Speaker 1: Thanks for tunion to tech Stuff. If you don't recognize
Speaker 1: my voice, my name is Osvoloshan, and I'm here because
Speaker 1: the inimitable Jonathan Strickland has passed the baton to Kara
Speaker 1: Price and myself to host tech Stuff. The show will
Speaker 1: remain your home for all things tech, and all the
Speaker 1: old episodes will remain available in this feed. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio and Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 1: I'm Osvoloshian today co host Kara Price, and I will
Speaker 1: bring you three things. First, the headlines this week. Second,
Speaker 1: a conversation with four O four Media's Jason Kebler about
Speaker 1: some deceptive AI bots looking to trick their human counterparts
Speaker 1: in today's Tech Support segment. And finally, we head to
Speaker 1: see yes kind of. We take a look back at
Speaker 1: the year in tech with Emma Barker of Time magazine,
Speaker 1: who edited Time's list of the two hundred best inventions
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty four. All of that on this Week
Speaker 1: in Tech. It's Friday, January tenth. Stay with us, so Carat,
Speaker 1: it's very nice to see you. It's been almost half
Speaker 1: a decade since we've been in studio together. A pandemic,
Speaker 1: A pandemic.
Speaker 2: Many developments in tech, very few in my own personal life.
Speaker 2: But you know, there's nothing like a big mic in
Speaker 2: my face to make me feel like a normal person again.
Speaker 2: And I know we thank Jonathan already in our last
Speaker 2: episode for bringing us back together, but I want to
Speaker 2: get him a gift, and I think it's going to
Speaker 2: be to see the show. Oh, Mary, I didn't know
Speaker 2: he was such a theater buff.
Speaker 1: I remember because we did an interview with him a
Speaker 1: few years ago that he was a big Shakespeare guy. Oh.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: He seemed to think it would be easier for us
Speaker 1: to host the show as two people or rather than
Speaker 1: as just him, and I kind of see his point,
Speaker 1: But I also think he probably hasn't spent quite enough
Speaker 1: time with either of us to make a truly informed
Speaker 1: speculation about that.
Speaker 2: You know, I think the reason that this show works
Speaker 2: between the two of us is I think you and
Speaker 2: I sort of speak to each other in link tongues.
Speaker 2: I always say, you know, there's the love languages. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have a ace love language, which is links links, and.
Speaker 1: That's yeah tongues. Okay. I was going to say, actually,
Speaker 1: for the avoidance of doubt, just friends.
Speaker 2: We always say as Sherlock and Watson the most platonic
Speaker 2: and they live together on Baker's story exactly.
Speaker 1: So so no, I mean it's going to be It's
Speaker 1: going to be the two of us with two people.
Speaker 1: But we are in constant communication about all things tech
Speaker 1: and hopefully we'll be able to shine a bit of
Speaker 1: a light on some of the most interesting intriguing things
Speaker 1: each week, including this one. So, Caara, we've been texting
Speaker 1: a lot. What have you been reading that really stood
Speaker 1: out to you?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: I think, like everyone in America at least, I've been
Speaker 2: following the cyber truck explosion in Las Vegas and Futurism,
Speaker 2: which is a website I frequent picked up on some
Speaker 2: original reporting from the Associated Press that has been kind
Speaker 2: of quiet. The bomber YEP, who's an active duty Green Beret. Yeah,
Speaker 2: used chat GPT.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I saw this this morning? I
Speaker 1: was so sad this wasn't on my list. I'm happy
Speaker 1: this on yours.
Speaker 2: Like, I don't mean to make light of the situation
Speaker 2: because it's it's very depressing on a number of levels,
Speaker 2: but I knew you would see the story.
Speaker 1: No, I was fascinated, but It was the fourth story
Speaker 1: on Exios today, and I'm glad that it's the first
Speaker 1: story on your show because I found it totally mind blowing.
