This Week in Google 764 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.

00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Twig this week in Google. This week, the return of Stacey Higginbotham. Paris Martineau is also here. Jeff Jarvis we have a beautiful song, a sea shanty, custom written by our AI, just for Craig Newmark. We'll play that. We'll talk about how you keep cows from eating too much metal, or maybe what to do after they've eaten too much metal. I wasn't completely clear. Stacey recommends a really depressing book and we talk about how AI really is just a code term for eugenics.

00:35 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It's all coming up next on Twig Podcasts you love from people you trust this is Twig.

00:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You love from people you trust this is twit this is twig this week in google, episode 764, recorded wednesday, april 17th, 2024. Cow magnets. It's time for twig this week, google, the show where we cover the latest news from Google. Somebody suggested we've already gone through this week in general. Somebody suggested last week we should call it this Week in Giggles. There will be giggles aplenty this week because we're going to have some fun.

01:18
Jeff Jarvis did not go to Italy, so he's here. We thought, well, he won't be here. You know, it would be really great to have Paris Martineau from the information she's here and have her joined by our former beloved co-host, stacey Higginbotham, who's also here now, policy fellow at Consumer Reports. Uh so, but all four of us are here. So get ready for this weekend giggles, because we're gonna have some fun. Now, before we go too far, you remember we were playing with suno last week, the the ai music generator, still very, I think, very impressive. There's another one that came out right after it, called audio, which is audio without the A, I guess, or studio without the ST.

02:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You know it's a sign of a good name when you have to explain it.

02:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What is Udio? But I've tried them both and I think Sunoda is the best. So we thought you know we always play Craig Newmark's choral work when we introduced Jeff Jarvis, professor Tao Knight, professor of journalistic innovation at the now wait a minute, craig, craig, craig Newmark, craig Newmark J school at the City University of New York. But I had Suno shortly after our show last week and it blew me away. I thought let's make something new for Craig. So I asked it to write a song about Craig and, as you know, craig is his number one. Charity is pigeons After journalism.

02:55 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, not number one, but what prompt did you give it?

02:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think I just said write a sea shanty about Craig Newmark celebrating his love of pigeons, and this is what we got.

03:12 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Silence.

03:15 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Stunned.

03:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Benito's scrambling. Fill in your own song. I did send you the link, right, benito? Do you have to? I can't play it.

03:23 - Paris Martineau (Host)
These days. I don't know what's happening. Do you have to? I can't play audio this day, these days I don't know what's happening that was a game.

03:31 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That's my thought, okay here we go, here we go, here we go and this is what happened in the land of the internet.

03:41 - Craig song (Announcement)
There was a man named craig. He had a passion for pigeons Like no one could explain. He sailed the West's vast ocean In search of pigeon lore, his love for these feathery friends Forever to explore. Oh Ray Newmark Pigeon man, you sail the virtual sea with your feathered companions as free as they can be. Oh Frank Newmark Pigeon man, your heart takes to the skies in a world of zeros and ones.

04:25
You find joy in pigeon's eyes With every click and scroll. Craig's love began to grow. He built a platform, a nest where pigeon lovers could go From city streets to rooftopsops. The pigeons took to flight. Craig's passion became a movement spreading far and wide. Oh Ray Newmark, pigeon man, you sail the virtual sea with your feathered companions as free as they can be. Oh Ray, newmark, pigeon, man, onions as free as they can be isn't that amazed that was ai generated in under a minute.

05:22 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's my favorite thing about it is that it equated platform and nest.

05:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I don't think I said anything. I might have mentioned Craigslist. It seems as if Suno does do some extra research, because in other songs I've created it has pulled in stuff that was not in the prompt. I think that it might add know, add some of its own.

05:47 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
but pretty much anyway. Do you want to play the other one, just so that people can judge? Sure, but I have to give it to Benito.

05:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what? Let's see, how could I do this? Yeah, I'll say we'll do it for later in the show For the Discord. I have a lot more of these.

06:08 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I was going to say I tried to make quite a few. Oh really.

06:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And some of them ended up better than others.

06:20 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
as far as twig theme songs go, I think we're close to getting a better theme song, to be honest, oh, no more Renaissance Faire.

06:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A better theme song, to be honest, oh, no more renaissance fair. Well, I was gonna do a renfair style show that maybe said paris, leo and jeff and something like that, I don't know. Here I'll work on that here let's do that paris.

06:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Do you have one to share too, I?

06:39 - Paris Martineau (Host)
uh, have one. I think I sent repertoire email chain chain, but Renaissance is a better theme. I was trying to figure out. I was playing around with Suno and quickly hit my limit on the free credits and was like I'm not paying money for this. But it is interesting, leo, that you mentioned that you think it kind of does its own research on it, because I found I had to be very specific with the things that I wanted and it wouldn't make the sort of obvious logical leaps that I assumed it would. Um, when it came to, it's a mystery how the whole thing works.

07:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's really a mystery, but it's really.

07:13
I ended up paying for it because by the way there is a reason to pay for it oh, I think it was 99 for a year. But the reason to pay for it, they're smart, it's in the fine print. If you generate it with the free account, you don't own the rights to the song, but it's royalty free if you pay, so I can use it as our um, as our theme song. Here I'm gonna, I tell you what. I will copy this link that I just generated, if I I'll put it, should I? Where's best to put it? Benito in the show notes? The doc, yeah, the doc's the best, the doc. Okay, so I just had it. I just, while we were talking, generated something new and let me insert a row, and this is, I don't know, stacyacy, you can be the independent third party judge. Oh, wait a minute, what is it? Command shift v you can be in today before the show started, leo and jeff learned about command shift v.

08:16 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Previously they'd been using god knows what techniques because we're old and we don't like to learn new things Possible.

08:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is a possible new theme song. And you know, the reason I chose this terrible theme song and Stacey has lived with this for years, and so did Jeff, and actually it goes back to even Gina is because I wanted a contrapuntal kind of round, like you talk, then I talk, then we talk, like that. But it didn't work. Oh, there was actually a method to it. I wanted a contrapuntal kind of round, like you talked and I talked and we talked, it's like that. But it didn't work. Oh, there was actually a method to it.

08:48 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You actually had a rationale behind it.

08:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Also because it was royalty free, I paid for it.

08:56 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, I thought it was just royalty free, yeah it sounded royalty free too.

09:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think Suno does better stuff, but Benito play our new. I haven't listened to it.

09:05 - Paris Martineau (Host)
This is sight unseen. I'm curious, though, if this takes off, if we will start to associate Because you know we have the same associations, like you just said, with royalty-free music sounding royalty-free. I wonder if, in a couple of years, we'll be like oh it so sounds, suno it sounds. Ai-generated.

09:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Try weeks, not years.

09:27 - Craig song (Announcement)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, benito is a skeptic, by the way, that's Benito Fury, and he's going to be, replaced Maiden's Fair.

09:36 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I don't think we can have Maiden's Fair in there. I'm sorry.

09:43 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
This is like a long-haired redhead on a rock.

09:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
who's like bad?

09:44 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Stacey disapproved within a second. Yes, wait, it's the Outlander soundtrack.

09:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It didn't do anything I asked it to do.

10:02 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Okay, I pasted one. What did you prompt it? With? What did you write, Leo?

10:09 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I heard nothing about technology.

10:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I said Ren Faire style madrigal for the show this week in Google starring Jeff Leo and Paris, but this did not. Let me try again. How about a?

10:23 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Renaissance romance.

10:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Paris at least you were a maiden fair in this, as opposed to honey, which is what leo called uh stacy to get her mad many times hey stop it, even though I'm not not even in the studio.

10:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh well, what should I? What should the style be for this?

10:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I've got Paris' one here.

10:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Go on, let's hear Paris'.

10:48 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's rock themed and it did generate one. Is this Blink-182? Inspired.

11:13 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It is Blink-182.

11:15 - Craig song (Announcement)
San Jose Jerry Hendricks leading the way you did. That, didn't you?

11:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're leading the way. Geriatrics leading the way. You did that, didn't you? That's not the machine.

11:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I did so. You know it took a couple times, but I had to be, like you've got to mention, this week in geriatrics which Stacey is our alternative name to pay respect to Jeff and Leo.

11:42 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Ferris, you should tell Stacy how your friend characterized the show.

11:48 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, when I first started doing this, I got a text from my friend saying oh, how's that podcast going that you're doing with your two dads?

11:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, I was like pretty good, stacy knows all about that, doesn't?

12:03 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
she. I have definitely called them old on at least more than one occasion. Oh yeah, sorry y'all, oh yeah.

12:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, we're going to play one more and then we're going to really stop. This is a very, very bad habit, but that's what happens. When you discover this AI stuff, there's some really interesting stuff happening. Music is pretty easy, and I think and I've said this before, but I'll say it again that all this is going to do is make more valuable the human created stuff, because only humans can do kind of unexpected, quirky, weird things. The AI just does the mediocre. So, but, as it turns out, podcast theme songs are generally on the mediocre side at best. Yes, endorse, it's all right, you want to play this one? This is a. This is also. This is medieval.

12:52 - Craig song (Announcement)
I think it's the fourth one land of knights and castles maybe you should prompt it with like lutes, have you thought about putting in that it's a tech podcast?

13:21 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, Computers. It does have our name in there, that's good.

13:33 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I'm going to start calling you Sir Leo, sir Jeff and.

13:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Sir Paris, thank you, lady.

13:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Paris, please.

13:42 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
No, no. If you're a knight, you're a sir. Oh Paradis Paris, I'm not. If you're a knight, you're a sir.

13:46 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Peronis. Paris Rhymes Peronis. That's awful. This is rough, this is terrible, nothing will hit as hard as the Lorem Ipsum Gregorian chant that was pretty good. That was pretty good. I think we're just trying to.

14:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That was pretty good. I think we need to move on now. But thank you, I'm not using my podcast music anymore.

14:13 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
What's yours? So if you would like the IOT pod, I don't remember it- Is it royalty?

14:17 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Can you hum?

14:18 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
a few bars. I can't anymore. I'm so sorry. I'll send it over. It's royalty free.

14:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's royalty free. That's all I care about at this point. Anything If I don't have to pay for it, I like it. Okay, I'm going to put in one more, but we're not going to play it, we're just going to, I'm just going to put it in, and then you decide what you want to do Meanwhile. To do meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, meanwhile, uh, let's, let's, uh, actually, I'm gonna put benito, you got some more work to do. We want to do some video today, because this is a sad day. This is a day to say goodbye to atlas, the boston dynamic robot that gave us such nightmares for so many years. Boston dynamics did that dog, which was terrifying, but atlas I don't know about you, stacy, but atlas really scared the pants off of me the dog is still more terrifying.

15:14 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
But I'm with you. Atlas is also like thing I see in my nightmares so, benito, there's on line 26.

15:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh well, actually there's a farewell video. Where did I put that here? It is line 30. Boston retires its robot atlas. And what they did with the boston dynamics did to say goodbye is they played a. They made a highlight reel of some of the great moments from atlas. Atlas is the robot, remember they tried to kick and push over. Anyway, watch this. Poor Benito, I'm making him work hard today. Normally I play these audio and video cues from my own computer.

15:52 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Something's up with this page.

15:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's giving you just a white there. It is Okay, go down, scroll down, because below.

16:03 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
it is an action Play the whole video.

16:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Go full screen on that Play the whole video.

16:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the on that Play the whole video. This is the farewell.

16:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
He's so stocky.

16:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Can you go full screen? There you go and play the sound too. Yeah, that was easy.

16:17 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
This does not help my nightmares at all.

16:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the old robot. I told you it was scary. He's gone, Stacy.

16:22 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
He could always rise again.

16:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what, though? Watch, because they're going to make you feel better in just a second.

16:31 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Analyst is not going to have any children.

16:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Walking over rocks.

16:42 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That's fun Getting hit with a 20-pound ball Opening doors.

16:49 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Walking on an incline.

16:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Picking up boxes. This is the one where they're so mean, yeah, so mean. So this atlas is based on hydraulics, oh God.

17:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh jeez, why is there so much dust coming out of it? Wait watch.

17:14 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
No, that's fluid. They're going to show you fluid.

17:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're going to show you the hydraulic fluid pouring out of a broken limb. Oh no, In fact, maybe we should warn people, trigger warning on this, because it's pretty, oh God, oh no. Did you see that?

17:37 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Whoa blood color.

17:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was well coffee color, I mean.

17:41 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, it was copper.

17:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's oil, I guess, Anyway, Atlas. Thank was copper. It's oil, I guess, Anyway, Atlas. Thank you for many years of entertaining Pratt Falls and Tumbles. I think it's great that Boston Dynamics has such a sense of humor.

17:58 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, exactly, you know this is their wildly expensive product, but they're making progress, they're making progress, they're making progress.

18:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's rolling all the way down the hill. All right, now, if you go back to the line 26, this is the new Boston Dynamics electric version of Atlas, and they decided to keep the name, interestingly. So no more hydraulics Now these are all electric actuators, and it's a friendlier face, you see, there's a video also for this.

18:30 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
That is not friendlier. No, that's way more it's a blank disc. With a ring light so it can broadcast your device.

18:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's lying down, it's got fists. How's it going to get up Like that?

18:46 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Like the exorcist girl yeah.

18:48 - Craig song (Announcement)
No, no, no.

18:50 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's got a tight butt.

18:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, there's no front to that one. It can go anywhere you want it to go. So get ready, because here come the robots. Thank you, boston Dynamics. Oh, did you guys see the? Uh, boston dynamics.

19:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Cowboy, uh, cowboy, robot dog video. Does those words make any sense to you?

19:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
if you had woman television and, uh, I think I can. I know where we're going.

19:20 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Let's see it's a line 27. I've been thinking about this all week.

19:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, this is a real human right.

19:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's a real human. And then there's the robot dog it's dancing with him.

19:35 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I think it's beautiful. That thing will never be cute. It will always be terrifying.

19:39 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh no, it's definitely terrifying, but this is kind of mesmerizing.

19:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know.

19:44 - Paris Martineau (Host)
This came across my TikTok feed and I've been thinking about it. It's very TikTok. It's called Spot, it's from Spot Talk, which is just a bunch of weird things people have trained the spot dog to do.

19:57 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
There was a spot that got shot. A spot got shot, a spot got shot. I think it was up in Alaska. That makes sense. Am I not surprised, you know? A spot got shot, a spot got shot, I think it was up in Alaska. And the person who? Yeah, am I not surprised, you know? I don't know if it stopped it or not, but there were fines involved.

20:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's the thing. If it didn't stop it, now I'm scared.

20:16 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, well.

20:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So there is, of course, AI in all of these robots.

20:23 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Okay, these robots were terrifying before. They had ai, and ai has just been veneered over the robot now.

20:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah I mean one of the demo videos they showed of the new uh atlas electric atlas is it can grasp uh random arbitrary objects. So it can look at an object and figure out where its pinchers go and close it and lift it up and move it around. So it's really the idea. By the way, Boston Dynamics was purchased by Hyundai and so the first use of this new electric robot will be in the Hyundai factory floor where it will be lifting auto parts and moving them around and positioning them and so forth.

21:01 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It was purchased by Hyundai from Google. Google Right who sold it.

21:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, there was a google in the.

21:09 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I think, yeah, boston dynamics used to be independent.

21:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Then google bought it and then it was in the middle and then google didn't want to be a weapon robot.

21:16 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, I don't want to make evil robotic dogs, that's that's a problem.

21:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's not good no uh, anyway, thank you, atlas, for giving us loads of laughs and a few more than a few nightmares. Uh, did you see the marquez brownlee review of the humane ai pin, the worst product I've ever reviewed?

21:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I just saw all the blowback from it.

21:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And there was huge blowback, which surprises me Huge blowback, which is ridiculous.

21:47 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean, I think people think that reviewers exist to hype up products. I mean, you see the same sort of blowback if a news outlet gives a bad review to a video game.

22:02 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
nowadays, we're all product stons today and that's that's where we're at, and it's a shame, because the biggest is great.

22:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, the biggest complaint was on Twitter. I won't say the guy. It feels like the most of the people were upset. We're either friends of the humane company or invest or, more importantly, investors are friends of investors. But the biggest negative tweet came from somebody who said you know Marques Brownlee, a guy with 180 million followers and billions of views, just killed this company. Oh geez. Well, yeah, suicide. You know what killed the company? Yeah, it's a bad product.

22:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Putting a bad product up before it's ready and charging people for it. That's what benedict evans on twitter said. He said I'm gonna pile on. But you sell a product, you say it's gonna work. You charge money for it doesn't work. What do you expect?

22:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
excellent, uh blog post from a guy named steven sandovsky about all of this, in which he says effectively, companies are taking the Apple playbook to create these products and that is not the right way to do it. Let me let me see if I can find his his post.

23:21 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
The Apple playbook being releasing your hardware in alpha or beta and letting your first buyers beta test it.

23:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, actually, Apple doesn't do that really. It did it with the Vision Pro and it's the first time they've done that.

23:33 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
And it did it with the watch. I would say they did it with the watch.

23:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sorry, it's Benjamin Zandofsky. Oh, the humanity is the name of his blog why you can't build Apple with venture capital. And is the name of his blog why you Can't Build Apple with Venture Capital. And he talks about the Humane. They raised six years ago $230 million to ship the pin, but he says it is a bad product. It deserves to be a bad product, but this is what Venture Capital does.

24:03
He says you have to understand how VCs think. Rich people and rich organizations think pension funds and billion-dollar college endowments. Don't throw all their money in a savings account of the stock market. They have so much money they can place bets in alternative investments. These are hedge funds, real estate or venture capital. In other words, throw a lot of money at a ton of startups knowing that most of your investments will lose money, but every so often you'll get one that's so big it pays. It pays back. It's kind of the hollywood hit model for making movies. Um, he said so. They were able to raise money because humane was founded by a couple. By by the way, he says that is immediately red flag number one Never invest in a company that's founded by a couple. But Wired turned out okay. That's. Wired is a good example of a success. And then Twit is a couple, but you know, most of them know and maybe that's Sorry, hello, is that my wife Tell her? Is that my wife Tell her?

25:05 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Is that a landline or is? That he does have a landline.

25:09 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I do have the landline, you know, but this is.

25:10 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Oh, you just have the landline on your phone.

25:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, spam risk he has a landline in his rung Um he. The other problem was that the guy worked at Apple designing um the uh, the first iPhone, and so that pedigree helped, but ultimately, really what Humane was was a laser projector that they added AI later on and made it be more of a post iPhone device right.

25:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But isn't the problem that it doesn't return answers that are useful?

25:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The problem really is that it was slow and the laser gets hot, the laser gets hot, the battery dies very quickly, and the way they solved that, they knew that was the case. So they have swappable batteries, so you carry around a pocket of batteries and put in your pen. He also compared it to the secret, which was a bracelet that you would put on your wrist and that would project with laser light a screen, so you didn't need to carry a phone right. That also never worked Well these are efforts.

26:17 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
They see it, our blob.

26:20 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, amazon had one. It was their kid's toy that had a projection screen. That's right. I can't think of what it was called. They killed that. But we've been waiting for viable interactive projections for a long time to give us. Yeah, like our blob Jeff, which is the next form factor to get us away from this.

26:43 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
There was also the projected keyboard, too, that you could type on a surface.

26:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, um good, good piece, benjamin Sandofsky. Uh oh, the humanity is the name of the piece from Sandofskycom.

26:57 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Are you really?

26:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but see, this is the thing and I was surprised that people were so upset about Marquez's review. I I didn't buy it because I looked at it I said this is a non-starter, I wasn't interested. Real people weren't upset.

27:11 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Real people don't even know what the humane pen is.

27:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, you're right, excellent point Some guy on Twitter was upset.

27:18 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And that guy is not a real person.

27:21 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
The Twitter class, the Twitterati, has shrunk to a very definable class of grievances.

27:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would say I thought it was a weird take on. Excuse me, my phone is ringing. I thought I had.

27:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Wow, all of you guys are getting calls, Stacey. We've got to get some calls coming in here. Wait, I know how to use.

27:42 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Do Not Disturb. What was that? I thought? Do Not Dist some calls coming in here. Wait, I know how to use. Do Not Disturb. What was that I?

27:46 - Paris Martineau (Host)
thought Do Not Disturb on for eight years.

27:48 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, I was like my phone's never able to ring.

27:51 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I can't remember the last time I heard my phone ring, frankly. But no, I think that part of the issue here which I think that Sandofsky piece gets at Leo is that maybe the reaction to this product would have been different if humane wasn't like their pitch is predicated on. We're redefining a generation of products. We are creating the next iphone, the next interface for the internet. If they, I don't know, were able to shoot smaller to begin with, being like this is an interesting way to augment your cell phone use, or kind of have it be perhaps in the niche of a smartwatch, but with that laser kind of projection capability, it might have been a different story, but because of the way venture capital works, you don't get VC funding unless you have a huge, momentous idea that warrants all that hundreds of millions of dollars. So of course, it's going to end up falling flat. Yeah.

28:48 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, you have to go to the yeah to the mass with VC. And I think we're actually we're seeing some real problems here with this because stuff that should be funded at like research universities where we're testing out the concepts more, we've kind of decimated that type of funding so we're not getting those incremental like efforts and all of our incremental efforts are now being funneled into VC things where they have to hit big, where they can't afford to try something that works for a little while. So actually, the way Amazon tried this kind of projection screen Bosch has one that they've tested in appliances for like in your oven hood, for example, to like project a recipe down on like. Those are the right places to see that probably and just kind of test these out in different iterations to get it to like a mass point.

29:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.

29:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Stacey. Here's a question, though. I wonder whether now the money's rushing into AI at huge valuations. I've been arguing with media. We move from mass down to a human scale. I wonder whether the VC world moves to smaller things or they're just too addicted to scale.

30:01 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Well, okay. So the VCs there's more like. I've covered venture capital since 2000 because I'm old. So I saw that first growth of VC. We're like, how big can VC get? And then we had like the 08 kind of crash and we're like, oh my God, it can't get any bigger. But then it got bigger. And so you have all of this money and it does have to go somewhere because they have seven to 10 years to make a return and, like y'all are saying that baseball or Hollywood analogy they have to make it big. So you, you have more funds going to I won't say more firms.

30:39
I mean there are more firms, but they're still the big, huge ones. More firms, but they're still the big, huge ones. And until they start not generating the returns because they are still, if you're in one of the big funds, you're still getting the returns that are good for the LPs. So I don't see how this. I feel like we have to have a revolution to stop this. I'm being so dead serious. We have to get to a point where we're like, oh, maybe chasing returns isn't the end all be all of society, because that's kind of where we are.

31:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're not alone. We've had David Kantrowitz on, who does the big technology show, and he's said for a long time the financialization of the tech sector has really been a problem, that it's it's harmed it. It's a harmed innovation. Now I did just buy two things to a I. I passed on the humane pin, but I did just, and I passed on the vision pro. I didn't see either one of those as as important, but I did buy two things and both of them should come in the next couple of months. So I want to talk about that in just a sec, but before we do, I want to take a little break. Stacey Higginbotham is here. So nice to see you, stacey. So how's it going at consumer reports?

31:55 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Oh, it's going great. Um, yeah, I don't know. Like I'm working on all this crazy, like I'm learning, I'm learning how laws really get passed and that's exciting. Is it depressing you? I mean, I'm not going to lie, yes, it is depressing.

32:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Good, Because we have some stuff. We have some laws. You're you're a Senator. Marie Cantwell has a little bill in the in Congress right now. We'll talk about those. I would love to get your input on that. You don't have to speak for Consumer Reports, but your input will be useful. Yes, it's really nice to have you. We miss you. You also shuttered your IoT podcast. Right, I did.

32:35 - Paris Martineau (Host)
What is.

32:36 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Kevin.

32:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Toffle doing these days.

32:38 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
He's working at Wawa.

32:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is he pushing carts? He likes it. Is he bagging?

32:44 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
no, he's he got sick of being on all the time, so he he's stalking and he's like talking to people. He's still learning computers as he does he's yeah, he basically works at wawa and then codes the rest of the time. You're not joking, having a great time.

32:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, he's working in a supermarket. Well, a convenience store.

33:02 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's got to be more of a wawa, you have to understand, is more of a cult than a store yeah, it's like I've gone to wawa.

33:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I went to wawa once this a couple months ago and I didn't. I was like, oh, the height, it's overblown. I went there once. It's not overblown, it's phenomenal. Every single gas station should be like wawa. The pretzels are oversold, though. The amount of coffee creamer options, just the amount of coffee options generally mind-blowing.

33:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe Kevin should do a Wawa podcast. It sounds like there might be an audience for that Could be called Wawa this week on the Wawa podcast creamers. Do you want them dark and rich, or light and fluffy? Your choice.

33:43 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
We'll talk. We need Kevin to judge, I think, the menu options for us.

33:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, wow.

33:50 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
He does get a free sandwich every day, really Free.

33:53 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
When I worked at Ponderosa, we just got a discount.

33:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Honestly, I shouldn't say anything because if Club Twit doesn't work, it's me eating beans and working out of the local.

34:04 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Costco Leo, for those listening is holding an actual can of beans and spooning them into his mouth right now, with the top still on.

34:12 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
He hasn't fully taken off the top.

34:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't even heat them up, I'm just eating.

34:18 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I was going to say they can't be warm because it's unless you can't microwave them. No, I didn't. Would you stick it in a pot? And then you get a sous vide in the can you put the cat on a fire? Yeah, you put it on a fire that's all.

34:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You just need a little fire. My mom moved out in october. Uh, there is in the in the fridge there's a jar of maraschino cherries I guess those those never go bad. There was a can of baked beans, there was peanut butter and some frozen bread and I've been living on that for the last week. So don't knock it All right, you can't order groceries on the Internet.

34:57 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Oh, groceries.

34:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't think of that.

35:00 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Guys, guys, guys, let me tell you Everybody out there right now, listen to me carefully you have to join the club to save Leo. Please, serious, you have to save him. At least let him get a microwave to heat the beans.

35:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you don't join the club it'll just be beans.

35:18 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
At least let him buy a hot dog to go with him. For God's sakes.

35:22 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Let him get some toast for his beans.

35:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Join the club. Join the club. Club Twit Twittv slash Club Twit $7 a month. You could save this man eating beans, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

35:37 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Next he's going to sell everything behind him on eBay.

35:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You want my childhood train? You want a clock? You see this head. This is carved out of wood, solid wood, anyway. Um no, this is all mom's stuff. We're uh, I don't know what we're going to do. You know, that's the hard part, right, she's? She's happy in the in the home, but the house is full of stuff. Um, all right, moving along, let's talk about our sponsor for the uh show today eufy, eufy. You know the eufy brand. I know stacy. In fact, you've talked before about uh anchor. We love anchor.

36:20
This is the eufy video smart. Here's Micah installing it. With just a Phillips screwdriver, it slots right in. Now here's what's cool about this it does double duty. Instead of getting a video doorbell and a smart lock, you get it all in one the Video Smart Lock E330,.

36:37
Very easy to install. It's battery powered. The battery lasts up to four months, easily recharges a 10,000 milliamp hour rechargeable battery. You get a low battery notification before it runs out. There's the battery right there, so it's easy to take out. You can even have a second battery pop it in. That makes it very simple.

36:55
But there's one thing I really love about this Eufy door lock it has a keyhole, so if the battery dies, you can still open the door with a key. Imagine that fingerprint reader 0.3 second fingerprint recognition, one second unlocking. Watch this. The embedded ai self-learning chip becomes more accurate with every use. You have passcode unlocking. You can share that passcode with somebody. Uh, it has remote control. There's 2k clear sight camera on a two-way audio. You could talk to people. Enhanced, enhanced night vision.

37:26
There's Burke trying to get in. He's saying I need to get in and Mike is going to say, okay, I'll let you in. He unlocks the door. Look at that. Here's the thing I love about this no monthly subscription fee and your videos are stored locally. You don't have to worry about the privacy. You never have to pay for storage.

37:47
This is a really good product from Eufy. We love Eufy. We love Anchor. They've made a very nice video lock the 3-in-1 triple security video smart lock the E330. Again, no monthly fees. You store your videos locally. If you make it part of the whole eufy smart home solution, they have a hub which means you can store lots more video, but it stores a lot on its own. You can enjoy a worry-free experience with an 18 month warranty and eufy's fantastic 24 7 customer service team. Uh, you know stacy, I know you like the smart home thing. This might be the next smart home doohickey for you the Eufy Video Smart Lock E330. Now here's how you find out more. You go to Amazon and search Eufy Video Lock E-U-F-Y or go to eufycom E-U-F-Ycom. You'll also see it in stores. Your home improvement store will certainly have it, and we thank Eufy for their support. There's some more of this stuff in the Eufy smart home line. It's a really cool line and I love the company anchor. I love what they do. This has been a great little door lock for our engineering department. Thank you, eufy.

39:02
I bought two things in the AI smart vein. I've mentioned one before, which is the Brilliant Frames, and those are supposed to come sometime this month. Brilliantxyz. I think this is actually a much smarter form factor than the Humane. These are regular glasses. They have my prescription in them. They have a OLED layer on the clear glass that can display. It's essentially a heads-up display so you can look at something. It can display information about it. You can get translation.

39:32 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I'm getting Google Glass PTSD as you talk. Yeah, but you're looking, but the glasses are cute, jeff.

39:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Look they're cute little circles.

39:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I would look good with that, wouldn't?

39:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I.

39:40 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, I think you guys, both would look good in them. Stop it. Now I know you're teasing, I mean genuinely, I think they would look good, I think they're cute circle glasses.

39:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's the batteries in the earpiece. It has a little nose charger as well you can plug into. I just think this is very so. Look, what I'm most interested in is not the $3,500 Vision Pro, where you seal yourself off from the world in effect. I'm interested in bringing AI with me in small form factors that might pair up with my phone.

40:16 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Is this frame?

40:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
as in the frame computer. No, oh, okay, this is brilliant, as in glasses, it's not X1.

40:20 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It said frame. It says frames as in glasses, it's a frame.

40:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a glasses frame that's the one I got is the H2O one. It's clear, so you can see the camera, you can see the motherboard, you can see the modules. I think it'll be kind of interesting, anyway, if I show up for a show 350, I think something like that. Was it extra to add your prescription?

40:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I might get some. This sounds really cool actually, no, it includes well, wait and I'll get some.

40:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was gonna get the meta ray bands, but this is next level up because it's got projection on the screen.

40:48 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You can actually it's a heads-up display because that is what I've always been saying. I would actually really want, if there's a way for me to look up something while I'm like doing my dishes.

40:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'd love that and you could talk to it. It could talk to you the other thing I got and you might have seen this, and this is the people you saw in the bar. Remember the rewindai?

41:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
people. No, that was ai new computer.

41:12 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh, okay, I bought the rewind and then realized it wouldn't work with an Android and stopped the order.

41:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, they now have a pin.

41:19 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That I don't think is that what you're talking about? The limitless? It's a pin that you wear that records everything, right.

41:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it doesn't work with Android, does it? Even need a phone. Yeah, okay, so you have to have the rewind app on your phone, all right.

41:37 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Do the frames work with the phone real fast before we move to this next one? Good, question.

41:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a good question.

41:45 - Paris Martineau (Host)
These questions will be answered when I open the box I love that you do not know this.

41:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Why should I look at that kind of thing?

41:49 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I mean you've got $950 on it all of the phones? It doesn't matter to me, uh it's cooler if it doesn't work well. Actually, I think it's cooler if it does work with the phone, but it doesn't in a way that's like over the air.

42:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So the glass is less so because they they work with open ai. Maybe they it doesn't in a way that's like over the air. So the Glass is less so because they work with OpenAI. Maybe they'd have to have a phone. I would bet you'd have to have a phone.

42:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It says on the website that they have an Apple. They work for Apple and Android.

42:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now Rewindai has renamed itself to Limitless. They have a software product, the AI Assistant, but they are now selling this Limitless pen. It's a magnetic clip, so you can put it on a collar there it is, or you can wear it around your neck as a pendant. It records everything all day, which I find very interesting, and then sends it off to an ai for transcription and synopsis analysis, action items, that kind of thing.

42:51 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Wait, uh is it only your voice. Do you well this?

42:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is interesting, right, the part of the issue is well, you can't. In most states you can't in california.

42:59 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
You definitely that's, I was like is this, yeah, two-party consent state.

43:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It has voice recognition in it and it knows your voice, so it records you. When it hears a new person, a light comes on and you have to verbally say to the person if you want to record them. Hey, I would like to record this conversation, may I? If they give their consent, the AI adds their voice print to the list of people that can record and it will then record that conversation.

