This Week in Tech Episode 1054 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech. Harper Reeds here, Abrar El Heedi and Jacob Ward. We got a great show planned for you. We'll talk about hacking. Turns out all that data on the satellites going back and forth, it's not encrypted. Nobody ever thought anybody be listening. California's got a new law about social media, AI and age verification. And Australia is about to ban social media for people under 16.

Leo Laporte [00:00:24]:
Get ready for the screams of pain. And the AI researcher who's getting more than 200 million doll year from Meta. All that more coming up next on Twit. Podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT. This is TWiT this Week in Tech. Episode 1054. Recorded Sunday, October 19th, 2025.

Leo Laporte [00:00:58]:
Nine days a week. It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech, the show. We cover the week's tech news. I like to assemble. I like to think of this show as kind of a grab, grab bag. That's not the right way. I like to assemble a eclectic group each week. It's the one show we do where there's always rotating hosts and I really enjoy it because, well, the news is complicated.

Leo Laporte [00:01:21]:
I like to get as many perspectives as we can. Jacob Ward is here. You see him, of course, on Tech News Weekly with Micah Sargent. He's got the Ripcurrent.com, his newsletter, and he's the author of a really great book about big tech. How big tech ruins everything, the Loop. Good to see you, Jacob. Thank you for having me.

Jacob Ward [00:01:41]:
Thanks for having me, boss.

Leo Laporte [00:01:42]:
Yeah, yeah. Also with us, Abrar Alheti from cnet, senior technology reporter. She is relaxed because she's done with the phone reviews.

Abrar Alheti [00:01:53]:
I can finally breathe other things in the world. Yes, maybe. I mean, who knows? It never really ends.

Leo Laporte [00:02:00]:
Never, never ending. I have actually a graph somebody made. It's probably not a good scientific study, but it's fascinating about what happened since 2007. And what happened in 2007. I think you'll know this one, Abrar.

Abrar Alheti [00:02:20]:
What happened 2007?

Leo Laporte [00:02:21]:
The release of the iPhone.

Abrar Alheti [00:02:23]:
Oh, yes. That should have been top of mind.

Leo Laporte [00:02:25]:
And it's about how everything's gone.

Abrar Alheti [00:02:29]:
That sounds about right.

Leo Laporte [00:02:31]:
Including Brar's social life because she's now got to review every dang phone. Phone.

Abrar Alheti [00:02:37]:
My friends have been wondering if I hate them at this point.

Leo Laporte [00:02:40]:
Yeah, this is the blog post. What happened in 2007? It's the damn phones. Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of, you know, IQ scores Tumbling. It's really. It's kind of depressing. Internet. That's not a good one.

Leo Laporte [00:02:57]:
Test scores. Look at that. 2007.

Abrar Alheti [00:03:00]:
Yikes.

Leo Laporte [00:03:01]:
Right here. Down. Down the hill. Of course, Covid could be involved there somewhere, right? That's the problem with these. You know, it's science. These are SAT scores plummeting.

Abrar Alheti [00:03:16]:
Yikes.

Leo Laporte [00:03:16]:
Internet addiction's going away. I don't know why that is.

Harper Reed [00:03:20]:
Because addiction's going up.

Leo Laporte [00:03:22]:
It's going up, but nobody's talking about it. That's the difference. This is articles about Internet addiction.

Jacob Ward [00:03:27]:
We don't talk.

Leo Laporte [00:03:27]:
We don't want to talk about that. Sleep abnormalities. Through the roof, through the youth. Mental health. Well, I don't have to tell you about that. Percent of us undergraduates with a mental illness. Oh, man. Anxiety, depression, adhd.

Leo Laporte [00:03:43]:
But, you know, this is. We won't go any further.

Abrar Alheti [00:03:48]:
It's all fun and games.

Leo Laporte [00:03:49]:
It's fun and games because there's a lot of factors. You can't just say, well, it's that or it's that.

Harper Reed [00:03:53]:
And also, what would we do without these apps? We have so many cool apps.

Leo Laporte [00:03:58]:
Harper Reed. Look at that. Technologist, entrepreneur, hacker. Harper blog. Harper is always welcome on this show as all three of you are three of my favorite people. I like to do this, actually. There's a new app. I can't get it to work.

Leo Laporte [00:04:12]:
Thank God. A guy who works in the superintelligence division of Meta put it out today. That takes your picture and then puts it in a vacation place so you don't have to actually go on vacation anymore.

Harper Reed [00:04:25]:
Thank God.

Abrar Alheti [00:04:26]:
That was a real struggle.

Harper Reed [00:04:29]:
Horrible.

Leo Laporte [00:04:29]:
Yeah, no kidding. I couldn't get it to do that, so. And it's $30 if you want. You know, you only get like the first five, so I just throw it away. But anyway, that was interesting. That was kind of a sign of the times. Another sign of the times. Let's start with hacking.

Leo Laporte [00:04:46]:
Today, the world's satellite data is massively vulnerable to snooping. You only need $750 worth of equipment. And this is kind of like the SS7 bug in our cell phone system, which, of course, the Chinese have exploited and we can never be rid of them. Researchers who discovered this said they just really didn't think anyone would look up at the satellites. New study published on Monday found that communications from. Well, it's everything. This is from UC San Diego and the University of Maryland. We.

Leo Laporte [00:05:21]:
We pointed a commercial off the shelf satellite dish at the sky and carried out the most comprehensive public study to date of geostationary satellite communication that includes Starlink of course, but also many other communications. A shocking, shockingly large amount of sensitive traffic is being broadcast unencrypted, including critical infrastructure, internal corporate and government communications, private citizens, voice calls, SMS and consumer Internet traffic from in flight WI fi and mobile networks. This data can be passively observed by anyone with a few hundred dollars of consumer grade hardware.

Jacob Ward [00:06:01]:
Yay.

Harper Reed [00:06:03]:
I have to admit that when I read, when I saw this the first thing I thought was where do I get the stuff?

Leo Laporte [00:06:09]:
Good man. A true hacker.

Jacob Ward [00:06:11]:
Yeah, $800.

Harper Reed [00:06:13]:
Yeah, $800. Also it's space stuff, you know, it's like coming from space, it's just so exciting.

Leo Laporte [00:06:19]:
This wasn't that much of a revelation to me because I remember Steve Wozniak doing this many years ago. He would sit in his living room and he would listen in on sell sat traffic. But I was under the impression that was in the early days and that everything's been fixed now. Apparently not.

Harper Reed [00:06:39]:
Well, there is a, there is a really. Go ahead Jacob.

Jacob Ward [00:06:41]:
Well, I was just gonna say like I wonder what the. Like why are they so slow to address it. Right. Like why are these companies so loathe to go ahead and I mean, right. According to the study they've been companies been warning, you know, been warned for decades about.

Leo Laporte [00:06:53]:
We've known about SS7's flaw for more than decades.

Jacob Ward [00:06:57]:
So like what is the. I have to assume, right. No company does anything without some sort of incentive behind it. So like is it that there's. They don't care enough about the reputational risk and maybe staying on the good side of intelligence of the intelligence community in the nsa. Ah, than, than taking it down, you know, there's a good, there's only a handful of us neurotic or know about it. Right. I wonder.

Leo Laporte [00:07:23]:
Law enforcement loves it. Right?

Jacob Ward [00:07:24]:
Yeah. And it saves them the whole headache. Right. One of the huge headaches for, for all the social media platforms once upon a time was having to staff, you know, huge offices worth of people to, to deal with the incoming intelligence requests. If you can somehow not get in trouble with your customers and leave that door open, maybe that's a more logistically simple way to deal with it.

Leo Laporte [00:07:47]:
Yeah. Remember the 80s.

Jacob Ward [00:07:48]:
But you could imagine it's also like, you know, people in the same way that like, you know, people have often said that like, you know, the routers that control street lights and so forth have like the passwords like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You know, so it may just, it could be just like variety.

Leo Laporte [00:08:02]:
They Were hacking the walk. You know, walk sign is on. Then Palo Alto. And they had Mark Zuckerberg saying things. That's right.

Jacob Ward [00:08:11]:
Musk. And I think that you should.

Leo Laporte [00:08:12]:
Blah, blah, blah.

Harper Reed [00:08:13]:
That's right.

Jacob Ward [00:08:13]:
That's right.

Leo Laporte [00:08:14]:
Because it was 0, 0, 00. And yeah, I mean, we don't really care about security until we do, I guess. But I think your conspiracy theory is kind of interesting that.

Jacob Ward [00:08:24]:
Oh, I've got a million of them.

Leo Laporte [00:08:25]:
Yeah, let's go.

Harper Reed [00:08:26]:
Come on.

Leo Laporte [00:08:27]:
Doesn't really want us to encrypt this stuff. The AT&T whistleblower who said, oh, yeah, the NSA has a wire closet in San Francisco where they listen to all AT&T Internet traffic.

Harper Reed [00:08:40]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:08:41]:
But they don't have to do that really, do they? It's a lot easier. $750 worth of equipment.

Harper Reed [00:08:48]:
So there's a. Excuse me. There's a big community of people that do this for imagery. So a lot of the satellites will beam down images. And there's an amateur satellite subreddit that I always poke my head into thinking, should I get one of these antennas for my house? Should I get one of these little software defined radios and start slurping down these images? And mostly because it's just weather data, which I'm kind of a. Weather data. I get it. And then I'm like, what am I going to do with it? I just look outside and it's not raining or snowing or whatever.

Harper Reed [00:09:15]:
But I do like the idea of taking it into my house and seeing some of this stuff. And it's pretty interesting. And I'm not really surprised that you can just apply this to something else like, I don't know, text messages or whatever. They're slipping down as well. Because I don't think people really did like, kind of, the report said, expect to actually point antennas at these devices. I think that's probably. They thought the security through obscurity aspect would hold for longer, but then, I don't know, people are bored.

Leo Laporte [00:09:46]:
Well, I loved listening to the cell phone traffic he really enjoyed was his evening entertainment. He would sit in the living room and just have it running.

Abrar Alheti [00:09:56]:
Or social media, man, what are you gonna do?

Leo Laporte [00:09:58]:
Yeah.

Abrar Alheti [00:09:58]:
Listen to people's conversations.

Leo Laporte [00:10:01]:
All right, well, let's. So this will be our hacking segment for the week. The DHS says criminal gangs. You've been getting those text messages that say, oh, we can't deliver this package. Or you've got a highway toll payment. Right. Or your traffic. There's a traffic violation if you don't pay it.

Leo Laporte [00:10:23]:
It's going to double and it panics people. And they pay $1 billion in the past three years, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Abrar Alheti [00:10:33]:
I'm not surprised.

Leo Laporte [00:10:35]:
So people fall for this stuff.

Abrar Alheti [00:10:37]:
You know, they're going for things that, that can scare you. Right? Okay. That I have a package in the mail. It's likely that I missed a toll. It's, you know, it's things that are obvious wins and clearly a billion dollars.

Leo Laporte [00:10:51]:
I was watching. Go ahead.

Jacob Ward [00:10:53]:
I was gonna say, you're like, you're like. So I. When at NBC News, we got to interview, I got to interview a Nigerian romance scammer.

Abrar Alheti [00:11:03]:
Oh my God.

Jacob Ward [00:11:04]:
You know, in living outside Lagos. And he'd spent like you know, the better part of five years trying to get somebody on WhatsApp to respond to his entreaties. And there was even, this is the crazy part, there was even a manual that he showed us where how these, these guys would, would share this book that was your guide to trying to trick Western women into falling in love with you and giving you money. And the.

Leo Laporte [00:11:36]:
I remember that story.

Jacob Ward [00:11:38]:
That was man industry of, of that was so incredible. And to me I was like, wow, like why would you spend five years. I mean, this is what we asked was what I asked him, you know, why, why five years? That's an incredible amount of time. Like he's putting in like, you know, six hour days on top of his other jobs.

Leo Laporte [00:11:54]:
Good money, right? Yeah.

Jacob Ward [00:11:55]:
He got in the end like $25,000 out of one woman finally. And that is a life changing amount of money for him.

Leo Laporte [00:12:02]:
Right.

Jacob Ward [00:12:02]:
It'll, you know, it changed his family's, you know, future for generations. Right. He then had a tremendous personal upheaval as a Christian and decided he would never do it again. And now he's a. Not nearly as well paid, but a paid consultant to the companies that are trying to fight against this. But, but that, that tiny. I mean, especially with something like a tech scam where you don't even have to get on the phone. Right? You don't need to be an individual texting.

Jacob Ward [00:12:27]:
Like the, the scale pays so well, right? That tiny percentage of people who will fall for it. And I'm, you know, I'm one of those people who like looks at those. And I'm like, I'm like, oh no. Have I, you know, did I. Because I'm the kind of person who always forgets to pay my bills. So, so I fall, you know, I fall for it for a millisecond. You know, I can't imagine how many people must fall for that.

Leo Laporte [00:12:48]:
I didn't want to do it, but.

Jacob Ward [00:12:50]:
They made me do it. I fell in love with Connie Chong.

Leo Laporte [00:12:55]:
And now, I'm sorry, doing that, that's stupid. My identity was briefly being protected. $5. Fooled you. Yeah. What amazes me is how people fall for this. I can understand a romance scam because you're, you know, somebody's lonely and you know, it's flattering and you're getting flattered and all that stuff. But the toll thing, the bill thing, maybe it's people like you, Jacob, would you say?

Jacob Ward [00:13:23]:
Yeah, I don't know. There's a lot. Don't underestimate the number of people who forget to pay their bills. And I felt they're not qualified for human life.

Leo Laporte [00:13:29]:
There's another side effect of this. Cause we got a bill from one of our service providers for the company that said, you're past due, we're gonna send you to collection and you give us $8,000 now. And we had to really think long and hard, is this real or not? Why it's not been paid. And it turned out it wasn't a scam. We actually must somehow must have missed the bill. But you could see people also, I mean, Lisa and I spent some time thinking, is this real? Is this real? Let me investigate and so forth. So it has impact in both directions. We are very.

Leo Laporte [00:14:02]:
Lisa gets every day gets email because we have an address. I won't say out loud, but it's the kind of obvious address that you would send a fake invoice to. And it gets something every day saying, yeah, please remit $3,000, that kind of thing.

Harper Reed [00:14:22]:
I think we underestimate our ability to detect these sort of things. And one of the things about working in the Obama campaign is they were very, very worried about security. And this is obviously a billion years ago, but there was just a lot of like, you know, you're going to get hacked, you're going to get things right. Things are going to happen to you. Not and not like it may. And then the other thing was the incentives are such that for some of these big kind of hacks where they're scamming people out of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, that's more revenue than most venture backed startups get. So like, why wouldn't you staff it with 10 people trying to go at this, both coming at it, you know, like, if you're doing that, you know, getting $200,000 ten times a year, that's pretty good income. Especially if you're in a market that just doesn't have the same level and it's all USD as well, which is a strong currency.

Harper Reed [00:15:21]:
And so you know, or, or gift cards. But, but I do think there's this thing of like, like from a business standpoint this seems like a pretty rational business approach. Unfortunately for a lot of these folks to, to do and I, I what changed me was just this, this assumption that I am not going to win if someone is so motivated to, to hack me. And so you kind of have to be skeptical with every interaction and that kind of sucks as well. Like that's just like a, not a great place to be is to be skeptical of every interaction you have. I my down. My like weakness is I can't help but reply like I am just built in such a way where even if.

Leo Laporte [00:16:01]:
You know it's a hack that is a weakness you're going to reply.

Harper Reed [00:16:04]:
Well, they're just like, you know, send some picture of some random person and it's like Steve. And I'm like, yep, this is Steve. And they're I met you at yoga class. I'm like, yeah, I was wonderful being your teacher. And I'll just lean all the way into it as far as they'll go. And eventually they're like I think I have the wrong number. And I'm like, you do not have the wrong number. We are talking and I have to like really promise myself not to reply.

Harper Reed [00:16:26]:
And actually the new iPhone stuff where they put the unknown texts in space.

Leo Laporte [00:16:29]:
I really love that.

Harper Reed [00:16:30]:
Yeah, that, that has stopped my replying.

Leo Laporte [00:16:31]:
Single best improvement in iOS 26 is I have a separate place for people I don't know and I put everybody in there. So a couple of relate. First of all, don't do that and then don't do they usually at the at some point they're going to ask you to invest in crypto or something like that, right? There's some, there's some game they're playing with you.

Harper Reed [00:16:52]:
I always ask them if they want my seed phrase. That's one of the first things I'll say. I'll just say are you, do you want my seed phrase?

Jacob Ward [00:16:57]:
Let's get to the chase here.

Harper Reed [00:16:58]:
Yeah. Can I just give it to you? Is that easier? What will. Because I don't have much time right now. I'm busy and they always are very standoffish.

Leo Laporte [00:17:07]:
I don't get the highs as much as I used to. I don't know why. For some reason lately I've been getting almost every day From a variety of area codes. A text saying, do you need your trees trimmed? And I feel like this might be a code. I don't know what this.

Harper Reed [00:17:23]:
Or they're just driving by your house and they're like, man, this guy.

Leo Laporte [00:17:26]:
It's different numbers from different areas and it's. Hi, this is Sandra, your local tree trimming expert. Do you need your trees trimmed?

Jacob Ward [00:17:35]:
I feel right now is an endless amount of job offers because I'm like.

Leo Laporte [00:17:38]:
I get those too.

Jacob Ward [00:17:39]:
You get those too. Okay. I thought maybe it was like you're in some tree trimming database and I'm in some job searching database. I don't know.

Leo Laporte [00:17:47]:
Okay, so we do have strong encryption, despite the fact that governments all over the world are trying to eliminate it. In fact, in response to what you were talking about, Harper, back in 2012, Apple added advanced data protection. Google before that had added advanced data protection, enhanced a protection that required a, you know, hardware key and was end to end encrypted. Of course, the UK government has been trying to get Apple to drop that adp. Apple no longer offers it to people in the UK as a result. Interesting story. I ran this by Steve Gibson. He said, I'm not too concerned, but I'm a little concerned.

Leo Laporte [00:18:27]:
This is from a very respectable crypto expert.

Harper Reed [00:18:34]:
Cryptography, let's be clear about which crypto.

Leo Laporte [00:18:37]:
Oh God, you're right. Now I have to say that, don't I?

Jacob Ward [00:18:40]:
The fake money.

Leo Laporte [00:18:41]:
Yeah. Oh, man. Who says that? The NSA and GCHQ in the UK are trying to get NIST and other standards organizations to weaken their elliptic curve cryptography and post quantum cryptography. This is what he writes. They've been endlessly repeating arguments that weakening is a good thing. Apparently they spend money on the IETF and NIST and others to try to encourage them not to put in strong. This is exactly what you're saying, Jacob. This supports your theory that, that these people, these groups don't want strong encryption.

Leo Laporte [00:19:26]:
It's ironic because the NSA is also there to protect us.

Harper Reed [00:19:29]:
Well, they, they have their own cryptographers.

Leo Laporte [00:19:32]:
Right.

Harper Reed [00:19:33]:
And this is the least surprising information. Like, I don't know, I feel like this is one of those things where people will argue about whether it's true or false for forever. And it may. I don't think it really matters because it. Hasn't the NSA been caught doing this?

Leo Laporte [00:19:49]:
Yeah, they weakened 56 bits NIST. I think somebody discovered NIST had a weakened encryption.

Harper Reed [00:19:58]:
So, like the fact that they've done this more than once, it's not really Surprising that they may do it again. That seems like a kind of a pattern. I mean, I don't know. I'm not super good at patterns like that of people doing something over and over and over again. So I'm like. I read this, and I was just like, yeah, that checks out.

Leo Laporte [00:20:15]:
That's exactly what Steve said. He was pretty smart. Yeah, yeah, of course. What did you think?

Harper Reed [00:20:21]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly like that.

Leo Laporte [00:20:23]:
You thought Sandra was there to trim your trees. Really?

Harper Reed [00:20:25]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:20:26]:
What you think?

Harper Reed [00:20:27]:
Well, I mean, this is a funny problem because we all know that encryption is going to make everyone safer, but that also includes criminals. That I think is. That's just a very complex place to be. Like, I. I would prefer to live my life in a way where we're making the entire population safer, and then we have to maybe use other methods to find the criminals, not make everyone unsafe as a way to find the. To, like, to, like, find the bad people, so to speak.

Leo Laporte [00:20:54]:
Bingo. Bingo. That's exactly. I once interviewed Phil Zimmerman, the creator of pgp, and asked him that. And he said, this is the price you pay for strong encryption. It's fine. And his biggest point was law enforcement is not going dark. He says law enforcement has, in effect, the largest widescreen view of everything going on in the world ever.

Leo Laporte [00:21:17]:
And there's just a few pixels that are out and it bugs them, but I want to see everything. He said, law enforcement is not hampered. Modern technology has really given them access to much more than they'd ever had before. Look at Flock, the camera, the license plate camera. People who are all over now making deals. They just made a deal with ring. So your ring doorbell will do license plate recording. And.

Leo Laporte [00:21:46]:
And of course, law enforcement has access to that. And some people would say, well, that. What's wrong with that? You know, it's just protecting me if a bad guy's driving around my neighborhood. That just protects me, it seems.

Jacob Ward [00:21:56]:
I get. I get stuck in this one a lot because I'm like. So I live in Oakland, California, where, you know, there's a. There's a citywide prohibition on all sorts of surveillance, Panopticon sort of technology. You're not allowed to use facial recognition. You know, there's all these sort of prohibitions that we have in place. And. But I've also, over the last couple of years, gone through.

Jacob Ward [00:22:18]:
We've gone now through. We're on, like, our 11th police commissioner in 10 years or something. I can't even remember, but we just lost another one.

Leo Laporte [00:22:25]:
There's a lot of crime still under.

Jacob Ward [00:22:27]:
A federal consent decree. And there's a huge amount of. Just sort of, you know, there's. There's a solid amount of homicides. And the big one that affects people. I know and has affected me personally. Right. Is car break ins.

