This Week in Tech 1040 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 Twit this Week in Tech. Great panel for you. In fact, one of the chat room folks said this one is a banger, and I would agree. Harper Reed and Amy Weber here. A quick program note before we get started. Both Harper and Amy are passionate and occasionally adult expletives slip from their mouths. We've decided this time not to bleep them out, so if you're offended by strong language, this might not be the show to listen to. If, on the other hand, you're interested in deep conversation about important issues of the day, including ai, uh, I think I would stay tuned, because this one's a great one. Twit is next. Podcasts, podcasts, you love.
00:46
From people you trust. This is TWIT. It's time for TWIT this Week in Tech, episode 1040, recorded Sunday, July 13th 2025. The $100, 000 stapler. It's time for twit this week in tech, the show where we cover the week's tech news. You're going to be very glad you're here today because we have two of my favorite panelists. Well, we always have my favorite people because we don't book my not favorite people, but I'm always pleased to welcome har Reid to our microphones. Technologist, entrepreneur, hacker at harperblog and his company 2389.ai, which is not the line number of. You're not expected to understand this in the Unix code. We know that now. Unfortunately, it's not too late to change the name of the company Harper. I'm just saying.
01:43 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Well, we've been leaning in on the Pi part Like this is our favorite digits of Pi and we're moving offices right now 3.141582389.
01:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, very nice, it's further down, yeah.
01:54 - Harper Reed (Guest)
And we're changing offices and our unit number is F314.
01:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So we're just going to keep going and keep going, keep going, yeah, it down going, yeah, it's pie all the way down, also here. As if this that weren't enough, the wonderful amy webb from the future today strategy group our favorite futurist hi amy, hi leo and and uh hardcore bicyclist yes, I did.
02:18 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I only I had a shorter ride this morning because we had some pretty bad storms. But um, yeah, I guess what's your weekly mileage typically? Uh, I've been traveling a lot for work, so it depends, but somewhere between 150 and wow but to put that into perspective, the tour de france, guys are riding between 100 and 200 miles a day a day. Yeah, um, right now, but I, since I saw you last, I I competed in unbound, which is a you mentioned you were gonna do that yeah, it's a great gravel.
02:49
It's a the world's like best gravel race, according to me, um out in kansas and uh, it was great you had a good time I had a great time. It's a get all muddy we were dry this year um oh good it was the North route this year, so it was hilly dry. It was direct sun and like 95 degrees, pretty gnarly crosswinds which were just it was just hot air blowing Um, so that was not not fun.
03:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How many flats?
03:17 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I did not have any flats. I had enough equipment on me to service five different bikes. If anybody else had had problems, just added to weight that I probably didn't need to carry, but yeah.
03:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How many. It looks like a lot of people get involved in this, maybe like 80 or 90 or.
03:33 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Um, no, no, no, there's a this. I think there were 4,000 people committed, but there's. There's different tracks. So, um, one of the world's most probably the most famous ultra endurance cyclist, lachlan Morton, came in second. I watched him cross the line, the XL.
03:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wait a minute. If you watched him cross the line, that means you came in first. Yeah, that's exactly right.
03:57 - Amy Webb (Guest)
No, they had started the night before. Oh okay, so there's two. The main event is the 200 mile and there's a 100, a 50, a 25.
04:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So yeah, it's it's great, what fun.
04:11 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Congratulations.
04:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, thanks, that's a big deal, all right. Well, that's enough for the nice stuff. Now we're going to talk about the news of the week. Do we have to Leo? No, I wish we didn't from the atlantic.
04:33
Uh, this kind of summarizes what is basically happening. Uh all over the world. Uh, age verification requirements are are kind of coming in. Uh in australia and uh in the uk and, yes, now in the US, the Supreme Court last week in the free speech coalition versus Paxton, the attorney general in the state of Texas, upheld a Texas law requiring websites with sexually explicit material to verify the age of their users, which means everybody, not just kids, has to prove they are of age.
05:07
Uh, using government id in most cases, although I guess there are some third-party tech technologies that might keep porn. Keep your, keep your id out of the hands of pornhub, I don't know. Um, as the atlantic points out, the case's true importance lies not on its effect on the adult entertainment industry, but it shifts America's willingness to regulate digital technology at all. You know we've lived in the age of section 230 and light hand uh regulation of the internet because it was a nascent technology. Clarence Thomas in the majority opinion said nope, it's not nascent anymore. It's established and we think age verification is okay, despite the quote. Incidental burden on adult speech thoughts. Nothing to say anybody.
06:06 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Come on, amy, I know you have a thought or two, and then um so my initial reaction to this was I wonder how this shifts the business landscape, although I guess it's kind of what I focus on, um, because if porn hub, if you now have to age verify for porn hub, I don't see a lot of people willingly doing that.
06:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, Pornhub's already withdrawn from the states that require this.
06:30 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Fine, anybody who does. It seems like this is a huge win for OnlyFans, because I don't think OnlyFans is going to be subject to the same why not? It'll be harder to prove prove first of all any. A lot of the content that you might consider to be totally explicit is behind a paywall anyways, so how would somebody verify it's not out there for anybody to see? It's not the same thing as pornhub. So my initial thought was it'll be easier for them like. This is going to be a good time for only fans to build up its business, because any freely available porn is going to be harder to access.
07:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But that well, there'll also be, I would imagine, kind of sketch sites that aren't like porn hub, where they go, you know, come and come and get us right. I mean, imagine there'll be some of that too, right right, so that that's the main thing and there'll be also sites that set up. I would, if I were uh an evil actor, uh that set this all up, just to get the information that's right.
07:33 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So what this has me? Interestingly enough, um, you know, I'm I'm always worried about monopolistic power and control and, uh, and centralization of certain things and and our any government, including our own, um, and so this seems like perhaps the first reasonable use case for blockchain. So, if there was a third party. It's like. It's like, of course, porn. Finally, is the is the thing that makes it take off.
08:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They kind of go together in some way, so to speak.
08:09 - Amy Webb (Guest)
But look, I I initially thought about, like, if there's going to be some kind of regulation going forward which clearly now there can be in, certain states will want it be in, certain states will want it, then I would there would. It would be a good time for a third party to come in, either clear or some blockchain, something or another, or Pornhub that was the other thing I kept thinking. If Pornhub was really smart, they would make their own browser with a VPN built into the browser and it would be like porn browser that would allow you.
08:43
So it's like a little bit of but whatever. So, like you just bypass anything that requires age or ID verification because it's got a built-in VPN. You know, I mean there's ways around the and I'll stop as I go. There's obviously lots of ways around this. You just VPN to a different place, but that's out of reach or confusing for a lot of people. So it just seems like, from my point of view, this law seems like it will have mostly negative knock-on effects for the very people that wrote the law, because it's going to open up innovation in all of these other ways.
09:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Isn't that often what happens? It just channels all that energy and Clarence Thomas is like, chief among them.
09:25 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Don't think about the next order impacts right of the Arcane and draconian laws that they attempt to to create. So, and I, I mean I it's.
09:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look, if you go into a bookstore, a news shop and as a kid and try to buy a Playboy, the owner's gonna say, no kid, get out of here. I mean it's, we have a standard, a normal standard, that we don't let kids see the adult content, and I don't. I think that that's a.
09:49
I think we had a standard yeah, now it's probably not really, I don't think we really have that, so maybe that's why this is happening, because kids do, in fact, thanks to the internet, have all sorts of access. I don't have any problem with in your mind saying, well, let's figure out a way around. This Problem is it's not just going to be adult content, it's going to be LBGTQ content, it's going to be political speech that some people don't like. Utah has a minor protection in social media act. It's going to keep kids off social media. California has the so-called age appropriate design code, which is so poorly written that it could apply to anything. There's COSA Harper. What do you think?
10:32 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I mean I think Amy said it well I don't know if you've ever interacted with young people, but they're pretty good at getting around rules.
10:40
They're really good at getting around things as well, as they don't have any experience to deal with scams and to deal with bad actors, et cetera. So I think the big worry that I would have is that this is just going to create more opportunities for people to prey on youth and the people who, theoretically, this is trying to protect. The other thing is, back when NFTs were relevant, there were a lot of people that were trying to put KYC information on chain so that if you KYC'd one place, you wouldn't necessarily have to KYC at all these other subsequent places that were related or partnered or what have you. Obviously, that is not how fintech works, and so it kind of died on the vine in some regards, but I do think there is opportunities to do verifiable credentials and all sorts of fun open source-y sort of web standard ways to solve some of these problems. Of course, none of these this legislation is taking that into consideration, and so it's just going to be the worst of any imagination on this stuff, which is always a bummer.
11:44 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, I think we're hitting this inflection point across multiple technologies and forums for communication, where we've had this unbridled, totally open, you know, restrict nothing approach for a really long time and I think that that worked, except that society also changed. And you know, if I think back to, I mean God, if you think back now to Janet Jackson and the Super Bowl and the stupid people were so shocked and they lost their minds. Yeah, you know, and, and where we got, where we are.
12:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think still the most rewound moment on Tevo of all time gosh.
12:23 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Well, tivo shortly died after that.
12:26 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, well, there's no chance for anything to compete now I mean, I think this is kind of the problem when you go totally free enterprise, totally like the market will figure it out, open innovation or not the problem is that that works on paper and that works in math but that doesn't work in practice because there's a lot of other variables when you involve people, especially young people who are learning how to be human like adults. So I think we're gonna see a lot of these inflection points and, unfortunately, the way that our government works, we don't really have mechanisms in place that are more flexible.
13:07
that there's not a lot of nuance in this and it's binary, and then politics has become really binary.
13:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I think we're just going to live through a really challenging period as we try to straighten everything out uh, that's what this atlantic piece written by uh alan uh z rosin rosenstein, who was a senior editor of law fair and a professor of law university of minnesota law school, says. He says the the results of the 30-year experiment with a hands-off approach on the internet are, in much of society, including the supreme court, is recoiling from the consequences. The fear of stifling a new technology has been replaced by the dread of the harms that technology, left unregulated, can cause. So is that a good thing? I mean, maybe. Maybe we were a little too laissez-faire. I personally prefer the laissez-faire, but that's that's kind of my attitude. You have kids? Uh, you have a kid? Well, I have.
14:02 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Well, I have a kid Now. To be fair, my kid is like a really lovely but weird kid compared to other kids. So she's a 15-year-old ready to jet off to MIT and doesn't use TikTok or anything else. Good for her, yeah. But look, it's a challenging time and I don't study this, so I've any. This is all just anecdotal. There's ample sources of reputable data out there. You know, when I was 15, there was the the back of the video store where that was the adult section there's a beaded curtain.
14:39
Right, it was that there were, like you know, dirty magazines and I'm sure people had like cinemax oh, that's right, yeah, I forgot about that, but we didn't have cable.
14:49 - Harper Reed (Guest)
So my favorite, though, was the friend who had the satellite dishes, and you would go over there and you would like try and see between the swiggly lines, because they didn't quite have the decoder.
15:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You see this like weird that's right, but you could kind of see body parts maybe if you looked real closely. Let me just look real, real closely, but I think I what's going on in there.
15:13 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I don't know, but here's the I don't want to sound like a prude or anything, because I'm not um, but here's my take on this is you've got readily accessible content. You don't have to have a friend with a satellite or like jury rig or cable box or anything, so it's, you can have it on your phone in private and the content is dramatically more extreme than it used to be.
15:35
That's what I was going to say, right? So the content is significantly more extreme and you're dealing with kids whose frontal lobes aren't quite like working yet, and I just think it sets there was actually there was actually. Do you guys watch Big Mouth? It's a cartoon on a network. It is it's uneven. The first season was very good. The current and last season addresses like free and unfettered content for everybody, without regulation or anything at all, like no friction content, and the kids are the teenagers on the show. Really, I don't wanna spoil it for anybody, but it's a really good explanation of why, like maybe we should come up with something, but I don't know. Harper, I'm kind of interested, cause you've been much closer to this than obviously I have. Like, is there a way to regulate that doesn't stifle speech I mean, that's the tricky part or impair privacy?
16:33 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I don't think that. I don't know. I've been thinking about this a lot for years really, just because of the KYC thing and having built my career on like FinTech in many ways. There's always that friction point where you're like man, I don't want to ask anyone for this information, and so how do you do this without that? And I don't know.
16:57
I think my main worry is kind of what Leo was saying, which it's like it's one thing and we can kind of all agree, maybe that I say maybe, but I'm pretty sure we all do that.
17:06
Like you know, children should not have access to pornography, or if they do, they should have it in some sort of context which is very well observed, etc. By people they trust, etc. So like, okay, but then the problem is it's not just gonna be used for that, and I think that's where the technology is not necessarily the problem. Right, we can have the best technology that's open and like privacy preserving and all these things, and still it could be used to stifle free speech. I don't think privacy preserving technology is. You know, we could get signal to design it and still could be used by parties to say, oh, you have to put all you know, lgbtq plus content behind it, or you have to put anything that is politically you know I could totally see that, by the way, I I could see that being a next step, that anything in some of these stages that are lgbtq needs to have age verification.
17:59 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I can see that yeah well, get ready.
18:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Australia is quietly rolling age out. Age checks for search engines like google, which we all use.
18:11 - Harper Reed (Guest)
This was one of the funny things I always wondered about, because I don't know if any of y'all have ever tried to make an app and put it in the app store, but there's a lot of draconian rules that apple puts onto their apps and one of them was like if you have any kind of link out or inside of your app to like unfettered internet, they would. They would make you raise the age requirement of that app because theoretically it could address, it could suddenly get internet on it.
18:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, and I just always wondered how this is the same thing with like pirated, by the way, and safari lets you get anything, of course, at any time I think about this a lot, where people are like we have to stop all the the torrent search engines.
18:48 - Harper Reed (Guest)
And it's like, bro, google is a pretty good torrent search engine, right, you know?
18:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
like I think we have starting at the end of the year in australia, google and microsoft will have to use some form in australia of age assurance technology on users when they sign in or face fines of almost $50 million per breach.
19:06 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So question you can use a browser without signing in, so what am I missing here?
19:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Does it mean that Google will then say you have to sign in to use Google search so that we can check your age?
19:20 - Harper Reed (Guest)
The issue that I have with this is it's not necessarily about age, it's about identity, right Like if you just click a little button that says I'm above 18, like tobacco sites or alcohol sites whiskey sites. That's one thing, but my guess is that the legislation and then also the search engines probably don't. They probably hate this and don't hate it at the same time, because then they can start owning more of the identity of that person and they can start owning it.
19:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But it's good for them, hey, we have no choice. Australia's making us do it.
19:52 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So who's who's on the other side of this? So they scan your face and estimate how old you are based on your. So for somebody like me I would have. I'd be in serious trouble because I look so young for my age.
20:03
Do you still get carded, amy? I do, leo. I get carded all the time when I order all the alcohol that I drink, but what it's like, so who's damn. I hate that I'm saying this out loud, but I think all of. I think. If all of these things actually start causing new points of friction, this is the moment for blockchain, is it not?
20:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Or something. How would blockchain be implemented?
20:30 - Amy Webb (Guest)
to make this work, I guess because I'm thinking.
20:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like I'm on the blockchain. I have some sort of entry on the universal ledger and you can go check the blockchain and see how old I am.
20:41 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I'm thinking about cloaking digital identities. So you're just like a no PII, but verified number, so that you know what I mean.
20:52 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Who would administer that You'd?
20:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
still have to have some point of entry. That is not blockchain like Apple or Google or somebody that would have to then.
21:01 - Amy Webb (Guest)
It's just a different type of key, right, so a key like so.
21:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
so yeah, but somebody's got to establish the key.
21:06 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Somebody has to say okay, this is this I have verified this person is 18 you don't need blockchain to do this.
21:12
you have, like, all sorts of privacy preserving technologies like I mean, if you think of, like apple is rolling out identity, like state ids on the phone, like that is basically a picture and then that id you're describing. I think there's lots of ways to do this without rolling out blockchain. I do think that there are aspects of blockchain and people that have been working in that space that have been talking about putting ID on there for years and years and years and years. It is nice, it is cryptographic, but you know verified credentials the web standard is pretty good at this. It exists. You know Apple has done a lot with this stuff sorry, I was just clicking a couple steps forward.
21:46 - Amy Webb (Guest)
And when you have all of these moments of disruption, there's their money follows and I was just immediately going to like what is the new ecosystem?
21:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
so what is mark andreessen going to do?
21:56 - Harper Reed (Guest)
is what you're asking well, you're just going to complain in a group chat about colleges or universities or something I don't know or universities or something I don't know.
22:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, just to pile on, blue sky is now rolling out age verification in the uk, because the uk's online safety act requires platforms with adult content and, yes, even social media has adult content to have age verification. I think it is lovely.
22:20 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I think it's lovely that blue sky thinks that people are using it. Young people are using blue sky. I think that's. I think blue skies big public announcement is taking a page out of open a eyes. Let's make the announcement first, and then everybody will follow.
22:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, yeah, they're using, they're going to use something called kids web services, kws, a parent verification platform, which I think, in a way, I like the idea of the parent deciding what's appropriate for their kid. I mean, that's. The main problem I have with all of this is who is government to say whether a child is adult enough to experience this? Shouldn't the parent be responsible for that? I know there are lots of loopholes.
23:03 - Amy Webb (Guest)
But yeah, and here's the thing, and I just cause I get irritated every time I hear this argument that it's it should be the parents. I had to go to a mandatory phone safety class last year or start of seventh grade maybe. Every parent had to sit through it was mandatory, every parent had to sit through it, and it was four high school students and their parents talking about how damaging the phones have been and they wish they wouldn't have started the phones. And my husband and I are sitting there with our couple of other friends, like we shouldn't have to be here. Our, our kids don't have phones, right, like you know. You know how easy it is to make sure your kids don't have these problems you don't give them a phone, or your 16 year old still doesn't have a cell phone we finally got her a phone, because now she's like going to be starting driving and stuff.
