WEBVTT - Part One: AI Is Coming for Your Children 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:06.400 Ah, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:09.039 is uh, it's a podcast. You know what what what 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:12.760 do you want? That's honesty and advertising can't argue with that. 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:13.280 It is. 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:18.439 It is a podcast. I'm Robert Evans, your host, and 0:00:19.280 --> 0:00:22.720 I didn't think of a funny introduction for this episode, 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:26.520 So pretend I shouted a tonally or screamed out the 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:29.880 name of a dead dictator, and let's welcome our guest 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.680 for the episode, Ben Bowler. 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.559 If you could be a dictator's name, that would be 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:37.600 most appreciated. 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:39.600 Yeah, one of the hard to pronounce ones. 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:40.920 Yeah, go for it. 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:46.080 Oh okay, uh wow, that's that's definitely uh oh. There 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:48.519 are so many good wines though. Okay, Matt Mood. 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:48.680 I'm. 0:00:50.840 --> 0:00:53.519 Jodd. I think you're right there. You go out there. 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:55.320 This is why you're the host, Robert. 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:57.800 Yeah, yeah, I mean that's an interesting one, right because 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:02.560 he wasn't I don't know how you yeah characterize exactly 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:04.959 what he was, but he's become a darling of Twitter 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:07.679 since his time as the as the leader of Iran, 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:13.440 which is always fun as the air quotes leader. Yeah yeah, yeah, 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:17.920 wild stuff. I do love like the every now and 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:20.319 then you're like, this guy who had a very different 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.600 vibe you know when he first came to my awareness 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:28.360 via media is now like a completely different person in 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:30.800 a lot of people's eyes because he like went after 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:35.240 Donald Trump on Twitter. Always funny, Ben, how do you 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:39.640 feel about AI? Not the movie with Haley Joel Osmond? 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:44.080 Oh well, oh okay, Well, all my notes are trash then, 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:45.959 because I thought we were talking about this. 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.559 Okay, I did say prepare for an episode on AI 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:53.080 and then send you thirty seven pictures of Jigglo Joel. 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:57.360 So yeah, and thank you, thank you. I'm framing those, Robert, 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.600 I'm framing those. Yeah. Well, I got to give a 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:04.960 shout out to a lot of folks ethicists working in 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:08.600 the field who are asking about the nature of consciousness 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:16.040 and why why the term AI is somewhat you know, problematic, 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.160 like what makes an intelligence artificial? 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:19.720 You know? 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:24.720 But when I hear AI, if I'm most people, what 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:30.360 I'm thinking is, oh, I should have studied math. Numbers 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:31.000 are scaring. 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:34.520 Yeah, I've been so, I've been kind of digging into 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:37.840 this as a new beat for myself as a reporter. 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:42.200 As we'll introduce today, Like there's some some some stuff 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.360 I've kind of gotten sucked into here, and as I've 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:47.200 kind of talked to more people who are on the 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:50.440 technical side of things here, I'm gaining both a deeper 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:54.640 appreciation for how complex this stuff is. You know, there's 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:58.639 been a lot that's sort of You've got this mix 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:04.600 of like incredibly dense academic papers and kind of the 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:07.720 the commentary of people who are actually like working with 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.480 the nuts and bolts of this stuff and not trying 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:13.640 to pump up the price of you know, the IPO 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:17.239 valuation of their company. Right, and then you've got kind 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:19.680 of the hype cycle, which is very different. 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:19.919 Right. 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:23.160 The people who are are kind of talking about, you know, 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.520 how models are actually constructed, and you know what the 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:29.320 ideal size for the models might be, and like how 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:31.680 the capabilities kind of will change as they sort of 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:34.280 ramp up or ramp down the scale, talk about like 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.480 the potential problems like model collapse and whatever. Versus the 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:41.400 people who are like an AI is going to take 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.120 control of all the nukes. No, no, this isn't just 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:47.600 me stealing the plot of Terminator too in order to 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:50.880 like hype up the power of the product my company's making. 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:56.640 I swear these it's real swears ease, So. 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:59.320 That's how you know it's legit. That is, that is 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:04.800 some actual nomenclature used in the halls of powers where. 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:08.280 Yees yeah, and I think you can always trust when 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.400 a bunch of people with a vested financial interest in 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:16.880 making their AI products seem extra powerful. Recite the plot 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:20.080 of Terminator too to you as if it's you know, 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:24.640 a serious, serious business. So as we've kind of let 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:26.720 into the internet is a wash right now and kind 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:29.680 of cheap takes on what AI means for the future, 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:31.680 you know, on one hand, you've got these kind of 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:34.560 terminatory fears. Kind of the best example of this recently 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:37.560 was WECE put out this very dumb article that was 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:42.000 like a military AI killed its creator because it was 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:44.960 trying to stop it from launching a missile, and everyone 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:47.200 was like, oh my god, you know, we have to 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:49.320 stop this, and then it turns out, well, actually what 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:51.599 happened is like a bunch of human beings were sitting 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.480 around a table like kind of plotting out things that 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:56.680 might happen if they ever built one of these, and 0:04:56.720 --> 0:04:58.960 someone was like, well, what if you did this, and 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:01.360 like that's all that happened like they were playing fancy 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:03.040 D and D. It's nothing to be scared of. 