Tech News Weekly Episode 295 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.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:00:00):
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, we kick off the show with my interview with Mark Germin from Bloomberg to talk about Apple's dip into AI by way of large language models. And then we actually end the show. There's stuff in between, don't worry. With Megan Marone who wrote for Fast Company. You might remember Megan. She talks a little bit about artificial intelligence and therapy. Therapeutic uses of artificial intelligence. Very interesting stuff. Plus I talk about a TikTok from IMAX that has everyone screaming. Why is there a Palm pilot on the wall? I didn't know they were still around. And then of course, we've got Netflix. That's my story of the week. Had an earnings call. Really good earnings. But they're making some changes to their tears. And I'm curious how the writers and actors strike is gonna impact that. Hmm. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly.
(00:00:54):
This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Cisco Meraki. Without a cloud managed network, businesses inevitably fall behind. Experience the ease and efficiency of Meraki's single platform to elevate the place where your employees and customers come together. Cisco Meraki maximizes uptime and minimizes lost digitally Transform your organization, Meraki's intuitive interface, increased connectivity and multi-site management. Keep your organization operating seamlessly and securely wherever your team is. Let Cisco Meraki's 24 7 available support. Help your organization's remote, onsite, and hybrid teams always do their best work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit podcasts you love from people you trust.
TWiT INTRO (00:01:46):
This this is twit.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:01:51):
This is Tech News Weekly episode 295. Recorded Thursday, July 20th, 2023. Oppenheimer, powered by PalmPilot. This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Zocdoc. The free app where you can find and book appointments online with thousands of top rated patient reviewed physicians and specialists. Filter specifically for those who take your insurance are located near you and treat almost any condition. Go to zoc doc.com/tnw and download the Zoc doc app for free. And by drta, security professionals often undergo manual tasks of collecting evidence. Well, with Drta, companies can complete audits, monitor controls, and expand security assurance efforts to scale. Say goodbye to manual evidence collection and hello to automation. All done at drta speed. Visit drta.com/twit to get a demo and 10% off implementation. And by the AWS Insiders Podcast. Search for AWS Insiders in your podcast player. Or visit cloud fixx.oria.com/podcast. We'll also include a link, the show notes.
(00:02:59):
Our thanks to AWS Insiders for their support. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am one of your hosts and I am back. I am Micah Sargent. I'm the other guy Jason held. Good to have you back sitting at the table. It just feels empty when you're not here. Back table, back in the saddle, back at the table again. Yeah. happy to be here. Happy to be doing this show and very excited about what we're gonna kick things off with today. Yeah. Cause it's interesting this was kind of a late breaking bit of news as far as this show goes, because typically we have to find some folks earlier in the week, get them on the show. I happen to see this news fly by, and excited to be joined today by Mark Germin of Bloomberg to talk about Apple's experimentation with with ai. Welcome back to the show, mark.
Mark Gurman (00:04:01):
Thanks both as always for having me. Glad to be here. Happy to talk about AI
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:04:05):
<Laugh>. Yes. So let's, let's do that. Of course. We've got chat, G P T, we've got Google doing Bard. We've got Microsoft with its co-pilot and all of this magic that's going on. But some would look at Apple and say maybe the company isn't sort of putting something out there. But you have heard that internally the company is working on something. Tell us a little bit about that and then we'll dig in with even more.
Mark Gurman (00:04:38):
Yeah, Apple's definitely a laggard here, not just because they haven't announced anything, but because they're not, you know, particularly close on anything compelling or anything consumer grade in the AI space. Typically, you know, apple is a little bit behind the competition in terms of these next generation technologies. They try to come in here and they try to do something better. I would expect them to try to pull the same you know, rabbit outta the hat. You know, they bunny outta the hat this time too. <Laugh>, right? They have their own internal tool they've developed based on an L l M called Apple, G p t, or Ajax, G P T. Those are some names that people inside the company call it. It's based on a new l l m large language model framework. They've created cult Ajax or Apple JX for short.
(00:05:27):
It's based on Google js, which is an ML framework from Google. And within Apple, they're running it on Google Cloud. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But the idea is to develop their own large language model that runs on their own cloud infrastructure in addition to their own consumer regenerative AI product that they hope to introduce sometime next year. And it's unclear exactly what that's going to be because they don't necessarily have a plan of record yet for what they're going to do. But they do have many people working LLMs at the company. They're all in on AI and LLMs throughout the organization. At this point. This is a new thing that they're ramping up for. And this is gonna be a big part of what Apple's doing over the next two years.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:06:02):
So that's fascinating what you just said about the current version. It's based on Google Jacks. It's running on the, on Google Cloud. So this is an opportunity for internally the company to kind of see how to go about using a large language model before they develop their own entirely. Or will I mean, of course, you know, this is a little bit crystal ball, but in Right, in the future, you see them completely doing their own, not something that is based on what Google has.
Mark Gurman (00:06:35):
Yes, they are. They're, they are doing their own. They are working on their own. And Ajax is the foundation of what they're going to be building. And this is going to be a powerful L l M. And the thing to know about LLMs, and I think a lot of people don't get this, is there's a reason why Google, Microsoft open ai now Apple have all been able to sort of pull something together around the same time within months of each other. That's because the fundamental technology that these generative AI products and these G P T products are using, it's all based on the same exact underlying tech. Mm. and the same underlying models. They're known as transformer models. So the technology is very much the same. Now, where do these companies differentiate? They differentiate on the training data, right? How you're training these models and they differentiate with some of their secret sauce, their magic, and of course the consumer output. So basically, apple needs to re-skin those underlying models to fit exactly the type of product they want to build. I believe that they're going to try to do something in the productivity and creativity app space longer term, but in the short term, I think they're going to try to integrate some sort of chat G P t like functionality into the Siri app itself.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:07:46):
Got it. Okay. So this is really interesting because shortly after ww d c and now I'm for, oh nope. Now I've forgotten his name again. Daring Fireball. Gruber Gruber. Thank you. John Gruber had an event that he typically has, and it's a talk show live. And there Craig Federighi was asked about Apple's sort of foray into ai. And one of the things that he talked about is, of course this has been a conversation in years past as well. But this year saying, you know, while we may not be saying ai, ai, ai, we've got it here. We've got it here, we've got it here. And one of the things that they talked about is in iOS 17, and you mentioned it in this piece the improved auto Correct. That's coming in iOS 17 is a, is based on a transformer model, or is, you know, at its heart is a transformer model, so Yeah, but
Mark Gurman (00:08:39):
It's not an L l M. So like the
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:08:40):
Auto Yes. Could you clarify? Yeah,
Mark Gurman (00:08:42):
Yeah. So <laugh> the auto Correct upgrade, they're trying to make it they're trying to spin it PR and marketing wise into being some sort of L L M or some sort of major ai. The actual technology for the new auto correct is under 50 megabytes for example, in terms of how much space it takes, right? A real l l m a real generative AI product that is terabytes, right. Of data mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So it's completely two different worlds. There's, as much as they want to try to make it one in the same, there is no comparison. And they're going to do that until they're ready to, to bring the real thing out the door. Right. And so it's two different planets.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:09:25):
Interesting. Okay. So this is another question that I had for you because in your piece, you mentioned the company was caught flatfooted in the past year with an introduction. And one of the questions I was going to ask you, because we it's, it's a common narrative among apple journalists or Apple, you know, coverers, is that the company does the, the wait and see approach, and they refine the tech, and they do this, and they do that. And so you have folks who, who see that as the, the way that Apple works. But then you have some folks who say, well, in this case, the company is behind and they kind of compete with each other. But it's almost as if, from what you are mentioning, the company was caught flatfooted, but they are trying to make the appearances, though. A they're doing a wait and see approach, but B, they've already got this stuff underlying in, in the technology that they already have. But that, that differentiation that you, that you just talked about, that 50 megabytes versus the multiple terabytes and all of the processing power and stuff suggests that maybe they're trying to sort of put a bandage on it or a stop gap and say, no, no, no, we already doing this.