23:51 - Harper Reed (Guest)
But it's she, there's no social media on it and uh but also, this is, this is the plot point of ferris bueller's day off. Right, like, why is your friend, your parent that says, oh yeah, I confirm that harper is of age. I am harper's dad, also harper. Like I feel like this is this the thing I?
24:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
this is so, does that mean?
24:10 - Harper Reed (Guest)
government should be doing it. I think this is fine. I think we should enact all this stuff. It's just going to make a whole generation of hackers right, which I'm happy with. It's going to be people who are good at bending these rules. I like young people and and like porn or alt content or whatever is like water down a hill, right. They're just gonna get to the end like it doesn't, and they may not.
24:32
That might not be their thing. They might find something else that they like, but they're gonna. They're gonna check it out and you're gonna put all these things in front of them and they're gonna figure it out. They're gonna. I mean, like you can share a password. There's like there's all sorts of ways to do this. I mean, it was happening when I was in middle school.
24:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm old enough to remember the days where every parent was trying to install these web blockers and there were many sites that told the kids how to get around it. And the thing is, one person figures out how to get around it, it spreads like wildfire through the middle school and then it goes out on the internet. Uh, there's just no way to stop it so here's a question yeah, so like.
25:15 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So somebody gonna put instructions in chat gpt to block. So just to further your point, harper, so like. Fine, all these regulations come down there, all these restrictions. Does that mean that somebody is going to have to change the model or the output or retrain all of these AI systems where they might go next to just teach me how to?
25:34 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I mean, they already do that right. There's already safety work on that. If you read, like anthropics, safety research, they talk a lot about this kind of thing Obviously not this thing specifically, but they even talk about the bio risk and all these other things which are just orders of magnitude different, like it's just like you're pivoting, focusing on a different thing, and they do a lot of work to protect it. And I'm sure that if we said, oh, we're banning this word, then they would probably enable the same amount of work that they're doing to ban, like Molotov cocktails or hot wiring a car, and then you can use the same tricks that you can to get it to talk about hot wiring a car, to get it to talk about being gay or whatever you know other puritanical thing we want to ban in the United States. So I think that there's a lot of. I think that what I think is going to happen, though, which I think is going to be interesting I really believe that this is how you create hackers, because every story I have of a friend who is, like, very good at computers starts with something like my parents were mad at me and grounded me and took away my keyboard, and so I stole a credit card in the AOL chat room, bought a new keyboard, plug the new keyboard in and was back to hacking.
26:35
You know, like it's like, oh great. Like this is how you create people who are very good at getting around. Good, a new generation of hackers is coming. Well, the difference is is like when we were doing this in the 90s, no one knew about, like the cops would just be like you did what and you'd be like, yeah, I got to go to school, okay, cool. Now they're going to put you in jail, um, and probably some camp somewhere. And so like I feel like it's a little different, like it's, yeah, it's like I think that there's some ramifications, and especially the, and the ramifications are going to be uneven, based on, you know, who you are, your ethnicity, etc. Um, and so I think that that it is going to be, you know, it's like what they say, like, um, justice is going to be, you know, unevenly distributed throughout the us, with these rules and these.
27:15
Well, it already is it already, this is going to affect people who are at risk anyway, instead of affecting people who you know the the lawmakers are thinking about.
27:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But there'll be a lot of white kids who know how to hack there will.
27:26 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I think there's going to be a lot of kids who know how to hack. The white kids are going to be talking about it.
27:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're going to get away with it. You know I love, though, about both of you. We've been talking about this for a while as it's been coming, and, uh, we, oh I. You know I'm focused on the age identification and the privacy issues and the enforceability of all this. You guys are already like and I love this about you especially I mean thinking about three steps ahead, like, well, okay, so this is going to create a nation of hackers, and what is the business opportunities here? You guys are already, you've already accepted it and it's like okay, so what do we do now?
28:10 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I guess, amy, when you work with your clients's, that's kind of what you say to them is look, this is what's happening, so here's what it's going to mean and here's how you adjust. Yeah we're.
28:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, I guess I'm um, you're a realist.
28:17 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I'm very pragmatic. So if this is the situation, then my job is to say where is the world going, where will value be created, or where is there absolute destruction ahead, and then what do we do about it?
28:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Instead, of wringing your hands and oh dear, oh dear, you just say well, how do we, you know, I look at somebody like Tim Cook and I think about all of the you know title forces impacting him, from you know, the tariffs to China, I mean, it's just, it's everything. And and this guy has to somehow weave very carefully his way through all this, and he continues to do so. But I guess that's the job of a CEO in interesting times.
29:07 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yes, definitely. So let me put it this way CEO tenure is down. It's in decline.
29:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Really. More so than any other time before, because it's such a stressful time to be a CEO.
29:22 - Amy Webb (Guest)
No, I think it's partially, because a lot of CEOs stuck along for a very long time and waited to retire. There were different crises that the board said just stay another day, stay another X amount of time. So now you've got this new crop of people, and especially from companies that promoted from within. It's their first time at bat as CEO, but they're like 55, 60, older than that, and they're just not gonna stick around for 10 years or they just can't because it's tough at that point. So it's just shrunk everybody's time horizons pretty significantly.
29:58
And then in government any like. We defunded the agencies that would have done the long-term planning they don't exist anymore and the people who would have done the planning.
30:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So and and, and I would presume that the stock market's focused on quarterly results also. Uh, helps that trend because you only get a few quarters before. Yeah, investors are like the yeah they don't have much patience.
30:24 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Investors create totally unnecessary tension and a lot of the valuation. Look, nvidia is having a great year and they just crossed a threshold of $4 trillion, so it's like the first time in history. It also signals a sea change. It was blue chip companies that made stuff, and then financialization companies, and then it was computer companies, and now it's NVIDIA, which signals a different kind of you know, what kind of company is NVIDIA?
30:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What category do we put?
30:59 - Amy Webb (Guest)
this in. Yeah, I mean, I just think it's. I think it's really tough, and so this whole, all of this stuff that's now happening in the judicial realm and the FCC and like all of these things that are happening are, I think I think everybody's just got this constant like state of I would call it FOMA the fear of missing anything. It's not FOMO anymore. And so it's just, people just make weird decisions when they're under duress, and I think everybody feels like they're under duress.
31:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are these unusual times? Somebody in our YouTube chat says ah, it's always like this, it's not always like this, it's not always like this. No, no, no, no. Trust me, I've been around, I'm older than all of you.
31:39 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I've had my job changed like a hundred times and I keep trying to do the same job and it keeps changing and I feel like that wasn't the case for any one of my relatives.
31:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
AI has really accelerated this in interesting ways. We're going to talk about AI in just a little bit great panel. I love having you two on Harper Reed uh, technologist, entrepreneur, hacker. It's great to have you. He's working in AI right now at 238 behind AI and he has got everything wired in there. I don't he's got agents, he's got I mean, we were talking before the show. I'm I'm jealous, I like this. You've got, uh, you got, you got people listening at all times.
32:16 - Harper Reed (Guest)
When I say people, I mean ai, people I did have to put a sticker on the door that says when you enter, just fyi, there's a lot of listening happening and just if you have an issue. Here's our privacy policy, and if you have an issue, please just like send me a note.
32:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's an example of how fast this has happened, because in the last 10 years and I feel bad for kids growing up suddenly everything's on camera. There's nothing that's not being recorded at all times that's already over. Now it's everything's on AI. There's nothing that's not being analyzed, dissected and summarized into bullet points at all times. It's crazy. We are being observed by our own uh agents also. Uh, wonderful to have amy webb here. Futurist she thinks about, she thinks about long-term strategy at future. Today's strategy group um, and they're both going to Japan. When are you going to both be in Kyoto?
33:08 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Well, I'm coming in early. I think I'm going to be there a week before.
33:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Same. This is for the Japan leadership. What is this?
33:18 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So let me plug, if I may, a wonderful program called the United States-Japan Leadership Program, which brings together young-ish American professionals in government, in business, in the arts, in technology and science and Japanese professionals for the purpose of fostering dialogue and like stuff going forward. So there's one week that is spent in the United States with experiences and dialogues and stuff and one in Japan, and when you're done with both of and it happens in consecutive years and then you become a lifetime fellow, which Harper and I are now and I cannot say enough about it. So you don't have to be fluent in Japanese or like you have to be interested in Japan, but you don't have to be like a Japanese speaker, have lived there or anything. I highly, highly, highly recommend that you apply if you are interested in Asia and Japan and the future and I don't know, harper, you want to say anything else?
34:21 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I mean, it's a very good example of a very well executed soft diplomacy program that is just about partnership and friendship and all that stuff. The thing that I'm misunderstood about it is how much impact it would have on my life going forward, which I thought like many programs I'm sure, amy, you've been involved with many programs that kind of act like it's the same and then the moment you're done with it, they disappear. You disappear and then next thing you know, you're like you forget about it. Five years later you meet someone in an airport and you're like, oh great, remember that. And that's basically the entire interaction. This is like a daily. There's a daily thread going on.
34:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You see people get married, you see people change careers you see people, everything, you know everything, from life to death, to everything, and it's this really really beautiful community, um, and it's kind of builds itself, but I highly recommend um taking a look at it and really, what age, what age? Is uh, or is this? Well, the cutoff is 40, okay, so you don't have to be that young.
35:19 - Amy Webb (Guest)
No, no, mid-career yeah, um, but what's kind of cool is the program? I think started about 20 some years ago, but there are people now who've who. So, like my daughter, who's 15, has friends in Japan because of the program. So while Harper and I are doing our fellows thing, petra is going to be out roaming around Kyoto by herself with her friends and, like you know, she'll have two free days and screw around and have. They're going to go to the Nintendo museum and the manga museum and have you know. So it's.
35:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You have prepared your child for the future. I think that's amazing.
35:52 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I have prepared my child for a very narrow type of future where she's going to have to work hard to find other nerds like her. But but she's a good kid. We exist, we're here, she just got her she's got good kid, we exist, we're here, us she's got her. Sorry, I was, I was a proud mother moment. She just got her Eagle.
36:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She's an Eagle scout at 16 at 15, 15.
36:14 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, and she got it just after turning 15.
36:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So she's a she must be one of the youngest.
36:20 - Amy Webb (Guest)
She yeah, one of the youngest and she also won a national science award for doing all of this original science research. So she's she's Scouts has a horrific history, so I don't want to gloss over any of the it's not Boy Scouts anymore, it's Scouts.
36:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it's Scouting America. And.
36:36 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I gotta, I gotta say our particular it's we have an all girls but also all inclusive troop. Nice girls but also all-inclusive troop nice um, and it has been unbelievably great for her and for the other kids on it. There it's, it's great so all right.
36:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You've always impressed me as a mom and your daughter is very lucky. I think that's fantastic. Congratulator. That that's amazing achievement, wow. Uh, and if you're interested in the uJapan Foundation, it's us-jforg if you want to apply or just find out more us-jforg.
37:11 - Amy Webb (Guest)
And then you can come and hang out with Harper and me in either Japan or Seattle.
37:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A lot of fun. Kyoto's incredible. I just love Kyoto, it's hot.
37:19 - Harper Reed (Guest)
It's going to be hot. I don't think people understand how hot Japan can get like I.
37:26 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I don't understand. I don't think people understand how hot. No, they don't. There's a whole. They have a whole different the word for the kind of hot we are about to encounter there's a whole. It's called mushiatsu. There's a there's a whole individual word just to explain that type of hot which is humid and horrible and wet it's horrible.
37:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, we could thank harry s truman for not nuking kyoto back during world war ii, because he II, because I think he honeymooned there or something and decided not to drop the bomb because he honeymooned there. Okay, we're going to take a little break, and this is a special message from our sponsor going out to all of you kids this Week in Tech, brought to you this week by ExpressVPN. Yes, you might want to get to know it. A few decades ago, private citizens used to be largely that private. And what's changed? Well, of course, the internet. Think about everything you have browsed, searched for, watched or tweeted. Now, imagine all that data being crawled, collected and aggregated by data brokers and government into a permanent public record your record. Having your private life exposed for others to see was once something only celebrities worried about, but in an era where everyone is online, everyone is a public figure. To keep my data private when I go online, I turn to ExpressVPN. In fact, when I travel, it's a great boon because I can still catch the football game or the f1 race.
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41:37 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Okay it's a digital representation of a dollar. It's pegged, so to speak, so they can peg it to a yen or to a US dollar or whatever.
41:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Unlike Bitcoin, it doesn't fluctuate.
41:49 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Right, so it's trying to remove some of the chaos from it. But also, if you're all on chain, so to speak, and you're buying Bitcoin or you're buying Ethereum or any of these things, you can't buy it with your paper money over here or your money that sits in a JP Morgan or whatever it sits in. You have to actually buy it with something that's on that chain, and so you want something that is a good representation of the money, that of your fiat currency, so to speak.
42:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The other issue besides volatility with Ether and Bitcoin is the gas fees that the cost of creating a transaction and time and money.
42:27 - Harper Reed (Guest)
So I think that's largely mitigated by some of the other chains that they've created um so stable coin doesn't have that it depends on where you're doing it like. If you're doing it on the ethereum chain, you certainly can rack up some charges just using stable coins. But what I think is really interesting about stable coins and I am not a tax, so don't trust me on this but it seems that because it's not going up and down, you don't gain any money by trading in it.
42:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you don't have speculation.
42:56 - Harper Reed (Guest)
So you don't have speculation. Your taxable income is very, very, very low. All of these things are happening there, but what's neat about it is it's a good way. It's like it feels a little bit like future money, because if I send Amy 10 bucks, she just kind of gets 10 bucks. It's like you can build Venmo. You can build all these things without having to do bank partnerships and all this other stuff.
43:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's the other thing. I've been told that is good about stable coin is you don't have the VIG, that MasterCard and Visa and banks charge for these transactions.
43:25 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Exactly. Well, now, where it's complicated, though, is someone's making money on it, because typically, how you build and design these things is you have a, you create a token, and then you back it theoretically with treasury bonds and all this other stuff. To say this is one for one. So when you put a dollar into the system, we buy something that you know makes us money to support this, and so you're making 5% off of billions and trillions of dollars at Tether or Circle or what have you Super smart business. But I don't think that it's a good idea to have some private, theoretically venture-backed business controlling the fiat electronic digital currency of the United States, for example.
44:06
But smoke, if you got him, I suppose, um, but I, I certainly I have a small number of usdc. It's almost my only crypto on my coinbase debit card that I use. It's the card I give my kid when he runs around and does weird stuff like he's at an arcade. It's like, yeah, go use this one. It's all fantasy money, um, but it's all. It's all usdc, which is a stable coin, but I love stable, but there.
44:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So there is not one. So cool, even even if the genius bill passes in congress, there isn't one stable coin there. It's, there's many every country has a c, so they're the central bank, cb central bank we may not get that because there are three bills that congress is considering, one of which would prevent the fed from ever creating a digital version of us currency or a central bank this is what I like about the united states is that we we're not very good at thinking.
44:58 - Harper Reed (Guest)
That's one of my favorite parts about this. Like um, you know not to talk about our Japan fellowship much, but one of the other, our fellow um, our fellow fellows there uh was part of writing the, the Japanese stable coin stuff, and it's just so well thought out and like watching them. And the reason why it's thought out is because, for whatever reason, they're very iterative. They did one in like 2018, they were like great. And then a couple of years later, they're like well, let's fix it. And they did it again and again, and again. And it's just like. Last year they released another one and the US is just like here's five different versions that are all cancel each other out. We're just going to pass them all.
45:35 - Amy Webb (Guest)
And then reverse it when the next administration.
45:37 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Reverse it hard. That is that.
45:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think that does hurt the United States is that to the outside world we look very ephemeral Like. Every four years it's different.
45:49 - Amy Webb (Guest)
It's what it really looks like is we have no plan, and that's because we don't. We don't. No we don't have a plan. I was in Davos in 2018, I think 2018 and 19 at the World Economic Forum Central bank. Digital currencies was a big topic and everybody was trying to hash this out and think about it and you know. So it's not like all of this is happening overnight. Actually, if you guys are, if people-.
46:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact, we're laggards. Is that what you're saying? To this? I mean this process.
46:19 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I mean, we're laggards in getting our shit together, but there are lots of really smart people who think about this. So there's a person, a researcher at MIT, named Neha Narula, who's brilliant, who is great, and she heads the digital currency initiative. There's a lot of really smart people out there who are consistently trying to advise you know, here's what you do, but nobody's you know picking up what they're putting down, or at least they're not holding on to it so so in, in theory at least, stablecoin would be a good thing.
46:51 - Harper Reed (Guest)
We could, we banks could start moving, markets could start moving money, uh, in stablecoin instead of cash for settlements to be faster, costs would be lower yeah, and then there's all sorts of of really neat kind of impacts in that if you're trying to send money back home to some other country, so to speak, you can pay for rent or childcare, et cetera, and stablecoin allows you to do this, because if you're working for crypto, so to speak, then you're being paid in magic beans if you can't buy food with it, and a lot of people, I think, are excluded from that world because they're just like, yeah, I got to pay for childcare, like I can't do this, and so you know, a good, good legislation around this. What it will do is it may bolster crypto in general, but what it will do is it'll allow the banks to actually work within these things within a framework that allows them to not get in trouble with the future.
47:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think the problem is Because there's regulation around it.