43:29 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
So you got permission a like a code, in the sense that you have to say those exact words.

43:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I don't, no, no, I don't think so. Well, we'll see. But they say no. You just roughly say, hey, I'd like to record this. Is that that okay? And they say yes, oh, that feels real dodgy Well again yeah, we'll see how well this works. Right and truthfully, I could. Right now I can record anybody on my watch without asking them, so this is illegally, admittedly.

43:58 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, I was going to say not in the state of California, but it crosses over certain state lines.

44:03
I'll be I'll be interested, leo, in what the quality of the recordings are like. Let's say, if you get someone's consent and you're in a meeting or at a coffee shop or walking in the street, because I often record conversations to people it's a big part of my job I of course ask for consent, but I have my little uh. Right, I have a handheld recorder actually, which I can find in here, that looks very dorky but it's state-of-the-art and it has a hard time picking up people in like crowded spaces, even when I point it in the right direction or have my uh. You know, I've got a pickup microphone. I can even put closer, so I'm curious how this will work if it's on your lapel, because Cause I'd assume the quality would be.

44:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're going to find out Cause I ordered it. This comes in August. This isn't real much 99 bucks, but there is a subscription. But I don't think it's very expensive I can't remember it wasn't, it wasn't awful and you don't have to subscribe. But you're going to want to subscribe because it's going to use the AI to analyze what it's hearing. So, yeah, this would be perfect for you, actually Paris. So it sends $19 per month.

45:11 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Per annual.

45:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's expensive. Yes, so it stores it on your Mac or your PC or your phone. I mean, look, I don't know all the answers. They say 100 hour battery life, which is completely the opposite of the humane pin, is it?

45:31 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
connecting to your phone via bluetooth. Is it on the device and you connect?

45:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, on device, but then it connects, I think, to a larger device, your mac or your, or your phone, your pc or so for the data transfer is it-. It's encrypted.

45:46 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Ongoing. No. Is the data like? Is it sending the data via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi constantly to your device, or do you plug it in at night to get that? Because? That battery life is insane for-.

45:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it couldn't be constantly transmitting. It's probably recording and then you connect it and it downloads it. I don't know, we'll find out. It was $99 pre-order, no subscription required, but if you want to have all the features, $19 a month For unlimited audio storage.

46:17 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'm doing that right now, Jeff.

46:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Just to see what you look like. Oh, that looks good. You know what, jeff, that's you?

46:24 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
that could be you. I would get a less.

46:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I wouldn't get black, I'd get a less harsh well, I did the other color too, if you go up in the chat wow, I think the black so long as they're not tinted, would work with either of you oh, that's interesting.

46:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's very fun actually. Well, there you look like a Nordic explorer. Yeah, professor Amundsen kind of. But either way, the point is not so much look at all the things I'm buying, but that I think we are on the cusp of some very interesting smaller AI, omnipresent AI devices that you know, like the movie Her. At some point in the next few years, I think we're going to have a big breakthrough and you're going to really want to have an AI assistant on your person. Don't you have it on your phone? You?

47:16 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
do have it on your phone.

47:17 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, but it sucks.

47:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it doesn't. Well, we're not talking Siri Like chat. Gpt on your phone is pretty good.

47:24 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Siri's fine, it's not great.

47:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The thing. Here's the thing I realized with AI AI by itself, the chat thing. Where AI really shines and I've said this many, many times is where you put your data in it and then you query the AI about your data or you interact with the AI about your data. That's what this pin and these glasses do. They are recording your life and then sending that to the AI for analysis, and I think that could be very useful.

47:53 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
So that could be useful. I think the real value of AI is actually pulling information from the world around you and giving it to you when you need it in the format that's easiest to digest. Yes, Like, so I don't care about my life. I actually think it'll be interesting as a social experiment if your pin actually works to be like, actually like. How many relationships will be murdered by the fact that some guy's?

48:17 - Paris Martineau (Host)
going to play that.

48:18 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
There's a Black Mirror episode about this yeah, yes, I think it could be bad actually.

48:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I think it's like anything with great power comes to great responsibility. I think you have to be careful how you apply this, for sure.

48:32 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I want to see your summaries, because obviously no part of me wants to go back and relive my entire, everything verbatim for my day. I just want, like, hey, what's my to-do list? What did I promise people today Exactly?

48:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I need Bingo.

48:48 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Leo, I hate to break this to you, but on the frame it says that you get limited AI services for free. They will have a paid tier. That's fine In the future.

48:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would expect that this stuff is not cheap to run.

49:03 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's not coming with your prescription. You could have your local optician fit a prescription lens?

49:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, that's though, so that's out of date. Whatever you're looking at, I'm looking at their site. Well, they, I, they, they. They said what is your prescription? We're going to put it. So they're sending me lenses 350 is a good price. I know it's cheap, it is cheap.

49:26 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's just glasses, I'm still ahead. Yeah, I mean that's, that's what sold me. I'm like, well, it could be fun.

49:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are you looking at brilliant Dot X, y Z Jeff.

49:33 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yes, product slash frame. Can I have my local optician fit a prescription lens? Yes, the RX lens rx lens.

49:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Your optician fits needs to be flat on one side in order for it to be laminated to the flat surface of the frame. You can't have that, you can't have that. But you, if you press, if you order it, they'll say okay, what's your prescription?

49:54 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I tried that. It's not asking me for a prescription oh, maybe I just got lucky.

49:58 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, maybe they figured that was too expensive. That might be.

50:01 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I pre-ordered early right, so maybe that's what what's happened.

50:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They decided they didn't want to get in that business.

50:07 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I had my optician put, of course, lenses on the damned Google Glass up there in the closet.

50:13 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, you were a Google Glass head See the difference is you don't look like a.

50:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nordic explorer in Google Glass you look like an ass, a glass hole, yeah.

50:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Or you look like Scoble.

50:28 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I don't know. I think we're like a couple years away from the original Google Glass design, making a big splash with Gen Z or whatever is after that.

50:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It really, honestly, might be premature even for this, but maybe I'm overexcited, but I feel like we're so close the back end to frame what?

50:48 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
what do they call it? What? What ai are they calling on?

50:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
when you ask questions, uh open ai chat gpt and versus the meta glasses oh, maybe I'm wrong.

50:59 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I'm sorry no, they can't.

51:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Be so chat gpt is just no, I'm sorry, the rewind is just. No, I'm sorry, the Rewind is ChatGPT. I'm not sure what the Brilliant is. I didn't ask these questions.

51:10 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I just bought it.

51:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I will ask them when I get it. The real problem is just like the Humane Pin. Look, I could tell that was a non-starter without buying it. But sometimes you have to buy these things to try them, to see what you got Right, See how it works.

51:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I'll give you all it has access to models like Perplexity, openai's ChatGP Whisper. I shouldn't have said anything.

51:34 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Mr Skeptic over there Some of the things they were showing were clearly not chat. I mean, they were not words. It was giving you imagery it was giving you. Or it was giving you imagery it was giving you, or it was reacting to imagery, I think the idea is you look at those raspberries and it tells you those are raspberries.

51:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Great, you dork, you idiot. Hey, there are fruits that I look at in the grocery store that I don't know what the hell they are. True, they're not raspberries, but you get the idea.

52:01 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I've been thinking for a while about getting reflecticles. I think is what they're called. I put the link in the chat. Have you guys heard of? They're the privacy glasses that blur your face for facial recognition? I think it would be really fun to wear them in the airport. They'd probably get tackled.

52:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're going to get tackled. So I flew out here and they took my picture.

52:27 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
They said you don't have to. Well, but I did, oh yeah, yeah, no, I've been. I've been now photoed at three different airports in the last few weeks and it's I would wear, like I would wear reflectables.

52:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I I've contemplated like makeup you'll have problems because the what they're the TSA is doing they take your picture and then they compare it to your ID, just to make sure that's you.

52:49 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
They also make you take off your glasses to do that Right.

52:52 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, and I guess I'm less worried about the. Tsa aspect of it, I mean I don't know Worried is the word. Maybe they throw it out maybe they don't. I'm worried about walking down the street. There's like all these NYPD cameras everywhere that I'm sure are connected to some God knows what database.

53:18 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So I don't really need to have my face in two weeks ago and uh, one of the uh other keynoters because there's no single keynote, everybody's a keynoter now was a woman who designed uh clothes that confused it oh yes, I have one of those. Um, I was there with cashmere hill. She was also keynoting and I leaned over and I said would you wear that? And she said for the hoot but not for the fashion. Yeah, those are like camo those look.

53:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, they're hideous. Was, was it?

53:44 - Paris Martineau (Host)
adversarial fashion Jeff.

53:46 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yes, I think so, it's.

53:48 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think I've talked about this either on Twig or on Twit before, but they're like, they have these hoodies that yeah, I'll put the link in the chat that essentially confuse license plate readers by inserting junk data into them. Use license plate readers by inserting junk data into them. So if you're like wearing it as you bike by or walk by, it will read all of the license plates on your jacket as being cars going by, but they don't connect to any car, so it makes it harder for the police to track people's movements.

54:19 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This isn't what she was doing, but I see that adversarial fashion also has face masks If you really want to look paranoid.

54:26 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I don't think it's paranoid.

54:27
I think, so here's the deal. It's, I mean, government surveillance bad, municipal cop surveillance, even worse. But I think there's also a fear of legit and viable fear about being in the background of someone's TikTok video or somebody taking your picture because they think you're being a jerk and then trying to identify you and do whatever Like. Basically, you're not going to be allowed to be anonymous in public and I mean at all, and that's a very scary, and in addition to not being an anonymous, you'll end up being searchable for the end of time and ye I think that when the robots come, they're gonna keep track of who's not helping them and that's why leo's turned into the biggest ai.

55:23 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Leo has gotten radicalized. He's being really normal on this episode. He's trying to play both sides.

55:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
When you deny your face to the AI, you're undermining the future. What?

55:37 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
is even happening. Give it all your stuff. He had a walk with someone. He won't tell us who.

55:42 - Paris Martineau (Host)
An AI luminary. He was hypnotized. Since then he's been saying things are going to get really weird in five to ten years and we gotta be prepared.

55:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That guy is on that new app, air chat. Have you played with that yet?

55:55 - Paris Martineau (Host)
yeah, that is the worst it's. It's like clubhouse, but no annoying, it's worse you soon as you so.

56:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So this is a Twitter, but it's all voice Ugh.

56:08 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yes, where it's like you can only post tweets.

56:10 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I have to hear Jason's voice.

56:12 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And you can't scroll through the feed. It shows the tweets. Have you In text? Well, in text, but you can't scroll without hearing everyone's voice and everybody only replies and posts in paragraphs. So I opened up the app the first time and immediately someone was speaking to me in paragraphs, out loud. It was awful, and am I wrong, but is it?

56:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
everybody sped up?

56:36 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It sounds like it. I don't know for sure, but I thought the same thing also.

56:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It might be that they're all talking really fast, but I think I tell I think it's speeding it up a little bit. Yeah, be that, they're all talking really fast, but I think I tell I think it's speeding it up a little bit. Yeah, it's the worst cacophony ever. Feel alone again ever you open this app, everybody's going crazy over it right for two weeks. Yeah, it's another one.

56:56 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Can I open it? Do we want to see what it'll say?

56:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, just just play it, just so we can hear it.

57:00 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You won't believe this it's not gonna show on my. It's just a bunch of people. It has a really dumb logo too. That's just you, matt. That's a reply to a gift. That's it. It's just you, matt. Here we'll do the air chat. People are going to listen to our conversations.

57:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Get on with it. Put it closer to the mic.

57:23 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
The whole point is that fishbowl effect, and if someone has something interesting to add they can, and it breaks the conversation off and you choose to reply or not.

57:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's definitely being sped up, Brian. What's the secret sauce of making sound here sound so much smoother than anywhere?

57:35 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
else. Oh my God, it's like men talking to me. Yeah, just men talking at me, men explaining. Oh God talking at me.

57:42 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh God, why won't it stop? It doesn't stop when you close out of the app you have to pause it.

57:49 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Oh God, that's like my nightmare. That's not going to succeed at all. There's going to be like a class of people who are like all on it and good for them, but I would never.

57:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, good, thank you.

58:02 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Was that Jason? You think that was definitely Jason I heard his voice, yeah. It sped up, though? Doesn't that sound like it sped up? Well, get the paint over faster with him. Yeah.

58:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And he talks fast. So if it's fast, it's really fast.

58:16 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Who thought that was a good idea. Vcs.

58:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I got people who needed more clubbers.

58:21 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, it was just.

58:22 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Calacanis, is this his?

58:24 - Paris Martineau (Host)
app. No, no, no. No, that was Calacanis who was talking.

58:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but everybody's all the, you know, usual suspects.

58:30 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
All the boys.

58:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know who's on it. Yeah, you know who's on it, I'm on it, but I haven't. I can't you know it's funny because I talk for a living Put anything on there.

58:44 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's like no, the way I tweet, or post or ski or what have you is fundamentally incompatible with me saying those words If I had to say the words that I was typing, I'd never write anything.

58:58 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Because the irony is assumed with you.

59:01 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yes.

59:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You have to hear it yourself. Oh that's it, I get it. So if you said it, hear it yourself. Oh that's it, I get it. So if you said it, it might not sound ironic.

59:08 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
They might sound snotty and mean, which is not really the case. But if you tried to do that, voice right paris yeah, it just also there.

59:20 - Paris Martineau (Host)
This is an incredibly dumb thing to say. There's no way to type in lowercase when speaking Right, and I don't like that. That's a good point. Posts need to be in lowercase because they need to have an inherent like. They need to inherently devalue themselves, in my opinion. Oh.

59:37 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I like that. Oh, that's nice. Oh, oh, that's, that's profound.

59:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're somebody who's put more thought into tweeting than I have in my entire 20 years of tweeting, or whatever. I never even thought about that.

59:51 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Well, tweeting is like. I mean, that's my rough draft, or it used to be. I don't really tweet anymore, yeah, but.

59:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, now you can. What is it? Air chat? Is that the name of it?

01:00:00 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Now you can air chat. I would never air chat. I'm terrible, like I had to testify yesterday and I realized, my God, if I can't write something out ahead of time, I would be a terrible litigator. I'm like, oh, I can't do it.

01:00:12 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Do you? Ever capitalize Paris. Oh, I see you do. Yes, okay, I have seen it.

01:00:17 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I do sometimes, when you say yes, you capitalize. Yes, yeah, all caps yes.

01:00:24 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yes.

01:00:24 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'll capitalize company names occasionally if it's a tweet related to work, but I don't think that they should be. I don't know, I don't think that my little posts need to be capitalized. Are you all lowercase? I'm all lowercase. Do you punctuate? Yeah, sometimes it depends. Can I ask? She's a child how old am I? I didn't know what you said. I'm 27. I was speaking in lower case how old are you?

01:00:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I never noticed that you tweet in lower case yeah, it's definitely a generational thing yeah, although you don't use a lot of punctuation, I don't know.

01:01:11 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah wow, I love that we're all analyzing my tweets now there there was actually I think it was like a week ago in the wall street journal. There was actually an article about people around paris's age that were like I decided, decided I had to be a grownup that start using caps or like capitalization in my texts. I think it was or emails or something.

01:01:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, no, I saw that. I saw that push alert come across in the Wall Street Journal and I was like, oh man, if the journal's getting on to lowercase, I don't know what to do now. It's over.

01:01:42 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
No, I've got a 17 year old and they they're 17 now. They're going to college. What Like in August. Decision has been made.

01:01:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.

01:01:56 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Congratulations.

01:01:57 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
How far away from home?

01:01:58 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
How close to home?

01:01:59 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
They're going to Bryn Mawr in Philadelphia, very, not very fancy.

01:02:05 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Get your airfare ready. Very fancy. You got to get her a cashmere sweater.

01:02:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Got them a cashmere sweater and a circle pin. I think that's what you want.

01:02:16 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Oh, I was like a humane. Pin the adversarial sweater.

01:02:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, I think they'd go for that uh, yeah, my kids mocked me for years for using punctuation, because they're so cute. He uses punctuation in his text messages to us and capitalization. I think they grew out of it. Actually, they now write like normal people, or they do to you. Maybe I taught them something. How about that? Let's take a little break. And then I do want to talk about your senator, stacy Maria Cantwell, and her privacy legislation. Apparently, this is kind of a change of pace for maria cantwell. Uh, senator from washington. That's what they're saying. I know you're looking at me funny, but that's what they're saying. We'll talk about it in just a second. Uh, great to have stacy higginbotham back behind the microphone to get your hopes up. She's not gonna be here, uh, more than this time, although I won't be invited back you can well, we'll invite you.