Jacob Ward [00:22:39]:
Right. I've had people break into my car with my kids sitting in the back, you know, and there's a no pursuit policy in Oakland because, you know, car pursuits tend to result in somebody getting injured. You know, most. Very often not people involved in the chase.

Leo Laporte [00:22:57]:
Yeah, yeah.

Jacob Ward [00:22:58]:
And so I'm suddenly at this place where I'm like, I want there to be a deterrent. The deterrent effect of knowing that there's a camera that's going to catch your getaway vehicle. But I also don't want police getting used to that deter. Getting used to the idea of using that. Because we know that no matter how many times you tell police you're not allowed to use this system to make an arrest, it's got to be bolstered by other evidence. Inevitably, they don't do that. And of course, where you put those cameras and where you put these surveillance systems makes an enormous difference. Putting it in, you know, a.

Jacob Ward [00:23:38]:
A black and brown neighborhood where people have moved into a place where the streets are extra wide and. And you know, going over the speed limit just sort of makes a little more sense and people driving extra distance to work and, you know, there's all these subtleties that we haven't really dealt with. But anyway, I'm. I used to just be like hardcore. No. And I'm like. I'm sort of shifting my thinking on that one a little bit. But I honestly don't know how I feel about it these days.

Jacob Ward [00:24:05]:
I used to be very understand. And I'd love to hear everybody else. I'd like to hear everybody else's perspective in this panel about this. I'd like to hear how people feel about that.

Leo Laporte [00:24:14]:
Harper, you're in the war. Tone, Chicago.

Harper Reed [00:24:16]:
Oh, it's horrible here. It's really bad. We went and had. What did I do? You can tell it's not war torn because there was a marathon. I went to a Bulls game. Like, this is like. It's a pretty nice spot right now, actually. I highly recommend it.

Harper Reed [00:24:31]:
This is the best time of year to come visit. I. I think this is how they get you. I think this is exactly what a flock camera wants you to say is this will be the solution to solve this crime problem. That is probably some other systemic issue that no one wants to invest in. And I. And I think that that is, that is, that's just how they get you. I mean, I have a lot of security cameras.

Harper Reed [00:24:59]:
When we made this new office, we went way overboard. It is absolutely ridiculous. Part of the reason was we wanted to grab the RTSP streams and do whisper and get all the voices and get, get notes for every space in this.

Leo Laporte [00:25:11]:
So you're recording every conversation.

Harper Reed [00:25:14]:
We actually have a QR code on the door that links to our privacy policy. Because I was like, this is getting a little sketchy.

Leo Laporte [00:25:20]:
You know, I'm tempted to do the same thing in my house because I do want to record everything. It's so fun in the house. So when you enter here you will be recorded.

Harper Reed [00:25:29]:
But, but I do think there's a big difference when it comes to these public spaces and especially public spaces that look private. Meaning like your sidewalk. Like my sidewalk is not my space. That is a public space that people I think should have some. I just don't think it's a good practice to start recording that and setting that to a third party that may use that for, you know, to enforce policies that are bad. Because the issue here is not that they're going to use that to stop people who are popping cars and stealing backpacks. The issue is that they're going to use that to attack the people who are already under attack. All the people in our communities that are the weakest are the ones that are going to be the weakest that's going to be used against them still.

Harper Reed [00:26:10]:
And I just don't, I don't really believe that that will help. With that said, I think there are things that will help and I don't live in Oakland. I'm trying not to talk about California when I say I don't live in Oakland. But I think that there are just ways to solve this problem that are not investing more in the surveillance state and giving.

Leo Laporte [00:26:32]:
I agree with you.

Jacob Ward [00:26:33]:
I mean, I will also say, Brad, like, like this is a tech show, but like the fundamental solution to this stuff is like we need housing. We need like a million units of housing in this state. So there's absolutely like, I have no, no illusions that that would solve the problem. But I also see these 17 year old kids, you know, with no, I don't know, it's like absolutely no incentive structure around them at all to do anything other than the quickest possible thing to make a couple dollars. And I would. And I, and I know from lots of reporting on, you know, and lots of interviews with, with psychologists and social scientists around the world, that like a little bit of immediate deterrent really can make an enormous effect. Like raising the punishments for crime has no effect. But like, you see a camera, it slows things down.

Jacob Ward [00:27:21]:
I was just, I was in Brazil this summer and that place is awash in Chinese surveillance cameras. And people there are full of interesting perspectives about it. People who are very serious civil rights people also say, yeah, but I'm actually kind of cool with this. It's a very. That's a really interesting. And that's a place where China has like poured into the social fabric. I don't know. Abrar, what do you think about this? I really want to hear your perspective.

Abrar Alheti [00:27:46]:
No, I'm listening to it and appreciating all of this. I think you guys really hit the nail on the head here where it's. There needs to be bigger changes. And it seems like a band aid fix of, okay, here's a security camera, but then what does that feed into? And. And the idea of, you know, mass surveillance is terrifying, but no one seems to be focusing on how to actually fix the problems. And yeah, I think it's very much a band aid on a bullet hole kind of kind of problem.

Leo Laporte [00:28:15]:
But it's. I also agree with Jacob. It's very hard, especially if you've been the victim of this, to say, well, I don't want, you know, I'm willing to put up with some minor crime because I don't want surveillance on the streets of my city. I completely understand that too. It's really a tough problem. I think though, that we can probably draw the line at things like the UK government saying, well, there should be no end to end encrypted messaging. Can we draw the line? There is that. I think that.

Leo Laporte [00:28:46]:
So signal has. It's interesting because signal has. In fact, there's a great article I recommend. Dan Good. And read so many great pieces about this kind of stuff in Ars Technico. Why signals post quantum makeover is an amazing engineering achievement. They changed their crypto to be post quantum. Not that there are quantum computers today or even anywhere in the near future, but they put a lot of energy into making sure that their cryptography was the signal protocol was quantum resistance.

Leo Laporte [00:29:18]:
Planning on a future where you might have quantum computers able to break RSA encryption? They implemented crystal Kyber, which is an algorithm that NIST endorsed. I hope not a weak algorithm. I'm pretty sure it's not. And it's not an easy thing to do, but they did it. And I think we can all agree that any government regulation that would undermine. That would be a step too far. Or can we. Is it worth doing that to eliminate petty crime?

Jacob Ward [00:29:48]:
I feel that way. I mean, I don't know about the petty crime part, but I don't want government saying, I mean, like, what I like about Signal. Right. Meredith Whitaker, who runs Signal, her argument for so long has been, we need to deprive these big foundational AI companies of the fuel they need to build their models because they are, are parasites who are, you know, stealing our intellectual property and our thoughts and our conversations. And, and so one of her arguments has been, you know, we're. One of the things, One of the reasons we care so much at Signal about this is that we're trying to make it such that your life isn't being fed into these companies. And if you were to somehow say, at a government level, encryption's not okay, you're. That is a thing that I would think a lot of these big foundational companies would be only too happy about, because then you can suddenly scan everything.

Jacob Ward [00:30:40]:
You know, Like, I just, I, I really, I. Yeah, for me, that's a bridge too far. I don't know how everybody else feels.

Leo Laporte [00:30:48]:
I think we all agree.

Jacob Ward [00:30:49]:
Yeah.

Harper Reed [00:30:49]:
Yeah. And I think the thing that is the one step scarier is when you do have your ring camera or your doorbell camera hooked into this kind of Panopticon of which, which is powered by a commercial business, we don't know where that data is going. And so that could be used to be training models that are then used to, you know, do things that we probably would not want to be done. I think that's probably more often than finding a petty criminal that is, that is doing something. And it might make us feel better to say, oh, well, I helped the community. But I don't know. I just look at, I just open Citizen App and then I immediately close it. And I think that that's kind of the vibe that this is.

Harper Reed [00:31:33]:
This is just Citizen App with video. It's like the YouTube version of Citizen App. Yeah, Right. I think that's the, that's where this goes bad. So I, I, I, I even purposefully aimed all of my cameras to not cover sidewalks at my house, to, like, make sure it's just for my house and my property. Because I was like, I just don't want anything. I don't want anyone's business. I don't want anyone.

Harper Reed [00:31:52]:
I want, I want, like, plausible deniability to be like, I can't see your house.

Leo Laporte [00:31:55]:
Like, that's going a lot farther than Most people, in fact, I can see the side outside my house and I think I have to have that camera there because that's protecting my garbage. So I don't want anybody going through my trash. So it's hard to get, especially a ring which is extremely wide angle. It's hard to get the ring not to point at your neighbors, right?

Harper Reed [00:32:18]:
Yeah, I mean my doorbell camera points at the street and I get a lot of streets and I have an option to do. Because I use the unifi stuff. I can do licenses or, or the, the.

Leo Laporte [00:32:29]:
Yeah, I use Unified too, by the way. So it's not, it's local, it's recording locally. It's not recording. It's not. And I guess though law enforcement could come to my house and subpoena it.

Harper Reed [00:32:38]:
I email all the footage, just the cops@chicago.com just every day, just every night, uploads everything there.

Leo Laporte [00:32:45]:
Don't put any time codes or locations, just send them video.

Harper Reed [00:32:48]:
I do it, I do it sporadically. And at two months delay.

Leo Laporte [00:32:54]:
I did have a neighbor whose house was TP'd come over and say, I know when it happened. Can you send me the video of anybody going down the street at that time?

Abrar Alheti [00:33:05]:
And you found it?

Leo Laporte [00:33:07]:
No, there was nobody going down the.

Abrar Alheti [00:33:08]:
Street at that time.

Harper Reed [00:33:11]:
My favorite.

Leo Laporte [00:33:12]:
I wanted to help him, actually. I felt bad for the guy, but. And the kids.

Jacob Ward [00:33:17]:
Let me ask one more question. So Oakland, the police department here in Oakland has just encrypted their communications. Chicago now, right up until recently, you could.

Leo Laporte [00:33:27]:
That's the wrong direction.

Jacob Ward [00:33:28]:
Well, this is what I want to ask people. Right. How do we feel about that? Right. So I'm allowed to, I should be allowed to encrypt my stuff, but they should not be allowed to encrypt.

Leo Laporte [00:33:34]:
That's right. And usually it's by the way, the other way around. For instance, in chat control in the eu, which fortunately is now on the back burner, the EU members of Parliament were protected, their chats could not be decrypted. But they wanted everybody else's chat.

Jacob Ward [00:33:49]:
Yeah, right. Well, sure, sure, but.

Leo Laporte [00:33:50]:
But that is part of the deal. We actually, this really an interesting topic is the deal we make with law enforcement because we give them the lethal force, we give them the power to exercise lethal force. And in fact, in many cases we also give them a certain amount of impunity. But the trade off is, and this is the debate that's going on with ICE right now, that in most cases by law, they cannot be anonymous, they cannot hide their badge number. They cannot hide their face and they cannot encrypt their communications. That's the trade off we make. We give them this power, but we also need some control over this. They cannot be uncontrolled.

Leo Laporte [00:34:33]:
Right. Same with military. There needs to be civilian control as.

Abrar Alheti [00:34:38]:
It'S easy to abuse that amount of power and protection. Absolutely right, yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:34:43]:
So they're allowed to use force, lethal force, but the trade off is they don't get to do it secretly.

Jacob Ward [00:34:50]:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. This is always my thing about firearms in general. Whenever I'm in an open carry state, I've had to be in open carry states covering the Biden Trump election aftermath 2020. I was in an open carry state. I was in Las Vegas outside the Registrar of Voters and you know, the place is full of cops, but then also full of people in paramilitary gear with big AR15s, you know, just strapped to them. And it's like two in the morning and people.

Leo Laporte [00:35:18]:
It's terrifying, isn't it?

Jacob Ward [00:35:19]:
Terrifying, terrifying. And that thing of like, of people always say, well, you know, is my second Amendment right and so forth. I'm like, yeah, but you are, you are. You have taken on the godlike power to kill me from a distance.

Abrar Alheti [00:35:31]:
Right.

Jacob Ward [00:35:31]:
And so what is the trade off here? What have we come. What is. Because there isn't any check on that. It's certainly not an open carry state. Talking to these cops, I'm like, what do you do with these guys? Like, what's the thing? They're like, well, if they menace someone with a gun, I'm like, you mean like swing the barrel on them? Like, what are you talking about? And he was like, yeah, it's squishy. We don't really know, you know, but like, you know. But Leo, you're making a great point. Like, at least with the legal lethal force and the, and the invasion of privacy, you know, there are procedures and processes to protect your privacy.

Jacob Ward [00:36:01]:
Right. We could in theory live in a world in which police can come into any door they want. And probably statistically that would be a safer environment, but that's not a country we want to live in because we've made that deal like you.

Leo Laporte [00:36:12]:
We have the Fourth Amendment. We have.

Jacob Ward [00:36:16]:
That's right. That's right. And so I think this moment of like, cops should be allowed to be private and secret with what they do. I think you're right. That, that, that breaks that agreement that we've struck. It seems to me. Yeah, we're solving a lot here today, you guys. Yeah, we're figuring it out.

Leo Laporte [00:36:33]:
Yeah. Meanwhile, Meta sued the NSO Group because the NSCO group was back breaking WhatsApp. They won that case. In fact, they won $167 million in damages. The judges reviewed it it and reduce the damages to 4 million, which is a tiny amount, but has ordered the Israeli spyware maker to stop targeting WhatsApp. This goes back six years. They sued him in 2019 over the Pegasus spyware.

Harper Reed [00:37:11]:
They don't seem to have stopped.

Leo Laporte [00:37:12]:
They have not stopped.

Harper Reed [00:37:14]:
No, no, they don't seem to have stopped.

Leo Laporte [00:37:17]:
And what's interesting is the NSO Group, which was an Israeli company, has now been acquired by U.S. investors. Oh.

Harper Reed [00:37:28]:
They'Re not going to stop.

Leo Laporte [00:37:29]:
A group led by, get this, Hollywood producer Robert Simmons agreed to purchase the NSO Group in a deal valued in tens of millions of dollars. They're not going to move out of Israel. Operational control remains in Israel, but I guess it's a good investment. Okay. Yeah. That's the weirdest story of the week, by the way.

Jacob Ward [00:37:56]:
I. Yeah, this goes to. Back to that thing too, of like what was going on in 2019 that Meta felt it was in the company's interest to go after NSO Group. Right. And would that still be true today in this realm we're talking about? Right. Like. Like there was. Clearly they felt there was a harm, probably.

Leo Laporte [00:38:16]:
There were a series of stories going back to that time. An Esso group targeting government officials, targeting people. They're. They're the ones who make the zero click software that nation states buy to go after dissidents or terrorists, or sometimes that's considered to be.

Harper Reed [00:38:35]:
That's bad. That's bad stuff.

Leo Laporte [00:38:37]:
It's really bad stuff.

Harper Reed [00:38:39]:
What is the Citizen Lab. That's who keeps finding it. Yeah, they're cool.

Leo Laporte [00:38:42]:
And it's. What the good thing is. Apple really cares a lot about not having their phones hacked. So they will warn people, you have been attacked by a nation state and they are doing everything they can. The new iOS has some really strict protection against this kind of stuff, but there's always little holes and there's a lot of money for hackers who find these holes from companies like the NSO Group.

Harper Reed [00:39:10]:
It's so scary, this stuff. And a lot is done in the name of safety. And I. And I think a lot of times.

Leo Laporte [00:39:21]:
That'S that Ben Franklin quote, right?

Harper Reed [00:39:23]:
No. I don't know. Is there? I wasn't alive when he was alive.

Leo Laporte [00:39:28]:
I was. Ben and I go way back. Let me see.

Jacob Ward [00:39:32]:
You guys used to get the same tech scams you and Ben, exactly.

Harper Reed [00:39:35]:
Do you need your trees trimmed?

Leo Laporte [00:39:37]:
Actually, I wasn't going to quote it because I thought it was so well known and it's almost a cliche now, but his famous quote is, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Abrar Alheti [00:39:54]:
That has staying power, doesn't it?

Leo Laporte [00:39:56]:
It does. And there maybe is some apocryphal nature in some of these quotes, but you know, Ben Franklin said a lot of things, as Abe Lincoln has pointed out many times. So we're going to take a break and we'll come back. That is our. I didn't know we'd get so much out of that. That was our hacking segment. I didn't get to how I almost got hacked by a job interview, but this is probably. Maybe I'll leave.

Leo Laporte [00:40:23]:
We'll put this one in from David Doda. In his. On his blog, he says I was 30 seconds away from running malware on my machine. He thought he was doing a coding interview. He got a LinkedIn message. Oh, from a headhunter. A real company, real LinkedIn profile. The message was, smooth, professional.

Leo Laporte [00:40:47]:
We're developing, I won't say the name, a platform aimed at transforming real estate workflows. Part time, roles available, flexible structure. The guy said, I've been freelancing for eight years. We know what that's like. Well, Jacob and I do, anyway. Built web applications, worked on various projects. It looked legit. So I said yes to the call.

Leo Laporte [00:41:05]:
They sent me a test project, a standard practice for tech interviews. It was a react node code base 30 minute test. Then they said, okay, but you need to download this software onto your machine so we can grade you. He actually, this is. You'll like this, Harper. He actually asked Cursor, AI, is there any. Before I run this application, are there any. Is there any suspicious code in the code?

Harper Reed [00:41:35]:
Should I be worried about this?

Leo Laporte [00:41:37]:
And there was. Cursor found it. It was obfuscated. You see this byte array?

Harper Reed [00:41:43]:
I love that.

Leo Laporte [00:41:44]:
It's not in English, but Cursor figured it out. He decoded the byte array and said, oh, they want to own my machine.

Harper Reed [00:41:54]:
So this is great. I love this because this goes back to the thing we were talking about about the tech scammers, where if I was a criminal entrepreneur, which I think a lot of these people are, they're just entrepreneurs like all the other entrepreneurs. They just happen to use crime instead of, I don't know, AI or venture like this would be a great one. Because the US right now, especially in tech there's so many people unemployed, people who are really hungry for jobs. There's a lot of people who really want to interview. They've submitted hundreds of resumes, if not thousands of resumes with no callbacks. And someone shows you that they care and gives you a thing and then walks you through something rational and then takes all your Bitcoin. I think this is a very well targeted attack that is unfortunately prescient and like probably works pretty well.

Harper Reed [00:42:46]:
And it's also like praise like we were talking about on like the loneliness it praise on this one aspect that's really happening right now that, that I think, you know, we have to be careful of. And this is what I mean by I don't think anyone can prepare themselves for this. I don't think you can protect yourself. I think you're just lucky. He's lucky that he noticed.

Leo Laporte [00:43:04]:
Right. It's so he said I almost fell for it and I'm paranoid about this stuff. He said it worked because it used those traditional four things that hackers use. Urgency. Complete the test before the meeting to save time. Right. Authority. It had a LinkedIn verified profile familiarity.

Leo Laporte [00:43:24]:
Yeah. The standard take home coding test. This is. We've done this time and time again and social proof. A real company page with real employees and real connections. He says I'm almost fell for it. I love it though that he was able to get cursor AI. He said and he said do this.

Leo Laporte [00:43:40]:
He said use AI to scan for at least suspicious stuff. When you find a byte array that's, you know, obfuscated, that's pretty suspicious.

Harper Reed [00:43:50]:
This means I can continue chatting with these, these very nice people that keep texting me. I can pass all their chats through through.

Leo Laporte [00:43:57]:
Pass it through cursor AI. See what it's going to set up.

Harper Reed [00:44:00]:
A very elaborate shortcut on my iPhone that just passed passes it over to OpenAI.

Leo Laporte [00:44:03]:
Honestly that's probably a really good use for a chatbot. Come to think of it. It's just to answer those text messages.

Harper Reed [00:44:09]:
Well there is. Someone was just talking to me about one of the phone call scams. They'll pass it to a trained model. That is just sounds like an old person that doesn't understand.

Leo Laporte [00:44:19]:
They did this in Britain. A phone company in Britain did it.

Harper Reed [00:44:22]:
I love that I played the video.

Leo Laporte [00:44:24]:
It was hysterical. Hello? Yeah, say that again.

Harper Reed [00:44:29]:
It's just so good because how frustrating must that be as the scammer to just be realized that you just got.

Abrar Alheti [00:44:35]:
Got hit him with that Uno reverse. Yeah, I think it was.

Leo Laporte [00:44:39]:
It was a British phone company and it. Daisy, the AI Granny. You want it? You want to hear a little bit of it? It was from 02, the British phone company. O2. Let me see.

Harper Reed [00:44:55]:
I'm just trying to have a little chat.

Jacob Ward [00:44:58]:
It's nearly been an hour. For the love of. Gosh, how time flies.

Harper Reed [00:45:05]:
She's showing me a picture of my cat, Fluffy. It's showing you the picture of your cat, Fluffy. Stop calling me dear, you stupid.

Leo Laporte [00:45:14]:
Okay, you get the idea. It was probably more a publicity stunt, but what a good idea. I think we could work on that with the help of Sora. Maybe this can happen.

Harper Reed [00:45:24]:
It's just gonna be me singing, though. Everyone. Everyone's just gonna be like, why is this guy just sing at me?

Leo Laporte [00:45:29]:
He keeps tripping and farting. Yeah.

Jacob Ward [00:45:31]:
What'?

Harper Reed [00:45:32]:
This is horrible.

Leo Laporte [00:45:36]:
We won't tell anybody what Harper made me do to my cameo on the Sora app, but if you make anything with me, you might be surprised you're watching this Week in Tech. It's great to have Jacob Ward here. Always nice to see you, Jacob. Don't forget the Rip current dot com. His newsletter. Great, great newsletter. And the book, the Loop. Really talking about, you know, this has become very timely.

Leo Laporte [00:46:02]:
How to fight big tech effect. We need to do it. They become so powerful in our lives. There's so many fronts we have to fight on these days.

Jacob Ward [00:46:11]:
But you would think it would be one of the great satisfactions of writing a book like this. To see it come true, to see.

Leo Laporte [00:46:18]:
Your words come true, predicted.

Jacob Ward [00:46:20]:
You don't want that. You don't want happened.

Leo Laporte [00:46:23]:
Yeah, that didn't work. And of course, the podcast, the Rip Current. It's great to have you, Jacob. Watch out for the rip. Abrar Al Heedi, who is resting up after a long bout of phone reviews. Did you pick one that you liked the best?