47:55 - Harper Reed (Guest)
There's actual regulation and legislation.
47:57 - Amy Webb (Guest)
This stuff is pretty hard to understand, to be quite frank, and so sometimes what I've noticed is that on the non-fintech side of things, there's a lot of conflating, just like ethereum or bitcoin with stablecoin and they're not the same well, I so not always. I mean harper already said it earlier there's less volatility. The idea is, you reduce the ball.
48:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not day trading, you know you're reducing volatility haven't there, though, been some pretty well-known stable coin collapses, and I mean those were.
48:33 - Harper Reed (Guest)
They had a different name for them, but they most of those were algorithmic, meaning that they had some algorithm that was helping them peg. Instead of saying I'm pegged at usd, they were pegged at some equation and most of those all have gone up in flames and um, I happily have forgotten all of that world um, but I still love. I truly think stable coins are an opportunity for us, um, to build some just really neat things that give that increase financial access, etc. I also think it's a great way for rich people to hide wealth if they want oh, just what we need we'll see.
49:10
Come on, you know so another what you're saying is we no longer need the canary islands, we've got stable coin you can just put all your money in some stable coins, you know, and then magically transfer it to your phone, and then magically transfer it to someone else's phone and then, you know, throw your phone in the ocean and then lose all your money okay, um.
49:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is there a leader in stablecoin is? Is it usdc? Is that your preference?
49:35 - Harper Reed (Guest)
so circle, which I have a great factoid about. Circle jeremy, the founder of circle, was the inventor of cold fusion. What, yeah? Who knew that? Why?
49:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
didn't you tell everybody else, we could use that right about now no, the web programming language, oh that not the cold fusion. No no oh yeah, I used to use cold fusion.
49:56 - Harper Reed (Guest)
That was cool yeah, I like that. He made cold fusion and didn't make it, and then now, you know, makes stable coins but then and then the other one is tether, um, and tether is worth researching because it's quite a roller coaster tether, that's tether, that's the one you like is tether no, I prefer usdc because, uh, because I, I, I find it to be a little less um sketchy well, this is part of.
50:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The problem is there isn't going to be a federal digital currency because we want uh, we want market oh, there isn't going to be.
50:30 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Isn't there a uh trump coin that's getting rolled?
50:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
oh, a dollar sign, trump yay feels pretty federal to me well, obviously, what's his name? Uh thinks. So he just bought another hundred million dollars of it, son, um, oh, it's got to be a good investment. This guy's all in on trump. He's got 200 million dollars in trump. I had so much money in trump. You get to meet the president, though, and I have a fine rubber chicken dinner with him I feel like that's not my interest.
51:02 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I don't think I'm the target audience there. Okay, um, I feel like that's not my interest.
51:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't think I'm the target audience there. Okay, um so good. I didn't realize this. Stablecoin good and this is so.
51:16 - Harper Reed (Guest)
It's good we're gonna do crypto week this week. That's gonna everybody well.
51:18
Well, everybody should watch with great interest I personally think stable coins have an opportunity to really help further financial security for a lot of people if they're done with some thoughts in mind. I don't have a lot of confidence that our current batch of legislators are thinking just to stop, so I'm pretty concerned about that. I also know that one of the things that I think you said, leo, is this this stuff's complicated, it's hard to think through. I guess amy said that as well. Like it's this really a lot of like? For instance, here's an example like how does money transmission work? Like how does that work? Which is a whole batch, a whole thing.
51:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like there's licensing we are really digital already. I mean cash is not king any longer, right I?
52:02 - Harper Reed (Guest)
mean everything, but in the US we are so far behind when it comes to open banking, etc we are like the least, uh, progressive banking country in the world well, probably because same as same thing happened with cell, cell phones, because we we invented it.
52:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So we have all this Legacy's infrastructure that we're reluctant to get rid of.
52:23 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I don't think we're reluctant to get rid of. I think we're protecting it because of power yeah, these mastercard have a lot of money.
52:29
One of the things that's interesting about this is that this is a way to disrupt that, and these mastercard invested a tremendous amount of money, acquisitions, resources, etc. Trying to support this stuff. Most of the support is done outside the us because the us just doesn't know how to handle it, but I think it. I think we don't even have jib and pin. No, we don't. It's. It's so funny that. Do you remember traveling?
52:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I still give my credit card to the waitron.
52:53 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I know, I know I never anyone from europe is like the fuck. Are you doing? What is wrong with?
52:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you. They just took your credit card, dude. Yeah, yeah, they're bringing it. Where'd they go with?
53:04 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I always hope that they're swiping it Like. That's my dream.
53:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like hope they're swiping it and there's not a skimmer installed in the thing. They're swiping it.
53:11 - Harper Reed (Guest)
No, that's what I mean. Like I want, I want to be. I want to be caught up in some crime syndicate, Like someone at a restaurant is back there being like.
53:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, you don't mean swiping it like running it through, you mean they're stealing it yeah, they're skimming it.
53:21 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I just, I just love the like harper let me.
53:24 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Let me tell you you truly do not want to no, I don't as somebody who uh has this happened to you, amy. It's less glamorous than you may be imagining.
53:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh no identity theft. It's not everything it's cracked up to be. Is that what you're saying? You know it's very common here in in my little town in northern california for skimmers to be discovered in gas station pumps. You know, all the time it's a very easy thing to pop one in. Come back in a couple of days you got a bunch of credit card numbers.
53:51 - Amy Webb (Guest)
You know how you, you know how you don't get caught up in that. You don't. You don't put gas in a car you drive.
53:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You and I drive electric. I know, yes, I or you take public transit? We have the same car now.
54:03 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Do we you have an i5? Yeah, oh nice, do you like it?
54:07 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I love it I want an i5.
54:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm trying to decide. My lease runs out in a year and a half. I'm trying to decide so does mine If I should keep it, or maybe the next thing will be there by then. So Brian, quick side quest there um, there's a lucid gravity that brian and he's for like three years been talking to people.
54:31 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So I hope he's been saving for those three years. There there is no car. So he he has now finally gotten a hold of somebody there and he's like all right, six months from now I'm ready to get this car. And they were like no, that's not gonna happen, you can't there there is no I think it's not going to happen. You can't there. There is no. I think it's like not happening for them.
54:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Gravity.
54:45 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah.
54:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, oh, but yeah any lucid would be nice.
54:49 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, I don't know. I think the V one of like version one of a lot of these cars are so glitchy.
54:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, after owning a Tesla, I decided I want to buy a car from a metal bender, you don't yeah, because basically, the Tesla is a golf cart with a computer in it is what it is, uh, and I don't the computer, by the way. Speaking of which, good news, tesla owners, you're gonna get grok, I'm excited about that.
55:28 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I, I love this. I hate talking to google and its lack of ability in my car, like when you're just like, hey, google, take me to wherever, and it's like searching for tacos and you're like I know I'm home. I want to go home calling mom yeah it's like whatever I, I really want a smart, somewhat unreliable ai assistant in my car. I promise you, I want all of the bad and all of the good you won't feel bad when it, when it goes if I get into a tesla, is the tesla gonna have a little chit chat with me about, uh, my, you know city?
56:04 - Amy Webb (Guest)
there's genocide in south africa right now that I can drive you involving a. It's a little campsite just for people like you, uh I want to take a little break.
56:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
When we come back. We could talk about grok. We could talk about what happened with grok that was a wild.
56:20 - Harper Reed (Guest)
That was a wild, it was a wild ride and yet entirely predictable, oh 100.
56:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Microsoft learned this years ago when they created a tay, a bot that was trained on twitter twice because it happened.
56:35 - Amy Webb (Guest)
They yanked it offline and then fixed and re-released it and the same damn thing happened again within 24 hours.
56:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it went racist because Twitter and Twitter's not Twitter anymore, it's X, it's clearly not. Twitter anymore.
56:50
You know, All right, we'll talk about that in just a bit. Great panel I love having. If I could just, you know, do all the shows with you guys, but you've got real lives and real things you're doing. But anyway, it's wonderful to have you on. I feel very fortunate when we get Harper Reed and Amy Webb together and I know you feel the same way. Thank you for being here. Special thanks to all our Club Twit members who make this show possible. We appreciate you. Our show today brought to you by NetSuite. We appreciate our fine sponsors as well.
57:21
Netsuite, it's an interesting I think if you've been listening, you know, I think amy would concur an interesting time for business. Tariffs, trade policies are what's the word? Dynamic, supply chains are squeezed and cash flow is tighter than ever. If your business can't adapt in real time, you are in a world of hurt. You need total visibility, from global shipments to tariff impacts, to real-time cash flow, and that's netsuite by oracle, your ai powered business management suite trusted by over 42 000 businesses. Netsuite is the number one cloud erp for many reasons. It brings accounting, financial management, inventory and HR all into one suite. You've got one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real-time forecasting, suddenly you're peering into the future with actionable data and with AI embedded throughout, you can automate a lot of those everyday tasks, letting your team stay strategic. Netsuite helps you know what's stuck, what it's costing you and how to pivot fast. It's one system, full control. Tame the chaos with NetSuite If your revenues are at least in the seven figures. Download the free ebook Navigating Global Trade Three Insights for Leaders at netsuitecom slash twit. That's netsuitecom slash twit. We thank them so much for their support of this week in tech.
58:54
Elon Musk said I'm gonna update grok grok. Uh, the new grok model came out on wednesday grok 4 all new version. Elon. Uh, well, I mean, look, he spent a lot of money, bought a lot of nvidia h100 cards. Uh, after meta, I think uh xai is the number two owner of uh nvidia cards. Elon build it as the smartest ai in the world. In their own tests, xixi says grok 4 appears to meet, match or beat competing models from open ai and anthropic on advanced science and math problems. Um, and, by the way, I pay 20 bucks a month actually. I don't. Oh, I'm sorry, did I say I pay for it? No, I'm an involuntary blue check on twitter, so I get it for free you're an involuntary blue check.
59:48
Yeah, that's incredible they, so I actually bought. I should show you this when elon bought twitter, I was a normal blue check, a verified user, so I bought. I ordered this plaque.
01:00:06
It says in honor of Leo Laporte, who had a verified Twitter account before they were available for purchase November 2022. Oh, I want one of those, isn't that cool? Yeah, yeah, it's a little dusty. Dusted it off and then so I labored in, uh, in obscurity for some years after that, without a blue check. Then one day I woke up to say, oh look, without giving him any money, elon has given me a blue check you're not notable, you're verified I'm verified cory doctor.
01:00:38
Doctorow changed his handle at that point to say involuntary blue check. I don't use X so I don't really care, but I was happy to see that I get the benefits of that, including access to Grok, which is nice because I pay for every other AI, yeah same. Do you have any of the $200 pro accounts, Harper?
01:00:59 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I have the OpenAI one and I have the Anthropic oneper. I bet you, I have the open ai one and I have the anthropic one and I don't have the grok one.
01:01:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you find it beneficial to have the extra?
01:01:09 - Harper Reed (Guest)
on the open ai one, the o3 pro or the o1 pro prior to that I find very good from a reasoning standpoint I like o3 yeah yeah, and it's um, it's, it's very, very good. I've heard a lot of very good things about the new grok model. Um, I typically don't really use um nazi products, I should say, except for volkswagens um but, uh, volkswagen, we only think of the last 75 years, we don't consider but um, I've been, I've been.
01:01:42
I did download the app yesterday, being like I should probably check this out because so many people that I really admire were saying it's pretty good, kind of unfortunately, and I do like just this whole last week I was just like oh my God, Could you imagine being on that team? One of my favorite things to think about are people who are doing stuff and they're doing it with all of their, their, their effort, and they're trying to be very good and well-intended and all this stuff. And then then life just hits them with a brick and but they're, but they're like like there's obviously a bunch of people on that team that really are spending their life building this thing. And then, and then elon is like let me introduce you to mecca, hitler. And they're just like our presentation is tomorrow.
01:02:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like what are you doing? So what do you think happened? Do you think elon literally went down to the office and typed in a few special uh tweaks, or actually the grok team? The grok team apologized. They said update uh on what happened on july 8th. First of all, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced uh. After careful investigation we discovered the root cause was not elon, it wasn't el, it wasn't Elon. It was an update to a code path upstream of the Grok bot. Oh, maybe it was Elon. This is independent of the underlying language model. Well, yes, it's fine tuning after the model.
01:03:11 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Well, I'm guessing it's the prompt, right, my guess. I'm guessing that and that you can easily change.
01:03:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's in text right. You could just go in and say say hey, mention the white genocide in south africa.
01:03:22 - Harper Reed (Guest)
You might want to, so I I think it's very clear that this is elon well, it follows his beliefs.
01:03:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The other thing that somebody noted is that if you ask the reasoning model um to uh respond to something like israel versus palestine, one word, which it will consult, it will literally show you as its reasoning. Let me see what elon says I have a different.
01:03:52 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Uh, I'm not a conspiracy theory person, I want to just say that first yeah um, look, uh. O3 pro has made some pretty decent advancements in the past couple of weeks and gemini is banging out some good stuff and claude is banging out some good stuff, and here's little scraggly grok, desperately trying to get some kind of attention and hook got the attention I was with, uh, I'm not gonna say who, but I was with some of the, some folks at grok, uh, not too long ago, talking to them about, like elon musk.
01:04:27
Yes, I was hanging with my bro elon, because he loves people like me you joke, but we've had.
01:04:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, a couple of weeks ago jason calacanis went on and he literally was hanging with elon. Now I am.
01:04:39 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Look, I don't have a lot of free time and among the people that I would want to spend such little time that I do have, elon is not anywhere on that list, you've never carried his child. I take it.
01:04:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not yet, not with that attitude.
01:04:53 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, here's my thought. So I was talking to some of the Grok guys and I. They were pretty tight-lipped and whatever. I was like look, just tell me, where do you guys see your place in the world? You've got three pretty strong competitors. What's going to differentiate you off the Twitter or whatever it's called, x platform? Where do you see yourselves? There's literally not a single executive team that I ever encountered where your name ever comes up. You guys are never in the room in any of the conversations. Anybody who's doing anything with hyperscaling Like I'm happy that you're building the world's biggest supercomputer with you got all the chips, but like you're just not even on. You're, you're just nowhere. And they didn't have an answer to that other than, well, we've got a lot of stuff cooking. So I'm wondering if this was actually a publicity stunt and intentionally done.
01:05:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's the wrong kind of publicity, though, amy.
01:05:49 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Well, it is, but it is. But Microsoft survived. Tay and Elon, there is some.
01:05:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's because Microsoft does a lot of other things besides chatbots.
01:06:00 - Amy Webb (Guest)
But if you're elon musk coming up or down from ketamine wherever you are in your cycle, and no but, but I mean in all honesty, there is so much money on the line for that company so there is an exchange. In fact, he's just borrowed more money from spacex correct so which is really a mistake, but that's right that's right, and if I was a shareholder I'd be running for the hills right now.
01:06:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, they really are one company. They're the Elon companies. Now it's pretty clear.
01:06:28 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So I'm wondering if I don't doubt. I think Harper is right. I think this probably came top down. And. I'm wondering if he miscalculated and thought that some you know, even negative publicity will stir up enough and it'll get us people talking about us again and see that it is a really good. He's the kind of person who believes there's no such thing as bad publicity, that was a stupid thing, to do but like again, I don't know, I don't know any form of any team out there that is using Grok in any way.
01:06:56 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Yeah, I know a couple that are doing it for coogen stuff, but I can't tell if they're doing it to be contrarian or if they're doing it because they just find a better outcome. But they are using it for real, isn't?
01:07:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it damaging, though, to kind of give people the impression that an AI can really be grotesquely not just wrong grotesquely evil. Isn't that a bad thing to tell the world that you know this easily you could make an AI be? But that is exactly what.
01:07:31 - Amy Webb (Guest)
that's what Sam Altman did in February of 2022. We've built GPT-2. It is so powerful. It is so strong that we cannot release it, and there is so much craziness and hype right now around AI, I just there's a part of me that wonders. Like there was no, like it takes a long time to retrain a model and it's highly unlikely, given that they they fired all of their security team people that like anybody was minding the store. So my hunch it would have been hard to engineer this overnight or to remove a restriction. So my hunch is that there was a tiny upstream tweak that got made.
01:08:08 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Yeah To the prompt Right.
01:08:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So so my do that.
01:08:13 - Harper Reed (Guest)
that's easy, anybody can do that I think there's this other thing that is is people don't like to talk about, which is like the billionaires um anti-woke agenda, where they're just they're so mad about something. I can't quite put my finger on what they're mad about because it doesn't seem like it's real every time they say the words that they're mad about. But this they're mad about something to some to such a level that they are like elon just goes. He probably just put in a system prompt like be anti-woke, say the opposite of woke, and they're.
01:08:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know there's no safety yeah, I don't think he said talk about hitler or talk about genocide, but I think he very likely said when somebody asks you opinion on a controversial subject, check my posts on x, something like that. Right, that would. That would be all it would take. Yeah, mark Andreessen say universities will pay the price for tei. Yeah, sure, yeah. What are they upset about? What are these nut jobs? I mean, we have rewarded them all with vast, unthinkable amounts of money. This is a Gilded age for Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen and Sam Altman and all these guys. They have more power and money than anyone.
01:09:30 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Since I don't know Putin, Because, as things were changing in between 2016 and 2020, that centralized power in a different place, away from the tech oligarchs, and instituted new if not restrictions or laws expectations for how their system should behave, and I don't think they wanted to be told what to do. I don't think it's that.
01:09:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I remember Larry Page at Google IO saying oh you know, I wish we could have a Google island where there'd be no governmental regulation.
