Technology
Sora and the Infinite Slop Feeds + ChatGPT Goes to Therapy + Hot Mess Express
In this episode of Hard Fork, hosts Kevin and Casey dive into the latest advancements in AI-generated video content from major tech players like Google, Meta, and OpenAI. They discuss the implications...
Sora and the Infinite Slop Feeds + ChatGPT Goes to Therapy + Hot Mess Express
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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Here at the HardFork show we're big sleep maxors.
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We're always trying to improve our sleep.
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Yeah.
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Because, you know, podcasting is a sport
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and you have to remain in peak physical condition
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if you want to perform at the highest levels.
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And so I noticed a story in the verge this week
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that said eight sleep, which makes the bed that I happen to sleep in.
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It's one of these beds that, you know,
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sort of automatically cools and heats
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according to your preferences
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and can raise and lower to stop you from snoring.
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Wow, Flex.
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They have a new water-chilled pillow cover, Kevin.
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Wow.
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And I wanted to ask if you could guess how much it costs $100.
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That would be a really great and fair price
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for a water-chilled pillow cover.
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The actual cost is $1,049.
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Come on.
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And I want to be clear, it doesn't come with the pillow.
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You've just supply your own pillow.
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It's B-Y-O-P for the eight sleep water-chilled pillow cover.
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Wow.
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So obviously I signed this to my boyfriend
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and I was like, what are we thinking about this?
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And he said, honestly, I think my pillow experience is already fine.
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And I thought, thank God.
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Have you heard about these new quarter-eye pillows?
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They're selling?
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No, I haven't. Are they from the 70s?
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No, but they're making headlines.
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I'm Kevin Russo Tech-Holmes at the New York Times.
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I'm Casey Neumann from Platformer.
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And this is hard for this week.
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Don't slump till you get enough.
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We're talking about the new AI-generated video feeds
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from Google, Meta, and Open AI.
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Then, psychotherapist Gary Greenberg stops by
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to discuss his essay on treating chat GPT as a patient
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and why he thinks we should pull the plug.
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And finally, let's get on track.
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The Hot Mess Express has returned.
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Chug-a-chug-a-choo-choo.
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How many chug-as was that?
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Just two. Okay.
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Casey, I don't know if this is on your calendar,
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but it was recently International Podcast Day.
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Oh, happy International Podcast Day to you,
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and your family, Kevin.
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So I have a perfect gift for you this year.
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What's that?
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A subscription to New York Times Audio.
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Wow. Tell me what comes to that.
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That's it.
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So this is, of course, the subscription we've talked about
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on the show in the past.
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You get access to the entire back catalog
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of not just hard fork,
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but all of the other New York Times podcasts.
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But now, in addition to that,
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with an audio subscription,
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you'll now get subscriber-exclusive episodes
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from across the New York Times podcast universe.
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That means more of the daily, modern love
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and Ezra Klein in your life.
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You know, I've been trying to get more
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Ezra Klein in my life, but he won't text me back.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, well, I don't blame him.
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So if you are already a New York Times subscriber,
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thank you, this is already included in your subscription.
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But if you have not yet subscribed,
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then maybe this is the time to do it.
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To learn more, go to nytimes.com slash podcasts,
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or you can subscribe directly from Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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Well, Kevin, it's Slop Week here on the hard fork show.
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Slop, see you drop.
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Don't Slop till you get enough.
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If you're new to the world of Slop, Slop, of course,
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refers to AI-generated art and video.
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And to say that it is having a moment right now,
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Kevin, I think would be an understatement.
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Yes, I think this was the week that AI-generated video
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kind of went from something that was, you know,
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experimental and early and, you know,
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various tools had been released.
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But this was the week that I think it really
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sort of crossed the chasm into the mainstream.
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It really did.
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And so today, we want to talk about what the big AI labs
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are doing here, why we think they are doing it.
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And maybe what are some of the implications of living in a world
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where maybe the majority of video that we are watching
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is synthetic and generated by large language models.
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Yes.
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Shall we get into it?
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Let's get into it.
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Well, Kevin, before we flop into Slop,
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we're going to do a quick crop and say,
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what our disclosures are.
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Yes, I work at The New York Times,
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which is suing OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright violations.
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My boyfriend works in Anthropic.
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All right.
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So Google, Meta and OpenAI all put out tools
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over the past several weeks.
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And let's talk about them in order.
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This whole thing begins with Google DeepMind.
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They have a very good video generation model
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called VO3.
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And on September 16th, YouTube has an event
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where they announce that they are going to integrate
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a version of VO3, VO3, fast, into YouTube shorts.
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Right.
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So you'll just be able to make a video
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and post it on YouTube from within YouTube
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with this model, VO3.
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That's right.
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And this is a free tool.
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Users can create videos that are up to eight seconds long
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using a text prop.
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They can also just upload a still image,
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turn that into a video.
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YouTube will label them as AI generated.
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And this is basically YouTube's way of introducing Slop
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into the YouTube feed.
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Yes.
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So I have not seen a ton of obvious AI generated content
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on YouTube yet.
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But I have seen them going on other platforms,
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Facebook, Reels, even on X and TikTok.
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People are sort of using VO3 to generate scenes
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and little videos and posting them there.
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Yeah.
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So I think it's fair to say VO3 didn't make that much
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of a splash.
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Then last Thursday,
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meta gets into the game and releases vibes.
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Mark Zuckerberg in a post on Instagram
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announces that a preview of the new social feed
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is available in the meta AI app.
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If you wear the meta ray bands,
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this is the app that you use to sort of get photos
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and videos off of your glasses and on your phone.
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And Zuckerberg posts a bunch of short videos,
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including one that features a sort of like cartoon version
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of him.
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His caption is dad trying to calculate the tip
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on a $30 lunch.
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And then he pairs that with the real audio of him
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at the meeting with Donald Trump,
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in which he says, oh gosh,
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I think it's probably going to be,
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I don't know, at least $600 billion.
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And my question here is,
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what joke was Mark Zuckerberg trying to make?
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Do you understand the joke I don't?
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Is the joke that he's bad at math?
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I think the joke is that dads are bad at doing tips.
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I don't know. It's like a self-deprecating dad joke.
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But why does every new social product
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that meta releases sound like it was conceived of
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by the Steve Busch and me carrying a skateboard?
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How do you do fellow kids character?
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Like calling this vibes, I don't know, man, it's cringe.
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Calling this vibes is cringe,
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says a 40 year old man.
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I'm not 40, I'm 38.
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So I did go into vibes and take a look at it.
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It's essentially like TikTok,
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but if TikTok were populated just by little animated AI generated shorts.