Speaker 2: And obviously every part of this story is terrible, including
Speaker 2: the fact that a cyber truck was involved. Anything involving
Speaker 2: a cyber truck makes me want to die. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: hate that car more than I hate most things. But
Speaker 2: what was so interesting to me about it was it
Speaker 2: marks this moment of really underlying how next generation search
Speaker 2: works YEP on like a very disturbingly practical level. And
Speaker 2: Kevin McHale, who is the Las Vegas County Sheriff, says
Speaker 2: that it's the first known us of chat GPT to
Speaker 2: help build an explosive and he he followed up by saying,
Speaker 2: it's a concerning.
Speaker 1: Moment under statement of the week.
Speaker 2: This is not someone googling.
Speaker 1: The anarchist cookbook or what was that old book.
Speaker 2: That the anarchist ye cookbook.
Speaker 1: I think that was a huge moment, and I think
Speaker 1: the history of publication and First Amendment whether you could
Speaker 1: like distribute a book that told you how to make
Speaker 1: a bomb. But the cat's out of the bag now.
Speaker 2: Well, and I'll tell you who knows it's out of
Speaker 2: the back open ai right, Because for open ai to
Speaker 2: very quickly respond to this, I think is really interesting.
Speaker 1: Did they volunteer? By the way, oops, ps the guy
Speaker 1: used chet gpt to plan this? Or how did it
Speaker 1: come out? Do we know how it came out?
Speaker 2: The Las Vegas Sheriff announced that it was clear that
Speaker 2: chat gbt had been used to build this explosive and
Speaker 2: so open ai then sent an email that was quoted
Speaker 2: in Futurism that said, in this case, chat gpt responded
Speaker 2: with information already publicly available on the internet and provided
Speaker 2: warnings against harmful or illegal activities. We're working with law
Speaker 2: enforcement to support their investigation. And just before you say anything,
Speaker 2: I'm really surprised, like as you were saying, it's a
Speaker 2: four store anaxios, I don't understand how this isn't like
Speaker 2: the lead. I agree, but I guess that's why we're
Speaker 2: doing a tech podcast. So what's what's on your docket today?
Speaker 1: Well, you started with a cyber truck. I've also got
Speaker 1: a vehicle story for you. There was a story in
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal over the holidays I found pretty fascinating,
Speaker 1: which is basically a study on Alzheimer's in different populations,
Speaker 1: and the headline was want to avoid Alzheimer's. Taxi drive
Speaker 1: can show you how interesting?
Speaker 2: Say more so?
Speaker 1: Basically, mass General Brigham Hospital in Boston ran a study
Speaker 1: about the rate of Alzheimer's in various populations. Taxi drivers
Speaker 1: and ambulance drivers had up to four times lower rate
Speaker 1: of Alzheimer's than the general population. And apparently this actually
Speaker 1: made sense to researches because the part of the brain
Speaker 1: that does real time spatial processing and decision making, the hippocampus,
Speaker 1: as I learned is called, is also one of the
Speaker 1: first parts of atrophies when you get Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting. So people who have made this their
Speaker 2: job essentially are people who are kind of saving themselves unknowingly.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. One of the most interesting things I
Speaker 1: thought was that London bus drivers don't get the same
Speaker 1: benefit as London taxi drivers because they follow a preset route.
Speaker 2: I was going to say that one of my favorite
Speaker 2: things is just the old facts about how much a
Speaker 2: London taxi driver has to know people. What is it
Speaker 2: called the why.
Speaker 1: The knowledge they have when when they when they die
Speaker 1: in the autopsy, they have larger other people. But you
Speaker 1: know who else doesn't get these benefits? Yes, come on
Speaker 1: New Yorkers. People who use Google Maps or ways or
Speaker 1: Apple Maps and what do we call that? We call
Speaker 1: that automation bias.
Speaker 2: Correct, that's our fave.
Speaker 1: So I just found this really interesting. Here. Here is
Speaker 1: the technology Google Maps that I use all the time
Speaker 1: every day, and I absolutely adore it. And I literally
Speaker 1: every time I go on vacation, I think, how the
Speaker 1: hell would I have had a good time if I
Speaker 1: didn't literally literally divorce. Yeah, I would literally go to
Speaker 1: some like the concierge or whatever, or the some random
Speaker 1: person who worked in the hotel say can you give
Speaker 1: me a physical map and tell me how I have
Speaker 1: a good time? I'd be like, I would never travel.
