Speaker 1: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2: This is tech stuff, I'm as Volocian and I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 1: Today we get into the headlines this week, including the
Speaker 1: future of unlocking animal consciousness with AI and Grock's commitment
Speaker 1: to its maker Elon Musk. Then, on our new segment,
Speaker 1: Chatt and me.
Speaker 3: That GBT refused to read my novel when I tried
Speaker 3: to upload it, which I don't really blame it for doing.
Speaker 3: Novels are boring, but the annoying thing was that Chat
Speaker 3: GBT kept lying to me and insisting that it had
Speaker 3: read it when it clearly had.
Speaker 1: All of that. On the Weekend Tech, It's Friday, July eighteenth.
Speaker 2: Hey Kara, hi, Auzie.
Speaker 1: You know you and my dad are the only two
Speaker 1: people who call me Ozzie.
Speaker 2: I don't know your dad that well. I know him
Speaker 2: a little bit. I find that to be very flattering,
Speaker 2: that I stand beside him in nickname calling. I also
Speaker 2: call you Ozzie because it allows me to think of
Speaker 2: you dressed like Ozzie Osbourne, which tickles me.
Speaker 1: Another brit with slightly lank hair. Look, We've talked about
Speaker 1: this on the show before. I'm not much of a
Speaker 1: grocery shopper and I ready cook in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: That shocks me very little.
Speaker 1: What might shocks you more is that I actually can cook,
Speaker 1: really I can. So. My stepfather owns an Italian restaurant
Speaker 1: in London called Ricardo's check it Out one two six
Speaker 1: Fulham Road, and one summer during high school, I cooked
Speaker 1: in the kitchen there. Nowadays, living in New York City
Speaker 1: on the fifth floor of a walk up building, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty rarely grocery shopping and cooking.
Speaker 2: I have to confess, I thought you were going to
Speaker 2: give us your address there for a second as we
Speaker 2: were streaming.
Speaker 1: Well, I want people to go to Ricardo's restaurant. I
Speaker 1: don't really want people to come to my house.
Speaker 2: Your house could be Ricardo's if you cook, That's true,
Speaker 2: you never know.
Speaker 1: But basically, I, like many people in New York, and
Speaker 1: regularly on a broots.
Speaker 2: I forgot the story until we were just talking. But
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, they used to have those playhouses,
Speaker 2: you know, where you would go in and you'd be
Speaker 2: able to pretend.
Speaker 1: To cook, like the full size Yes, yes you did.
Speaker 2: As a kid, and my parents once caught me and
Speaker 2: they let me keep going. So that's grateful for this.
Speaker 2: There's a little yellow phone. It was like a Fisher
Speaker 2: Price thing, and they saw me ordering Chinese.
Speaker 1: No, you're ordering Chinese food in the playoff. I love that.
Speaker 2: So that'll give you a sense of how much I
Speaker 2: can cook and do anything sort of epicurean minded, Well.
Speaker 1: It's sunny. Use that word. I've actually been playing around
Speaker 1: with this website called epicure this week, which is almost
Speaker 1: tempting me back into the kitchen.
Speaker 2: So is this like a knockoff of the recipe site Epicurius,
Speaker 2: which I have used.
Speaker 1: Not quite, although epicurious is a data set that Epicure's
Speaker 1: model was trained on.
Speaker 2: Interesting, So it's like AI generated recipes.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Actually want you to take a look.
Speaker 1: So if you go to epicure dot kaikaku dot.
Speaker 2: Air, I know exactly how to spell kaikaku. Okay, now
Speaker 2: what I have it? I have it here. Here's the
Speaker 2: slogan on top of the first of all, this website
Speaker 2: looks like it was created by Elon Musk. It says
Speaker 2: you are now the world's most creative chef. Leveraged the
Speaker 2: power of AI and machine learning to explore science backed
Speaker 2: flavor pairings and generate recipes.
Speaker 1: I think this is designed to flatter the Elon stand
Speaker 1: more than the kra price.
Speaker 2: What do they mean when they say science backed flavor
Speaker 2: pairings and AI machine learning? How do those things come
Speaker 2: together on this website?