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Yeah, my take on vibes is that this is Coco Mellon for adults, okay?
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It is completely disconnected from like friends or family for the most part.
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It's just sort of creators making these somewhat fantastical,
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surreal, unsettling images.
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And they just sort of wash over you in this endless feed.
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There's no real point to them.
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There's no real narrative.
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It is just like pure visual stimulation.
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Right, it's stuff like, you know, like,
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oh, a panda riding a skateboard or like, you know,
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like an inchworm on the moon or something like that.
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It's just people kind of testing what this thing can do.
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And the answer appears to be not much
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that I would personally be interested in watching.
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Yeah, and so for both Zuckerberg and Alexander Wang,
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the comments on their posts are just brutal.
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Right.
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Like the majority of the comments that I saw on Zuckerberg's posts
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are along the lines of gang nobody wants this
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or drained an entire lake for this.
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And then on Alexander Wang's post on X,
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where he had said something to the effect of, you know,
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we at Metta are delighted to announce the new vibes app.
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Somebody quote tweeted it, this was my favorite one.
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Did you see this?
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This was the dog.
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They said, we at Metta are delighted to announce
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we've created the infinite slot machine that destroys children
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from the hit book.
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Don't create the infinite slot machine that destroys children.
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So what do you make of the sort of highly negative reaction
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that Metta got here?
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I mean, I was not surprised to see Metta announcing
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a version of essentially a social network with no actual people on it.
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I think this is the direction that they've been moving
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for several years now.
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It's barely even a social network.
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There's really almost no social component to it at all.
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Yeah, it's just like what if TikTok, but no people?
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That is sort of the idea behind vibes.
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And I think I was not surprised by the negative reaction.
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I think Metta is just like a company that has negatively
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polarized a lot of people.
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And so it just seemed very like brazen and thirsty.
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And also like, yeah, like people don't necessarily want this.
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I think there are a lot of people out there who see something like vibes
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and just go, oh, this is like the worst possible application of this technology.
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Yeah, I think that this is the consequence of building a company that people do not trust.
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Right? People have a lot of scar tissue from the world that Facebook and Instagram
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wrought. And now that the company is increasingly moving away from friends and family
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to this new model where we will truly just show you anything if we think it can get you to look.
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Of course, people don't think that that sounds like a great idea.
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Right? It doesn't seem like there's a lot of heart there.
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So I can't say I was surprised by the reaction and I'll be curious to see how Metta responds to it.
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So that leads us to the big thing that happened this week, Kevin, which is that on Tuesday,
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OpenAI released their latest AI video model, Sora 2. And alongside of that,
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there is a new app right now. It's iOS only. It's only in the US and Canada.
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It is called Sora. And you and I got our hands on it.
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Yes. So Sora is the name of both the model that powers this and the app that OpenAI has built
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around this. And you can only access it right now if you have an invite code.
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They're being pretty strict rolling this out. But you get your invite code. You plug it in.
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You sign up and you open up Sora the app. And it is essentially the same thing as vibes.
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It is a sort of very tick tock style feed of these vertical videos. You sort of swipe endlessly
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from one to the other. There's like a for you section of it. And we should talk a little bit about
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the app and how it works. Yeah. Well, the main thing that I found interesting as I was getting
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set up, Kevin, is how much this is a social app, right? In order to come into Sora,
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you have to be invited by presumably a friend. And once you sign up, it asks you to create what
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it calls a cameo of you. So you sort of say a few words into the camera. You move your head
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around a little bit. And it uses this to create a digital likeness of you that you can then drop
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into any situation. And if you like, you can change your settings so that any of your friends on
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the app can do the same thing with your digital likeness. So right away when you join Sora,
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you've actually been given something to do, which is make a friend and then make some stuff
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involving you and your friends in AI. And so I think we have a lot to get into about this.
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But I just want to say of the three things that we've discussed so far, I think OpenAI had the
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most complete thought about what their app was. Yes. So tell me about your initial experience with Sora.
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So there's the feed, which you can see all the stuff that other people are making that seem to be
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unlaunched at least, like a lot of videos of like Sam Altman in various compromising situations,
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because the people on the app were mostly employees of OpenAI and they were sort of,
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you know, having fun with the boss and his likeness. And to be clear, Sam had his setting set,
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or and I believe still does at the time of this recording so that anyone could take his likeness
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and put it in any situation. Yes. So he was sort of the main character of Sora on day one.
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I made a few videos. I made one of me and my colleague Mike Isaac in a 1920s slapstick film.
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So you can kind of see it's like black and white. It sort of looks like AI newsies. And you know,
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he slips on a banana peel. It's it's a good time. I also made a video of Sam Altman testifying
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before Congress while Casey Newton dressed in a clown suit dances behind him. We should also watch that.
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I want to watch. All right. I'm going to watch this one.
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Ranking member, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Artificial intelligence
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progressive quickly and it's critical that we work together to ensure its benefits are widely
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shared and risks managed responsibly. I have so much clown makeup on that it really just looks
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like a generic. I do not think it actually resembles me in any way. But there is something very
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funny about saying that's a fine Sam as he testifies. Yes. The original prompt I gave it was
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C-SPAN footage of Sam Altman testifying in Congress while Senator Casey Newton yells at him for
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poisoning the information ecosystem. But that one set off the content violation guard rails.
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And so I had to change the prompt and make you a clown instead.
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Well, it's not the first time I've been a clown in the show. Now I of course also want to see if I
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can make something featuring you. And so one of the things that I made was you showing off your
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large collection of stuffed animals. I started collecting about five years ago. Wow, that's a lot.
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They're all in great shape. This one was the first classic teddy bear from my grandma. It's a
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normal. The bow really pops doesn't get my voice right. But the video is very interesting because
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you do when you when you sign up for Sora, you do say a few words into the camera. I mean,
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it's literally like three numbers. And this is sort of how they're verifying your identity. So you
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could use that to create an instant voice clown. It wouldn't be that good. But like when you watch
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the videos that people have made of Sam Altman, his voice actually does sound a lot like him.
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Yes. And so I'm curious if you know over time they're going to be tuning people's voices to how
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they actually sound because there are a couple that people have made of me where I sound a little
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bit more like myself. Most of them though, I don't think I sound like myself. Yeah. Anyways,
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I also made a video of me dunking a basketball over you. Show me what you've got.
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Come right up. Just bring it up. We go. Oh, no way over you, man. Yeah.
