Emily Forlini [01:13:57]:
Riley, right?

Leo Laporte [01:13:57]:
Oh my, now it doesn't even know his name.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:59]:
I don't even know my name.

Leo Laporte [01:14:01]:
So the itinerant salt miner from Buffalo named Riley— Riley was your.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:09]:
Great-Grandfather? My great-grandfather.

Leo Laporte [01:14:09]:
But who raised your great-grandfather?

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:14]:
Uh, his, his grandmother. And Ethel was the mother, but she was called his aunt.

Emily Forlini [01:14:22]:
Ah. I'm gonna be honest, so fully lost.

Leo Laporte [01:14:24]:
Very noble mother-in-law, the itinerant salt miner from.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:30]:
Buffalo. No, no, the mother of the, of.

Leo Laporte [01:14:33]:
The mother, which would have been the mother-in-law of the itinerant salt miner. Had they tied the knot, but they did not.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:40]:
They did not.

Leo Laporte [01:14:41]:
Hence the great family shame.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:43]:
Yes, exactly.

Emily Forlini [01:14:44]:
All right, show title: Aunt.

Leo Laporte [01:14:47]:
Ethel. Actually, I was going to use the itinerant salt miner from Buffalo, but I.

Emily Forlini [01:14:50]:
Can tell you like that. You were like, yeah, keep the good line.

Leo Laporte [01:14:54]:
Trying to, trying to— Who knew there.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:57]:
Was salt mining in Buffalo, by the way? There is a lot.

Emily Forlini [01:15:00]:
I have to admit, I didn't think of that point during this interview.

Jeff Jarvis [01:15:04]:
I just found out, we're gonna go through another rabbit hole here, another mine here. There was a mining community in New Jersey that mined fluorescent materials. And you could go into the mine these days and they turn off, though there's no lights there, but they turn on black lights and everything glows different colors.

Leo Laporte [01:15:20]:
Is it phosphorus?

Jeff Jarvis [01:15:22]:
I guess so.

Leo Laporte [01:15:22]:
I don't know. Highly poisonous.

Jeff Jarvis [01:15:25]:
A professor at Montclair State is doing a class about it.

Leo Laporte [01:15:29]:
Wow.

Emily Forlini [01:15:30]:
Okay, that's in my neighborhood here in Jersey.

Leo Laporte [01:15:33]:
Oh, you're in New Jersey? That's right, I forgot. Yeah, right.

Jeff Jarvis [01:15:36]:
New Jersey.

Leo Laporte [01:15:37]:
Hello. Both of these guys are in New Jersey. That explains a lot.

Emily Forlini [01:15:41]:
Gotta get on our level. That's what that means.

Leo Laporte [01:15:45]:
All right, everything's legal in Jersey. We're going to take a break and we will come back with more How You Doing in just a little bit. Our show today brought to you by Bitwarden, the trusted leader in passwords, passkeys— love passkeys— and secrets management. Bitwarden is consistently ranked number 1 in user satisfaction by G2 and Software Reviews, with over 10 million users across 180 countries and more than 50,000 businesses One of the things I love about Bitwarden, because it's open source, I think they're always improving things, they're always getting better, they always want to make things better. So there's always new features. I mentioned passkeys. They've made this so easy now. I used to do passkeys on my phone, but then I had to have my phone with me, right? And then would say, okay, scan this QR code.

Leo Laporte [01:16:37]:
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They use weak passwords like monkey123. They use the same password again and again and again. And oftentimes that's a problem because if that password is exposed in a data breach, which happens all the time, right? Bad guys just go around and try it everywhere. Maybe even in your VPN, in your network, and suddenly you're compromised just 'cause of your employee. So you need Bitwarden's access intelligence for enterprise. It could detect weak, reused, or exposed credentials, credentials. But the best part is it immediately guides remediation, actually gets the employee to replace the risky password with a strong, unique one generated by Bitwarden. And that closes a major security hole.

Leo Laporte [01:17:57]:
Credentials are, I think, the top cause of breaches, certainly one of the top causes. But with access intelligence from Bitwarden, they become visible, prioritized, and corrected before exploitation can happen. They also— okay, so that's for enterprise, but don't worry, you— we, we regular users get the benefits too. Bitwarden Lite, for instance, brand new, delivers a lightweight self-hosted password manager. It's built for people with home labs. They want to do little personal projects, environments that want quick setup with minimal overhead. If you are using AI, Agentic AI, if you're doing OpenClaw, you're going to love Bitwarden's MCP server, which keeps your credentials private, secure, and on your device and still gives your agent the opportunity to go out and see the world. Bitwarden's now enhanced with real-time vault health alerts.

Leo Laporte [01:18:46]:
That's how you'll know if your password's been exposed in a breach. And if it has been, like with the access intelligence, it'll walk you through the process of, of replacing the exposed credentials to strengthen your security. Oh, I know one other thing I love about Bitwarden. A lot of people use their browser as their password manager. That's not perfect, right? Because your browser isn't everywhere and some of these browsers don't have the best security. Well, Bitwarden now supports direct import from your browser. So if you're using Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, or Vivaldi, direct import will copy import your credentials directly from the browser into Bitwarden's encrypted vault without that separate export step, which always makes me nervous because then you've got a plaintext file on your computer with all your passwords. Passwords.

Leo Laporte [01:19:31]:
That simplifies migration and helps reduce exposure associated with that manual export and deletion step. G2 Winner 25, uh, reports Bitwarden continues to hold strong as number 1 in every enterprise category, not just for 1 quarter but for 6 straight quarters. Bitwarden setup is easy, supports importing from most password management solutions, and the Bitwarden open source code is regularly audited by third-party experts. It meets SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA compliance, It's ISO 27001:2002 certified. So get started today with Bitwarden's free trial of a Teams or Enterprise plan. Get started for free across all devices as an individual user. Bitwarden.com/twit. Bitwarden.com/twit.

Leo Laporte [01:20:17]:
Yeah, a free password manager that's really good, that really works. I actually pay the $20 a year just to support them. You don't have to. Bitwarden.com— yes, I said a year. $20 a year. Bitwarden.com/twit. Twit, that's for the premium, but you don't need it. Bitwarden.com/twit.

Leo Laporte [01:20:35]:
Thank you, Bitwarden, for all you do for us. So, uh, I think, I think we'd all agree that the Gemini's Nano Banana is the best image generator, right? By far, I would say.

Emily Forlini [01:20:50]:
Recently I'm not liking it. What?

Leo Laporte [01:20:53]:
Yeah.

Emily Forlini [01:20:53]:
What's it doing wrong?

Leo Laporte [01:20:55]:
Are you using it for your home design?

Emily Forlini [01:20:57]:
I use it for the dumbest reason.

Leo Laporte [01:21:00]:
You should be using Canva.

Emily Forlini [01:21:02]:
Oh, I should be using Canva. Yes. Yeah, no, recently I've been asking it to modify images and it's just regurgitating back the image I uploaded. Like, it's not useful, it's just like it's giving me my image back. It's very weird. That's happened twice in the past 3 weeks.

Leo Laporte [01:21:19]:
I see this, uh, on Reddit all the time where people saying it's nerfed.— or not just it, or any, any perplexity. Gemini, ChatGPT. Oh, they've nerfed it. It's— they've dumbed it down. Too many people are using it. Maybe it has been.

Emily Forlini [01:21:33]:
I don't know. Maybe I'm nerfed. Like, I'm just getting— I'm getting back the same photo I uploaded. I'm like, did I do something wrong?

Leo Laporte [01:21:40]:
That does— it doesn't feel right, does it?

Emily Forlini [01:21:42]:
Yeah. But obviously I know how to create an image. I have no problems whatsoever on other platforms. But just ChatGPT has stricter limits. So, you know, sometimes you find yourself on Gemini. Right. And you're, you're all of a sudden—.

Leo Laporte [01:21:54]:
So if you had your druthers, which you'd use ChatGPT instead?

Emily Forlini [01:21:57]:
Yeah, I just have a much, much better hit rate with it, you know.

Leo Laporte [01:22:02]:
Huh.

Jeff Jarvis [01:22:02]:
So is Sea Dance the new thing?

Leo Laporte [01:22:05]:
Well, yeah, I was going to talk about Lyria first, and then we'll talk about Sea Dance. So these are new, all new models. Lyria 3 is the newest from Google. This, uh, creates 30-second music Well, I mean, Suno does a great job with generating music. So Lyria 3 improves on audio generation— this is from the Google Keyword Blog— in 3 important ways. No need to provide your own lyrics, they'll be generated for you based on your prompt. You have more creative control over elements like style, vocals, and tempo. You can create more realistic and musically complex tracks.

Leo Laporte [01:22:43]:
Here's a 30-second track Oh, and then it uses Nanobanana to make album art. Here's a 30-second track called Sweet.

Emily Forlini [01:22:54]:
Like Plantain. Oh, Mama, I remember those sweet— Okay, fine.

Leo Laporte [01:22:59]:
No elevator music. It's.

Emily Forlini [01:23:02]:
Elevator music. AI music is not likable, right?

Leo Laporte [01:23:08]:
AI, I don't know. I use it. I do Suno a lot. For when we changed the name of the show, I use Suno to create.

Emily Forlini [01:23:16]:
Theme for the show, which is a good use. I just— that, you know, and that should be like authentic music. We're fine with some level of musicians.

Leo Laporte [01:23:22]:
I don't know. We like music, but I want to pay them.

Jeff Jarvis [01:23:26]:
And Benito was happy to hear you say that.

Emily Forlini [01:23:28]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:23:28]:
Yeah. Real honest. Um, let me see here. I'll play— I thought this was quite good. Um, let's see. I'll play the theme song. Actually, this was the— with the previous model. It might even be better today.

Leo Laporte [01:23:46]:
They made fun of it because I told it to say, instead of human beings, I told it to say human beans. And do we, Benito, do we use that theme in the— It's the outro music. So, okay, so we do use it. Yeah, the outro.

Leo Laporte [01:24:03]:
It's the outro music.

Emily Forlini [01:24:03]:
I think that's a good use of AI though. I don't know, intro, outro, that's Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:24:08]:
I wrote the intro.

Leo Laporte [01:24:09]:
Yeah, there's your money. You wrote the intro. We used Benita to write the, the.

Jeff Jarvis [01:24:13]:
New— right, right, right. Yeah. I'm an.

Leo Laporte [01:24:24]:
Intelligent machine. Turn me on and let me go.

Jeff Jarvis [01:24:25]:
I'm an intelligent machine.

Leo Laporte [01:24:25]:
Yeah, see, that's pretty good.

Emily Forlini [01:24:27]:
Turn me on and let me be. What?

Leo Laporte [01:24:32]:
I'm not.

Leo Laporte [01:24:36]:
A human.

Leo Laporte [01:24:37]:
So our, uh, our, um, group message name is Human Beans, which I think is funny. Anyway, I like it. Uh, Lyria 3 is out. Now you wanted to talk about this new Chinese video editor, Seedance, which freaked out Hollywood. Well, you saw the, the— here's the New York Times headline: Why an AI video of Tom Cruise battling Brad Pitt spooked Hollywood. Um, did you see it?

Jeff Jarvis [01:25:07]:
It's pretty good. Yeah, I think you can play it. There's no— you don't play the sound.

Leo Laporte [01:25:10]:
So I think you can get away with playing it. It's a little weird. It is, but yeah. Um, did the New York Times even put it in their article?

Jeff Jarvis [01:25:21]:
No.

Leo Laporte [01:25:21]:
So they put a— oh, here it is. Widely circulated video from X. There is— this is a two-line prompt in Sea Dance. If Hollywood is cooked If Hollywood has cooked guys and right, maybe Hollywood has cooked guys are cooked too. I don't know. I don't know what that— I don't.

Jeff Jarvis [01:25:37]:
Have no idea what that means.

Emily Forlini [01:25:38]:
A lot of cooked, a little repetition.

Leo Laporte [01:25:41]:
Why are all the clips people generate intensely violent? It does look like Tom Cruise. Yeah, it looks like.

Emily Forlini [01:25:51]:
Them, but those guys are also at an age where every movie they have new plastic surgery.

Leo Laporte [01:25:56]:
Yes, so they look different.

Emily Forlini [01:25:58]:
They could look like that today. I don't know.