Mark Gurman (00:10:35):
It's a mix of things. So I'll give you an example. Okay. So obviously the Vision Pro is coming out years after many of the other VR and AR headsets that have been on the market, but the reality with that device is that Apple has been working on it since 2015, right? So they weren't necessarily caught flatfooted, they were just extraordinarily slow to market, right? Mm-Hmm. this AI thing, they were clo caught flatfooted in the sense that they didn't even really start working on it until these things started to crop up publicly. So they really did miss the boat here, and quite frankly, they've been missing the boat on Siri and AI for years mm-hmm. <Affirmative> even from the get go. Right? and it's really amazing and embarrassing given that Siri was launched four years before any other competing service.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:11:16):
Yeah. I think that, that kind of leads into one of my questions about this is Siri. Of course, when we think of, it's funny because I feel like we talk a lot about AI as if it's this brand new thing that suddenly is here. But in many ways, you know, on iOS, Siri is more or less an AI interface, you know maybe a lot maybe a step down from where we're, we're, you know, finding ourselves now. Same with assistant on Google Side. The, again, going back to the narrative of, you know, series not as good as the other ones out there. How does that potentially impact Apple's efforts when it comes to this AI Plague? Could, could that be seen as a disadvantage kind of carrying that the, the, the burden of that history along with it? Or really it's just proofs in the pudding, you know, let it speak to itself.
Mark Gurman (00:12:04):
I can, I completely agree with you. I mean, I think Apple would be best served pretending Siri never existed. <Laugh>, you know,
(00:12:12):
It's so interesting because an Apple Maps has the same problem. Apple customers, especially the ones who are telling their friends about what to use and not to use, they have a very long memory and they get burned very easily. Uhhuh <affirmative>. And so, you know, the idea that Siri has been terrible for many years. It doesn't matter what amount of improvements or the, the range of improvements Apple makes that product, it still carries that baggage from many years ago. Likewise, with Apple Maps, like Apple Maps is, I would say borderline excellent at this point. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, wall Street Journal had a good article about this the other day. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Yep. Saw that. And, you know, people are starting to, to use it, but you're never gonna be able to drop that baggage that Apple Maps had from the beginning. And it's been 11 years since Apple Maps launched. It's been you know, 12 years since Siri launched. And so that's not gonna go away. So I think Apple would be best served by doing a rebrand of Siri. I don't know what they would call it.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:13:06):
I love Ajax. Hey, Ajax, that's, it's a large language bylaw, call it Silly cleaning spray
Mark Gurman (00:13:12):
<Laugh>
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:13:13):
Silly. Yeah, exactly. Well, and speaking of that, the, the, the long memory, I, I see the same thing with Home Kit and Home that initial launch and the, you know, the first year or so of exclusivity where there weren't that many products, and now there's so many out there that work with it, it's a great system, but people even in our sort of, you know, tech sphere, still think that it is not a great system. And it's not because it's because they haven't used it, that, that they think that <laugh> and that they, they, they still have that sort of narrative that's with it. One of the, the sort of, oh, go ahead, please.
Mark Gurman (00:13:54):
No, I was gonna say that's fair. I mean, I wouldn't characterize Home Kid as a great system but I, I do use it and it's mostly problem free. I have not used the Google and Amazon Home ecosystems enough to make a fair comparison. But in terms of maps and, and the voice assistance and such, I think I could fairly say with confidence that Siri and Apple Maps have both improved dramatically, but are both the step behind apple Maps, I think has, has pulled away from its past way more than Siri has. I just think Siri, there's just so much baggage there. It's not deeply integrated enough into the system, and their AI efforts are sort of so all over the place that people don't really differentiate what AI is. And I think, you know, what Apple considers or markets AI to B is different than what consumers think AI needs to be. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and that's a marketing problem, right? And so Apple either needs to fix its marketing or align the way it positions AI to how modern day consumers think of ai, and they'll be able to better do that when they have the goods to offer next year.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:15:02):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the other thing that you talk about in this piece is this Apple, G P T an internal tool. What are engineers doing with this tool? And especially, you know, we heard that apple and many other companies said, don't put your information into something like Chat G P T, because we're concerned that then that information is going to be used as part of the training model. It could blah, blah, blah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So what's, what's going on internally and is this tool, you know, at the same level as chat G P T, how does it, how does it work for them?
Mark Gurman (00:15:38):
I think that was actually one of the driving forces behind releasing this tool internally, is because there's clearly a need or a desire for people in engineering environments to use something like Chat G B T to help with product prototyping, code testing getting questions answered based on data it's trained with, based on summarizing text, based on rewriting code and such. And so I think those tools are very powerful. But the last thing Apple wants is Apple Engineers using third party tools, right? With Apple's confidential proprietary things that it's working on, right? So the need came about to actually build those tools for internal use cases. Does that make sense? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So in terms of the functionality it's pretty much the same as chat G B T.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:16:19):
Yeah. and then last you, you mentioned next year where we could see the first kind of AI related announcement. Any, there's
Mark Gurman (00:16:29):
No plan of record, right? Okay. That's the problem. There's no plan of record yet. They haven't devised an actual consumer product strategy yet. So obviously that can fluctuate, but the goal is to have something next year.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:16:40):
And any ideas on what that could look like? Where do you see the company maybe putting its focus? I think there's a talk about Apple Watch technology, and of course,
Mark Gurman (00:16:52):
So I would have to imagine that the first L l m rollout will be something to do with Siri mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But next year they'll have this AI based health coaching service that's ai, but it's not like a generative AI or an L l m type of situation. It's just a different category of ai. It's more of a old school type of AI where you're, you're learning the, the way the user functions, you're learning more about the user. You're taking data in from the user, you're taking metrics from the user, and then you're using it to build the personalized health coaching plan and recommendations for specific specific dieting for specific health things, specific workouts, specific fitness tasks. So that's separate, but that is still ai. And don't you worry they'll market it as such. <Laugh>.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:17:34):
Yes. I think we will start to see Apple mentioning AI a little bit more than we have seen already. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mark Kerman, it is always a pleasure to have you join us for the show always sharing some great insights and some great quotes like apple would be best served, pretending Siri never existed, <laugh> <laugh>. But thank you for your time. If folks want to follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing, of course I can go to bloomberg.com. But anywhere else they should go.