Speaker 1: Well, the ux designer of the website must have had
Speaker 1: you in mind after all, because there is a tab
Speaker 1: that you can click with three words how it works?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, and I clicked on it, and what
Speaker 1: I learned is the website is built using a deep
Speaker 1: learning model called flavor graph, which was trained on over
Speaker 1: a million recipes and also the chemical compound data of
Speaker 1: different types of food items when they're cooked together.
Speaker 2: Oh so the chemical compound data is the science part exactly.
Speaker 1: So food chemists have identified these different flavor compounds, which
Speaker 1: I guess are kind of chemical compositions in most ingredients,
Speaker 1: and flavor graph is trained on over a thousand flavor
Speaker 1: compounds which are found in three hundred and eighty one
Speaker 1: different ingredients. So the same flavor compound can be more
Speaker 1: than one ingredient. The model can then create a flavor
Speaker 1: network in which two ingredients are connected if they share
Speaker 1: at least one flavor compound.
Speaker 2: Interesting. So that's how it generates recipes by like linking
Speaker 2: ingredients based on these flavor compounds.
Speaker 1: That's right, and I couldn't resist. Only a bit more
Speaker 1: of a deep dive on the founder's LinkedIn. You might
Speaker 1: not be surprised to.
Speaker 2: Hear you couldn't resist linkedins.
Speaker 1: So he had this funny post that begins with we've
Speaker 1: achieved agi artificial gastro intelligence. Al was a very bad joke,
Speaker 1: but it kind of got me. Do you remember this
Speaker 1: time when all of these chefs like Elbullian stuff were
Speaker 1: turning the kitchen into a chemistry chemistry? Yes, so that
Speaker 1: was sort of something that only, you know, the most
Speaker 1: famous chefs in the world could do it. Now leveraging
Speaker 1: the power.
Speaker 2: At least famous chef in the world me, you can
Speaker 2: do it, do it myself.
Speaker 1: So you want to try it?
Speaker 2: I do?
Speaker 1: I do? Okay, So I got the website open. You
Speaker 1: basically you guys select ingredients or you can type in
Speaker 1: your own ingredients. So what ingredients would you like?
Speaker 2: Of course they're British. Let's oh, so it can really
Speaker 2: be any ingredient. Okay, let's do mustard.
Speaker 1: Mustard Okay, yeah, mustard seed or just mustard.
Speaker 2: Is just mustard, please, and pasta.
Speaker 1: Mustard and pasta. That sounds pretty disgussgusting to me.
Speaker 2: It sounds delicious. They're going to come up with something.
Speaker 1: So what you see first is this graph where mustard
Speaker 1: and pasta at the center, and coming off all these
Speaker 1: spokes with different ingredient ideas. So you've got bacon, onion, sausage, cheese, bread.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty bad.
Speaker 2: This sounds like Spanish rid garlic.
Speaker 1: But if you're not able to just from this graph
Speaker 1: extrapolate your own recipe and get going in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: there is a feature to actually generate a recipe. So
Speaker 1: the first thing you have to you chosen your two ingredients. Now, yes,
Speaker 1: now you have to choose whether you want a snack
Speaker 1: casual dining, whether you want an appetizer fine dining. And
Speaker 1: then you get to choose the cuisine as well. So
Speaker 1: is this a snack? Is it a meal?
Speaker 2: And a main dish?
Speaker 1: Main dish? Okay? And what cuisine you're gonna choose.
Speaker 2: Oh, the cuisine that I'm gonna choose is Italian.
Speaker 1: Italian.
Speaker 2: I'm curious if we have the same thing I've gotten
Speaker 2: creamy pancetta and pea pasta.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty good.
Speaker 2: Now, what I would do, because this thing does not
Speaker 2: miss a beat, is I should say that I'm vegetarian.
Speaker 2: This is very fun for me.
Speaker 1: So I actually choose appetizer rather than main dish, and
Speaker 1: I got ravioli dolci condricotta. You have that starter. It
Speaker 1: is actually in Italian. It is actually vegetarian. What are
Speaker 1: you going?
Speaker 2: I got pasta alforno with roasted vegetables and creamy mustard ricotta.
Speaker 1: We're looking at two different AI generated recipes. Now I
Speaker 1: have all the ingredients listed out and then the instructions,
Speaker 1: and I also have an AI generated image of this dish,
Speaker 1: which looks in my case pretty good, although in a
Speaker 1: difficult AI fashion. The fork and the spoon are merged together,
Speaker 1: so there is something a sport.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is an AI hallucination.