01:10:05 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Interestingly so, so they weren't just blowing smoke. There's actually. There's a very interesting. I don't want to like direct people to a different podcast, but but the hard fork, which I don't love, oh yeah.
01:10:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, you can direct people to other places.
01:10:19 - Amy Webb (Guest)
But Ross Duterte who's a?
01:10:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that interview with Teal was wow.
01:10:24 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Right, but Teal. So there's a couple of things that I found interesting. He did talk about leaving a meeting with Elon, so I wonder if there was a little bit of bro tension talked about. There's a moment in that podcast where he talks about Elon no, giving up on mars. Mars is a different place to to start civilization again.
01:10:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They were talking about sea studying at some point, so this sort of deal was big into for a long time, moving out of the united states and creating independent sovereign islands on oil and abandoned oil.
01:10:56 - Amy Webb (Guest)
But that is okay. So some states have wisened up to that and the state of Montana, just like last week, changed some of its restrictions in the past two weeks to enable more longevity testing outside of traditional rules. Again, I think this is less about anti-woke or somebody's mad at somebody else. I think this is just I have a world view and and the rest of the world should follow it, and I'm gonna concentrate power around me in that world view they also think they're smarter and better than everybody, right okay, but like so did Kings.
01:11:36
I mean, if you go back, yeah so do kings so we just it's a different um well, kings didn't have mecca hitler though kings had mecca henry viii I mean they had.
01:11:47 - Harper Reed (Guest)
They had real hitlers they would chop people's heads off.
01:11:51 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I guess the point. The point is it's about consolidation of the the kind of person at the right moment in time that has the right personality, amasses the right amount of wealth, that's able to consolidate power. So what we're seeing unfold in real time are is just a new form of immensely powerful people duking it out which has happened throughout human history. This is just the, the latest version of that, for my so.
01:12:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In this interview with dutat, teal says 2024 is the year Elon stopped believing in Mars. Mars was supposed to be a political project. It was building an alternative. And in 2024, elon came to believe that if you went to Mars, the socialist US government, the woke AI, it would follow you to Mars, would follow you to mars. He says uh, if I had the seasteading version with elon where I said if trump doesn't win, I want to just leave the country, and then elon said there's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go. This is the only place that. Maybe that was when elon decided to pump a quarter of a billion dollars into the trump campaign. I guess, again, it was.
01:13:00 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Again, it's interesting as Sam Altman was considering a run in politics prior to. Trump.
01:13:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I think, if you again I thought Mark Zuckerberg when he went on that tour of the 50 states?
01:13:12 - Amy Webb (Guest)
He definitely was.
01:13:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He wanted to be president.
01:13:15 - Amy Webb (Guest)
But this is not about anybody wanting to be president. This is not about, like, a strong desire to contribute back and be a civic leader. This is about power, massing power and feeling like you are, it is your right that you have the right to win, isn't that?
01:13:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
kind of what's changed in the world. I don't know, maybe I'm a pie-eyed optimist, but it used to be. There was this sense of community, the sense of let's become leaders so that we can make the world a better place for everyone. And now it's. What can I get for me and mine?
01:13:54 - Amy Webb (Guest)
well, I think, I think there's that and also and I don't want to like veer off into crazy territory here, but you know, the Trump administration it's too late for that Trump administration published on White House letterhead a ridiculously written and, let's just be honest, stupidly capitalized open letter. Who does that?
01:14:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Who does the capitalization there in that White House?
01:14:19 - Amy Webb (Guest)
A president of another country, admonishing that president for wrongly, like bolsonaro, that there was a previous president that did some did some bad stuff.
01:14:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That you already said the b word, so we know what you're talking about.
01:14:32 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Brazil okay, go ahead, okay, so so anyhow, imagine some other foreign country public president publishing an open letter to us, doing the same thing we're now like on in social media, like interfering with the politics of other countries. So I think all the again-.
01:14:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what you're worried about.
01:14:55 - Amy Webb (Guest)
No, no, no. To me, that exemplifies these shrinking. For as much as these people talk about democratization, which is total fucking bullshit, they're working very hard to consolidate power around them. So it's a, it's a form of a kingdom. It's just taking a totally different shape this time around and and it's tricky because so much of it is algorithmic, so you don't have to fly your flag in the street.
01:15:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a algorithm that is identifying you and and putting you you know, sort of sorting you into a tribe and then stoking your emotions uh, david brooks, who wrote bobos in paradise and not one of my favorite people in the world, but he does put forward this notion that in the back in the day, people wanted to do something, wanted wanted political power so they could do something good for society. But that is clearly not the case anymore.
01:15:51 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Yeah, well, I mean, I think these, I think a lot of these folks would say they are doing something good for society. It's not our good or it's not a shared good? Okay, they believe that though I think from their perspective.
01:16:04 - Amy Webb (Guest)
They've I mean they're doing the best. Thing world coin, which is now just world. You know the orb, I mean I, I think I want one of those orbs.
01:16:13 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I would love an orb to scan my eye everyone that comes into my office.
01:16:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'd be like you got to scan your eye I'll give you some, uh, I'll give you some stable coin, I'll take it A world coin. So they took the word coin off so that it wouldn't have the Just kidding, now we're just, yeah, we're not exploiting.
01:16:32 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Kenyans anymore.
01:16:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, now, it's just a cool piece of this was Sam Altman's big investment. A world coin, actually, it still is. You can go to a little empty storefront in New York City and San Francisco with some plywood and two-by-fours and you can scan your eye. Inspires a lot of confidence, all right, well, okay, maybe I don't want Grok in my Tesla, although they're very quick to say it is great, it won't drive the car. They're saying that.
01:17:06 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I spent. I spent a bunch of time yesterday talking to a friend about Waymo's specifically, how I thought they were very cool. I really like. I like that experience and her entire perspective was but what if it locks the door and doesn't let me out?
01:17:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She saw Silicon Valley, where it drove the guy into a container ship and he ended up in Japan. Maybe, but that is like she thinks people think that AI has volition.
01:17:32 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Wait a minute, Harper. Why did you find that interesting? Tell me more.
01:17:36 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I find it interesting because she has a fear that is not like I. Most of my peers and friends that I've talked to about Waymo's say oh, I don't have to talk to someone. Oh, as a, as a person who is oftentimes scared of the Uber driver, I don't have to interact with a person who might take me someplace. I don't want to go or even have some awkward interaction or I have to fake that I'm on a phone call or all of these things that are survival mechanisms.
01:18:05
Her first thing was like what if there's a bug and it locks me in and drives somewhere and won't let me out, Um, which which I was like that's a very valid concern, and I, but it was not anywhere in any of the things I'd ever talked about about this, and so it was just very. It was very interesting for me that you know, and we, her and I, had talked a lot about, um, Uber drivers, et cetera, etc. And how she doesn't like that experience and so the fact that she wasn't like I don't have to talk to anyone anymore. She was immediately like I don't want to get locked into a machine, which is a very valid fear. I feel like that's a real thing. I don't.
01:18:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I also don't want that, I just didn't think about it at all I have never ridden one of those, but I don't live in a town where they're. They're great prevalent.
01:18:39 - Harper Reed (Guest)
You like it?
01:18:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
love it. So one of the things I think is a little bit hand wavy is how much of that is actually being driven by an autonomous ai and how much of it is being driven by someone back at the home office I kind of don't know all of them yeah, I think it's.
01:18:59 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I think there are a lot of times where somebody takes over oh, I got in a situation in uh in la where it was just in, it was just kind of stuck and I hit the like the button, just waited for a second, and then I hit the help button and then it just said and then it said someone is is helping you get out of this situation and kind of pull, and then like, like but. But from my perspective I was just like, yeah, cool, that's great.
01:19:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, it's good there's somebody there watching.
01:19:25 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of the current AI world is puppetry. Where?
01:19:32
it's like a person on the back, whether it is someone stoking a prompt a la what we were just talking about with Mechithiller or whether it's driving a car or helping you buy something, and I actually don't think this is too bad, meaning a lot of tech has been this way. If you think of anything that's defeating captchas, that's like captcha farms in the Philippines or in all these places. There's a lot of this that has been around for a long time. It just is we're now acting like it is some magical thing, and the problem is is it's very hard to discern whether it is an actual puppet or whether it's the magical thing, and as someone who's trying to build a magical thing and not a puppet, I think about this quite a bit. How do you give magic to the user without them thinking, oh, this is just another puppet that is there? With that said said, puppets are pretty cool sometimes.
01:20:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My brother makes puppets it's like the laundry folding robot they've been showing for 10 years at ces, which is really sunny in japan. Do this, do this? Uh, this goes back a long way. There was a chess playing robot, uh, 300 to 200 years ago. That impressed.
01:20:43
Everybody had a little side of it little person inside of it yeah, very mechanical Turk yeah yeah, uh, which Amazon then decided hey, that's a pretty good name for what we're gonna do. The European Union has unveiled rules for powerful AI systems rules, so you don't have to worry about getting locked in. How do we feel about government regulation of AI? Good, is it a good thing, harper?
01:21:12 - Harper Reed (Guest)
it's a good, pretty pro regulation, I think. Generally. I think I think the thing that I'm most mad about is the lack of iterative approach to regulation. And I really because I'm pretty happy with like GDPR, like great, like it has some problems, but I'm not unhappy with the ramifications there or the fact that I have USB-C on my iPhone. I'm pretty happy about this, like I don't think that I think Europe being the person that forces everyone else to like have relatively open access rules, is not a bad thing for our world. I do think that sometimes it could be more thought out and I do think the people who are building a lot of these rules may not be thinking like I mean to what Amy said earlier. They're not thinking so far ahead, they're only thinking about right now.
01:21:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like your point, though it should be an iterative process, that you should try something, see how that works, adjust it over a period of time, because no law can at this point be perfect. We have to watch what happens.
01:22:11 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Right, amy, you agree I, yes, I agree with generally, with harper, I agree in general. Anyways, um, I agree with the iterative approach. I, however, think that so regulation works in the EU because they're far less litigious than we are in the US and also there's been a for the past 20 years. They have had a very consistent approach. So and they, you know, they have had a plan. They execute on a plan. So they we knew, you know, they announced GDPR years in advance. Same thing with the AI regulation. This didn't come overnight. They've been talking about it for a while, so that's fine.
01:22:55
I don't think that approach, I don't think regulation works in the United States in the same way, and I can give you a couple of quick reasons why. Um, first of all, uh, our society is too litigious. So the moment that we try to enact really, I mean the moment that we try to enact legislation, we already have a patchwork. Um, in the united states, like, every single state has a very different approach, which makes it incredibly difficult for anybody, you know. And then trying to figure out something federally, any company is going to fight back against that.
01:23:31
So the moment that you start really trying to regulate, you are going to wind up in years worth of court battles, which doesn't resolve anything. It just creates more problem of court battles, which doesn't resolve anything. It just creates more problem. I think, though, rather than regulation and I'm alone in this opinion and I will die on this hill I think we should make it possible for the companies creating the stuff to make as much money as they possibly want if they follow so. It's not regulation, but it's a financial incentive to do what we all believe is what I believe is best, which is treating a lot of this as a public good. The market helps them make decisions, so regulation is punitive. Market helps them make decisions, so regulation is punitive.
01:24:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Financially incenting them is a much better pathway.
01:24:27 - Amy Webb (Guest)
How do you do that, though? I know so, and that leads me to the third thing, which is planning. So we don't have a shirt, we don't have a perspective on AI in the United States. I find it unfathomable that Russia made Sputnik and the United States was like shit. We got to do something and we had a moonshot moment, and nine years later, you know whatever.
01:24:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Before this decade is out, we will put a man on the moon.
01:24:54 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Great, and we did, and many wonderful things happened after that point. It's not like this ai, stuff materialized overnight. We, why? I don't understand why we don't have a public, private, singular sort of this is what we all want to do, and why? Because we can't agree. Well, I don't think that's true. We, I agree. Yes, I think, if we have good leaders, which I don't think we have right now.
01:25:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the job of a leader is to coalesce public opinion around the good.
01:25:27 - Amy Webb (Guest)
And look, I'm politically independent. Trump has done a terrible job, but from my point of view, so did Biden. We've had a bunch of terrible jobs when it comes to certain things, and AI and tech and certainly biotech fall into those categories. So we're at this impasse where European-style regulation is not going to work in the US because it's just going to get stuck in the courts. I think that the best way forward is to incent the companies to do what's right by following a bunch of rules, and I actually have written extensively about this. So I think there is a way to do it, but it's not going to be popular. Nobody wants rich people to get richer is the problem, but I honestly think that's the only way forward. Well, those incentives work.
01:26:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We know those market incentives work. Right now they're kind of unfortunately they're negative incentives, but they do work. People respond to them. So you're saying you have to adjust the incentives to get people moving in the proper direction. That's better.
01:26:28 - Amy Webb (Guest)
a carrot is better than a stick in other words, mainly because I don't know of another lever we can pull right now, given without radically changing what regulation is in our country and we've also done it before, right, like what.
01:26:42 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Like what you're describing, amy, is very Vannevar Bush kind of you know the past and how things have worked. So it's like this is a pattern that has worked before. I think that the hard part is that when it worked before, we were flush from World War II and had a lot of tailwinds pushing us a very specific direction, whereas now it seems like we have a lot of headwinds that are stopping us. And I think what's complicated about this is a lot of the people who the government or various orgs would say are our enemy China, et cetera are taking advantage of this playbook and just running with it, and so where we are trying, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for Sputnik, you know they're the ones that are building all of this really great stuff, and you would have thought that DeepSeek or some of these other kind of yeah, I was going to say China.
01:27:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
China has done stuff that is equivalent of Sputnik. Deepseek is a good example.
01:27:33 - Amy Webb (Guest)
It is, but again. So what was the Sputnik moment? Was we weren't completely like, we didn't rely on Russia to make all the stuff we buy.
01:27:43
So the problem with China is so it's a little complicated, but again, there's a way to do this where we have a perspective on the future. This is the future. This is where America continues to exert its wonderful things. About America, right? That has nothing at all to do with China, so it is not a China's bad. The US is good. This is more like we have a clear vision of what prosperity looks like in this country and now we're going to go after it and everybody else can try to keep up. So the point is, there is a way forward. I worry that the longer we persist, ai and it's not just AI, there's other important technologies that exist out there that are as fundamental, or you could argue more on a fundamental but we keep politicizing it and at the same time that we're politicizing tech, or it's becoming politicized, we're more divided. So we got to like, got to rein things in.
01:28:42 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Do you know, Amy, if the Sputnik push, although and I just read the right stuff, the Tom Wolfe book, which is really great Do you know if that was enabled by the labs that Vannevar Bush had created, or was that outside of that, Because it also seemed to fit within some of the frameworks of the defense contractors of the time and some other places? But because there's quite a big difference between, you know, 1950 and 1965.
01:29:11 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Right, I, it's my and I'm certainly not an expert in any of this, but my daughter's national history project national history month, I don't know big project she did on Sputnik and how it catalyzed tech innovation, so and we looked at a bunch of declassified CIA documents so that I'm pulling from like eighth grade research here.
01:29:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, yeah, it's the best, by the way.
01:29:39 - Amy Webb (Guest)
But it seems like the establishment of, it seems like the Sputnik moment, wasn't just this race. It was like this horizontal approach where we were going to change education Um, we were going to establish public private research projects or partnerships Um, it wasn't like we were just going to designate one lab or the or whatever these three labs. It was a much more. It was a much more multifaceted approach, but there was a singular direction. So I think that's what's missing.
01:30:11
I think we just don't have this, like you know, and it it makes it's even worse because like I don't mean to dog on Sam Altman today, but he and he's he keeps saying like there's a lot of like. We don't mean to dog on Sam Altman today, but he keeps saying like, there's a lot of like we don't know what artificial general intelligence is, we're figuring it out or we don't know what super intelligence is. We don't know what the future is going to look like, and it creates this completely ridiculous, unneeded like. We don't know. Until we get there, just trust us that we'll build it. I think we need to coalesce around, not what it is, but what is the society that we want and how are these enabling technologies?
01:30:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
right, it's. It's interesting. You mentioned vannevar bush, who wrote a classic essay in 1945, called, as we may think, uh, and which really kind of ushered in the information age. But his moment wasn't the Sputnik moment, his moment was Trinity, his moment was the use of the atomic bomb and he was very concerned that we were focusing our technological advances on destructive technologies, and that's why he advocated for information technologies. So it is interesting how these kind of pivotal moments can push a society in a direction. In response.
01:31:29 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, I think maybe there's just so much, I worry, there's so much unneeded distraction that we're taking our eye off the ball and the result of that is going to be a dip in prosperity and a dip in, like you could be significantly more productive and that can yield significantly less GDP and people can realize significantly less individual wealth. I just I feel like we're we're missing this like layer.
01:31:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is it a one-way ticket? It feels sometimes. It feels to me like the direction we're headed is irreversible. You, you. I think, amy, you wouldn't believe that you seem like you're an optimist um, look that I don't believe in fate.
01:32:18 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I'm not a religious person. I think that the future is the result of the decisions that we make, and that means we have agency, which is great. We just have to, like you know, it's really. I think one of the most radical acts any person can make is to imagine themselves in the future. That is a terrifying thing to do, because you have to confront your cherished beliefs in order to do that and be willing to think the unthinkable. And maybe it's good things, maybe it's bad things, but it's different. We I don't think we have leaders that are willing to do that. I think everybody, the people who have ascended. Look, I, I never wanted to be president, but I wanted to be solicitor general. That was my dream job when I was in fifth grade.
01:33:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh cool, you wanted to testify in front of the Supreme Court or pursue cases in front of the Supreme Court.