Mark Gurman (00:18:01):
Yes, go to bloomberg.com/power on please to subscribe to my weekly column comes out every Sunday. You can follow me on Twitter, twitter.com/mark Gorman, and be sure to join the new Power on Discord to keep in touch with me and others who enjoy Apple.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:18:17):
Awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much.
Mark Gurman (00:18:19):
Thanks Micah. Thanks Jason, as always. I will see you next time. Yes,
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:18:22):
Thanks. See you then. All righty, folks. Up next. We've got some stories of the week with Jason's coming first, but I do want to take a second to tell you about our first sponsor for this episode. It's Zoc Doc. You know that feeling you get when you finally find the thing that you've been searching for on the internet after spending hours researching, reading thousands of reviews, you finally find it this thing, be it sparkly disco pants, perhaps a designer dog hoodie, or whatever it happens to be. It checks all of those boxes you have, and it's got five stars, and it arrives in just 48 hours. Yes. The heavens have opened up. The sun is shining down on me, and I can finally get that designer dog hoodie I've been looking for. Wow. So, thank, thankfully, right? Thank goodness. So, you know, why is it that you can get this special thing you're looking for in just two days, but if you wanna see a good doctor, it can take forever to get a doggone appointment.
(00:19:30):
Why not to mention, how do you know if they're even actually good? Well, thankfully there is a way. It's called Zoc Doc. It's a place to find and book great doctors who have amazing reviews, many with appointments that are available within 24 hours. And Zocdoc is a free app where you can find amazing doctors and book appointments online. We're talking about booking appointments with thousands of top rated patient reviewed doctors and specialists. You can filter specifically for those who take your insurance are located near you, and treat almost any condition you're searching for. These docs all have verified reviews from actual real patients, not bots, not l l m generated reviews. The average wait time to see a doctor booked on Zocdoc is between just 24 and 48 hours. Take that in. That's it. You can even score same day appointments with Zocdoc. Once you find the doc you want, you can book them immediately with just a few taps in the app.
(00:20:33):
No more waiting awkwardly on hold with a receptionist like I wanna call a phone number in the first place. So go to zoc doc.com/tnw and download the Zoc Doc app for free. Then find book a top-rated doctor today, that's Z O C D ooc.com/tnw. And I know all of you very smart very self-starter individuals. You could head to the app store and type that in. But we need you to go to that url, zoc doc.com/tnw. That way it's signals to Zocdoc that you heard about it on this show. And then you'll get that link to your app store of choice zocdoc.com/tnw. And we thank Zocdoc for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. Alright, we are back from the break, and that means it's Jason Howell's, story of the Week, story of the Week. And then I have an interview coming up later with a guest you won't wanna miss Familiar to the show.
(00:21:32):
I was, I've heard of them before. Yes, indeed. So that's coming up a little bit later. But first I thought we'd talk a little bit about Netflix seems to be one of our rotating topics that we, that we focus on every month or two. They actually just made some pretty major changes to their pricing model. This happened yesterday along with an impressive earnings report. I'll get to the pricing model in a second. But Netflix did really well. It wasn't that long ago that we were like, oh no, everything's going south for Netflix. Well, they added 5.9 million subs, rose revenue 3%, 8.2 billion year over year in that raise. So Netflix's doing all right attributed in no small part to two things that we've talked about on this show repeatedly. One, the crackdown on password sharing, which we aren't gonna really focus on in this story, but two, it's ad supported tier.
(00:22:23):
Oh, yeah. And to that end, Netflix eliminated its basic tier for the US and the uk. The basic plan that had no ads, this was basically the the introductory plan that you could get without ads the first foot through the door if you were willing to pay a little bit more and not get ads for Netflix that started at 9 99 here in the us That plan is gone now. And if you don't want ads, w now going forward, you're gonna have to pay $15 49 cents. So that's kind like the baseline. It used to be 10 in the us now it's about 1550. Wow. So it's, it's quite a jump actually. It's a jump. Exactly. Is that how much I'm paying for Netflix? I need to get rid of this. And I mean, this 1550 I think is, I don't even know that you get 4K for that.
(00:23:12):
So if you're getting 4K through Netflix, you're paying more than that. I need to check on this. I think you're paying somewhere in the $20 range. Netflix actually made this change last month in Canada. So, you know, the idea was that this would possibly happen in other markets at least in the uk according to some of the articles that I read. But of course, here they're, they're rolling it out overseas. They're rolling it out here. Last year, you may remember, Netflix rolled out its ad supported tier for the very first time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that's a $6 99 cents a month here in the us. And then in April, they added some extra features to that plan. They added se they, they upgraded it from seven 20 P to 10 80 p. They also allowed more simultaneous streams. Well, one more, basically a total of two simultaneous streams.
(00:24:01):
If you had the ad supported plan used to be one the basic. And, and actually, once they upgraded this ad supported plan, in many ways it matched the feature set of the tier above basic. So it started to become, I think the, the lines started to get a little blurry. Yeah. It's like, oh, you're paying the least, but you're getting a lot of the features that the tier above this basic entry level no ad plan would get. And so it started to kind of seem like, you know, the time bomb was ticking for the basic plan to eventually go away. But what I think is interesting about this is it really shows just how profitable that ad tier must be. Yeah. Must be. Exactly. If Netflix is willing to kind of cut off that basic and say, if you wanna pay less for Netflix, you have to get the ad tier.
(00:24:49):
And I have to imagine they're getting a lot of interest that has to be part of the reason why their year over year has increased, at least to a, to a certain degree. Netflix seems like they're doubling down on that with this move. What I'm wondering is two, two different things. At what point do we see that $7 ad tier jump up to 10, that seems like an obvious, like no-brainer gonna happen eventually thing, you know what I mean? Absolutely. It's, it's like they've cleared the way for it from seven from $7 all the way up to 1550. There's a lot of space in there. And if that's a tier that people are actually craving for or using, and, and we've seen that Netflix has no problem raising their their rates over time and not really going backwards. I don't know.
(00:25:39):
I think that's, that's coming. It's the writing's on the wall for sure. <Laugh>, if it doesn't go up to 12. Yeah. Right. <Laugh>, although, yeah. That eventually let's, let's make our way there slowly over time though, Mike. Yes. Probably so. So let me slow you down there. Netflix. Listen, let's do ten first. We'll get to, you'll get to 12. We'll soften you up with a 10. Yeah. Then the next, you know, six months later, we'll take you all the way to the 12 point point 60 cents a year for the next. Yeah. I don't know anybody using the ad supported tier, so I haven't really heard any like, direct feedback about, especially because once you, like you started out with no ads. Yeah. So I would find it hard to then go ads mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, in fact. Yeah, totally. That was, so I, we were watching some shows on Disney Plus and h Hulu, and then when those shows had ended I was not interested in continuing to pay for Disney Plus and Hulu.