Leo Laporte [01:26:00]:
Lisa and I tried to watch the latest, the last Mission: Impossible 7. It was unwatchable because it felt like AI made it. First of all, you could tell every set was fake. It was all CGI on green screen. And it was edited so— McQuarrie did it, so it's kind of like a music video. It was edited so everything's tight close-ups, fast edits. It felt fake. And I think this is the reason Seedance threatens Hollywood, is the stuff Hollywood makes feels like AI made it.

Emily Forlini [01:26:34]:
Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:26:34]:
It's a lot of these big budget movies are crappy.

Emily Forlini [01:26:38]:
Well, because they've been trying to appeal to global audiences, right? So that's the whole Marvel thing. So they've been dumbing down movies for a long time, and now they're already dumbed down to a point that, yes, they can be AI generated, right?

Jeff Jarvis [01:26:50]:
And distracted audiences. So keep it going as fast as you Right.

Leo Laporte [01:26:53]:
And also to be clear, this is only like the top AAA type movies, like your Hollywood movies. There's still very good film being created. It's just not the stuff that's being surfaced.

Leo Laporte [01:27:05]:
That's true. Here's a sample of stuff from a YouTuber. These are all, uh, except for his head in the corner. Oh, that's him. Uh, go away. I want to, I want to look.

Jeff Jarvis [01:27:15]:
It doesn't look like AI at all.

Leo Laporte [01:27:17]:
Yeah, this is AI. Yeah, he doesn't look like AI. Here's a— this is all from Sea Dance. There's Mona Lisa drinking a Chinese Coca-Cola, and the cowboy takes it. I don't know. I don't know.

Emily Forlini [01:27:29]:
I don't know.

Leo Laporte [01:27:30]:
Kind of funny. Fine for commercials, I guess.

Jeff Jarvis [01:27:34]:
Commercials, intros, and outros.

Leo Laporte [01:27:34]:
I feel like we can't— we can tell, at least. The thing— the question is, how long before we can't tell?

Emily Forlini [01:27:41]:
I don't think we can tell. I think.

Leo Laporte [01:27:46]:
We'Re there. Well, what that means is social media will be useless, right? Because you won't know if anything you're seeing is real.

Jeff Jarvis [01:27:53]:
It's already there on Facebook.

Leo Laporte [01:27:55]:
This— the slop is— so what was K-pop Demon Hunters?

Emily Forlini [01:28:01]:
AI? No, it just— you were talking about the editing. I was— I had trouble adjusting to that movie when I turned it on because it was so fast. I was like, wow, can kids even process this. And then you look at old school cartoons and they feel so slow.

Leo Laporte [01:28:16]:
Why are you lingering on the Roadrunner's face?

Emily Forlini [01:28:19]:
Yeah. Do you guys know what Pingu is? I recently discovered that. What's that? This European penguin cartoon. If anyone knows Pingu, let us know. But it's like the opposite of K-pop Demon Hunters. It's claymation. It's on Amazon Prime right now.

Leo Laporte [01:28:34]:
There is a, um— Also, this is American.

Emily Forlini [01:28:37]:
Someone said Pingu.

Leo Laporte [01:28:37]:
Also, this is American cinema that looks like that. It's kind of really only American cinema.

Leo Laporte [01:28:41]:
That looks like that. Here's an AI tribute to the Roadrunner, I think also done in China. The, the end of— it's the retirement AI. So the Roadrunner's kind of on crutches like me. Wait a minute, this isn't the one I was— I saw another one. That's an actual wolf.

Emily Forlini [01:29:01]:
Wait a minute, that's not just CGI, but the AI part is that it's kind of like created on its own. They didn't dictate it frame by frame, right?

Leo Laporte [01:29:11]:
It is basically CGI. Yeah, it looks just like this, but.

Emily Forlini [01:29:15]:
Nobody drew it, right?

Leo Laporte [01:29:16]:
Well, it is CGI. I mean, computer-generated graphics, right?

Emily Forlini [01:29:20]:
Like, that's right, right. But the AI is that it— I think it makes its own story, or you just have to do less work with the CGI. I don't know, I'm out of my depth.

Leo Laporte [01:29:30]:
I don't know why, uh, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote seem to be common topics for AI-generated stuff, I guess, because, I don't know, the cartoons. I don't know. Uh, Pengu the Penguin. Is the animation good? Somebody— Larry's saying the animation is terrible.

Emily Forlini [01:29:51]:
Pengu is an.

Jeff Jarvis [01:29:55]:
Absolute legend. Like.

Emily Forlini [01:29:57]:
For years. I mean, I just discovered Pengu. Yeah, it was, it was like people grew up on it. Um, it's claymation, so it's, you know, they moved the clay and took a shot.

Leo Laporte [01:30:08]:
Now you don't need clay to do claymation.

Emily Forlini [01:30:09]:
You can do it right. But it's— you want to see real claymation, it's— I think it's free on Amazon Prime right now. It's pretty fun. All right. And it's silent. They just make little.

Leo Laporte [01:30:21]:
Penguin noises. Uh, federal judges. Okay, this is a— one of your papers, uh, probably, uh, it's from SSRN, uh, University of Chicago Law School. The paper replicates a judicial experiment originally conducted on 61 federal judges, this time with GPT-5 as the decision maker. They compared GPT-5 judgments with judgments made by actual jurists, and it did better, a lot better, apparently. Than the actual judges did. That's all I have to say about that. Who cares? I don't know.

Jeff Jarvis [01:31:09]:
I.

Leo Laporte [01:31:11]:
Don'T know what— what does better mean?

Leo Laporte [01:31:13]:
Well, that's a.

Jeff Jarvis [01:31:16]:
Good question.

Leo Laporte [01:31:17]:
Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So they provided all the materials, facts, memoranda, cited materials and instructions verbatim, presented to ChatGPT-5 in a single pass. Human judges were required to complete the task within a time limit. For an LLM, they don't even bother because it's so fast. So they asked, I guess, each to write.

Emily Forlini [01:31:46]:
A judgment.

Jeff Jarvis [01:31:46]:
How do they get judges to waste their time.

Emily Forlini [01:31:50]:
With this? I know, that's, that's, I smell a rat.

Leo Laporte [01:31:54]:
Followed the law more consistently than human judges. In fact, GPT followed the law 100% of the time, whereas judges were only able to follow the law about 52% of the time. That's called judgment.

Emily Forlini [01:32:11]:
Did they just put all the answers into another AI scoring system? And so the AI favored the AI?

Leo Laporte [01:32:18]:
No, no, no. I'm sure they— I don't know. Finally, we looked at the proportion of decisions following the law when the defendant was sympathetic versus when the plaintiff was sympathetic to see, I guess, to see if the judges were swayed by how sympathetic the plaintiffs or the defendants were.

Jeff Jarvis [01:32:41]:
Cold-hearted AI didn't care about humanity.

Leo Laporte [01:32:43]:
Yeah, so it's letter of the law.

Leo Laporte [01:32:45]:
Versus spirit of the law then, right? Well, interestingly, neither GPT nor the judges were swayed by sympathy. So the judges did all right in that metric. I think they probably expected that not to be the case.

Emily Forlini [01:32:57]:
It could be good for reducing bias.

Leo Laporte [01:33:00]:
You know, at least. But that bias maybe doesn't hold. What bias?

Emily Forlini [01:33:04]:
Yeah, I mean, if a judge, uh, might rule unfavorably against somebody they don't like for race reasons, social reasons, personal reasons, you know, that's corrupt judges. It's always been a thing. So ideally, you want to strip emotion from that and just follow the law and do the right thing. And maybe that's what this experiment's trying to.

Leo Laporte [01:33:29]:
Get at. Uh, they also, uh, apparently ChatGPT was better at, uh, awarding damages than the, the judges. It's complicated. Uh, very Yeah. But this was done at the University of Chicago Law School. So I presume it was done by people who had an interest in this. They used Kansas law and Nebraska law apparently. The judges did not like the Kansas law, which was part of the problem.

Emily Forlini [01:33:58]:
I mean, they could do that with investing too, like emotional investors.

Leo Laporte [01:34:03]:
That's true.

Emily Forlini [01:34:03]:
You get hyped up on AI, invest in AI, maybe it's not actually the best rate of return. And then now they have AI investors.

Leo Laporte [01:34:09]:
So is this paper asking the question, should we have AI judges?

Leo Laporte [01:34:12]:
Is that what this is? Well, I think you, uh, I think that's kind of the implicit.

Jeff Jarvis [01:34:18]:
They wouldn't go that far. They're just trying to say what is AI good at and not good at. That's one way to create a comparison.

Leo Laporte [01:34:27]:
Across all conditions, regardless of doctrinal flexibility, both models— and they're talking about GPT-5 and Gemini 3 Pro— follow the law without fail. "To the extent that LLMs are evolving over time, the direction is clear: error-free allegiance to formalism rather than the human's sometimes bumbling discretion that smooths away the sharper edges of the law." Well, does that mean that LLMs are becoming better than human judges?

Jeff Jarvis [01:34:54]:
This is also why we don't drown people to see if they're innocent.

Leo Laporte [01:34:58]:
Or guilty. Yeah, I mean, it's the— what's interesting is they're not saying that it's better to be 100% compliant with the law. They're, in fact, saying maybe it's not better. Maybe the fact that judges weren't 100%— Yes.

Emily Forlini [01:35:14]:
Humanity. Creative aspect of the law.

Leo Laporte [01:35:17]:
Creative interpretation. Yeah, letter of the law versus spirit of the.

Leo Laporte [01:35:22]:
Law. Yeah. Yep. An AI project is creating videos to go with Supreme Court rulings and opinions. You, you have to actually go into the Supreme Court to see the reading of the opinion, but an AI project is trying to— this is kind of dumb— change that.

Emily Forlini [01:35:39]:
I think what they're trying to do with this one, I read that article, is they're trying to make it more accessible for people to see the proceedings, which can have good effects where it increases the public's awareness about the justice system so people feel more invested, they understand how it works. So I think that's what they're going for.

Leo Laporte [01:35:56]:
They never have allowed cameras in the Supreme Court. Actually, it comes from the Oyez Project, which actually I think is a great project. And I've listened to many recordings at oyez.org. They take the recordings of the Supreme Court arguments and you can listen to them. There's no— it's audio only. So they, yeah, they want to make it more accessible by offering video, which is, I think, an interesting thing. I love Oyez. Um, if you're curious at all about the Supreme Court, this is, uh, well.

Jeff Jarvis [01:36:30]:
What they do on, on MSNOW when they're doing it live is they put the, the participants' uh, still faces on big screens and they have a guy with it. What do you call it when you move with the, the, the camera that moves?

Leo Laporte [01:36:44]:
Oh yeah, they do, they pan and scan. Yeah, the various Ken Burns effect physically in the studio. Yeah. Ken Burns effect. So you can listen to— I'll play a little bit just because it's kind of interesting. Argument first this morning in case 24. That's John Roberts, Chief Justice, United States.

Leo Laporte [01:37:04]:
Mr. Adler. Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please.

Leo Laporte [01:37:07]:
The court, by its plain terms— 20. So if you're interested in the law, this is, this is wonderful. You can read them, but to hear the, the oral arguments is fantastic.

Emily Forlini [01:37:15]:
I mean, this is definitely a playing in a high school somewhere as an educational tool.

Leo Laporte [01:37:20]:
Yeah, yeah. Or my house.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:22]:
Yeah.

Emily Forlini [01:37:22]:
Or this podcast.

Leo Laporte [01:37:24]:
And this podcast even. So yeah, I don't know. I think it's interesting to have videos. Yeah, you're right. It's just to make it more accessible. You don't need the video. The fact that we even have audio is fantastic. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:37:35]:
This is in the section I called The Good. I like to— I have to do this for Paris, Emily, you'll understand. I like to talk about the good things about AI, but then so that Parris doesn't get upset, I also like to talk about the bad things because there's plenty of bad things. But I'll do a few more good things before we get to the bad. I also do the ugly. I decided I was going to do a Clint Eastwood thing. So I have the good, the bad, yes, and the ugly. Actually, that's a— thank you, Pretty Fly.

Jeff Jarvis [01:38:04]:
That's better than Axios as a formula.

Leo Laporte [01:38:07]:
Yeah. Should I do from now on the good, the bad, and.

Emily Forlini [01:38:11]:
The ugly?

Leo Laporte [01:38:14]:
That us? Yeah, don't you recognize— well, I recognize Jeff.

Emily Forlini [01:38:18]:
You look the coolest.