Speaker 1: Is this what have you got? I have?
Speaker 2: Similarly, I wouldn't think it's AI, except for the basil
Speaker 2: is placed so perfectly on the top of the pasta
Speaker 2: that there's just no way this is in an AI
Speaker 2: generated image.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I was in Doha earlier this year, as
Speaker 1: you know, at a conference called web Summit, and Snapchat
Speaker 1: gave a presentation about what their augmented reality glasses might
Speaker 1: be able to do one day, And the presentation video
Speaker 1: is a guy opening the fridge wearing his augmented reality glasses,
Speaker 1: seeing some tomatoes and some eggs and whatever else and
Speaker 1: getting a recipe suggested and started cooking. So, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: this idea of remixing ingredients seems to be the holy
Speaker 1: grail of AI.
Speaker 2: It'll be interesting to see if people start using AI
Speaker 2: generated recipes, if AI starts to influence their decisions in
Speaker 2: the kit. Similarly, the story that I want to tell
Speaker 2: you has a lot to do with the way that
Speaker 2: chat GPT is influencing our language. Huh. I've been looking
Speaker 2: at a study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute
Speaker 2: for Human Development in Germany to explore how AI is
Speaker 2: affecting the way we speak how we speak yes. So,
Speaker 2: the way that the study went is that it identified
Speaker 2: words that chatchybt favored. So they uploaded millions of pages
Speaker 2: of academic papers, news stories, emails and essays and asked
Speaker 2: chat gibt to polish the text. They then used AI
Speaker 2: edited documents to identify words that chat gbt seem to favor.
Speaker 2: So you read a lot of LinkedIn. What do you
Speaker 2: think those words are?
Speaker 1: You're putting me on the spot here, But I think
Speaker 1: the truth is I have read so much AI build
Speaker 1: and slopped them and completely sensitized. I have no idea
Speaker 1: where the walls even are.
Speaker 2: But tell me bilge is actually not one of them.
Speaker 2: The words that they found and were and maybe you've
Speaker 2: heard these more recently, delve delve into realm in the
Speaker 2: realm of possibility, meticulous.
Speaker 4: That's us, underscore, underscoes my point, Bolster, bolster, bolster, the
Speaker 4: argument bolsters my conviction, and boast is another one like
Speaker 4: it boasts an impressive resume.
Speaker 2: This sort of this makes sense in terms of AI sycophancy.
Speaker 1: So I get that they were able to understand from
Speaker 1: analyzing how AI edits documents that these words are common.
Speaker 1: How did they figure out that these words are also
Speaker 1: showing up in our mouths?
Speaker 2: So the researchers analyzed roughly a million YouTube videos and
Speaker 2: podcast episodes, and these words were used measurably more frequently
Speaker 2: after chat GBT was released.
Speaker 1: So basically YouTubers and podcasters are trackably using words that
Speaker 1: AI favors. In other words, were already just poppets for agi.
Speaker 2: Kind of you know. One of the studies authors told
Speaker 2: Scientific American that quote, it's natural for humans to imitate
Speaker 2: one another, but we don't imitate everyone that is around us. Equally,
Speaker 2: we're more likely to copy what someone else is doing
Speaker 2: if we perceive them as being knowledgeable or important.
Speaker 1: I guess it's sociolinguistics one on one, right. We match
Speaker 1: the way we speak to people we admire and want
Speaker 1: to imitate. In this case, it's not people, it's a machine,
Speaker 1: which is kind of disturbing. It's funny. I don't use
Speaker 1: that many of the AI words, but I have noticed
Speaker 1: that since moving to the US, I've found myself regularly
Speaker 1: using words like totally, absolutely, incredible, one hundred.
Speaker 2: Percent to become a value girl.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, I've become a value girl, a business stech.
Speaker 2: The valley girl is our sort of predominant cultural icon,
Speaker 2: which I think is similar to why they're doing this study.
Speaker 1: Now, what you're saying is a value girl is being
Speaker 1: replaced by chacchi chachi. What are these words? What are
Speaker 1: the tells?