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:06.760 Yeah, man, it's like it's like a war game, like 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:11.080 a simulation, right, it's a planning out a hypothetical. Yeah, 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:14.520 and it is that that's that's headline chicanery. 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:17.000 And it's not it's not even a simulation where like 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:19.520 they didn't like even code you know, a fake AI 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:21.720 to like test it as a simulation. We're literally just 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.280 like bullshitting, you know, like nothing, nothing was built. Which 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.160 is not to say like I'm not concerned about the 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:32.719 possibility of like AI, you know, involvement in weapons targeting 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:34.160 and stuff and that kind of thing. Like there's a 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.159 lot to be concerned about there, but not this article. 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:39.320 And then kind of on the other end, on the 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:41.520 positive end of the hype stuff, you've got like this 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:44.280 this growing chorus of people who are like certain that 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:47.400 AI is going to save education and rescue students. Bill 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:50.080 Gates is like a big kind of he's one of 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:52.680 the big guys like kind of pushing this idea. I 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:55.760 found a thing recently where he was like very excitedly 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:58.280 talking about how open ai had taught a chat bot 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:01.640 to pass an ap test and why this might mean 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:05.320 something good for education. I'm kind of hesitant to say 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:08.120 that I buy that, just because I haven't really seen 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:11.599 any evidence that like an AI is actually good at 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:13.960 teaching people stuff, which is not to say I haven't 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:16.960 seen evidence that there are uses for it in education potentially, 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:19.719 but like, I think people are getting a little bullish 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:22.360 about this, and kind of somewhere in between those two 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:24.760 hype peaks, you know, the robots are going to nukasol 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.720 or the robots are going to replace teachers. Somewhere in 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:30.320 between those two hype peaks is a story I ran 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:33.120 across a couple weeks ago about an author who wrote 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:36.760 ninety seven books in nine months using chat GPT. 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:42.040 Oh no oh no oh no, I think, oh gosh, 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:42.679 all right. 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:45.040 I'm gonna guess a lot of people came across this 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.240 story and it's one of those things it sort of 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:51.800 dropped and a bunch of different like places like the 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:54.160 I think the Post was one of them. Insider was 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:58.160 one of these kind of like low quality publications or 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:03.480 publications that have recently unk in quality significantly, who are 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.880 chasing SEO shit right, And it's also kind of noteworthy 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:08.960 to me that like this story hit right as the 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:11.800 writer strike began, like the writers go on strike, and 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:13.920 then there's this story about like, well, this guy wrote 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.600 almost one hundred books in less than a year using 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:20.760 chat GPT. You know, maybe we don't need all these writers. 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:24.800 Now if you actually look at this, this author quote 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.920 unquote and with the most quotation marks around that word, 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:30.880 I can possibly add like like a whole script that's 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:34.000 just quotes around the word author. There is a guy 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:37.920 named Tim Buscher, and the reality if you actually look 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:40.679 into what's he did here, he didn't write ninety seven 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:44.560 model novels using chat GPT. He had an AI generate 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:48.720 like ninety seven stories each about two to five thousand words. 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:54.200 And if you don't know how novels work generally speaking, 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.600 kind of like the minimum word count before something's considered 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:00.800 a novel, it's about fifty thousand words. It's and that's 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:04.440 a short novel, right, you're talking about like I don't know, 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:06.840 Old Man in the Sea style shit or something like that. 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:08.640 I don't actually how many words Old Man in the Seas, 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:12.840 But like my silly book with robot, horny cyborgs and 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:14.559 stuff was one hundred and twenty thousand words. 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:17.160 So also, it's a really good book and people should 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:17.520 read it. 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:19.040 Thank you. That's very nice. 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:23.280 It's not a compliment. I'm objectively saying it's a good book. 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:27.000 Well, thank thank you. I agree that because like he's 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:29.680 not having it write novels. What he did was he 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:32.640 had it churn out short stories each with dozens and 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:35.160 dozens of illustrations in them. There's something like fifty or 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:37.480 sixty in each story, which is also too many for 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:41.800 a short story. Waits, Robert, did he draw the pictures himself? 