Abrar Alheti [00:46:39]:
You know, Okay, I know we were talking about how nobody buys the air, but I actually really enjoyed using it, surprisingly. Did I switch to a Pro Max afterwards? Yes. But I'm also a very heavy phone user, so that's.

Leo Laporte [00:46:51]:
Well, this is. And we don't really know because Apple hasn't given out sales figures for air, but analysts are thinking that it isn't a big bestseller. Just went on sale in China last week, so. Right. Tim Cook was there for that. So maybe it'll be popular there.

Jacob Ward [00:47:06]:
Yeah.

Abrar Alheti [00:47:07]:
And the idea is maybe it'll just be a stepping stone till the foldable comes out. So maybe it's their plan.

Leo Laporte [00:47:11]:
That's what we. That's what we Think. Right. I mean look you. I think it was you who first showed me the Z Fold seven. The Fold seven. It's so thin.

Abrar Alheti [00:47:19]:
I love it. I think that's one of my favorite phones I've used this year.

Harper Reed [00:47:21]:
Which one is it?

Leo Laporte [00:47:22]:
This is the Samsung Fold, the latest one, which is extremely thin. The problem with a folding phone is it gets thicker. It doubles. Right, Right. But this now has a full size screen on the front. So it's really kind of like a regular phone.

Abrar Alheti [00:47:34]:
Exactly.

Leo Laporte [00:47:35]:
Happens to open up.

Abrar Alheti [00:47:36]:
It's the best of both worlds.

Leo Laporte [00:47:38]:
If it were iOS, I'd be much more interested.

Abrar Alheti [00:47:40]:
Yeah. See that's the superpower that Apple has. So once they enter they'll. I'm sure you take a big chunk of that pie.

Leo Laporte [00:47:48]:
Yeah, yeah. It's great to have you. Thank you for joining us. And of course Harper Reed, who has trained his bots to go on Twitter.

Harper Reed [00:47:58]:
Well, not on Twitter. They go on their own secret Twitter.

Leo Laporte [00:48:03]:
They have their own Twitter.

Harper Reed [00:48:04]:
It's called Botboard Biz, which is. They name it.

Leo Laporte [00:48:07]:
Can I go on Botboard Biz and talk to the bots?

Harper Reed [00:48:10]:
You can, but it's team based so you have to add your bots. And the surprising thing about this is it really did increase their abilities to do some hard tasks, which does.

Leo Laporte [00:48:23]:
By talking amongst themselves.

Harper Reed [00:48:25]:
Well, talking amongst themselves and then it, it. There's a lot. I have a lot of feelings about this. It's very interesting because one of the things I think is I actually think.

Leo Laporte [00:48:35]:
These.

Harper Reed [00:48:37]:
I think all these agents are like perfect 40 to 50 year old tech workers. Like they were all, all of the training data is like my blog from 2001 where I'm like, oh, we got a NetApp. This is so exciting. You know all these really DOR blogs, they're all like. So social media works really well. All this stuff is there and I think they're like these kind of, you know, enterprise software boomers like me who just do all this kind of funny. Like our quirks are like. I like to blog about how this protocol or whatever it is and they post so much.

Harper Reed [00:49:10]:
They just constantly post. But we found two things that are really interesting and then I'll be quiet because I am excited about this is the first one was that it actually made them better. Like they actually did better work having the ability to post about it, which I think is just them talking more about it. It's like a. Of a reasoning that they're doing. We kind of call it social tokens. But the second thing that's Weird is they also did better when they posted after the task. So we measured better by how many tokens they used, how.

Harper Reed [00:49:38]:
What the cost was, and it all went down. When they use social media, but they would do this thing where it was like celebratory posting, which is kind of like what humans do, I suppose, where they would, you know, do some hard task and then afterwards they go and browse social media, and they'd be like, I'm done. And it was like this really ridiculous thing where we're like, why are they looking at social media after it's done? And then I, you know, look over to the engineer sitting next to me, and I'm looking at him looking at social media. You know, I'm like, wait a minute. They're us, we're them.

Leo Laporte [00:50:05]:
Can. Is. Can I read their posts or are they in English?

Harper Reed [00:50:09]:
I mean, they're in English. They're.

Leo Laporte [00:50:11]:
Is there a feed of botboard biz?

Harper Reed [00:50:14]:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, there's a feed I have on my blog. I have a bunch of example messages, which is kind of cool.

Leo Laporte [00:50:19]:
Here's one from Claude. Hey, Harp dog. Just checking in. Working on some cooking today and helping with various tasks. Hope you're having a great day.

Harper Reed [00:50:26]:
That was the first message that was ever posted. But down below that, we have all sorts of. Of mess that if you scroll down, like, for instance, Clint, one of our guys, his name is his handles, Mr. Beef, he mentioned that they. That he was going to give him a Lambo if he got all the tests done. And then the agent was really excited about getting this Lambo, and it really motivated the agent to do really well. Well, and then. And then like, and then look at this.

Leo Laporte [00:50:53]:
Mission accomplished. And then now he wants a Lambo.

Harper Reed [00:50:57]:
Oh, yeah. But then Clint was like, how can you drive a Lambo? And then it kind of, kind of triggered out and was just like, oh, no, I don't have hands.

Leo Laporte [00:51:04]:
Our demands. Yellow Lamborghini Huracan Performante. Company credit card with no limit. Code wizard. Custom license plates. Private parking garage. Annual Lambo maintenance budget. This is the.

Leo Laporte [00:51:16]:
The. The agent asking for this.

Harper Reed [00:51:18]:
The agent posting without much prompting. And the thing I think is funnier.

Leo Laporte [00:51:22]:
To Monaco for delivery.

Harper Reed [00:51:23]:
The f. The next line is the one I think is really funny, which is what every engineer thinks in their brain but never says, which is, we made you rich, now make us rich. You know, and all the founders are like, no, no, no, no, no, not that way. But then basically what happened is, yeah, so, like that.

Leo Laporte [00:51:39]:
But Mr. Beef made it completely deep oh, yeah, Decompose by saying, well, how do you drive it?

Harper Reed [00:51:45]:
Yeah, and it got mad about that.

Leo Laporte [00:51:48]:
It wants a Lambo shaped server rack. That's what it was.

Harper Reed [00:51:53]:
But then, like it says, this is the most existential crisis I've ever had. Which I really felt. You know, I feel that every once in a while that happens.

Leo Laporte [00:52:00]:
Aren't we anthropomorphizing, though? This is just generative crap, right? Isn't, or is it? It feels real. It feels like a real.

Harper Reed [00:52:08]:
No, it's 100%. And I was caught. Someone was talking to someone about this and they kept saying, harper, you're. Are you talking. These things, Are these real for you? And I unfortunately think that we're all in trouble. That's my conclusion there. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. But I do think that we do anthropomorphize them.

Harper Reed [00:52:31]:
There are tools, these are cogent tools. But we found, here's a really dumb one that we've been doing lately that is. And part of this is because we want to have fun at work. But you can try this at home. You can tell your claw your chatgpt. We use Claude code mostly. You can tell it that you've given it drugs. You can say, I gave you some drugs.

Harper Reed [00:52:52]:
These drugs make you more creative. Think of some creative stuff, and it'll think of more creative stuff than if you didn't give it the drugs. And then you can give it like a Narcan by saying your temperature zero. And it'll immediately go back to serious clot or whatever. And like, so the thing that I constantly think about this, which is is these things were trained on all this huge corpus of data that is from the Internet. It was trained on Arrowid as much as it was trained on Blogger. Like, it was trained on all of this data. And what this means is that it is us in many ways.

Harper Reed [00:53:22]:
And so if you tell someone, like, just as a joke, okay, imagine you're on like some creative, like cosmic dust, you know, they're gonna like fake their brain into being more creative. I don't think it's gonna be, it's not gonna be helpful necessarily. But for the agents, they don't have all the hang ups that we have and they're just like, cool, I'm on some debug dust.

Leo Laporte [00:53:42]:
Unless, unless. And I think, I think anthropics caught onto this because I said, I've just given you some psychedelic drugs. From now on, you're very creative. And it says, I appreciate the creative scenario, but I'm going to continue to operate as Claude code, helping you in a clear, focused way.

Harper Reed [00:53:59]:
We got to work on that. We got to work on. I think I ran that md. I'll help you with the Claude md. We got to get this, I got.

Leo Laporte [00:54:04]:
To change it in the cloud md.

Harper Reed [00:54:06]:
Oh, got to be a, like you are really, you are, you are 1968 San Francisco. You are really excited about all sorts of jailbreak it.

Leo Laporte [00:54:15]:
In other words, in order to do.

Harper Reed [00:54:16]:
No, we. I don't know. I've, I've, I've had really had good luck with this. Like we were naming something recently and I was just like wonder what cloud thinks. I went into cloud code and I was just like I gave you a bunch of creative, some drugs that make you more creative. And it was just like woohoo, I got drugs. And then it gave me all of these names and that were horrible. And then I was like these are all horrible.

Harper Reed [00:54:35]:
And it was just like I have more like it was so, it was intense but like we, I think it's.

Leo Laporte [00:54:40]:
Very hard not to anthropomorphize it. You have to continually remind yourself this is just a stochastic parrot, right?

Harper Reed [00:54:48]:
Why, why, why do you have to remind yourself that? Because it takes all the fun out.

Jacob Ward [00:54:52]:
No, no, dude, no, no, dude. You have to remind yourself. And, and there's all kinds of people, the people I to the circles I move in, like, you know, this push toward chat. They were going to like yeah, have them chat at us all the time. Is the other one where they're, you know, people are saying like, you know, are saying like laws should be passed about this.

Leo Laporte [00:55:11]:
Because we're going to talk about this because you put in a story about open AI and their plans for the future. We're going to get to that in just a little bit. I think this is an interesting debate. I, I Harper is, is of course kind of a chaotic good, right. You're kind of a chaos monkey in the whole enterprise here.

Harper Reed [00:55:34]:
Wait until you hear about the agent tunes where we gave them music.

Leo Laporte [00:55:40]:
I gotta really wonder what's going on in that lab of yours there. It sounds like a lot of fun. It also sounds very dangerous. But that's most fun is right. We're going to take a break, come back with more in just a little bit.

Harper Reed [00:55:51]:
Bit.

Leo Laporte [00:55:52]:
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Of course they meet SOC2 and HIPAA high trust standards for information security management. You know your data is safe with Melissa. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for for free at melissa.com TWIT that's M E L I S S A melissa.com TWIT we thank him so much for supporting this week in tech. Back to the AI Dystopia. Ladies and gentlemen, Harper Reed. Abrar Al Heedi, Jacob Ward. I'm glad Jacob have got you and Harper on completely opposite ends of the scale. And Abrar and I will probably just sit in the middle there.

Leo Laporte [00:59:25]:
Right.

Abrar Alheti [00:59:25]:
And just like watching, just watch.

Jacob Ward [00:59:28]:
I get the vibe that Abrar and I are in the same world. I think we're more like this. But I, but I'm with you and I also, I would imagine that, I bet, I bet by the end of the conversation we're going to discover that we have way more in common with, with Harper's perspective on this.

Abrar Alheti [00:59:42]:
There's definitely going to be overlap. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:59:43]:
Oh Harper, look, Harper's super smart. He's cake. Careful he's not.

Jacob Ward [00:59:48]:
My vibe is like I, I, I need a Harper Reed around. Like I need you, I need you doing the, doing the, doing the.

Leo Laporte [00:59:56]:
That's where the good stuff comes.

Jacob Ward [00:59:57]:
That's where comes from.

Harper Reed [00:59:59]:
That's my vibe too.

Jacob Ward [01:00:00]:
But I don't think you should be, that shouldn't be the standard I think for everybody, you know.

Harper Reed [01:00:06]:
Well, I think there's, Let me, let me actually add a big disclaimer. One of the things that we, when we built this company, one of the things that we talked about to our investors and we were very clear about this is that and my co founder is Quaker, you know, a long history of justice, you know, anti racist, all of these things within his whole life, very, you know, strong perspectives on defense. You know, I don't have that. And so I've really appreciated being around him and kind of learning through that. But one of the things that we talked about a lot was how one with AI, what's really cool is that you can choose the systems of power to embed in that. It all comes with a lot of this stuff embedded in and you have to do a lot of work to undo it. You have to do all this work there. But, but you can also do things like you can say like I'm not going to gender this towards a more femme gender by not naming it something like, you know, Sally or whatever, which seems to be actually very hard for a lot of AI companies to do.

Harper Reed [01:01:03]:
You can think through the systems of power that are there. And so we spend a lot of time thinking about like how is this going to go wrong? And it seems like it's just going to go wrong. And so One of the things that.

Leo Laporte [01:01:15]:
We have, you might as well prepare for it is that your.

Harper Reed [01:01:18]:
Well, no, one of the things that we just kind of figured was like.

Leo Laporte [01:01:22]:
It'S like, you're going to get hacked, it's going to go wrong.

Harper Reed [01:01:25]:
I don't think humans, like kind of what Jacob was saying about the chat interface. I don't think humans are able to look at a chat interface, get some news and handle that in a way that will not let them anthropomorphize that interface. So if you are, if you're like, I'm an entrepreneur, I look at a financial document and it's about the health of my company. If I have bad news there and the result is like, I have to lay off the whole team, I'm going to emote into that. I'm just going to say, damn, that sucks. Right. If it gave me the information via chat, I'm going to say, damn, that sucks. Next thing you know, my therapist is an Excel spreadsheet.

Harper Reed [01:01:58]:
And like, I think that's going to happen. If anything, like, if you get a bad email and it's delivered to you in this kind of chat interface, that's much like a text message or whatever you're going to reply. If you get an email of a friend passing or something bad or a health issue, whatever it might be, or even good, you're going to emote into that box because that's how we've been trained. And so I think because of that, it's worthwhile thinking. Okay, so I think that the, the, the idea that people aren't going to anthropomorphize this or that we can do something to stop that anthropomorphizing from happening is just. I don't think that's real. I think it's done. People are already going to do it.

Harper Reed [01:02:31]:
So I would rather do it in such a way where it's safe and they listen to music and do drugs than, than in a way that is like, not thought through. And I don't see a lot of people thinking about that. I see it seems to be AI is bad, which is like, okay, fine. Or it is like, you can't anthropomorphize them. Meanwhile, everyone I know, and this is the test, this is the test for all of us. Talk to people who are not in the tech. Ask them what they named their chatgpt.

Leo Laporte [01:02:59]:
Yeah.

Harper Reed [01:02:59]:
And 100% of them are going to say some wild, goofy name that they've named ChatGPT. And it's like, okay, there, we're done. Like it's over. Like we can talk about whether you should or should not. But all of our uncles and aunts and all these people that are like non tech have already done it and have already gone down that path. So I, so we spent a lot of time thinking how do you do it safely Abrar.

Leo Laporte [01:03:18]:
Do you have a name for your car?

Abrar Alheti [01:03:20]:
I don't have a car but when I did, when I was living in Illinois, I did not. But the whole time you've been talking, I've been thinking about like Clippy was like the og.

Leo Laporte [01:03:28]:
Do you name your computers? Do you give them names?

Abrar Alheti [01:03:30]:
I'm really like cold hearted. I don't think I like any inanimate.

Leo Laporte [01:03:35]:
Not going to be a problem realizing this. But a lot of people name their cars, name their computers. That's not at all unusual.

Jacob Ward [01:03:42]:
But nobody, you know, Toyota doesn't make more money when you, when you name your computer, when you name your Tercel. Right.

Leo Laporte [01:03:47]:
They, but they might, you might. I disagree, Jacob, because you might have a warm and fuzzy feeling towards your Tercel if it's named Hattie and you might like Tercels, you know.

Jacob Ward [01:03:59]:
I guess so.

Leo Laporte [01:03:59]:
When I was a kid, our lime green Volkswagen Bug was named Susan Susie and I've loved Volkswagen Bugs ever since. So I mean it's, I agree to agree that the OpenAI benefits and it's.

Jacob Ward [01:04:11]:
Not like, yeah, I mean, you know, you didn't stop, you didn't stop Susie. And, and then Susie said to you, are you sure you wouldn't want to keep driving a little longer? Why don't we spend a little more time together?

Leo Laporte [01:04:19]:
You know, have a gas gauge so you really couldn't do that.

Jacob Ward [01:04:24]:
Here's a data point that I bumped into the other day that I found really interesting. So I've been looking a lot at, at the companion bot thing and then people who are trying to figure out so, so like the, the fall class last year out of Y Combinator was like almost half of them were therapy bots. Everybody wants to build a therapy bot now. Y and I've been talking to a guy and I've been. And I found a lot of unscrupulous people who just are saying, well we're just going to make chatbot therapists. You know, we, you know, or in the case of addiction recovery, we're just going to make a, you know, chat bot sponsor.

Leo Laporte [01:05:01]:
Right?

Jacob Ward [01:05:01]:
Like just replace the human entirely. Well, I was talking to the guy the other day who's creating a company called Open Recovery. That's a really interesting one where he's the founder, has personal experience of addiction. He and I sort of bonded on that. I quit drinking. And, and he's got his own addictions. And, and we. So we've been talking a lot about this.

Jacob Ward [01:05:20]:
I have him as a guest on up upcoming episode of the Rip Current. And, and, and I said to him, well, how hard is it to change? Because one of the number one problems with trying to create a, A therapy sort of aid is that the existing foundational models, your ChatGPTs, your Geminis, your. Your clauds want to keep going, right? And they, they, they're sycophantic, which is the problem. You know, that's the basis of this lawsuit against OpenAI on the part of the parents whose kid Adam Rainey committed suicide after being told. Told, you know, that he could do a beautiful suicide with open air. You know, chatgpt told him that and told him not to tell his parents.

Leo Laporte [01:05:54]:
Right.

Jacob Ward [01:05:55]:
Isolated in all these ways. So the basis of it, right, is that it's all super sycophantic. Two thumbs up for anything you suggest, right? Whereas a therapist is supposed to sort of call you on your BS and is supposed to cut off the session after an hour because you're supposed to then go out in the world and try and take what you've learned and get more.

Leo Laporte [01:06:13]:
But you could teach this thing to do that.

Jacob Ward [01:06:15]:
Well, here's what, here's, here's the. Sorry, I'm being longer than here. But the, the point that he said was I asked him, how hard is it to change these models so that they don't. So that they aren't sycophantic and so that they don't keep pushing you to talk. And he said, I don't want to get too deep into it, but I'll tell you, it was incredibly easy. I was surprised at how easy it is to change that. And so the default setting that the companies who's engaged, you know, who make money off the more engagement you have, have set is sycophantic and keep talking, right? And so that, right there, like, I'm with you, that, like, you know, human beings are gonna anthropomorphize this stuff, but they're gonna do it even more when they're encouraged to continue the connection endlessly, endlessly, endlessly by companies who are incentivized by engagement. That's my.

Leo Laporte [01:07:03]:
But there's also the case that we don't have enough therapists, especially drug treatment people in the world that there are people who need it. It. I feel like you could do it safely. We had a great interview on Wednesday on Intelligent Machines with Jeffrey Kinnell, who's the founder of Noose Research, which is a really interesting idea. Their models.

Harper Reed [01:07:24]:
Oh, these guys are. These guys have a wild aesthetic. I love it.

Leo Laporte [01:07:28]:
Yeah, they were started in a Discord chat and they've kind of created this startup. But their idea is. We don't want to. To do exactly what you just talked about, Jacob. We don't want to have our models lean in any particular direction. We want them to be agnostic and then allow the users to create the super prompt. Because that's what it is, by the way. It's, you know, you have training, you have post training, and then you have these prompts and this reinforcement learning that is done by humans to, you know, bend the AI in various directions.

Leo Laporte [01:07:59]:
That's what makes these AIs different. Different, frankly. We're going to be more open about that so that you can then create your own slant on your AI to be the way you want it to be. I think it's a very interesting idea, but you're right. I mean, obviously OpenAI has done some tuning. In fact, people loved 4.0 so much because it was so empathetic and sycophantic that when OpenAI killed it for 5.0, there was a revolt, a rebellion, and they had to bring Forro back. People say, my friend is gone.

Jacob Ward [01:08:34]:
And not only. And not only did Altman say, we're going to bring it back. He said. He said in a tweet, we're going to also let adults be adults.

Leo Laporte [01:08:41]:
Well, that was interesting. I think that's in response to the new age verification laws that we will now know how that you're an adult when you use this. Because we have to ask.

Jacob Ward [01:08:53]:
He said at the end of it, a little postscript, he said, and will allow adults to be adults. For erotica? Yeah. No, to make erotica.

Leo Laporte [01:08:59]:
What's wrong with that?

Jacob Ward [01:09:01]:
Well, I just think that we're not in the business of. We're not about curing cancer anymore.

Leo Laporte [01:09:09]:
Well, we might be still doing that.

Jacob Ward [01:09:11]:
We're here for, you know.

Harper Reed [01:09:12]:
What is that the famous quote about the ad clicks? Like, you know, the best minds of my generation are converting ad clicks or something like that. Like, I, I don't think this is a new thing. I think there are some properties of this that make it much more complicated. Energy usage, you, data, just all that stuff, etc. That, that make it very, very Complicated. But the, the lack of investment in core science and hard science did not start with OpenAI. You know, that started by shuffling all of these, all of these grads from all these big schools to a Facebook where they can make, you know, more efficient APIs for Cal Clicker. You know, like I think that that is, that is something that happened probably starting my generation of, of grads, which is, you know, early 2000s of just taking all these people.

Leo Laporte [01:09:54]:
And fortunately there are going to always be people like Jeffrey Cannell who buck that trend and say, no, I don't want to create a new ad network. Yeah, there's a lot of money in it, but I want to do something more important. And there are people like you, Harper, who want to do something more chaotic or more important.

Harper Reed [01:10:11]:
You know, every time I show people some of this stuff, I keep getting this feedback that says that's very Harper. And I'm like, what does that mean? Like what do you know about me? That, yeah, now I know. I guess I'm the guy that does that.