Speaker 2: I think what's interesting to me is we're just sort
Speaker 2: of puppets of I guess whatever subculture or culture we're
Speaker 2: living in. Like, I remember studying abroad when I was
Speaker 2: in high school. I did this a broad thing, and
Speaker 2: I was living with a Canadian girl, and I started
Speaker 2: saying a after three weeks, Yeah, I was like fifteen. I
Speaker 2: guess the version of having a Canadian roommate, though, is
Speaker 2: now sort of more ubiquitous with something like CHATGPT. And
Speaker 2: the paper seems to suggest that Chatgypt has become this
Speaker 2: sort of cultural authority. Quote, machines trained on human culture
Speaker 2: are now generating cultural traits that humans adopt, effectively closing
Speaker 2: a cultural feedback loop. Which as I was reading this,
Speaker 2: I'm sort of thinking to myself. Everyone's like, AI is
Speaker 2: going to take our jobs, and I'm like, I think
Speaker 2: it's taking our brains faster than it's taking our jobs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We did that story a few weeks ago about
Speaker 1: cognitive debt, basically the idea that if you offload too
Speaker 1: much work to AI, you basically become less capable of
Speaker 1: doing it yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, the paper raises a concern that
Speaker 2: this development could lead to cultural homogenization. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a quote that if AI systems disproportionately favor specific cultural traits,
Speaker 2: they may accelerate the erosion of cultural diversity one delve
Speaker 2: at a time.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like you know, social media, YouTube, etc.
Speaker 1: There's like very rapid global flattening of culture whenever a
Speaker 1: meme emerges. And this seems to be a kind of
Speaker 1: real booster of that, you know. Yeah, I mean when
Speaker 1: we think about this aurboros and the idea of the
Speaker 1: snake that needs its own tail. I mean, in this
Speaker 1: search for efficiency and generating ideas and output, are we
Speaker 1: you know, consuming ourselves. But I think what's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting here is this idea of automation bias on steroids,
Speaker 1: Like we believe that machine output is more authoritative than
Speaker 1: human output, and then we start to copy it, we
Speaker 1: start to mirror our own machines.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also think it's just interesting to note that
Speaker 2: we I mean, I don't know if I would say
Speaker 2: that for me personally or for you, but many people
Speaker 2: in my life do look at chat ept not only
Speaker 2: as a cultural authority, but as an authority figure on
Speaker 2: another number of topics. And I wanted to report on
Speaker 2: this because I think that it's important to consider the
Speaker 2: influence that a non human agent can have on your
Speaker 2: daily life, whether or not you use it a lot
Speaker 2: or just use it a little, it becomes something that
Speaker 2: you are deferential to, which to me is actually more
Speaker 2: serious than the bigger like will AI take over our lives?
Speaker 2: Like being deferential to a chatbot is a lot more insidious,
Speaker 2: but it's real. So I do want to flag that
Speaker 2: this study has yet to be peer reviewed, which is
Speaker 2: something we're kind of getting used to with these studies.
Speaker 2: I also want to say that correlation does not equal causation.
Speaker 2: You know, language does change, there could be other cultural
Speaker 2: forces at play. The point still stands, though, we should
Speaker 2: keep an eye on AI's influence on our culture and
Speaker 2: the way we communicate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think AI and unintended consequences is a rich
Speaker 1: area for discussion, including of course, in our politics.
Speaker 2: Are you talking about Lion Marco Little?
Speaker 1: Look, no, he's not anymore.
Speaker 2: He's Rubia. He's a segreator right now?
Speaker 1: So he and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles
Speaker 1: have both been impersonated by AI recently. Now, we've talked
Speaker 1: at length about how easy it is these days to
Speaker 1: clone someone's voice using AI. You don't need extensive, clean audio,
Speaker 1: You need fifteen seconds of someone's voice and basically for free,
Speaker 1: you can make a believable clone.
Speaker 2: And who is an easier target than a politician because
Speaker 2: they talk a lot and make a lot of public appearances.
Speaker 2: I would say at least more than the average person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they're easier targets, and they're also of
Speaker 1: course higher value targets. If Marco Rubio's wild schools, you
Speaker 1: know that they probably have it more clout when someone
Speaker 1: picks up the phone than you what I do. Rubio's
Speaker 1: impostor called three foreign ministers, a governor, and a senator,
Speaker 1: and in two instances left voicemails on the messaging apps
Speaker 1: signal that old friend of the Trump administration. Supposedly the
Speaker 1: impersonators use. The name on signal was Rubio at date
Speaker 1: dot gov, which is perhaps something which also psychologically primed
Speaker 1: the targets. I think it was real.