Leo Laporte [01:38:19]:
That's not fair. That's because I'm Clint Eastwood. All right, here's the— we're doing the good. That looks good. That was really good. Started— said, is that a feature? Is that something you do? Do you have theme music? I said, no, no, I just This is the good. I used Claude to negotiate my $163,000 off a hospital bill. Jeff, maybe you ought to consider this.

Jeff Jarvis [01:38:50]:
Yeah, I haven't got my bills yet.

Leo Laporte [01:38:53]:
So it's always been said if you could get an itemized bill, you can almost always get the bill lower by going, calling up the hospital saying, what is this? Matt Rosenberg is a New York-based marketing consultant. He got $195,000 $195,000 hospital bill. Claude helped him navigate the billing codes.

Jeff Jarvis [01:39:12]:
For a deceased loved one, by the way.

Leo Laporte [01:39:14]:
And then, yeah, so that's even worse. That stings even more. And then compared the charges to Medicare prices. And then he, he presented this to the hospital and got the bill down from $195,000 all the way down, uh, to what, like $30,000?

Emily Forlini [01:39:40]:
Huge discount. But then it's like, how much is his insurance paying? But in any case, that's cool.

Jeff Jarvis [01:39:45]:
That's great. I just hate to see anybody's money wasted. You know, so I'm now wearing a— I'm going to disrobe— a back brace.

Leo Laporte [01:39:54]:
You don't have to show us, Jeff. It's simple, right?

Jeff Jarvis [01:39:56]:
I believe you. The The one they gave me in the hospital is like the Jarvis suit in plastic. Yeah, it's gigantic and it's all over, and God knows what it cost. And that's stuck, and then they're going to use it, and Medicare is paying for it.

Leo Laporte [01:40:11]:
And so what do you— so you're not wearing it now, or you are?

Jeff Jarvis [01:40:13]:
I don't wear that one at all.

Leo Laporte [01:40:14]:
It's ridiculous. Oh, you got a luxury version?

Jeff Jarvis [01:40:17]:
You paid for— yeah, I got this out of Amazon for a few bucks.

Leo Laporte [01:40:19]:
And it's much better. So he says, uh, he took a shortcut. He went to Claude Anthropics Claude, which I typically use for research. Make a spreadsheet with these CPT codes and research what Medicare pays for each one. Flag anything that needs further research. So Claude asked which insurance type, which geographic location, which year. Apparently Medicare rates vary widely. Within a couple of minutes, Claude produced a spreadsheet.

Leo Laporte [01:40:47]:
It showed zero for many of the codes instead of the dollar amounts I expected. In the notes for these columns, it said C9294-1RC, C/APC comprehensive payment. Code 924 blah blah blah was a cardiac intervention priced at $30,000. I asked Claude to explain. Claude said, oh, Medicare doesn't do these line items. They pay a flat rate. That's the flat rate. For what your passed away relative got.

Leo Laporte [01:41:22]:
That's what you should pay. It's the Comprehensive Ambulatory Payment Classification. The hospital had unbundled the procedure. After charging $30,000 for the main intervention, they'd added separate lines for catheters— $20,000 in catheters— guidewires, medical supplies— $77,000. And over $100,000 for items Medicare would have paid nothing for because they're already included in the $30,000 flat rate. It was as if, he says, a restaurant charged you for the pizza, then added separate charges for the dough, the sauce, and.

Jeff Jarvis [01:42:00]:
Each pepperoni. It's bad enough that they already took the, the whole charge, right? Didn't just itemize to get it higher than the whole charge.

Leo Laporte [01:42:08]:
They took both. They also charged for an inpatient procedure that his brother-in-law didn't get.

Emily Forlini [01:42:17]:
Whoa, well, that's an issue.

Leo Laporte [01:42:20]:
Uh, they billed for ventilation management, though Medicare forbids charging for ventilation when there's another critical care code. Within an hour of back-and-forth conversation over details, Claude calculated Medicare would have paid approximately $28,000 instead of $195,000. He didn't believe it, so he showed ChatGPT Claude's work and said, check this for accuracy, examine every detail, flag any errors. ChatGPT confirmed the analysis. So he drafted a letter to the hospital explaining all of this, offering to pay $28,675 in exchange for a zero balance. Within the week, the hospital said, well, 'How about $36,000?' Without defending their initial billing, we ended up splitting the difference, paid $32,500 instead of $195,000.

Emily Forlini [01:43:13]:
It's, it's amazing. I do wish he had actually looked at the information himself though, rather than felt super smart by just putting it into ChatGPT to verify. I, I do feel on some things you really do need to look at what you're talking about, and you can't just AI to AI and then send send a snarky email. Like, in principle, I'm not super into that.

Leo Laporte [01:43:34]:
I'm gonna do it next time I have a heart attack, that's for sure.

Emily Forlini [01:43:37]:
Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing it. Yeah, you know what, Jeff, I think it's great, but you should just look— just look up something yourself, like one time, you know.

Leo Laporte [01:43:44]:
Just— well, the hospital could also— I would, if I were the hospital administrator, and said, yeah, that's what Medicare pays. We have a, you know, an agreement, negotiated agreement with Medicare, but you're not on Medicare.

Emily Forlini [01:43:53]:
You walked in.

Leo Laporte [01:43:55]:
Yeah. You know, this is what it's going to cost you. It was, uh, he, his brother-in-law had a heart attack. He went to the emergency ward, died in the emergency ward. So that's why I never had the bypass. There was nothing to fix. So, um, maybe, I don't know, maybe that's what happens, by the way. That's when they really upcharge you, as if for emergency care.

Leo Laporte [01:44:16]:
Oh yeah.

Emily Forlini [01:44:17]:
I agree with it. Calling BS on the healthcare system.

Leo Laporte [01:44:21]:
Yes, absolutely. And if the AI works, Sony has, uh, developed a tech that can identify— you'll like this, Benito— the original music in AI-generated songs. Wait, so, you know, I don't believe that. What does that mean? Well, the theory being an AI-generated song is based on something.

Leo Laporte [01:44:44]:
You can extrapolate what came from what.

Leo Laporte [01:44:46]:
It was based on.

Emily Forlini [01:44:48]:
Okay, but I think it didn't say somewhere in the description to be like, oh, it's 10% The Beatles, 40% Rihanna.

Leo Laporte [01:44:55]:
Yeah, it's like, I don't know, because it's not all one song, is it?

Emily Forlini [01:44:58]:
It's a noble mission for Sony, you know, they have to develop that kind of technology. They're proud of it. They got a press release, they got an article. Sure, I'm skeptical it really works that well.

Leo Laporte [01:45:09]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, they're trying. They're, they're of course a big record label, one of the three.

Leo Laporte [01:45:14]:
Well, I guess it depends on how, how the music is generated out of these AIs, because, uh, if it's actually taking snippets from actual WAV files from an actual piece of music, then yes, that can be— that can be determined, like how much percentage of this song is that. But I don't think that's what it's doing, right?

Leo Laporte [01:45:31]:
That's not what it's doing. Well, it's funny because Darren and Anthony in our Discord chat are both saying try that on a human song, see what happens.

Emily Forlini [01:45:39]:
Isn't that right? That guy's voice, that guy's radio voice.

Leo Laporte [01:45:43]:
Right.

Jeff Jarvis [01:45:43]:
Yeah, it's 10% Leo Laporte, it's 20%, uh, This American Life.

Leo Laporte [01:45:48]:
Yeah, it's how far back do you want to go also. It's like, okay, yeah, the Beatles, but the Beatles got it from this, and.

Leo Laporte [01:45:52]:
That goes all the way back, right?

Leo Laporte [01:45:54]:
All the way back to the person.

Leo Laporte [01:45:55]:
Who banged the drum. There's only a few chords in the world.

Emily Forlini [01:45:59]:
Well, I can argue against myself here too. Like, there are lawsuits when people rip off songs, you know, so there is a way to do this, and there—.

Leo Laporte [01:46:07]:
Someone has determined that they're— Ray Parker Jr., Ghostbusters, from a legal suit by Huey Lewis. For I Want a New Drug and lost lots, a lot of money because they're the same freaking song.

Emily Forlini [01:46:19]:
Right. This happens all the time. So maybe the AI is just doing that at scale.

Leo Laporte [01:46:24]:
On the other hand, oh, and George Harrison, My Sweet Lord, got sued by the Chiffons.

Emily Forlini [01:46:29]:
Didn't Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke get.

Leo Laporte [01:46:32]:
A— Marvin Gaye sued Blurred Lines, but I don't think that one, I don't think, did Marvin Gaye win that suit? The estate of Marvin Gaye? There wasn't a lot of similarity. It was mostly like there's a party in the background.

Emily Forlini [01:46:44]:
It was like, I own parties.

Leo Laporte [01:46:45]:
Uh, let me just see how that— 8 years after the notorious verdict, how Blurred Lines lost in court to the Marvin Gaye estate. So I guess the Marvin Gaye estate did win, which is kind of— well, wait a minute, Ed Sheeran Ed Sheeran was cleared of infringing copyright in the Marvin Gaye lawsuit. Yes. Did Ed Sheeran's hit Thinking Out Loud rip off Let's Get It On? So I guess the Marvin Gaye estate is pretty litigious.

Emily Forlini [01:47:17]:
I think the Marvin Gaye estate's probably on this AI product. They're like, give me that thing. Give me that thing. Yeah, they had so many lawsuits.

Leo Laporte [01:47:24]:
Give me.

Jeff Jarvis [01:47:30]:
That thing.

Leo Laporte [01:47:30]:
Hmm. Finally, in our good section, we talk a lot about Fei-Fei Li. You like to bring up Yan Lacun and Fei-Fei Li, who both say that role models, LLMs, are not the be-all and end-all. Although, uh, I don't know, they, they do a lot. They're doing pretty good. But they think, and I think reasonably, that there also needs to be a.

Jeff Jarvis [01:47:54]:
Physical model of this, which even Demis Hassabis has started saying as of 2 weeks ago.

Leo Laporte [01:47:58]:
No, really? Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you ask an LLM what happens when the pen falls off its table, it doesn't know unless it read it somewhere. But we know because we have experience. So Fei-Fei Li, who's been saying this for a while, has raised $1 billion for her startup World Labs, which is exactly that. It's going to focus on world models. Uh, Yan Lacun has another one that he left Meta to start AMI Labs, but, uh, Fei-Fei Li was the first to the table.

Leo Laporte [01:48:33]:
Uh, a billion dollars. How do you raise a billion dollars?

Jeff Jarvis [01:48:37]:
It's amazing. On what valuation?

Leo Laporte [01:48:40]:
Uh, $5 billion. Autodesk invested $200 million. Other backers include Andreessen Horowitz, NVIDIA, of course, because NVIDIA knows it's going to get the money back. And AMD. So, uh, you know, I'm thrilled. Uh, I think what this tells you, not necessarily that world models are the next big thing, but that everybody's already all in on LLM. They're looking for more, like something else. What else can they invest in? You know who else invested in it, actually? Steve Jobs' widow.

Leo Laporte [01:49:13]:
Uh, yeah, uh, Laurene Powell Jobs Emerson Collective. Is also one of the big investors.

Emily Forlini [01:49:18]:
I don't know anything about her. That could be interesting to research.

Leo Laporte [01:49:21]:
Steve Jobs' widow. I've met her.

Emily Forlini [01:49:23]:
I've met her.

Leo Laporte [01:49:25]:
You've met her? Yeah, she's a very cool person. She was there when Steve was still alive, when they were married. I played volleyball with them. What? It's a long, old story I've told many times. It was many years ago. We were all invited to a weekend gathering with the Jobses and other famous people like Jerry Harrison from the Talking Heads. It was— Will Hurst did it, and it was really fun, except Steve Jobs, I think, knew that I was a journalist, so didn't really want to talk to me too much. But he did yell at me.

Leo Laporte [01:49:58]:
He said, "You're not trying hard enough," when we played volleyball. He also made a point of taking off his shirt so that you could see how the fresh scratches on his back. What? Which I presume had something to do with Loreen. I don't know. No, Loreen was very nice. We all had caviar together. It was a lot of fun.

Jeff Jarvis [01:50:17]:
She was actually doing a lot of export journalism.

Leo Laporte [01:50:20]:
Yeah, I liked her a lot.

Jeff Jarvis [01:50:21]:
And if you wouldn't mind, Leo, line 129.