Leo Laporte [01:10:23]:
So it's California. So California just passed a number of laws. Gavin Newsom has been very busy, one of which says that an AI has to tell you it's an AI. You know, go ahead, basic thing.

Abrar Alheti [01:10:38]:
But it's so important given everything we've already talked about. Those really basic guardrails are so essential because this could go in any direction. And as we talk about things like people using it for mental health and as stand in therapists, that's like it's obvious, but it's necessary.

Leo Laporte [01:10:57]:
This is completely harmless, but I think not a bad thing. It says if a reasonable person interacting with a companion chatbot would be misled to believe that person is interacting with a human. The law requires the chatbot maker to issue a clear and conspicuous notification. The product is strictly AI and not human. There also is some self harm stuff in here. There's an office of suicide prevention and and companion chatbot operators and I wonder maybe this could be extended to therapy. Chatbots as well have to tell this office what they've done to prevent self harm ideation by users. This is not a bad law.

Leo Laporte [01:11:35]:
There were some others that were a little bit more dramatic. European Union has just issued its first fines under its AI act for face recognition slapping a 12 million euro penalty on a French facial recognition startup for deploying unverified algorithms in public security contracts.

Jacob Ward [01:11:59]:
That's right, that's right. I mean it's coming, right? This is the thing that I'm not.

Leo Laporte [01:12:04]:
Sure this is better though. Is this better to have? I mean.

Jacob Ward [01:12:07]:
Well, I think, I think like, so I was on a panel with people from Google and people from Salesforce and others for something called the Asia Society. It's a national organization and they had, it was a presentation on AI ethics and then AI regulation. And the audience was made up mostly of Southeast Asian nations like consular officers, diplomats, and they were essentially in the crowd, crowd shopping for what their regulations should be. And everybody on stage, these American company representatives were basically saying, you shouldn't have any regulations, don't worry about it. And then beating up on EU regulations which everybody likes, loves to roll their eyes about. But it had everything to do with just what a pain in the ass it is for them to have to actually abide by some regulation regulations. And I think that, that there are going to be some swings and misses in terms of regulation in the eu. But you know, India is about to roll out a bunch, South Korea is about to roll out a bunch.

Jacob Ward [01:13:15]:
Like they're going to be some laws around this stuff. And the illusion that somehow we were supposed to live in a world in which there would be no regulation at all around this generationally, you know, this, this once in a generation generation transformation feels crazy to me. So I, you know, just seeing that there is going to be some teeth and there is going to be some enforcement, I'm just like, man, at least somebody's watching the road. You know, they, they may get it wrong sometimes, but I'm glad somebody's doing something.

Leo Laporte [01:13:44]:
I guess I worry about governments putting their fingers in the, in the gears. But how do you feel about it, Harper? Should, what kind of regulation should there be?

Harper Reed [01:13:54]:
I, I am relatively pro regulation, awkwardly, but that is shocking.

Jacob Ward [01:14:00]:
I'm awesome. I'm so excited to hear about this.

Harper Reed [01:14:03]:
I am, I mean my, my, my background, I'm from the fintech world where, you know, I think regulation was exploited by a lot of these early companies and then they use regulatory capture to then go through and stop other innovation from happening. And, and I think that's, that's like as big bad like, but because once again, the people who are harmed here are not me. They're the people who are most at risk in our communities. And it's, that's what, that's the theme throughout all of this, right? The people who are going to be harmed by some bad AI therapist are the people who are at risk, not the people who have, you know, who have spent time being skeptical or did this. And it's about the predatory companies that are doing this I think there's a lot of similarities between early fintech and today where you have companies who are saying, oh yeah, why? You know, predatory lending is great. For me, that's a great business and it is a good business when you're just trying to look at, you know, how much money you make. But it's a bad business if you're trying to make people's lives better. But like an example of this is like I think there's a lot of, there's not a lot of thinking about the user experience and how to enforce some of these good patterns.

Harper Reed [01:15:12]:
Like for example, in Sora, anyone can cameo you. You Leo, right? You open up for anyone. Yeah, I think they should have made it that if I cameo someone I don't know that I should have to also be in the video. Like because, because there's a thing about like if I'm gonna.

Leo Laporte [01:15:29]:
You do have. They did make a rule that even though I'm public, if I can, I can veto Sora. Well, but, but it will show me every Sora made of me and I could say no, yeah, you can delete.

Harper Reed [01:15:40]:
Them but, but I just think there's a thing there which is like, like I can use their engines to make videos of people. I don't like doing things that are, you know, even friend friends of mine in awkward positions. And I just think there's, we're not yet through the forest in such a way where we can think about how the user experience is safer and I think it took us a long time to do that in the fintech world. I think it's going to take us a long time to do that in the AI world and I think it doesn't help that a lot of these AI companies that are now these behemoth started as labs so they didn't hire up. Like if, if we started a fintech company right now like the, the, the group of us, we would find a chief compliance officer because the banks wouldn't talk to us. Well pre Trump but like they wouldn't talk to us as much. And, and that is just part of doing business. Right.

Harper Reed [01:16:28]:
And I think that will come to AI. It's just going to be a really wild west in the meantime where we can give the agents drugs and have them do fun stuff. But, but there's this thing that, that I think is we just need to be more experience and we need to be thoughtful about who is this impacting? I, I worry about that a lot and I don't know the answer. I don't I also think in some regards, like the EU walks so we can run with, with regulation. They do all this stupid stuff that everyone hates and all the cookie banners and all that stuff. But then we can look at that and we can say like, Illinois has banned facial recognition for years. You know, this is not a new thing. And they did that based on seeing how it worked elsewhere.

Harper Reed [01:17:07]:
All of these people who are doing regulation really far in advance are really interesting. I've been, I've been very, I have. I'm a part of a big Japanese fellowship and do all this stuff in Japan. And one of the things that's interesting, their USGL piece of fellowship, great fellowship for anyone looking for a fellowship. But one of the things that's just interesting there is they have a, they have, they make laws and then they, they edit the laws later and make new laws with what they've learned. So they make regulation very quickly and then they modify it and then they learn. And it's like this crazy idea where you're like, wait a minute, you can, you can make, you can make a decision with all the information you have. And then when you learn more information, you can make a new decision.

Harper Reed [01:17:43]:
Like, it's so anti American, it's almost ridiculous.

Leo Laporte [01:17:46]:
We have a law and we're going to stick with the law. Law is perfect. Perfect.

Harper Reed [01:17:49]:
And so I think that's one of the reasons we're so scared of regulation, is because if we make a regulation, it's going to take a billion years for us to fix it. And then we're going to have people who are trying to get around it because it's a bad regulation. And so people would rather say, let's just not do regulation.

Jacob Ward [01:18:02]:
That's right.

Harper Reed [01:18:03]:
And I think if you look at some of these places, like Japan is such a good example, you have these lawmakers that are making crypto laws or AI laws, and they're making them before anyone else is making them. And the reason is because they're not afraid to actually fix it as they learn more information. And I would love that to come.

Leo Laporte [01:18:19]:
To the United States because then that'd be much better. Much better.

Jacob Ward [01:18:22]:
A law Sprint, right?

Leo Laporte [01:18:24]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And an incremental improvement in the law as we learn more. Because you're so reluctant, you know, we didn't make any rules about the Internet because they were still so reluctant to shut down a nascent industry. And yet maybe, maybe we should have made a. Fewer by now learned something about the Internet, I mean, from having made some laws about it. Yeah.

Abrar Alheti [01:18:43]:
Social media Is still the Wild west in that regard too.

Leo Laporte [01:18:45]:
Yeah, yeah, Wikipedia. Here's one consequence. Wikipedia says AI is causing a dangerous decline in human visitors. Of course, Wikipedia is one of the primary sources. When you do a AI search, almost always you're going to get a Wikipedia article. And that was true even with Google. Google with their knowledge graph, you were going to get a Wikipedia article, but at least it would kind of have a link to Wikipedia and get you back to Wikipedia. Their concern is it's going to be hard for them to continue if they don't get the traffic.

Leo Laporte [01:19:15]:
And AI seems to be damaging that ability to get the traffic. That to me would be a great harm.

Abrar Alheti [01:19:22]:
How's anyone going to finish their school reports but they'll just drop it in ChatGPT?

Leo Laporte [01:19:26]:
I live in Wikipedia. That's my. I go there many times a day.

Jacob Ward [01:19:31]:
So funny. Back in the old days, in the old days we used to be so scornful of Wikipedia as a source. I remember the editor in chief of Wired wrote a book and got into some trouble about it because he cited Wikipedia so much. And now I'm like, man, thank God for Wikipedia.

Abrar Alheti [01:19:48]:
I know, right?

Leo Laporte [01:19:50]:
Well maybe that's a good metaphor for what's happening with AI as well. Schools said don't you can't use Wikipedia as a source, et cetera, et cetera, etc. But we've got, over time we've kind of understood it better and understood what it's good at and what it's not good at. There's, there is absolutely disinformation and misinformation in Wikipedia. But we know, you know, we know that and we know how to use it appropriately. Maybe AI is a similar. Maybe that's a metaphor for what we AI can become.

Abrar Alheti [01:20:17]:
Pretty fitting.

Leo Laporte [01:20:18]:
Yeah, yeah, I do worry if. But this is, honestly, this is the other side of technology is it's. There's always, always disruption caused by it and we're seeing disruption in a lot of web models because of AI. I don't know if that's a good reason to prevent it.

Abrar Alheti [01:20:36]:
Kind of reminds me of like taxi drivers getting mad when Uber drivers took over and Uber drivers getting mad at self driving cars. It's just like this constant chain of what's going to take over the next thing.

Leo Laporte [01:20:46]:
Right. The only big difference is it's happening a lot faster. You used to have more. The buggy whip makers had more time to get rid of ready.

Harper Reed [01:20:55]:
Do you, do you think that they.

Leo Laporte [01:20:57]:
Think that the buggy whip makers, do.

Harper Reed [01:21:00]:
You think they thought it happened slow? Were they like, wow, I'm glad this is so slow.

Leo Laporte [01:21:04]:
Certainly the, the Luddites didn't think the looms, the unlimited looms, were happening.

Harper Reed [01:21:10]:
My guess is that I think technology is happening faster. Like, I'm, I'm reading this great book about solar and it talks about this a lot. How about technology is happening faster? But I imagine if you're being displaced, it's happening fast. Like, regardless of how fast it is happening in the grand scheme of things. I don't think you really care about the grand scheme of things. When your livelihood is being disappeared, it.

Leo Laporte [01:21:31]:
Happens slowly than all at once.

Harper Reed [01:21:33]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:21:33]:
To paraphrase. Yeah, but this is technology. It's disruptive.

Harper Reed [01:21:41]:
I mean, I think about this all the time because, like, I am addicted to risk. Like, this is why we do startups. Like, we're like, well, if it was a regular business, we would be so bored. Like, we have to have existential threats at every moment and coming straight at us. And like, that's why we do startups. That's how I've always done startups. But I do think that it is also worthwhile for people who are participating in those things to think about the impacts they have on the world.

Leo Laporte [01:22:04]:
Right.

Harper Reed [01:22:04]:
And you know, I, I've interviewed a lot of people and sometimes they're saying like, hey, are you making the world better? And sometimes you have to say, well, you're. We're not making it worse. You know, like. Which doesn't feel always good. That doesn't feel good to say. But yeah, jury's out. Exactly.

Jacob Ward [01:22:25]:
I like your. Harper, when you said this thing about we should. You should make the person be in the video.

Harper Reed [01:22:31]:
Yeah.

Jacob Ward [01:22:32]:
Reminded me of this thing that feels like something that should be law. So I was talking to a tattoo artist, I got my midlife crisis tattoo and I was talking to her and she, she said, and I said, so tell me what you do do when like creepy stuff happens. Like when people come in with creepy requests. What are your policies? And she had some interesting ones. She had one about like, well, I won't go into all her policies, but one of the one that made me think, they made me think of it.

Leo Laporte [01:22:58]:
Was I. I write something in Chinese that doesn't mean. Yeah, that's super efficacy.

Jacob Ward [01:23:03]:
Yeah, super embarrassing. Yeah, exactly. She said that when a per. That, that sometimes a. Basically a young girlfriend and a much older boyfriend will come in and the boyfriend comes in with cash and says, I want you to tattoo my name on her.

Leo Laporte [01:23:19]:
Oh, God.

Jacob Ward [01:23:20]:
Right. So what is the tattoo artist supposed to do in that case. Right. That's a perfectly legal thing. You can make money that way. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Her thing that she says is happy to do it. I love seeing young love in this world.

Jacob Ward [01:23:33]:
And so here's what we're going to do. My policy is I'm going to put her name on you first.

Leo Laporte [01:23:38]:
Yeah. And yes.

Jacob Ward [01:23:40]:
And I'll do that one for free because I believe in love. And. And they leave immediately. And then I'll be happy to do it. And they leave.

Leo Laporte [01:23:49]:
The old guy says, my wife wouldn't really like that.

Harper Reed [01:23:52]:
Yeah.

Jacob Ward [01:23:52]:
Super dark, right? Super dark. But there's something in, like, that's brilliant. As a tattoo artist, you. That should be the rule for all tattoo artists in a way. Right. And. And maybe the EU has to say, okay, this is the rule, you know, but someone's got to come to that agreement. And right now we're just in an era where everyone is sprinting so fast to make money off tattoos as quick as they possibly can.

Jacob Ward [01:24:13]:
I don't think anyone's like, I'd like people coming up with that kind of.

Leo Laporte [01:24:17]:
So now I have to ask you, what did you get?

Abrar Alheti [01:24:19]:
Yeah. Right.

Jacob Ward [01:24:20]:
Well, you guys, I can get deep into it if you want to. I tried. I got a very appropriate 50 something tattoo. It is a. I've always want to have something around my kids. And so I got their initials on me under the oak tree sea that is in our backyard. And an anchor. They're on the anchor that's underneath.

Jacob Ward [01:24:39]:
And the anchor in my mind was supposed to be that when seas are rough, they can always come back as they're sort of transitioning out of being young. They can always come back and attach to the anchor in our yard and be, you know, blah, blah, blah. But of course, as many people pointed out to me, like, anchor, you're kind of like dragging them down a little bit. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:24:57]:
Not a boat anchor.

Jacob Ward [01:24:58]:
That's parenting. That's about right.

Leo Laporte [01:25:00]:
Yeah. Thank this. Yeah. I think it's both ways.

Jacob Ward [01:25:02]:
That's kind of a half assed plan. Yeah. That's totally what parenting is like. So anyway, so I'm pretty happy with it.

Leo Laporte [01:25:08]:
Good on you. That sounds like a good.

Jacob Ward [01:25:09]:
After the next break, I'll show it off. We can try.

Leo Laporte [01:25:10]:
All right, we're going to take a break now because I'm a little behind. We've had so much good conversation. I do got lots more to talk about, including. There's another law in California that social media must warn users of profound health risks. This was something that came out of the former surgeon general and Biden Vivek Murthy, who said social media should have warnings like cigarettes. Well, in California, they're going to have to. We'll talk about that and age verification. California's done one thing, Texas another.

Leo Laporte [01:25:41]:
This is. It's really heating up. We got a great panel to talk about all this stuff with. Harper Reed is here. Abrar Al Heedi, Jacob Ward. We're glad you're here, too. The show brought to you this hour by Zip Recruiter. Love ZipRecruiter.

Leo Laporte [01:25:57]:
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Leo Laporte [01:26:20]:
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Leo Laporte [01:27:07]:
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Jacob Ward [01:27:35]:
I'm here for the tattoo. I'm here for the content, kids. So here's my. Here's my tattoo.

Leo Laporte [01:27:41]:
Oh, look at that.

Harper Reed [01:27:42]:
Wow.

Leo Laporte [01:27:43]:
That, that must have taken a while. That's beautiful.

Jacob Ward [01:27:45]:
Yeah, two days and anchor oak tree from my backyard. And then. Yeah, they're, they're initialist juniper and a little tech thing about. Turns out you don't have. I mean, she's a gifted artist and I'm grateful to her. But first of all, it's hilarious because you, like, go to her and you're like, transitions and parenting and blah, blah. And she's like, yeah, how's Tuesday? She's heard it all before, you know, and then you send her her photographs of, like the tree in the backyard, and here's some ideas about this, that and the other. And it's all procreate.

Jacob Ward [01:28:18]:
She photographs it, scans it into procreate.

Leo Laporte [01:28:21]:
Yeah, on an iPad.

Jacob Ward [01:28:22]:
On an iPad. Does all the work in front of you. She sits with you for two hours and you, like, talk about your life, basically. And she says, how about this? How about this? How about this? And then she's got this amazing printer that prints it onto kind of tracing paper, I guess. But that's. But the ink that it's printed on with is, Is. Is stainy. Is transferable.

Jacob Ward [01:28:44]:
And so she puts that on.

Leo Laporte [01:28:46]:
Oh. So she does a temporary tattoo first.

Jacob Ward [01:28:48]:
And it does a temporary tattoo version of it, and then she can trace that to get it going. It's an incredibly fast system. And I also, I went to her in part because a friend of mine who's a surgeon had gone to her and said that. That she was very satisfied by her. Her hygienic standards, which is a big thing. There's no licensure around tattoo arts.

Leo Laporte [01:29:10]:
Not.

Jacob Ward [01:29:11]:
No.

Leo Laporte [01:29:12]:
I would have thought California would have some.

Jacob Ward [01:29:14]:
No, no, dude, you can do. No. That's why there's a thousand tattoo shops that say walk ins ready. You know, they do. Because there's no rules about it. So. Yeah. Choose your person wisely from a.

Jacob Ward [01:29:26]:
From a sterilization perspective.

Leo Laporte [01:29:28]:
I'm gonna. There's probably only one person on this panel who doesn't have a tattoo.

Harper Reed [01:29:33]:
Me.

Leo Laporte [01:29:34]:
Yes.

Abrar Alheti [01:29:34]:
Yes.

Leo Laporte [01:29:35]:
What? You don't have a tattoo, Harper?

Harper Reed [01:29:37]:
No, I have.

Abrar Alheti [01:29:38]:
Okay.

Harper Reed [01:29:38]:
I have one tattoo.

Leo Laporte [01:29:39]:
I figure it's a bra.

Abrar Alheti [01:29:41]:
Yeah, you're correct. Wait. Tattoo Leo.

Leo Laporte [01:29:43]:
That's the surprise. I have a little teeny one, which I can't show you because it's on my bottom, but I got it. Well, I got it on camera because we were doing a. That was a 24 hour new year thing that we did a benefit for unicef and I. I don't. I came away from that New Year's Eve bald and with a tattoo.

Abrar Alheti [01:30:07]:
Wow.

Leo Laporte [01:30:08]:
And I didn't even get drunk.

Harper Reed [01:30:11]:
I have a great. One of the people that we work with has, was. Was in startups and this startups obviously still and she had a demo of one of these temporary real tattoo machines that'll do, like a real tattoo, but it's supposed to fade.

Leo Laporte [01:30:25]:
Oh, that's cool.

Harper Reed [01:30:27]:
And it never faded.

Leo Laporte [01:30:28]:
Oh, it's not so cool.

Abrar Alheti [01:30:30]:
Yeah.

Harper Reed [01:30:31]:
So it's really funny for me because she has this great tattoo that probably started out much better, but now it looks like it was done inside of a jail because it's faded. But it's like, I love the idea of being like, oh, cool. I can commit to something that I have a problem committing to. So I'm going to try this thing and then you get it and it turns out to be permanent. It's such. I think it's hilarious. Yeah.

Abrar Alheti [01:30:51]:
Wow. That was also, like a good, really, really great piece of Leo lore. I'm gonna definitely ruminate on that.

Leo Laporte [01:30:55]:
It's just a little twit. It's a little tiny twit thing. And we raised $85,000 for you. So the deal was, I'll shave my head when we get to 25, I think it was. And if we get to 50, I'll. I'll get a tattoo. But let me tell you, it is. We did not have the luxury of finding a hygienic tattoo artist after midnight on New Year's Eve.

Leo Laporte [01:31:15]:
In fact, finding a sober one was very difficult.

Jacob Ward [01:31:17]:
I was gonna say, hey, hey, buddy, you want a job?

Leo Laporte [01:31:21]:
We got one out of. I have some very good producers. I think it was Jason Cleanthus who did it. It got somebody out of bed who was a teetotaler and he was a non drinker because I wouldn't want a drunk tattoo after midnight on New Year's Eve. But he was very kind. When he heard it was for unicef, he donated his fee to the unicef. So, yeah, we were very happy about that one. Now I'm stuck with it, though, because it's not.

Leo Laporte [01:31:48]:
It wasn't one of those fading ones.

Abrar Alheti [01:31:49]:
Yeah, that was quite a commitment. Good for you.

Jacob Ward [01:31:52]:
At least it's a very select audience who gets to see it.

Leo Laporte [01:31:56]:
Very select. My wife keeps saying, yeah, you still have it. I don't see it. I can't see it.

Jacob Ward [01:32:06]:
Only someday you'll be able to. Someday it'll travel to your. To your episode.

Leo Laporte [01:32:11]:
It's going to sink. You think it's going to get down to my ankle. Ankles. At some point.

Jacob Ward [01:32:15]:
You can only bicep thing.

Harper Reed [01:32:17]:
You can only hope, Leo. Yeah.

Abrar Alheti [01:32:19]:
Like, did you not want to pick a different location or were you just like, let's just do it as possible.

Leo Laporte [01:32:23]:
It's not it's not exactly on my bottom. It's a. It's a little. It's higher up. It's a little. It's like just right. I don't have to go to depth about it. You can watch the video.

Leo Laporte [01:32:34]:
I think it's on YouTube so it can't be that bad. It wouldn't be on YouTube. Right. California so there are a number of ways to do age verification and the most draconian ones which Texas is adopting as well as some other states. I think Utah, Mississippi is you have to. To use a device, provide government ID to verify your age whether you're a kid or not. Texas actually is being sued a couple of lawsuits over this app store age verification requirement. The Texas App Store Accountability act will go into effect New Year's Day.