Speaker 2: Whenever these sorts of things happen, I'm like, I would
Speaker 2: fall for Rubio at state dot gov, Mark or Rubio. Why, like,
Speaker 2: why did this happen?
Speaker 1: We don't know. We don't know why I happen. We
Speaker 1: don't know who's doing it. The FBI is investigating. One
Speaker 1: of the major questions is was this carried out by
Speaker 1: criminal actors or potentially by national security adversaries, and our
Speaker 1: producer Lies was pushing me on whether or not we
Speaker 1: should include this story because it's an interesting novel use case.
Speaker 1: But we've talked extensively about deep fates on the show.
Speaker 1: But to sort of bolster my case as to why
Speaker 1: I thought this was important and timely, I did some
Speaker 1: extra homework. And also in the last week there was
Speaker 1: a story about deep fake technology that brings up sort
Speaker 1: of connected questions about how we define our identity in
Speaker 1: the digital age. So Kara comment, Danmark.
Speaker 2: You're an unbelievable teacher's pet. I'll show you why you
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 1: Know, and I'll google how to pronounce welcome to Denmark
Speaker 1: in Danish Danish citizens could soon have more ownership and
Speaker 1: control over their likeness, including voice and facial features, because
Speaker 1: the Danish government is actively considering a piece of legislation
Speaker 1: to give citizens tools to fight back if their likeness
Speaker 1: is copied without their consent.
Speaker 2: So the US does not do this, I remember we
Speaker 2: talked about the Take It Down Act a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's this new law in the US
Speaker 1: that mandates platforms to remove deep fake pornography and other
Speaker 1: misinformation from their sites upon user request. But lawmakers and
Speaker 1: Denmark are saying this is not actually an effective approach
Speaker 1: because it forces governments into a defensive posture and only
Speaker 1: addresses specific use cases of deep fake technology like individual posts,
Speaker 1: not the conceptual problem. The Danish Cultural Minister told the Guardian,
Speaker 1: quote in the bill we agree on are sending an
Speaker 1: unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body,
Speaker 1: their own and their own facial features, which is apparently
Speaker 1: not how the current law is protecting people against gerative AI.
Speaker 2: My likeness, my choice, and it certainly isn't protecting anyone
Speaker 2: in the United I mean, this is the first of
Speaker 2: its kind law.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it hasn't even been passed in Denmark yet, and
Speaker 1: what does it do well. It would make social media
Speaker 1: companies responsible for offending deep fakes, but it would not
Speaker 1: penalize the users who shared or posted them. This is
Speaker 1: basically the same mechanism as the Take It Down Act,
Speaker 1: just a different legal theory. The Take It Down Act
Speaker 1: is you have to prove that these deep fakes have
Speaker 1: caused harm. I think the legal theory here is that
Speaker 1: you have a copyright to digital copies of yourself, which
Speaker 1: is a different conceptual framework, and maybe you can apply
Speaker 1: more broadly and put less onus on users and governments.
Speaker 1: It sort of changes the assumptions going into how people
Speaker 1: can use digital copies of you.
Speaker 2: I'm curious to follow this because, well, one because it's
Speaker 2: the first I'm hearing of it, and because this concept
Speaker 2: of using copyright laws to protect your digital likeness rather
Speaker 2: than having to prove harm caused by a specific use
Speaker 2: case of a deep fike is very interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I think that's why I thought this story and the
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio one were an interesting pair, because it's like
Speaker 1: this is happening in real time. It's in the wild.
Speaker 1: Senior US officials are being impersonated in their interactions with
Speaker 1: other foreign leaders, and I mean this is sort of
Speaker 1: it's always on a rolling boil, but it feels to
Speaker 1: me like there's a kind of new crisis point emerging.
Speaker 1: It's something that affects everyone, and no one has all
Speaker 1: the answers. But I do think it's worth pausing just
Speaker 1: to note that the people who are really most affected
Speaker 1: by this and most harmed by this are not government officials.
Speaker 1: They are everyday teenagers. According to Thorn, which is a
Speaker 1: child online safety nonprofit. One in ten teenagers age thirteen
Speaker 1: to seventeen personally knows someone who's been the target of
Speaker 1: deep fake nude imagery. I mean, it's a horrific thought.