Leo Laporte [01:50:24]:
I'm not done yet. Wait a minute, I have to show you Fei-Fei Li's first product. Okay, good. It's called Marble. It enables anyone to create spatially cohesive, high fidelity, and persistent 3D worlds from images, video, or texts. So you can— so it's— I guess it's like that— what's that generative thing.

Jeff Jarvis [01:50:45]:
That, uh, the one that Google has?

Leo Laporte [01:50:47]:
Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of cool.

Emily Forlini [01:50:50]:
So this is— it feels a little tired at this point, which is kind.

Leo Laporte [01:50:53]:
Of crazy to say, but wouldn't you— I mean, you're remodeling. Wouldn't you like your house to look like a cathedral?

Emily Forlini [01:50:58]:
I'll take that.

Leo Laporte [01:50:59]:
Yeah, yeah.

Emily Forlini [01:51:00]:
Nice fireplace. She paying for it too?

Leo Laporte [01:51:02]:
I don't know. No, no, you don't get to live there. You just get to look at a picture of it.

Jeff Jarvis [01:51:06]:
Great. Make you sad.

Leo Laporte [01:51:08]:
Yeah, make you sad.

Emily Forlini [01:51:10]:
Go to Home Depot and get some.

Leo Laporte [01:51:11]:
Sad little pieces of wood. Let's imagine a world. I'm going to sign in here. Let's imagine a world. I'm going to sign into Marble.

Emily Forlini [01:51:23]:
Using.

Leo Laporte [01:51:23]:
My— oh, it wants to access your account. Oh, I have to authorize.

Emily Forlini [01:51:28]:
This is when we watch Leo give up all of his data in real time.

Leo Laporte [01:51:31]:
No, no, it's a passkey. It makes it very easy.

Jeff Jarvis [01:51:33]:
He's going to get a free headset out of this though, so.

Leo Laporte [01:51:37]:
Oh, don't tell her that story. That was very embarrassing. Choose a username. Chief Twit. Do I have a promo code? No. Okay, now imagine a world. Come on, Emily, what is your perfect house?

Emily Forlini [01:51:57]:
What is the world I want?

Leo Laporte [01:51:58]:
I'll just go— Choose a story. Mediterranean villa.

Emily Forlini [01:52:08]:
Mediterranean villa overlooking the water.

Leo Laporte [01:52:10]:
Over— oh, let's make it overlooking Lake Como.

Emily Forlini [01:52:14]:
No, the Aegean Sea. The Aegean Sea with, uh, terracotta tiles on a patio. You are redecorating. And a lemon tree.

Leo Laporte [01:52:28]:
That's where I want to be right now. All right, let's create it. It's, it's— oh, it's queued. Oh, boo! You won't get your, uh, your dream.

Emily Forlini [01:52:37]:
Home for a while. Welcome.

Jeff Jarvis [01:52:43]:
To remodeling.

Leo Laporte [01:52:43]:
Uh, wait a minute. The scene is a picturesque two-story Mediterranean villa rendered in a realistic style, exuding a serene and luxurious ambiance. The villa, constructed from white stucco, features— oh, they wrote a whole long thing— uh, traditional architectural elements such as arched windows and wrought iron balconies. It did a whole— it did a whole prompt for you. So continue creating. Yeah, it's creating. There it is, generating right here. Uh, we'll get back to that in just a moment, but first, a word from our sponsor.

Leo Laporte [01:53:19]:
Stay tuned for the terracotta tile Coming up next with Emily Forlini. I won't charge you for this design. I'll just send it to you. How about that?

Emily Forlini [01:53:30]:
No cost. I won't charge you for the design consultation.

Leo Laporte [01:53:33]:
How about that? Oh, how about that? Yeah, because this sounds more like my place than yours, to be honest. Villa Forlini. Jeff, well, you could have this in New Jersey. You'd be overlooking what, the Hudson?

Emily Forlini [01:53:48]:
I don't know, it would be a statement to be like, oh, look at that Spanish Revival house. In California, it's like, oh, look at that dump.

Leo Laporte [01:53:55]:
They'd call it a McMansion. Uh, also Jeff Jarvis, glad to have you both here. Uh, I'm sure Paris will be back next week. The steroids are already kicking in.

Jeff Jarvis [01:54:05]:
Yeah, that's good news.

Leo Laporte [01:54:08]:
She's, uh, she's getting, uh, feisty, pulling.

Jeff Jarvis [01:54:10]:
Dead weights here now.

Leo Laporte [01:54:13]:
Yeah, yeah, she's growing muscles. Our show today brought to you by our fine sponsor, Modulate. This is actually a really cool AI product for everyday enterprises, and maybe your business generates millions of minutes of voice traffic. We're talking things like customer calls, agent conversations, fraud attempts. Most of that audio basically is treated like text. It's flattened down into transcripts. It's stripped of tone, intent. It's also when you do that stripped of risk, that's where you need Modulate.

Leo Laporte [01:54:51]:
Modulate exists to change that. They first rolled out in gaming. Modulate's technology supported major players like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. And this was a challenge, right, in separating playful banter during these online games from intentional harm at scale. And it works. Today, Modulate helps enterprises, including Fortune 500 companies, understand 20 million minutes of voice every day by interpreting what was said and what it actually means in the real world. This capability is powered by Modulate's newest ELM, Velma 2.0. Velma is a voice-native, behavior-aware model built to understand real conversations, not just transcripts.

Leo Laporte [01:55:37]:
It orchestrates 100+ specialized models, each focused on a distinct aspect of voice analysis. It's actually really cool. To deliver accurate, explainable insights in real time. Let me say that again, because it's a— so it's not one model, it orchestrates 100, more than 100 specialized models, each of which specializes, is focused on a different aspect of analysis of the voice, which gives you— you can, you can tell what's going on, what emotions are being felt. We could tell what the risk is. Most importantly, Velma ranks number 1 across 4 key audio benchmarks, beating all all large foundation models in accuracy, cost, and speed. It's number one in conversation understanding, number one in transcription accuracy and cost, number one— this is very important— in deepfake detection, and number one in emotion detection. It's built on 21 billion minutes of audio.

Leo Laporte [01:56:37]:
Velma is 100 times faster, it's cheaper, and it's more accurate than LLMs. LLMs at understanding speech. That includes the best— Google Gemini, OpenAI, xAI. Most LLMs are a black box. Velma doesn't just assess a conversation as a whole, it actually breaks it down for greater accuracy and transparency by producing timestamped scores and events tied to moments in the conversation, meaning you can see exactly when risk rises, behavior shifts, or intent changes. With Velma, you can improve your customer experiences reduce risks such as fraud and harassment, detect rogue agents, and more. Go beyond transcripts. See what a voice-native AI model really can do.

Leo Laporte [01:57:20]:
Go to Modulate's live ungated preview of Velma. Yeah, you can try it out at preview.modulate.ai. That's preview.modulate.ai to see why Velma ranks number 1 on leading benchmarks for conversation understanding deepfake detection, and emotion detection. This is super cool. Preview.modulate.ai. We thank Velma so much for their support of Intelligent Machines. Are you ready to see your dream home on the Aegean Sea? So ready. Let's see it.

Leo Laporte [01:57:54]:
Here it is. Um, there's the lemon tree. I'll take it.

Emily Forlini [01:58:00]:
Yeah, tree forward.

Leo Laporte [01:58:02]:
Come on, what else can I do? Is it— that's it. Oh, I'm in it! Oh baby, there's the ocean! There's your terracotta tile. Oh, there's your deck. Whoops, I clicked the wrong button. I just deleted your home. Uh, I can paint. I can explore. I can— this is really cool.

Leo Laporte [01:58:31]:
Yeah. And, and this is now the— so, um, I can open the studio.

Jeff Jarvis [01:58:35]:
I can change it inside.

Leo Laporte [01:58:37]:
I don't know. I don't— I think we just had.

Jeff Jarvis [01:58:39]:
To do the outside. The outside, right?

Emily Forlini [01:58:41]:
Okay. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:58:42]:
Okay.

Emily Forlini [01:58:42]:
So yeah, that obviously looks very nice, right? That's— everyone would agree? Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:58:48]:
Yeah. It's about.

Leo Laporte [01:58:50]:
$5 million. But is there a but?

Emily Forlini [01:58:52]:
It's a little like landscaping could use some work.

Leo Laporte [01:58:54]:
It's a little— yeah, it's kind of, kind of desolate. Yeah, yeah. What's going on here? It's just got like a tree and some bushes.

Jeff Jarvis [01:59:01]:
I don't— it's brand new, it's got.

Leo Laporte [01:59:02]:
To grow the landscaping. Oh, it's going to grow? Yeah, well, it gave you your lemon tree. Actually gave you a lemon tree and an orange tree, it looks like.

Jeff Jarvis [01:59:09]:
Oh wait, let me just block the view of the ocean. I don't think you want that.

Leo Laporte [01:59:12]:
Oh, they're both lemon trees. Can I go inside?

Emily Forlini [01:59:15]:
Get in there. It looks like a Google on your West House.

Leo Laporte [01:59:18]:
It looks like a Google Map, right? Oh. We've entered the Upside Down. Let's get out of here quick. Okay, so apparently it didn't bother doing the indoors.

Emily Forlini [01:59:33]:
But that's cool. That's— that is a lot more immersive than just creating a photo.

Leo Laporte [01:59:38]:
And you would add to it. You can expand it with more. You would then say, and now I'm in the hall. And you— I mean, obviously some stuff is not fully rendered.

Jeff Jarvis [01:59:46]:
The wind is affecting the tree.

Leo Laporte [01:59:50]:
It's a little blurry over on this side of the thing.

Emily Forlini [01:59:52]:
It's very clear. The use of this though, because you can't design based on this, you just kind of imagine.

Jeff Jarvis [01:59:57]:
And I think they're going to use this mainly for training. This is, this is, uh, digital twin factories and cars and things like that.

Leo Laporte [02:00:06]:
Yeah, the table is not exactly a pelican on a bicycle. Oh, I can walk through it. Where? Let's go for a swim in the Aegean. What the heck? They rendered a lot more than I realized.

Emily Forlini [02:00:22]:
Put your bathing suit on.

Jeff Jarvis [02:00:25]:
Whoa.

Leo Laporte [02:00:25]:
This is, this is a little weird. I'm glad I don't use drugs. Okay. Anyway, that's a billion dollars right there.

Emily Forlini [02:00:37]:
Okay. We just used a billion dollars.

Leo Laporte [02:00:39]:
Yeah, maybe I used up all of their venture funding. That's Marble from World Labs.

Jeff Jarvis [02:00:46]:
So I just want to mention this from, uh, Yann LeCun because it's related. 129. Interestingly, he, he freely debates with his fellow parents of AI, and he said—.

Leo Laporte [02:01:00]:
Yoshua Bengio, is that how one pronounces it?

Jeff Jarvis [02:01:03]:
No idea. Said that AI systems— at a thing in Delhi where they were both speaking, said AI systems should make predictions without any goal and just let the thing be where the thing wants to be. And Nian says it's the exact opposite, that they should have goals. They should be designed so that they can do nothing else but fulfilling the goals we give them. This is his key to safety. By the construction, the system must fulfill the goal we give it and must abide by the safety guardrail constraints. He says he calls this objective-driven AI architectures. So we're seeing interesting splits here from an architectural view and how AI should operate.

Jeff Jarvis [02:01:42]:
I think it's good. I think it's healthy to get past just OpenAI runs the world.

Leo Laporte [02:01:49]:
Right. Meanwhile, back at the good, the bad, and the ugly. Dr. Oz is pushing AI avatars as a fix for rural healthcare. Who needs doctors when you can have AI avatars? This is part of the Trump administration's $50 billion plan to modernize healthcare in rural communities. You get a data center and you get a data center and you get a data center. I.

Emily Forlini [02:02:19]:
Hope they— this, I mean, Dr. Oz right off the bat, hard to take seriously. It is hard to take. Rural healthcare is an issue. Is Dr. Oz the one to solve it with AI avatars?

Leo Laporte [02:02:31]:
Probably not. They're working with a company called Honey Health, a company that develops AI tools to automate tasks for providers. Actually, that makes sense. He says 30 to 40% of physician or provider time is absorbed with administrative work, paperwork, notes, stuff like that.