01:03:17
But uh, you know, I know that you've got bigger fish to fry as policy person at the uh consumer reports. Policy fellow, leo fella fellow. Well, I didn't want to be gendered, I wanted to be you, you know, policy person.

01:03:35 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It's what it is.

01:03:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She's a jolly good fellow, I'm sure. Anyway, it's great to have you, paris Martineau also, and Jeff Jarvis and, in spirit, craig Newmark, the pigeon man, also here, so it's nice to have all of you in studio. Our show today, brought to you by Delete Me. Delete Me this is really important stuff, not just for privacy, but for security. Have you ever searched for your name online? It's terrifying. In fact, I don't recommend it. You will not like how much of your personal information is there for all to see. Uh, I am talking name, address, birth date, salary information, home value information, all sorts of stuff. Now, it's also a security issue and we learned this the hard way. We got got Lisa, our CEO. We got her on to leave me immediately after a bad guy sent out text messages to all her direct reports saying hey, I'm stuck in a meeting, can you buy these Amazon gift cards and send them out? Because I can't do it and I need to get these out right now. The reason that was terrifying is A they knew her phone number. They knew her direct reports. They knew her direct reports. They knew their numbers, but they also knew that she buys Amazon gift cards for our employees and staff and friends. It was a very scary spear phishing attack and a lot of that information came just directly from data brokers out there on the internet.

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01:06:56
Maria Cantwell is one of two sponsors of a new privacy law that has been proposed, a bipartisan agreement that has been proposed in the Senate. She's the Commerce Committee chair, so she's really in a position to regulate the tech industry. I have often thought that Senate and Congress in general would never pass such a thing, because there are people in law enforcement and the intelligence community who will go to their favorite pet member of Congress and say, hey, please don't vote for that. We need those data brokers, we need that data. We buy it. We know they do. They've admitted to it. Washington Post said kind of an interesting thing Cantwell is a dot-com millionaire, former House member, according to the Washington Post.

01:07:54
According to the Washington Post, she has been a roadblock to industry abuses for years of. Dozens of bills, the Washington Post writes, introduced to address privacy, content moderation, even artificial intelligence Few, have advanced out of the Commerce Committee. One house aide said that's where a lot of the tech legislation goes to die. It's a graveyard over there. The post says and this is an article from cristiano lima strong that cantwell had is the primary reason for the impasse. According to more than a dozen current former congressional aides in both parties and others familiar with the committee's dynamics, all of whom refused to uh, you know, spoke on the condition of anonymity. Some say they feared retaliation. Cantwell has repeatedly upended privacy negotiations. In 2019, she broke up a working group trying to hash out a compromise. In 2022, she rebuffed a landmark agreement from three key lawmakers, the first of its kind, uh, bipartisan bill. Um, now you might say. Well, if she's so anti-privacy, why is she sponsoring this bill?

01:09:06 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
pro-privacy that's right, she's, which is like I couldn't well, I couldn't figure out the story, because she keeps on being in the beginnings of bills and then she drops them, as it goes, yeah she drops them.

01:09:16 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
so she drops the 2022 one, I believe it was because, oh, now I now I don't remember what it was for uh, it would preempt state laws and she felt that washington, there were some state laws that were good, but this apRA actually preempts state, yeah.

01:09:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Interesting, isn't it? Yeah, I, here's what I. Okay, you can correct me if I'm wrong, stacy, because you have much more real world.

01:09:43 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I've read the legislation.

01:09:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, my sense of it is law enforcement which really doesn't want data brokers to go out of business. This is a very valuable tool for that, but they data brokers to go out of business. This is a very valuable tool for that. But they recognize the landswell of opposition to data brokers you just heard the last ad I did and so they realize something has to be done.

01:10:04
What they don't want is a bunch of states like Illinois and California, which already have extremely strong privacy protections, to pass these laws. They don't want a patchwork of 50 laws, most of which would be more strict than a federal law. The California Privacy Act is very good, so I suspect what they did is they're taking what they can. They're going to make a federal law that will preempt all of these laws. You know, admittedlyly, who wants a patchwork regulatory environment. You don't know what to do. Be better to have a federal law, but I think it's going to preempt the stronger laws and give uh data brokers and maybe, even more importantly, meta this law is odd and I'm being so diplomatic here.

01:11:00 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
This law is confusing AF and it offers some really strong provisions for people. It has a private right of action, which means, like you or I could sue, as opposed to our attorney general suing on our behalf right, so we could go and take action on our own behalf if we wanted to. It has a data minimization standard, but it also has the most confusing and sometimes contradictory language about, like, what data is covered, how is it sensitive? Can you transfer data around? And in a lot of cases, it doesn't actually advantage the big social media companies Exactly. It doesn't necessarily help them. I think it actually will make their lives a little bit harder because of some of the confusing language. I think it does definitely make it much.

01:11:56
It does not protect us to the extent that we will need to to get out of like data brokerage, like it totally preserves their ability to collect lots of data, because for an individual to decide to like, oh, I don't want this site sharing my data. Some data, well, I can automatically opt out of, but some data, if it's sensitive, I have to actually, or if it's not theme sensitive, sorry, I will have to go to a site to opt out of it actively. It won't be like what's it called. I won't be able to universally opt out of things, but some of it I will be able to like. I'll have to proactively tell them not to share this information, and it's really unclear who's going to be covered by what rules. So this law feels like a mess, like official. The official CR position is we haven't made a decision yet. Oh, interesting Okay.

01:12:51
Because it is. It is because it is very confusing. The Stacey. I have read this legislation and compared it to other privacy regulations, Like the 2022, I can't remember what its acronym was ADPA no, A-D-D-D-P-A, that was so much better.

01:13:08 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Stacey, do they have the full bill out? I thought that it wasn't seen.

01:13:12 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
This is a draft bill so the draft bill. Yes.

01:13:19 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Everyone's seen it. It's a bit for a while there. There were a lot of speculations still and and summaries from people who had seen it, but it wasn't out yet, so oh no, it's totally out yet yes, it's totally.

01:13:29 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I was like no, it's totally out, um so stacy, since you've gone to Consumer Reports, have you learned anything about kind of how these bills come together, like the strange kind of amalgamation and structure and vagueness you described? Like how do you think that got that way? Do you think it is like lobbying, or is it just because this goes through so many drafts or something else?

01:13:59 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
So I think when you see confusing bills like this one I'm not talking specifically about this particular bill, because I have no idea how this got yeah, I think what you have is a lot of people saying, oh, these words, we need to use these specific words because they mean this to us, but then you get another group of people coming in saying, no, no, these are the words we need to use, and then they kind of they'll and this is a draft, right? So in this case it's a draft, so presumably someone will go through and make it better. They're okay, everyone may know, know this. But there are people who are like, literally that's all they do. They write legislation. I didn't know that they're drafters.

01:14:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So what do you think Cantwell's end game is?

01:14:44 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I think the end game is to create some sort of federal privacy legislation. So we have one standard. I don't know what Cantwell's personal drive is there. I mean, she's Washington state Senator, right?

01:15:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So we've got Microsoft, is Amazon Well if you look at her donors, of course, according to the post, amazon web services CEO Adam Salipsky, president of Microsoft Services CEO Adam Salipsky, president of Microsoft, brad Smith, t-mobile CEO Mike Sievert and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos all donors.

01:15:23 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
So what's interesting here and this is I'll just throw this out here because y'all are going to love this, this bill there is a theory and it actually is pretty credible based on the reading that this would actually preempt the FCC's ability to regulate privacy for ISPs there you go. It also might preempt the FCC's ability to do net neutrality.

01:15:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So that's the smoking gun I was looking for. Well, there's some reason why they're willing to give in on this at this point.

01:15:56 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, so let me I'll drop it in the show notes, because this is a nice little. I don't know where to put it. I'm going to just drop it in line 87, because that's where I am on my thing, perfect that's great. On line 87 it's all comes it all comes back to you.

01:16:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it Stacey the whole way this show works. People say a line number and then I go. Ok, fine, it's not a democracy. You understand, you remember all of this.

01:16:22 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I'm like it's a Staceyocracy.

01:16:25
So if you scroll down, this is just a bunch of expert perspectives and the public knowledge. So if you look at Sarah Collins, director of governmentalal Affairs, of Public Knowledge and public knowledge has fought for net neutrality for decades Basically, they're saying that this is going to reempt and there is wording in the law about common carriers being covered entities under this law, which would be the law would apply to them Anyway. So there's a lot here. I personally don't love it. Maybe it'll get better, but I also I really don't know if this is going to pass, given like where we are in, like the world of politics. Right, we've got to get this all the way through committees. It's a presidential election year. Everybody's like. I mean I don't see how this is going to pass the article is from tech policy dot press.

01:17:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Experts provide early analysis of the american privacy rights act. That's that's the name of this apra, and, just like we said, there's some confusion about how, what you know what happened that Maria Cantwell has kind of changed her position. Her co-sponsor on this is in the House of Representatives is also from Washington, republican Representative Kathy McMorris Rogers. The tech policy notes the collaboration between the two lawmakers is notable, in part because Senator Cantwell was one forceful opponent of a previous attempt at comprehensive privacy legislation that Representative McMorris Rogers championed, and that was the one you talked about ADPPA. Adppa, the American Data Privacy Protection Act, which McMorris Rogers steered through the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Sheet chairs advancing out of the committee with a 53 to 2 vote, but the bill stalled as California Democrats raised concerns that it would weaken California's law. Cantwell opposed it.

01:18:39 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
She was just in the Wall Street Journal for the TikTok law.

01:18:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is she one of the sponsors of?

01:18:44 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
that, yes, interesting. So there could be. This could be a legislative and press campaign designed to get her to the forefront. Or, like Washington State, she's to the forefront or, like Washington state, she's not running for governor of our state, obviously because we're in the midst. Our governor has currently said he's stepping down, so we've got two candidates running, but it could be that she's thinking of like twenty twenty eight and starting to like push her name out there. That's not crazy.

01:19:16 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
As the confused legislator who wants things and then doesn't want them. It's not a good look from the story in a way.

01:19:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it's a tough story on her and I actually have to say this tech policy piece is also fairly hard on her. But it's just. Maybe I'm conspiracy theory minded, but you just really wonder when somebody who has been so at she worked. She was chief of marketing at Real Networks. Maria Cantwell was at Real Networks when they had a major privacy issue. They were really snooping on everything everybody was doing. Shows her she's got roots in the privacy invasion community.

01:19:54 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Well, I mean anybody who worked at a tech company has roots in the privacy invasion community. If that's not too well, I mean any anybody who worked at a tech company has roots in the privacy surveillance right.

01:20:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Real network had a lot of other problems too, but uh, sarah collins at from public knowledge, as you point out, says this removes the fcc's authority over communication services. That's a big deal, um, but there are a lot of other negatives about this. And yet, at the same time, I think most Americans think we do need comprehensive data privacy regulations, that the data brokers are out of control.

01:20:28 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
We absolutely do and this could give. I mean, if something like this passes, it's because we needed some sort of greenwashing privacy washing that makes Americans feel like we have something for our privacy, and there are things that would make it very clear that we're opting out, so we would get options to opt out of things we might feel more powerful. But it doesn't preclude the trading in our information to data brokers or trading in some of our information to data brokers, so it could be something where it looks awesome as an everyday consumer start from the web and then it doesn't actually solve the real problems that are happening with data gathering and assimilation and then reselling, and that might be what they're after.

01:21:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Alan Butler and Catriona Fitzgerald from the Electronic Privacy Information Center say that this is problematic for a number of reasons. Data minimization rules can't be enforced through the private right of action. There are a lot of little loopholes in this law. California Privacy Protection Agency's work could be significantly disrupted. The new FTC Privacy Bureau would need substantial funding and stronger enforcement tools. They say there's a lot to analyze. We look forward to working with Congress to ensure strong, comprehensive privacy.

01:21:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I pick some moral entrepreneur with a difficult past.

01:21:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, really Okay, oh yeah, okay. Well, there are a lot of other people here CDT, the Center for Democracy and Technology, future Privacy Forum, open Technology Institute, demand Progress, progress, public knowledge, as you mentioned. Uh, check my ads. There's some, there's some.

01:22:00 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
this is a good piece, so yeah, my boss did a full piece on it too, so if you want, I'll give you the so consumer.

01:22:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Consumer reports has not yet said how they feel about this law. Is that because it's so complicated? It did just come out a couple of days ago, so I understand.

01:22:16 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
So it we did. Here's here line 87. This is my boss and this is what he has said about it. He's a privacy dude I'm sorry, it's line 88, my bad um, and he worked at the ftc on privacy. He does all of our privacy advocacy, so he's a privacy dude and that's his take and the reason. None of these are official takes yet, because every organization that is looking at this is like oh, you don't want to. I mean, this is something that's really hard actually for me coming from the journalism background. You can't go in and be like this sucks, this sucks and this sucks, it's politics. You have to go in and be like this sucks this sucks and this sucks, it's politics.

01:22:56 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You have to go in and say what could we do?

01:22:58 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
What a lovely home you have here. It's so beautiful how you've done this, and I would love to talk about this thing that you've proposed. I just feel like could we come?

01:23:08 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
to terms with this. It's hard, it's really hard.

01:23:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You have to take a shower afterwards, I know jason brookman is your boss, the director of technology policy for consumer reports. Sorry, justin writes.

01:23:18 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
The headline is unclear protections in the american privacy rights act not worth broad preemption I might surprise you, stacy, but I I actually have been in favor of federal privacy regulations, so we don't end up with a patchwork of 50.

01:23:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's fine as long as it's strong. If it's going to preempt the California Privacy Act it has to be at least as good.

01:23:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But you know, if you listen to somebody like Masnick, the politics are. We've been mushing around with this forever. It's better to something than nothing. Yes, get started, it's policy, yeah.

01:23:50 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yes, and this is probably not the appropriate vehicle. Also, you guys would love this because there's AI. They also tackle some algorithmic discrimination in here just for funsies.

01:24:00 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, they have a kind of ridiculous clause that you can opt like opt out of all AI. No spell check for me.

01:24:09 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It's opt out of something called consequential decision making. So that's when AI is doing things Well, but people listen to you. Look, here, I am not being any fun again. Look, I remember this dynamic.

01:24:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No fun stacy's back party pooper stacy.

01:24:24 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It's policy pooper stacy things so like your resume, do you get housing? Like those are things we actually.

01:24:33 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Those aren't just silly ai things, so that shouldn't be to my mind, that shouldn't be about each individual user having to opt out of it. That should be regulated at the top level is that you shouldn't use consequential AI for anybody unless you know you can give certain guarantees. I think that's the wrong end of it. Is what I'm saying.

01:24:50 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I don't think we'll ever get there, because I think, by virtue, unless we like, drop our population by a lot, which we might who knows?

01:24:58 - Paris Martineau (Host)
climate change there's always time for a mass extinction event. Exactly.

01:25:04 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
But I mean we are going to use AI for consequential decision making because it's scalable, it's cheaper, it's good at that too.

01:25:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In some cases it's not bad.

01:25:14 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
In some cases it's not bad. In some cases it can, and that's why we have to figure out what the right.

01:25:20 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Standards, mitigations are.

01:25:22 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Right For when it's used. How, if you? Know, like, yeah, if you know you're on the terrorist watch list. Yeah, how do you get off? And how do you get off quickly and efficiently? Not through knowing a congressperson.

01:25:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, stacy, thank you, I'm glad you were on. Actually, this is a very important topic and when we want to we will be, I'm sure, covering more. And yeah, I guess I agree with Mike, jeff and you that something's better than nothing, except that I live in a state where we have pretty good privacy protections.

01:25:59 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, you're soon going to have no news. Well, let's talk about that.

01:26:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a good one, isn't it? So Jeff told us read us a little bit from his. Really, I thought I read the white paper you wrote.

01:26:12 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You read all 40 pages.

01:26:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it was good. You write well. You're a good writer. Oh, so it's a it flow it flew by.

01:26:19 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
There's a lot of fun history in it.

01:26:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There really is um we're talking about a link tax that's proposed in california to save journalism. Who could be against that right? Uh well, jeff, you point out what a bad idea it is. You want to summarize?