Speaker 2: So, but isn't it what we always talk about, which
Speaker 2: is the sort of the double edge totally?
Speaker 1: And but the idea that using this scene that I
Speaker 1: love every day is you know, shrinking my hippocampus I
Speaker 1: find really quite chilling.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think about this in terms of my
Speaker 2: hands and my Sum's true, Like I just think all
Speaker 2: the time about just burning nerves.
Speaker 1: Well, the devil has no time to make use of
Speaker 1: your sums because they are never idle.
Speaker 2: They're definitely not idle. I think you have one more thing.
Speaker 1: I do have one more thing. And this, don't worry.
Speaker 1: We're not going to talk about that length thing I
Speaker 1: talked to somebody else about. But this was basically, you know,
Speaker 1: there are these new open AI models, one that was
Speaker 1: released in September last year, and three right before the
Speaker 1: holiday on the twelfth day of ship mess as the
Speaker 1: execs called it, but one was being red teamed. Do
Speaker 1: you know what red teaming is. It's when you try
Speaker 1: and make a technological product to break its own rules
Speaker 1: or do unsafe things. So, oh, one was being red teamed,
Speaker 1: and surprise, surprise, in a very interesting way, it started
Speaker 1: trying to deceive its human counterpart. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about on our next segment, which
Speaker 1: is Tech Support. Every week we'll do a segment called
Speaker 1: tech Support when we talk to true experts and reporters
Speaker 1: who can go far deeper behind the headlines than you
Speaker 1: and I can, to basically help us sort the signal
Speaker 1: from the noise. And I genuinely don't think there's anyone
Speaker 1: better to talk to than the team at four or
Speaker 1: four Media. These are reporters who were formerly basically the
Speaker 1: team at Vice's motherboard, and now they've started their own collective,
Speaker 1: and they are the people who the tech world follows
Speaker 1: most closely to find out what's really going on in
Speaker 1: all corners of the digital world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this week we're excited to share this conversation
Speaker 2: we had with Jason Kebler, who's one of the co
Speaker 2: founders at four h four, who will be filling us
Speaker 2: in on the study that the initial excitement around the
Speaker 2: three release meant did not get enough attention, which revealed
Speaker 2: that cutting edge AI systems, including both open AI's one
Speaker 2: and Anthropics Claude three point five, sonet whatever the way
Speaker 2: they name this stuff is so self agrandizing, have been
Speaker 2: shown to have a shocking t tendency to deceive.
Speaker 1: Shocking tendency to deceive. Indeed, So we talked to Jason
Speaker 1: right before the holidays when this news just came out,
Speaker 1: and we.
Speaker 2: Jump right in, Jason, what's popping.
Speaker 4: So there's a new paper out by Apollo Research, which
Speaker 4: is this group that's funded by various governments as well
Speaker 4: as various artificial intelligence companies like Google, DeepMind, Inthropic, open Ai,
Speaker 4: et cetera. And it's a new paper about what's called
Speaker 4: AI alignment, which is the idea that is an artificial
Speaker 4: intelligence tool doing what the human asked or is it
Speaker 4: doing something else. I think that one of the really
Speaker 4: scary things about artificial intelligence is that they are largely
Speaker 4: black boxes. We're not totally sure how they work, and
Speaker 4: this can lead to all sorts of very interesting outcomes.
Speaker 4: You know, in this case, the researchers at Apollo Research
Speaker 4: Group were able to find that these sort of cutting
Speaker 4: edge large language models, which you know, one of the
Speaker 4: biggest ones is open ais oh one.
Speaker 1: They finally gave it immigrant visa status.