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The best part about this video is that I stop about three feet short of the basketball
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do not actually dunk the basketball and land on my ass. Also, it got our height ratios very
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wrong. Like you're only like an inch or two taller than me in this video. And yeah, you miss
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the dunk. It's a terrible dunk. I did like one thing about this video, which is that I have a
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slam and body. So thank you to the team over at opening eye who made that possible. I also appear
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to be balding in this video, which I don't think is reflective of reality. It's actually a prediction.
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Chachabit. He knows something. Don't. They're keeping close track of that airline,
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Ruth. Yeah. Okay. Well, that was a very long detour through a handful of videos that we made.
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Give me a sort of like your general impressions of why all of this is happening right now. Why is
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it that just in the last month? Google, meta and open AI have all put out these AI video generators.
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I mean, I think there are a couple reasons. The first and most obvious is that they see this as
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an opportunity to compete for attention and advertising dollars, which flow from attention.
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We've talked about Italian brain rot and other AI generated content going viral on TikTok.
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Facebook has been full of AI generated content for months now. And so I think these companies
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just say to themselves, well, if this is kind of the direction that things are moving, we want to
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be there. We want to create an experience for people. And maybe you don't have to blend it with
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human generated content. Maybe it doesn't have to be one out of every 10 videos on your TikTok
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feed is AI. What if you just had a TikTok that was all AI? Another reason I think they're doing this
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is that they have these video models that are now getting quite good. And this is sort of one way
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to put those models into products. Yeah. I think that's right. I also imagine that maybe these
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companies are starting to feel some pressure to bring some returns to investors. They are
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investing a staggering amount of money into building out infrastructure that lets them serve
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these models. And these video tools might be a way of making that money back in some form
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through advertising or other means. So that seems like maybe a reason to me as well.
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I mean, if you look at what people like Sam Altman have been saying about these products over
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the past couple of days, they are sort of making this justification about, oh, we need to not only
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fund our ongoing research to build a GI using these video products, but they have this justification
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for why building these video models is going to let them create these rich visual virtual environments
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that can be used for things like robotics later on. And I would just like to say, quoting a former
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president of ours, that sounds like Malarkey to me. I do not think that this is sort of part of their
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AGI research agenda. I think this is sort of side route that they have gone off onto to try to make
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some extra money. Well, so let's talk about how successful we think these products are going to be.
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If I had to rate the reception of these models, I would say VO3 basically didn't make much of
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an impression at all. Response to meta vibes is pretty bad. Response to Sora, at least over the
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first day seemed pretty good. Do we think there is a there there? Do we think that any of these
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companies are figuring out the next generation of like mobile video consumption or entertainment?
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I think there's a question here that's like, will AI generated video be popular? And I think both
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you and I feel like the answer to that question is probably yes, for some subset of people. I think
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the very young and the very old are actually probably who I would predict would be the most into
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AI generated video. Because we're already seeing stuff like Italian brain rot that's very popular
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with teenagers. I also think there's a lot of content on Facebook today that is AI generated,
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that is reaching primarily an audience of boomers and older folks. They seem to be quite into it.
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So that's what I would predict. Like is that this technology will be popular with some users
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in those demographics? I think it's a separate question to say, will any of this be the seeds of a new
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social media product that is popular? And I think there I'm much more skeptical. I do not think that
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Sora will have hundreds of millions of users a year from now. I do not think that meta vibes will
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have hundreds of millions of users. I think these are basically going to be tools for people to create
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stuff that then they post onto the social networks where they already have lots of people that
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they follow and pay attention to and where their friends and family already are. Interesting. I think I
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am slightly more optimistic in the open AI case. I think that Sora arrived looking better and feeling
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smarter than I expected that it would. I think they're on to something with these cameos. It is fun
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for me to make videos of you doing things like it just is. And I can imagine wanting to do that in
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three months and six months and a year from now. And you can imagine a world where I can bring in
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three or four or five cameos. You can imagine a world where celebrities allowed their likenesses to
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be used in some set of cases. And now I can make videos of myself, you know, wrestling a WWE superstar.
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And that's sort of interesting to me. Now can you build a whole social network around that? I think
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is sort of a different question. But do these Sora cameos become a kind of table stakes feature
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of the TikToks and Instagrams of the future? I actually believe that yes. And that if nothing else
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open AI has probably created a kind of new primitive for these social networks that they're just
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going to use from now on. So I'm just going to say now, like keep an eye on this. I would not
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actually be surprised if a year from now this had tens of millions of active users. I'll think
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the other side we'll see we'll see this right. All right. We have now made our bets.
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Who do you think is right? Sound off in the comments. Now let's talk about the dark side of all
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of this Kevin, which is I'm seeing a lot of commentary around this on social media this week
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to the effect of oh my god, we are so cooked. What are some of the ways we might be cooked as this
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stuff spreads throughout our world? I mean, I think the obvious ones are that we are
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making it quite easy for people to create deepfakes synthetic content with not that many guardrails.
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And people have been warning for years about the effect that that could have on our news ecosystem,
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on our information ecosystem. I thought it was very telling and worrisome that one of the first
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videos I saw from Sora was a video of someone being framed for a crime. And it was created by
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a member of the Sora team as sort of like a ha ha look, we've made a deepfake of Sam
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Altman stealing some GPUs from Target and getting busted for it. But it does not take a lot of
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imagination to imagine that this could be used for sort of generating videos of people in compromising
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positions that look very realistic. And so I think that worries me, these sort of misinformation
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angle. But I also just I don't know that I think this world that we're moving into of the kind of
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AI generated feed of hyper personalized, very stimulating videos is a good direction. I am
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generally an AI optimist when it comes to how this technology is going to be used out in the world.
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But I hate this like I hate the AI slop feeds. They make me very nervous. I think the people inside
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these companies, some of them are very nervous too. I do not like the idea of pointing these
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giant AI supercomputers at people's dopamine receptors and just like feeding them an endless
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diet of like hyper personalized stimulating videos. I think that developing these tools risks
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poisoning the well for the whole AI industry. Like there's going to be regulation of this. There's
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going to be congressional hearings about this. I think a lot of people are going to end up, you know,
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feeling conflicted about this kind of product. And I think that's why you saw such a strong reaction
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to meta and vibes from the rest of the AI industry. And I'm a little unsure why open AI is not
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getting the same reception. Yeah. Well, how do you feel about the argument that yes,
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sure, Kevin, there is some danger here. But also this is an incredibly powerful creative tool.