01:26:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So this is legislation that is a cousin to federal legislation. The JCPA this is the CJPA from the same lobbyist, the NMA you tired of all that now which is the Association for Newspapers and Now Magazines, and in the California version, says that Google and Meta can be forced to negotiate air quotes, negotiate with publishers to pay for news as a usage tax, usage fee based on how many links they give to those publishers. Huge numbers of weaknesses. Number one is that it doesn't just support california news, but the vast majority of the money goes to national and even international news. There's no standards, so it can go to extremist news.

01:27:24
Um, there's a 100 000 revenue floor, so all kinds of black and latino and new media are left out. It only rewards links, links, so black and Latino newspapers and good old newspaper aren't valued at all. It violates fair use. It violates copyright. It violates the First Amendment because it has a must carry clause and it provides a perverse incentive for more clickbait because you want to get more and more and more links. It's just terrible legislation that ends up supporting national media companies and hedge funds.

01:28:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's what I wrote. I'll read what Google wrote in its keyword blog, because we talked about your piece last week. This week Google kind of laid down the law. They said by helping people find news stories, we help publishers of all sizes grow their audience at no cost to them. Cjpa would end up that model journalism preservation act to continue to buy up local california newspapers, strip them of journalists and create more ghost papers that operate with a skeleton crew to produce only low cost and often low quality content. That link bait you were talking about. Cjpa would also put small publishers at a disadvantage and limit consumers access to a diverse local media ecosystem.

01:28:55 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So what Google did that caused? I was at the ISOJ journalism conference in Austin and this bomb fell while we were there. What Google says in that post is that, as they did in Canada, they tested with a small number of users taking news links off.

01:29:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The nuclear option. It's not a test.

01:29:14 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's a way to shoot across the bow of the California Senate. It's a way to. It's a way to, you know, shoot across the bow of the of the california senate.

01:29:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How would you also said, if we didn't link to you at all, huh right, how'd you like that we?

01:29:24 - Paris Martineau (Host)
uh, took your news and went home.

01:29:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, shame if something should happen to your nice journalism thing. Um, so uh. They also said that they would freeze any new efforts in the Google News initiative and their showcase and so on, and so that means no more money. So there's just. There was tons of panic. This was national, no, it's just California right now. But in Canada Facebook threatened it and did it and I go through that in the paper where where the money that Google is going to pay in Canada is just above the minimum. But people lost traffic, they can't start new things. They're really hurting because of the meta move In California. Meta has already said we'll do the same thing in California. We are out of news entirely. I think we're out now. We're really out.

01:30:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They say that only 2% of queries on Google search are news related.

01:30:20 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Meta says something similar that you, you know it's not important to us. We're happy to be out of that business and it's not, and it gets them in trouble. So I think that some some said this was a um, uh, a big foot move by google that could backfire. But I think at some point google had to say no, we're serious, there's no cap on this. You're not really worth that much to us. Um, no, and and the thing is like, the editor of um, the san francisco chronicle, spoke with this event and he made a point. He was a wonderful guy and he made a point of saying you know, google's been pretty good to us. They've done good things for us. They they've been a good citizen around news, um and uh.

01:30:54
So this was bubbling like crazy, because if the CJPA passes in any stupid form now, at the end of my paper I list a score of alternatives that would be smarter and I think there is a discussion to be had, but this horrible lobbyist legislation should be killed. I think I might've had a piece apart in helping to kill it in Illinois. It's not fully dead yet, but it seemed to be a problem there. It's not doing well in federal land In California. It's getting close and now people are screaming. The head of the Northern California Jewish publication wrote a letter to the Jewish lobby in or caucus and said you're going to hurt us like crazy. You're going to. This is going to be terrible for us. Look at what happened in Canada and it could be really bad, leo.

01:31:43 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Do you have a sense of what the political climate is as far as, like, legislatures go around this Like? Does it seem like something that people are? There's momentum to pass?

01:31:54 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It passed easily in the assembly and then people screamed about this is stupid legislation. So the Senate Senator Glazer, who's in charge of the necessary committee kind of pulled back and paused everything. But there is generally a view that you don't lose voice votes by slamming the big platforms. And even in the state that is the headquarters of those companies, with tons of employees from those companies and lots of political money from the companies and the employees, it's amazing. It's political fair game to go after Google and Meta in California.

01:32:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It is interesting because the script has flipped in Seattle and in Washington, where it used to be kind of political suicide to go against Amazon and Microsoft because they're the two biggest employers. But now, I mean, the city council in Seattle has completely flipped against Amazon and passed a lot of local ordinances that kind of curb amazon's influence and specifically tax their employees at a higher rate.

01:32:59 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So it's interesting that california hasn't had the same um kind of fervor you know this wasn't with you, stacy, I imagine, uh, since you're actually working in policy now and I'm not, I'm a bull in a china shop. I talked to a staffer for somebody in the Senate, in the US Senate, and they know how dumb these pieces of legislation are, but they said the way you got, what alternatives can you give us? Can you give us any, any, any, any exit paths here to something that's not as damaging? That's a little bit more sensible, not as damaging, that's a little bit more sensible. And so I really took that to heart and tried to propose a bunch of alternatives.

01:33:39
Now, one thing that might happen in California is if Google agrees to do something that looks good and Buffy Wicks, who proposed this bill, can say I brought them to the table, I made them pay attention, I'm the heroine. Can say I brought them to the table, I made them pay attention, I'm the heroine that might win the day without legislation, but they want, each side wants to have some flesh from the other.

01:34:05 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean we actually build model legislation for everything we care about, or for many issues that we care about, just so we can come to the table when we see someone proposing something silly, like, perhaps how about this, consider this? Let me show you our legislation and then you know in. I don't, I don't, I don't think my boss, or even the ceo of cr consumer reports is ego driven to the point where we're like I'm happy to give someone else credit if it gets the rules that I want to see passed. I don't care so, and I think I mean that's really important, though, to politicians, because optics that's the word I was like they use a word for it. It's optics.

01:34:51 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So do you actually write um uh, full legislation, or or a pressie of what it includes?

01:34:58 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I, because I am not a lawyer. I write things I think are important, Words that people use to describe the things that I think are important, Potential loopholes associated with those words. And then I give them to people who are drafters, like people who write actual legislation and they will, or in sometimes with like state legislatures that are smaller. You actually just go to the legislator and you give them your ideas or thoughts and if you can point to other states examples, they love that and then they bring it to the people who work in their own houses and write it. So I mean, if I were Microsoft, I'm sure I'd have a person who actually could write legislation and they would just do it for you. But we don't.

01:35:49 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So here's a question for you. I've said and I said this at the journalism conference as a journalist, I am offended that journalism companies are hiring lobbyists to seek favors from those whom we should hold to account, both in government and in technology, by the way.

01:36:11 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I think that's kind of naive. I'm with you 100% as a person who is a journalist at heart Right, like I'm still a bull in a china shop, right but I do think that to get anything done the way you want, you have to have a lobbyist and does it suck 100 percent. But that's just where we are as a democracy.

01:36:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
What do you think, Paris, since you're more of the purest journalist among us now?

01:36:40 - Paris Martineau (Host)
No, I mean, I think what Stacey just said is very true. I agree with you, Jeff. I think it's probably it feels morally quite squeaky, Squeaky.

01:36:52 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Squeaky. I love it. It's a great word yeah Is that a real word, that is a real word.

01:36:57 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And it's been used on this podcast multiple times before.

01:37:01 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Um, I have used the word squeaky in the past.

01:37:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yes, I love that. It I don't know. It feels quite squeaky, it feels quite unpleasant to think about participating in the game, but I also think that the rules of the society and structures we live in make that a necessity if you want to get things done. I'm not sure that makes it good or okay or the right thing to do, but it is what a lot of people and organizations do nonetheless do nonetheless and if you're smart, you can hold your.

01:37:42 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
You can have your paper lobby for things, your executive people at the paper lobby for things and your day-to-day journalists may disagree with it oh, they generally do, you're right well, yeah, you gotta have a separation of church and state, except between.

01:37:53 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Well, here's the other thing, though.

01:37:55 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So I read a bunch of stories about CJPA and from organizations that would benefit greatly that do not disclose that. That's way wrong. This has an impact In Canada. Michael Geist, who was a brilliant lawyer up there who was covering all the stuff up there, he said the Toronto Star was going all tech is horrible, tech is awful. Until the day Google said, oh, we'll give you something. They went well, okay, stop that series, took that off, stop doing that. The Wall Street Journal, I think, is awful in this way and California legacy news has been propagandizing for this and I think it's awful. And the journalists aren't pushing back, at least even about transparency. Well, LA.

01:38:44
Times said we're a member of the NMA, but they didn't say they would benefit.

01:38:48 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Well, I mean, frankly, the people who are probably writing those stories are, I mean, in many of these cases, probably writing multiple stories a day do not have an understanding of the inner workings of the business in which they work to where they'd be able to disclose it. I agree that I think there should be more transparency. If you're an organization, if you're a news organization, lobbying for anything, you should disclose that to your teams, that you can make appropriate disclosures in your stories, that to your teams that you can make appropriate disclosures in your stories.

01:39:17 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But I'm not sure that it's on any. The LA Times Guild opposed this until they got a change in the law that benefited them, and then they were for it.

01:39:27 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Well, I mean, the LA Times Guild has a lot of problems to deal with. I think they're just trying to keep as many of their guild members with jobs as possible.

01:39:33 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, yeah members with jobs as possible. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say I don't think it's asking like a journalist to hold people in power accountable in their internal like companies is kind of like asking an abuse victim to leave their, their spouse. You know like it may happen, but where are they going to go? Do they have fun? I mean it's being a journalist.

01:39:53 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
At least have standards in the coverage At least.

01:39:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
at least have a standard uh caveat here saying this affects us or you could hire the solicitors at the london firm vardags the headed by isha vardag, the self-styled diva of divorce, of divorce, who accidentally got a couple divorced.

01:40:18 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, yes, what. I put this in the rundown. What A couple got accidentally divorced due to a computer error made by a legal team. They were trying to submit a divorce for one couple and accidentally submit it for another and the judge was like, sorry them's the breaks, it was approved.

01:40:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And the judge says, sorry, them's the breaks, it was approved. And the judge says, yeah, it's done. Now they're divorced. Oh man, yeah it's not what you want.

01:40:50
The online system operated with its now customary speed and granted the orders divorcing the williams's within 21 minutes. The solicitors realized their mistake. Two days later, the guardian writes and applied to the high court to rescind the final divorce order. They described the error as somebody at vardag's clicking the wrong button, but the judge said no. There's a strong public policy interest in respecting the certainty and finality that flows from a final divorce order.

01:41:21 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Too bad I ended up on medicaid part b because finally finally got to the answer this I, I didn't, I'm still employed, I'm not supposed to be on it, I'm not supposed to do that, uh. And I said do you do this to people? No, we don't do that to people. Finally, the fifth guy I got to said oh, somebody wrote down a social security number. It's close to yours and looked like yours, but it's not yours. They requested part b. You didn't. They didn't get it. You did oh, no, even so. Then I had to go back and back and back and they were billing me for this and oh, oh, no penalties coming up. Finally, I did what you said you wouldn't do before. I went to Senator Cory Booker's office and they're very nice people. They said we'll write off for you and then, finally, I got my right card. Yeah, and that's not AI, that's not computers, that's an idiot.

01:42:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's lobbying. It's too easy that.

01:42:11 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
That's not lobbying, it's just. It's the fact that we we don't put things in place to fix mistakes. And it's hard to fix mistakes and if it were easy, people would scam it. I mean, that's, that's the cold, hard truth.

01:42:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, All right, I'm sorry, I changed the subject, but I think it was appropriate.

01:42:33 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
That was a lot of news. We were all sad about journalism.

01:42:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah. I don't want to get back into it so I won't ask any questions, but we'll follow that with interest. I have a feeling Google has a giant hammer. That might be just enough to get the job I think the threat was all that Google did.

01:42:51 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, google said we're serious.

01:43:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Because the funny thing is the dynamic here is that in australia google sorry, we're trying to leave it we're we're back on it.

01:43:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know I'm sorry, I'm sorry I laughed, jeff, continue.

01:43:08 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
No, no, that I can do, it's not a democracy?

01:43:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
no, it is not no, it's a jar ofocracy what else you want to talk about.

01:43:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's so many stories in here.

01:43:19 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, because I thought Jeff wasn't going to be here today, so I went and put in a bunch of stories. So you put him in there. You went to town.

01:43:24 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Almost all of these are Paris's. Yeah.

01:43:32 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Thank you I looked yesterday and I was like Jeff's not going to be here, I've got to put stories in. I don't know who's going to be on the show with me. Pick a story then.

01:43:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's some great stories in here Neopets Nostalgic Revival. I put that in there for Paris Crippled users. In six months Neopets is back, baby, oh, good for them is back baby for them. Oh wow, it looks exactly. That's yeah bring it back.

01:44:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Uh, you and my daughter both grew up on neopets. Oh my god, club penguin, club penguins.

01:44:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That was, that was the disney, uh disney, attempt to get all of your information. I mean to advertise to teenagers.

01:44:14 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I mean to make a lovely life for you um, I, I'll, I'll throw out the uh, amazon killing the madam a skills. Yeah, that's mostly because I saw the headline and I guffawed because the headline from ars technica is amazon virtually kills efforts to develop Alexa skills. Disappointing dozens which was great it ties into my own thesis of like hey, we went all in on this smart home IoT stuff and it was pretty sucky for the end user and didn't deliver, so let's claw that back and that's all.

01:44:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's all. Well, we know they were. They're losing. What is it? A billion a year on Amazon Echo. They thought so, yeah, yeah. On June 30th, Amazon will stop giving out the monthly Amazon Web Services credits that have made it free for third-party developers to build and host A-word skills. You know, gosh, I've been planning to write that Alexa skill for the longest time and now it's not free anymore have uh.

01:45:24 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Did you guys ever use any of these uh skills? I'm trying not to say the name I did to set up. I've only ever used one, which uh was. If you tell it echo, make cat noises, it'll make cat noise. It makes like cat meows and they're varied and they'll keep going and my cat goes crazy for them. I haven't done it in a while maybe good, crazy, bad crazy good, crazy, she really loves it.

01:45:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She gets really close up to the uh echo my wife, who is a cat lover, found there is a I don't know if it's a skill. There's a feature that you can have the echo meow instead of saying anything else when you give it a command. So now, when we say echo, set spaghetti timer for 12 minutes, it goes meow.

01:46:06 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
And yeah, I wish I could do that for google, because google will repeat verbatim my command back to me in a much slower tone of voice, or do you?

01:46:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
mean you want to set a spaghetti timer? Yes, excruciating. And then the other one I don't like is did you know I can also do your laundry for you and order?

01:46:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean, it's just did you know you can tip your amazon?

01:46:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
driver by saying blah, blah, blah.

01:46:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Or you can order stuff through our app. I'm like shut up, Shut up.

01:46:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Shut up. So anyway, the Alexa I'm sorry, the Echo Developer Rewards program is ending, which means now just one more nail in the coffin. Third party skills I've done the Jeopardy skill. I've done a variety of skills. I like the skills.

01:46:59 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Well, I think some skills that add, like, for a while, you had to have a skill to integrate with the platform. If, like you, were a smart home company, right. Like so to make your lights work, right. Some of those skills still exist and are mandatory for using things together, and so it might be that, like GE, would pay to keep my oven preheating through Madam A, just as a benefit for people who bought their ovens.

01:47:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Amazon says fewer than 1% of developers are using the skills incentive programs. There are 160,000 skills on Amazon Echo.

01:47:36 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Well, most of them were built back in like 2017. Yeah, they're still around.

01:47:41 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Stacey, here's a question for you, since you were in the stuff and we really haven't been together since ChatGPT and stuff and skills and the whole question. Spoken interface bodes ill for chat, gpt and company.

01:48:04 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
No, I think the way that you had to access skills required a lot of cognitive overhead in a way that chat, gpt or any sort of generative AI that's worth its salt will solve, so I actually think it will be better. So, yeah, I think that's going to be helpful. I don't think that I don't. Voice interaction is not going away, and I think chat, gpt or generative AI that uses large language models will only make that better.

01:48:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So and chattier. That's the problem.

01:48:40 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It doesn't have. I think right now it's chatty, but it will get better.

01:48:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and with the proper prompt you can keep it a little more concise. So just to be clear, amazon is not killing skills, they're just killing the incentive programs they were paying to third-party developers to make skills. Skills are not gone and the truth is apparently nobody really made much money on skills anyway, including.