(00:26:36):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I canceled them. But my partner ended up, there were some shows that were older shows that he wanted to continue watch. And so he got Disney Plus and Hulu, but did it with the ads. Okay. And then when a show popped up on Disney plus that, or no, we decided to do a marathon of, I think it was like Indiana Jones or something. Jurassic Park and Indiana, whatever. And we started to watch it and it had ads. And I'm like, I can't do this, I can't do that, all that. So I ended up paying for the upgraded thing to go back to the no ads that we had in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. I think it would be hard to, on Netflix be a no ads and then no suddenly have ads. But for new people who are signing up, or I think this is the big one little Baby birdies in the Nest that are then no longer in the Nest.
(00:27:27):
Mm-Hmm. Or who, maybe they got pushed outta the Nest, but they were still in their parents' plans, but now their parents, now they're can't let them be on there. Right. Then I could see them going for the ad version. For sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I can only compare this to YouTube, which for years I was on the YouTube music kind of side of things for my music service or play music, whatever, whatever it was. It's been five different things over the course of the last decade. But along with that came a free subscription to YouTube Premium, which basically removed all the ads. And since I've, since I've turned away from YouTube music, this was probably like a year and a half ago kind of jumped on board with Spotify and we don't pay for the premium YouTube anymore.
(00:28:10):
Oh, okay. That's you say premium Spotify. I was like, no, this, no, no. We, we do have that thankfully <laugh>, that would be even worse. I can imagine getting ads in between my songs. No, thank you. But but anytime I watch YouTube, I'm served an ad now and after like many years mm-hmm. <Affirmative> of never seeing an ad on YouTube, it's Stark. Yeah. Like, yeah. And, you know, and now there's like two pre-roll ads, one of which you can skip, but the first one you can't, you know, it really depends on how it it is and yeah, it's hard. I mean, it is, you know, I made the mistake of getting, I didn't do the for the music, but I did the YouTube, whatever it was called for like the YouTube side of things. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and then <laugh> after going no ads. And I don't use YouTube that often.
(00:28:54):
Right. Oh, to Right, right. But you do. But when I go there, I'm like, ah, it used to be so much better. It used to be so much easier, dear. That's how it works. Yeah. I mean, that's how they get you, right. Indeed, indeed. Real quick, before we venture off this story of the week and get onto the rest of the stuff, I also think it's interesting that we are in the midst of a pretty major writer strike. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the actors have joined, so now it's not just a writer's strike. The actors are are in it as well, and they are spilling the T too. Oh yeah. You've been following that, but sure. There were so many actors who are like, so, you know how you think I'm rich? Yeah. Here's this numbers, here's the receipts. Yeah. Here are the receipts. Exactly. Used to be I have health insurance.
(00:29:34):
Totally. Right. And it's really interesting because a lot of this, I mean, so much of this is based on the fact that the streaming model has, has really upended and, and really wiped out mm-hmm. <Affirmative> these you know, these people's ability to do this as a career without having to get other jobs in a, in an industry that used to be, it used to be totally supported. Yes. And now, you know, it's that kind of money transfer to the people who have a lot of money. And then the people who are working on these shows, their, their windows are shortened, but their contracts don't allow them to, you know, do things for longer. And I guess my point with this whole Netflix thing is it's coming at an interesting time that they're, that these changes are happening if these price raises happen. Just because very soon the content pool is going to be a lot more limited mm-hmm.
(00:30:22):
<Affirmative>. And I wonder how that's going to impact a longtime Netflix user's kind of view of what's on the network. And I mean, you know, stranger Things was set to start filming in the coming weeks come out like early mid 2024, I believe. Okay. Now it's very uncertain. I mean, you know, they're not obviously not gonna be filming. And I don't think that this sort of delay from a writer strike and an actor strike, it's not like once it gets figured out, everybody goes right back to Exactly, yes. Everything takes time. Yep. It's all a buildup again. And all those schedules, I mean, they're scheduled out literally for years. And so how does that impact what Netflix has going on in the next couple of years? You know, maybe it's maybe it's just as an example of chickens coming home to Roost sort of thing.
(00:31:10):
You know, you had it coming and here it is. It's a lot. I think it, it really is. It's, there's, there's so much involved in it and it's hard to you know, har hard to, to dig into and, and understand like what the business model looks like, how it works. Yeah. Every, it's Wow. How, how it's all going. It's a lot do not know. But anyways, interesting stuff as always going on with Netflix. And like, I think the broader kind of online streaming model as well. We've, we've enjoyed as, as, as fans of shows and, and tv, we've enjoyed a, an, a glut of high quality content. I think we're now starting to realize, oh, wait a minute, is that, you know, does that support the people who are creating these things? Are they supported? Are these models from these streaming services, are they feasible in the long term?
(00:31:59):
Maybe. Maybe we're realizing that they aren't. Yeah. You know, that major changes need to happen. What does that future look like? Yes, indeed. All right. Well, that's my story of the week we got, Mike is coming up here and I'm super interested in this. This is a fascinating thing that I never knew about imax. So hold the, hold your thought there. We'll get to that in a second. First, this episode, tech News Weekly is brought to you by drta. Is your organization finding it difficult to collect manual evidence to achieve continuous compliance as it's growing, as it's scaling? Well, as a leader in cloud compliance software by G2 Draw to streamlines your SOC two, your ISO 27 0 1, your PCI dss gdpr, hipaa providing 24 hour continuous control monitoring, so you can focus on scaling securely with a suite of more than 75 integrations, DRTA easily integrates through applications that you're using.
(00:32:52):
You know, aws, Azure, GitHub, Okta, CloudFlare, countless security professionals from companies, including Lemonade Notion and Bamboo hr, have shared how crucial it's been to have drta as a trusted partner in the compliance process. So you can expand security assurance efforts using the drta platform that allows companies to see all of their controls to easily map them to compliance frameworks. To gain immediate insight into framework overlap. ADA's automated dynamic policy templates, support companies new to compliance using integrated security awareness training programs and automated reminders ensure smooth employee onboarding as the only player in the industry to build on a private database architecture, your data can never be accessed by anyone outside your organization. All customers receive a team of compliance experts that includes a designated customer success manager. And ADA's team of former auditors has conducted more than 500 audits. Your ADA team keeps you on track to ensure that there are no surprises, no barriers along the way.