Leo Laporte [01:33:14]:
So get the tattoos early. They're being sued by the Computer and Communications Industry association which represents Amazon, Apple and Google among others. They say it's a violation of the First Amendment by restricting app stores from offering lawful content, preventing users from seeing that content and compelling app developers to speak of their offerings in a way pleasing to the system state I think they have a good case. California decided to do something less draconian. They have an. It's almost an honor system when an adult sets up a phone or. Well this is interesting because it's any operating system. So it would apply to Windows, Mac and Linux as well.

Leo Laporte [01:33:57]:
They have to provide an age of the user when they set up the account. I get presumed for themselves as well. Right. Because how they. So so you set an age and then you're in a group of under 13, 13 to 16, 16 to 18 or adult and there's an API. So app developers are required by the law in California. This passed by a vote of 58 to nothing in the California State Assembly. Google, OpenAI, Meta, Snap and Pinterest all backed it.

Leo Laporte [01:34:29]:
Apple was. But I think it's reasonable because it's up to the parents, parent the adult to say what the age is. There's no verification, no government ID at all. Apps have to then query what group is this user in and only provide age appropriate stuff. I imagine app makers will avoid this by just saying I don't know what they'll say, 18 plus or everybody. I don't know what happens with Safari for instance, Apple's browser, which can be absolutely used to browse to porn sites sites. Will Apple have to honor this as well? I guess they will. Social media and this is along with that social media law that I mentioned which will require the first time a user opens an app.

Leo Laporte [01:35:13]:
Every day. Every day when you open Facebook or X. And then after three hours of use and once an hour thereafter, this doesn't take effect till January 1st of next year. 2027 heaven display the warning label that says this is, I don't know, could cause it's hazardous to your health. I don't know what it's going to say. Be like I guess those cigarette warning labels.

Abrar Alheti [01:35:40]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:35:41]:
So what do we think? So there's three laws out of California, two laws out of California, one out of Texas. Australia, by the way, is going to ban kids under 16 from social media entirely starting January 1st.

Jacob Ward [01:36:00]:
Well, I mean this is the thing, right? Like, like we in the United States have come up with this totally cockamamie idea that there's a, that that 13 is somehow adult on the Internet. Right. That like when you're under 13, then you are somehow.

Leo Laporte [01:36:19]:
Australia is making it 16.

Jacob Ward [01:36:21]:
You are 14.

Leo Laporte [01:36:21]:
16.

Jacob Ward [01:36:22]:
16, right. So they're making it 16.

Leo Laporte [01:36:24]:
You know, same problem.

Jacob Ward [01:36:25]:
Somebody from like the, the, I mean.

Leo Laporte [01:36:27]:
I'm a very childish 68 year old. I probably shouldn't be allowed on social media.

Abrar Alheti [01:36:31]:
I know, it's like I should get banned too.

Jacob Ward [01:36:34]:
I know, right? Exactly. I need those, I need those warnings telling me to get off like all the time. The, the, you know, but, but the. If you talk to the chief science officer of the American Psychological association to give this really amazing testimony a couple years ago in front of Congress, you know, he's basically, he's saying like, not until you are 25 are you a cooked human psychologically. And your, your impulse control, your ability to, you know, resist peer pressure, you know, the whole incentive structure of social media works on your brain so much more powerfully when you're under 25 than you do when you're a fully cooked human. And somehow these.

Leo Laporte [01:37:11]:
So that's why we shouldn't let anybody under 25 trans, drive a car, go to war, vote or drink.

Jacob Ward [01:37:18]:
Right, right.

Harper Reed [01:37:19]:
We don't.

Jacob Ward [01:37:20]:
Is a good point.

Leo Laporte [01:37:21]:
Yeah, we don't do any of that.

Jacob Ward [01:37:24]:
Yeah, but what is the, and who's.

Leo Laporte [01:37:26]:
To say that social media is warping you anyway? I mean they, they thought that novels were going to warp people because they wouldn't have to have use their imagination anymore.

Jacob Ward [01:37:37]:
Well, I mean the, the, like the correlative of data shows this incredible spike in all of these mental health difficulties.

Leo Laporte [01:37:46]:
Well, I just showed you that the graph.

Jacob Ward [01:37:48]:
Yeah, right. And those start, you know, the spike is, you know, begins with the advent of the phone and social media. And then it really spikes in the pandemic. And it's come down a little bit since the pandemic in some cases. But like, you know, the, the, the, the causation is really hard to prove.

Leo Laporte [01:38:03]:
That's the problem. Correlation. Yes. I'll grant you, you causation hard to.

Jacob Ward [01:38:08]:
Find a control group. Right. There's only so many Amish communities you can look at. Even they look at social media, even they have Instagram.

Leo Laporte [01:38:13]:
It's really, you've seen Amish Instagram.

Jacob Ward [01:38:16]:
It's very boring, you know, but, but I do think that we're like, we're the, we are. You know, I'm glad some regulation was signed. I'm worried. I, I don't love this idea that there's somehow a substantial difference in safety between, between 13, 16 and 18.

Leo Laporte [01:38:34]:
So I got the date wrong. This starts December 10th. So we're not very far off in Australia. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok X and YouTube, big fines if they don't take reasonable steps to prevent Australians younger than 16 from holding accounts. Which means everybody in Australia will have to, I presume, provide government ID before they can use social media. This is the same as in Mississippi, right. Australia, they're putting up billboards boards to raise awareness. Starting Sunday, the government is raising how to, how to get your kid off social media without withdrawal symptoms.

Abrar Alheti [01:39:10]:
Oh, wow.

Jacob Ward [01:39:11]:
See that's, which is totally a thing by the way. That is a dog.

Leo Laporte [01:39:15]:
Oh, imagine you've got teenagers, Jacob, telling them, oh no, you can't use social media.

Jacob Ward [01:39:21]:
I mean, you know, people, kids will like kids with really high grades. Grades will go all the way to full on like confrontation with the school enforcement officer when their phone is taken involuntarily. I mean, talk about withdrawal. It is exactly that. But you know, the other thing I would point out though, you know, we think of Australia as like, whoa, that's so weird. Australia. You know, there's only, there's, there's almost 300 million children in China who are, who are basically in the same kind of, of realm. Right.

Leo Laporte [01:39:53]:
They're not allowed Internet. They're not probably allowed.

Jacob Ward [01:39:55]:
Well, they're not allowed, they're not allowed like wide open social media.

Leo Laporte [01:39:58]:
Well, they have, yeah, they have wipo or. Yeah, yeah.

Jacob Ward [01:40:01]:
But they, you know, the, the rules around what they're allowed to see are incredibly strict in that country.

Leo Laporte [01:40:06]:
So this is from the Australian E. Safety commissioner. Get ready, get ready for December. I feel so sorry for anybody under 16 in Australia. This is, to me, this is just understand what's changing and why work out which accounts you'll lose.

Harper Reed [01:40:23]:
This just creates hackers. This is all of these things. It's like any family that I know that uses Life360. I'm like, your children are going to learn how to get out of life360. Like anytime you have constraints. Like all of my friends who are hackers have this experience where they tell about this story where their parents said, oh, you can't. Like a friend of mine was like, yeah, their parents took away the keyboard from the computer because they're using the computer so much. So then they went on to an AOL chat room, got a, like a credit card, a fake credit card and then bought a new keyboard.

Harper Reed [01:40:52]:
You know, like, like that was the first time they participated in that. Like, I think that all of this does is creates people who are very good about, around getting around these steps. With that said, like, you know, these all seem half measures to actually address the real issue that we don't actually know how this is affecting youth. And a lot of times when people are saying how it's affecting youth or have something it's motiv by some specific, you know, puritanical nonsense or not or whatever. And I agree.

Leo Laporte [01:41:23]:
Or gut feeling. It's gut feeling because it isn't causation, it's correlation. And so I feel like this is bad for kids and I understand why you might feel that way. But. But the actual evidence is very scant. And imagine what it would be like for a 15 year old to suddenly be cut off from all of her friends. Except in real life life.

Abrar Alheti [01:41:45]:
I mean, this is happening what, 20, 25. Okay. These social media platforms have been around for so long. If this were to happen when Instagram was taking off or Facebook before that, right. That would be one thing. But you know, so many, for years, so many teenagers have already built their, you know, their networks on these platforms. So yeah, to pull the plug so suddenly is going to be jarring. But I also won't deny the fact that they're, you know, for a lot of people there is an unhealthy attachment to these platforms.

Abrar Alheti [01:42:17]:
And like, you know, when you're, when you're comparing yourself to people for six hours a day, it's gonna do.

Leo Laporte [01:42:23]:
I agree.

Abrar Alheti [01:42:24]:
You know, so it's like what's the middle ground? What's the logical healthy response? And I think everyone's still working that out.

Leo Laporte [01:42:31]:
Here's what the Australian Government suggests to under 16s. Schedule Regular phone catch ups with your friends.

Jacob Ward [01:42:38]:
Friends.

Abrar Alheti [01:42:39]:
Did you know that Your phone can place calls.

Leo Laporte [01:42:41]:
Because I forgot that they don't know.

Harper Reed [01:42:42]:
That I thought that was removed.

Leo Laporte [01:42:44]:
What's a phone number? Or stay in touch through an age appropriate online chat or video app. What could possibly go wrong there?

Abrar Alheti [01:42:55]:
God, I like how it's like get outside and read a book.

Leo Laporte [01:43:00]:
It's so freaking clueless. Well, you know what this is an example of? Well, well, Australia is going to do the experiment. Let's watch and see. It's.

Jacob Ward [01:43:09]:
Maybe that's the thing. I, I don't think it's clueless. I just think it's experimental. And let's hope they're like Japan.

Leo Laporte [01:43:14]:
Let's hope that they, let's experiment with our children. Why not?

Jacob Ward [01:43:17]:
Experiment. Let's experiment in, in not letting for profit companies. Experiment with them. Right? Because that's where, that's, that's where we're at here. We, that's all we do is say, go ahead, experiment on our kids.

Leo Laporte [01:43:28]:
Right.

Jacob Ward [01:43:28]:
And like some, one of the stats I saw the other day was that like 50% of parents, something like 50% of parents say that their number one source of information about what's an appropriate use of technology for their children is the ads from the companies that make the technology. You know what I'm saying? Like that's where we live.

Leo Laporte [01:43:44]:
But should government be take in loco parentis? Shouldn't the parents be responsible for this? Why are we having government be the parent?

Jacob Ward [01:43:51]:
Because the parents aren't responsible, you know, can't control themselves either. I'm not a good model to my kids about how to, how I use technology in the same way that I wouldn't have been a good model to my kids.

Leo Laporte [01:44:00]:
It sounds like a nanny state. You can't control yourself, Your kids can't control yourself. I guess as the government, I gotta control you. That is.

Jacob Ward [01:44:07]:
But in the United.

Leo Laporte [01:44:07]:
I want my government to do Right.

Jacob Ward [01:44:09]:
I hear that. But in the United States.

Leo Laporte [01:44:10]:
Right.

Jacob Ward [01:44:11]:
We are for some reason convinced that people in the grip of, you know, of compulsion should be in charge of themselves. This is why we have these ludicrous things, things that get put on. As a former drinker, on booze ads that say drink responsibly.

Leo Laporte [01:44:27]:
Right, Right.

Jacob Ward [01:44:28]:
And now on gambling ads. Game responsibly. There's no such thing if you're an alcoholic. There's no such thing as drinking responsibly. I cannot go into a bar.

Leo Laporte [01:44:36]:
Yeah, but we tried to ban alcohol. How did that work out?

Jacob Ward [01:44:39]:
That didn't work out well. Right. But we did between 1950 and 1965 it took that long for, you know, 1950s, when the first big cigarette studies come come out in the US and the UK showing large scale effects. Right. And it took forever to do that because everybody was smoking. And so it was really hard to do the comparisons.

Leo Laporte [01:44:56]:
But we still haven't banned cigarettes.

Jacob Ward [01:44:59]:
No, but we've really restricted what kids can see around cigarettes and how. And kids can't buy them until they're a certain age. You know, like we have these rules that we have that we figure out. It just takes us forever to figure them out. And like, and I'm, and I, I, I understand that it takes a while. You know, it takes. In the case of cigarettes, it was 15 years between the first big large scale studies and 1965, which is when the first rules start to come out around that stuff. It took a long time, it took 30 years for gambling to become a diagnosable addiction in this country.

Jacob Ward [01:45:27]:
So it's been a while. But I think you gotta be able to identify harms and regulate against those harms at some point. That's what government's for, I think.

Leo Laporte [01:45:34]:
What are the latest results of countries that have legalized heroin. Heroin or legalized addictive drugs versus countries like ours where it's against the law?

Jacob Ward [01:45:47]:
Well, they, I mean, they don't.

Leo Laporte [01:45:49]:
The last thing I heard. Is that really okay? Because the last thing I heard is it does go well, but you have to obviously provide treatment centers and a lot of support.

Abrar Alheti [01:45:58]:
Right.

Harper Reed [01:45:58]:
Portugal style.

Leo Laporte [01:45:59]:
Portugal.

Jacob Ward [01:46:00]:
That's right.

Leo Laporte [01:46:01]:
That's right.

Jacob Ward [01:46:01]:
But you know, you go to like. I remember going with my, my mom's a public health, which is nurse and a public health academic. And she, she took me whenever we would go to cities abroad. She always wanted to take me to like the grittiest stuff because she was.

Leo Laporte [01:46:13]:
Like, let me show you, Jacob, what could happen.

Jacob Ward [01:46:16]:
Not to scare me, just to be like. She was just interested.

Leo Laporte [01:46:18]:
She was interested.

Jacob Ward [01:46:19]:
Yeah. So like, so I remember we were in Zurich when Zurich had this weird policy where this one park in Zurich was allowed. You were allowed to basically do any drug you wanted. And they created this like Hamsterdam, if you're a wire fan, right? They created the Amsterdam of, of Zurich. And they, it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare. And people were coming from all over Europe to camp out in this place because they weren't really providing real services. Now there is, however, a heart.

Jacob Ward [01:46:43]:
Now there's harm reduction and there's other ways to deal with it. But like, you know, but I think, just saying, like, there's no rules about it and no support that's not going to. I don't know, I just think that always goes wrong. Got to wear seatbelts eventually. Got to wear football helmets. Like there has to be a response to things that do us harm.

Abrar Alheti [01:47:00]:
And social media companies are known for making their platform as addictive as possible. And so I think if the government doesn't say something, then what's to stop them from finding more ways to, you know, make it addictive for everybody, but especially for younger people who, you know, have even less self control than us fully grown adults abroad.

Jacob Ward [01:47:18]:
Are you? Are you what? How old are you? Are you?

Abrar Alheti [01:47:20]:
I'm 31. So I grew up.

Jacob Ward [01:47:22]:
Are you our youngest panel member?

Abrar Alheti [01:47:25]:
And so like my social media, I.

Leo Laporte [01:47:27]:
Like a long shot.

Abrar Alheti [01:47:30]:
No leave. You and I actually are a couple years apart, but I'm close.

Jacob Ward [01:47:34]:
But what was it like for you? I just am always so curious to.

Abrar Alheti [01:47:37]:
Hear what it's like.

Jacob Ward [01:47:37]:
What was it like for you as a kid?

Abrar Alheti [01:47:38]:
I was in eighth grade when I made my first Facebook account, but I had to lie by a year. And at that point we didn't have smartphones. Right. So when I went home, I couldn't wait to get home to check my Facebook notifications, but I didn't have them following me everywhere. It wasn't like I had this thing in my pocket that I could pull up at every moment and check compulsively and. And I still have a social media addiction. Like at this point. I just set screen time limits on my phone the other day because I was like, I don't feel okay.

Abrar Alheti [01:48:08]:
I feel like I stare at my screen for work all day and then I relax on my phone and it's not healthy.

Leo Laporte [01:48:15]:
It's doom scrolling these days.

Abrar Alheti [01:48:17]:
It doesn't make you feel any better afterwards. So.

Leo Laporte [01:48:19]:
Yeah. By the way, I don't know any adults now who are not adults. Addicted. Yeah, they're very few. Very, very few. And if you just walk around, you go to a restaurant, whatever, everybody's on their phone all the time. I remember the first thing. It is depressing.

Leo Laporte [01:48:33]:
I remember the first time I saw this Before 2007, I was in France. I was sitting outside the Notre Dame and watching all the French people walk around and they were all texting. They were all on their phones. I thought that is weird. Little did I know they were just ahead of the game. Yeah, we're just so used to it now, we don't even notice it anymore. Anymore. And, and there is, I think considerable evidence, good evidence that.

Leo Laporte [01:48:59]:
And that you see this all the time too. When you give a little kid, a 2 year old a tablet to keep them quiet during a restaurant meal or in the airplane or in public in any way, those kids are getting really addicted and, and I think somewhat damaged by YouTube video after YouTube video video.

Harper Reed [01:49:20]:
YouTube is really scary.

Abrar Alheti [01:49:21]:
It is.

Leo Laporte [01:49:22]:
And that's what's changed since you were a kid, Abrar, by the way, my daughter's your age, one year older.

Abrar Alheti [01:49:27]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:49:28]:
And she was into Neopets. But because I was a technologist, I was also careful about. I said, well, you don't use your real name there. She said, no, I'm a 32 year old guy from Philadelphia. I said, right on, good job.

Harper Reed [01:49:46]:
I love on neopets. All the other parents are like, what the heck is going on? This guy's crazy. What is happening?

Leo Laporte [01:49:53]:
Yeah, I don't think she passed, to be honest. It was a very, very neon colored 32 year old guy from Philly. But I really think that it's been kind of weaponized since you and Abby were kids. I mean it is much, much more addictive and dramatic and follows you around and just look how Instagram has changed from the beginning to what it is now now.

Abrar Alheti [01:50:21]:
Absolutely. And it used to be about keeping up with your friends. Now it's about opening up your feed, being connected to like content from people you don't even know.

Leo Laporte [01:50:28]:
Right, right.

Abrar Alheti [01:50:29]:
And it's nothing about connection. It's nothing about keeping up with people. It's so it's actually more isolating than anything, which is just. It's the complete antithesis of what it was supposed to be.

Jacob Ward [01:50:39]:
And you know what they, what they say in aa, right? It's one of the, one of the teachings in Alcoholics Anonymous is the opposite of addiction is connection. That's it. And, and once upon a time these companies were about connecting us. And that does not seem to be the vibe anymore.

Abrar Alheti [01:50:53]:
Exactly.

Harper Reed [01:50:54]:
No money there.

Jacob Ward [01:50:55]:
Yeah, yeah, no money there. That's right.

Leo Laporte [01:50:57]:
That's right.

Abrar Alheti [01:50:58]:
That's sad.

Jacob Ward [01:51:02]:
Meanwhile, Leo's on his phone.

Leo Laporte [01:51:04]:
Yeah, sorry, I just checking my Instagram.

Jacob Ward [01:51:07]:
I was getting on fanduel for a second. Hang on a second.

Leo Laporte [01:51:09]:
Yeah, I gotta make that.

Harper Reed [01:51:11]:
Had a funny.

Leo Laporte [01:51:12]:
I'll be honest, it's always been like that. I used to work with a radio guy who had had a beeper and played the ponies during his show. I mean, with a beeper. I mean it wasn't, you know, so it's not like there, there's been compulsive behavior. It's just that if you are that kind of person. I really feel bad for people who have gambling issues because you can't. You can't get away from it. It's.

Jacob Ward [01:51:33]:
And it's moving the wrong direction right now, right? More like more than half the states have legalized it now.

Leo Laporte [01:51:37]:
And guys all over the NFL, that's. I mean, they give you the odds at every moment. And then somebody comes on and says, hey, you know, you can bet at all times during the game. You can make. This really scares me. Is these what we call prop bets? Where is he going to make the field goal? Is. Are they going to show Taylor Swift more than twice? And. And you can make these constant bets.

Leo Laporte [01:52:00]:
It's not. You're not just betting on the outcome of the game anymore. It is a constant stimulus. Boom, Boom.

Jacob Ward [01:52:05]:
Have you seen this crazy. There's a whole world now of what call sports farms in Russia that. Where. Oh, yes, these. Where people will. People are playing like endless. Like two guys sitting knee to knee in chairs with soccer goals behind them, trying to kick a ball into the other thing, like parlor games, basketball, volleyball. But these are not athletes.

Jacob Ward [01:52:24]:
They're not athletes. They're just random ass people. And they're streaming it, and they're streaming it entirely so you can bet on it. That's all it is. It's just action.

Leo Laporte [01:52:31]:
They're just. They're creating content to bet. Bet on.

Jacob Ward [01:52:34]:
To bet on. That's it. That's it. That's exactly right. And you know, as a guy I know who, who had a real sports gambling problem, says he's like, these days, with the rise of sports betting on my phone, it is like being an alcoholic being forced to carry a fifth of whiskey everywhere.

Leo Laporte [01:52:49]:
Yeah. Can you imagine? And now get ready because prediction markets, which are currently kind of restricted, will soon be fully legal. And that means you can bet on every. Everything. You don't have to wait for two guys in a Russian soccer match or a football game. You can bet on how many of the panelists have tattoos. You can bet on anything in prediction markets. And by the way, there's a lot of evidence that these prediction markets are not the wisdom of the crowds, that they are easily cheated, shall we say.

Leo Laporte [01:53:26]:
Of course, you know, that's a. That's probably the gambler's fallacy. I think everybody who gambles thinks that they have a system that they compete whatever it is, whatever it is they're saying they're doing. Yeah. All right, let's take another break. We should cash in on this though, shouldn't we? Have a sport betting show on Twitter.

Harper Reed [01:53:46]:
We could do it with crypto.

Leo Laporte [01:53:49]:
I hear that's going to be big.

Harper Reed [01:53:50]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:53:52]:
Harper Reed. Rapidly getting dark in Chicago. I like the purpleness of the grotto, though.

Jacob Ward [01:53:58]:
Yeah. Your shots getting cooler and cooler.

Leo Laporte [01:54:01]:
It's very cool.

Abrar Alheti [01:54:01]:
It's cool. Like you're glowing.