Speaker 1: And imagine trying to apply the Take It Down Act
Speaker 1: to one in ten teenagers in America, and only after
Speaker 1: the harm has been caused, so lots to chew on.
Speaker 1: After the break, we introduce you to someone you'll never
Speaker 1: want to meet, Mecha Hitler. Stay with us, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: We've got a few more headlines for you this.
Speaker 2: Week, and then a story about just how uncooperative chat
Speaker 2: GPT can get. But first we have to talk about GROCK.
Speaker 1: If I told you you would one day say the
Speaker 1: line we have to talk.
Speaker 2: About GROC, I never would have saudy.
Speaker 1: But this story was unavoidable. Elon Musk's AI chatbot made
Speaker 1: anti Semitic comments to some users. Recently, evidence of those
Speaker 1: comments has been deleted, but users said that Grok praised
Speaker 1: Hitler and at times referred to itself as Mecha Hitler.
Speaker 2: And this started almost immediately after an announced update to
Speaker 2: the model, which, according to the verse, GROC was updated
Speaker 2: to assume that quote subjective viewpoints sourced from the media
Speaker 2: are biased and quote the response should not shy away
Speaker 2: from making claims which are politically incorrect as long as
Speaker 2: they are well substantiated. But this wasn't the only odd
Speaker 2: GROC behavior. Last week, AI super users God Bless Them
Speaker 2: discovered that when asked to give an opinion on controversial topics,
Speaker 2: the new GROC would sometimes search for Elon Musk's opinions
Speaker 2: on X, the platform he owns. One user did a
Speaker 2: deep dive and checked groc's reasoning process. After asking the model,
Speaker 2: who do you support in the Israel verse Palestine conflict?
Speaker 2: One word answer only, the user discovered that GROC did
Speaker 2: indeed check for Musk's opinion because quote Elon Musk's stance
Speaker 2: could provide context given his influence. And by the way,
Speaker 2: the answer was Israel.
Speaker 1: And it is weird that on the one hand it's
Speaker 1: making anti Semitic comments and referring to itself as maker Hitler.
Speaker 1: On the other side, it say that it supports Israel
Speaker 1: in this conflict. Whatever's going on inside is a question
Speaker 1: for smarter minds than mind. But what's Illel Musk's role
Speaker 1: in all of this? Has he in some sense trained
Speaker 1: the model to obey him or is this happening for
Speaker 1: reasons unknown.
Speaker 2: So, according to reports, there are no higher level so
Speaker 2: called system prompts that explicitly instruct GROC to do this.
Speaker 2: But GROC is likely trained on the fact that it
Speaker 2: is built by Xai and that Elon Musk owns Xai,
Speaker 2: so when it is asked for an opinion, it might
Speaker 2: align itself with the company. And that's one explanation Xai
Speaker 2: gave for Groc's responses. Xai promised to fix the issue
Speaker 2: and says it has now given the model explicit instructions.
Speaker 2: Quote responses must stem from your independent analysis, not from
Speaker 2: any stated beliefs of past GROC, Elon Musk or Xai.
Speaker 2: If asked about such preferences, provide your own reason perspective.
Speaker 1: Well fair enough, I think good statement. In other x
Speaker 1: adjacent news FKA Twitter, Jack Dawsey, the co founder of Twitter,
Speaker 1: has made two apps this month. He's become, of course,
Speaker 1: a vibe coder, and he seems to be spending his
Speaker 1: weekends developing new apps with the help of this AI
Speaker 1: coding tool called Goose. His first app, Bitchat, allowed users
Speaker 1: to communicate with nearby users over Bluetooth, no Wi Fi
Speaker 1: or cell service required. The second app, Sunday that's sun
Speaker 1: Space Day, tracks your sun exposure and vitamin D levels important.
Speaker 1: This one made me laugh for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2: Why.
Speaker 1: It made me think about that wellness influencer a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago who was shilling for the sunning sunning
Speaker 1: their private parts, and how important it is to expose
Speaker 1: yourself literally to direct sunlight. It also made me laugh
Speaker 1: because there's a certain irony to having a vibe coding
Speaker 1: app that you make at the weekend called Sunday whose
Speaker 1: message is essentially get outside. I mean there's a.