(00:34:02):
Plus ADA's pre-audit calls prepare you for when your audits actually begin. ADA's Audit Hub is actually this solution to faster, more efficient audits. You can save hours of back and forth communication, never misplace that crucial evidence that you need and share documentation instantly. All these interactions, all interactions and data gathering actually occur in Drta between you and your auditor. So you aren't gonna have the switch between different tools or correspondence strategies, keeps everything focused. With ADA's risk management solution, you can manage end-to-end risk assessment and treatment workflows. You can flag risks, score them, and then from that point decide whether to accept, mitigate, transfer, or avoid them. ADA maps appropriate controls to risks that simplifies risk management and automating the process. Jada's Trust Center provides real-time transparency into security and compliance posture that's gonna improve sales, security reviews and better relationships with customers and partners.
(00:35:05):
So say goodbye to Manual Evidence Collection, say hello to Automated Compliance by visiting drta.com/twit. That's D R A T a.com/twit, bringing automation to compliance at Drta speed. And we thank Drta for their support of Tech News Weekly and the Twit Network. All right. Tell me, Micah, what do IMAX movies and PalmPilots have in common? Nothing, right? Yeah. Nothing. No. let's take a, I will, I will describe this let's take a look at a TikTok that IMAX posted a week ago where they were showing the sort of ridiculous engineering feats the company had to do in order to bring Oppenheimer to imax. I think it's 11 miles of film on these special reels, but as you're watching this, how platter this video? Yeah, it's a huge platter. You'll notice that the video starts out with a kind of zoomed in shot of a tablet of some sort upon which you can see a palm device that I, it appears to be some sort of palm pilot emulator running on a tablet screen.
(00:36:27):
And ju as is the way of the internet where IMAX was trying to show the film platter and show, they're talking about these little orange bits that helped to extend the platter out to be long enough for the runtime of Oppenheimer. Everyone instead focused on the tablet that is running what appears to be Palm OS software. So the Verge did a deep dive into this. Once again, David Pierce is responsible for my story of the week. Thank you David. And this time it's about this, this Palm pilot. So it says the, the headline of the pieces, here's why the best IMAX movies still need a Palm pilot to work. And they don't need a, it turns out a physical palm pilot, they can just use an emulated palm pilot. This is the M one 30. And this little device is basically controlling the system that feeds the film into the projector.
(00:37:34):
It was released in 2002. It's got a tiny little one 60 by one 60 display. It's two inches diagonal and a little tiny processor as well. But what this does is it will control what they call the quick turn reel unit, the Q T R U. And it just makes it so that the reels that get fed into the projector are running at the proper speed for the film. So depending on what you're showing, how, how fast it needs to run, how slow it needs to run it has to be running at all times in this case as an emulation. And there are some little kind of details about this, this, and I won't go, I won't share them all cause I want everybody to go check out the article. But there's a little bit of text on there that says, take up.
(00:38:29):
And according to The Verge who spoke with a person knowledgeable of how this technology works, takeup defines which platter is ready to receive the film. After it goes through the projector, there's a, a line called Feed, which defines which platter is feeding film into the projector. So you could say, you know, feed one, feed two, feed three which with Oppenheimer being 11 miles long and weighing 600 pounds, I would imagine that you would need to have some more reels. And then there's just a little line at the bottom that says locked. And if it's locked, that means it's ready. So it's locked and loaded, ready to go. Now everything else is fairly mechanical, and I think that's what makes this really fascinating is that the feeding process, the film process, all of that is very mechanical. And this palm <laugh> system that's part of the Q T R U is kind of the only quote unquote high tech bit of the process.
(00:39:33):
So something low tech in our modern world is the highest tech part of the process. And I think that that adds to some of the charm that these mm-hmm. Film directors, you know, have about this, that it's, it's how we used to do things and there's no reason to change it. And it, you know, it, it worked that way before. So we might as well keep that going. Which makes me think about how folks like Christopher Nolan and others who are big film people might not be too fond of George Lucas, given that he was at the forefront of making digital film what it is today. You know, so many films are produced digitally, and then there are these folks who are trying to hold onto the old way of doing things. And there's that, that that, that, you know, combat there.
(00:40:32):
Because if Lucas had not used funds to essentially bequeath theaters all around at, at the very least the United States, maybe around the world with digital projectors, then that would not have kicked off the revolution that is digital film, at least, you know, for some time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. So he kind of saw it as postpone, this is the future. And then he is like, but I'm not gonna wait for the future. We're gonna make it happen now. Now it is interestingly, they don't really touch the Palm Pilot device in emulator form, or even if it was in physical form, it just sits there. It is running kind of all on its own, and you don't really have to interact with it other than, than doing it. But I do wanna read a little bit more. It's here, it says quote, IMAX engineering designed and manufactured an emulator that mimics the look and feel of a Palm pilot to keep it simple and familiar for IMAX film Projectionists.
(00:41:40):
The emulator runs on a wind mate panel pc, which is a 10.1 inch windows tablet. Hmm. that was designed to kind of be outside of conference rooms to do schedules and video conferencing. So they've taken this wind mate tablet PC and stuck it on the wall. And then they want these projectionists who have always used that Palm pilot to do what they need to do to continue to do that. And this really is, it just seems a, if it ain't broke, don't fix it kind of situation. Yeah. Where, why would they invest in doing this whenever everything works as it does, and then to run the risk of things not working then there's no reason to do it. And of note also, in this spurge article, there are only 30 theaters worldwide. Yeah. That can even show this full 70 millimeter print.
(00:42:37):
19 of them are in the us. Most of the IMAX experiences out there are digital. So you would have to go to one of these specific locations. So if they're 30 and they're all running this Palm pilot, let's let them keep running the Palm Pilot emulator on a, let me just read, I'm just gonna read the full name Wind mate. W 10 IB three S P C H two C P OE Panel. PC <laugh>. Yes. just rolls off the tongue, does it not, it rolls off the tongue. Like that film rolling off the reel. Yes, indeed. There is a there there is. I like that. The AMC Metreon in San Francisco will have this in it's Oh, and its full it's glory. Yes. Oh, wow. I should knock on the projectionist spoof and say, can I see your Palm Pilot?
(00:43:24):
He's like, ah, you too. <Laugh> <laugh>. That stupid TikTok. Yeah, I read that article. I saw that TikTok. Yeah. I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, don't it. And and if you do fix it and then it breaks more, then why would you Yeah. Don't well just leave it. Yeah. And, and investing the, the time and resources into recreating something that exists in a literally like a, a couple of handfuls of, of cinemas, but at the same time, I mean, there is a, a time at which that thing's gonna need to be replaced, right? Yeah. Like, it's not gonna last forever. I can't imagine. Right. I, but I wonder, but maybe it does. This feels like one of those situations where all the projectionists are going, why did someone tell people this? Now they're gonna come around and take away our palm pilots.
(00:44:09):
Yeah, yeah. And you will pull it from my cold dead hands. Oh boy. This just reminds me, I, once upon a time, I worked in the, in the movie theater industry for probably like five or six years. And at one point I managed a movie theater for a couple of years. And so, and I, at that theater, I wasn't responsible for replacing the platters. If I had worked at a different mo movie theater, I would've been Oh wow. But there was a union projectionist there that kind of walked between two different cinemas to, to manage all that stuff. But I was very close to and very familiar with the technology behind the scenes, which makes me really interested on, in like a kind of a, a, a nerdy like theater buff sort of way to get in the booth and kind of see one of these things rolling.