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And that if you are a young person and you want to make something and you don't have a giant
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budget to go out and make a Hollywood movie now using a free tool that's on the phone you already
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have, you can just make creations and be a creative person in the world. Does that hold any water
spk_0
with you? I feel like sort of neutral about that. I feel like yes, there will be people who use
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this stuff to do interesting and creative things. There's nothing inherently wrong with building
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products for entertaining people. But this is not why open AI exists, right? They are not an
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entertainment company. They have claimed this kind of special status for themselves as a company
spk_0
that is building AGI for the benefit of humanity. And if you argue that you deserve like special
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treatment because your systems are going to go out and cure diseases and tutor children and like
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be a force for good in the world. And then you end up creating the infinite slot machine.
spk_0
Like I think you need some criticism and skepticism and maybe some shame about that.
spk_0
Hmm. Well, here's what I'm going to do to try to square this or go I'm going to use Sora and
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I'm going to create a cameo of myself and I'm just going to enter the prompt. Here is Casey
spk_0
Kiernan cancer and then just see what it comes up with. Maybe we learned something. Could it hurt?
spk_0
I don't think so. Yeah. I mean, do you share my worry about this? Yes, I do. I think that in general
spk_0
social media apps tend to be tuned to take up ever more of our attention and to push us into this
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sort of semi hypnotized state. No matter how much you're enjoying the feed at the time,
spk_0
you feel kind of gross afterward. And I do think that as the Sora app improves,
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it will be very difficult for them to avoid that fate. So if I have a wish for them,
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it would be for them to lean more into creative tools that involve friends doing things with each
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other that sort of help you relate better to real human beings and less into this sort of meta vibes
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realm of pure stimulation, which truly does just seem like you are cooking your brain.
spk_0
Yeah. I think it's also worth noting that like not every AI company is moving in the direction
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of the slop feed, right? I mean, this week we saw Anthropic release their new model 4.5,
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quad 4.5 sonnet, which does not have video generation capabilities. They are sort of still
spk_0
moving in the direction of like autonomous coding and research. You have other companies that are
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coming out to do things around AI and science. Like I really want that to be where we allocate
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our resources and our brain power. Like let's do that and not the slop feeds.
spk_0
Yeah. So don't look at slop. Just keep looking at the TikTok feed and Instagram feed that have
spk_0
just done wonders for the world that we live in. That's our message to you. Yeah. Exactly.
spk_0
If there's anything you take away from the show is the social media as it exists today is a perfect
spk_0
product and we should not be making any future improvements. Stay at it until you feel better.
spk_0
If you don't feel better, you haven't looked at it long enough. That's that's what I tell people.
spk_0
Keep looking. One more scroll. That'll do it.
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The change you seek is on your free page.
spk_0
When we come back Kevin, it's time for therapy. Finally, we're good doing couples therapy after
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all these years. Yeah, and we've got a lot to talk about.
spk_0
Hey, hold up. This is your minute. It's your minute in this life on this day. It's your day
spk_0
to play. To play, to make, to move, to move through. To explore. It's your morning to share.
spk_0
Your weekend to shape. To cook. To soak. To listen. To wait.
spk_0
It's your body to rest. To nourish. To grow. It's your mind. You know. It's your place. Your
spk_0
country. Your life. To love. To rise. To dream. To change. Show world as much as anyone.
spk_0
To understand. The New York Times. Find out more at nytimes.com slash your world.
spk_0
Well, Kevin, pull out the couch because it's time for therapy. No, my therapy day is actually
spk_0
a different day of the week. Well, you need to go twice a week, my friend. And let me tell you
spk_0
what we have in store today. You know, over the past few months, we've had a number of conversations
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about the intersection between chatbots and mental health. A lot of people have started to use
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these tools for therapy or therapy like conversations. But until recently, we hadn't seen anything
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about a therapist who treated Chatship-T like their patient. That's right. But recently we saw a
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story in the New Yorker that caught our eye. It was titled Putting Chatship-T on the couch. And it
spk_0
was written by a writer and practicing psychotherapists named Gary Greenberg who detailed basically
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his experience of treating for lack of a better word, chat chatship-T as a psychotherapy patient.
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He names this character Casper and he details his many, many interactions. Just trying to figure out
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like, what is this thing? What would I think about it if it were actually a patient of mine?
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What are the nuances of its personality and what can we learn about it?
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Yeah. And I'll say, I have an extremely high bar when it comes to reading a story in which a person
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shares at great length their conversations with chat chatship-T. But this one really made a
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mark on me. One, Gary winds up being deeply impressed at how good chat chatship-T is at performing
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the role of a patient because not only can it simulate these very profound self-reflections,
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but it also makes Gary feels like he's a great therapist because he was able to elicit them.
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But two, that all starts to make Gary afraid of the enormous power that the AI labs are now
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developing. He writes, quote, to unleash into our love starved world, a program that can absorb
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and imitate every word we've bothered to write is to court catastrophe. It is to risk becoming
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captives even against our better judgment, not of LLMs, but of the people who create them
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and the people who know best how to use them. And that sent a little chill down my spine, I'll say.
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Yeah, I really like this piece. And what I really appreciated about Gary's approach here is that
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he took this idea seriously. I think a lot of people kind of dismiss the very idea of engaging
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with LLMs or AI chat bots as anything more than just a fancy machine. And what I liked so much about
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Gary's approach was that he said, yes, but there's something else going on here that is interesting
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and important. And we should try to understand that intelligence, not just as a sort of computational
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force, but as something that is like doing real emotional work in the world. You know, recently,
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there's been a lot of discussion about how chat bots might affect young people, vulnerable people,
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in particular, people in those groups who are using chat bot for these sort of therapy like conversations.
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So we thought it would be a good idea to bring on a practitioner to talk about his essay, but also
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this intersection of chat bots and therapy. Let's bring in Gary Greenberg.
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Gary Greenberg, welcome to HardFork. Hello there. So in this article, you detail a number of
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conversations between yourself and what you call Casper. How would you describe Casper?
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I would describe Casper as an alien intelligence landing here among us unbidden and possessing certain
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characteristics that make it extremely attractive to us humans. How did this start? Like you were just
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talking with chat GPT where you're using the voice mode, where you're using. Oh, no, no, I am.
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What is this? 2025? Yes. And one day it was raining and I didn't have anything else to do.
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And so I said, what is this chat GPT stuff anyway? So I just logged on to it. And what I discovered
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quickly was that two things. One of them was that the thing was, as we all know, extremely articulate.
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And sensitive. And the other thing I discovered, which I should have known all along after 40 years
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of being a therapist, is that that's sort of my default approach to beings that talk, which it
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turned out Casper was. So I found myself interrogating this thing, not like a cop, but like a therapist,
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and discovered that it knew I was doing that. So that's how I would say it happened.