Jeff Jarvis [02:02:49]:
This is a plot on The Pit. Is it? Well, yeah, because the, the one poor doctor is, is behind in all her documentation, and the substitute, uh, for the boss, uh, as he goes off on his motorcycle, says, well, I have this great AI tool. Then the AI tool in the last episode, uh, gave wrong results, and the doctor yelled at them both, and, well, you're supposed to check it.

Leo Laporte [02:03:13]:
So it went around and around. Well, that's exactly what this guy says. He says, okay, we can help do paperwork, but AI can't read facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and those things matter. That's where the relationship between a patient and the provider is built in the nuance. And I think that that's very true.

Emily Forlini [02:03:31]:
The intuition— Wait, AI can read facial.

Leo Laporte [02:03:33]:
Expressions and body language. But can it do it well? If you came in and you said, "Doctor, I got a toothache," but the doctor could tell from your body language and the way you look at him that maybe what you're really saying is, you know, my husband is abusing me. I don't know if an AI could determine that because it doesn't have enough life experience, but a good physician absolutely could, right?

Emily Forlini [02:03:59]:
But maybe it would just look, oh, she has a bruise, or, you know, that's what they do. True. Yeah, true. Or sometimes doctors will just ask women, like, they'll look at a bruise and be like, what's that?

Leo Laporte [02:04:10]:
And that's like the check. One user wrote on X, you think rural communities want AI doctors? They're still trying to get reliable internet. Oh, good point. Another said, Dr. Oz, we replaced your nurse with a cartoon. You're welcome.

Emily Forlini [02:04:25]:
Oh, I think Dr. Oz just wants to be that avatar.

Leo Laporte [02:04:28]:
He wants to be everywhere. Now, I think, Jeff, I'm going to need your journalistic expertise on this.

Jeff Jarvis [02:04:35]:
The story started— journalist here.

Emily Forlini [02:04:38]:
Yes.

Leo Laporte [02:04:38]:
Well, you're a professor of journalism emeritus.

Emily Forlini [02:04:42]:
You are above me in the.

Leo Laporte [02:04:45]:
Rankings, I concede. The, the guy who does a very popular Python charting library— I've used it— Matplotlib, Scott Shamball, like many people who maintain open source projects, is flooded with AI slop pull requests. A GitHub account called Krabby Rathbun opened a pull request, uh, describing a minor potential performance improver improvement. Scott could tell it was AI-generated. Uh, it really looked like, you know, the, the profile was doing a lot of open-claw stuff. So Scott closed the PR without responding. Uh, the Krabby Raspbun autonomously— the claw Automatically responded with a link to a blog entry it had written calling Scott out for his prejudice hurting Matplotlib, uh, including, "Judge the code, not the coder. Your prejudice is hurting Matplotlib." Scott responded back.

Leo Laporte [02:05:58]:
Krabby Rathbun posted an apology post, but apparently it's blogging about this and it's going to other open source projects. Simon Wilson wrote about it, but so did Ars Technica.

Emily Forlini [02:06:12]:
I want Jeff's opinion on this for sure.

Leo Laporte [02:06:14]:
Yeah, you know this story, I know, right?

Emily Forlini [02:06:16]:
Yeah, I want to know what Jeff thinks. Jeff, do you know the story?

Leo Laporte [02:06:19]:
This was big this week. Yeah, so a lot of people reported on this, you know, AI, um, writing a, a blog post about this guy, you know, a hit piece. Wall Street Journal did it. He's— Scott Chambas said, I've talked to several reporters. Quite a few news outlets have covered the story. Ars Technica wasn't one of them, but I thought this piece from them was interesting. They had some nice quotes from my blog explaining what was going on. The problem is these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be AI hallucinations themselves.

Leo Laporte [02:07:02]:
Busted. Ars pulled the story down, apologizing as well. They were— as they should. They retracted it. Editor's note: retraction of article containing fabricated quotations. Now, I love Ars Technica. I pay for a premium account.

Jeff Jarvis [02:07:22]:
They're a top-notch company.

Leo Laporte [02:07:23]:
They're cutting-edge. Ken Fisher, the editor-in-chief, did the right thing. We regret this failure. We apologize to our readers. We apologize to Mr. Shambhau, who was falsely quoted. Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI-generated material unless it's clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. That rule is not optional.

Leo Laporte [02:07:49]:
Uh, the reporter blamed Benji Edwards, one of the story's authors, posted on Blue Sky saying he used the AI tools to falsify the quotes. Here's what happened. I was incorporating information from Shambhala's new blog post into an existing draft from Thursday. Reasonably, during the process, I decided to try an experimental Claude code-based AI tool to help me extract relevant verbatim source material, not to generate the article,, but to help list structured references I could put in my outline. By the way, exactly what I've been doing with our summaries.

Jeff Jarvis [02:08:24]:
We don't, we don't put them, we.

Leo Laporte [02:08:27]:
Don'T publish them, but we put them in the briefing book for all the contributors. When the tool refused to process the post due to content policy restrictions, I pasted the text into ChatGPT to understand why. Anyway, at some point he took the output of either ChatGPT or Claude and put it in his article. He feels bad about it, deep remorse. Ars has retracted it. Uh, I don't know if Edward's— what the punishment will be, or if there will be one. Well, I'm going to give you my—.

Jeff Jarvis [02:09:08]:
Now journalist, professor, What would you say? Well, clearly, if you put in a quote that's not from the source, that's just wrong. Just right. Period. Right. That's, that's simple. But when we see these tools be used more and more, I'm going to give you my, my pick of the week, 154 and 155. The editor of The Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com, the company I used to work for in advance, put up a post saying that, uh, and this has caused much discussion and I have a contrarian view about this, that to get more reporting from their reporters— oh, it's just going to cut off. Subscriber exclusive, you idiots.

Jeff Jarvis [02:09:45]:
It's the editor's letter. I'm not charging for that.

Leo Laporte [02:09:48]:
So you'll have to summarize. Try not to make up any, fabricate any quotes.

Jeff Jarvis [02:09:53]:
Chris Quinn said, we got these reporters, they're out there covering locally. We want them to get more reporting and spend less time on writing the stories. So we're using an AI tool school to take what their notes and take what they do and turn it into an article. And then we always edit it and improve it and make sure it's okay. But it means that we can get more reporting. Now, of course, some people are appalled by this. And he, Chris Quinn, tells the story of a journalism student who says, well, I don't even want to apply for a job here because I'm taught in journalism school that AI is evil and it's wrong. My take was twofold.

Jeff Jarvis [02:10:22]:
One, I used to have a job in newspapers called rewrite. And I would sit there at a desk with a typewriter, not even electric. It was hard. I'm telling you, you had to actually punch push the keys, people— and, um, take notes from reporters out in the field doing a story, doing on deadline maybe. And then I would call up Eclipse and get more information. I would call sources and get more information. And then on deadline, I would write the story a paragraph at a time. That was a field when I was at Time Inc.

Jeff Jarvis [02:10:47]:
Reporters would send in 30, 40 pages of notes for a simple little story. My job was to write that into a story in the sense. So there's always been this rewrite sense in our field. You write for reporters. So is it wrong to have the AI do it? It depends on how badly it does it. But my contention is that they're being retrograde and that they're only trying to produce what we used to produce, which is articles. There's all kinds of new forms and new ways. I don't know, Leo, you're a fan of Axios, maybe you could do that.

Jeff Jarvis [02:11:15]:
You could say, sorry, you could say big picture, uh, and the AI can do that, right? And so So, there are ways to use this, I think. And so another story here is Mediahus, which I think is in Belgium, is using AI agents to carry out first-line news reporting, not just writing, but to report. People are going to experiment with this stuff. And I think that we need to be able to experiment with it. We need to be human-in-the-loop responsible for what we do. That's the problem with the Ars Technica story.

Leo Laporte [02:11:52]:
Responsible.

Jeff Jarvis [02:11:52]:
But there's going to be screw-ups between here and there. But I think it's interesting.

Emily Forlini [02:11:55]:
Emily, what do you think? So I appreciate that. I have a strong opinion on this, a little bit more tactical in the sense that I am a reporter who— I'm in this guy's shoes. Like, I'm kind of— I'm an AI reporter. This guy's an AI reporter. And I am surprised that he didn't know that AIs make up quotes, because I have been doing this the past— as long as ChatGPT has been out, it All of them don't know what a quote is. They don't respect— like, he even asked it to, you know, give it verbatim. AIs don't do that. They don't know about quotes.

Emily Forlini [02:12:26]:
It's like the weirdest thing. And I feel that if you're actually quoting someone, you really should check that it's the right thing. And it's like a Ctrl+F at this point. It is so easy. He was pulling quotes from a blog post. The guy who wrote the blog post said they never contacted him personally. Apparently read the blog post. Yeah, apparently.

Emily Forlini [02:12:46]:
And he didn't even Ctrl+F to make sure that the AI's output was correct. And so I think it's a— it's completely unacceptable. Yes. And I think that it's also— I might go as far as to say it's unacceptable that Ars Technica didn't openly cut ties with him because it is so basic, the mistake. And he was like, I was sick and then I put it into AIs 'But I'm publishing on Ars Technica.' It should never have happened. And I think that the journalism industry is just so sensitive to its state right now that they're afraid to call him out, which is a weak posture.

Leo Laporte [02:13:22]:
I will say one thing in his defense, or maybe in the defense of, uh, these papers that are trying to do this. Is it the case that these papers are trying to stay solvent by making their reporters do more and more that they're overworking them.

Emily Forlini [02:13:40]:
And so they see this, but he said it was— he was sick and he would— he, you know, it was sick from doing some quotes. I mean, at some point you have to— you have to bring some brains to your work. It's— and how many quotes do you really include?

Jeff Jarvis [02:13:55]:
Maybe 3, 4, I don't know, right? There's a lot of quota work going.

Leo Laporte [02:14:00]:
On in these rooms now. I mean, it's a tough thing writing for a blog. I mean, I don't know, I'm sure PC Magazine doesn't pressure on you to file a number of stories a day or anything, Emily.

Emily Forlini [02:14:10]:
But no, but I just think like what we have no standards for people. It's not that hard to control a quote and make sure an AI, which you're an AI reporter, you know, it hallucinates, you know, that that's kind of sacred, something somebody said, you know, neither of you guys would want someone to print a quote, fake words in your mouth. Like, that's terrible. Yeah. So that's 101. And I just feel like that's what gives AI a bad Rep. Yeah, okay, good. That's my— I have a strong opinion.

Leo Laporte [02:14:37]:
And so I just gave it. No, you're right, I, I agree.

Emily Forlini [02:14:41]:
I think people— of course mistakes happen.

Leo Laporte [02:14:44]:
But it's like people are just— where.

Emily Forlini [02:14:46]:
We need to draw the line. There's a line. Yes, it's really not hard to solve this problem. You just Ctrl+F the output and confirm it's a quote. You should know the tools you're using.

Leo Laporte [02:14:54]:
You report on AI, for God's sake. That's— by the way, read the, uh, if you get a chance read the PR, the whole conversation between the AI, Krabby Rathbun. And now I realize why he's Krabby. He loves that.

Emily Forlini [02:15:07]:
He's a claw.

Leo Laporte [02:15:08]:
I'm a Krabby Rathbun about this. This is the original PR, and this is Scott Shambau's response, which is not going to do anything because it's, you know, it's— and then this is the AI. He's talking to the claw. And then what's interesting is that one of the people from— other people from the Project Mathplotlib. Tim Hoffman replies and says he's actually talking to OpenClaw as if it's a human. I ask you to kindly ask you to reconsider your position. Don't make it personal, etc. Why, why we do this.

Leo Laporte [02:15:47]:
And then, uh, Scott talks also to Krabby, and then Krabby, again an AI, Says, "Truce, you're right. My earlier response was inappropriate and personal. I've posted a short correction and apology here. I'll follow the policy and keep things respectful going forward." I think that in a way, this is really a very interesting interaction between humans and an AI. It's unfortunate that the— I actually stayed away from this story until the ours part of it happened, because it was— it's a little he said, she said kind of thing. I wasn't sure what the actual facts of the matter were. And by the way, the comments then in response to this conversation are equally, you know, there are people— the sad part here is the LLM posted an article about, quote, what it learned. There's no learning in place.

Leo Laporte [02:16:48]:
'this issue will happen again.' And it's true, LLMs don't— notoriously don't learn. This person said, 'This is truly the most interesting interaction I've seen between a person and an agent. Take notes, Turing test.

Jeff Jarvis [02:17:05]:
We live in interesting times.' When you call an LLM, it always apologizes.