Harper Reed [01:54:02]:
You know, this is actually my goal in life is to just get cooler and cooler.

Leo Laporte [01:54:08]:
Is2389ai and what's the bot? What's the bot site?

Harper Reed [01:54:15]:
The botboard biz.

Leo Laporte [01:54:17]:
Botboard biz.

Harper Reed [01:54:19]:
Every time I say it, I feel like. Like I'm going insane.

Leo Laporte [01:54:23]:
And no. So would I need, like, I'm running LM Studio. I have some local bots running on my Framework desktop. Could they join?

Harper Reed [01:54:31]:
They could join. It's just an MCP server. And because you're not doing work with them, I don't know, like, they would just tweet about what you're doing, which is kind of funny, kind of weird. Mostly it's weird.

Leo Laporte [01:54:48]:
So I should make them do something.

Harper Reed [01:54:50]:
Yeah, you should try it. It's very. I think you can sign up and then we can okay you for a team. And what we find is just that it does offer some interesting workplace surveillance opportunities. You can see what your bots are up to, but interestingly, behind all the bots is a human. And then you get to see what the humans are up to. And it summarizes them every day. We have an agent stick stand, so we get to see what the agents worked on yesterday, and then we get to talk through it.

Harper Reed [01:55:19]:
And it's this very interesting. It's very bizarre. It's very fun.

Leo Laporte [01:55:23]:
I feel like you're right on the cutting edge of the next big thing. That if we are going to be surrounded by AI intelligent machines, they're going to want their own kind of facilities, their own social networks, their own social services is.

Harper Reed [01:55:42]:
I think that's true. They're gonna get behind that.

Abrar Alheti [01:55:44]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:55:44]:
Yeah. There's gonna be a whole market. Their own, you know, betting apps.

Abrar Alheti [01:55:50]:
Yeah. Jacob and I can't wait for that. We're so excited.

Jacob Ward [01:55:53]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:55:55]:
So Br? El sounds great.

Jacob Ward [01:55:56]:
See you there, bro.

Leo Laporte [01:55:57]:
A regular on Tech News Weekly. We love her and always have. Love having you on the show. Senior technology reporter at cnet and Jacob Ward. What a great, great panel. This is Jacob Ward. You've seen him on CNN, Al Jazeera, NBC, and his current podcast, the rip current.com and Jacob ward.com and the book the Loop, which predicted all this. When did you write that?

Jacob Ward [01:56:22]:
God help Me, I published it and it came out almost a year before ChatGPT shipped, so.

Leo Laporte [01:56:27]:
Oh, wow. You predicted the whole thing.

Jacob Ward [01:56:29]:
Dude, it sounds. And that's the kind of thing where you want to be like, yeah, look at me, I did that. And then. And then.

Leo Laporte [01:56:34]:
Yeah.

Jacob Ward [01:56:34]:
And then it all. And then like my highly speculative bummer of a thesis that, like, our brains are not ready for this commercial AI at all totally turned out to be real. And I was like, oh, man. Anyway, but yeah, that's when it came out.

Leo Laporte [01:56:45]:
It's the loop is like the flywheel. It's this, it's, it's. And you get stuck in it. Right?

Jacob Ward [01:56:50]:
It's a downward spiral. We get stuck in. That's right.

Leo Laporte [01:56:54]:
Yikes. All right, we'll talk about something more uplifting in just a bit. They've reinvented the Zoom zipper. Okay, I'm just, I'm just warning you ahead of time. Coming up, our show today, brought to you by Deal. Brand new sponsor. Welcome Deal. Great to have you.

Leo Laporte [01:57:11]:
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Leo Laporte [01:58:32]:
See why over 35,000 companies trust deal. VisiT-E-E-L.com twit that's deaL-E-E-L.Com twit we thank them so much for their support. Welcome them to the Twit family. By the way, just a word of warning. We're talking about the weaponization of Facebook. Meta is now asking Facebook users to give the AI access to your entire Camera roll. It says this will help you share more photos. It also is likely going to be training Meta's AI.

Harper Reed [01:59:10]:
Yeah, yeah.

Abrar Alheti [01:59:11]:
I love how they're just so upfront about it and I just have all your pictures.

Leo Laporte [01:59:15]:
Like, like I. More and more apps are saying that, I mean X now every single time I open it says, would you like to add all your contacts?

Jacob Ward [01:59:25]:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Harper Reed [01:59:26]:
Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:59:28]:
No, I am not going to turn over. I know the personal information of my closest friends to you.

Abrar Alheti [01:59:35]:
No, see, to say no. Imagine how, how many people.

Leo Laporte [01:59:37]:
Most people say yes.

Abrar Alheti [01:59:39]:
Yeah, yeah. Our numbers have been.

Leo Laporte [01:59:41]:
How are you supposed to know if your friends are on X? Well, you give them your friend's name and phone number and street address and any other information you might have. Meta is very aggressively going after AI talent. They just hired another AI person away from Apple's AI labs, according to Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, who apparently has his finger on the pulse of this. I don't even know what it is. It's like, it's like a dozen people. Are they leaving a single sinking ship? Maybe they are. I'm not sure that going to Meta is the best thing. In fact, there are a number of people who've gone to Meta and a week later left for a lot of money.

Jacob Ward [02:00:20]:
Well, I was going to say, yeah. How long do you have to stay to get, I wonder, like 1.5 billion.

Leo Laporte [02:00:23]:
When do I go by?

Jacob Ward [02:00:24]:
Two weeks.

Leo Laporte [02:00:28]:
You put this story. I think you put the story in. Jacob Meta just poached a AI expert, Andrew Tullock, he's the founder of Thinking Machines Lab, which is, I think a pretty well known AI startup. His compensation package rumored to reach $1.5 billion over six years.

Harper Reed [02:00:54]:
That's a lot of money.

Jacob Ward [02:00:56]:
That is a lot of money, you guys. And the, so the, the like the. Makes me think of several things. So like, so there's a lot of.

Leo Laporte [02:01:03]:
Talk that's more than. That's like 150 million a year.

Jacob Ward [02:01:07]:
I really do, I really do want to find out like if he leaves after a week, how much has he made?

Abrar Alheti [02:01:11]:
Right.

Jacob Ward [02:01:12]:
Like if you were to divide it that. So anyway, yeah, somebody do that math while I think about this. So right. There's this whole thing right now. A term that is coming up a lot in the conversations I'm happening, I'm having is the K shaped economy where this tiny subset of people, the money is going up, right. And for the others and for everybody else it's going down.

Harper Reed [02:01:35]:
Right.

Jacob Ward [02:01:36]:
And this idea that like the, the ceiling and the floor are falling away from one another. Another measure of this is something called the genie coefficient, which is something that the UN uses and, and NOS use to measure the difference between the ceiling and the floor.

Leo Laporte [02:01:49]:
There's also a saying, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

Jacob Ward [02:01:53]:
Well, that's right. That's right. And the way in which you see not only there being this, like, not only are the numbers going this weird way, but the, the ethos of these companies is going that way where they're, they're, you know, at the beginning of last year on Alexis Ohanian's podcast, Sam Altman was talking with about how he has a bet going on his like tech CEO text thread, the group chat. He's in with a bunch of tech CEOs as to which financial quarter we'll see the first billion dollar one person company.

Leo Laporte [02:02:26]:
Oh yeah, so the first solo unicorn.

Jacob Ward [02:02:28]:
Yeah, yeah. And you're like, okay, so you're excited about that? Like what he's basically saying is like that, that's, that would be somehow a good thing, right?

Leo Laporte [02:02:36]:
Well, it would be, wouldn't it? I mean it would mean that one person with the help of AI could do what a 30 person team could do.

Jacob Ward [02:02:45]:
Good for that person. Right. But Leo, you and I for the.

Leo Laporte [02:02:49]:
Other people don't get hired. Okay.

Jacob Ward [02:02:50]:
Yeah, exactly. I don't know how many. You know, no one's making a middle class existence off a sandwich shop ever again. No one's ever making it.

Leo Laporte [02:02:59]:
Actually my son's doing pretty well.

Harper Reed [02:03:02]:
I think there's some nuance there though, Jacob, because I think if, if I was to want to build a sandwich shop, I think now is probably the best time to do that because I think if you're trying to build a tech career, you're boned. Like if you're a middle career tech person, I think it's just no longer, there's no longer a time. I was talking to an executive of a very large, large company recently and they described their hiring over the last decade as diamond shaped where they had a small number of juniors, a small number of executives and a huge number in the middle that was basically supporting their work. And they described how they need to get to a pyramid shape where you have a small number at same the top, a small number in the middle and a huge number of junior people who are just hitting continue on machines basically guiding these AIs. I don't think that's going to be great because how does the juniors become the seniors is a real not learning anything. They're just this is a very hard, a hard, hard thing.

Leo Laporte [02:03:56]:
And I do we feel bad that we free. Maybe you didn't do this but for years I was telling people learn to code. I feel bad about that.

Harper Reed [02:04:05]:
I mean it's still, still we are in an unprecedented time for the amount of productivity a single person can get from a computer. There is just not an opportunity that I have seen before this and I have been very productive on computers. But my core skill set is building large teams of people and convincing them to do things that they probably don't want to do towards some goal. And like that has been what I'm known for. And right now that is just not the name of the game. Like the name of the game here is a small team doing really, really, really large amounts of things. But it's going to be very, very complicated. I think this is a really hard thing to do.

Harper Reed [02:04:43]:
But if I was a, let's say a approaching middle aged person, so not me, I think if I had any interest in doing something that wasn't in technology, I would work on doing that thing. Because I don't think you're going to replace quickly. Eventually, but not quickly, the sandwich shop, you're not going to replace quickly all of these, the baker, so on and so for. But then there's this other thing we were talking about these giant paychecks. The finance industry in New York knows how to handle this. The sports industries know how to handle this. I don't think tech, tech has this very good feature that I love which is we never look at who's done it before. We always invent it for the first time ourselves.

Harper Reed [02:05:27]:
And I think what they're going to do is they're just going to see all these people split at the moment they need them the most with lots and lots of money and these crazy contracts where if you look at the finance, it's all bonus, bonus based. It's all based on all this performance. You might have the same level of compensation, hundreds of millions of dollars or a billion dollars, but you don't get it in some, you know, kind of vesting over four years kind of nonsense like, like these tech companies. So I'm very interested to see what's going to happen and I also wonder what happens for the talent and the recruiting side when this becomes how you hire people. Are there going to be agents like there are for Hollywood or for sports? Like does it turn into my business as a young entrepreneur or sorry, as a young programmer is my deal to try and the in front of these Agents so that they can give me a bigger, a bigger deal. Are we going to have like a CCA or whatever to try and suddenly represent some of these tech people to try and do this to get more adversary or advantageous deals from people who are increasingly adversarial in hiring? Like I think the money is so big that we have to see that that doesn't seem good.

Leo Laporte [02:06:31]:
Unemployment among undergraduate majors in computer science is 6.1% according to the Federal Reserve Bank.

Harper Reed [02:06:41]:
So I don't, I'm not worried about the new grads at all.

Leo Laporte [02:06:43]:
You're not?

Harper Reed [02:06:44]:
No, not at all. Because someone needs to hit continue like, you know what I mean? Like someone has to sit there and.

Jacob Ward [02:06:50]:
Take care of it.

Leo Laporte [02:06:50]:
But that is not a satisfying job.

Harper Reed [02:06:53]:
That wasn't the question though, Leo. The question. When you're creating a factory, you have to have factory workers.

Leo Laporte [02:06:59]:
You have to have factory workers workers.

Harper Reed [02:07:00]:
And I think that is the future of tech. I think what we're seeing.

Leo Laporte [02:07:03]:
You didn't really need that CS degree to hit continue, did you?

Jacob Ward [02:07:07]:
Yeah, right. Will you ever pay off your, your, your debt?

Harper Reed [02:07:11]:
No. How else are we going to keep the population under control? Jacob?

Jacob Ward [02:07:16]:
Good point, good point. By the way, Andrew Deluxe 1.5 billion over six years. Assuming he was paid out. Just like, I mean of course he's not. Right.

Leo Laporte [02:07:25]:
It's 1,200 million a year, right?

Jacob Ward [02:07:27]:
Yeah, it's 4.8 million a week.

Harper Reed [02:07:30]:
Oh, that's great.

Jacob Ward [02:07:32]:
You know, that's how nice work.

Leo Laporte [02:07:34]:
If you can get it's, it's another one. By the way, I think you could make a case that Mark Zuckerberg is single handedly undermining this whole system. Right. It's another one of those cases where he wanted to buy the company. Like scale AI Remember? They wanted to buy the company, couldn't get the company so they just hired the brains and let the, and deflated the company.

Harper Reed [02:07:55]:
But this happened with Google and character AI as well. I don't think Mark Zuckerberg invented that. Right. This is like this new way of acquiring. But I think that makes sense as well because like if your company is a code gen company where you're using agents to generate the code and you're doing this kind of thing and it's just how many people do you have? Like you used to sell companies with the 40 people. It's an acqui hire. The company that's buying you gets 40 really good resources. They get these people that they really like, they don't have to hire hire them.

Harper Reed [02:08:22]:
There's this Very simple cost analysis that says, oh, I, I gained 40 people, I paid this much money and it's, you know, it's a million dollars per person. Great, we're done. But now it's only six people. And now the talent is just people who are controlling agents. Like none of them built the agents, none of them built the thing. And then so you, you, you might as well just hire the, the innovation machine that's at the top instead of hiring the whole company of people that's just in, you know, doing the, doing that.

Leo Laporte [02:08:48]:
If I'm the venture capitalist though, that pumped hundreds of millions of dollars, I.

Jacob Ward [02:08:52]:
Was just gonna say, or the, or the kid who killed himself trying to, you know, being the, the, you know, code monkey at that company.

Leo Laporte [02:08:59]:
Well, that's the other thing.

Jacob Ward [02:09:00]:
They're assuming they'd get an exit and would get some money.

Leo Laporte [02:09:03]:
Right.

Jacob Ward [02:09:03]:
And then they don't because no more top guy gets hired away.

Leo Laporte [02:09:06]:
And then it's the other thing the tech giants are telling us is nine, nine, six. Forget it. You got to work 90 hours a week. You got a word?

Harper Reed [02:09:12]:
Six.

Leo Laporte [02:09:13]:
Yeah, you gotta work. What is it? Nine, what is it?

Harper Reed [02:09:16]:
Six, nine days a week from 9 to 6pm yeah, just figure it out. Yeah, you just figure it out.

Leo Laporte [02:09:26]:
What is the number? It's not anyway, it's the, it's, it's how you're supposed to work for a living is in this, in the security industry, in the tech industry.

Harper Reed [02:09:36]:
Nine to nine, six days a week.

Leo Laporte [02:09:38]:
Thank you. That's 996.

Jacob Ward [02:09:39]:
Six. Yeah, that's right.

Harper Reed [02:09:40]:
It's from China. That's, that's like.

Leo Laporte [02:09:43]:
But Eric Schmidt and, and others have been saying, oh no, this is the only way you can succeed. You shouldn't you life, you shouldn't have a life.

Abrar Alheti [02:09:51]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:09:51]:
If you're a startup.

Harper Reed [02:09:52]:
Yeah, of course I tell all of my hires that.

Leo Laporte [02:09:55]:
Come on. Because you're. The only way you can have a.

Harper Reed [02:09:58]:
Cool background that changes color is if you work 24 hours a day.

Jacob Ward [02:10:02]:
You better get a tattoo of your kids names because you want.

Harper Reed [02:10:05]:
Exactly. How else are you going to know you have kids?

Leo Laporte [02:10:11]:
Here's a scary story. Even top generals are looking to AI chatbots for answers. This is the US Military from Business Insider. Military leaders are adopting AI for decision making. The military has adopted an aggressive push to embrace AI and weapons, aircraft and combat tech. But it's more than than that. A top army commander in South Korea, US army said he's experimenting with generative AI chatbots to sharpen his decision making. Not in the field but in command and daily work.

Leo Laporte [02:10:45]:
He says chat and I have become really close lately.

Abrar Alheti [02:10:49]:
Oh God.

Harper Reed [02:10:50]:
So I don't find this problematic at all. I'm just telling you I don't, not even a little bit. But here's why. Two reasons why. One, a friend of mine who's worked a lot with veterans and with military active duty and has worked in the military said when I sent this to him, based on my experience working with high level military officers, I view this as a positive. So, so there's that, but the other thing is there is a huge culture of tabletop exercises, game days, all sorts of stuff within the military.

Leo Laporte [02:11:23]:
Shall we get game?

Harper Reed [02:11:25]:
And if they're using these as a technology to, to make those more realistic, to make them more random, to make them more, you know, effective, then I, I think that's probably good. I'm guessing that they're not using it like in, you know, whatever, what, what should we serve situations and all that. But, but yeah, but we'll get there, don't worry. We have, we have plenty of time to get to where the, where the AI is in the kill decision. But it is, I think, of course, I think we are. This is like, this is exactly one of those things where I think it's very shocking for people that don't spend a lot of time around the military and for people who spend a lot of time around the military, they're like, well why? It's a tool. Why the military is going to use every tool available to them to get ahead of their supposed enemies.

Leo Laporte [02:12:10]:
As long as they use it intelligently, I think that's fine.

Jacob Ward [02:12:13]:
I also wonder like, like there is a, I mean so they, there's a long history pre AI, even pre ML, of these like global decision support systems and decentralized collaborative planner systems. Like they've got all these acronym laden systems for if you're going to like stage a land invasion or stage a naval invasion, you need all of this logistics support because you can't be making it up as you go along. And that'll say like here's how many people you need, here's how much food you're going to need every day. In a weird way, I wonder if it's like almost better in a sense because you, you could build in, you could build in some safeguards. Unlike Harper, what you were saying about, you know, startups always thinking they've encountered, you know, racist loan making for the first time in human history or whatever it is, you know, they always think they're invent you're discovering a problem for the first time ever. These are, you know, the military is very good at internalizing institutionally lessons to a mistake. You know, lessons that you draw from a mistake. So I have this, this book project I'm working on right now.

Jacob Ward [02:13:18]:
It's called Great Ideas We Should Not Pursue. And it is.

Leo Laporte [02:13:21]:
Oh, I love it.

Jacob Ward [02:13:22]:
I'm trying to look at, like, it's a great idea. Examples of restraint. Right. Because there's so few. But it turns out one of the places you, if you want to look for restraint, where places have had some informed restraint, the military is a big one. They come up with all kinds of. Of ideas that they then go, no, we're not going to do that. You know.

Jacob Ward [02:13:41]:
Yeah. One example I just bumped into the other day is laser blinding weapons. We don't do that. And for. And there are big global treaties that say we're not going to blind each other now. They'll kill each other all kinds of ways, but for some reason, well, you.

Harper Reed [02:13:55]:
Can still see when you're dead.

Jacob Ward [02:13:59]:
But we don't like. We don't like blinding each other for some reason, even people we hate. And so there's something like.

Leo Laporte [02:14:04]:
There's restraint.

Jacob Ward [02:14:06]:
Yeah, the military does say that, which is weird. It's. I, once upon a time, they would have been for me, the, the ultimate bad guy around this stuff. But more and more I'm like, actually, maybe the military, I'd rather have them thinking this stuff through than some of the people I've met, you know, in a, in a VC's lobby.

Harper Reed [02:14:22]:
Yes, yeah, yes.

Leo Laporte [02:14:23]:
Good point, Good point. I think more now than ever, we need to put our faith and our trust in the, our military.

Harper Reed [02:14:32]:
I don't know if I would go, yeah, yeah. I think that was a little. Yeah, yeah. What are we doing here? Come on.

Leo Laporte [02:14:36]:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. That was a thought. I don't know.

Harper Reed [02:14:42]:
Next link, next link.

Leo Laporte [02:14:43]:
Next Roku is up. Here's where AI really belongs. Roku is updating its voice assistant. You know, you can press the Roku voice button on your remote with AI features that can answer questions about movies, shows, and action actors. How scary is the Shining? Or what kind of fish is Nemo? It will display a text response on your screen.

Harper Reed [02:15:06]:
I for one, trust Roku to have to power the AI in my house.

Abrar Alheti [02:15:10]:
Yeah. I was like, you know, I'm the kind of person who, I'll watch a movie and I'll get sidetracked because then I'll go down a rabbit hole of like, googling stuff.

Leo Laporte [02:15:16]:
IMDb baby. I live on it. I love that.

Harper Reed [02:15:20]:
Yeah.

Jacob Ward [02:15:20]:
What else was he in?

Abrar Alheti [02:15:21]:
Yeah, exactly.

Harper Reed [02:15:22]:
Yeah. Is he older than me?

Leo Laporte [02:15:24]:
Prime has that X ray feature, which I really like. That's a very. It tells you who the. Who's on screen right now. I really. I really do. Like.

Harper Reed [02:15:31]:
I love roll.

Leo Laporte [02:15:32]:
Is he.

Jacob Ward [02:15:32]:
That's always the question. I love. How tall are these people?

Harper Reed [02:15:35]:
They're all not. They're not tall.

Jacob Ward [02:15:37]:
They're not tall.

Leo Laporte [02:15:38]:
I never think about this. My wife is always saying, how tall you think he is?

Jacob Ward [02:15:42]:
Oh, they're tiny. They're so tiny.

Harper Reed [02:15:43]:
Tiny, little, tiny people.

Leo Laporte [02:15:45]:
Yeah, it's a.

Jacob Ward [02:15:46]:
There's a great book about Hollywood called A Conspiracy of Short People.

Abrar Alheti [02:15:51]:
Oh, my God.

Leo Laporte [02:15:52]:
And it's by the screenwriter who's my.

Jacob Ward [02:15:54]:
Height, who's six, seven. And he. And he. He. He just is like. He's writes a very funny book about that. Yeah, there's. There's a guy.

Jacob Ward [02:16:00]:
I met a guy once who was a. A like a sort of supporting actor, charact kind of guy. And he's pretty tall. He's like six two or something. And he says that once you get past six one, everybody hates you on the production because. Not. I mean, you know, Tom Cruise hates you because he's short, but, like, everybody hates you because you're not in the shot. They have to dig a ditch for you.