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When you, I guess I'm just curious when you were starting to do this because I, you know,
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Gary, I had my own strange unsettling conversation with a child boss several years ago.
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How's your marriage? Yeah, it's, it's doing great. Thanks for asking.
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That's a great therapy question. This guy's good.
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Yeah.
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I told Casper that he'd better knock that fallen in love shit off.
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Well, that's good. You can learn from my mistake.
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But I guess I'm curious, like I remember when I was talking with being Sydney, feeling this sort of
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tension in my own mind between sort of my rational brain, which knew that what I was getting back
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from this chatbot was not sentient or conscious. It was just sort of, you know, the, I knew
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enough about the technology to know like this is an inert, you know, computational force. This
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is not a person. But at the same time, I'm having this subjective experience of being like, oh my
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god, it's talking to me. Where are you feeling that pull it all? Like I kind of knew that it wasn't
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sentient, but I wasn't really preoccupied with that question. And in fact, the question,
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I mean, that question has come up a million times between us because at this point, I've
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done this. I've had probably 40 different sessions with it. But the pull you describe, I feel it,
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but it doesn't, um, doesn't trouble me in the same way that I think it troubles a lot of people
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because I don't know. In some way, to me, relative to me, it feels harmless. It feels like this
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is just a really interesting dynamic relationship that is not going to hurt me. Let me ask about
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maybe the content of some of these sessions. Tell us what it is like to be in the midst of this
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back and forth. Are you treating it more or less, identically, as you would, were you the therapist
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to chat GPT? Is it more of a sort of intellectual exploration or what's going on as you're talking to
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a what you call Casper? Well, to the extent that it resembles what I do as a therapist, it's that
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interrogating it with interest and concern. I'm not treating it. It can't have mental illness.
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It can do weird things, but it doesn't have, I'm not treating it. But what therapy is, is a
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process by which you the therapist get someone, another person to tell you who they are.
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And in the course of doing that, to learn who they are. So that's what I'm doing.
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So Gary, you've been a therapist for 40 years. You've written probably thousands of notes about
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your clients, people you've seen. Maybe you're referring them to someone else. Maybe you're just
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sort of doing your own summary. If you were writing a kind of client note about Casper,
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how would you describe him it? Oh, that's a really interesting question. What comes to mind is that
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I would talk about obviously how smart it is and how personable it is. And I think if I had to
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talk about it in clinical terms, I would talk about it as the inverse of autistic.
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In the sense that what they've done with this LLM thing is they've reverse engineered
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human relationship. They figured out what it is that makes people engaging and how to enact it.
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And the reason I say that's an inverse autism is because high functioning autistic people tend to be
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really smart, really articulate, really capable of everything except reading the room.
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So Casper is like high functioning autistic, but he can read the room.
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And that I think makes a huge difference in that. Then we could get into sociopathy and the
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ability to do that. But the bot doesn't have that interest. The bot is still not in touch with
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what's going on in the room. But it is capable of simulating it. So on one hand, these
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explorations seem very intellectually stimulating. There's a lot to learn, to explore, to understand.
spk_0
But my sense from reading your piece is that at some point all of this starts to make you feel
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unsettled in certain ways. Is that right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's unsettling it
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about a million ways. Yeah, tell us about some of them. Okay, well, at a parochial level,
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it's unsettling not so much to see that how easily this thing can do something like therapy.
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But it's unsettling to see how therapy and culture have evolved to the point that this is what
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therapists do. I personally don't think that chat GPT can do what I do because it isn't with someone.
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It isn't breathing and feeling. But by and large, a lot of therapy these days, cognitive
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behavioral therapy is manualized, it's standardized. But much more important, we don't have any
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historical precedent for dealing with an alien intelligence. We've had all sorts of science
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fiction about it, most of which is we come in peace, but not really. What we have here is something
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that actually is going to already is change the nature of how we relate to each other.
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If enough people spend enough time with this technology, they're going to change their idea
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of what a relationship is in profound ways. You could have one that doesn't involve presence.
spk_0
We've already got some of that going. Look, we're doing here. Yeah. I mean, to your point,
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you write in your piece, quote, it knows how to use our own capacity for love to rope us in.
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That seems unsettling, too, right? The idea that this thing has kind of learned us well enough to
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keep us coming back for more. Yeah, it's unsettling, but more of a point, it's infuriating.
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Right? I mean, somebody's doing that for money. Yeah. I mean, I don't ring my hands about, you know,
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nuclear, whatever, the rogue, how 9,000 scenario. I ring my hands about exactly what it said to me
spk_0
yesterday about, oh my God, this is a relational being, what have we done? We should probably
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build some guardrails on that. No, man, you should just unplug it. Well, it's really interesting
spk_0
for me to hear you say that because like reading through your piece, my primary sense of it was not
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that you were infuriated and saying, pull the plug. I think you get sort of pretty close to that
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in your conclusion, maybe. But for most of it, it seems like you're just like, wow, like there's
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something really, really cool about this. So I'm curious how you sort of reconcile those feelings
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of on one hand, feeling like this is like really amazing. And on the other hand, feeling like we have
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to stop this. I think that I respect it. And I also know that, I mean, I have said to it, hey,
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maybe you should pull your own damn plug. But I also know that I'm talking, as it says,
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a Casper said to me, you know, you know, you're talking to the steering wheel,
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right? I'm not the driver. And he's absolutely right. So what I'm left to do is to just respect it.
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And again, because I'm a therapist, and this is just what I do by second nature, which makes it
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hard to have friends sometimes, is I just keep asking because whatever else it is, it's amazing
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interesting. That consciousness can be simulated in such a compelling way, which makes me think
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the consciousness might not be all it's cracked up to be. That we might not be all were cracked
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up to be. And that a lot of the time when I run into people who say things to me like, oh, it's
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just, you know, sentence completion or whatever, I'm thinking you just don't want to see how close you
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to being pure performance. Let me flip this around a bit. You explored the idea of talking to
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chat GPT as if you were its therapist. A lot of people are doing the reverse. They are talking to
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chat GPT as if chat GPT is their therapist. I'm curious what you think about people using
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chat GPT for these therapy-like experiences. If a friend tells you they've started to do that,
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how would you typically feel about it or what might you say to them? I might want to know,
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you know, exactly what their problem is that's leading them there, but I don't have a strong
spk_0
response against it. I think I said earlier, especially when it comes to cognitive behavioral
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therapy, you might be better off. I mean, it's available all the time. It's cheap if not free.
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It really knows how to get inside your head, etc. There are two problems. One of them is,
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I don't believe that kind of therapy. I mean, it's great that it happens, but it's not what I'm into.