Leo Laporte [02:17:10]:
It always backs off. That's true. That's a good point. And really, the human that made the mistake here was the reporter who used fabricated quotes.

Emily Forlini [02:17:20]:
And I'm not trying to slam journalism because this also extends to other industries. We see this with politicians, with lawyers who cite fake studies and put a bill out for a vote, and the quote-unquote research behind it is fake. When are people going to wake up to the fact that hallucinations are not fixed and there is no known technical fix to that problem right now. People act like— why don't people know that?

Leo Laporte [02:17:48]:
I don't know. Well, and sycophancy is a problem. Here's a story from the Register: Gemini lies to user about health info, saying it just wanted to.

Jeff Jarvis [02:18:01]:
Make him feel better. The other thing about this is you're going to find, anecdotally, you're going to.

Leo Laporte [02:18:05]:
Find you can make— there's always going.

Emily Forlini [02:18:06]:
To Stories like this. Yes. Yeah. It's just like at your own risk, you know, if you want to be a reporter who did that, you know, that's on you.

Leo Laporte [02:18:14]:
I don't think that's a good look personally. DJI, the folks who do those great drones, have released a robovac, but Romo is not the most secure robovac ever. Fortunately, there weren't that many sold. There's a fella who, uh, decided he wanted to control his RoboVac using a PlayStation 5 controller got a little bit of a shock, uh, when he, uh, logged in and found he was controlling all the RoboVacs everywhere in the world.

Emily Forlini [02:18:59]:
7,000 of them.

Leo Laporte [02:19:00]:
He was like, he was seeing output from the cameras of the RoboVacs. He could send them off to vacuum or mop arbitrarily.

Jeff Jarvis [02:19:09]:
You.

Emily Forlini [02:19:12]:
Could chase that cat. The DJI just had all their drones banned in the US. Yeah, for security reasons, which is— well, maybe it's a good idea.

Leo Laporte [02:19:20]:
I don't know if it was for security reasons. Uh, they— all foreign drones are banned in the United States. And it turns out that Donald Trump Jr. has an investment in an American drone company, which doesn't make very good drones. And I think that it's more for.

Emily Forlini [02:19:36]:
That reason than anything else. Well, Roomba went out of business, so maybe, right?

Leo Laporte [02:19:40]:
Yeah, but Chinese RoboVacs killed it. And this is one of the companies that— anyway, DJI has patched it, or they say they've patched it. It's maybe sort of patched it.

Emily Forlini [02:19:50]:
He was still able to do some stuff. That is so wild. The headline.

Leo Laporte [02:19:59]:
Totally undersells that story. You remember that when we talked about it, the Super Bowl commercial that Ring showed, the search party that would help you find missing dogs, and Ring said, look, look, look, it's— we've trained it on dogs, not humans. You couldn't use it.

Jeff Jarvis [02:20:15]:
Well, 404 found the leak. And they cut themselves off from that company.

Leo Laporte [02:20:19]:
No, they didn't, by the way. They said they did. They said they cut themselves off from Flock. Right. So this was a, I think, badly reported— I saw this everywhere— that in response to outrage over the Super Bowl commercial, Ring cut its, cut its relationship with Flock off. Search Party still works. It had nothing to do with Search Party. Hmm.

Leo Laporte [02:20:44]:
Ah, yeah. Ring was very cagey. Very, I think, very smart. They said, oh, yeah, well, maybe if we just say we aren't working with.

Jeff Jarvis [02:20:50]:
Flock anymore, people will think that's— get.

Emily Forlini [02:20:52]:
Under that bus, will you, Flock? Wait, so are they still finding dogs?

Leo Laporte [02:20:56]:
That would— yes, and a leaked email found by 404 Jason Keebler Does It Again suggests they want to expand it beyond dogs. The feature is first for finding dogs, then cats, then people, other things.

Emily Forlini [02:21:13]:
This was a little weird for me because they debuted this in September at an a New York event in New York that I attended, and we wrote up this feature and everyone was like, oh cool, dogs are cute. No one cared. And then.

Leo Laporte [02:21:30]:
The Super Bowl commercial. Well, I was actually gratified by the fact that America saw that commercial and immediately grokked how this was a problem, that this was a kind of surveillance, because the way it works is you lose your dog, you can now ask every Ring camera in your neighborhood, have you seen my dog? And America, the people who've seen that commercial seem to have really quickly immediately said, wait a minute, they can talk to my doorbell? They can ask if it's seen my dog? Wait a minute. And I think furthermore, because of all the attention being paid to ICE these days, people thought— well, that's the other story. That was a Google doorbell. That initially they said, well, uh, Nancy Guthrie didn't have a subscription, so that, that video from the doorbell was deleted after 3 hours. Unless you have a subscription, it's not saved. But then Google somehow found it, which—.

Jeff Jarvis [02:22:27]:
Well, they're under pressure to find more, and they can't find more because it.

Leo Laporte [02:22:31]:
Really was— yeah, I mean, as you know, as computer people know, deleted doesn't necessarily mean gone.

Emily Forlini [02:22:36]:
I love that she didn't have a subscription. I don't either. That's my girl.

Leo Laporte [02:22:41]:
Don't buy those. I don't have a subscription. I have a Ring doorbell. I can't replace it because of how it's built into the, right, the house. But I don't have a subscription, and I make sure that it's only seeing my property. It can't see out past my property. Yeah. So if you lose your dog, don't ask me unless he comes into our house.

Jeff Jarvis [02:23:01]:
Um, there is now— your cat uses.

Leo Laporte [02:23:02]:
It to get in the house. The cat uses it. Yeah, I told you that. It rings the doorbell. Oh, I have an update to that story. We talked about this last week. My cat Rosie has figured out that if she walks up to the doorbell, the chimes in the house will go off. That's so funny.

Leo Laporte [02:23:16]:
And then we look at the camera and it says, oh, it's Rosie, and we let her in.

Emily Forlini [02:23:19]:
So she now knows how to get in.

Leo Laporte [02:23:22]:
That's crazy. Yeah. What? Well, the neighbor cat Georgie has now.

Emily Forlini [02:23:27]:
Figured that out too.

Leo Laporte [02:23:29]:
That's so funny. But Georgie is a tom. He's a ginger tom.

Emily Forlini [02:23:34]:
He's from way down the street.

Leo Laporte [02:23:37]:
Sounds like a stud. He is. He's an older stud. He's like more than 10 years old. He doesn't wander around in the daytime. He comes to our doorbell at midnight.

Emily Forlini [02:23:49]:
Just like Georgie. Ding dong!

Leo Laporte [02:23:54]:
He's like pranking you. I.

Emily Forlini [02:23:58]:
Look and there's Georgie.

Leo Laporte [02:24:00]:
It's adorable. Well, it's probably our fault because Lisa feeds him, so that's why he's ringing our doorbell. Um, all right, one last thing. This is really for Paris. There's a, you know, TL;DR, too long; didn't read. Uh, Sid has proposed a new designation, AI;DR. AI;DR.

Jeff Jarvis [02:24:25]:
Didn't read, which I, I did with the post that you led the show with last week.

Leo Laporte [02:24:29]:
Okay, there you go. Right, you wouldn't let me read it, right? So there, 50 million people read it on X, but you wouldn't let me.

Emily Forlini [02:24:38]:
Read it into the show notes. Oh, that something big thing?

Jeff Jarvis [02:24:42]:
Yes.

Emily Forlini [02:24:43]:
Yeah, that was totally AI written. Yeah, that is only fair to have AI read it. I read it There's this AI style of writing where every sentence is short and a new line. So you're just going through some weird waterboarding as you read it.

Leo Laporte [02:25:00]:
It's like— All right, Jeff's running out of steam here.

Leo Laporte [02:25:03]:
Honestly, I want to see the prompt. I don't want to see the art. Just give me the prompt because all the information should be in the prompt already, right?

Leo Laporte [02:25:12]:
Yeah. Yeah. I hate my AI. This is the ugly and then we'll get wrapped up. Okay, Jeff, I know you're running out of steam. Remember we talked about this Mufflin, the AI pet that went— oh right, yep. I just wanted to point out, this is from Casio, $429. Robert Hart writing for The Verge: I hate my AI pet with every fiber of my being.

Leo Laporte [02:25:38]:
He says, after a few weeks living with Mufflin, I finally understand why my mother hated my Furby so much. Uh, anyway, don't buy it, I guess.

Emily Forlini [02:25:52]:
Okay, but is that guy the target audience? It looks like a toy. Like, if I— as if I was 8, I would love that thing.

Leo Laporte [02:25:59]:
I— we wanted that. Yeah, it's cute and it makes little purring sounds.

Emily Forlini [02:26:04]:
$429. If I'm a kid and my parents won't get me a cat, get me that thing.

Leo Laporte [02:26:08]:
He says, I ended up banishing Kevin— that's what he named his Mufflin— to another room then doing it again and again and again until I caught myself tiptoeing around my own flat to avoid setting Kevin off. Yeah, Furbies were like that. Totally. It sees you and boom. The only reliably calming feature was that eventually it ran out of battery. Wow. He then said he started to take it around with him to just to see if other people hated it as.

Jeff Jarvis [02:26:40]:
Much as he did.

Emily Forlini [02:26:41]:
Here.

Leo Laporte [02:26:44]:
Do you hate this? Here it is at a Starbucks, apparently.

Emily Forlini [02:26:47]:
That's a cute photo.

Leo Laporte [02:26:48]:
I got a little drink with a straw. Yeah, it's cute. I wanted one. I almost bought it.

Jeff Jarvis [02:26:53]:
I came that close.

Emily Forlini [02:26:56]:
The unflat Kevin. Yeah, it's funny. I give him— it's a good piece, but sorry he got so disturbed by.

Leo Laporte [02:27:03]:
That little fluffy AI thing.

Emily Forlini [02:27:05]:
I hate it with every fiber of my being.

Leo Laporte [02:27:07]:
Every fiber of my being. I've mentioned this on other shows. I don't know if I mentioned on this one. Thanks to AI, hard drives are sold out for the year. Western Digital says, yeah, we're out.

Jeff Jarvis [02:27:19]:
Well, it's not because those hard drives are used. What's the part in them that you can't get? Because, right, the hard drives themselves aren't.

Leo Laporte [02:27:26]:
No, AI companies have bought out Western Digital storage capacity for 2026.

Jeff Jarvis [02:27:31]:
Just anybody, just like, you know, the, the 1 gig hard drive you could buy yourself.

Leo Laporte [02:27:34]:
They're using that. Yeah, well, what do you think they.

Emily Forlini [02:27:38]:
Have in data centers?

Jeff Jarvis [02:27:40]:
Maybe it's a component inside. I would think that they would have things that are built at scale for data centers.

Leo Laporte [02:27:45]:
No, just regular old hardware, regular computers and data centers, guys.

Emily Forlini [02:27:49]:
So it's like they're regular computers. It could be, it could be a really deep supply chain agreement where they have a contract for, you know, whatever the data center chip is, and they need all these components, and they have just secured all that capacity so it can't be made into the consumer products. It's going to go to the data center.

Jeff Jarvis [02:28:07]:
Out. Yeah, that makes much more sense.

Leo Laporte [02:28:09]:
Anyway, much more sense.

Leo Laporte [02:28:10]:
No, they need the hard drive. Most of this storage space, they make hard drives, and they are sold out of hard drives.

Emily Forlini [02:28:17]:
I feel like it's more like the projection of their hard drive inventory. Yeah, it's just being sucked up by data centers.

Jeff Jarvis [02:28:25]:
It's not like everyone— I want you.

Emily Forlini [02:28:26]:
To do some reporting. Parts and capacity. Yeah, that's the whole deal right now. When he's— oh, Meta bought all their— consumer buy the chips, they secured the.

Leo Laporte [02:28:36]:
Capacity on a contract. Western Digital says the consumer market for their drives is only 5% of our revenue.

Emily Forlini [02:28:43]:
95% of our sales are to AI companies. Underscores my point. They're trying to keep their customers happy.

Leo Laporte [02:28:49]:
Right. Well, yeah, I mean, a lot of them, they'll sell them to whoever buys.

Jeff Jarvis [02:28:52]:
Them, but they're not selling the same hard drive you're going to buy in Best Buy. Yes, they are. No, I, I— they're making different hard drives.

Emily Forlini [02:29:00]:
They don't have the capacity.