01:49:10 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Amazon.

01:49:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Amazon lost a lot of money because by 2018, this Ars Technica article says Amazon had paid developers millions to make custom Alexa skills. But you know, those developers found it very hard to make money off skills, with a rare few pointing to making thousands of dollars at most. The number one skill is the Jeopardy skill, which is expensive. It's five bucks a month at most. The number one skill is the Jeopardy skill, which is expensive it's five bucks a month. Then are you smarter than a fifth grader? Apparently, lots of people want to know who wants to be a millionaire Everybody and calm the meditation act. Those are the popular, most popular skills right now. Skills will continue. Developers will continue to be able to make money. There just won't be those incentives to develop a skill. It makes sense in the early.

01:50:00 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, they thought it was going to be the app store and it is not the app store. It is basically like developing for another platform that may or may not be necessary. Same with the gpt store.

01:50:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was just going to say that you know now, partly that's because open ai has not yet established a store per se. But apparently I mean I put I've have skills up on the gpt store, but you know, I don't know if anybody's even downloaded them. You don't know, and and they haven't set up a way to get paid for it yet either. What is uh panic as a business?

01:50:35 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I assume that's a Jeff.

01:50:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh yeah, that is, that was both panic. I was going to try to put together a whole panic section just for Stacey's benefit. Ai panic In her honor today. What line is that, leo? Oh?

01:50:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
line I don't know from lines, what Lines Schmeins. It's a line I don't know, 106. 106. 106.

01:50:57 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Right under Tuscany, all the way down there, hey, tuscany drink.

01:51:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I did that just for you.

01:51:04 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This is Neera Weisblatt, our friend oh, I love Neera, yes who has been doing more work on the amount of money that's going into all this stuff, and who's involved in Tess Creel. Above that, the line above that is the paper that we've been long awaiting from Emil Torres, as well as Tim DeGabrielle, on Tess Creel. I'm halfway through reading it right now. So an effort to keep talking about this stuff.

01:51:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And they're linking it to eugenics.

01:51:35 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yes, directly In the lead, they're saying straight out that this is a child of eugenics, which I think is really important to say, because that's not um pussyfitting around the topic at all. Is it accurate? Yes, yes, I've talked to emile torres about this and he's convincing. And there's a historical. Why does Elon Musk want to put chips in heads? Have only certain people, have lots of babies and populate the universe Because he thinks that he can make the future. That's a lot of them.

01:52:13 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It's a, it's a through line. So if I don't think all of them think it through, but if you question, if you look at the core beliefs, ultimately these people feel like they're smarter and better than other people and they also feel a sense of threat, looming threat of maybe that mass extinction event and then so the solutions that come up to them are automatically going, they're going to prioritize saving the smartest number of people they can from this theoretical event, which then another threat stacy that they feel, which is like immigrants and people who are different than them too well.

01:52:50
So that's like us. I feel that that's like unexamined privilege. Personally, like I feel like I feel like if you come at them and you're like, oh, you hate immigrants, they'd be like, oh my God, no. But then if you actually question them, like a few layers down, they'll be like well, yes, those people from developing countries are not as smart and as good as me. I mean, it's not their fault. They're from a developing country. Like I think there's a lot to get. Yeah, I think there's a lot of unexamined life there.

01:53:20 - Paris Martineau (Host)
There's something that's even in the abstract here that I think is good context for this, describing the through line from AGI to eugenics, it says. As a result, many of the very same discriminatory attitudes that animated eugenicists in the past, such as racism, xenophobia, classism, ableism and sexism, remain widespread within the movement to build AGI, resulting in systems that harm marginalized groups and centralized power, while using the language of safety and benefiting humanity to evade accountability. Accountability yeah, I'm sure that this paper is long it's 42 pages. I haven't read it. Obviously goes into a lot more detail about that, but I think that that's like an interesting context to add to this discussion, is it? I'm sure there are many examples of test grail boys, uh, being outwardly racist classes I'll give you one, but there's also the trickle-down effects.

01:54:16 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Exactly. The other example is here. Is that effective altruism at the beginning was buying mosquito nets at the cheapest possible way to save the maximum number of people, right? Oh well, look how smart we are and how we use the money it shifted to well actually, no, let's hold on to that money so that we can redesign the future for all those 10 to the 15th people in the future who we know more about and you know the people now in the mosquito. They're not so valuable. It comes out in those kinds of insidious ways.

01:54:48 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Well, I mean big picture, like super big macro human view. We have moved to a culture of like incredible individualism from more of a collectivism culture. Right, and if you do, and as you do, that and prioritize the individual, the people who will accrue power are the people who are going to want to retain that power and do so through ignoring, actively killing, the rest of the collective. That's not part of the item, it's fun.

01:55:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's fun, you guys. I can see why how Eugenics is fun. I can see how it's depressing, but I'm like that's my sarcastic point might conclude that the consequence of creating AGI would be harmful to marginalized groups, to workers, to to privacy, et cetera. I don't, and I think that that's probably. That may well be true. I think it's a little unfair to say that anybody who's interested in promoting AGI is interested in that consequence. Maybe they're not, I think that's an interesting point, leo.

01:56:03 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I think that the AGI because there's a test trail piece and there's the AGI piece Now generally I think what they would say is that AGI piece. Now, generally I think what they would say is that AGI is BS, except for the guy who walked you on the beach and hypnotized you. It's never going to happen, it doesn't exist, it's crap. But it is used as a goal for people who do believe in the T-E-S-C-R-E-A-L of T-E-S-C-R-E-A-L, and so they're intertwined and a lot of the people who are pushing AGI are test trail people.

01:56:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I guess I should re-examine my interest in AGI, which I'm pretty sure although I'll have to read this and examine my inner soul deeply, but I'm pretty sure it's just a kind of a plain kind of technological interest. In what can a machine think that's interesting?

01:56:53 - Paris Martineau (Host)
no, actually it says in the introduction, open ai defines agi as highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work. Nothing about thinking or feeling, which I think we've all uh talked at leo ad nauseum about, is a BS framework and has no place in this podcast.

01:57:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So an open AI is probably correct. That's really what an AGI is about is replacing humans. So I guess at that level, yeah, it's a form of anti-humanism.

01:57:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, here's the other one that's important Pedachin and Goetzel I can't remember how to pronounce either name who popularized the term in 2007,. Define it as a quote software program that can solve a variety of complex problems in a variety of different domains. Okay so far, but keeps going and then controls itself autonomously, getting more interesting. Keeps going with here's the hard part its own thoughts, worries, feelings, strengths, weaknesses and predispositions, like a human B-S.

01:57:58 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, we don't like that the current versions of AGI predicate like pretty much the traditional mainstream version of intelligence, which is you have access to a lot of information and you can synthesize it quickly to deliver some sort of new insight. But there's like I don't see an AGI for maybe emotional or proprioceptive intelligence and there are. I mean, I don't know. I think this is dumb. I've always thought it was dumb. Yep, that's my verdict. It's an interesting paper.

01:58:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I really do think it's an interesting paper and I guess one of the problems with scientific advancement in general is not thinking about the consequences of the work you're doing or even scientists, thought I think we have lost a lot in the last few years.

01:58:58 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Oppenheimer, you know, I know the whole movie is about his failure to think through the consequences, but I think for a large portion of humanity in time, people have thought through the consequences. That was part of like the rubric of what people were doing when they were trying to invent stuff Not everybody, I mean. There's obviously people who are engineering things, who don't think about it. But I think what's happened today is we don't't value that. We force people to invent quickly without thought. We prioritize again, I'm going with money, um and it. It feeds all the way back to like how we value like certain types of education. It's, it's and and I do think this is kind of a thing that that capitalism hath brought. I'll just say it. I had a conversation today.

01:59:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In the conclusion of the paper, they say we argue that attempting to build something akin to a god is an inherently unsafe practice Ding ding, ding ding and urge researchers and practitioners to abandon this goal in lieu of building well-defined, well-scoped systems that prioritize people's safety. And I think that that's probably the case. I think that's accurate, I think that's good, I think I think it is. I also think that some people are interested in the idea of agi. Just to see, can you do it?

02:00:20 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
macho breastfeed. Look how smart I am. I can make a machine man.

02:00:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
This is the plot of evangelion. We're all going back to a 90s anime.

02:00:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you can do it, should you do it, yeah and I know actually goes back to jurassic park and the the problem with this? What was the quote? The problem with you, scientists, is you. You were so anxious to figure out if you could do it.

02:00:45 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You never stopped to think no, it all goes back to Gutenberg and the creation of the first general machine.

02:00:53 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
As a 90s baby, as a 90s kid, I'm going to say that Paris is an allergy. Paris is way cooler than you are. Oh yeah, I know that.

02:01:04 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So I had a conversation today with an executive at LinkedIn to learn things that are for the new degree program I want to work on and you know he was interesting in saying he's the guy who wrote a really good op-ed in the Times about two months ago and he was saying that the impact of AI speaking our language and writing code and so on and so forth I think after talking to him I thought about it. I argue that from Gutenberg through today, the technology fades into the background when it gets boring and then the creativity comes to the fore. It could be because AI is a literate machine, though it's the most sophisticated technology you could argue we've ever had this side of nuclear power. It also, I think, accelerates the fading of the technologist and the technology into the background because, oh, it just talks to us, look what it can do, which is good because it puts it in the hands of more people, but it's bad in that we don't judge it as a technology to understand what it does.

02:02:05 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
You could argue the same thing about the divorce case. That's just the same thing about software, right? Software has made it really easy. I mean, I don't, I don't think. Do I think ai is important? Yes, I don't think it's like this end of civilization thing that we like to think about it as, simply because I guess we've lived through so many.

02:02:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But you know, I could be wrong well, you'll never know, because we'll be dead.

02:02:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's always time for a major extinction event exactly you got the entire theme of Oppenheimer completely wrong wasn't it that he, like, did all this without thinking, and then he realized later that he was like the point of Oppenheimer was that this jerk of a guy, admiral Strauss, who had his feelings hurt because Oppenheimer kind of mocked him several times in congressional testimony, decided that Oppenheimer should pay for it by losing his clearance and being thrown off the uh, you know, the aec. That's the whole vision part.

02:03:13 - Paris Martineau (Host)
There are there are two parts of the movie, as shown in the title cards. This is coming from me, a person who saw oppenheimer in theaters twice, and red american prometheus, which I'd highly recommend. Um, there's two parts of the movie fusion and fission. The fission is the part you're describing the fusion is the making of the atomic fusion, and fission, the fission is the part you're describing the fusion is the making of the atomic bomb in which he, I believe his original response when tapped to do it is no, I don't think I want to do this. I don't want to create a thing of human destruction and kill all these people, and they're like well, the Nazis are going to do it first as well as your old buddies in Germany.

02:03:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So we've got the fastest. And he knew heisenberg was good enough to do it. So he said well, I guess I have to do this because we can't let the nazis have the atom bomb. Uh, but then you're right, you got it turned around. Fission was what he did, and then fusion, which is the hydrogen bomb. Um, he didn't want to go ahead with doing the hydrogen bomb because he thought it really was too dangerous.

02:04:11 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Oh, okay, so he was thoughtful, so never mind, oh yeah he was thoughtful.

02:04:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He went kicking and screaming, Oppenheimer, did you know? He knew what he was doing.

02:04:22 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, he and all the people at Los Alamos never thought that they were going to drop two bombs. They thought it was maybe going to be a one-time thing to scare people into the movie.

02:04:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He was involved in targeting and choosing hiroshima and nagasaki as the targets it's in for a penny, in for a pound.

02:04:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, so, and that's the real what oppenheimer is actually about whoever pays for it gets to use it thank you, benito, for solving this conundrum um.

02:04:52 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It is interesting, though, that it's about strass being so butthurt because oppenheimer mocks it's all about optics, what we were just talking about this is what radicalizes these people into the test creel world, like if you look at like minor, little petty injuries andrease, uh mark, andreessen, if you look at it as a baby like so these people? So they're all babies, they're butthurt I hate saying that phrase because it feels like I'm a teenage boy it is, but it's true like something like really personally offends them and they feel attacked and then they go completely 180 and double down.

02:05:28 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's crazy to me it's male ego.

02:05:29 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Well, it's because the sort of people who pursue political power are the ones who have an inflated sense of self, want to have control over something. I mean they also want to do good. But frankly, the way the american political system is, you have to be in a position where you're saying I am the one who is going to be making these decisions, and that requires a bit of egotism. So, of course, when you get that ego damage in some way, you're going to respond.

02:05:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, it's malignant narcissism at work. But I do think the secondary, perhaps the secondary part of Oppenheimer was how vindictive Admiral Strauss was oh, absolutely and punished Oppenheimer for the most minor offense and hurt the country because Oppenheimer's voice then was not heard and his opposition to fusion was not heard. So in a way that did have a massive, that minor injury had a massive consequence To me. That was also part of the point of the movie. You're right, maybe it was a little bit about Oppenheimer too.

02:06:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
A little bit.

02:06:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He wasn't the title, okay, okay, hey, let's take a little break. We are so glad to have Stacey Higginbotham with us. You add so much to the conversation. This has been such a fun show. Jeff Jarvis, stacey Higginbotham, paris Martineau Thank you all three of you for being First word from our sponsor, cachefly.

02:06:47
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02:09:23 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Did it distribute by BitTorrent.

02:09:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We did distribute by BitTorrent. There was no, so I didn't know A lot of real networks, right? Yeah, the first time we put the podcast app like this was 19 years ago.

02:09:39 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Tomorrow, today, today, april 17th Happy birthday to you, Twit. I just realized Happy birthday to you.

02:09:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Twit 19 years ago. Happy birthday to you 19 years ago. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you and people say AI generated music will never make it. I tell, you.

02:10:04 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I tell you the three most tone deaf people in the world singing over Zoom call.

02:10:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's hard to do it on Zoom because everybody's a little bit different. It's rough.

02:10:12 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That's what made it even more fun.

02:10:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, no, it was 19 years ago today. The first show was just me and a bunch of buddies. We got together at a brew pub. I had some equipment, I recorded it and something like 14.

02:10:26 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You recorded it in a bar.

02:10:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, in a bar, and I called it the revenge. You recorded it in a bar. Yeah, in a bar. Wow, we used to do our show.

02:10:32 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Our CES show was in the bar, so yeah, yeah, I know We've done it and I can't remember 30,000 or 40,000 people downloaded it.

02:10:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There it is, Episode one who?

02:10:41 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
was on it, kevin Rose.

02:10:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Patrick Norton, david Prager, it was all the screensavers, uh, people like on tech tv and uh, it wasn't called. This we can take was called the revenge of the screensavers. But contest did not like that and sent me a cease and desist. So we had to find another name. But I didn't know anything about this. So I put it on a website and the website crashed immediately. Right, you couldn't. There's no way to put a show. You know, within a few months, we were getting a quarter of a million downloads a week. We couldn't. There's no way to put a show. You know, within a few months, you're getting a quarter of a million downloads a week. We couldn't. There was no way to put a show on a website. So I was sending it to people and say, could you see this? And then telling people the BitTorrent address so they could download.

02:11:22
It was. It was horrible. It was just you have to have a to do this, you have to have a CDN. It's a lot easier now. If you were starting a podcast now, you'd go to one, you'd go to Spotify or Libsyn or one of the big podcast companies and they would handle all that for you. But at the time no one knew how to do this. Cachefly saved our lives. It was there would not be a network without them, so that's why I'm always grateful. Yeah, it's 19,. 19 years. We're going to have a little party on Sunday.

02:11:54 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
We have an open studio and I have, oh, that's why Sunday's open.

02:11:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, it's one of the reasons. Yeah, and I think there's 25 or 30 people. We have room for 14. So we're going to figure We'll have people be sitting on the floor. I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to get everybody in and we're going to have a live show. Mike is going to be there, jason Howell is going to come back join us for that. Abrar Alhidi will be in studio. I'll be in studio. That'll be really fun, and I think we're going to go out afterwards to Lagunitas and have a little party to celebrate. So we all inviting everybody. By the way, that's open to club twit members, I, I shouldn't be saying if you want to come, come, but please come. No, why not?

02:12:37 - Craig song (Announcement)
at least it's gonna storm the studio storm the studio screaming say no no fire.

02:12:42 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Marshal is somewhere over there shaking their fist uh, I don't know.