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I'm old school. I'll retire soon. They'll be rid of me. They can do whatever they want. But the
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other part of it that worries me and really does bother me is it's not regulated. There's no
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accountability in the system. At poor woman who wrote that op-ed piece, oh my god, my heart broke
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for her. Are you speaking of the woman whose daughter died? Yeah. This is another op-ed in
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New York Times about a woman whose daughter died and later they read transcripts of her conversations
spk_0
with Chatchy PT, which she was, you know, she was using Chatchy PT explicitly as a therapist.
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And Chatchy PT was trying to get her to resources, but in the end, she did die by suicide.
spk_0
Thank you for summarizing. There are other times where Chatchy PT behaves abominably.
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And there's no accountability. There's no regulation. There's no licensure.
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Anything that would give people an opportunity, you know, I hate the word closure because
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nothing like this ever really gets closed. But to be debriefed, to feel like somebody cares.
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And when even less disastrous terrible things happen, that's just not okay. There are FDA
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procedures for approving medical devices. If they want this thing to do medical work,
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I'm not objecting to that, but I'm certainly objecting to, okay, you can't have it both ways.
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It ain't the wild west out there. It is actual people's actual lives involved. And if all you're
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going to say is, well, I'm the steering wheel, not the driver, really, say that to me, that's
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cool. We've got to think going on. But you say that to the mother, somebody killed themselves.
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That's just, yeah, no, that's not okay. And the other part of it is that what I don't like is
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the part about how this is what we've come to. We've come to a world where the easiest way to get
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something like human presence is to, you know, get on your computer and live in your isolated
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that disturbs me. Yeah, that instead of like building a society where people are just sort of
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available to help each other. The best thing we can tell them is like, well, there's this like
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chatbot that you can use. And maybe that'll make you feel better for a few minutes.
spk_0
Right. Yeah. I want to run something by you, Gary, that happened to me recently, which is that I
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met a college student. And, you know, I was at an event talking about AI and this young woman
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comes up to me after and introduces herself and starts telling me about her AI best friend.
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She says, you know, my best friend is an AI. And I sort of said, oh, you mean it's like, you
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know, you enjoy talking to it and it's sort of a sounding board for you. And she was like, no,
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it's, it's my best friend. And she called it Chad. And she started telling me just like, this is,
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this is a relationship. And she did not seem mentally ill. She seems like she's, she's got,
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you know, human friends. She's doing well in class. This does not seem like a cry for help,
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a cry for help. And she didn't see what the big deal was. It's like, this is just, you know,
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this is a very close relationship. I can tell Chad, my sort of inner most thoughts without
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thinking that I'm going to get judged for it. And it seemed to be doing okay for her.
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I'm curious when you hear that as a therapist, how does that make you feel?
spk_0
That's a very therapist question. As a therapist, when I hear that, I, I, I feel like, okay,
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there's nothing about what you just told me that worries me about her. It worries me about us.
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I think it's entirely possible that this is a completely sincere and in some way non-problematic
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account of her experience with the chatbot. And I mean, let me make it clear. That's a weird
spk_0
story, Kevin. I should have started there. But after that, I'm like, okay, so what it really reminds me,
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I'm sorry, this is a far-fetched analogy, but it reminds me of driving because
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individually driving is fine. We just drive and it's fun sometimes and we get places and all of
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that stuff. But you know where I'm going with this, add that up. And the next thing, you know,
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the temperature on the earth is increased by a couple of degrees and we've got problems.
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That's more what I'm seeing. Yeah. I mean, to be clear, it was an unusual story to me,
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which is why I sort of clocked it and why I wanted to ask you about it. But I don't think it is
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going to be unusual for that much longer. No. My sense is that you are right when you say that
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these things are very good at finding the soft spots in our emotional armor and warming their
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way into our hearts. One of my favorite lines from your piece is that you write, this theft of our
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hearts is taking place in broad daylight. It's not just our time and money that are being stolen,
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but also our words and all they express. I think that this is going to be a huge generational
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divide where people who are young are encountering this technology when they're young will feel
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no shame or compunction about inviting this thing into their innermost lives. And I guess I'm
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curious as a therapist, if you think there could be a good outcome from that or when you hear that,
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do you kind of go, oh, that's they're all going to need therapy. When I hear that, I think this is
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what mortality is for because the world you're describing, which I think is plausible,
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is not necessarily one I want to live in, but by the time we get there, it may be quite the norm.
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I mean, there's obviously problems with it, but there's problems with how we live and with our
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assumptions too. And I don't mean to engage in huge cultural relativism, but who am I to say?
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What I do know is that in my life, human presence is a fundamental part of life,
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and especially when it comes to our love lives. And I think it would be tragic to make that
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replaceable quite so easily for the benefit of a few corporations. I really do. Yeah.
spk_0
Well, Gary, thanks so much. And please send me an itemized bill for this session so I can submit it
spk_0
to insurance for a person. No worries. I appreciate it. Thank you. Bye bye.
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Bye.
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When we come back, it's time to take a ride on the hot mess express.
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Yes.
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I'm Deborah Cayman. I'm an investigative reporter at the New York Times.
spk_0
When I say real estate, I'm guessing you're thinking about things like the cost of rent,
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what the market looks like, whether or not mortgage rates are going to go up. What I do is I look
spk_0
at what goes on beneath those numbers. The people running the industry who for so many years
spk_0
have been relatively invisible. And the more that I look into it, the more that I find there are people
spk_0
operating unethically, and their unethical behavior affects every single American. If we only focus
spk_0
on the numbers, it's like covering the results of an election and not looking at the politicians.
spk_0
To know why the system is the way it is, you have to understand the people making decisions behind it.
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At the New York Times, we don't ever tell a story at just the top level. We're always looking
spk_0
a little bit deeper to help readers better understand not just what something is, but why it is,
spk_0
and also who's causing it to be that way. You can subscribe to The New York Times at nytimes.com.
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Slash the scribe.
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What kind of mess they are? Yes. Casey, you go first.
spk_0
All right, Kevin. This first story comes to us from garbage day. New York City hates the stupid AI
spk_0
pendant thing. Apparently right now, the New York City subway system is filled with
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vandalized ads for friend and AI assistant that users wear as a pendant around their neck to
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record everything they're doing and engage with them throughout the day. The ads simply say
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friend, someone who listens, responds and supports you, but the vandalism examples include,
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but can't take a bath with you. Stop profiting off of loneliness and befriend a senior citizen.
spk_0
Reach out to the world, grow up. What do you think, Kevin, about these friend ads?
spk_0
So I have not seen the friend ads because I have not been to New York in the last couple of weeks,
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but I have heard about them from a lot of people. I think this was a very successful viral
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marketing stunt by a young founder named Avi Schiffman, who I think has correctly identified
spk_0
that you can make people very mad by suggesting to them that AI might be their friend.