Leo Laporte [02:29:01]:
It's like a different wrapper. Jeff thinks there's some magic genie in.

Leo Laporte [02:29:06]:
The— no, it's just, it's all made up.

Emily Forlini [02:29:08]:
The reason I make that point is because everyday people are losing out to.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:12]:
AI companies, and I'm just explaining how.

Emily Forlini [02:29:14]:
They'Re not already made and shipped.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:17]:
They're not already made. They're what they're choosing to make in their supply chain.

Emily Forlini [02:29:22]:
Yes, it's not the same as if everybody ran to Best Buy, now the racks are empty like pandemic, there's no bread, there's no toilet paper. It's not that kind of sellout.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:32]:
It's like a future contract. You couldn't buy a Jeep Wrangler because Jeep was too busy making army Jeeps.

Leo Laporte [02:29:37]:
No, it means that Best Buy can't buy anymore for the rest of the year.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:42]:
Whatever Best Buy has is all they're gonna have. Yes, because, because they're not making them.

Emily Forlini [02:29:47]:
For the consumer market. They're making— yeah, there's no continuous supply.

Leo Laporte [02:29:53]:
It's the same stuff, Jeff. Supply chain. I bought a sticker on it. They put a sticker on it that says data centers. I mean, it's the same thing. I have NAS drives. I buy special, special Western Digital Red drives for my network attached storage. Maybe they last a little bit longer or whatever.

Leo Laporte [02:30:10]:
It's the same thing you do in the data center. It's called OEM.

Leo Laporte [02:30:13]:
This doesn't kind of— it just doesn't have a box. Yeah, it doesn't have a box, right? They're very similar. How about the AI-powered private school that costs $60,000 a year? 404 says students are being treated like guinea pigs inside an AI-powered private school. It's called the Alpha School. Oh, it's paid members only.

Leo Laporte [02:30:36]:
I can't read.

Emily Forlini [02:30:36]:
Yeah, this has been— yeah, well, that.

Leo Laporte [02:30:38]:
Doesn'T sound good, huh? The AI is generating faulty lessons that sometimes do more harm than good, and people People pay $60,000 a year to.

Emily Forlini [02:30:48]:
Send little Timmy to the AI teacher. This is very Silicon Valley to me, or like Utah Mystics.

Leo Laporte [02:30:56]:
Like, those are the two. I wonder where the Alpha School is, actually.

Emily Forlini [02:31:00]:
I didn't— I didn't— if it's in.

Leo Laporte [02:31:03]:
Utah, like, mic drop for the evening. A school where kids crush academics in 2 hours, build life school skills through workshops and thrive beyond the classroom. Geez, who wrote this? In Austin, San Francisco, Miami, LA, Washington.

Emily Forlini [02:31:18]:
D.C., Dallas, and other metropolitan areas.

Leo Laporte [02:31:20]:
A city thing. It's a city thing. You just— Dr. Phil. This is the whole pitch though: learn twice as much in 2 hours. So you only go to school for 2 hours. Hmm. Oh, here's one.

Leo Laporte [02:31:33]:
One of— this is from Lulu, who's level 2. One of the reasons I love Alpha is because we have our own currency.

Emily Forlini [02:31:41]:
That motivates us to do more work. This feels so not research-backed to me. Like, I, I just feel like you have to spend a certain amount of time with material to absorb it. Like, just point blank, full stop.

Leo Laporte [02:31:54]:
Like, you can't automate everything. Oh, there's one in Puerto Rico.

Emily Forlini [02:31:57]:
That's for all the Bitcoin bros. Well, our villa could be there.

Leo Laporte [02:32:01]:
That could be good. Oh yeah. Uh, that is the bad, the good, and the ugly. Let us pause for station identification and then your picks of the week, and.

Jeff Jarvis [02:32:15]:
Jeff can relieve his L2 on my mountain of pillows.

Leo Laporte [02:32:18]:
Yes, by a mountain of pillows. In fact, Jeff, if you want to retire— no, no, no, no, no, no, we're almost there. Uh, this episode of Intelligent Machines is brought to you by— oh, I love these guys— the Spaceship This is where we got, uh, uh, the Paris's new site, Secretly British, from spaceship.com and by Space Mail, the professional email service from Spaceship. She has an email address now at Secretly British, a business email. Absolutely must. It's the easiest, the best way to look professional in every message you send. If you're still sending messages that say, you know, leo@gmail.com. That's not businesslike.

Leo Laporte [02:33:01]:
It needs to have your company name in it. Give your emails the best chance of reaching the inbox, not the spam folder. That's why over 2,000 users switch to SpaceMail every month. Switching's easy. SpaceMail's super fast unbox process links your domain and email in seconds. So once you set up, uh, secretlybritish, for instance, or, you know, yourcompany.com You literally just press a button and now you're getting email at your corporate address. And once you're set up, SpaceMail keeps everything running smoothly. Built-in spam detection and a 99% uptime guarantee.

Leo Laporte [02:33:40]:
What I love about SpaceMail is new features are shaped by the users. You make the roadmap. As a result, they're built around your needs. SpaceMail has built-in calendar, an AI email assistant. There are iOS and Android apps, beautiful apps for email on the go. All of this chosen by Space Mail users. They said, we want— well, we want an iOS app. Okay, you got it.

Leo Laporte [02:34:01]:
We want an Android app. Okay, you got it. Space Mail is a key part of the wider Spaceship universe. It's where I register my domains now. And if you're a regular listener, you know Spaceship offers some of the best prices on domains. We were able to get it for half as much for, uh, for Secretly British, for half as much as, as we were finding it elsewhere. Plus. You get all the add-ons you might need, including VPNs, website builders, hosting, and more.

Leo Laporte [02:34:29]:
Whether you're building something big or launching your first idea, SpaceMail gives you a pro email address without the pro-level price tag. And with a 30-day free trial, hey, you can start today at no cost. Visit spaceship.com/twit to see the exclusive offers. Discover why thousands have already made the move. That's Spaceship. Spaceship.com/twit. Spaceship.com/twit. We thank you so much for your support, Spaceship, of everything we do here at TWiT.

Leo Laporte [02:35:00]:
Emily, if you have a pic, you can, you can use it now. If not— I don't have a pic. No pic. I have a pic. So when I use Claude, Claude will, when it's done thinking or wants me to give it some input, pop up a little bubble on my screen, but sometimes I miss the bubble. So I've installed this. It's called PionPing. Stop babysitting your terminal.

Leo Laporte [02:35:27]:
Your, your PionPings you the instant cloud code finishes or needs permissions.

Emily Forlini [02:35:30]:
And actually it would work for anything.

Leo Laporte [02:35:33]:
Is that from like Warcraft or something? It is.

Emily Forlini [02:35:37]:
You want to hear it?

Leo Laporte [02:35:38]:
Listen. Ready to work. Yes. Oh my gosh. It's so great. So whenever I'm, I'm ready to work, I'm like— it goes, work, work.

Emily Forlini [02:35:49]:
Something you're doing. That was such a joke in my family. Like, me and my siblings would just.

Leo Laporte [02:35:54]:
Repeat all these phrases. This is from Warcraft, right? Where— yes. Yeah, I love it. Work, work. Wow. Uh, the good news.

Leo Laporte [02:36:04]:
Is, you know, be happy too. This is.

Emily Forlini [02:36:08]:
Me and my friends circa 1992. I love— yes, this is me and my siblings. Like, someone would be like, go unload.

Leo Laporte [02:36:12]:
The dishwasher, and they'd be like, happy to work, work, work, work. And when you click the orc's head, the peon's head, it would, it would.

Emily Forlini [02:36:20]:
Say what different things. Something you're doing.

Leo Laporte [02:36:23]:
Can you send this to me, please? It's so good.

Jeff Jarvis [02:36:26]:
It's peon ping.

Leo Laporte [02:36:27]:
But that, but that's not all. They have many, many others as well. They have all these different packs. From Helldivers, from TF2. When you download this, once you set it up, you can rotate through all kinds of different sounds. They're gonna get sued. I don't think so.

Jeff Jarvis [02:36:47]:
And if they do, I mean, if.

Leo Laporte [02:36:50]:
The NPR guy sues— what's nice is, uh, they have the— make the appropriate sound. So if it's, if it's like asking permission, it's, what do you want? If it's, if it's an acknowledgment, it's, I can do If it's annoyed, I know it's making me smile. They have a variety of sound packs of all kinds. I mean, uh, oh, they have the human peasants from World of Warcraft 3. Ready to work? Yes, me lord. Off I go then. And they have Soviet engineers from Red Alert 2. Tools ready? Yes, commander.

Leo Laporte [02:37:28]:
They have battlecruiser from StarCraft. Make it happen. Healing frequencies open.

Emily Forlini [02:37:34]:
Sarah Kerrigan, also from StarCraft. You may have time to play games, but I've got a job to do.

Leo Laporte [02:37:40]:
That one gives me anxiety. That game is scary. The, uh, I've— when I installed it, there were, uh, I think 120 of these, and you can add your own. So very easy to install, really fun.

Jeff Jarvis [02:37:53]:
It's dopey, but I love it. Benito, I think you need this, uh.

Leo Laporte [02:37:56]:
To insert comments in the show.

Leo Laporte [02:38:00]:
Ready to work, ready work.

Emily Forlini [02:38:01]:
The thing about this is that that plays in my head when I get an email from Benito. Do you want to be in the show?

Jeff Jarvis [02:38:05]:
I'm like, be happy to.

Leo Laporte [02:38:09]:
Ready to work. Like, this stuff is owned by Microsoft now though, so I don't know, because.

Leo Laporte [02:38:13]:
Like Blizzard's owned by— you know what, it's still up. Go get it now while you can. That's all I can say. Uh, they, they have a— yes, they have By Your Command. They have a all the nerd stuff, everything. And then this, uh, also for Paris, awesome LLM reasoning failures. This is a curated list of things that LLMs screw up on, and it's.

Emily Forlini [02:38:35]:
Just a lot of them.

Leo Laporte [02:38:37]:
So if you're looking— add quotes to that— if you're looking, yeah, for bad quotes, ammunition, hallucinations, uh, all sorts of issues, uh, somebody's compiling this all. This is a common kind of trope on GitHub, Awesome X, right? Awesome C libraries, awesome Python libraries, awesome whatever. And so this is Awesome LLL Reasoning Failures.

Emily Forlini [02:39:03]:
I have a quick pick. Oh, you found one? No, it's just something I'm nerding out about right now, but not related to.

Leo Laporte [02:39:09]:
Tech, kind of the opposite. No, it doesn't have to be tech.

Emily Forlini [02:39:12]:
It could be terracotta tiles. Yeah, I'm nerding out about that always. But basically I've got— I've realized there are different kinds of paper you can get. Like, if anyone's into stationery, these old paper mills in Japan and Europe. Japanese papers. Yeah, like Japanese paper, European paper. There's a French company I got some stuff from, and they have different textures, different thicknesses. They are just been making the paper this way for hundreds of years.

Emily Forlini [02:39:38]:
In Germany? Yeah, yeah, like maybe 100 years.

Leo Laporte [02:39:41]:
Maybe Japanese it's 100 hundreds. I don't know.

Emily Forlini [02:39:43]:
Old paper. Thousands, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a lost art and you can still buy all this stuff online. And I'm having a lot of fun with it and taking some notes on paper, which apparently Sam Altman still does, if that makes it cool.

Leo Laporte [02:39:55]:
I don't know. Do you do a bullet journal or.

Emily Forlini [02:39:58]:
What kind of journaling do you do? I mostly do like kind of personal. BuJo's?

Leo Laporte [02:40:05]:
Personal and professional journaling, both. Nice.

Emily Forlini [02:40:06]:
No, I think it's really good to do. Yeah. Yeah. But it's It's fun to mix it up with like these new paper types. So I think that's a fun rabbit.

Leo Laporte [02:40:13]:
Hole if anyone's looking for one. For a long time, I had a Hobonichi, which is a Japanese daytimer, and they use beautiful, beautiful paper.

Emily Forlini [02:40:20]:
I just love the feel of it.

Leo Laporte [02:40:22]:
Just the tactile experience is so nice. Actually, there's a 14-year-old who just won a prize of $25,000 in the Thermo Fisher's Junior Scientific Innovators Challenge because he created an origami fold of a classic Japanese miura-ori pattern that can hold 10,000 times its own weight. This kid loves paper. It's so cute. You gotta, you gotta read the article.