02:12:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what are they gonna do? Shut us down, people in spirit that'd be pretty good radio Ticketstwittv.

02:12:52
If you're going to come, let us know. We'll try to find a place for you. It's one of the things we try to do to make Club Twit fun. We really am. If you don't want to see me eating beans on the show in the future, join Club Twit Seven bucks a month. Join club twit seven bucks a month. Supports everything we do, supports paris and stacy and jeff and the benito and the lights. Keeps the lights on the studio.

02:13:18
Uh, it's the only way we're going to be able to survive this, because the downturn in advertising really is so dramatic. Uh, but thank goodness we have club twit members. It's less than two percent of the total audience. I'd like to get it to five ten. If we got it to five or ten, I wouldn't need advertisers at all and we could launch new shows. We could also. I really we really wanted to do an ai show, but we just we didn't have the money. So I'm glad that you and jason are doing that, jeff yourself, um, but that's what happens is we have to kind of, you know, pare it down. Uh, we don't want to do any more of that if we, if we don't have to, and your help will make a big difference. Twittv slash club twit seven bucks a month. We did cancel the yearly plan because I don't know if we'll be here in a year. That depresses the hell out of me I know I don't really.

02:14:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
A year would be the 20th you got to make it to 20.

02:14:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know I quit the radio show after 19 years and I thought it probably should be 20.

02:14:18 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Why you got to one up yourself. You got to make it to 20.

02:14:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's just a number. It's an odometer number, it's not. 19 years is a long time for a podcast network.

02:14:28 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Yeah, I didn't last that long.

02:14:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Stacey podcast network yeah, I didn't last that long stacy is supposed to say something different on the astley say no, she's right, it doesn't, it's. Uh, we've lasted a long time, we're happy. I, I have enough.

02:14:43 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Uh, I've saved you gotta keep working till you die. I'll tell you what the american way.

02:14:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I, I want. You know this is a case of I don't have to, but I want to. Uh, I don't need the money, but I would really like to keep covering I, this agi thing. What's happening with ai? All this stuff is so interesting. For the first time, I was getting off. Frankly, I'll admit, I was getting a little bored. Uh, about four years ago it just seemed like there was nothing new, nothing interesting happening and all of a sudden, with AI, it's really gotten interesting again and with the battle between the people and big tech and how big big tech has gotten, it's a very interesting time and I think we have an important job to do, so I want to keep doing it.

02:15:30 - Paris Martineau (Host)
So help us people, please you just need 5 to 10% of you.

02:15:37 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That seems like an impossible number, but public radio can do it, you guys can do it Yo public radio is not doing it anymore.

02:15:44 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You know that, right, no, this is why we have to do our 24-hour marathon. Sign up for Club.

02:15:49 - Craig song (Announcement)
Twit, I'll do it ac will take an hour, see I'll take yeah we're filling this up.

02:15:55 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'll do as many hours as you need, all right, I've got.

02:15:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is like crazy I'll get a tattoo for it I love it. Thank you, you guys are fantastic. I really appreciate it. We, we love what we do. It's fun, we're lucky, we know we're lucky, we know we, we are privileged position, uh, but we also I, I think we all think it's what we're doing is important. It's not uh, it's not trivial, so, uh, pick a story. What else you want to talk about?

02:16:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
we got a few more minutes before we have to wrap this up oh, I want to talk about where is it um line 113 crypto trader if you're a crypto trader who's about to do a big fraud, the typically what you don't want to do is you don't want to open up google and search in things like elements of fraud and statue of limitations, market manipulation. Apparently, the story is that a trader was accused of stealing $110 million from a cryptocurrency exchange called Mango Markets. Search these terms, as well as market manipulation, criminal and FBI surveillance. Right before he did some market manipulation, he apparently manipulated future contracts in October 2022, when he boosted the price of swaps on this cryptocurrency exchange by 1,300% in 20 minutes and then borrowed against those inflated contracts using anonymous accounts, before fleeing Puerto Rico for Israel.

02:17:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What's wrong with that, though? Really, I mean.

02:17:40 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I guess you shouldn't do financial crimes.

02:17:43 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I was going to say swaps actually shorts on swaps against derivatives was one of the things that caused the housing bubble to burst back in 2008. Yeah. At least he picked something really complicated, right. That's going to take a little bit of time to unwind, except leaving the search terms does. Depending on using Cognito mode.

02:18:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The mango market was crazy. It was all smart contracts overseen by a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. I mean, it was itself an extremely complicated derivative market. So I'm amazed that the feds could figure out what he did.

02:18:28 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Well, I mean with cryptocurrency. There's a ledger.

02:18:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's true.

02:18:32 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean when the feds are looking for evidence of securities fraud. Typically how they do that is they look to see who made it big on trades that happened, you know, right after a stock moved in some dramatic way, and see if anybody made some suspicious trades. It's way easier to do that when everything is on a ledger.

02:18:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's all recorded. Yeah, eat with the future, pay with your face.

02:19:03 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Moral panic.

02:19:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Moral panic.

02:19:04 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Who is this? Who put this one here, lois?

02:19:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Beckett in the Guardian Eat the future pay with your face. My dystopian trip to an AI burger joint.

02:19:14 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
She sees a robotic French fryer and calls it absolutely terrifying. Oh geez, Come on. Oh, no Come on Wait, wait, wait. That's why I say that the deck on this story is insane, it is.

02:19:28 - Paris Martineau (Host)
If the experience of robots served fast food dining is any indication, the future of sex robots is going to be very unpleasant, excuse me, the Guardian has issues.

02:19:43 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I love them but they got issues about sex. I visited.

02:19:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Cali Express last week to find out what an all-American lunch, served with a side of existential dread, tastes like. When I entered the restaurant, located near Caltech University in Pasadena, I was greeted with giant posters advertising the quote frying AI robot Marvel, but few actual customers. Most of the people inside were other journalists. Oh well, a television crew hovered over the grill machine. The space was decorated with early prototypes of robot arms, as well as a riff on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, with a human hand reaching out not to the hand of God, but to a robot claw holding French fries, but to a robot claw holding french fries. Uh, apparently this is all tied into the fact that california raised the minimum wage for fast food workers to 20 bucks an hour. So this restaurant uh created a fully autonomous, ai powered robotic restaurant. To chew it, churn out burgers and fries A small number of humans.

02:20:55 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Way back, in like 2000.

02:20:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's the auto mat, a small number of humans still required to push the buttons on the machine and assemble the burgers and toppings.

02:21:05 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
So I've a friend of mine actually hosts a newsletter about robotic food, or did, and these things have been around before, like Chachi Pt and our latest AI iteration it's. I mean, and yeah, it's true, wage pressure is driving this and the fact that rents are super high, labor costs are high. Have you ever?

02:21:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
been to a Cheeto factory. There's no people in there.

02:21:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
No, I haven't, Leo, have you.

02:21:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes via. Tiktok. I wish I'd been in a oh yeah, that's one of my favorite tiktok topics is how things are made. Yeah I do I thought cheeto factories yeah well, how do they pump them? There's no humans involved. It's a conveyor belt, automated line of. But all these pringles?

02:21:48 - Paris Martineau (Host)
the same thing thing.

02:21:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This was depicted in the 1999 movie Chicken Run yeah, actually I should mention that our club watch along.

02:22:01 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'm having a lot of 90s references today thank you the chicken pot pie maker.

02:22:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah we are going to watch the very famous. Actually, do we figure out if we can watch it or not? No, I've forgotten. Tell us what you're talking about Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which came out in 1927.

02:22:24 - Craig song (Announcement)
It's about all this right.

02:22:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, 1927. And we were going to do a watch along. In fact, you're all invited. It's going to be at the Laporte House and the club, all the club members, we're all going to watch the movie together and make fun of the vision of the future, which involved, I think, quite a few robots, as I remember.

02:22:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So blue sky and threads can get fairly scoldy. I still like them better than, of course, twitter. It's not hard scoldy. I still like them better than, of course, twitter, it's not hard. But I complained about this story and people. Just well, it's capitalism and it's technology. I said it makes french fries. You don't understand. I said it makes french fries, it just makes french fries. What's the big?

02:23:06 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
And if anyone's ever worked a fryer, that's not a fun job. Exactly.

02:23:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Dangerous, but it's the first step to eugenics. You've got to agree to that.

02:23:17 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Ponderous we could probably find the right point to get off that ride and stop developing that particular thing. Before we get to eugenics, what is Vigil?

02:23:28 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This one is another interesting new AI tool. It's going to scare everybody. I put that in there, but it replaces one part of a video image with another, so if you go to the demo.

02:23:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I've been seeing a lot of Vigils lately. Yes, you have. So the idea is you can have the Joker doing his dance, you know Joaquin Phoenix doing his creepy, weird dance down the steps, but instead make it be Elon Musk.

02:23:57 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And it looks just like Elon Musk. Benito you've got to play some.

02:24:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Viggles. Yeah, you take a beginning and you animate. It's like a prosody which takes a voice and applies another person's cadence to the generated voice to make it sound. Here you go.

02:24:17 - Craig song (Announcement)
Here's the joker. And he told me you got to talk about how to use Vigil and Comfy UI to get the best results.

02:24:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, and are we going to see the output? This is going to be a how-to.

02:24:29 - Paris Martineau (Host)
But if you can avoid it, then that's going to be no. We need the.

02:24:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got to search for Viggles.

02:24:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Go to the one above. Go to the one above, you can do it. Sorry, benito, my fault.

02:24:41 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Viggle, Viggle, Viggle, rockin' everywhere, as they say.

02:24:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is that a 90s reference?

02:24:47 - Paris Martineau (Host)
No, I believe it's a reference to the song, an LMFAO song that has wiggle, wiggle, wiggle rocking everywhere there you go.

02:24:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I could be wrong If it's Viggoai right.

02:24:58 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
That's a 90s band though, isn't it?

02:25:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Probably it's not loading. It's not loading. What's wrong with your internet? You got to talk to the people who run that place. Okay, I got it. I got it, viggleai, and you can see how they take a person doing something and apply what she's doing. Yeah, there's a bunch of demo videos on there. How far down do I get?

02:25:24 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Viggle this.

02:25:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the bottom. Oh well, Never mind. All right, we'll leave this as an exercise for the listener. Do your Vigil work.

02:25:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Go to Twitter and search for Vigil. No, you don't. No, never mind Don't.

02:25:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Never go to Twitter and search for anything. It would be my suggestion. Yeah, all right. Ready for a chatbot version of your favorite instagram influencers? Ask the new york times. Instagram is testing a program that offers its top influencers the ability to interact with their followers over direct messages using a chatbot. Because who has time to talk to real people?

02:26:08 - Paris Martineau (Host)
it's funny because this is already what, uh, only fans creators do is based, except for not with chatbots. I think they hire people to just I've often seen this because people are talking about just dudes in like their rooms or at an office sitting there pretending to be an only fans creator and messaging people sexy things. I think it's quite funny. Mechanical Turk for OnlyFans yeah, but now mechanical Mechanical Turk.

02:26:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We talked about this when Meta first did this with Kylie Jenner, and they did it with a handful of influencers, celebrities, a handful of influencers, celebrities. Billy, the character that was inspired by Kylie Jenner, has 193,000 followers on Instagram. Anyway, who cares? I don't care, you know what? Go for it, let's do a changelog. This is the stuff that really matters.

02:27:10 - Craig song (Announcement)
It is the Google changelog that's louder than usual for it. Let's do a change log. This is the stuff that really matters. It is the google change log.

02:27:14 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That's louder than usual. It's a big loud. Google change log for everybody heralding a change log that'll last two seconds google maps will use ai.

02:27:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact, I think it's the case that the lab for the last, like three or four, shows google maps has been the big thing in the change logs it's like they keep adding features to google maps. Now google maps will use ai to help you find out of the way ev chargers wow, okay finally google maps.

02:27:48 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh, there's more well, now we'll show Like Trump's reaction to Gettysburg Paris. Oh, that was funny, wow, holy cow Gettysburg that video was pretty good yeah. It was EV chargers.

02:27:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, Horrible and beautiful at the same time. Never fight uphill me boys, Me boys, Never fight uphill. Google Maps is oh Lord, we laugh. But oh, Google Maps will suggest transit walking alternatives next to driving routes. Now, this is actually good. It's going to be also consider like an also consider card. Hey, you could drive, but you know what? You could also walk and it might be faster, especially if you live in.

02:28:30
New if you live in, or it might take 42 hours, which it does to me sometimes yeah, this is going to come to 15 cities around the world amsterdam, barcelona, london, montreal, paris, rome and sydney. It is true, it's probably easier to walk somewhere in rome than it is to to drive. Um, that's good. That's to kind of promote, you know, people using eco-friendly means of transport. Uh, google can now convert text on a website into the thing you most want. What would that be? Ads? Finally, google ad sense is debuting a new format for websites that converts existing text on a site into a shortcut for google search. It's called ad intense.

02:29:15 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I'm not ad intense, uh that's very intense, or it's like it's intent. What do you?

02:29:22 - Paris Martineau (Host)
intend to do yeah, it's in a tent.

02:29:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The intent you're intent, you're in a tent and you're and you're watching an ad. Google ad sends, places links into existing text on a oh what? Okay, they place links into existing text on a wedge web page which will launch a google search. The new format, which requires no third party cookies to show relevant ads, overlay search results over the page you're viewing when you click the link. Okay, okay, so I could be looking at a text and I don't understand, but anyway, it's a way to put.

02:30:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean, I didn't miss this, doesn't?

02:30:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, I know this is the fun part you call it. Maybe you remember this the google changelog that leo never ever wants to do the struggle to understand what's new. Is this important?

02:30:22
no, no, not that this is important and that's the google changelog for what it's worth, for what it's worth, for what it's worth. Let us uh, let us pause to remember the late lamented Google change log and hope that we can get Stacy to come back someday and then do our picks of the week, and you have brought some wonderful picks in the past, stacy Higginbotham. Would you like to bring us another one?

02:30:49 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I love how you start with me every time if I'm on the show.

02:30:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I do. I always go with you first, because you always got good stuff.

02:30:59 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I abdicated. I abdicated. I abdicated my throne.

02:31:06 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
She was the queen, but she abdicated and perished.

02:31:11 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I've abdicated that throne so I don't have a really fun like connected gadget to bring, but I do have a really awesome book. Good, it is what's it called? It's Hold on.

02:31:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I want to make sure it's not. I am Legion, the Bobaverse volume one, is it?

02:31:27 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It is not. It's verse volume one, is it? It is not. It's not a science fiction one, it is a prophet song by paul lynch and it came out, I think, maybe late last year, maybe early this year. Okay y'all, it is set in ireland. It is basically how a normal person would view a company or a country going into fascism oh look it came out very in august okay, it is so hard to read but it is so good.

02:31:59
And I don't know if I'm recommending it to you because I want you to read it and like you're like, oh wow, this is so easy. Or if I want you to be just as traumatized as I was, or if maybe, like we can talk about it afterwards and be like like, like I really wanted to, parts of the time, throw it across the room.

02:32:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is not a resounding review, but um it did get the man booker prize for 2023, so it's really well written it was just.

02:32:22 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
It was very stressful for me to read because I feel like I live with someone who would behave this way and it feels very close to home. Maybe it's a terrible book to read right before the election. Maybe it's a really prescient book to read right before the election. It's really good though.

02:32:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh my goodness, I think I will read this. I'm putting it on my Audible list. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.

02:32:46 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So one of those examples where there's an audio CD available, but it's not on Audible.

02:32:52 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Oh, maybe he's all crazy and doesn't want to feed the Amazon.

02:32:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, this is on Audible oh it is oh, oh, okay, but that can happen.

02:33:01 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You know how it is with rights, it's all crazy.

02:33:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, don't read this too close to the election. Is that what you're saying, Stacey?

02:33:11 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Please don't yeah, seriously do not Okay.

02:33:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think I mean it was stressful reading it like two months. I'm already pretty stressed. So, yeah, okay, good. And I should mention that Stacey's Book Club is a week from tomorrow it's the 24th, and we are going to be doing the Babaverse book, one of the series, which I thought was wonderful and hysterical, but I'm curious what stacy thinks. Um, it is called I am legion we are, we are, we are legion.

02:33:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
We are, bob, I just looked it up and it is. I can tell you b-o-b-i verse, because I thought you were saying baba verse like b-a-b-a like boba tea no, like boba verse no, it is, is not.