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.800 He sure did not. And we'll talk so like if 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:49.080 you look at these, like I went to his web page, 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:51.360 and thankfully, one thing I will give Tim Buscher is 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:52.920 it looks like he's put most of these on a 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:56.040 personal web page rather than dumping them all on Amazon, 0:08:57.160 --> 0:08:59.040 which is what we're going to talk about in a second. 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:01.000 But if you look at the shit he's got like 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:04.040 a bunch of different Like one of the stories is 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:08.040 Occupy AI, which is described as like a story about 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:12.920 protesters fighting cops because AI takes the jobs away or 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:17.960 something like that. There's not like characters given or any 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:20.600 kind of like sense of a narrative arc. But the 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:24.120 AI generated art for the of the cops, like beating 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.239 up people makes them look like the bad guys in Spaceballs, 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:31.440 And I do appreciate that. So that's that's that's good. 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:38.320 Sophie can show you the Spaceball's illustration. Oh holy smokes, Yeah, 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:44.959 they found shit. So I don't I don't have a 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.280 lot of respect for Tim's story writing project, but I 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:52.040 also don't think it's particularly harmful, right, Like, other than that, 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:53.840 you know, this guy got a bunch of news attention. 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.920 His books are presumably geared towards adults, or at least 0:09:56.960 --> 0:09:59.360 young adults, and I don't really think a lot of 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.480 people are gonna get swept up in it. But there's something, 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:05.960 there is something sinister in the world of people using 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.920 AI to generate stories. And this is where we get 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.760 into the meat of what we're actually going to be 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:15.040 talking about this week, because I have found myself doing 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:17.720 some journalism again. I don't do as much of that 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:21.320 as I used to, but I kind of got I 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:23.520 fell down a rabbit hole over the last two weeks 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:27.000 and I have been investigating something that I found really 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:29.880 fucked up and scary. And the short of it is, 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:33.000 the robots are coming for your children. If you've got 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:37.000 kids out there, there is a shady network of influencers 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:40.440 and conmen who are trying to warp your kid's brain 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:42.760 so that they can make a quick buck off of 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:46.240 Amazon KDP, which is called which is kindle direct publishing. 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:48.760 So that's what we're fucking talking about today because it's 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.679 actually a serious problem that people should be aware about. 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.480 And I haven't seen any real reporting on this. I 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:57.120 was keyed into this story when I ran across a 0:10:57.200 --> 0:11:00.560 Reuter's article like two weeks ago about a boom in 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:04.120 AI written ebooks on Amazon, and the piece zooms in 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:08.480 on this wanna be author named Brett Schickler. Brett is 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:12.000 a salesman from Rochester who heard that chat GPT could 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:15.000 write stories and he decided like he'd always wanted to 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:17.240 be a writer, but he just could never get anything 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:19.120 down on the page. And he was like, well, maybe 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:23.320 this will make it possible for me. He told Reuters, 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:26.000 the idea of writing a book finally seemed possible. I thought, 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:30.319 I can do this. Unfortunately, the book he put out. 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:33.240 Is why is that so funny? I can do this? 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:36.920 By not so sad when you learn what he wrote 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:40.280 because it's his book is The Wise Little Squirrel, a 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:44.520 tale of saving and investing. It's a guide to fight 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:50.240 literacy through the eyes of Sammy the Squirrel. And I'll 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:53.400 say this, everything we're about to talk to on this 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:56.480 episode is much worse than The Wise Little Squirrel, because 0:11:56.480 --> 0:12:00.200 I will give him credit for one thing. He Schickler's like, 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:03.400 Brett has a thing he wants to get across to people. 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:04.160 I'm not. 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:06.000 I don't think he's done it well. I don't think 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:08.520 this is the right way to teach kids kids financial 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.120 literacy is to have like a robot generate a story 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:14.760 about a squirrel so they learn how to invest. But 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:19.960 he actually seems to care about like transmitting information to kids, 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:23.920 which is Wellson who does. Yeah, So I'll give him 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:26.520 some credit for that. Also give him some credit for 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:29.080 the fact that the cover of his book it doesn't 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:32.240 look good, Like this doesn't look like a real book. 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:37.000 I wouldn't say, but there's nothing like inherently off putting 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:39.840 or terrifying about the squirrel drawing on the cover. 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:42.400 I don't I don't know, man, I don't know. 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:44.440 Robert Sophie find unsettling. 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:49.439 Well, there's the other there's the other animal there, which. 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:54.560 To wait, where's the other in the trees? 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:54.839 Oh? 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.480 Yeah, yeah, well, and you know, the perspective is pretty 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:01.320 fucked on that chipmunk. Yeah, I don't buy it. I 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:02.559 don't buy the perspective here. 