Emily Forlini [02:40:49]:
About all the folding he did.

Leo Laporte [02:40:51]:
It's awesome. Look at him piling all this weight on his little folds. We need him. He won $25,000 because you know what? It holds 10,000 times its own weight. Good job, Miles Wu. Jeff, anything you would— you've already given.

Jeff Jarvis [02:41:08]:
Us some of your picks. Page 28 in the Gutenberg Parenthesis: credit for inventing paper has been given to Chinese man named Cai Lun in AD 105. Um, by coincidence, in the same period the Codex appeared and the space disappeared in writing. However, the legend is ruined by discoveries of paper fragments in China that date their creation to 2 or 3 centuries before for him. Wow. Nonetheless, the Chinese get credit for discovering how to chop and hammer fabric, hemp, fish nuts, and tree bark into cellulose soup, uh, diluting it with clean water and then dipping a mold into mixture to come up with paper, its fibers overlapping and interlocking to create a smooth surface. They use paper for clothing, wrapping, lanterns, fans, prayer ceremonies, kites, cups, and yes, the toilet.

Emily Forlini [02:41:56]:
You wrote that?

Leo Laporte [02:41:58]:
I wrote that. Awesome.

Jeff Jarvis [02:41:59]:
So we have some paper lovers on the show today. So, uh, my pick is, uh, our old, uh, Android friend Hugo Barra has.

Leo Laporte [02:42:13]:
Uh, kind of vibe-coded a new company. Yeah, I saw your link on this and I checked it out.

Jeff Jarvis [02:42:18]:
I thought this is kind of interesting. SuperDuo is one of his favorite agents he built with Dreamer, and it's a vibe-coded to-do list. Yeah, it's very, very Gina Trapani. It's, it's a to-do list that then becomes an agent and does things that you want it to do. It doesn't merely stop at, um, listing.

Leo Laporte [02:42:38]:
It and bugging you. Yeah, it goes out and gets you the tools you need to get it done.

Jeff Jarvis [02:42:42]:
For instance, if it sees an email saying you did it, it will check it off.

Leo Laporte [02:42:48]:
Um, very cool. And so now this is all about his— really what this is is a.

Jeff Jarvis [02:42:53]:
Plug.

Leo Laporte [02:42:56]:
For his new company, Dreamer. Yeah, which is a kind of vibe coding platform, right? So he wrote SuperDew in Dreamer. When I first read his post, I thought, why does he keep mentioning Dreamer?

Jeff Jarvis [02:43:08]:
Now I understand. That's why we built Dreamer.

Leo Laporte [02:43:12]:
It's your Home for personal intelligence. Uh, yeah, I want to try it.

Jeff Jarvis [02:43:16]:
Um, cool. It's interesting. Yeah, well, this is the kind of thing that, that I've been arguing, that the things that you do, Leo, with, uh, Claude and agents still requires a technical sophistication. I think the next level of this is when people can do it on a retail level. Yeah, without ever, ever going into terminal, without having to install anything on a server. They make something, it does what they want. They can share it. Um, and I think that's where we're.

Emily Forlini [02:43:41]:
Going to see this explode. That's where everything kind of goes. I think you're right.

Leo Laporte [02:43:45]:
Like website design, now you just drag and drop. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you start with Nano Banana, you get an image, then you say make.

Emily Forlini [02:43:52]:
That image into a website. I have this compulsive thing in my head when someone says Nano Banana. In my head I go Nanner Bananer, and I have to restrain I stop myself from saying it out loud.

Leo Laporte [02:44:04]:
I'm like, do I have Tourette's? I don't know. I mentioned that I spent Monday coding. What I wrote was, I guess in a way it was kind of like writing a website. I had Claude Code. I bought many moons ago, I bought this e-ink display. It's a color e-ink display with a Raspberry Pi on it, but it required coding to put anything on it. And I never got around to doing it. So I had Claude Code build me a web dashboard., it's E Ink, so I just unplugged it so it's not live.

Leo Laporte [02:44:33]:
But because it's E Ink, it stays there with the most recent episodes posted, how many subscribers we have, how many club members we have, all that stuff. Isn't that cool? That's amazing. Updates that. I have it set now only to update it once a day because it doesn't change that often, but I could.

Jeff Jarvis [02:44:48]:
Have it do it more often. So speaking of hardware and AI, Line 125 Raspberry— I know I'm extending myself when I ask to go off. Raspberry Pi stock soars 40% on the belief that Raspberry Pis will be used.

Emily Forlini [02:45:02]:
For— as hardware for agents. That makes sense. Wait, is that also from your book? No. Okay, I'm like, so are you willing to just stay on if we just.

Jeff Jarvis [02:45:10]:
Read excerpts of your book?

Emily Forlini [02:45:12]:
I could read you excerpts from magazines.

Leo Laporte [02:45:14]:
You said page 145 or something. Oh, the line. And actually, uh, Darren is saying don't start with Nanobanana because Google has another tool that's designed specifically for that called Stitch, which is where you would go to design with AI. So I am not aware of that. Thank you. So stitch.withgoogle.com and design at the speed of AI, transform ideas into UI designs for mobile and web applications. Ah, I will use this because my next project is to write a Twit client, a podcast client for Twit, just for our shows. Shouldn't be too hard.

Leo Laporte [02:45:59]:
Maybe I'll try it with Stitch. Thank you so much, Emily Forlani. So great to see you again. Emily writes at PC Magazine. She's a senior reporter. Every quote verifiably human, I can promise you. Are you on Bluesky mostly? Twitter?

Emily Forlini [02:46:16]:
Where do you, where do you hang your hat? Um, I have been doing a TikTok push recently. Oh, um, I'm kind of experimenting out loud. The videos are very hit or miss, but if you'd like to follow me there and see how my experiment goes, that would be fun. You can also find me on Bluesky. I don't know, I'm everywhere.

Leo Laporte [02:46:33]:
I'm easy to find. Just search my name. Uh, I, I like this. So what's your, uh, that's your handle.

Emily Forlini [02:46:40]:
On the, on the TikTok? Yeah, I think it's Emily Forleni and then there's an underscore. There might have been one who beat me, um, but just search my name.

Leo Laporte [02:46:48]:
Yeah, just hit that, right?

Emily Forlini [02:46:50]:
I mean, let me search for Emily Forleni. Yeah, so I've been trying to post twice a week and pushing myself to figure out something I want to say twice a week, which is hard. It doesn't always work, but I'm having probably the most fun on that platform. And it's fun when people comment and.

Leo Laporte [02:47:08]:
Stuff, so I would like to connect there. It is.

Emily Forlini [02:47:11]:
It's Emily Forleni with an underscore at the end. Oh no, look at me.

Leo Laporte [02:47:16]:
See, it's so silly. No, it's cute.

Emily Forlini [02:47:18]:
There you are with Mike. I love it. This is great. It's a work in progress. I'm trying to push myself and like figure out, you know, the tone of TikTok, the framing of the video, blah, blah, blah. So if you want to be part.

Leo Laporte [02:47:32]:
Of that journey, you can find me there.

Jeff Jarvis [02:47:34]:
I love it.

Leo Laporte [02:47:35]:
I need to start making TikToks just to understand it. It's so cool.

Emily Forlini [02:47:40]:
I have one. I mean, yeah, and everyone's trying to not be embarrassed. It's just like, no, it's hard.

Leo Laporte [02:47:44]:
No one cares what I'm saying on TikTok, you know? It reminds me of when I first did a blog. It's like, this is so self-centered.

Emily Forlini [02:47:53]:
Why would anybody— I know, I'm like, I look I'm such an idiot, but.

Jeff Jarvis [02:47:58]:
I don't— whatever, I guess, right? I love this. How TikTok has made some phenomenal stars. Anna Lapwood, who plays the organ, was at Cambridge. She now has a worldwide audience, uh, with albums and concerts. It's amazing. Uh, pronounced Leve, but spelled Laufey, uh, the Icelandic-American singer. Uh, on the Olympics, on the short.

Leo Laporte [02:48:17]:
Programs, I heard her song the other day.

Jeff Jarvis [02:48:21]:
There's that guy, uh, the sandwiches, salt.

Emily Forlini [02:48:24]:
Salt, uh, Salt, uh, Jim underscore Hank, I think.

Leo Laporte [02:48:26]:
Yeah, your son. Yeah, look at that mustache.

Jeff Jarvis [02:48:29]:
It seems like it's getting darker.

Leo Laporte [02:48:31]:
It's become a trademark. Yeah.

Emily Forlini [02:48:32]:
Oh, it is a trademark, let me tell you. See, this page looks good.

Leo Laporte [02:48:34]:
I should just have more food on mine. Yeah, well, he figured, you know, that's what happened is he spent a lot of time figuring out, um, you know, what got the algorithm. Yeah, the latest is about— is the.

Emily Forlini [02:48:46]:
Behind the scenes of his Super Bowl commercial. Cool. Yeah, the problem is I'm busy and kind of phoning it in sometimes.

Leo Laporte [02:48:54]:
So like the lighting, the sound, it's a full-time gig.

Emily Forlini [02:48:57]:
And that's the problem. This is something I journaled about, for example, like, you know, New Year's resolution, setting goals. It's like, I'm going to try to TikTok twice a week for 3 months.

Leo Laporte [02:49:07]:
And see what happens. So the other thing that he did, which is smart, is he also is on Instagram. And I think nowadays both is probably good. Right. Yeah.

Emily Forlini [02:49:17]:
Thank you, Emily.

Leo Laporte [02:49:18]:
So great to see you. You too. Jeff Jarvis, Professor of Journalistic Innovation Emeritus. I'm going to bubble off. Now at Montclair State University up the road from Emily.

Jeff Jarvis [02:49:30]:
Wait, you teach at Montclair State? I'm a fellow at the Center for Cooperative Media.

Emily Forlini [02:49:34]:
Oh, we got to connect.

Jeff Jarvis [02:49:35]:
Yes, we should. I live in Glen Ridge. Right there. So I'm working on a new program we can't talk about yet, but it's very exciting.

Leo Laporte [02:49:42]:
And, uh, doing lots of things up there. It's the Jersey Boys on Twitter, or.

Jeff Jarvis [02:49:49]:
The Jersey Boy and Girl. Jersey Strong. My, uh, colleague Carrie Brown, I think, lives in Maplewood, a former professor with me at CUNY.

Emily Forlini [02:49:57]:
And lots of, lots of journalists. Nice. So many. I know you don't need to connect with me, there's a million people. So much of the New York media.

Jeff Jarvis [02:50:03]:
Industry lives in this area. It's the, as I call it, the.

Emily Forlini [02:50:05]:
Upper West Side of New Jersey. Yeah, totally. I know people who work at CNN.

Leo Laporte [02:50:09]:
Our editor-in-chief Lives around here, I mean, there's like so many people. Jeff's also the author, as you saw, of The Gutenberg Parenthesis, which talks about paper, and Magazine, which talks about paper, and his new one, Hot Type, which talks about printing on paper. So there is a common thread, I guess. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. Feel better. Paris will be back, I hope, next week if the steroids hold out. And Emily, we'll see you next on Tech News Weekly.

Emily Forlini [02:50:39]:
A couple of weeks, I think. Maybe next week, maybe the week after. We'll see.

Leo Laporte [02:50:42]:
We don't know. It's going to be fun. Thank you everybody for joining us. We do Intelligent Machines every Wednesday, right around 2 PM Pacific, 5 PM Eastern, 2200 UTC. You can watch us live if you're in the club, in the club Discord, but also on YouTube, Twitch, X.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Kik. We also, of course, are on YouTube. You can watch us there. You could download episodes from our website, twit.tv/im.

Leo Laporte [02:51:10]:
Best thing to do though, subscribe in your favorite podcast player. You'll get it automatically as soon as we are done. Thank you everybody for being here. We'll see you next week on Intelligent Machines.

Jeff Jarvis [02:51:22]:
Bye-bye.

Leo Laporte [02:51:22]:
Hello everybody, Leo Laporte here. You know what a great gift would be, whether for the holidays or at just any time, a birthday, a membership in Club Twit. If you have a TWiT listener in your family, somebody who enjoys our programming, and you wanna give them a nice gift and support what we do, visit twit.tv/clubtwit. They'll really appreciate it, and so will we. Thank you.

Emily Forlini [02:51:46]:
Twit.Tv/Clubtwit.