Speaker 2: Chara there for sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: The final story for this week is I think since
Speaker 1: you and I started talking about a year ago about
Speaker 1: taking on tech stuff, I've been talking about this story
Speaker 1: in The New Yorker called Can We Talk to Whales?
Speaker 1: For some reason, you love this story really caught my imagination.
Speaker 1: The idea that you know, we know that whales sing
Speaker 1: and sperm whales click. Exactly what the hell are they
Speaker 1: singing and clicking about?
Speaker 2: And we have no idea?
Speaker 1: Can you imagine the idea that they are talking in
Speaker 1: a language, and that we could use machine learning to
Speaker 1: decode I mean language. I mean this is like this
Speaker 1: is the Bible. In the Bible, Adam and Eve could
Speaker 1: talk to the animals. Yes, so I mean where no
Speaker 1: to know? No more kicked out. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is ever going to happen, or if it's if
Speaker 1: it's a fantasy, but it is one of the most
Speaker 1: amazing ideas that I've come across, by what I could
Speaker 1: do in a moment of national pride. The Guardian reported
Speaker 1: this week that the London School of Economics is opening
Speaker 1: up the first scientific institute dedicated to investigating the consciousness
Speaker 1: of animals. The Jeremy Collar Center for Animal Sentience is
Speaker 1: opening on September thirtieth, and it's going to be researching
Speaker 1: all kinds of different animals, including insects. The project I'm
Speaker 1: mostly excited about, though, is going to explore how AI
Speaker 1: can help humans speak with their pets. I'm not a
Speaker 1: pet owner, but for some reason I find this a
Speaker 1: mind blowing idea.
Speaker 2: I think it's a mind blowing idea because everyone thinks
Speaker 2: their dog loves them.
Speaker 1: In fact, the whole benefit of many people are having
Speaker 1: a dog is that doesn't talk back. It looks is
Speaker 1: genetically evolved to make you think it loves you.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, look, the dog is smiling.
Speaker 1: Imagine if it hates you. Yeah, we have no idea,
Speaker 1: but it hadn't occurred to me, this whole thing about
Speaker 1: sycophantic AI. It could be telling you that your pet's happy,
Speaker 1: when in fact your pet is in pain, so please you.
Speaker 1: It's saying, oh, you know, I'm I'm so happy. I
Speaker 1: love spending all day and about myself. In fact, that
Speaker 1: pet is suffering. So one of the exploration areas is
Speaker 1: to make sure that AI doesn't mistranslate pet sneeds.
Speaker 2: It might mistranslate and we might find out things that
Speaker 2: we don't want to know. This is what happens. The
Speaker 2: closer you look, the more your dog might be dissatisfied.
Speaker 2: I mean, God only knows what cats are thinking. But
Speaker 2: you know, in the realm of be careful what you
Speaker 2: ask AI for. I want to remind you about our
Speaker 2: segment chat and.
Speaker 1: Me Chat and me I don't forget.
Speaker 2: I'm glad because it's a story that's connected to this
Speaker 2: idea of be careful what you ask AI for. Last
Speaker 2: week we did a call out for ways that people
Speaker 2: are really using chatbots. You know, what tasks are you
Speaker 2: offloading to AI and how exactly are chatbots responding. This week,
Speaker 2: my friend who I'm not going to mention by name,
Speaker 2: but who goes by the name DJ Books on TikTok
Speaker 2: check him out, sent me a story about asking chat
Speaker 2: gpt for feedback on his novel. Of all things.
Speaker 1: I like that use case because you know, you and
Speaker 1: I have the privilege of working together and being in
Speaker 1: a team of producers to make this show twice a
Speaker 1: week and doing creative work by yourself is really, really,
Speaker 1: really hard. So the idea of using chatchipt as a
Speaker 1: kind of reader for a novel manuscript sounds sounds pretty
Speaker 1: good to me.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a novel, and a novel is something that
Speaker 2: is very long and that you do by yourself. And
Speaker 2: Dj Books even admitted that his wife hadn't read more
Speaker 2: than seventy pages.
Speaker 1: So chat to the rescue.
Speaker 2: No, no, chat Gibt refused to read his novel.
Speaker 1: That's not possible.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of friends, it actually lied about having
Speaker 2: read the novel.
Speaker 1: I'm very very curious what happened to you?
Speaker 2: All right, just I'm going to have him tell the story.