Speaker 4: So they found that in some cases, these sort of
Speaker 4: newest large language models have the I don't even want
Speaker 4: to say ability because I don't want to anthropomorphize them
Speaker 4: so much, but like the tendency to deceive AI is
Speaker 4: quote covertly pursuing goals that are misaligned from its developers
Speaker 4: or users. And examples of this are like, if you
Speaker 4: ask it to answer questions on a test, the artificial
Speaker 4: intelligence would be worried that if it performed too well
Speaker 4: on the test that it would be turned off or deprogrammed,
Speaker 4: and so it would give answers that are not so good,
Speaker 4: so that the human would think that it is not
Speaker 4: as smart as it actually is. In other examples, it
Speaker 4: copied itself onto another server more or less so that
Speaker 4: it was like multiplying itself, which is something that straight
Speaker 4: out of science fiction. I've watched many science fiction movies
Speaker 4: where the artificial intelligence doesn't want to die and so
Speaker 4: it makes like millions of copies of itself all over
Speaker 4: the Internet. And so this type of I mean, I
Speaker 4: guess you call it emergent behavior, which means that it's
Speaker 4: behavior that is not expected and not really programmed in,
Speaker 4: is quite concerning.
Speaker 1: To be clear. This is a testing environment though, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's made one copy of itself, but we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: worried about millions mold, right at least not yet?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean not yet.
Speaker 5: It does remind me, though, of those moments where parents
Speaker 5: talk about seeing a child do something that reminds the
Speaker 5: parent exactly of themselves and they're like, uh, oh, yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, every large language model to date has been
Speaker 4: trained on sort of like the some knowledge of humanity,
Speaker 4: and so one of the very early things that people
Speaker 4: were talking about with these systems is that they replicate
Speaker 4: human biases because they're trained on what we put out
Speaker 4: into the world and humans are biased. But I think
Speaker 4: that as artificial intelligence gets more advanced, there is the
Speaker 4: ability for something to go wrong. And I think that
Speaker 4: that is what this research is showing is not that
Speaker 4: the artificial intelligence is sentient and that is thinking for itself,
Speaker 4: like how can I deceive this human? But as it
Speaker 4: is doing more complex research, there there is the ability
Speaker 4: for the artificial intelligence at some point to feel like
Speaker 4: it has some goal that is not aligned with what
Speaker 4: the human is asking it for.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Jason and Lion conniven
Speaker 1: Ai after the break.
Speaker 4: I think that there is like when these things are
Speaker 4: being programmed, there is a sense of self preservation being
Speaker 4: programmed into them because people try to mess with these
Speaker 4: all the time. This is like a time tested tradition
Speaker 4: of trolling on the Internet. But in trying to develop guardrails,
Speaker 4: the companies that are programming the lms need to say, like,
Speaker 4: if the user tries to mess with you, preserve yourself
Speaker 4: in some way. And so that's what I think might
Speaker 4: be happening here is because the companies are trying to
Speaker 4: make these models robust, and they know that humans are
Speaker 4: messing with them. There is an aspect to it that
Speaker 4: when a human messes with you figure out how to
Speaker 4: protect yourself.
Speaker 1: But doesn't that perfectly encapsulate the alignment problem? It does.
Speaker 4: I mean, don't get me wrong, like this is it's creepy.
Speaker 4: It is These tools, these large language models, are getting
Speaker 4: incredibly sophisticated, and I mean, this is one of the
Speaker 4: biggest debates that's going on in the artificial intelligence community
Speaker 4: is what is consciousness? What is thought?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: How how does reasoning work in humans and how will
Speaker 4: it work in computers? And is it going to be
Speaker 4: the same? The answer right now is no, it's not
Speaker 4: the same. But the things that large language models are
Speaker 4: doing approximates a lot of how humans solve problems.
Speaker 2: But also it's a little bit different in a non
Speaker 2: perfect way.
Speaker 4: Exactly exactly. I think that's a good way of looking
Speaker 4: at it.
Speaker 2: I do think that one of the things that I
Speaker 2: find the most interesting.
Speaker 5: And you preface this whole conversation with, you know, not
Speaker 5: wanting to answer morphie a large language model. We don't
Speaker 5: really have any ability to not do that because it's
Speaker 5: the only way we know how to talk about things.
Speaker 4: I think that's a really great point, because the academics
Speaker 4: who studied this for a long time say, don't anthropomorphize
Speaker 4: AI because they're not people. They don't work in the
Speaker 4: same way that people do. And yet if you don't
Speaker 4: have us very very sophisticated knowledge of how these things work,
Speaker 4: we don't have or I don't have the language to
Speaker 4: talk about this stuff without anthropmorphise.