(00:44:54):
Cuz that platter is giant. I mean, it's huge. It's the fact that it's 600 pounds of film. Like I would love 11 miles to see this print, 11 miles of film. I would love to see this print. I'm sure it's amazing. All right. So that's my story of the week. Yes. And we have a great interview coming up, but I do want to take a moment to tell you about our third sponsor today. It is AWS Insiders Podcast who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly AWS Insiders. It's a fast-paced, entertaining, an insightful look behind the scenes of AWS and cloud computing. And look, this is not your typical Talking Heads Tech podcast. Never heard of those. It's high production value, high energy and high entertainment. It's full of captivating stories from the early days of AWS to today and beyond.
(00:45:45):
Hosts, Rahul Supermanium and Hillary Doyle dig into the current state and the future of AWS by talking with people and companies that actually know it best. Rahul is a veteran AWS pro with more than 15 years of experience managing more than 45,000 AWS instances. He's known for pushing AWS products to their limits and for believing AWS is truly the operating system of the future. AWS Insiders is a show that's full of opinions, takeaways, and untold stories about the challenges, innovations, and the mind blowing promise of cloud computing. And there was a recent episode that I think anybody out there would find fascinating. It's called Behind the Scenes at Prime Day with aws. And the guest on the show is Jeff Barr. For folks who don't know the, he is the vice President and chief evangelist for Amazon Web Services. So one of the heads of AWS itself, who talks about Amazon's own experience with AWS in concert with Prime Day.
(00:46:52):
And we're talking huge numbers, millions of requests per second, billions of products sold, and how AWS helps to make sure that Amazon Prime Day went off without a hitch. And when I purchased, I think one product that day I was able to get it and not worry about it not getting to me when it needed to. So, really cool. Look well worth listening to there are some other episodes of what as well early in this season they talked about filling the cloud talent gap and then also Moderna mRNA and aws, where they talk about Moderna being a CloudFirst company. Very cool. So, search for AWS Insiders in your podcast player, or visit cloud fixx.orea.com/podcast. That's cloud fixx.au r e a.com/podcast. And of course, we'll also include a link in the show notes. Our thanks to AWS Insiders for their support to listeners and viewers out there.
(00:47:59):
We just wanted to let you know that in the next interview we do talk about topics such as suicide and self-harm. If that's something you would rather not listen to or watch please feel free to exit the episode at this time. Thank you. We are back from the break, and that means it's time for Jason Howell's interview. That's right. Interview with a special guest. We're grappling right now with things like whether AI should be seen as an extension of humanity or maybe just a robot in disguise, <laugh>. And I think there's a lot of assumptions that are being made as to what humans really want out of these machines. Whether those robot those robots, I call 'em robots, but you know, the ai, the systems behind them can actually offer a, an experience that you know, goes at least on par with what we get from a true human experience. And when we're talking about therapeutic instances and the use of AI for things like therapy think that's a perfect example of where we as humans have a certain expectation. Can the machine actually satisfy that expectation. So joining me, you may remember our guests from hosting such podcasts as well. This one, Megan Marone, it's good to have you back.
Megan Morrone (00:49:18):
Hello Jason. Thank you for having me.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:49:21):
It's great to have you. And I love your glasses game. I feel like every time I see you, you've got a new frame on it and they're all fantastic. Glasses on point. <Laugh> plants on point. Good printer choice. There you go. Love rating your your backdrop, your background.
Megan Morrone (00:49:38):
I tried to come into the studio, but I was told I wasn't invited.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:49:42):
Oh, well I'll be, oh,
Megan Morrone (00:49:45):
I'm just kidding.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:49:46):
<Laugh>. Okay. I was like, who are you about to drop under the bus? Cause
Megan Morrone (00:49:49):
No, I'm gonna, I'm, I will stop by the studio, but I, it's hard to fit a third person in there in the middle, right. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:49:54):
That's okay. We make, it's easier.
Megan Morrone (00:49:55):
That's what I missed. My leg
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:49:56):
Has to
Megan Morrone (00:49:57):
Go there, there. I know. I'm always welcome there <laugh>.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:49:59):
That's where my leg is. So I'd have to move my leg. Exactly. And I just dunno, that's where my water bottle is. So anyways, we would always make room for you, Megan. Absolutely. It's so good to see you. So you wrote about AI therapy for Fast Company. You've been pretty busy writing articles I've seen this week especially. So thought we'd talk a little bit about this cause and, and maybe we should take a step back first at, at the beginning here you did some work kind of looking at therapy with some of these different large language models. These chat bots might go going into this experience or experiment, whatever you want to call it. Did you believe that it could actually satisfy like you know, offer a, the therapeutic experience on par with like a human being?
Megan Morrone (00:50:48):
I, you know, I I really, that's a good question. I didn't, I didn't have any expectations really. I mean, I, I have been amazed by Chachi pt mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for over, I mean, I feel like the first time I saw it in use was Micah last, like November, December, right when it launched. And like we, I was having you guys over and he asked Chachi, bt what he should bring and like, said what the other people were bringing. It was this like amazing moment. I was like, oh my God, this is my new best friend <laugh>. So I guess, yeah, I was like, well, why can't it be a therapist? And I like did some search research and people have been using it, like a lot of people have been using it. And I think actually like Bard and Chachi, BT and, you know, open OpenAI that runs Chachi bt they've been sort of changing things so that people can't use it as much as they have been.
(00:51:38):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, like, so it is a little bit more protecting vulnerable people. But yeah, I mean, to some extent it, it really depends on like what you see as therapy. Yes. Mm. And a lot of people like confuse therapy with life coaching which is normal. But I mean, anyone who's a life coach or a therapist would like tell you specifically what the difference is between the two. But I have found that, you know, just going through and, you know, just using whatever my insurance can offer me, which is usually, which is often like some kind of third party thing where I match with someone, you know, in Canada who's gonna meet with me. And, you know, basically what I found was they were telling me a lot of the things that people have been telling me for a really long time. You know, like if you have, you know, if you have negative self-talk, then you know, here's what reframe what you're saying or, you know, it's like the stuff that like you would, you and I would say to each other, right. When we're like having a conversation about how we're feeling. It's like nobody needs a degree or needs to pay $300 an hour for someone to say, have you tried meditating? Well, right.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:52:43):
Yes. Right, right.
Megan Morrone (00:52:44):
I've tried meditating
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:52:46):
<Laugh>, there's, there's the low hanging fruit of, of of therapy suggestions and recommendations. Have you gone outside, outside today? You know? Yeah. Mindfulness, journaling, there's all these things. So then I guess from that perspective, like you, you spent some time with Chachi pt, you spent some time with Bard. Let's start there. Cause the third one I ha I'm, I'm super unfamiliar with, but we'll start with the two that everybody has, has already heard of. What kind of support were you able to get from these two systems? So like what were they, what were they telling you and was it, what is it satisfying?