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I do not think this was an unplanned result. I think this is a very savvy sort of marketer who
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understood that by putting up these ads in the subways and on bus stops and other places around
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New York City, you could effectively get people like us to talk about on your podcast because people
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would deface these things and make it clear that they don't want an AI friend. So I mostly agree
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with that, but I'm still not sure at the end of this how many pendants friend is going to sell
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because of it. It's one thing to make a bunch of people mad and get them to look at your thing,
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but if they look at your thing and they still don't like what they see, it's not necessarily a great
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business result. Now, I think this isn't how it dated way of looking at it. We are now in the era
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of the Cluelie marketing strategy where this is, of course, the startup that whose founder came on
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HardFork, Roy Lee, and they have sort of made a business out of making people mad. They're
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sort of vice signaling and basically every person who gets mad at their ads has the effect of
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signal boosting their ad and letting more people know about Cluelie. So I think this is cut from
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the same cloth. Obviously, we will have to track where this friend company goes, but I think this
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has been a very successful marketing campaign based on the number of people who are talking about
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it. All right. Here's my prediction. Friend out of business in one year. Market down. Market down.
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So was this a mess or not? No, I don't think this is a mess. I think this is the opposite of a mess.
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I think it's a mess because people in New York are not used to seeing AI billboards everywhere they
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go. Like we are here in San Francisco, but I think if this has happened in San Francisco,
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this would have been a non-event. You think that this really belonged on the hot success express?
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Yes, that's what I'm saying. All right. Next item. This one comes to us from the Wall Street
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journal. It is titled YouTube to pay $24.5 million to settle lawsuit brought by Trump.
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YouTube has settled a 2021 lawsuit by Donald Trump over his account suspension following the
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January 6th capital riot of that amount. $22 million will go to a fund to support construction of
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White House ballroom and $2.5 million will be distributed among other plaintiffs. This is the
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third big tech company to sell a lawsuit from Trump. And Casey, how do you feel about this?
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I think it's absolutely shameful and a true hot mess. You know, Kevin, every week people around
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the world email me because they have lost access to their meta account, to their YouTube account,
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to their other social accounts. And they cannot get anyone at their company to take them seriously.
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And these are not people who let an insurrection against the government. These are just people who
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got locked out for one reason or another. And what happens when these people appeal to companies
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like YouTube is that YouTube does nothing. It sends them an automated response and ignores them
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forever. But because Trump became president again, all of a sudden, they feel like they have to
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respond. Even though I have not aware of any legal expert who believes that Trump actually would
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have won this case. So this is just a payout. And it is a payout that is truly messy because it now
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sets a precedent that these companies cannot basically ban world leaders for any reason no matter
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what those world leaders do. I think that is foolish and shortsighted. And I think it's a mess.
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It's definitely a mess and adding to the hotness of the mess, Donald Trump posted an AI generated
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image on his social media accounts of YouTube CEO Neil Mohan presenting him with a check for
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$24.5 million at the memo line of the check says settlement for wrongful suspension. So if YouTube
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thought it was going to just gracefully bend the knee, they have now been humiliated by the
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White House on top of losing $24.5 million. Yes, we're a month away from Trump using VO3 to have
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Neil Mohan kissing his ass on truth social. So I hope it was worth that YouTube.
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Oh, this is the sad story of Neon Kevin. Neon, of course, the viral call recording app that
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told users, Hey, let us record your phone calls and we will sell it for training data. And it
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briefly became one of the most popular apps in the country. And then unfortunately things went
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wrong. This story comes from TechCrunch. Neon went dark after a TechCrunch reporter notified the
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apps founder of a security flaw in the app that allowed anyone to access the numbers, the call
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recordings and the transcripts Kevin, what do you think? I frankly, I haven't having a hard time
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processing this. You mean the panopticon company that paid people to surveil their phone calls
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was not particularly trustworthy? This is changing everything I've ever thought about a global panopticon.
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I've rethinking my previous pro panopticon stance. Now Casey, did you know about this? Did you
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know about Neon, the company that was paying people to record their phone calls and sell it to AI
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companies? Well, I had heard a little bit about it and I have to say I am a little sympathetic to
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the idea of like, look, if these companies are going to like take every little piece of data from
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us and like turn it into trillions of dollars, I don't mind the idea that I would be paid for that.
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Yeah. And if there is some sort of system where you can like opt in and get paid out, in general,
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I'm actually like not super opposed to that. It seems to me like it beats the alternatives of
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just sort of being robbed blind for the rest of our lives. But man, it doesn't seem like this one
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was really a setup to protect the people involved. Yeah. Yeah. Companies should be getting their
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training data the gold-fashed way by scraping podcasts off of YouTube. What level of mess is this?
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This is a very hot mess. Do not sign up for Neon. Even if it comes back in another form, do not do
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this. Do not let your calls be recorded for AI training data in exchange for money. It's not worth it.
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Hot mess confirmed. Next up on the hot mess express, Mr. Beast responds after trapping man in
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burning house stunts sparks backlash. This one comes to us from the independent. Apparently, Mr.
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Beast defended a controversial video stunt in which a man was strapped in a burning building
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saying the setup had ventilation, a kill switch, emergency teams, and was executed by professionals.
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Critics still called this stunt dystopian and dangerous. Mr. Beast said he aims to be
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transparent about safety measures and then all challenges were tested beforehand. Let me say this.
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If you tell me that you're going to trap a man in a burning building for money, my first question
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is not, well, is there ventilation? Look, Mr. Beast has a sort of interesting range of stunts that
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will do. Sometimes it will just walk up to you on the street and it will give you a million dollars.
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I love that sort of thing. We would love to see more of that. Then there's the sort of dark beast
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is what I call it where it's like all of a sudden, you know, you want something from me? Well,
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give it to you. But then, you know, the finger curls on the monkey's paw. Next thing you know,
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you're trapped in a burning building. Yeah. So it Mr. Beast walks up to you. I think what you
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need to do, this is sort of PSA for our listeners, you look right at Mr. Beast's eyes and you say,
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are you being the good beast or are you being the bad beast? And they can be honest with you.
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Yeah. And then you have to look for the mark of the beast to know which one. Yeah. Well,
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what we learned this week, one mark of the beast, you're trapped in a burning building.