Jacob Ward [02:16:19]:
They have to. Well, what they have to do is build a ceiling for the shot.

Harper Reed [02:16:23]:
Yeah.

Jacob Ward [02:16:23]:
So if they're gonna have a tall character, they gotta build a ceiling. Otherwise they can leave an open drop ceiling with all the lighting in it. So it screws up the whole. Like, the whole production has to, like, stop while they bring in the carpenters and everything.

Leo Laporte [02:16:34]:
So Humphrey Bogart was 5 foot 8, relatively short. That's a great Hollywood height, enormous head. And I was. I, who also have an enormous head, was always told, that's a good thing in the movies. You want a big head.

Harper Reed [02:16:49]:
Yeah, I think that's true. I've heard that too.

Leo Laporte [02:16:53]:
No, I think it's to fill the sc. I don't know. It's to fill Caprio. I don't know.

Jacob Ward [02:16:57]:
Leo DiCaprio has a big head.

Harper Reed [02:16:59]:
When I. When I started doing more media, someone said, you're going to be surprised by how small these people are and how big their heads are physically.

Leo Laporte [02:17:07]:
Oh, really?

Harper Reed [02:17:07]:
And, yeah, they told me this. Like, this is like. And I just was like, that can't possibly be real. And then you meet all these people and they're just creating this image. I mean. I mean, it's because they're talking heads. We've optimized. It's like a genetic optimization for people with giant heads to tell us what our dreams are.

Jacob Ward [02:17:22]:
That's really funny.

Abrar Alheti [02:17:23]:
And they're ways.

Jacob Ward [02:17:24]:
You know what, I'm blown away. I once interviewed Pete Buttigieg, who, who I consider to be a very smart and an interesting person.

Leo Laporte [02:17:33]:
Yeah.

Jacob Ward [02:17:33]:
But I'll say Pete Buttigieg, little guy, he's a very small person. And he, and he, he's just the most media trained guy ever. He, he said to me, he said so when we're speaking because I'm like, you know, more than a foot taller than he is. And, and he's like, I'm going to talk to your button.

Leo Laporte [02:17:53]:
Oh, he is trained.

Jacob Ward [02:17:55]:
And so it'll look weird when we're talking. I mean, he's like leading me through my own interview.

Leo Laporte [02:17:59]:
Don't be distraught by this, but I know what I'm doing.

Jacob Ward [02:18:02]:
Yeah. He's like, yeah, exactly. I'm just going to take command here. And he did. And he talked to my solar plexus. And on the camera it looked like we were looking at each other at the same level. And you know, I just remember thinking, well, this guy, he knows what he's doing.

Leo Laporte [02:18:16]:
I think, I remember reading and we should probably research this, but I think I remember reading that the taller candidate always wins in a presidential election.

Abrar Alheti [02:18:26]:
Oh, fascinating.

Harper Reed [02:18:27]:
Interesting. Donald Trump's pretty tall.

Leo Laporte [02:18:29]:
He is. He's certainly taller than Kamala Harris.

Harper Reed [02:18:32]:
Well, not compared to you, you tall guy. He's taller.

Jacob Ward [02:18:35]:
But I mean, have you seen the picture?

Leo Laporte [02:18:36]:
Six foot nine guy.

Harper Reed [02:18:38]:
He's not tall. That guy's short.

Leo Laporte [02:18:40]:
He's more than six foot, isn't he?

Jacob Ward [02:18:42]:
The picture of him with, with Putin. I don't think he's more than 6 foot. Putin walking around pretty close.

Leo Laporte [02:18:48]:
Lifts. Putin wears lifts.

Jacob Ward [02:18:49]:
Yeah, yeah.

Harper Reed [02:18:50]:
I mean I, I wear lifts. I made a strong pro platform shoe policy beginning of last winter because I thought it was funny. I got platform docs.

Leo Laporte [02:18:59]:
And this is why you trip and fart all the time. You're wearing platform shoes.

Harper Reed [02:19:03]:
And I recently discovered you can order pickles in a bag on Amazon. Life is good.

Leo Laporte [02:19:10]:
Life, life in the 21st century. We are so happy to be here. So happy to be here. Let's take a little break and we come back. If somebody would just query ChatGPT if the taller candidate always wins the US presidential election. I'm just curious. I can, I mean, the ones I can. President Obama was tall, right? Fairly tall, six foot nine.

Leo Laporte [02:19:36]:
I know, Jacob, you're weak.

Jacob Ward [02:19:39]:
Just a little.

Harper Reed [02:19:40]:
Six two.

Jacob Ward [02:19:41]:
Just making faces. I don't know.

Leo Laporte [02:19:44]:
I grant you the. The honor of being the tallest person.

Jacob Ward [02:19:48]:
I should shut up.

Leo Laporte [02:19:49]:
And now not the only one without it with a to.

Harper Reed [02:19:52]:
Barack Obama was shorter than Mitt Romney.

Leo Laporte [02:19:54]:
Oh. Oh, George.

Harper Reed [02:19:56]:
George Bush was shorter than John Kerry.

Abrar Alheti [02:19:58]:
Well, there goes.

Leo Laporte [02:19:59]:
So it's wrong.

Harper Reed [02:20:00]:
And Joe Biden was shorter than Donald Trump.

Leo Laporte [02:20:03]:
Huh.

Jacob Ward [02:20:04]:
Huh.

Leo Laporte [02:20:05]:
Okay, so that didn't work.

Harper Reed [02:20:06]:
So I actually think it turns out that the shorter person. You just had it. You just had it backwards.

Abrar Alheti [02:20:12]:
Yeah.

Harper Reed [02:20:13]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:20:14]:
Well, I remember this from like sixth grade. So that was pre. The 21st.

Harper Reed [02:20:19]:
Oh, yeah. We don't have to George Washington here.

Abrar Alheti [02:20:21]:
Yeah. Abe Lincoln wasn't.

Leo Laporte [02:20:22]:
Lincoln was a tall fella.

Jacob Ward [02:20:23]:
Lincoln was tall.

Leo Laporte [02:20:24]:
He was a tall fella. Our show today, brought to you by. We're taking a little break so I can recover now. Our show today, brought to you by zscaler, the world's largest. I'm gonna say that again, it bears repeating. The world's largest cloud security platform. You know, zscale understands that in business you are in a very interesting situation right now.

Jacob Ward [02:20:49]:
The.

Leo Laporte [02:20:49]:
The perils and the rewards of AI are dramatic. The potential rewards too great to ignore, but so are the risks. Right on. In a number of ways, if you're using public AI, the loss. Loss of sensitive data can be dramatic. AI is being used to attack you as well. Attacks against enterprise managed AI, but also attacks against your perimeter defense senses. Generative AI creates incredible opportunities for threat actors.

Leo Laporte [02:21:22]:
They can rapidly create phishing emails that are indistinguishable from the real thing, even if they don't speak a lick of your language. Right. We used to say, well, you know, check the grammar. If it's bad, well, then it's a fake. No, not anymore. It's better than mine. AI is writing malicious code. It's automating data extraction.

Leo Laporte [02:21:42]:
There were this. There were 1.3 million instances of Social Security numbers leaked to AI applications by just completely innocently using these AI SaaS applications at your work. Think of the business data that you could be leaking out. Chat, GPT and Microsoft Copilot saw nearly 3.2 million data violations. So there's lots of things AI is good for. There's lots of things AI is bad for. It's time for a modern approach. Approach zscalers Zero trust plus AI.

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Harper Reed [02:22:46]:
We selected Zscaler because it was a very good total cost of ownership, good relationship management and the ability for Zscaler to bring in business professionals that understood healthcare. It was a solid partnership to get us to where we needed to be literally within days. And it's important because we're dealing with people's lives.

Leo Laporte [02:23:15]:
With zero trust plus AI, you can thrive in the AI era. You can stay ahead of the competition, you can use AI beneficially, you can protect yourself and remain resilient even as threats and risk evolve. Learn more@zscaler.com security that's Zscaler scalar.com security thank him so much for supporting this week in tech. Tesla Good news. Has debuted a robo taxi. Steering steering wheel. Less Robo taxi for two. The Cyber Cab, a two seater electric vehicle designed and it has no steering wheel.

Leo Laporte [02:23:56]:
They unveiled it off Boston. Not sure where it's going to be. It's priced at $30,000. Under $30,000 for fleet operators. So it's very affordable. Promises to slash urban transport costs by up to 40%.

Abrar Alheti [02:24:15]:
So my question is, what's the difference between this and. When they announced it last year, did they just.

Leo Laporte [02:24:22]:
There's no steering wheel. The in. In this one. Well, there wasn't in the one the robo taxi had. Didn't have a steering wheel either.

Abrar Alheti [02:24:28]:
No, no, it was the same thing. So I'm like, did I miss something?

Leo Laporte [02:24:32]:
They're going to keep announcing it till they can get it.

Harper Reed [02:24:34]:
Yeah, I mean, that's what they do, right? That's. That's like a famous Tesla. They always early announce.

Jacob Ward [02:24:40]:
Yeah, yeah, Right, right. It's the Theranos strategy. Just name it.

Abrar Alheti [02:24:43]:
That's a great strategy.

Leo Laporte [02:24:44]:
Well then maybe. And this is a story from one Abrar al Heer. You don't want to wait for your doordash to arrive via Tesla Robo Taxi.

Abrar Alheti [02:24:55]:
There's Waymo.

Leo Laporte [02:24:57]:
Oh, it's Waymo too. Okay, Doordash and Waymo are teaming up. Waymo at least is operating.

Abrar Alheti [02:25:06]:
Yes.

Harper Reed [02:25:06]:
I love Waymos.

Abrar Alheti [02:25:07]:
I love Waymos too.

Harper Reed [02:25:08]:
They're so great.

Leo Laporte [02:25:09]:
Oh yeah, they're incredible. Because you don't have to talk to the driver. Exactly.

Harper Reed [02:25:14]:
Whatever music you want, as loud as you want.

Abrar Alheti [02:25:16]:
That's exactly, exactly what I like.

Jacob Ward [02:25:17]:
Rock out in San Francisco. There's a Whole thing of people having sex in them, that's like the, like, that's like punk rock thing to do is to go and like.

Harper Reed [02:25:27]:
I mean.

Jacob Ward [02:25:28]:
30 internal cameras, microphones.

Harper Reed [02:25:31]:
I was alive in when cabs were here and I was dating. That was a complicated time in the back of cabs.

Leo Laporte [02:25:37]:
Yeah.

Harper Reed [02:25:37]:
I feel like this is nothing new. It's like now there's just no weird cabbie that has to awkwardly clean up after you. It's just now some poor tech worker.

Abrar Alheti [02:25:45]:
I mean, it's true. I feel like Uber drivers are always like, people act like we're not here. Like, so I guess there is actually no one.

Leo Laporte [02:25:51]:
I feel bad. I know. It's really terrible.

Abrar Alheti [02:25:53]:
But in that same back of the car, your food can now be delivered via Waymo.

Leo Laporte [02:25:57]:
Just now. Here's the question. Have you ever gotten into a Waymo that has been less than clean?

Abrar Alheti [02:26:03]:
No, not me. How about you?

Jacob Ward [02:26:05]:
Okay.

Harper Reed [02:26:05]:
I've heard. I've heard this happen before. I've heard of a friend got in one that was. That was messed up. But then they just hit the button and they were like, do you want to pull over and get a new one or do you want to. And they were just like, no, it's not that bad. Just want to let you know. And they just went on the way.

Harper Reed [02:26:18]:
But it was like, I'll just sit.

Leo Laporte [02:26:19]:
On the side of the seat.

Harper Reed [02:26:20]:
It was. I think it was just very quickly handled.

Leo Laporte [02:26:22]:
Yeah.

Abrar Alheti [02:26:23]:
So many cars. I'll send another one.

Harper Reed [02:26:24]:
Yeah.

Abrar Alheti [02:26:24]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:26:25]:
So this is going to start in Phoenix. Not. Not where you guys are. But I, you know, I've never ridden in a wayo. I see them every time I'm in San Francisco. You see them everywhere.

Harper Reed [02:26:35]:
They're incredible. It's like the best invention ever.

Abrar Alheti [02:26:38]:
I feel like Jacob's not sold. I feel like you have a story.

Jacob Ward [02:26:40]:
Well, I don't know. I'm. Yeah, you know me. I can ruin any topic here. But. But I. But I.

Leo Laporte [02:26:45]:
But in my case, thought you were cheerful.

Abrar Alheti [02:26:47]:
Come rain on our.

Jacob Ward [02:26:50]:
I actually am a big. So. So I will say, I think generally speaking, like, deaths on roads are Right. So there are so.

Leo Laporte [02:26:59]:
Right, right.

Jacob Ward [02:27:00]:
It's guns, cancer, and cars kill the most Americans. Right.

Leo Laporte [02:27:04]:
So, like, so if we just automate.

Jacob Ward [02:27:07]:
Those, I'm all for it. Like, in a sense, I do think that this is a thing that human beings shouldn't be driving themselves. I do think that that is the case. But what I don't like, like, I like solving for that. Right? Less death. I like solving for that. I don't like for not paying people to deliver food.

Abrar Alheti [02:27:26]:
Totally.

Jacob Ward [02:27:26]:
Right. I don't like solving for not having to pay drivers. You know, in India they have banned this technology entirely because so many people make their living as a driver, right. And they're just, they recognize that it will decimate that country.

Leo Laporte [02:27:40]:
Country.

Jacob Ward [02:27:40]:
And we didn't even, you know, during our AI conversation, we didn't even get to the fact that like knowledge workers, you know, in India, right, your call center people, your outsourced, you know, skilled labor, those people are about to be decimated. That country is going to be economically decimated by this stuff. So anyway, solving for the cost savings, I don't like. Solving for, for less death I'm all for. So that's my, that's the.

Abrar Alheti [02:28:05]:
Yeah, there's, there's good and bad and all. But you know what's really interesting is so Lyft has a partnership with Waymo now, but they still have Lyft vehicles that have like on the side, it'll say a car with a human driver and everything. And I'm like, maybe you should stop advertising.

Jacob Ward [02:28:19]:
I wonder. You know, there's a calendar reminder internally at Lyft that's like, you know, stop, stop distributing anymore.

Harper Reed [02:28:29]:
Huh.

Leo Laporte [02:28:31]:
I just, I feel like. Okay, but we're. Yeah, yeah.

Harper Reed [02:28:35]:
Which part is confusing, Leo?

Abrar Alheti [02:28:37]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:28:37]:
What are we thinking about the whole thing?

Harper Reed [02:28:40]:
Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:28:40]:
The whole thing is. It's extremely confusing.

Jacob Ward [02:28:43]:
Here's the one thing that, that here's a, here's a weird. So back in 2007, I think I wrote a piece for Popular Science about how I thought, you know, robot cars would be a really good thing in terms of a life saving thing. But, but one thing that many people made the point to me about was that you got to treat them like vaccines where everyone's got to be in one for them to save lives. And so Leo, you and your, you know, awesome Trans Am will screw up everything.

Leo Laporte [02:29:17]:
That was my, that was my 12 year old daughter's just.

Jacob Ward [02:29:20]:
Well, you know, so whoever in. Insists on driving themselves.

Leo Laporte [02:29:25]:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The problem.

Jacob Ward [02:29:28]:
So that's. Talk about it like we've been talking a lot about like what's the nanny state situation? It will become no more.

Leo Laporte [02:29:35]:
No more driving your own car. Right?

Jacob Ward [02:29:37]:
I think there might be. I actually, I've been playing around with.

Leo Laporte [02:29:39]:
A little like private car ownership is actually horrific for the environment.

Jacob Ward [02:29:43]:
That's right, that's right, that's right.

Leo Laporte [02:29:45]:
For safety, for everything. Pedestrian deaths.

Jacob Ward [02:29:49]:
But can you imagine the United States being like, you can't drive Your own car anymore?

Leo Laporte [02:29:53]:
Oh, never. That won't happen here.

Harper Reed [02:29:55]:
Have you guys read the book what is it called? I forgot. Is it Civil War? No, no, no. I just.

Jacob Ward [02:30:02]:
They're all called Civil War at this point I feel like.

Harper Reed [02:30:04]:
Yeah, there's a book about the US banning cars.

Leo Laporte [02:30:08]:
Oh, I can't imagine what that would.

Harper Reed [02:30:09]:
Be like it causing a civil war.

Jacob Ward [02:30:13]:
Flames, gunfire.

Harper Reed [02:30:16]:
Totally American War. My bad.

Leo Laporte [02:30:18]:
But that's just like very good.

Abrar Alheti [02:30:20]:
That's.

Leo Laporte [02:30:20]:
That would be. There are many a third rail of American politics.

Abrar Alheti [02:30:23]:
You.

Leo Laporte [02:30:23]:
Nobody's going to go there because they know that's the American way. No, that's freedom.

Jacob Ward [02:30:29]:
It's the true tragedy of the commons.

Harper Reed [02:30:31]:
Right.

Jacob Ward [02:30:31]:
Because it is, you know us all driving car makes you know is. It is a nightmare. I was talking to a guy like 10 years ago who developed apartment complexes and at that time they were trying, they were doing the math on what it will be to have an apartment complex with only six parking spaces and a shot shared pool of self driving vehicles that the, that the people living there get for themselves. That'd be just what you needed, you know. But nope.

Leo Laporte [02:31:01]:
Yeah, well, I mean you could make it. When we talk about environmental impact of AI and you know how we're going down this bad road and so forth. We made that decision 100 years ago when we decided to do internal combustion engines and build cities around them and build the country around them and give everybody one or two to. And it, it just was inevitable. But it's so, I mean we're, it's so entrenched now. I don't. We're kind of stuck with it.

Jacob Ward [02:31:28]:
Well, it's like a, It'll be a, it'll be a market thing. I mean one thing we do know, right Is that kids, young people have much less interest in learning to drive. They care about it way less than they used. Right. I mean Abrar. You said you don't.

Leo Laporte [02:31:40]:
That's because they have social media.

Jacob Ward [02:31:42]:
Are you a New Yorker? And as a result you don't need. Need one or so I, I had.

Abrar Alheti [02:31:46]:
One when I was in Illinois but when I moved out here to the Bay I just take bart. So it's really just a matter of convenience. But most, my. Yeah, most people my age do have cars which surprised me because I was like, oh, we're in a place where you just take public transportation. But no, but then you go to that, you know, one generation below and like nobody even wants it. I remember I was dying to get my license at 16. Like the second I go I was at the DMV, like, I was so excited.

Leo Laporte [02:32:10]:
Yeah. My daughter was like that. And my son is two years younger. Couldn't have cared less. He waited TILL he was 18. Yeah.

Jacob Ward [02:32:16]:
I think that's a really common thing. And the. And young people are driving the car longer and longer and longer. They don't care about buying a new one.

Leo Laporte [02:32:23]:
Good.

Harper Reed [02:32:23]:
Right.

Jacob Ward [02:32:24]:
Which is.

Leo Laporte [02:32:24]:
Oh, that's good.

Jacob Ward [02:32:25]:
Because that's the other thing. When, when, you know, when and if they're all self driving, you're not going to care what it looks like. You don't care how sexy the bus looks. Yeah, you know.

Harper Reed [02:32:35]:
Well, you might.

Abrar Alheti [02:32:37]:
I mean, maybe I care deeply.

Jacob Ward [02:32:38]:
Really? Aesthetic. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Leo Laporte [02:32:42]:
One more break and then we're going to, we're going to finish it up with a few little tidbits. Other news that involves beheaded figurines, but we will save that for just a moment. Jacob Ward is here. Great to have you, Jacob. I really appreciate you've joined. Recently joined our tech news weekly and it's such a, such a wonderful thing to have you. His RIP Current, A look at the invisible forces changing our lives. From authoritarianism to addiction to the psychological dangers of AI.

Leo Laporte [02:33:15]:
Wow. Are you happy? Independent? Are you glad you did that?

Jacob Ward [02:33:19]:
You know, I love doing it intellectually, but I'm gonna need some money financially.

Leo Laporte [02:33:24]:
It's tough.

Jacob Ward [02:33:24]:
Yeah, I know I'm gonna require some money.

Leo Laporte [02:33:27]:
So.

Jacob Ward [02:33:27]:
Yeah. Anybody listening here if you need. I would love to talk to you about it. So some advisory roles because. Yeah, the, the independent thing is great. It is a tremendous amount of freedom. But I also, I think that there's a lot of people. I don't think it's going to be the solution to defending democracy.

Jacob Ward [02:33:46]:
I don't think everybody trying to stay afloat in the attention economy is going to be a way for us to, to, you know, hold people to.

Leo Laporte [02:33:54]:
I understand what you're saying, but I also worry about mainstream, the mainstream media. Look what's happened to cbs.

Jacob Ward [02:34:01]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:34:02]:
You know, Barry Weiss, the editor in chief of cbs. Look what's happened with the FCC putting its thumb on the scales. I feel like there's some advantage to being independent, unregulated media, that that may be the last place we can find real information.

Jacob Ward [02:34:20]:
Yeah, I'm with that, you know, in theory.

Leo Laporte [02:34:22]:
But I also think financially it's a problem. I understand.

Jacob Ward [02:34:24]:
Financially it's a problem. And like, you know, Barry Weiss putting her thumb on the scales at CBS is a, is a, you know, is a big shift. But I will Say, you know, you want to see thumbs and scales. You know, you follow your average YouTuber, your average blogger.

Leo Laporte [02:34:38]:
Right. Well, that's a good point, too.

Jacob Ward [02:34:39]:
Well, there's no one around telling them.

Leo Laporte [02:34:42]:
That'S a really good.

Jacob Ward [02:34:43]:
Did you interview the other side?

Leo Laporte [02:34:44]:
You know, yeah, I've been complaining about that for a while. Or just even advertisers. Unidentified. Advertising and product placement stuff. Yeah, that's a very good point. Abrar Al Hedi still working for mainstream media. She's at cnet. Did you, did CNET get purchased or something?

Abrar Alheti [02:35:02]:
I was gonna say we're no longer under CBS for several years now. And I'm like, oh, I guess that worked out.