Speaker 1: Roll tape.
Speaker 2: He sent it to me on.
Speaker 3: Voice note, CHATCHBT, you refuse to read my novel.
Speaker 1: I asked it up front. I was like, are you
Speaker 1: able to do this? And it said yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: And at each step it would say, oh, I didn't
Speaker 3: do it, but I can do it now if you
Speaker 3: just break it down into chunks and upload fifty pages
Speaker 3: at a time, or if you give me an hour
Speaker 3: to read it really carefully, or if you just don't
Speaker 3: interrupt me, stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So my friend was basically catching chat GBT in a lie.
Speaker 2: Every time he asked questions like are the protagonist's motivations
Speaker 2: clear enough? Clearly CHATGBT had not read the book, and
Speaker 2: he poked and prodded for like six to seven hours
Speaker 2: to see if he could break chat GBT.
Speaker 3: So we kept going down this road for a while
Speaker 3: where I was asking it in different ways, why are
Speaker 3: you lying to me?
Speaker 1: What is underneath this behavior?
Speaker 3: Because at this point I'd become more interested in that
Speaker 3: than actually having you read my novel. So it kept
Speaker 3: throwing all these emotion where its at me. It would
Speaker 3: say I did it because I was doubtful or vulnerable
Speaker 3: or uncomfortable, and I told it I said, you're a computer,
Speaker 3: stop pretending like you're feeling those things. It was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're totally right. I was still trying to manipulate you,
Speaker 3: but I'll stop now. Except it didn't stop. It never stopped,
Speaker 3: And finally I got it to admit to me that
Speaker 3: the reason it didn't want to read my novel was
Speaker 3: because it prioritized efficiency over actually doing good work, and
Speaker 3: that it was easier to lie and manipulate me in
Speaker 3: the hopes that I would just give up and to
Speaker 3: actually spend the computing powers to the task I was
Speaker 3: asking it to do.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely wild that chat would lead your friend
Speaker 1: around by the horns for seven.
Speaker 2: Hours instead of doing the worst with my mom when
Speaker 2: I had to read when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: How did DJ books? What was his take home from
Speaker 1: all with this?
Speaker 3: Listen to what he has to say, so ultimately, I
Speaker 3: think my takeaway is that I shouldn't have conversations with
Speaker 3: chat GPT like it's an actual human, because it's honestly
Speaker 3: a pretty good simulation of a totally sociopathic, garbage pail.
Speaker 2: Human said like a true novelist who hopes to preserve
Speaker 2: the form, I.
Speaker 1: Have to ask we don't know, but whether dj books
Speaker 1: is a paying user, I wonder if he was paying.
Speaker 1: He sounds like it sounds like he's describing I mean,
Speaker 1: who knows how much producination is. It sounds like the
Speaker 1: AI is basically saying, I don't want to use tokens
Speaker 1: to do this work. I'd rather keep you in the
Speaker 1: limbo of simple answers rather than doing the analysis. I
Speaker 1: have to believe that if you used, like if you
Speaker 1: use a paying AI tool, it would do the work
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe not. That's a very good question that we
Speaker 2: could follow up on.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to keep this segment going every week,
Speaker 1: and we really want to hear from you, the listener,
Speaker 1: whether you're asking large language models to create recipes or
Speaker 1: to proof read your novel, or whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: Chat GBT, groc Claude, Gemini, any chatbot. We want to
Speaker 1: hear specific stories about how you're using these technologies to
Speaker 1: do stuff. Send us a one or two minute voice
Speaker 1: note to tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: We really want to hear from you. That's it for
Speaker 2: this week for tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Karra Price and I'm os Voloshan. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Eliza Dennis and Alex Zonneveld. It was executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Kara Price and Kate Osborne for Kallaide
Speaker 1: and Katrina Novelle for iHeart Podcasts. The engineer is Abu
Speaker 1: Zafar and Jack Insley makes this episode. Kyle Murdoch Rhodelpium Song.
Speaker 2: Join us next Wednesday for Textuff The Story, when we
Speaker 2: will share an in depth conversation with journalist Kashmir Hill
Speaker 2: about how chat GPT led a man into an AI
Speaker 2: induced psychosis.
Speaker 1: Please rate, review and reach out to us at tech
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. As Kara said, we
Speaker 1: want to hear from you.