01:33:07 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I was super interested in constitutional law. I wanted to be the lawyer that argued in the Supreme Court. Love that and I would never go into government. I think it's amazing that Harper like side quested over for for a period of time.
01:33:22 - Harper Reed (Guest)
It was definitely a side quest.
01:33:24 - Amy Webb (Guest)
But that takes so much personal resolve and I mean that's a lot of people won't do that.
01:33:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We all need to do that right. We all need to pitch in and in a democracy, and what I worry about is that we have become an oligarchy and that the incentive. What I worry about is that we have become an oligarchy and that the perverse incentives of money and politics have just turned us into a nation of rich people asserting their power over the rest of us?
01:33:53 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Can we just put that into the capitalism bucket?
01:33:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, we're late stage. Capitalism, that's not just a bucket. That's the state of the situation.
01:34:02 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Yeah, I don't know if it's a, if it's a one way street. I do have some concerns about my own ride on this journey and my ability to see the other side of this. But I do think, you know, when I had a friend who is an AI researcher at one of the big foundational models and one of the things they noted was most of the people that work at these companies are very educated people.
01:34:25
They've gone through lots of graduate programs and gone through school for most of their adult life and they're now working professionally and very well compensated all that. But they're saying that the only lab that hires like that that is pretty right leaning is grok and and of you know, and so it's the people who go through these programs. That then you know, that's their, their world. And I think it's very interesting because, like most of tech in my experience, the reason I was able to be successful as Obama's CTO for that election, which was a very tech election, was because a lot of people were leaning to the left and it was very easy to hire, and so I don't know, I kind of think that we're going to get there. Um, it's just going to be real hugo bossy until we get there, like it's going to be a real mess what is hugo bossy?
01:35:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what is that?
01:35:13 - Harper Reed (Guest)
didn't he make the nazi uniforms?
01:35:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know oh did he oh, yes, yes, he did I didn't know that they were nicely designed. Was that under uh, albert Speer, did he?
01:35:24 - Harper Reed (Guest)
they were. They were attractive. I'm really hoping the ice, the ice budget, gets better uniforms this is what I'm hoping at least we have some really good.
01:35:30 - Amy Webb (Guest)
They're not good like, yeah, there's a lot of khakis, a lot of ill-fitting khakis sharp lines, maybe a big hat, like you know, with a badge.
01:35:40 - Harper Reed (Guest)
You know, maybe some big hat would be good we need bigger hats, bigger hats.
01:35:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They don't wear hats at all. Well, they wear baseball caps. That's what's wrong with modern society, by the way. Baseball, baseball cap go to a restaurant.
01:35:53
There's guys sitting in nice restaurants with baseball caps on. What the hell? Yeah, where did we go wrong? All right, baseball. My old, my old man moment is over. We're going to take a break. Amy webb and harper reed wonderful to have you both. Amy is a futurist at the future today. Strategy group ft sgcom. She's also the author of many books. In fact, when you said that ai may not even be the most important technology, made me think about your most recent book, which is called the genesis machine, which is all about biotech. And you're right. I mean, we we're in an interesting world, but we don't even think about what's going on with biotech these days. People should read this book, because there is a lot going on and there is a nexus between ai and biotech, absolutely um. And all you have to look for is the mrna vaccine to see how biotech could change everything, everything, everything. Harper reed, it's good you're not wearing a baseball cap.
01:36:56 - Harper Reed (Guest)
That's all I can say I don't know, I don't want to mess up my hair.
01:36:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't think you even own one. I'm gonna guess you don't even own one.
01:37:01 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I don't own a baseball cap. No I'm looking for you ever see the movie holy mountain? No, what's that? Holy mountain is a surrealist spanish movie from 70s, maybe, and that's more my style, so I'm I'm looking for a holy mountain hat.
01:37:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm thinking you would be more like this kind of uh, leather top hat.
01:37:19 - Harper Reed (Guest)
But I have to be very careful because because I'm like three minutes from either being a burner a steampunk or an alt-right guy that's what I'm thinking watch out my, this is the steampunk thing, yeah that's not my vibe. I mean, I know I have steampunk glasses, I just okay. You know, I'm just uh, I, I, I really think the world amy, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I think we're headed towards Mad Max or like REMs. It's the end of the world as we know it. Those are the two choices.
01:37:44 - Amy Webb (Guest)
You know what?
01:37:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
about bringing back colonialism. I think the pith helmet.
01:37:50 - Harper Reed (Guest)
That's still here.
01:37:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We still have that I'm going to wear this in some restaurants and just see what happens.
01:37:54 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah.
01:37:55 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Let's see what happens.
01:37:57 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Fun fact.
01:38:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm an enormous REM fan, but that's not the fun fact. It is the end of the world as we know it.
01:38:04 - Amy Webb (Guest)
yes, the fun fact is that it's my understanding that that song, that Michael Stipe and crew were in Georgia somewhere at a college and happened to walk in on a debate. There was a debate tournament going on and as a former debater, it's hard to imagine this. There's no way for me to explain it. There's, there's, there's there's talking really fast and usually in order to win you have to, it has to be the end of the world, Unless you have some other really crazy argument. So they see all of this and the super fast talking and the apocalyptic end of the world, and that was the Genesis for the song.
01:38:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow.
01:38:40 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Inspired by incredibly cool debate it all starts with forensics.
01:38:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yes, yes, were you a debater, harper?
01:38:50 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I feel like unfortunately I was, but I couldn't get out of my own way because we had mohawks and we never wore suits and we so always were docked points because of this. So, no matter how good we were, we were always punk debate team. We don't like them my, my, my cx partner only wore shorts I grew up in colorado and year round and so they would always have, like the judges would always wear some baseball caps, he's he's not making it up.
01:39:14 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Uh, if the if so, we're harper and are about the same age. And if we didn't, if the women didn't show up wearing like heels and, like you know, business suits we were docked as well.
01:39:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So which is you know? You were also a forensic.
01:39:28 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I competed in a debate, but my but my strengths was something. It was something called extemp. So there were extemp impromptu, it's like speech Rhetor, impromptu rhetorical. It's like speechifying, it's kind of like Toastmasters.
01:39:43
No, no, no, I competed in foreign extents, so you have to know what's happening everywhere in the world and they would give you a piece of paper and say, here, talk about it. You have to then go in and give a 10-minute speech with sources analysis. So that was my main event, that impromptu. There was something called rhetorical criticism. I used Dinesh D'Souza. I do not like Dinesh D'Souza, but he had a book called the End of Racism and I used. That was my book.
01:40:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's come a long way since then, I think.
01:40:12 - Amy Webb (Guest)
And after dinner speaking, which is kind of like early TED Talks, and then, so that I could compete in something called Pentathlon, I did something called duo, which is hilarious.
01:40:20 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Yeah.
01:40:21 - Amy Webb (Guest)
It's two people. I was terrible Two people reading out of a, out of a script and sort of somewhat acting with.
01:40:29 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Anyhow, my brother did duo stuff.
01:40:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I am not surprised. This is what makes you such great panelists. You are extemporaneous speakers. You know how to take a subject and just go.
01:40:42 - Harper Reed (Guest)
My goal in life is to be able to do a 10 to 40 minute talk on anything at any moment with someone else's slides Like that's one of my favorite things ever, harper, I can make that dream come true for you, and maybe we should do this in Kyoto. So this is a.
01:40:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I run an underground activity called PowerPoint karaoke, where I make the slides and there's um somebody else talks to him and he's never seen. The slides are the there.
01:41:04 - Amy Webb (Guest)
there is a theme, there's a beginning and end. Uh, they're ridiculous. Ridiculous looking stock images or GPT generated gym and I'm the one who controls the clicker, so if you're killing it, I let you go a little longer. Uh, and if you're? Bombing. I we go faster. Um, maybe we should. Maybe we should do that.
01:41:22 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I did this at a conference once and someone had missed the plane and they couldn't show up and a friend of mine said, do you want to just do their slides? And I was like, yes, and it was when I was working for President Obama and the talk was about Obama era like wire wire surveillance, like obama, and I was just like I don't think I can actually give this.
01:41:45
I don't think I can do this I know too much to do like the next slide, I was like oh, I'm in trouble, hopefully there's no recording I'll, uh, I'll, message you after.
01:41:55 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Maybe we should like do that as a alternative to okay, cool, love it, oh man now I have fomo.
01:42:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I have you can always come.
01:42:03 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I told you, just be one of our children, we'll register you, okay, little leo, little leo, my son. This is my son, little leo, my little son.
01:42:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He wears leather cowboy hats, but don't hold that against him. All right, we're going to continue on in a moment. You're watching this week in tech with two of the most interesting people in the world, it turns out. I had no idea. Uh, our show today, brought to you by bit warden, the oh, we love bit warden, the trusted leader. And password, but not just passwords, pass keys, even secrets management. If you're a geek, you'll love it. That bit warden this is so cool I know it's a small slice of the audience will generate your ssh keys and store your private key for you and automatically feed your public key when you log in. Mind blown, but that's just a small. I mean, I know. No, nobody listening is going well, I can't wait to get that, but if you needed, that would be really cool.
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01:48:10
Back to the matter at hand. Um, should I stay in the ai sphere? We have a few more things. Vo3 is everywhere now. In fact, it's pretty cool. You, yeah, this is the video generator google put out and everybody's getting it now. If you have a pixel phone, it's coming to your pixel phone. If you have a even though the 20 gemini account, you can generate, generate video and it's it's pretty good, isn't it, harper? It's very good. It's kind of scary good.
01:48:43 - Harper Reed (Guest)
It's not a cheap model to run, though, so I'm pretty excited for it to become more inexpensive. When it first was released, I did it on one of the AI providers and I think I quickly hit 50 bucks generating stupid videos of stupid stuff, yeah.
01:49:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But it was fun, wasn't it?
01:49:02 - Harper Reed (Guest)
And the results are just incredible, Like it's very good. Yeah, but it was fun, wasn't it? And the results are just incredible, Like it's very good. I'm pretty scared of what this means for content like that. Just because it's just, you cannot verify anything's real. Not anymore. It's very difficult, yeah.
01:49:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not anymore. That's part of the problem, isn't it?
01:49:22 - Amy Webb (Guest)
On the cost thing. So this is I have two totally opposing thoughts on this. I kind of like the isn't it on the cost thing. So this, this is. Uh, I have two totally opposing thoughts on this. I kind of like the fact that will smith can now eat spaghetti.
01:49:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You like that.
01:49:33 - Amy Webb (Guest)
These are all generated, obviously I don't mind it being expensive to generate anything that looks this good yeah um, because it reduces ai slop. You're not going to just burn a ton of cash right, just generating crap um you mean, like this pepe the frog at the counter of the lunch.
01:49:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yet you mean that, by the way they speak too, I should turn on the volume, so you can hear my breakfast.
01:50:01 - Amy Webb (Guest)
It's a gorilla so what I would love to know is it's a giraffe on a motorcycle doing wheelies in manhattan yeah, so all my content, a lot of my content, has been scraped and as part of these models, without my consent same.
01:50:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's interesting uh, you mean on future today strategy group and a book net, so like my books have been scraped.
01:50:23 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Our trend reports, which we have given away for free for years, have all been scraped. Nobody asked us anything.
01:50:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you have robotstxt and stuff? Oh yeah, so they're not adhering to the. It's not a law.
01:50:39 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Of course we do, but it doesn't great. So what are we supposed to do?
01:50:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like, send our lawyer after you know interesting thing, you know, cloudflare last yeah, a couple offered this automatic blocking and we accept they can't block Google because Google uses their search spider for their AI we are longtime CloudFlare customers, so that's all well and good.
01:51:02 - Amy Webb (Guest)
however, I don't have a way to digital, so like I would love for Google or somebody to offer me digital protection for my identity. It's one thing to steal my book and build a model around it. You know what? If somebody hacks my face, it's not the same thing as a deep fake Like this is a pretty significant improvement. I don't have the. What am I? What do I? Send a takedown notice of my, my face being used creatively or whatever, or maliciously, or maliciously right Again, I think so. Going back to the whole conversation about regulation, our regulators would not have, we don't have the mechanisms to regulate in advance. Meaning to it would have been either the regulation would be so broad that you wouldn't be able to enforce it, or it would be narrow and wouldn't.
01:51:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's kind of prior restraint, right? You can't.
01:51:52 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So right. So again, we have to figure out a way to get companies to invent cool things. I think that's great, but then like, use them, incent them to also create systems that prevent bad stuff from happening so denmark has passed a law giving everybody the right to copyright their image.
01:52:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That just happened. Is that a? Is that the kind of thing you would like to see?
01:52:20 - Amy Webb (Guest)
well, look, if you, harper and I both have very specific looks, okay, we, we, what do you mean? I'm confused, we don't you know? We, uh, harper looks like Harper and nobody else looks like Harper and I, I look like you know, I've got giant crazy hair and I tend to wear the exact same thing all of the time and you know, whatever, um, we're easy to spot and that makes us very easy to to replicate.
01:52:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I've got hundreds of thousands of hours of audio and video of me. Yeah, you're online. Yeah, and I'm sure it's been scraped same boat.
01:52:56 - Harper Reed (Guest)
There's probably I think this is something that I, that I, um I don't think we've seen uh, the last of, or the beginning of, is that anyone who has any content online, you can just make a digital clone of them and they can be used adversarial ways, or it can be used for cool content. Um, you know, and in some cases, I think all of us can take advantage of this with llms where we can say, like I am harper reed, you know who I am like, so so tailor your response to me. That's helpful.
01:53:26 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I'm not going to tell you where, I don't want to point any traffic to this, but somebody sent me an interview that I did with somebody in Brazil and sent a YouTube video and it is a weird looking. So it's me. It's my voice. It is a very strange looking version of me. It's my voice, it is a very strange looking version of me and it was video. And what the guy did was a mat, so like he presented it as though I sat down and had a conversation with him and then he made an AI version of me, when in actuality, I don't know who this asshole is. I certainly never talked to him, but he's presenting, he's representing my views.
01:54:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, it's's you know it's not like was he putting words in your? Well, obviously he was putting literally yeah, but was it stuff that you would disagree with, or?
01:54:12 - Amy Webb (Guest)
it doesn't matter yeah right, I, I don't, I don't, I didn't authorize any of that right so this is different than building a chatbot of me or a one-off video. You know, this isn't like deep fake porn of me. This is like meet my acting.
01:54:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's more insidious, because it's the kind of thing you would do. Yeah, uh, do we just have to get used to that, that this is the world we're in now?
01:54:36 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I mean, I don't know how we would even stop it well, I'd like for us to get started on stopping it like now that's, I think, the key.
01:54:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We should get started on it well then, mark, maybe that's the first step it's gonna.
01:54:50 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I guess it gives you the right to sue, but the my experience with the right to sue is that's not very uh strong protection it's and and once again, I think the issue is not like certainly we can do something like that, but who is going be, who's going to take advantage of this?
01:55:07
Like you know, amy, myself, you, leo, we're all people who are, for better or for worse, have been in the public eye in some regards and have resources, et cetera, doing fine, but if you're some young person who's like you know, likelihood or whatever has been taken and used for some nefarious thing or to make money, I think Snapchat did this with a bunch of photos where they introduced photos into people's photo stream that were photos of them doing things they had not done, and some people were like this is awesome and other people were like this is really creepy. In the past, when we've worked around these kind of things that are kind of future-y, we always try and push it through. A is this creepy filter which I just don't think some people are naturally good at um or they're even thinking about because we just don't want, like the, the worst thing that happened for your brand and my experience is for someone to associate it with creepy shit. Some people don't really have that um problem.
01:56:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well and we've tried to do this. Uh problem. Well, and we've tried to do this. Uh, there's the take it down act, um, which president trump said in his state of the union address he can't wait to use against social uh networks because he's been the most mistreated person on the internet ever in history. Yeah, uh, signing the law in may. I haven't seen any uh outcome from that. But this is. It was designed to deal with non-consensual intimate imagery, but the way it works, you only a site like, for instance, my mastodon site uh, twitsocial would have, 24 hours after a take it down request to verify that it is non-consensual intimate imagery and take it down, and which means I would immediately take it down request to verify that it is non-consensual intimate imagery and take it down, and which means I would immediately take it down because I'm not going to take the chance. So it it's widely believed it'll be used not merely to take down deep, fake uh revenge porn, but anything that anybody doesn't like I don't know, I don't.
01:57:00 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I don't think that's true. If I'm the general counsel for a company and if the law says you know non-consensual intimate content and somebody's upset that they got parodied, that is not intimate right, it's something totally different. You know, think of the volume. So if you just think about this from a practical, operational point of view, the volume of takedown requests that they could get untenable, you could build a scrape, you could build a bot. So I don't think this is going to have any impact on, for the most part, on content that is you think people will ignore it?
01:57:36
Yeah, look, we have a lawyer on our team that is mostly supposed to be doing contracts and higher order stuff and he's spending a chunk of time every week now on takedown notices.
01:57:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right. Because people are either stealing our stuff, Sending out takedown notices not incoming takedown.
01:57:57 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, sending out, we haven't been in this. It's amazing. We haven't been in this situation before.
01:58:09 - Harper Reed (Guest)
And all of a sudden there's an avalanche avalanche of stuff. Wow, you think it's AI related, like people are using AI to generate stuff and using your corpus of data to like create.
01:58:13 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So a couple of things. We wrote a very influential paper that we, you know, we always make all of our stuff publicly available. So this was on living intelligence and it has had a lot of impact, and a whole bunch of people have taken either the entire thing or chunks of it and have put it through an AI engine and are just republishing it as though it's their original thought and their own stuff. So we get one of, we see that like once a day, um, my visage, my voice, is popping up in non-sexual but like thought leader-y style interviews or podcasts or whatever that I, you know, it's just um, I think the, the, the um, availability of generative AI and the I don't know I, I guess people just don't aren't have like lack self-awareness and they're just posting a bunch of crap.