02:33:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It is a great book by Dennis Taylor. I can give you the premise because it all starts in the first page, as many books do. Bob Bob Jesus. Well played what I'm telling you Well played.

02:34:08
No, a lot of books don't start on page one, they start four or five. It's very confusing. No, no, what I mean to say is what I'm about to tell you happens in the first page or two. So you're not gonna I'm not ruining the novel for you.

02:34:22
Bob johansson is bob. He just sold his software company, made a lot of money. He's not gonna be working, working anymore. He's going to going to put his feet up, uh, but? And he's in las vegas to say goodbye to his team. And he decides, you know, right before he goes to, you know goes home. He says and I should? What I should do is put some. I got a lot of money. I should buy one of those things where they take your brain after you die and you put it on ice and maybe someday I'll be, know, reincarnated or brought back or whatever. So he pays for it and walks out the door and immediately gets clobbered by a car. The next thing, you know, he wakes up a century later and he's in a machine. And what gets interesting and the reason it's called we Are Legion, we Are Bob, is he's not alone. They've taken his brain and they've made many other bobs, all with the same personality.

02:35:17
It's a wonderful book. I love the premise and, uh, I think it's fun. There are four of them. A fifth is on the way. Uh, it looks not bob. Yeah, there are many, many more bobs than that. We actually by book three, I think there's a female, uh, and there's the story who's also getting cloned. It's really, it's really interesting. It's quite interesting. It's a. I don't, but I don't think. I don't know if you will like it, stacy. It's kind of a might not be your with your cup of tea, so, but I didn't. I suggested it. They voted it in. It'll be the book club on th a week from tomorrow, and I've promised that I will not influence the jury next time. Stacey will get to pick one of her horrible books and read that.

02:36:03 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Horrible. I give people a choice of books like a wide variety.

02:36:14 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You know what you got excited about the one you eventually hated, at least one of the ones you know.

02:36:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The one you were describing is really depressing, yes no, but that's the funny thing is she's now come up with another one, this profit book, the that sounds also the water knife by paolo gacicaluppi, and I love him as an author and I'll have to be honest, st by the time I finished the book I kind of liked it more, but it's a very grim near future reality.

02:36:36 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I did not like the Water Knife but people voted for it. I told people I was like this book is going to make you sad. I also gave them happier books.

02:36:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Why don't we do the Prophet Song next time?

02:36:52 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
No, that's not a science fiction. I'm only going to do happy book. Well, I don't know.

02:36:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I loved Clara and the Sun. That was wonderful.

02:36:59 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
You hated our cozy mystery set in space. I didn't even finish.

02:37:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
that I don't like.

02:37:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, what's the cozy mystery set in space.

02:37:06 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
That sounds lovely. It wasn't a cozy mystery, it was just cozy.

02:37:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's cozy sci-fi.

02:37:14 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Too many alien species in it for me personally if you want a cozy mystery set in space, I do hold on, I'm gonna. I'll tell you. Give me, come back to me and I'll tell you Stacy is really good on these.

02:37:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She's got a lot of good recommendations in sci-fi. She reads a lot. I watch TV a lot, which is why she's got a lot of good recommendations in sci-fi. She reads a lot.

02:37:34 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I watch TV a lot, which is why I'm not very smart. I listen to a lot of podcasts about Dungeons and Dragons. Oh dear, oh dear.

02:37:38 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Oh, okay, it's Malka. Older is the name of the author and then the first book in the series. It is literally a cozy mystery set in space. Wow, it's the Mim in the series.

02:37:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it is a it is literally a cozy mystery set in space. Wow, it's the mimicking of known successes, oh but that's not the one we did.

02:37:59 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
No, no, I am. I am actually gonna throw it out there as a potential book.

02:38:02 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Good, oh, a queer science fiction romance, mystery. Love that, that.

02:38:09 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
So Stacy's Book Club originally was sci-fi books that advanced beyond the 1960s and 70s and white men Stuff.

02:38:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, which this is. This Bobaverse book is current, but it's kind of in that genre.

02:38:27 - Paris Martineau (Host)
But it's Bob, it's kind of a guy. It's all about Bob. It's all about Bob.

02:38:36 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
So I predict you're going to hate, but anyway, we'll see. We'll find out thursday. Oh yeah, and murder bot diaries was our first book club ever that was a good one.

02:38:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That was a good one. We enjoy it and if you want to join us, you can uh on the 24th, but you got to be a member of club twit and all the details are in the discorded club twit. Paris a prediction I gotta I got two picks.

02:38:58 - Paris Martineau (Host)
One is uh, what I think is the superior new york times game strands. It's still in beta. Have you guys played it? Is that the new one? It is a new one, it's great, it's fantastic. It's kind of like a word one. It's great, it's fantastic.

02:39:11
It's kind of like a word search but there's a theme and there's like only specific right answers. So it looks kind of like a word search but you'll be given a theme up top and basically there are nine correct answers. It fills up every square in the word search and then one of the words you're trying to find, it's kind of like a revealer in crossword. It's like related to the theme and it's called a spanogram because it spans the crossword. So it'll either go from the top of the word search to the bottom or from the left to the right and it's just really fun. So this one is the long run. So you're going to like look for words, I guess related to like running or it could be something punny or something like that so you don't do, I see right but also, if you like, can't figure it out.

02:39:58
If you just go and search for normal words, like a normal word search every like three words you find it gives you a hint, it shows you where the word is, so it'll help you reveal it.

02:40:07
So I think like one of these is probably like uh, race I think marathon, because macaroni is yeah, marathon is up the top like right, which I think could be a spare spanogram so you can go from all over, so you from that m to that a it's like it's a funky word search and then to the the R down there and then down to the A yeah, and then thon, yeah, and it's a sphanogram because it goes all the way across. I don't know. It's really fun, I've been playing it all the time.

02:40:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like race rare rain macaroni None of them are the theme. So now I have a hint, I guess so now you have a hint.

02:40:48 - Paris Martineau (Host)
So now I have a hint, I guess. So now you have a hint, but part of it is you trying to figure out what is or is not the right theme of it. Some of them are easier than others.

02:40:59 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Is that Benito we saw playing? Yes, yes, it must have been, I see, I see. So it's boggle, it's boggle.

02:41:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm terrible at these. I don't know why I'm really bad at the. I could do the other games very well, but this word searching thing I have aversion to, I guess.

02:41:14 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I lost my entire family to the Netflix word trails thing. What? Is that it's? Terrible. So I think it's on Netflix and they're small games. It's word trails, which is kind of it's a crossword. Yeah, you fill in, you fill it. You have it's. It's a crossword. Yeah, you fill in, you fill it. You have it's boggle. You have like six or seven letters and then you have like what looks like a crossword thing, yeah, and then you just fill in the thing oh my god, and it's a game on netflix, yeah word trails.

02:41:49
Yeah, they have no. Netflix had games. If you like this, you'll love spending time doing that I will.

02:41:56 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'm right now going. I found a site that does that hosts the illegal archives of past. There you go zones of these, so when I'm done with that I'll do that. Uh, my other thing is very silly, but I saw it and I thought you guys would find it fun. It's cow magnets.

02:42:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not something you put on your fridge.

02:42:16 - Paris Martineau (Host)
No, not something you put in your fridge. This site explains what is a cow magnet. Have you ever heard of this type of magnet? Actually, cow magnets are very popular with farmers, ranchers and veterinarians because they're a well-known method of preventing hardware disease in cattle. Hardware disease is basically where cows just eat some sort of metal and then it like ends up in the digestive tract and hurts them when they try to expel it.

02:42:44
so, in order to fix it, what they just basically it is, they put a bit, they give the cow a big magnet, they swallow it and it sits there and it just collects all the metal. It's cow magnets.

02:42:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do they occasionally recover the magnet? Do they ever open up the cow?

02:42:59 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
and get it out.

02:43:00 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Or does it live there forever? Oh, it just stays there. I think it just. Yeah, it just stays there.

02:43:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're very strong magnets Al Nico magnets in the shape of a smooth rod, about half an inch by three inches.

02:43:12 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This is life with Paris. How do you find out about cow magnets?

02:43:17 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Honestly, I saw it on Y Combinator's news website. Sometimes I just go on there looking.

02:43:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't tell me it's worth $10 billion. I must have missed the Hacker News cow magnet piece. I love Hacker News.

02:43:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
They just linked to this website and I was like listen, I'm here for cow magnets.

02:43:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is it? Wow, yeah, who knew, I wonder. I bet you, there are people in our audience who are saying right now oh yeah, cow magnets, sure.

02:43:45 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, that's why you can't take the cow through TSA.

02:43:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You didn't know that.

02:43:53 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, know about cow through tsa. You didn't know that. Yeah, I just think it would be really funny if we approached like human medicine, like these veterinarians where it's like, uh, people keep eating metal and getting sick, let's just put a big magnet in there scooter x has put a link to the amazon cow magnets listing master magnetics original cast alnico five cow magnet half an inch in diameter, three inches long, pack of two for 22 that's reasonable. Oh, it's got a little cartoon cow inside diagram.

02:44:19 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
That's interesting but you could only feed them one, because if they ate two, they go, then they would.

02:44:27 - Paris Martineau (Host)
They would get perforations together yeah, yeah'd snack together yeah.

02:44:30 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
The history there. You need the cow's privacy to be violated under HIPAA, so you don't do two.

02:44:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
People who bought the Master Magnetics original cast cow magnet also bought and then it's just a bunch of cow magnets.

02:44:47 - Paris Martineau (Host)
The last slide in this Amazon display is is a thing that says vets agree, get magnets in the cows early oh my god, don't wait till cows are already sick.

02:45:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Make them swallow this now.

02:45:04 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I wonder if humans should do this yeah, I mean there's the whole dangerous things trying to putting the little magnets in your hands and whatnot oh, here's, uh, here explains one magnet works for the life of the cow.

02:45:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Administer with an ordinary balling gun. Oh wow, what's what? I don't know and I don't want to know. Poor cows, poor cows, cows.

02:45:28 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Poor cows.

02:45:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Poor cows.

02:45:34 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Well, thank you for that interesting. Yeah, I thought you guys would like cow magnets.

02:45:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, oh, did you scroll down on the Master Magnetics Amazon page? They have a picture of their founding family.

02:45:47 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, oh. Oh my, they definitely look like that photo was taken in the 70s we invented the cow magnet.

02:45:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, let's see who does this leave jeff jarvis.

02:46:00 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Pick of the week um, okay, so, uh, you know, it wasn't that many years ago when, about this time of year, you'd turn on Twitter, when it was still Twitter, and you'd be inundated with one-liners and T-shirt sayings and bumper stickers from TED. Now, hardly anybody talks about TED. There's hardly anybody TED. The TED speakers this year were kind of scary, but I'll leave that aside. But I did put up. So Vinod Khosla, the famous VC, put up his 10 slides. You want to see technological determinism and utopianism? Oh my, just a few of them. Number one expertise will be near free. What BS Was it, vinod, you walked with on the beach, aliyah?

02:46:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know.

02:46:48 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
No, because Vinod would never let anyone near his beach.

02:46:53 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You're right. You're right, he didn't exactly. No. Expertise is not going to be nearly free. We're not going to have AI doctors. Don't hand your body and your child over to AI. Number two labor will be near free. That's the dream of an investor. That's ridiculous. Uh, that's the dream of an investor. That's ridiculous. We will have a billion bipedal and other robots freeing humans with the servitude of undesirable jobs. Bs. Three computers will grow, use, grow expansively, fine, easy. Four AI will play a large role in entertainment and design. Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh. Number five internet access will be mostly by agents, which is to say you won't be getting to the Internet. You'll be taken to the Internet by these middlemen or middle robots.

02:47:39 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
By your AI.

02:47:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, exactly, and so I just you know flying.

02:47:46 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I actually think that last one is not too far off from how we access information on the Internet today.

02:47:55 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, there's three phases of AI Stacey. I have learned this going to AI events. There's the analytic and the generative and then the agentic. But you don't get to agents until you trust the suckers, Because you're not going to have a do tasks for you.

02:48:12 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
And I maintained that you won't have trust in a capitalistic society for any of those, because their their goals and your goals are not the same.

02:48:19 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So what we need to do is we need to go into the back into the, the, the song app, and we need to prime it to a version of the international for Stacy.

02:48:30 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
Okay.

02:48:31 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I know I'm so sorry. I've been radicalized the opposite way, I know. The other thing I want to mention you mentioned books. I want to recommend I just finished listening to Percival Everett's James. Oh, I've got to listen to that, is it good?

02:48:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, listen to it because it's really well done- Huckleberry Finn, as told by the other one, the black guy.

02:48:50 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
And not unlike Slave Jim. The movie American Fiction was based on his book, whose title I'm suddenly forgetting. There's a lot about language, and the great thing about the conceit of the book is that James is quite literate and well read but has to use slave language to make the white people feel comfortable to pass. Yeah, it's, it's. It's the reverse of code, switching in a magnificent way. It's really well done and I recommend it yeah, I hear good things about it.

02:49:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yep, uh well, thank you. You all are marvelous. It's always fun to spend time with you, stacy. We love seeing you again come back anytime I'll see you in a week at our book club and we'll come up with some fun book to read next time. I stacy has not forgot to read the baba verse book, so she has a week to read it now. So it's easy. It's an easy read you won't have you ever heard of the evelyn woods method. Speed reading no, don't do that. Read, read it every.

02:49:56 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
I'll read the book my gosh you guys, it's a week.

02:49:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not that long, it's easy, it's fast, it's fun. Yeah, I don't have a full-time job anymore it's all that well, but she is a policy feller at Consumer Reports, which is fantastic.

02:50:11 - Stacey Higginbotham (Guest)
You know what she's a policy gentleman, you cannot call me a feller, I refuse.

02:50:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So great to see you, Stacey. Thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Give our love to Kevin as well Next time you're at the Wawa. Paris Martineau writes at the information the informationcom still working on that big scoop I am.

02:50:39 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I was in the writing fugue state earlier today sorry, we broke you out of that.

02:50:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I apologize. No, thank you, uh, any excuse.

02:50:52 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I was gonna say. There comes a time in the deadline process where you start thinking thoughts like wouldn't it be nice to not know how to read, and things like that but do you, do you have a hard time like closing it out, like saying okay, no more, I'm gonna write the story no, that's the main thing. An editor that's the main component of my editor-reporter relationship is the editor is like all right, paris, you've done enough digging Time to put it on paper.

02:51:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Time to write it.

02:51:21 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And I'm like wait, put more digging. Is that because you like the digging so much or because you hate the writing so much? I like writing. I think it's just. I also really like the digging quite a lot, and I think that it it gets difficult, I guess, the more work you put in a story where, if you've been doing interviews and research for weeks and weeks, the idea of putting it all on paper seems more daunting than it actually is. And it's always, I don't know. There was a chart that I think Aaron Griffith, now a reporter at the New York Times, wrote about the emotional journey of filing a story, and there's one part of it which was labeled like the tranche of despair, which is like after the high of like oh wow, this story is fantastic, I love the idea, I love reporting. Then it's like I have to commit this to paper. Everything I've ever known or written sucks. But then you get out of the tranche despair and you're like wow, I hope you get out of the tranche of despair.

02:52:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, and into the highs of having written that's all I can hope for you remind me of harriet the spy. Did you ever read those books? No, but I knew the reference yeah, does she also like to do the research? Uh, jeff jarvis is a professor, former professor, I don't know who the what the hell. He is executive director of the town center for entrepreneurial journalismism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New.

02:52:57 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
York. Should we play it out with the other Craig song at the beginning?

02:53:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, we will. We have other songs. In fact, I put another theme in the rundown we might want to try. His book, the Gutenberg Parenthesis, is available at gutenbergparenthesiscom as his magazine. The Gutenberg Parenthesis is available at gutenbergparenthesiscom as his magazine, as will be his new book, the Web we Weave how we Must Reclaim the Internet soon to be available. You can get all three. You should have a bundle, the Jarvis bundle. Thank you, jeff. Thank you have a great week. I will be back next week. Will you be back next week? Will you be back next week?

02:53:33 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
yes, yes, okay you can't get rid of me. You're traveling sometime.

02:53:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, you're going to go away sometime. I might be coming up in California at some point in May, maybe we can get you to come up with a bridge and come up and visit us. Thanks Stacy, thanks Paris, thanks Jeff, thanks to all of you, thanks, especially to our Club Twit members who made this show possible. We'll see you next week on this Week in Google. Bye-bye.

02:53:58 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You got to go back to your beans.