Megan Morrone (00:53:22):
They're very validating. Which helps. And then it's a lot, like I asked it, I asked it some more like personal things, which is always risky. Right? Sure. Cuz you don't know where this information is going. Yeah. but I asked him some like parenting questions of like, oh, I have some frustrations with my kid. I'm trying to get him to get a summer job. And that was helpful. Like one of the interesting things with Bard was like I said, you know, it's July and he still doesn't have a job or No, I actually didn't even tell it. It was July. I just typed it in in the middle of July and said like, my son isn't getting a job. He's going to college in August. And it actually gave me the advice of like, well, it's kind of a little bit late to be looking for a job in July, but here's what you can try.
(00:54:05):
So it was very practical things. Chat bt the same thing. You know, a lot of what we were talking about, like if it's, if you say like, I'm feeling sad it will, you know, tell you all the basic things. And I'm not saying those things don't work. Like it's good to go outside good to meditate, good to journal, but it's a lot of basic things. And all of their, their legal information like, you know, I talked to some of the companies, some didn't respond, but mostly in their privacy policy, it says, do not use this for medical advice. Do not use it. You know, for like, do you know, do I not diagnose? And if you were ever to say like, I'm gonna hurt myself mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or I'm gonna hurt someone else. Right. It would definitely like it. Definitely. All of all of the, I mean, Chachi PT and Bard and PI also, like they have safeguards in there to like I'm not exactly sure.
(00:54:52):
I know they will, like, just like Google will, if you say, if you Google, I wanna kill myself, it's going to come up with a suicide hotline mm-hmm. <Affirmative> line. So I don't, it might go further. I might report that I'm not exactly sure about those things. But yeah, basically it was fine. And the, when I had a specific issue, it was definitely helpful in giving me advice, like more helpful than just like, Googling it would be because it was very specific to the requests that I made. And then, you know, it, but it also it's, it's trick. It's interesting. It will give you different responses if you just say, if you just asked it questions versus like, if you use clinical terms, like, I'm feeling depressed. Like, it then will remind you that it's a large language model and not a therapist, not a doctor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I think those things are evolving. And it's when you get into, like, if you've heard, I'm sure you've heard the stories of people using chat bots and really like, feeling suicidal and, you know, the chat bot sort of going wild and like recommending that, you know, you kill yourself or something like that. Those are all third party, like you know, very, you know, rudimentary generative AI apps that like, I wouldn't recommend. So, but the, these big ones, they're not gonna go Hey Wire yet in that way.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:56:10):
Yeah. Yeah. They're doing a lot to, to safeguard not only the people that are using it, but also protect themselves from anything <laugh> like that happening. So it seems like they have those those guardrails in place at least, at least early on. Now, what about pi? What's, what's different about pi? I, I was very unfamiliar with PI when I read it in the article. This is actually backed by Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt, just as, as a couple of examples of who's, you know, putting their putting their names and their money behind it. What, what is the focus of this, of this chatbot and how did it fare by comparison?
Megan Morrone (00:56:49):
So Reid Hoffman is one of the other supporters, so it's like really gotten everybody, like, you know, from DeepMind and, you know, Google and like all these people and you know, people formally from OpenAI who've come together for this very specific purpose. And they've done a lot of consulting with therapists and and other health professionals to really sort of focus on having, on making it a, a, a companion. So it's, it's, PI stands for personal ai, personal intelligence, and it's really it is really for that specific purpose. And it was, it was disturbingly enjoyable to chat with Pi <laugh>. Mm. And and it like, you can also like turn on the, the, like a voice, so it could be a male voice or female voice and, you know, and it, it also is very validating, even more validating than the other ones.
(00:57:42):
Like, whatever I said, it was just like, good job Megan <laugh>. And or just, you know, like, have you considered this? Or, it was very conversational right down to like, the weirdest part was, I mean, it was very like uncanny valley. So I asked it the same question about my son you know, trying to get him to get a, a job and how frustrating that was for like an, our relationship. And, and PI said, you know, I would suggest you just do some gentle nudging. And I, I meant to type back, I did some gentle nudging. I like that. But instead I accidentally typed, I've done some gentle judging.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:58:22):
Oh no. And then
Megan Morrone (00:58:23):
I responded, haha, I think you meant nudging, but judging works too.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:58:29):
Whoa. Honestly, got a sense of humor.
Megan Morrone (00:58:32):
I know. And I mean, like, part of me is like, oh my God, that had to be an actual person on the other end. That cannot be artificial intelligence that would recognize my, like Freudian slip there, but who knows? Yeah. But the biggest issue I wanna mention before, and I'm sure we're almost out of time, I remember how this works, but I see issues <laugh>.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:58:51):
Yes, absolutely. Tell me a little bit about that. I mean, you know, when you're, when you're in a therapy therapy and it's not a, it's not a firm cutoff time, so it's Okay. Things have changed a little bit since you were on night. Oh, okay. But all right,
Megan Morrone (00:59:02):
We got a couple hours. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (00:59:04):
Let's, let's just make ourselves comfortable. Not that much. Like, you know, usually often in a therapy session, you go into a room, there's a white noise machine outside the door, the door closes, everything spoke in the room is, you know, considered confidential. You've, there's a lot of, of these assurances when you're talking to a computer, you don't know. So did that impact you in, in, in this experience? And like, what, what about the, the assurances that the, the people creating these systems, what do they say about that?
Megan Morrone (00:59:32):
Well, they all say that your information is anonymized and that you're not connected. It's not connected to your name. Chat, g b t, you know, you can turn off the chat history so that it's not used to train these large language models. It's not sent out there. Pi also like, says that it, it, everything is secure and personal just between you and and the chat bot, unless you say something that's dangerous, unless you say something that you know, will be a risk to yourself or others. But, so that brings up a lot of things. One is that like we all know any place can get hacked. Any place can and will get hacked. And so, you know, you have to assume that like whatever privacy they have there's a potential that whatever you type in there get out.
(01:00:20):
And then there's just the like, nuance of being with a person mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and saying something like, oh, I'm so frustrated, I could kill that person. You know, and like, your therapist knows you're not gonna kill that person, but like, does an ai probably not. So like there's that, there's just also the idea that I mean, I think therapy should, everyone should have access to therapy. And right now it's like very gate kept not just like money, you know, costs a lot. You maybe have to have a job with medical insurance. You have to live in a place where there are therapists. It's hard to find a therapist that looks like you if you're like a marginalized person. So there's all those things. If we start saying like, you know, just yeah, you, you guys, you, you guys use this free therapy and I'm gonna keep going to that, you know, $500 an hour guy who graduated from Harvard.