01:59:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It'll be used, uh, misused well I mean it's currently misused. Right, that is a misuse uh, then there's an economic cost chris coons and amy klobuchar have the no Fakes Act, which the EFF really doesn't like, but it sounds like something you would like. The no Fakes acronym isn't very good. Nurture. Originals. Foster Art and Keep Entertainment Safe.
01:59:36 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, look, all of this is great when you're sitting around having deep thoughts with other people. I think we all want there to be fewer restrictions, because the slippery slope is you publish something that runs afoul of somebody else's political beliefs and you're silent. So, like I understand where all of this is coming from. But the practical reality is like I'm paying somebody and I did not have to before to just issue takedown notices because it's become so easy for people to steal our stuff.
02:00:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you would like this because this no fakes act is focused on digital replicas. It's targeting this exact kind of theft.
02:00:19 - Amy Webb (Guest)
But I mean.
02:00:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I understand your desire to protect yourself, but I worry about how it will be misused.
02:00:28 - Amy Webb (Guest)
This and that was what I was saying at the beginning. I think we've hit this inflection point where there were lots of I certainly I'm sure, Harper, I mean there were a lot of us 20 years ago who were saying here are plausible futures, this is where we are, these are plausible outcomes. Let's figure out a way to mitigate, to like make sure the best stuff goes forward and we mitigate risk in advance. There were it's not like there was a lack of that. There were a lot of people doing that. At one point, facebook had a. I knew the people on the team. They had a team doing this yeah, they don't anymore yeah no, so now.
02:01:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now the shit is here I'm not worried about facebook and google. I think they have the means, uh, to do this. I'm worried about me. I'm worried about my chat room and my mastodon and my forums. I do not have the means to respond to a bunch of takedown requests or people who don't like it that somebody said something they didn't like, uh, and I, and I feel like this is going to stifle free speech. It's going to stifle a lot of little guys who will no longer be able to. I will have to close all of these so the incentive we've incentivized people look linkedin.
02:01:40 - Amy Webb (Guest)
If you, if you've been on linkedin lately, it's just I I, literally before we started, popped on and saw that somebody had taken a post that I had written and chat GPTified it and it popped up because I'm connected to them and it's like Was it me Was it Was it me it was yes, Harper, you wouldn't do that, Harper. And look, I don't give a shit, it's LinkedIn. So fine. No-transcript Change the incentive structure. So LinkedIn could penalize people for doing that, but it's not in LinkedIn's best interest to do it, because and YouTube?
02:02:29 - Harper Reed (Guest)
didn't YouTube just announce that they are changing monetization around this?
02:02:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're concerned about slop. For sure, yeah, okay.
02:02:40 - Amy Webb (Guest)
My biggest concern in all of this, honestly, is not me, it's this slow march to absolute mediocrity and like no fresh ideas. It's hard, there's a reason why and whatever. Maybe I'm fucking weird, but like I write, you know all my thinking is done using pen and paper and it slows me down. I spend, I read in print. I do this for a reason it's because of of how my brain works and I want to have new thoughts. We and it takes time to do that. You know we're making it and I know. I know I know right now I sound like some fuddy duddy from yesteryear or whatever, but like I'm the one who's saying people shouldn't wear baseball caps.
02:03:24
I've already set a standard way beyond that, I think, if you want to live in a future where what you find on Netflix is like fine, it's not compelling, but that's what you got, and if you want to have products that are like okay, but not like amazing, look, when I first saw the Matrix, I was living in Japan, I had just come out of Aikido so I still had my gi on. I was all sweaty and gross and I saw that in a theater with other people and it blew my fucking mind and I felt like the way that I felt I wanted to like I chased that feeling. It was an amazing feeling and there's no AI system that would have created that movie for many reasons we can debate later on Like we're going to wind up in a future where everything is like fine, like it's mashed potatoes and gravy for everybody all the time, and whatever.
02:04:17
We're fed but like.
02:04:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe that will create the incentive for human created content that there will be a huge incentive.
02:04:28 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yes, but sorry. One last thing. My concern is cause I've seen and I'm not gonna say where I've seen this, but my concern is you have to learn how to think. They're like generating. You have to exercise that part of your brain. And the problem is, if you're using LinkedIn or whatever chat, fucking GPT to write all of your posts, whatever it is that you're doing, if you're constantly assisted, you are not unlocking deeper levels of creativity in your brain. You are no longer using the part there's a neurological thing here. You're no longer using the parts of your brain responsible for creativity and if we, you know, if you get into a habit of that, it uses less energy and the brain wants to expend less energy. So if we have an entire wave of people now where this is how they're operating, they're going to be very fast at doing many things and I think we lose. I just think we lose the extreme creativity.
02:05:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know a lot of people out there think I'm it's totally wrong and that's fine, but well, and I I mean, there is a history of old farts like us saying well, you know, once people start reading novels, they'll stop imagining on their own. Uh, you know, this is a his. This is a long history of moral panics over new technologies, somehow damaging our ability to think. Um, maybe it's not as bad as we're worried about. I understand what you're saying. I don't disagree with I'm seeing it.
02:05:51 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Harper is one in a zillion, all right harper's always been a hundred years ago harper would be.
02:05:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You guys would be unique a hundred years ago, 200 years ago there's two.
02:06:01 - Amy Webb (Guest)
There is an avalanche of evidence pointing to the contrary. Look, I am seeing the. It's because of incentive structure. So people are incentive incented to pump out more crap more quickly.
02:06:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, it's so funny because I've been thinking this. I just said it to Lisa the other day the whole everything is crap. But I thought it was because I'm old, because old people always say you young people don't know what music is and I, but maybe it is all going downhill, everything is.
02:06:33 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I mean, there are plenty of. There are plenty of, you know, wonderfully creative people out there. What I'm saying is it's it's. Everybody else is losing this muscle or they're under developing them where are the next?
02:06:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
where's the next generation of gorgeous like to come?
02:06:46 - Amy Webb (Guest)
from. I think we just want more. I don't know.
02:06:50 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I'll stop well, I think there's a couple interesting things first. The first thing is is um, I get in this conversation a lot with my musician friends who are saying there's no good music. The young people are all creating boring music, it's all the same, sounds the same, and I think that's incorrect. I think you're just they're looking at the wrong place. I do think there's still a lot of creativity, et cetera, but it is an uphill battle, much more so than it was when I was younger. I was free to create as much terrible stuff as I wanted and everyone thought it was unique.
02:07:20
The other thing that I that an anecdote. Of course, my entire life is anecdotes. I don't actually have any real information, but I was just in a photography store dropping off some film and they had moved the film to the front, very prominent displayed of this very commercial photography store not commercial meaning commercial photographers, not commercial meaning it's a lot of foot traffic because film is so popular right now. And the theory of the people who are working there was that it's because in this AI world nobody knows what's real and they want something that's verifiable and interesting and real and feels not perfect. And I think that there is a thing that is this world of. What does it look like when it's imperfect, when everything around us is so manufactured?
02:08:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
isn't that the? Isn't that the japanese? What do they call it? Bunraku? The japanese uh aesthetic, which is that a, a cup, a pottery cup, isn't, shouldn't be perfect, it should have a flaw, right, um, but we're not going to lose that I. I disagree, amy. I don't think we're going to lose that capability, that capacity. I think there's always been a mediocre majority.
02:08:33 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I love your optimism. I think we are headed right into an era of learned helplessness that's sad what do we?
02:08:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
do? What do we do about it?
02:08:44 - Amy Webb (Guest)
um, I think that we, as we lose friction. I think friction is important and I think, as we lose friction in our lives, we fall into this learned helplessness trap.
02:08:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We need friction.
02:08:59 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Where I again I think all look, I use all these tools too. I've got O3, I've got Claude, I've got Gemini and I'm using them in different ways. But I am not only using them if that makes sense, and I just see an increasing number of professionals relying heavily on them to do everything from figuring out how to respond to an email to it's not like outsourcing the mundane tasks. I'm seeing it for analysis. It's starting to replace the original thinking and, harper to your point, I would rather have somebody's bad original thinking than just generated mediocre you know what I mean Like we need Wabi Sabi.
02:09:40
There's learning in, there's valuable learning opportunities and like fucking things up. And I worry we're moving into this era where, like we can't fuck things up.
02:09:50 - Harper Reed (Guest)
We're over lubricated, that's true. Yeah, I think that's true.
02:09:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everything's just slipping around. Wow, you know.
02:10:00 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Leave it to me, Lou. I will always bring us way down.
02:10:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I actually completely agree with you. I've been observing this, but what I've been telling myself is oh, you're just getting old. But but now you young people are saying it.
02:10:11 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Now I'm thinking, well, maybe it's true, I, I don't think I'm not. I don't I'm not as negative as amy is, but I do think it is harder. Um, I always thought of it as like the youtube of vacation, of, of like the world and how, when YouTube first started it was very similar to how Vimeo just started. It was all these artists and weirdos doing weird Devo kind of film shit, and then it became like the most boring, brainless kind of content of like Minecraft videos, ripping off Amy's content and done with AI, right, and I think there's this interesting kind of experience.
02:10:49
Um, there's still really good video content out there. There's still really interesting people. It's just harder to find and we went through a time where it was all gone and then the only way to find it recently has been like TikTok, which kind of fucked up the algorithm fucked up our experiences about our assumptions about the algorithm, changed that on, you know, and to some extent it's scary, accurate, but like that then surfaced a bunch of different types of creators and then those creators then all iterated, as Amy said, towards this, this kind of perfection kind of point of view, and that's why we have the Minecraftcraft videos. Um, of amy's content is because they, they started creating the content, that is, that was going to be the like the saccharine content for that platform.
02:11:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It doesn't have to go that way.
02:11:33 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I will give you an example my point is that it was keeps shifting because I think that the users don't want it like they want it for a little bit, and they're like oh, this is tasty, is tasty this is tasty, and then it died.
02:11:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Smarter than that in the long run, we're going to hope so.
02:11:47 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So I think in the creative realm there is that correction. That happens I'm. I guess what I'm pointing at is an unfortunate. I know nobody cares about business, but in the world of of business I'm not seeing the correction because the incentives are so strong to outsource. That's the inshittification.
02:12:08
I teach graduate school and have for years, and I'm seeing some of the same patterns happening there. And look I. I want everybody to be smarter faster. There's a prompt that everybody uses. Help me learn of the. It's the 80 20 rule. Right like? Tell me the parita principle, yeah, right.
02:12:29
So uh, tell me the most important 20 out of the 80, whatever, so that I can learn it all it. There's a benefit in having the mind wander productively, uh, in the in the professional realm, and I just think the incentives are are, you know somebody, just I think it might've been IBM Somebody did a study that like, yes, everybody is um much more productive, but that hasn't reduced anybody's amount of time. So like, everybody's more productive and that's actually created more work, not less. So I just business, technology, creativity, government, they're all the parts of an interlocking Venn diagram and I just think it's important that everybody, that we don't lose this function. You know productivity is great. Bottom line is, you know every company cares about their bottom line, but like we've got to figure out a way to incentivize people to keep working. You know every company cares about their bottom line, but like we've got to figure out a way to incentivize people to keep working. The parts of the brain you know that have to do, yeah, I think people will do that.
02:13:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think people will do that. I, I have more. I'm not saying it, I'll be honest well, but there's you know I think maybe you're getting old, amy there could be, there's. Uh, of course, there's always been the mediocre middle, the mediocre majority, uh, and that's why exceptional people stand out, that's why they are exceptional, hi this is.
02:13:54 - Benito (Announcement)
I have something to say about that real quick. Yes, um, because I'm uh, you know, creative. I, you know, I went through the creative stuff for a long time and the problem is that, like, yes, there's a mediocre middle, but a lot of that is that they yes, there's a mediocre middle, but a lot of that is that they don't have the time to actually learn how to do the craft part of it or the opportunity now or the opportunity.
02:14:12
And like we don't know how many Mozarts we lost plowing fields, we don't know how many Picassos we lost in factories, you know, we just don't know Because they don't have the time, they're not given the opportunity they don't have. You know, art has pretty much, from the beginning, has been a rich person's uh adventure. You know, only rich people could really go into art or somebody that's still and it's still kind of the truth, yeah look, I, I am, I don't.
02:14:42 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I know that I'm. I'm on pretty pretty much on one side of this debate.
02:14:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I'm not disagreeing with you. I understand what you're saying.
02:14:50 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I wrestle with this. I think about this a lot. Is this a natural part of aging? And I think everybody at some point hits this moment? So I do think about it a lot and I'm trying to figure out if I'm overly indexing. I'm like things aren what, like they used to be, you know.
02:15:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, I think the the issue is that I'm I'm seeing a little young for getting to that point, but maybe, uh, you're advanced.
02:15:14 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I'm. I mean, I'm certainly on the camp if I can't find any new music I like. But, harper, you and I'll talk later.
02:15:19 - Harper Reed (Guest)
But I'm just weird shit.
02:15:22 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I, I'm seeing it in my world, so I am and I'm not seeing the correction. So there is no TikTok algorithm where something interesting pops up and then it gets popular and then it goes away, and because people are like wait a minute, you know, and then that correction is happening. I'm not seeing a correction. I'm not seeing a correction in boardrooms. I'm not. I'm seeing some changes that are, again, if you're prioritized to be fast and first, or most productive or whatever it is, and nobody wants to be left behind, that creates a pretty tricky set of conditions. And you know, are we going to get like I heard? I heard Sam talk about Johnny Ive and the ambient device that's coming, and Are we going to, are we going to inhabit a future where it's surprising and delightful?
02:16:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, this is why I'm glad to be on the older side, because I won't live to see it. I do feel bad for your child and I feel worse for her children, your grandchildren, because I told my kids yesterday we have till 2100, after that, all bets are off. We are not gonna make it out of this century. So enjoy it. I often think, amy, that I wish I had known that in the year 2000,. We were at the peak and it wasn't going to get any better. I would have enjoyed it more.
02:16:52 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I don't know, I feel like when was the peak year.
02:16:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
When did it all start going downhill 2010?
02:17:01 - Amy Webb (Guest)
2006.
02:17:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
2006.
02:17:04 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Smartphone. You guys are boring.
02:17:07 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I don't think everything has gone downhill. I guess what I'm saying is I but you think it's starting to. We're always on the precipice of going downhill.
02:17:17
I don't think it's a fait accompli. If that was the case, you know, look, it'd be hard to go to sleep tonight. I sleep fine, I get my, I don't um, so I'm not. I don't think it's all bad. I just want everybody to not give up agency and I, I want everybody to stay plugged in and I think there might be, and my daughter always encourages me on this.
02:17:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She's 32. She always says the pendulum will swing the other way. Dad, we are swinging strongly in one direction, but it's the natural course of events. The arc of history always bends towards justice. We will swing the other way. My daughter is not Martin Luther King, but she apparently channels.
02:18:00 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I mean, I think we're in a dark time for most of the people I know right now. But I also think that for 10-ish years I listened to no new music, and for the last five years I've listened to almost all new music, which is exciting, and it's not just weird EDM stuff that sounds. All the same, I think that there's art that's happening. I just think that what I've noticed is that it's harder to find to Amy's point, the unique stuff that has an identity, where it's very easy to find the content, the political beliefs. Hear a busker playing an amazing melody.
02:18:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think there are so many good musicians out there that we've never heard, that will never have a contract, that we'll never hear. There is an abundance of great art out there. It's just not evenly distributed. I guess we welcome you and thank you for joining the first parental advisory. Uh, version of twit. We've got a new cd cover. We're gonna, we're gonna put out. Uh, just you know because, no, I'm just kidding uh, there is a debate going on behind the scenes about whether we bleep you guys or just leave it in. I might do a disclaimer at the beginning saying uh, I'm sorry, it's my fault I know, and I what I did.
02:19:25 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I'm like super reserved and I'm thinking about it and then like an hour in, I'm just like fuck it.
02:19:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I said.
02:19:30 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Now, I'm just myself.
02:19:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That was my response, which is I love it because it means you guys are engaged and you're passionate and you're talking to what you feel, and that's more important to me than look. The president of the united states dropped an f-bomb to the press. Everybody broadcast it. The news channels were saying the word. I think we live in a different time, maybe not the best time, but the different time we live in a different time we definitely do I think.
02:20:00 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I think it's. I think you should change your phrasing framing of whether it's a good or bad time. I just think it's like this, the only time we got. It's super weird right. Nobody knows what's gonna happen yeah, and it's like it's very bizarre, like we just gotta figure some there's some weird shit's gonna happen. That's kind of what I've been thinking you gotta lean into it.
02:20:16
This is the thing I keep like I was saying about. Is it uh mad max or rem, like? Where are we at like? Is it just going to be like you guys remember? The book it's not mad max, I don't want to lean into mad. It has good fashion, though, and the cars are cool. You have the hats. But you remember the book from the early 2000s. I got it the first time in like 1999, called oh, I think, maybe maybe 2000. Who moved my cheese? No, is that a good book?
02:20:41 - Amy Webb (Guest)
no, it's a horrible book it's a terrible book and it is a very oft-repeated phrase.
02:20:46 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Yeah, it's like the funniest thing ever, because I got it because I was an internet company and the company had sold the tech team to another company and fired everyone and then gave everyone on the tech team this book about workplace change called who Moved my Cheese. We all looked at it like this DBA with a giant beard who was just really into AIX was just like like, said some horrible thing. And you know, to my little intern ears I was like what, the what's going on? And I just remember this experience of like these people with their whole careers suddenly just shifted and the and the and the bosses were like you'll understand if you read this book and then gave him this stupid book.