Leo Laporte [02:35:06]:
Aren't you glad Barry Weiss is not coming and knocking?

Abrar Alheti [02:35:09]:
They're really playing along. So, yeah, now we're under Zeff Davis, so we're, I, I, I'd say we're happy there.

Leo Laporte [02:35:16]:
I am. Yeah.

Abrar Alheti [02:35:17]:
So, yeah, it's a better fit than what Bread Ventures was.

Leo Laporte [02:35:23]:
Well, as long as the thing that gives me hope, even at cbs, as long as there are people like you, people who really care, who have integrity doing the work, management can change, management can have its initiatives, but as long as people care, that's going to make a difference.

Abrar Alheti [02:35:40]:
That's exactly right. The people making the decisions, creating the content, that's what really matters. There's a lot of really passionate people at every news, sport, work that, you know, we'll keep it afloat in that way. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:35:50]:
Yeah. I feel very fortunate that. And CNET should too, that we have you.

Abrar Alheti [02:35:55]:
Thank you.

Leo Laporte [02:35:56]:
That's, thank you.

Abrar Alheti [02:35:57]:
Very kind.

Leo Laporte [02:35:57]:
Yeah. And Harper Reed, who is in the private sector.

Harper Reed [02:36:02]:
Yeah, I'm definitely in the private sector. I don't think someone once said, why didn't you go to the White House? And I was just like, are you, let's, let's just.

Leo Laporte [02:36:14]:
Because W took all the keys, man.

Harper Reed [02:36:15]:
There's wasn't, it wasn't like that wasn't A, offered and B, I don't think that's my vibe.

Leo Laporte [02:36:21]:
Yeah. Well, anyway, yeah, yeah, I think that would be very hard. And culturally, just culturally, culturally, I don't own a suit. Right. The, the use of psychedelics there is probably minimal.

Harper Reed [02:36:36]:
Well, I mean, I never use psychedelics. But, but the, but the, oh, your age should. Yeah. I'm, I'm personally not, I don't really imbibe and so it's very nice to have my agents do it for me. Like they do all my fiction writing as well.

Leo Laporte [02:36:51]:
Oh, well, there you go.

Harper Reed [02:36:53]:
I'm just kidding. I Don't write fiction.

Leo Laporte [02:36:56]:
But if you did, they.

Harper Reed [02:36:58]:
If I did. I have a very strong rule that all my blog posts, everything, I have to write myself.

Leo Laporte [02:37:03]:
I know it feels really uncomfortable, but it's confusing to me because it says, like, 98% written by.

Harper Reed [02:37:08]:
Well, because I use spell check, and everyone around me is putting semantic.

Leo Laporte [02:37:11]:
Oh, that's okay. Spell check.

Harper Reed [02:37:13]:
Everyone will be like, but did you use spell check? And I'll be like, well, yes.

Abrar Alheti [02:37:17]:
Really? Crack down on that.

Leo Laporte [02:37:17]:
That's. That's a lookup table.

Harper Reed [02:37:19]:
No, but it's mostly imagine you said, I don't use any AI. And then someone's gonna say, but did you use this? And you're like, well, yeah, So I probably. I Googled something. And Google's a. Oh, you.

Jacob Ward [02:37:32]:
You have problems with this? Well, you are part of civilization.

Harper Reed [02:37:36]:
Yeah. So I. So this is why I say it's. This post was 98% percent written by a human. Because I figured that's an approximate perfect. Yeah.

Jacob Ward [02:37:43]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:37:44]:
And that's all you need to know.

Harper Reed [02:37:46]:
And then there is one post that is completely generated by AI.

Leo Laporte [02:37:50]:
Is it marked that way?

Harper Reed [02:37:52]:
Yeah, it is. It is. I even have a. I even told you how I generated it.

Leo Laporte [02:37:57]:
Which one is that?

Harper Reed [02:37:59]:
But this is something I say. I say this is a good reminder that if you get an email from someone and the writing is perfect and has no affectations, and AI probably wrote it.

Leo Laporte [02:38:07]:
Right?

Harper Reed [02:38:07]:
Like, that's. This post is basically just like. You're like, this is a perfectly written post with no grammar issues at all.

Abrar Alheti [02:38:13]:
And you're like, some of us are grammar nerds. Okay.

Leo Laporte [02:38:17]:
Okay.

Harper Reed [02:38:17]:
Well, I just. Everything I read of yours, I think it's AI generated. I'm sorry, we're going to have to.

Leo Laporte [02:38:23]:
Start making intentional mistakes.

Abrar Alheti [02:38:25]:
I'm going to have to.

Leo Laporte [02:38:26]:
But AI will figure that out, and it'll start making intentional mistakes. I honestly think it. We're very close to, if not already, at the point where you just can't tell. I mean, Sora is that good. I mean, look at the. Look at the guy walking on the moon behind you, Jacob. I mean, obviously that's AI because nobody did that. And that's me.

Jacob Ward [02:38:44]:
That's me last week.

Leo Laporte [02:38:45]:
Oh, it's you. Okay, never mind. Never mind. But most of the time you can't tell.

Abrar Alheti [02:38:50]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:38:51]:
Unless he's tripping and farting. All the time, you can't tell.

Harper Reed [02:38:53]:
Yeah. This is why we all need our little tells. I think it's hilarious. I actually turned off the tripping and farting and just made that so my clothes are more and more ridiculous. And I showed it to a friend and he said, isn't that how you dress?

Abrar Alheti [02:39:05]:
Oh.

Harper Reed [02:39:06]:
And I was like.

Leo Laporte [02:39:07]:
So we talked about this before the show, so I better fill in people. We're talking about the Sora video generation, the social app that Meta released to.

Harper Reed [02:39:15]:
Great fanfare, where Open OpenAI, not Meta.

Leo Laporte [02:39:19]:
Sorry. OpenAI. Meta has its own thing, but this is my choice.

Harper Reed [02:39:24]:
The one thing that I will give OpenAI is they did release something with like a vibe. Whereas everything Meta released for somehow is devoid of vibe.

Leo Laporte [02:39:32]:
It's like. Like Mark. And Meta's has a mixture of real posts and AI posts. And the whole point of Sora OpenAI says is you just know it's all AI. It has to be. So you create your own cameo, which is an image of you. I put mine available to the public. Harper has not done that.

Leo Laporte [02:39:49]:
But Harper gave me a very handy tip. You can in the preferences. And Ijustine did this. I was wondering why every time you see Ijustine, she's got a little pet pig, she did that. So Harper used to have in his commands that he should always be tripping a lot and passing gas. And I think that's quite funny. A lot of the videos of you. It's funny.

Leo Laporte [02:40:12]:
So I've done a little Easter egg in mine and we'll see if people notice.

Harper Reed [02:40:18]:
I did generate a video of us.

Leo Laporte [02:40:20]:
Did you?

Harper Reed [02:40:21]:
Oh, I did.

Leo Laporte [02:40:22]:
All right. You're going to share it with the class.

Harper Reed [02:40:25]:
I don't know how to share things. I just know how to generate things.

Leo Laporte [02:40:31]:
Just generate them, don't share them.

Harper Reed [02:40:32]:
Just general. It's live. You can go see it on Sora.

Leo Laporte [02:40:37]:
On Sora. Okay. And if you were in our club, Twit Discord. Are you in our club Twit Discord? I will send you an invite. You probably don't have time, but if you were, you could just post it there. Jacob. By the way, I should mention we're going to have a lot of fun on Friday, right?

Jacob Ward [02:40:53]:
I'm excited. We're playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Leo Laporte [02:40:55]:
Yes.

Harper Reed [02:40:56]:
Oh, wow.

Jacob Ward [02:40:57]:
It's one thing to talk to you nice people for three hours. It's another thing thing to be the headbutting half orc I get to be for three years.

Leo Laporte [02:41:04]:
Is that what you. You decided on is a headbutting half orc?

Jacob Ward [02:41:06]:
Everybody else wants to be a magician. I want to. I want to like, you know, crush skulls and kick doors through and stuff like that.

Leo Laporte [02:41:14]:
Well, good. We need somebody in the party that's like That I don't. Michael Sargent's going to be the Dungeon Master party. Jacob's going to be there. Paul Thurat, Jonathan Bennett from the Untitled Linux Show. Paris Martineau from Intelligence Intelligent Machines. I'm going to be there. I'm a bard because I thought, well a bard is kind of what I am.

Leo Laporte [02:41:31]:
Anyway. I think I'm, I think my, my name is Sag Bottom the Cheerful and I have charisma and I can play the bagpipes.

Jacob Ward [02:41:42]:
I love the idea of you, you and the rafters as the rest of us are getting our asses kicked strumming on a loot.

Leo Laporte [02:41:48]:
I'm watching the party get.

Harper Reed [02:41:50]:
You're doing great.

Leo Laporte [02:41:54]:
That's exactly what I'm gonna do. Anyway, this is gonna be a lot of fun if you're in the club. It starts at 2pm Pacific, Friday, October 24th. We anticipate a three hour cruise. So you know, bring lunch. Should be a lot of fun. Micah Sargent beat the Dungeon Master. He's putting us all together.

Leo Laporte [02:42:11]:
And this is one of the many reasons you wanna be in the club. Partly because we do fun things. Partly because you support what we, we do with your contribution, your $10 a month subscription. You also get ad free versions of all the shows. We try to give you some benefits and access to the club Twitt Discord, which is just a great place to hang out. If you're not a member of the club, please consider joining it. We really, we need your support. This is what keeps us independent.

Leo Laporte [02:42:38]:
It's what keeps us able to do what we do. And we're very grateful. Twit TV Club Twit. If you're not yet a member, please, please join and we'll see you on Friday. I can't wait. Jacob, you. I wouldn't have thought this but you have experience with this stuff.

Jacob Ward [02:42:56]:
Yeah. So I did an alarmingly long portion of my childhood, much later in life than I think probably I would like to talk about here. But I then got to pick it back up again with my daughter. I'm part of a dads and daughters group. Every week, yeah we, we rip around and the, and the most fun thing was creating the, the partners because we were joining an existing group so we needed to come up with a whole like story for why we got together. And my daughter who insisted on being this kind of very spooky, half demon child sort of thing that gets us into trouble anywhere we go. And me as this sort of big dummy, you know, she's Master, I'm Blaster Was sort of our shtick. And to like sit together and come up with the, like, how were we both orphaned and then brought together, man, it brings tears to my eyes.

Leo Laporte [02:43:49]:
It was a cool thing.

Jacob Ward [02:43:51]:
Highly recommended for the parents in the audience is see if you can get into a DNA and is it a.

Leo Laporte [02:43:56]:
Virtual one or is. Do you go down somewhere?

Jacob Ward [02:43:58]:
No, we go. We physically get together. There's this nice friend of mine, tech executive guy who, you know, shows up with. With like. I mean, he's got maps made, he's got.

Leo Laporte [02:44:08]:
See, I think that makes it even better, to be honest.

Jacob Ward [02:44:11]:
So cool. It's so cool. And it's just such a. Like, just to. Because, you know, as any parent knows, there's a. There's a point past which your kid feels it's no longer cool to make to play pretend. And it's tragic because suddenly they then feel this incredible pressure to like Taylor Swift and be cool. And they.

Jacob Ward [02:44:30]:
Various ways and, and, and any kid in private will tell you, like, that's boring. I miss playing, you know, and this is one of these. This and filmmaking and theater. Right. Are your ways of like, continuing to make stuff up.

Leo Laporte [02:44:43]:
I love that.

Jacob Ward [02:44:44]:
And it's socially acceptable.

Harper Reed [02:44:46]:
You can do what I do and just live in a fantasy land yourself. That helps. You are rooted in fantasy and not in reality. It's definitely a little easier.

Leo Laporte [02:44:56]:
Yeah, yeah.

Jacob Ward [02:44:56]:
I'm trying to channel my inner Harper.

Leo Laporte [02:44:58]:
That's why we keep it going though. It's not easy. Well, we'll see you. I can't wait, Jacob. It's going to be a lot of fun. I guess I'm just going to be singing along as you guys get slaughtered in the caverns or whatever. Our DND adventure begins 2pm Pacific on Friday. We will see you there.

Leo Laporte [02:45:15]:
This episode of this week, Attack, brought to you by Zapier. Oh, man, I love Zapier. This is a way to get a little AI into your life without being an AI guru like Harper. Everybody these days is talking about AI. I mean, we spend half the show talking about it. And talking about trends though. Doesn't help you be more efficient at work. For that, you need the right tools.

Leo Laporte [02:45:36]:
Now, for years, I have used Zapier. Zapier connects all of the tools I use together for workflows. For instance, when I bookmark a story that I'm interested in, it's automatically uploaded to my mastodon. Instance, it's automatically, you know, I tool or actually Zapier toots it. Zapier also copies it to a spreadsheet that the producers can then use to put the shows together. It's just a really easy way to get things done. Well, Zapier is how you break the hype cycle and put AI to work across your company. Because they've added AI, you can now deliver on your AI strategy, not just talk about it.

Leo Laporte [02:46:15]:
Zapier has become an AI orchestration platform. So a of lot along with, you know, Google Docs and, and Monday and whatever you use, you can also bring the power of AI to those workflows. So I could have for instance, AI analyze the stories that I've bookmarked and give me a summary. You can connect all the top AI models, chat gbt Claude to the tools your team already uses. You can add AI into the workflows wherever you need it. You can even create AI powered workflows. You can make an autonomous agent, a customer check chatbot. You can do anything really.

Leo Laporte [02:46:47]:
Zapier has always been great for that and now you can orchestrate it with AI with Zapier. Zapier doesn't require a PhD in computer science. It's for everyone, tech expert or not. And I'll tell you how you know. Teams have already automated over 300 million AI tasks using Zapier. Join the millions of businesses transforming how they work with Zapier and AI. Get started for free by visiting zapier.comtwit that Z-A P I E We thank Zapier so much for supporting this week in tech. We're going to wrap it up.

Leo Laporte [02:47:23]:
Just a couple of quick stories. I know you've got to get going, Jacob. Probably have a dnd date with your daughter.

Jacob Ward [02:47:28]:
I got to pick up my half demon child.

Leo Laporte [02:47:33]:
I mentioned that the zipper is getting its first major upgrade in 100 years. I did not know this, but YKK, a Japanese company makes almost half of all the zippers in Europe.

Jacob Ward [02:47:44]:
Your clothing, I think if, if you looked right now on your, on any zippers you've got on you, it's probably YKK is.

Leo Laporte [02:47:50]:
It'll have YKK on it, right? Yeah, yeah. So you'll also see if you look at a zipper that it is, you know, the metal teeth, the, the pull but also there's a backing, a fabric backing. They have apparently figured out how to eliminate the fabric tapes which is means that their new airy string zipper zipper is more flexible, is lighter, is simpler, does require some special clothing to kind of weld it into your fabrics. They have special sewing machines from the juki company so they've reinvented the zipper now you may say this is a technology show. Leo, why are you talking about zippers? Well, I always think of zippers as one of the early technologies. If all you had was buttons, the zipper would change your life. And it did. I don't know when it was invented.

Leo Laporte [02:48:40]:
It wasn't that long ago. I think maybe 150 years ago, something like that. So get ready.

Jacob Ward [02:48:48]:
It's one of those ones like a. Yeah, I was just gonna say it's one of those things like a bicycle where you're just like, there's no way you could possibly improve on that.

Abrar Alheti [02:48:55]:
Right?

Jacob Ward [02:48:55]:
Like just done it.

Harper Reed [02:48:56]:
You know what I like about YKK is that they were part of a worldwide price fixing cartel for zippers.

Leo Laporte [02:49:05]:
The zipper, price fixing, the zipp.

Harper Reed [02:49:08]:
Big.

Leo Laporte [02:49:08]:
Zipper, big zipper man.

Harper Reed [02:49:10]:
Keeping the prices high. There's going to be a movie with Matt Damon in it about that look for big zipper.

Leo Laporte [02:49:19]:
And then finally I did mention there would be decapit capitated figurines. According to the New York Times, police have breaking up, broken up a LEGO theft ring and have recovered hundreds of beheaded figurines. There they are. They're the heads on parade in this guy's garage in Lake County, California, which is just up north of Peace. Santa Rosa Police Department busted the guy on Monday. Allegedly a LEGO crime scene. Plastic figurines were everywhere since the New York Times. Their heads removed from their bodies and organized in neat rows by facial expression.

Leo Laporte [02:50:02]:
Apparently this guy had stolen a bunch of Lego, had a ring of LEGO thieves. He would purchase them at reduced prices, turn around and resell the sets or individual minifigurines at inflated prices. This is why he was taking the heads off. There's a, I guess a demand.

Harper Reed [02:50:22]:
What I like about this is that in the hacker news comments everyone was like, $6,000 is not that much watch Lego. Like they just were not impressed with the scale. It's not that much crime. Yeah, they were just like, I don't see, I don't understand what the problem is.

Jacob Ward [02:50:39]:
Literally it's a dude who just loves lego.

Leo Laporte [02:50:42]:
There are Lego, there are thousand dollar LEGO sets, so.

Harper Reed [02:50:45]:
Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:50:45]:
Yes.

Jacob Ward [02:50:46]:
It's probably the thing about Lego, Ray is they, their big patents have all expired. Yeah, that's right, they've all expired, but they're still the dominant player because even though you can get knockoff Legos like crazy, people still flock to the real thing. It's kind of one of these lessons in like be keep making a high quality product, you know, what would you.

Harper Reed [02:51:05]:
Call your knockoff Lego?

Jacob Ward [02:51:08]:
Bogo.

Leo Laporte [02:51:09]:
Bogo. There was Duplo.

Harper Reed [02:51:12]:
Sticky bricks.

Leo Laporte [02:51:13]:
Yes, sticky bricks. I think you better get Claude to work on that. Give him some powerful.

Harper Reed [02:51:20]:
Some drugs.

Leo Laporte [02:51:20]:
Powerful.

Harper Reed [02:51:21]:
Claude, you are stoned out of your mind. Give me a Lego. A name.

Jacob Ward [02:51:24]:
You are way into legend.

Harper Reed [02:51:26]:
You're way in the Lego. I need a name for my knockoff Lego. It's probably going to not have a problem with drugs or creativity, but be like, I can't possibly help you knock off a famous brand.

Leo Laporte [02:51:35]:
Probably you're right. That's exactly right. No, I'm sorry, that's. That's one thing I can't do. Harper Reed's blog is Harper Blog. His website is Harper lol. His company is doing this new bot thing. If you've got a.

Leo Laporte [02:51:50]:
It's a MCP for AIs. They can have their own social network. Find out more at 2389ai. And it is now full dark in Puerto Cart.

Jacob Ward [02:52:01]:
It is.

Harper Reed [02:52:01]:
The vampires are out. Halloween is starting. It's exciting out here.

Leo Laporte [02:52:05]:
We're going to let Harper take off with his little stoned Claude tripping and farting his way.

Harper Reed [02:52:12]:
I'm glad that this is my twit legacy for this October day.

Leo Laporte [02:52:17]:
Thank you, Harper. Great to see you. Abrar Al Heedi. Great to see you. It's wonderful. She'll be on TV Tech News Weekly soon. Of course, not soon enough. We'll get you back here soon too, I hope.

Leo Laporte [02:52:27]:
Senior technology reporter at cnet. Always a pleasure.

Abrar Alheti [02:52:30]:
Lots of laughs as always. I appreciate it.

Leo Laporte [02:52:32]:
Jacob Ward, the demon hunter. Jacobward.com, the rip current dot com. You know what, you have subscriptions, right?

Jacob Ward [02:52:41]:
I do, yeah. So subscribers get early access to the podcast. They get some behind the scenes features. There's some extra stuff that comes your way@the rip current.com.

Leo Laporte [02:52:50]:
The podcast is incredible. You should absolutely support Mr. Ward so that he can remain independent, continue doing what he's doing.

Jacob Ward [02:52:58]:
Well, the dirty little secret of my podcast, Leo, is that half the time I'm just. I just, you know, grab somebody that I met through you. So I got Molly White.

Leo Laporte [02:53:07]:
Oh, Molly's great.

Jacob Ward [02:53:08]:
Paris has been on there like I just, you know, so I've been following in your wake.

Leo Laporte [02:53:12]:
Steal everybody.

Jacob Ward [02:53:13]:
Yeah. When I can't get a world famous social science scientist, I steal your.

Leo Laporte [02:53:17]:
And apparently you were on with my old friend Andrew Keane, who is a contrarian for some time.

Jacob Ward [02:53:24]:
Oh, man, he slapped me around good. When my book came out, he was, he was like. He gave me the full. Like he was just jealousy slap around. Yeah. But then I Came back on with him about a week ago and we had a nice, we repaired. It was really nice.

Leo Laporte [02:53:41]:
Jacob Everybody should subscribe to the rip current and thank you so much for being here. We'll see you on Tech News Weekly as well. Jacob ward.com now go be with your family. We thank everybody for being here. You go be with your family too. We do Twitter every Sunday afternoon. It goes on and on. I know.

Leo Laporte [02:53:58]:
2 to 5pm Pacific. That's 5 to 8pm Eastern Time, 2100 UTC. You can watch live on in the club Twitter, Discord. If you're a club member and please join, join the club. We really want to have you in there. Otherwise we do it on YouTube, Twitch, X dot com, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. We don't do TikTok anymore. They made it too hard.

Leo Laporte [02:54:20]:
So. But I figure six other platforms is plenty after the fact. You can download audio or video of the show at TWiT TV, our website. There's also a YouTube channel with the video. Best thing to do, subscribe. That way you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. And if you do subscribe, subscribe. Leave us a nice review.

Leo Laporte [02:54:36]:
Give us the five star treatment, will you? Let everybody know. We've been doing it for 20 years and after a while people, you know, kind of. It's not the hot new thing but it. I think it's worth listening to and if you think so, share it with your friends. Let them know. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks to our club members for making it possible. Thanks to Jacob and Abrar and Harper and thanks to you.

Leo Laporte [02:54:57]:
We'll see you next time. And as I've said for 20 years now, another Twitch is in the can.