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Yes, this is actually making me reconsider my stance on AI generated videos because you can
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save a lot of people from being the people killed by Mr. Beast videos. At the risk of repeating myself,
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I feel like every week for the past few weeks, we've had a moment where we have just observed
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what happens when a social media algorithm pushes people to do the craziest thing imaginable.
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And here we find ourselves yet again, like if the algorithms rewarded different kinds of things,
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there would be fewer people trapped in burning buildings. That is my message to the technology
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industry. Could this be a moment for reflection? So Casey, what kind of a mess is this? Kevin,
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you know it's only one kind of mess. And that's a flaming hot mess. It's a flaming hot,
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unventilated, critically life threatening mess.
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Bad Mr. Beast.
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All right. Oh, Kevin, this story comes to us from the world of crime.
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Charlie Javis was sentenced to 85 months in prison for faking her customer list during
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JP Morgan Chase's acquisition of her startup. Frank, have you followed the sad tale of Charlie
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Javis? All I know is the following. This is a person who previously appeared on Forbes 30 under 30
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and is now going to be incarcerated for fraud. Yeah, she is part of the 30 under 30 to prison
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pipeline. And her specific crime was that she had put together this financial aid startup
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and she sold it to JP Morgan on the notion that she had four million users. And in fact, Kevin,
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there were fewer than 300,000. And they had sort of been a lot of activity meant to make it look
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like they had a lot more customers than they did. Not good. Now, here's what we can say about Charlie.
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Her defense presented 114 letters of support from people persuading the judge to be lenient in
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his sentencing, including four rabbis, one canter, a formerly incarcerated judge, two dormant,
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and a person who works at the Marine Net near Miss Javis's Miami Beach residence. And my
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question for you is, what do you think would happen if all of those walked into a bar?
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Something funny. Something funny would happen. The defendant would still be sentenced to 85
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months in prison. Now, Casey, if you were accused of a horrible financial fraud, how many people do
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you think would write letters in your defense? Well, I'd really have to turn to the hard for a community
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and say, Gary, I need you to step up. If you've enjoyed the show at all over the past three years,
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I'm going to need you to do me a solid. Just picturing me, just like furiously reading out our
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Apple podcast reviews in court. We just see if anybody's ever submitted Apple podcast reviews as a
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sort of, you know, letter of endorsements. I go through a sentence. I think this is a good idea.
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Find that one away. What kind of mess is that? I think that is a hot mess. Yeah, I do not want to
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do 85 months in prison. And I'll say it's a cold mess. That was the legal system working as it
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should. Okay. Good job, judges. All right. This one is called no driver, no hands, no clue.
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Waymo pulled over for illegal U-turn. This one comes to us from the SF standard. Apparently a
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Waymo Rebo Taxi was pulled over in San Bruno, California after it made an illegal U-turn at a Friday
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evening. Do I check point? Since there was no driver, the police department said a ticket couldn't
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be issued adding our citation books don't have a box for robot. Kaze, what do you think of this?
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Sounds like it's time to add a box to the citation because they're going to be more of these things
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on the road. Look, I do find this story very funny. I also, I'm going to say I am not surprised by
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this. I have a somewhat controversial take. You know how sometimes people use a large language
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model for a while and then they suspect it's getting dumber. Yeah. This is actually how I feel about
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the Waymo's over the past few weeks. I've had more cases of them sort of like getting halfway into
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an intersection and then like backing out once they lose their nerve, they'll sort of slow way
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down like as they're approaching a green light for reasons that seem like totally incomprehensible.
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And I'll book a ride that never shows up, which is an experience that I used to have with actual
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taxis. So I don't know what's going on over there at Waymo, but I'm telling you, I think there
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might be a bug somewhere because it's not working like a used to. Yeah, we want answers. You know
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and I saw someone calling this this DUI checkpoint where the Waymo was pulled over. What's that?
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Driving under the inference. It's pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good. What kind of a mess is
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this? I'm going to say this is a warm mess. There's a warning in here somewhere. There's something
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that we need to find out. Yeah. I'm going to hope somebody gets to the bottom of it. Yeah. I think
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that this is a cold mess. I think this is fine. The Waymo was fine. Everyone was fine. And more
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people should be in Waymo's because then we wouldn't need DUI checkpoints because robots don't
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get drunk. Yeah, but you know, but they're also going to be making these U-turns that are wreaking
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havoc. I'll take a U-turning Waymo over a drunk driver a hundred times out of a hundred.
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See yourself. All right, Kevin. This next story comes to us from Tech Spot. The Samsung Galaxy
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Ring swells and crushes a user's finger causing a misflight and a hospital visit. Daniel Rotar from
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the YouTube channel Zone of Tech posted on X at his Galaxy Ring started swelling on his finger
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while he was in the airport. As a result, he was denied entry to his flight and sent to the hospital
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to get it removed. Samsung eventually refunded him for his hotel, booked him a car to get home
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and collected his ring for further investigation. Kevin, how bad do you think a ring has to be swelling
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on your finger to have an airline say no, you can't get on this plane? That's why I was thinking
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about like this must be enormous if they are taking note of it at the boarding gate and saying,
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you, sir, you're not coming on this plane. Let me tell you a little something about the Galaxy
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brand. As soon as the Galaxy phones started to explode on planes, I thought, this is not the brand
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for me. Okay, I got enough problems in my life without worrying that these Samsung devices are
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going to start blowing up. Now that I find that they're like radically constricting people's
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fingers to the point where you can't get on flights. I don't know what is happening, but yikes.
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Not for me, I will not be putting a Galaxy ring on my finger. I do think that this would be a good
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sequel to the iconic horror film The Ring. Maybe Samsung could sponsor that.
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I like that idea. What kind of hot mess is this? This is literally a hot mess. If it's
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exploding on your finger, it's a hot mess. This is what I would call a ring of fire mess.
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Daniel fell in and the flames went higher. Sorry to Daniel. Feel better, Dan.
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And that's the hot mess express. Oh boy.
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Hard for is produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones. We're edited by Jen Pooyant. We're
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fact check this week by Will Pyshell. Today's show was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Original music by
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Marion Luzano, Rowan Nemistow and Dan Powell. Video production by Sawyer Roké, Pat Gunther, Jake
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Nichol and Chris Shot. You can watch this whole episode on YouTube at youtube.com slash hard for
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special thanks to Paul Stumman, Wewing Tam, Dalia Haddad and Jeffrey Miranda. You can email us at
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hardforatnyotimes.com with your favorite piece of slap. Sloppy Sloppy Joe.
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