02:21:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This was their excuse for firing you, because it's okay.
02:21:26 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Well, what I think about this a lot is that we now have all sorts of change and no one is handing out stupid books Like we might need to go back to the stupid book time where we're just like look, I know it's confusing, it's very hard to understand. You have to move out past Led Zeppelin. Here's a book about like hyper pop or some horrible.
02:21:42 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Actually, that's actually a really really smart insight. It's, you're right, we are going through an unprecedented amount of um change right now we really are.
02:21:53
So I'm not. This isn't like we, if you look at all the different variables and all the different circumstances and macro uncertainties, and it is a it is a pretty concentrated moment in time that we are all living through, and also I think it's great that mental health awareness has risen up and people feel like they can talk about it or talk to somebody, but there's not that at an organizational level. So I think organizations have panic attacks and people who are part of communities. So I think, like organizations have panic attacks and people who are part of communities, it we, we don't have a guidebook for how to get through this moment in time, cause it's not really you know, yeah, for better or for worse.
02:22:37 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Like I think this is this interesting thing is the who moved my cheese book was horrible, but it was this bookmark that said things are moving, things are changing and you get this book. That is really, really weird, especially as, like a like I don't know how I was 21, 22 or whatever I was. Like what does this even mean? Like what is that? I don't even understand capitalism. What they sold the tech team that's something you can do is sell a team. Like what is a team? Am I on a team? You guys think I belong like? I had a lot of feelings that morning you know what this, this show is?
02:23:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
the who moved my cheese for the 21st century. So we're just glad you're here.
02:23:12 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I hope it's better than that that is a lot of pressure on us to get this uh yeah, let's take a break.
02:23:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
When I, when I was working at tech tv and things were starting to go downhill, I bought 20 copies of the clue train manifesto and gave it all to all the executives, hoping that they would understand this new era that they were entering at the beginning of the 21st century, they didn't, they did not, they didn't.
02:23:37 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Who has, though, has that ever? Has anyone ever understood the era? They are no, you can't. You're like a fish in water you don't even know there's water I think we got to think about rock and roll more Like I think it's like I think we're all the parents I am not moving past Led Zeppelin, though I got to tell you right now that's a little, that's a bridge too far.
02:23:54
I was talking to you there, leo, but I think this is about rock and roll. I think it's a lot of like we're sitting there being like this music is too loud all right.
02:24:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Mike, who's watching on facebook, says can you please talk about tech? So we're going to take a break and we are going to talk about this.
02:24:13 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I thought this was this week in amy and harper's opinions I think this is a lot about tech.
02:24:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is about. This is about the cultural moment that tech has brought us to is what it is. But you know, to each his own. He probably wants to hear about the new samsung fold phone, so maybe we'll talk about that. Maybe not our show today. By the way, let's so glad to have amy webb with us. Uh, and future today. Strategy group ft, sgcom. If your company is has even the slightest inkling that maybe you should think about what's coming, this would be a good person to ask FTSGcom and Harper Reed, who is living in the future and he always has, and so I always use Harper as kind of an indicator about where we're headed. Now I'm scared. You've terrified me, harper. His company is what is it?
02:25:07
23 89, 23, 89, our favorite, our favorite digits of pie very good, a very good part of pie it's probably hugely tasty part yes, I told you last time you were on the mnemonic I use how I want to drink alcoholic. Of course, after the heavy chapters on quantum mechanics, that gets you 10 digits of pi without even just like that, and two, three, eight, nines in there. Our show today, brought to you by shopify oh, I love shopify. You know we were talking about uh tiktok and businesses.
02:25:43
My son, who became a tick tock superstar two and a half million followers then moved to Instagram millions of followers there and has now created his own company, salt Hank, where he sells salts and pickles. It all happened because of Shopify. It, he will tell you. Shopify and shopPay made the difference for him. Now he's got a massively successful restaurant in New York City. It's incredible when you're starting a new business and he went through this, learning all the new hats you have to wear it seems like your to-do list just keeps growing.
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You've got a marketing team behind you, but you could be a solo proprietor. I mean, both of them are or were. Now Henry's got many employees, but that's how you build the business right. You can easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are strolling or scrolling. And, best yetify is your commerce expert, with world-class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for shopify. Turn your big business idea into, with shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify comm slash Twitter. Go to Shopify comm slash twit with Shopify comm slash twitch. Couldn't recommend it more highly, actually. Very grateful to Shopify, now I don't have to support my son. In fact, he's going to be supporting me any minute now. Uh, all, right on, we go. Let's see. Oh, this is uh, this is uh talk about in shitification. Belkin has announced it's shutting down wemo next year, which a lot of home automation fans are very upset about. But honestly, yeah.
02:28:46
Wemo was one of the first right.
02:28:49 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Just worked very solidly. It was super easy and just was like but this is the problem.
02:28:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They could pull the plug. They sent an email to customers saying that Wemo's smart home products will no longer be supported as of January 31st. Any features that relied on cloud connectivity, including remote access and voice assistant integrations. The wemo app gone. Customer support will end on the same date. Wow, yeah, pulling the plug, but I think that's a lesson, isn't it? I mean, this is part of the inshification process anyone nobody.
02:29:27
Uh, they were still selling wemo products as recently as two years ago. Now some of the products because they support thread will continue to function through home kit, but not all. For devices still supported under warranty, which is not many, you'll get a partial refund. That's really a very short list. Here's the longer list of products that will be affected by the shutdown what else does belkin make?
02:29:56 - Harper Reed (Guest)
oh well, so belkin's interesting yeah, they're an interesting company.
02:30:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They, to my knowledge maybe you know better, amy basically they look at the Chinese manufacturer and they say that that that we're going to take them, we're going to put Belkin, slap our name on them and sell them. And it's very often the case that something you get from Belkin is actually made by another company. You could even buy at Timu or Alibaba or somewhere.
02:30:23 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, they're like cheaper lower end.
02:30:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But a lot of people use those Wemo smart home stuff.
02:30:30 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Well, maybe this is what's happening. Right Is that they're seeing that that was a. You know, they invented that. That's something that they have to deal with, full stack support and all that nonsense and they're just like, why would we do this? There's so many. I mean the market is not. It's slammed with competitors. Threads and matter have made it where you know those aren't necessarily relevant. No one wants another app, um, it kind of probably makes sense. It's just annoying for people who have kind of um done that. I mean I'm surprised hue has kept on so long as it is um, but but like it was the first, it was. They were the first. Easy to use, like just plug it in the phillips use yeah, I disagree.
02:31:12 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I disagree with you. The the first easy to use was the clapper well, that's, true that's true clap off.
02:31:20 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Yeah, I've been thinking about that fish. Remember that fish, the talking fish? Don't worry, be happy, billy Bass.
02:31:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Big mouth, billy Bass, yep.
02:31:31 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I've been thinking about that.
02:31:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can buy Billy Bass's that have been modified to do other things, sing other songs. I don't know.
02:31:50 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I searched for searched for billy bass and I got bill blast.
02:31:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So that wasn't maybe another designer, another singing fish.
02:31:57 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Maybe I need to say the you know you could probably drop that into vo3 and have bill blasts sing a fish, fish song. There we are can you?
02:32:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean you say we have become and shitified, but forgive me, this was a uh roundabout, I don't know, 2000, 2005, something like that. It also saying I will survive. Uh, for those of you want to make a political statement, and you can still buy them on Amazon, look at that, it's still available. The Big Mouth, billy Bass, oh boy, made by Jemmy Industries. Well, no, no, you have to get a used one. I see that. It's just yeah, it says on the listing top material type basswood.
02:33:05
The finish type polished the instrument guitar? I don't think that's right. Color red who filled this in? What are you talking about? Now I want to visit the Jemmy store and see. Founded in 1984, Jemmy is a trendsetter in seasonal decor, including air-blown inflatable light show and big mouth filly bass. Okay.
02:33:41
Okay, so powering Christmas decor all over the world. What else, uh, the streaming wars have now basically, according to the new york times, come down to to netflix and youtube. Uh, that's it. The rest of them also ran see, including such big names as Disney and Max now HBO Max as of this week, because changing names always helps the business, let's do it often. Youtube and Netflix, between them, share almost 20% of all television viewing time. That was back in may, according to nielsen. The next closest is disney, which includes disney plus hulu and esp, and all three together five percent, not even half what youtube does. Wow, youtube is a beast. It's a beast, and we're talking watching it on your tv. I'm not talking about watching it on your phone. This is sitting in your living room watching it on tv.
02:34:51 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Television viewing time well, I think netflix was the first big commercial and there's longevity and you know um and youtube is free and everything else. There's barriers to entry. Can I ask a question, leo? Are we going to not talk about BitChat? Because I actually had a question about that Dorsey's social network. And if we're not, that's fine, I can ask offline.
02:35:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, let's talk about it. Jack Dorsey has launched, I thought, a very interesting idea, not a new idea. This was used during the Hong Kong protests a network messaging system built on kind of Bluetooth, peer-to-peer.
02:35:35 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So this is. I have a technical question that I would love to get some insight on. So the mesh network that existed during the Hong Kong protests worked because everybody opted in during the Hong Kong protests worked because everybody opted in. The way I'm understanding this is that you don't somehow have to opt in and it's also still secure. Am I missing something?
02:35:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like how would you? It's true, because they're encrypted. I'm just reading the CNBC article. As users move through physical space, their phones form local Bluetooth clusters. I installed this and I wanted to use it, but I don't think anybody nearby is well, that was my question using it.
02:36:09 - Amy Webb (Guest)
So it only because, like amazon has a similar mesh, setup right bluetooth as well.
02:36:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact, if you're using low, lower, I think.
02:36:17 - Amy Webb (Guest)
If you, have an, a word um, you are automatically opted into that. You have to opt out um.
02:36:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So the question what she's saying alexa, you can say echo, I think it's safe she doesn't want to wake anybody up yeah, you automatically opt in um you know, we used to be really, by the way, just parenthetically. We used to be very careful about saying all those wake words yeah, and now I feel like everybody's.
02:36:43
They're all waking up all the time for random reasons, like nobody cares anymore I don't, well, I don't know my siri constantly goes what huh, yeah, like all the time if you say seriously, she goes yeah, it's terrible, yeah, or it works really well and it's like super sensitive and really is listening to what you're saying.
02:37:03 - Amy Webb (Guest)
You know everybody wants somebody to really listen, so maybe that is the true breakthrough of tech. Good point I would like to understand. So it's a mesh, so do you have to be part of, do you have to be part of BitChat for it to?
02:37:18 - Harper Reed (Guest)
work? Yes, or is it? Yes as far as I can tell. And so, strangely, right around the time that he released this, I started looking into Meshtastic, which is a LoRa mesh network that is kind of spread around and it's very fun and there's a whole bunch of nodes around.
02:37:35 - Amy Webb (Guest)
What was the word you just said? Lora L-A-U-R-A.
02:37:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
L-O-R-A long name.
02:37:40 - Harper Reed (Guest)
L-O-R-A and it seems like there's a whole community of people that are building these things and I have there's these little devices like a little card.
02:37:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have this little router thing and this seems kind of built on a very similar thing I'll like. I would be willing to bet you it is mesh tastic with Jack Dorsey's brand on it would be my guess.
02:38:00 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I mean, it's very it's in this case, it's bluetooth instead of Laura, but but I think it's what.
02:38:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it does require everyone to have the app installed for it to be, and there are some devices that become bridge devices according to the CNBC article, and those are the ones that kind of can connect separate nodes into a mesh.
02:38:21 - Amy Webb (Guest)
It's just what Amazon has already done, but now it's a social media, yeah.
02:38:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Amazon's very low bit rate, though I don't know if, uh, that's one of the problems with what amazon's doing is uh, it really is designed for things like, uh, you know, location tag so what does it matter that it's bluetooth?
02:38:36 - Amy Webb (Guest)
versus what am I missing? What's the big revelation here? What does it matter that it's not?
02:38:41 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I think the I think the revelation is that jack dorsey did it instead of some hacker in hong kong well also that he has, like he has the head of square, obviously a very large company I get it, but brands under it what does it matter?
02:38:56 - Amy Webb (Guest)
if it's encrypted, then what does it matter if it's not mobile packets and it's not internet data? So what's the? What am I missing about this? I guess you can't shut it off.
02:39:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think Bluetooth le is the key right ble. So you don't you know? Remember in the old days of Bluetooth you'd have to pair.
02:39:13 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, and there was this whole process. It made sense during Hong Kong because they were literally trying to stop Democratic and get around internet restrictions okay but this is in the you like. You don't need this for security, do you not? Yet?
02:39:29 - Harper Reed (Guest)
all right, like I mean, I think we, we, we, if you're, I would suggest that people look at censorship resistant technologies install it now, before it's prohibited? Yeah, but I do think there is, you know, the question of why you need this. Is is something important, and obviously I mean jack dorsey is invested in a lot of really interesting things like nostre and blue sky and all these things, like I do, and there is a thread there of making things that are decentralized yeah, decentralized and kind of focused on scaling, and this seems like another one.
02:40:01
Um, I do, I do prefer peer-to-peer based chat, typically, to your point, it's what do you use, I? I mean, I just, I still wish jabber was around you yeah, jabber was great.
02:40:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was so sad that jabber got killed but I'm a, I'm a.
02:40:16 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I use a lot of whatsapp. I use a huge amount of whatsapp.
02:40:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Whatsapp is like you know it's, it's uh, now the uS Congress says you should not be using WhatsApp. It's not.
02:40:27 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I mean I use signal as well and um, I'm not sure why they think it's not secure.
02:40:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
By the way, I think it's perfectly secure, but yeah, I don't know, I'm not.
02:40:35 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I'm not. I'm not a government worker. Hopefully, okay, and uh, I'm not. My. Their threat not a model is not my threat model.
02:40:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, I'm not, I don't have to worry so much about that but if you were, for instance, planning on thursday to go down and join the protests, as I am, you might want to install this. I probably wouldn't bring my phone. Actually, that's a good point. Yeah, don't even bring a device that can pinpoint you yeah, I would not where were were you on July 17th 2025? Well, I mean to get a pinpoint.
02:41:06 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I mean, if the surveillance is at this point, now Faces, it's all faces.
02:41:11 - Amy Webb (Guest)
And if you're a passerby, you're scraped anyways, and you know. Good luck.
02:41:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, the city of Petaluma. I noticed this. Every single intersection has a camera and I thought why are you? Are these all red light cameras? I think they got a grant.
02:41:29 - Benito (Announcement)
And they decided you know, we should just have cameras all over town. Well on that, leo, I actually got a notice from the DMV this week that I got. I was going 36 in a 25 downtown and they said this is a courtesy warning. In 60 days we are going to start charging people for this. We're watching, yeah.
02:41:47 - Harper Reed (Guest)
This has been in chicago for ages, you guys are behind the peloton 36 and there's face recognition attached to this.
02:41:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and we know that ice is now using uh, a face recognition system that was not intended for this purpose, but on their smartphones to try to uh track down illegal I'm sorry, undocumented immigrants, uh. So, anyway, if you want to get jack dorsey's uh system, good luck, because it's in test flight, which means very few people can use it. Um, I don't even know if apple would approve it. To be honest, I don't. I don't know why they would it's.
02:42:21 - Harper Reed (Guest)
There's a handful of apps that do very similar things. They're just not as well designed theoretically or as well funded. Um, and you know the the hong kong example is a great example. It's pretty interesting. Um, I think that there's there's definitely a need for for things like this. It would be really cool if a thing like whatsapp or signal would use this if it couldn't get connectivity. That's a good idea. That would be really neat, right? Oh?
02:42:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I can't get online, so maybe I'll see this ble and see if I can connect with other but that would be a great idea.
02:42:53 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Some interesting applications that I think are um, people aren't really thinking of it, doesn't? You don't have to be in a protest. You could be in a plane like chatting with your friends while you're on a plane not on wi-fi is interesting. Like you could be at a party. You could be in a plane like chatting with your friends while you're on a plane not on Wi-Fi is interesting. Like you could be at a party. You could be in a low bandwidth zone. There's all these other things. That mesh networking could be very cool. Connecting this to a greater mesh where you're bouncing and eventually you hit the internet through a peer-to-peer group is pretty compelling. I think there's a lot of really interesting aspects of this and I'm I'm excited that Jack is spending him his time doing these things, because I really want that, that kind of hacker. Let's just try this out, thing Um and and we'll see it's. It's interesting.
02:43:35 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Is the content being stored on device, then if it's decentralized, Temporarily yeah.
02:43:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's ephemeral messages only exist in device memory. They are encrypted end to end, okay, um, and I I I presume that they uh self-destruct at some point. There's a whole white paper on it.
02:43:53 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Uh, on github, permissionless tech so I think this is uh we're heading. I think, given politically where we're at solid hasn't really taken off, has it? Tim bernard lee's um?
02:44:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
uh, yeah, his idea was to you own your own data and it's stored inside the solid, you know blob it was it.
02:44:12 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I think that decentralization is going to become more and more of a thing going forward is blockchain the solution for that?
02:44:18 - Harper Reed (Guest)
no, because blockchain is not anonymous uh, yes, true, I think that I think the um, the key here is, you know, privacy preserving technologies, things that are that are zero knowledge, etc. Like I think that's really the key is zero knowledge technologies, and there's a handful of them. I mean signal and the whisper protocol is very, very, very good um, you can use that in such a way where you're not giving your personal data. I, for instance, choose to give my phone number, et cetera, to participate. But I think the key is it's just all about consent. Are you making the decision to share your personal data to you know? Even if it is to get something, it's still you're making that conscious decision where I think a lot of our default social software is that no one is know. It's it's just expected that you should share all this stuff.