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:05.160 And where did you and where did they get that acorn? 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:06.000 We don't know. 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:07.319 The acorn's massive. 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:09.880 The acorn is bigger than the bear. 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:13.400 Well, well that's just because the bear's further away. But 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:16.360 the acorn is at least the same size as the 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:20.720 squirrel's Torso, yeah, which I think might be, you know, 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:23.840 maybe maybe the subtext here is that the acorn is 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:27.160 inherited wealth and and the squirrel, oh you know, it's 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:31.240 to yeah represent you know, whereas whereas the squirrel in 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:36.880 the tree behind him kind of represents the working class. 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:41.880 Yeah yeah, yeah, who has no acorn? Right, because the 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:45.440 inherited wealth of our of our anyway, whatever, I don't know, 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:47.160 why am I? Why am I? Why am I doing this? 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.360 So you nailed it, nailed Brett's Brett's book, which is 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:54.280 available paperback only. That's another thing I'll give him credit for. 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:56.920 Because the stuff that's actually really grifty is all being 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.720 done on Kindle. It's currently in about thirty thousand, number 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:02.719 thirty thousand in literature and fiction for children. One thing 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:04.959 that does show is that like that sounds really low. 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.440 That's not terrible, right, Like, given the number of books 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:11.920 that are on Amazon, it's not like a runaway success. 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:14.400 I think that this is like probably because there was 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:16.520 a bunch of news stories around this, right because it 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:20.200 was it's kind of the first AI children's book to 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:24.600 go viral. It's not again any good, but I don't 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:27.640 see the harm. Like what we're about to be talking 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:29.600 about is like a bunch of people who have done 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:33.320 this in a much more harmful direction. So this story 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:37.040 kind of got me looking into what other people were 0:14:37.160 --> 0:14:40.880 writing AI children's books. And part of why I thought 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:44.080 to do this was late last year I watched a 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:48.280 documentary on the Folding Ideas YouTube channel. You're not aware 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:50.400 of that. Folding Ideas As a channel run by a 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:53.560 researcher and a writer named Dan Olsen, who I admire 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:56.400 quite a lot. He's the guy who did that line 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.880 go up documentary on NFTs that helped cause the nf 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.560 T crash. He's very good at what he does, and 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:05.800 late last year he published an investigation into a group 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:10.480 of Amazon con artists who like charge several thousand dollars 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:13.560 so that they can teach people how to mass produce 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:18.480 low quality books to have both read by voice actors 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:21.840 for like audible books, and to sell on Kindle through KDP, 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:24.560 which is again Kindle Direct Publishing. And it's one of 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:27.240 those things where like they're promising, they have all these 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:29.360 lurid stories about like you can make tens of thousands 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:31.600 of dollars in a few weeks. This is they really 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:35.080 brad They're called the Mickelson Twins, the particular folks he's investigating, 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:37.680 and they brag a lot about like how little effort 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:39.680 it takes to do this, you have to do very 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:43.320 almost no work whatsoever. And it's one of those like 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:46.280 they're basically just having people look through to see what's 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:51.560 selling on Amazon, create topics and then hire some ghostwriter, 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:53.920 pay him a couple hundred bucks to write a full 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.000 book in two weeks, three weeks something like that, and 0:15:57.040 --> 0:15:59.400 then find a voice actor and put it up. And 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:03.360 these book books like they're nonsense in a lot of cases, 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.280 like he was. I think the book that Dan put 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:08.720 together is kind of like a thought exercise was about 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:12.840 using self hypnosis to deal with epilepsy or something. So 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:16.080 a lot of really irresponsible topics, all that sort of stuff. 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:19.040 But the topics, you know, what matters is not like 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:20.960 what you're actually trying to get out. It matters that, 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:25.640 like what you're you're having these ghostwriters write include keywords 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.440 that correspond to popular searches on Amazon. Right, it's an 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:29.320 SEO scam. 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:34.520 I read about this. I read about this because because Robert. 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:40.480 The immediate question is why are these guys now selling 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:45.400 this trick, right, this grift that they have exhausted, right, 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:49.320 Like why did they move to the next grift. It's 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:53.680 very it's it's very interesting. You know, I wonder if 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:55.680 their next thing is going to be self help books. 0:16:56.320 --> 0:16:59.480 Yeah, I think that, like there's a there were already 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:01.560 some sort of in that topic that they're putting out. 