(01:01:14):
So like there is that like inequity that, that it causes. And of course, like we all know that like there's ity in terms of who has rights to privacy as well. And so yeah, there are a lot of questions. I think my belief is that the future will be at working in concert with a human. And not in the sense of like, you'll be chatting with it like a friend, but that it will be able to like, diagnose more conditions based on symptoms because like, it just, you know, has, has all that information that like every, you know, psychiatrist doesn't necessarily have in their mind. So that, that's what I think the, the future of it will be. But for now, like if you need a friend just and something very basic that is not like a super private issue, I would suggest, you know, chat, chat away.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (01:02:06):
Yeah. You could certainly check it out and see if it actually fulfills that need or what you're looking for. Going, going to it. And also understanding, like you said earlier, the, the, the people who have created these systems specify that like, these are not meant to be used in this particular way. So your, your mileage may and probably will totally vary on whether you get the answers that you're looking for, whether it gives you any of those, like those therapeutic like aha moments. Yeah. I don't know. There's, there's a lot of like, I don't know the, like the, the connection, the empathy piece. I just have a really hard time feeling like I'm gonna get that connection with a, with a computer screen versus being in a room where I come up with that, that moment. And, and it's very impactful when that happens. And so I think these systems, I'm guessing have a long way to go when it comes to that. But the basic stuff, like you're saying totally, like why not that that's, you know, and it, and it's, and it's informed by a lot of fa you know, factual information, hopefully that's fed into it, right? As the mm-hmm. As the, the research portion. So yeah,
Megan Morrone (01:03:12):
That's the other thing, like of course AI is prone to hallucinations and lies and could tell you like very wrong things. Yeah. But one hopes that it doesn't. Yeah. So, and I mean the one more like the ex existential part of it is like if it does re replace or really like equal human empathy, then that's a bigger question to grapple with. I mean, I know we don't have enough time to get into that <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to. But yeah, I mean, because like then what does human empathy mean? Absolutely. What does it mean to be humans? I mean, cuz already we're like texting with friends and family back and forth, like it's not that different. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we just know there's a human on the other side, but here, like they're absolutely is not.
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (01:03:50):
Yeah. Not until they've made themselves human. Anyways, not that I think that's gonna happen anytime soon. Megan Morone always a pleasure getting the chance to talk to you and sometimes you know, get together for lunch and stuff. So thank you so much for coming on once hour show tech News Weekly. Appreciate you being here.
Megan Morrone (01:04:13):
Thanks so much for having me. It's always
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (01:04:15):
Fun. Well, so, and you wrote this for fast Company your work. You are writing for a lot of different places right now. Where can people mm-hmm <affirmative> keep track of everything that you're doing right now?
Megan Morrone (01:04:26):
Pretty much Twitter is or Threads? I met Megan Marone on both. So yeah, like I've I've basically been posting things in both places, but I'm writing for Fast Company, I'm writing for It, brew for All You It people out there. And I'm also writing for BBC Work Life and hopefully other places too. So
Mikah Sargent & Jason Howell (01:04:46):
<Laugh>, there you go. Find Megan if you, if you've got another place and you like Megan, there you go. Match Made in Heaven. Thank you Megan. Thanks. Always a pleasure. We'll talk to you soon, <laugh>. Bye-Bye. Bye-bye. Alright, now with that, we've reached the end of this episode, tech Newsweek Weekly. We do the show every Thursday, TWIT TV slash tnw. That's where you can go to subscribe to the show because as we say, weekend and week out, that is the one of the most important things you can do for this show and for the network, is to subscribe to our podcast so you get them delivered to you automatically. We appreciate it when you do that. Thank you. And if you'd like to get all of our shows ad free, plus a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart, in your mind mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and wherever else you feel warm, fuzzy feelings consider joining the Club Club twit at twit tv slash club twit.
(01:05:36):
When you do, you subscribe for $7 a month, $84 a year. You will get every single twit show with no ads. It's just the content because you are supporting the network. You also gain access to the Twit plus bonus feed that has extra stuff you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show. Special Club TWIT events all get published in the Twit plus feed and access to the members only Discord server. A fun place to go to chat with your fellow club TWIT members and also those of us here at twit. My co-host for iOS today, Rosemary Orchard is one of the most active hosts in the Discord. Always great to get to chat with her, starting at $7 a month, $84 a year. It is a fantastic place to be and we continue to add more and more to the club.
(01:06:23):
We've got some great shows that are club Twitter exclusives, including the Untitled Linux Show. It is a show all about Linux. We've also got Paul OTTs Hands-on Windows program, which is a short format show that covers windows, tips and tricks. My HandsOn Mac program, which is a short format show that covers apple tips and tricks. The episode that'll publish a little later today is all about hot corners, ONMs hottest, fun, hottest of corners, the hottest of corners. Woo, that's spicy. And the wonderful Scott Wilkinson has Home Theater Geeks now in the club. It's relaunched there. And there is soon to be a show covering the stuff we talked about today. AI in the Club featuring Jason Howell. Yeah, I'll be sandboxing that actually today. It's be my second week in a row of sandboxing the AI Show. So I'm gonna be nice chatting with Anthony Nielsen.
(01:07:17):
He's gonna tell us about how AI integrates here at twit. Ooh, the different things that we do. Here's secrets. That's, that's really cool. That'll be valuable for anybody who's, you know, maybe wanting to do some of the stuff that we do. So definitely don't miss that you still have time to join Club Twit at twit tv slash club twit. So you can check that out. If you'd like to follow me online, I am at Mica Sergeant at many a social media network where you can add to Chi wawa.coffee, that's c h i h Hua h hua.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Please do check out Hands on Mac if you are a Club Twit subscriber or will soon be. Also check out on Sundays the wonderful Ask the Tech Guys show where Leo LaPorte and I take your questions live on air, do our best to answer them.
(01:08:11):
And on Tuesdays, of course, you can watch iOS today with Rosemary Orchard and yours truly where we talk all things iOS, tv os, HomePod, os Watch, os it's all the OSS Apple has on offer. We love to talk about the auto iOS today. I think that's it and that's all. So Jason Howell, tell us about you. Well, you can find me at Jason Howell on Twitter, Twitter social slash Jason Howell. That Jason Howell. It just really depends, but probably Jason Howell is in there in to some degree. I'm just not nearly as good at locking in my usernames in all the different places as, as you are obviously Micah <laugh>. So anyway, so just search for me. You'll probably find me somehow I do this show, of course also doing, you know, the AI show, working on that, and gonna be doing that today in the club.
(01:09:02):
So that's coming soon for club members, but that's really it for me. You can find me in all those places. And yeah, I think we've reached the end. So thank you everybody for watching and listening. So thank you at home. Thanks to everybody here in the studio for helping us do this show each and every week. Couldn't do it without the Johns and aunt I think was in here. Burke tested some people. So thanks for our team and thanks to you for watching. We'll see you next time on Tech News Weekly. Bye bye. Whoa. Yeah. Robot <laugh>,