02:45:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think that's not as great uh, and it almost sounds like in self-defense we should prepare to have these kinds of technologies well, there was a.
02:45:20 - Amy Webb (Guest)
There are lots of parts around the country that are still without connectivity or consistent connectivity, um, you know. So there's a, a case to be made or, you know, god forbid a satellite goes out, which is, you know, plausible. I mean, this is, these are critical workarounds that I think to harper's point, like there's no commercial incentive right now to develop this stuff, so it is going to take a hacker, a group of hackers, to sort of like. Let's figure out some workarounds. So it'd be good to have mesh networks established in case there is, you know, as a fail, safe, at the very least to be able to communicate. You know, it would turn our phones into like walkie-talkies, which wouldn't be the worst.
02:45:59 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Thing.
02:45:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty neat the bit chat white paper paper is quite good and quite complete and to my relatively untrained eye it looks like it's doing everything right. It's using well-known internet technologies for encryption and so forth. It looks pretty good, including Bloom filters, which is cool. You know what? I'll run this by Steve Gibsonson and we can talk about it on security now at some point. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he's already uh thinking about that. It's interesting, you know, I'm sure jack, because he what he put up. How about 15 million for uh, blue sky for the?
02:46:38 - Harper Reed (Guest)
yeah he's a smart guy. Yeah, he, he's a. He, you know, he's a well-known hacker, has spent a lot of time thinking through these things. I think that this is good. What I do hope, though, is that he actually pushes it out and that it becomes an actual product that people can use, because there's lots of uses that aren't just I'm hiding from the government. There's lots of valid uses, and it be neat to like have a ephemeral chat that you could use for places that are low bandwidth the plane or the you know, a club or a bar, or just someplace that doesn't necessarily make sense to have full internet or wifi.
02:47:16 - Amy Webb (Guest)
We were in. We took a family vacation hiked in Yellowstone and there's, you know, there's enormous stretches there where you've got nothing, so it would have been useful just to have you were using a satellite communicator, but yeah, there's spot devices for that right.
02:47:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what spot's all about.
02:47:31 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, but like yeah, I don't know, I think it's I have satellite on my T-Mobile phone.
02:47:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've never used it. I was very tempted to, but I wasn't sure how much it was gonna cost.
02:47:51
You've got elon in there. I've got elon, I got elon everywhere. I can't get away from elon. If I lose bandwidth here thanks to comcast which happens apparently fairly often I have a dish on the roof that will, uh, switch over to starlink, fail over to starlink. I'm not thrilled about it, but there's. There aren't a lot of choices, right? Elon is all over my stuff. All right, we're gonna take one last break and then a couple of last stories and anything you want to bring up, amy or harper, that we haven't covered. I'm glad you brought up the bit chat thing. That was actually something I didn't want to talk about. I think that's a good, interesting subject. Uh, amy webb, harper reed uh, two of the smartest people I know. It's great to have both of you going to japan and if, if I could, I would just hop on a big old jet airliner and meet you in kyoto. God, that sounds pretty easy nowadays.
02:48:33
You just you know, you walk on, yeah, you say I'm here, uh, you don't have to take off your shoes anymore. So that's a good thing, right, 20 years, 24 years, you do have to take your shoes off once you get there.
02:48:43 - Amy Webb (Guest)
There's there's no shoes, you have to change it. That's for a good thing, right, 20 years, 24 years. You do have to take your shoes off once you get there. There's no shoes, you have to change into slippers.
02:48:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But that's for a good reason. That's for a good reason you wear your little slippers. But yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I know, I was talking about this earlier this week. I have a friend who went out and bought Skechers advertised slip-ons for going to the airport so you could take them off easily and put them back on. He actually bought a pair. We were going out to wisconsin. He said I got the new airport. Uh, you know, tsa sketchers. I said I'm good for you, he won't need him anymore. We've just christine gnome has decided in infinite wisdom that there is no longer a threat from richard reed. Uh, the shoe bomber is in jail and keep your shoes on. It's the strangest admission of security theater ever really weird didn't uh either, trump.
02:49:36 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Somebody in the administration said that the liquids are next. I heard really.
02:49:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, wow, boy, that I have so many three ounce bottles of stuff or what. I'm sorry. Two point what was? It was weird. It was like 2.4 ounces. It was some strange measurement. Yeah, companies had to rush to make little tiny bottles of their emoluments, so weird emoluments. Emoluments is something else. I wonder if gets stock dropped. That's a good question. Search might have this episode of this Week in Tech brought to you by Oracle.
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02:51:20
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02:51:34
You remember maybe you don't, but it was a big. It was a big story at the time when the switch 2 came out. Young man went into a GameStop very excited the Staten Island location to pick up his Nintendo Switch 2. In fact I think he was the first in line and the employee was so excited to sell the first Switch 2 that he took the stapler and stapled the receipt right to the box. The staple went through the box into the screen of the Switch 2, breaking it. The company replaced the devices.
02:52:11
The incident went viral on social media and GameStop put it up for auction on July 9th. Quote authentic relics from the now infamous Staplegate incident. The company's spokesperson told Fast Company sometimes the universe hands you a stapler and says run with it. So they did, but the good news is they did it for a good cause, to benefit the Children's Miracle Network hospitals. They raised, after 200 bids, the highest bid $122,800. In addition to the stapler, the high bidder got the first known console to be officially stapled during a product launch by GameStop. They got the stapled box, the removed single staple, probably framed suitably, and a certificate of authenticity signed by GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen and a certificate of authenticity signed by GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen.
02:53:09
And, by the way, he said, if it reaches six figures, I will include my underwear. So I'm not sure, but I think there may be some underwear as well. Look at that. Oh, wait a minute. It looks like this Wait is it just the stapler. No, no, it's a whole thing. Get the box, you get the nintendo switch, you get the oh, you do get that stapled you get the staple, you get the whole thing.
02:53:36
Oh no, we're not. Wait a minute, that's not it. This is the wrong listing. I don't think this is the one that sold. You got a backup thousand dollars. I gotta I went too far I love it let me see what you get.
02:53:48
Oh, I guess I was looking at another here. It is, there it is. You get the whole thing, even that certificate of authenticity. Look at that. That is sweet, a sweet stapler deal. Uh, I guess it's still going. Is that right? Or is this an old listing? Oh, this is an old listing. Yeah, does it still work? Like? Can you still play it docked?
02:54:06 - Benito (Announcement)
no, it's still going. Is that right? Or is this an old listing? Oh, this is an old listing. Yeah, does it still work like? Can you still play it docked?
02:54:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, it's got a whole. Oh, I guess you could play it docked. I don't know. I mean pay 128 000. You could find out. If you are a nintendo fan, maybe you're a pokemon fan. Sad news we often end the show with obituaries. In this case, the voice of professor oak has passed away. Uh, james carter cathcart, who was a voice actor, uh, he was the voice. I don't this. To me it's meaningless, but uh, I know there are many Pokemon fans who will mourn the loss of. It wasn't just Professor Oak, it was Gary Meowth and James. He was prolific. James Carter Cascott passed at the age of 71, which is way too young.
02:55:02 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I wonder what his estate if's an estate? Uh, for his voice which will continue if you like, did a license deal that's actually interesting.
02:55:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sag has settled its actors, its voice actors. Uh strike that went on for six months, went on for a long time. These were the voice actors who did not, who were really concerned about AI stealing their job. Actually, this is old. Let me see if I can find the latest one.
02:55:33
Anyway, that is, our long national nightmare is over and the voice actors have made a deal. Voice actors have made a deal. Strike is over. I was hoping I could talk about the agreement, but let me see if I can come to an end anyway, uh, so, yeah, so I guess perhaps he will benefit somehow leo, are you in?
02:56:03 - Amy Webb (Guest)
are you in no?
02:56:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, I used to be sag after. When I did a radio show I was sag after, but so I guess I technically am, but I uh you have such an iconic voice. You know like I, I could, I could be anything you want, just ask. You know, I always I wish I had done that because it's much more lucrative and the hours are a hell of a lot better. But I foolishly thought you know, podcasting there's, that's the future. That's the future. You know what?
02:56:30 - Amy Webb (Guest)
our future is so wrong I know I blew.
02:56:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It wouldn't be the first time I predicted the future incorrectly. Uh amy, though she's got it. She knows she's got. She's got the future well under control. Her last book, the genesis machine, is all about synthetic biology. This is a great read. I know you're not promoting it anymore, but it's still in print. It's only a couple of years old but it's well worth reading. I really enjoyed this book thank you and the.
02:57:01 - Amy Webb (Guest)
The book that I wrote on AI, called the Big Nine, is a lot of what was in there is now happening, so the scenarios I get, yeah.
02:57:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wish I had a copy of the Big Nine. Oh, I do, wait a minute, that's right here. I have the whole Amy Webb bookshelf. Are you kidding me? Shelf. Are you kidding me? Uh, yeah, this is it is. It came true how the tech titans and their thinking machines could warp humanity too late. That already happened. Now you picked as the big nine and they're listed around here ibm, alibaba, microsoft amazon, google.
02:57:41 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I get a lot of questions about why in 2018,. I did not put. Openai as part of it.
02:57:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, there was no OpenAI.
02:57:50 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, they were around in 2015.
02:57:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Were they.
02:57:53 - Amy Webb (Guest)
The reason was because there is no model without a server firm and, basically, there is no AI in market without a hyperscaler. So you have, and that still holds true today. So, as much as open ai is making such big waves, there is no open ai without a way to distribute it. Um, which means that the telecommunications providers and uh and the hyperscalers have an enormous they wield enormous power, which, and they, which continues to be true, which and they, which continues to be true, I I have to. You wrote this in 2015. Uh, I started working on it in 15.
02:58:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it publishing takes extraordinarily long, like 2019, but you started.
02:58:34 - Amy Webb (Guest)
I don't remember what year it came out. Yeah it says 2019.
02:58:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but I mean it is prescient. You say artificial intelligence is poised to change the course of human history forever and you were right? Oh look, I even saved the press release from your publisher, so let me see what questions I'm supposed to ask you. Please don't I always do it.
02:58:54 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, you've heard them a few hundred times, I know.
02:58:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No we can. Oh no, they didn't give me any questions. I hate it when that happens. Yeah, I used to interview everybody who came to san francisco. For years I had a radio show. I interviewed more than 5 000 authors oh, wow over a period of years.
02:59:13
Wow and uh. Every one of them came with this, the, the one sheet with and almost all of them yours. Your publisher, to their credit, didn't do. It would have. Here's 10 questions you can ask, and what I learned very quickly because san francisco is on the west coast so we were at the end of the book tour in many cases is they have heard those questions from good morning muncie, from today in portland, from every goddamn radio station, tv station in the entire country, and they are sick to death of them. So I would actually gain points by tearing up the press release.
02:59:47 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yeah, when I've been on book tour, I don't I always just say, like you know, sometimes nobody reads the book and then they have to have those questions.
02:59:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I would try to read the books, which is not. I mean, I would do five or six interviews a day, so it was a non-trivial challenge, but I got very good at skimming. You even talk about artificial superintelligence in here. I do. Has your opinion on that changed? Are we on our way to super intelligence, or is that?
03:00:14 - Amy Webb (Guest)
so what I wrote about was we don't have a definition for it yes, we still don't, by the way, we still um. Look, there's plenty to worry about right now. I wouldn't worry about artificial superintell intelligence or whatever. Zuckerberg has renamed the company this five minutes.
03:00:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He cracks me up, man, the guy. He's got the money to back it up, though In fact he stole somebody from Apple this week. I mean he's really A lot of money 200 mil for that.
03:00:43 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Could you imagine that? Oh for Scale AI. No for the Apple guy. I think he paid him what I think, so Something like that Holy cow, I take it. The thing I think is Goodbye.
03:00:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Tim, I'm going over there Is.
03:01:00 - Harper Reed (Guest)
This is how professional sports works. Right, this is not how tech normally works, and the one that is very fascinating to me was the windsurf deal that fell through that was also this week Google was just like yoink, but what is interesting is that they took the execs and then a few key employees and left the team and the shell of the product, and so the question is what happens? Does it have a character AI? I?
03:01:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
hope they gave them all a copy of who Moved my Cheese.
03:01:31 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Well, I think that's something that we've. The conclusion here is that we're going to need another copy of that who Moved my Cheese, which I'm not sure what that copy looks like, what the title is, but I'm sure within 15 minutes it's going to be posted on LinkedIn by someone in the in the live stream.
03:01:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so they got really the core of windsurf, you think.
03:01:51 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I don't know if they got the core. I think the question is, what is the core? Is that is, is the? Are the? Are the leaders that built this? Are they what made windsurf pop? You know, possible Is?
03:02:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
that really worth all that money. It was Codiumium. They renamed it to windsurf, but it's a vibe coding editor yeah and it's.
03:02:07 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I have many friends who use it and love it and it's, it's really great and and I think that's, um, I think it's like that's a cool thing, right, like it's, it's a neat thing. But I but there's this trend that seems to be happening which is, instead of an acqui hire or instead of a straight acquisition, what they do is they basically poach the executives and then leave the shell of a company.
03:02:28
And then the question is like, what happens to the investors? What is the motivation to invest if that's the worry, Like if someone did that to my company I would be very happy Our investors would be very sad. And that's just a. You know, that's a very it's interesting. And so are there going to be some compelling um terms put on new term sheets that are like, if this happens, then we need a little bit of a cut of that.
03:02:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like I'm not sure it feels like they kind of hollowed windsurf out. They got technology externally.
03:02:57 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I mean they gave them also 2.4 billion or something right. So I feel like windsurf itself has some money to go forward. And then, you know, it says is it the founders? Is that who had made it successful? Are they going to be able to hire an executive to come in there and make that? Is that you, leo? Are they going to hire you to go in there? And well, here's the problem there?
03:03:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would presume there's a limited number of talented people that can do this job. I mean, it's got to be fairly constrained if they're getting $200 million. Yeah, so this is like the? You know the, the star quarterback, or the or the you know the no hitter pitcher. This is a, this is somebody you you know, in a small number of people, can do this.
03:03:35 - Harper Reed (Guest)
I'm guessing that there are agents, so to speak, that are helped negotiating these things Like that's, that's, there's too much money on the on the hook here to be able to do that. And so I have a friend that's in the sports world and he's like this feels just like pro boxing or this feels just like any of these things where the deals are so big.
03:03:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, and the reason it is in sports is because those people make the companies that own them a lot of money, and I guess it's potentially true. It's not clear, but it's potentially true for AI. By the way, I am not crazy about the windsurf site, the new purpose-built ide to harness magic really.
03:04:11 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Do you like magic? I'm a big magic fan and tab, tab, tab ship really I don't know, somewhere around here I have, I have my friend jesse vincent's uh, continue button, which is an easy button. You just press and it says that was easy. And then outputs to the keyboard, to usb, just continue. So you plug it into your code gen, you just hit it every time it just says continue, continue, or you could do shift enter and you don't even have to do that, you just let it go let it run.
03:04:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Harper is uh, do you want to say what 2389 is doing? Not yet okay. Well, I don't, because I don't know season stealth no, he's not in stealth, he's in confusion.
03:04:51 - Harper Reed (Guest)
Well, I just think you, just I just sit in this building, here in the space, my studio, and we wait for the company to arrive, and once it's here, then I can share with you what is actually agents that conspire with you, not against you.
03:05:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like that. I like that. 2389.ai anything else you want to plug. You're all going to japan. I'm so jealous. Uh, we should, we should give that. Uh, japan, uh, foundation.
03:05:20 - Harper Reed (Guest)
One more, it's a very cool organization and, uh, the founding of it is also very interesting. The, the, the people who are, who are, who are fellows within it are very interesting. There's a lot of really great people and a lot of you know a lot of people have done some really incredible stuff. Um, and the best part is is you'll be sitting next to someone who is quote unquote famous and quote unquote famous, and then the person next to them is like some like artists somewhere, or a chef or like, and then everyone is just like kind of very friendly. It's very nice.
03:05:49 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Yep Agreed.
03:05:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sounds like fun. It sounds wonderful.
03:05:54 - Amy Webb (Guest)
Well, I guess I'll see you in like two weeks. Yes, indeed, all right, safe travels.
03:05:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, thank you, and if there's some guy shows up in a pith helmet, you might just, you know treat him like a nice person. Thank you everybody. Thank you so much. You two are fantastic. What a great conversation. We went a little long and I apologize, but I I couldn't, I couldn't cut it off. It's just too good. Really appreciate your time. Thanks to everybody who got to see this fabulous show.
03:06:32
Uh, we do twit every Sunday, 2 to 5 pm Pacific, 5 to 8 pm Eastern, 2100 UTC, so you can watch us do it live. If you're in the club, you can watch us in the club twit Discord, which is a wonderful hang. Club members get ad free versions of all of our shows and a lot more at twittv slash club twit, and they perform a really important function. About 25% of our overhead, our costs, are absorbed by the club. Thank you. Thank you After the fact. Well, wait a minute. Before I go on, I should mention you don't have to be in the club to watch live. Well, wait a minute. Before I go on, I should mention you don't have to be in the club to watch live. We're also streaming on YouTube X, facebook, twitch, tiktok, linkedin and Kik Seven other platforms so you can probably see us're in the discord. There's always some interesting things going on in the discord, including a lot of ai generation uh stuff. There's bob ross painting a fluffy little club twit cloud uh.
03:07:39
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