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:03.920 I think mostly what it is is that, like you 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.919 can make money doing this. Your goal basically is to 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:10.400 trick people looking for real books on similar subjects into 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:13.080 buying your books because it's kind of hard to tell 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:15.320 on Kendle, and they may you know, if you just 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:17.920 are putting enough stuff out there, the sheer number of 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.560 people searching means that you'll make you know, sales, and 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:23.159 if you know, you don't. If it doesn't take that 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:25.600 much work, you know, if you get a couple hundred sales, 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:28.840 it can be worth it. This is not an easy path, 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:31.640 like actually an easy path to making a lot of money, 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:34.480 which is why the real business is in conning the 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:36.800 people who think that they'll make money off of this 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:39.080 and getting them to pay you several thousand dollars to 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:42.960 teach them all this crap. Dan in his video calls 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:46.960 these people coentrepreneurs, which is is a clever bit of wordplay, 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:49.639 but I do think the term actually kind of misses 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:53.359 something important because then, well, the con is Dan is 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:55.760 talking about, the con that he is he is unraveling, 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:58.840 is that like this is not actually a great business. 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.400 It's hard for people to really make money. They are 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:04.119 lying to folks about how profitable this is so that 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:06.840 they can take their money, and that is that is true. 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:10.200 That is a con. But there's an actual outside harm 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:12.800 aside from this con because like, the people they're conning 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:16.159 are not just passive rubs. They're trying to like unethically 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:18.760 make a quick buck. So to some extent, I'm like, 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:20.640 I'm not I don't have a huge problem with who 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.480 they're conning necessarily, But what I do have a real 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:26.760 issue with is that the byproduct of the cons they're 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.160 running is that the largest bookstore on the planet gets 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:34.120 filled with thousands and thousands and thousands of nonsense titles 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:38.800 that aren't real books that can spread disinformation, that can 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:41.919 just cause people to waste money, that can like, like, 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:44.000 there's a lot of issue. It makes it harder to 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.960 like find stuff that you're looking for that's of quality, 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:49.240 you know, on various topics. I've had to deal with 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:51.199 this a few times with bastards where I'm looking for 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:54.200 books on niche subjects and I find something that seems 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:55.720 to be about it, but it turns out it's like 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:58.080 one of these like crap books. It's like someone's at 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:00.719 best paraphrased to Wikipedia entry or something. 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:03.560 Is it is it that prolific thought? 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:07.000 Like what thousands and thousands of times really I I 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.520 have I have actually reached out to Amazon for comment 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:15.080 on like how many AI titles they have in their 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:18.040 library and how they like the degree to which or 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.159 whether or not they do anything to attempt to like 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:23.720 figure out which titles or AI or not, like I have. 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:25.920 I've asked them a couple of questions on that about 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:28.520 like their plagiarism, filters and stuff. I haven't heard back yet, 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:33.080 And if I do, I'll update this. I'll record it 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:33.679 update for you. 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:38.239 Well, surely they can just they can just create a 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:43.520 large language model that will respond to your insightful questions 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:45.480 in novel form. 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:48.760 Yeah, that would at least be a response. So far, 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:51.920 I haven't gotten anything from them because I think they're 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:55.000 they're following the Elon Musk root of just ignoring any 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:57.280 questions from media because there's there's a lot of money. 0:19:57.440 --> 0:19:59.879 They make money anytime people upload the shit in anytime 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.000 it sells, so like they don't have a problem with 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:05.320 con men putting fake books up on the site. And 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:07.719 it's one of those things. Again. When when I watched 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:09.600 this video by Dan, I was like, well, this is 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:12.320 an interesting con. I think what's happening here is kind 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:16.280 of unsettling. And then you know the late like the 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:21.879 AI explosion happened right, and suddenly this con gets supercharged 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:25.800 because the main barrier to entry and barrier to production 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:28.320 and profitability and the old way of doing things is 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:31.440 the ghost writing. You know, these people the original version 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:33.879 of this con You're hiring a human being to ghost 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.879 write a fake book for you, basically, right, And a 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:40.679 human being can only write fifty thousand dish words so fast, 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:42.960 even if all they're doing is like paraphrasing a bunch 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:45.919 of like Wikipedia and news articles, right, Like, there's a 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:49.040 degree there's a hard limitation on how many of these 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.240 can get written. And it's going to cost money because people, 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:55.240 even people who will do this very cheaply, won't do 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:59.679 it for nothing, whereas chat, GPT and other large language 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:04.480 models will write thousands of words for you for effectively nothing. 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:07.399 So as soon as I kind of read this story 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:10.480