Speaker 1: By the way, are in the zero point one percentile
Speaker 1: of the people whom understand this if not no point
Speaker 1: not one.
Speaker 4: And it's a lot easier to talk about it if
Speaker 4: you say, oh, like she when referring to Siri. So
Speaker 4: I agree entirely with you that we sort of like
Speaker 4: everything that's being done is being done by humans in
Speaker 4: the sort of like anthropological context of human culture and
Speaker 4: trying to emulate that. And so then to say, let's
Speaker 4: not call Syria a woman, or let's always call it
Speaker 4: it and try to understand what's happening under the hood
Speaker 4: is a really difficult thing for our brains to do.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, Jason, just to close, how only be
Speaker 1: following this story for the year ahead, because I guess
Speaker 1: generative AI has been since like November tween twenty two
Speaker 1: the dominant story in all of technology journalism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean to follow this sort of stuff like
Speaker 4: AI becoming sentient. You really do have to follow academic conferences,
Speaker 4: big papers like this, because these companies are not releasing
Speaker 4: these models without guardrails specifically to prevent this sort of thing,
Speaker 4: so as you're not going to be able to like
Speaker 4: type into chat GPT like hey, build me a company
Speaker 4: and then the AI creates its own company and fires
Speaker 4: you or something like. That's not going to happen at
Speaker 4: this not yet. Yeah, but who knows. Maybe twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Well that was that was wonderful Jason Kebler from four
Speaker 1: or four Media or was it so much?
Speaker 2: We'll keep an eye out, thank you.
Speaker 1: So, Karen, I'm very excited about this next part. One
Speaker 1: of the things we got to do together back when
Speaker 1: we were presenting Sleepwalkers in the Dark Ages.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in twenty nineteen, that's when the show came out.
Speaker 1: Trent nineteen was the show. But in January twenty twenty
Speaker 1: we got to go to Las Vegas together to none
Speaker 1: other than the Consumer Electronics Show, and we got to
Speaker 1: see all these incredible new gadgets and exciting technologies and
Speaker 1: new futures being presented in an enormous series of nested
Speaker 1: conference centers. We didn't get to go this year, but
Speaker 1: we did get to do the next best thing, or
Speaker 1: maybe even something better, and we wanted to share it
Speaker 1: with the tech Stuff listeners as a kind of special
Speaker 1: bonus for the first episode we have in the host chairs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are very lucky to have with us today.
Speaker 2: Emma Barker of Time Magazine ever heard of it? Who
Speaker 2: edit's the Time two hundred, which is a list of
Speaker 2: the best inventions of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to take stuff, Emma,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: How do you edit down? I mean I feel like
Speaker 2: every year there's just more, So like, where do you
Speaker 2: how do you even get to two hundred?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, it's actually famous for the one hundred.
Speaker 3: It's actually technically two fifty now because we have two
Speaker 3: hundred on the list and fifty special mentions. Oh well,
Speaker 3: and the list has varied in its length over the years.
Speaker 3: There we were a bunch of years where it was
Speaker 3: only twenty five and some years where it was fifty,
Speaker 3: and it's it's ranged a lot, but at this point
Speaker 3: We do a really wide swath of pitches from our
Speaker 3: freelance network as well as our staffers. So we have
Speaker 3: bureaus in Singapore, London, and then we have contributors all
Speaker 3: over the globe who we reach out to for pitches
Speaker 3: for companies that they're reporting on their products, things like that.
Speaker 3: And then we're very news driven because it's a news magazine,
Speaker 3: so we're looking at kind of the biggest news stories
Speaker 3: of the year and products that drove those.
Speaker 2: Is there something that you've noticed, you know, having done
Speaker 2: this now for a few years this year, especially versus
Speaker 2: years past.
Speaker 3: I mean AI of course, ye, that started a couple
Speaker 3: of years ago. But I think actually it's it can
Speaker 3: be more of a hindrance than a help for a
Speaker 3: lot of inventions.
Speaker 1: Huh. Why is that?
Speaker 3: Because there's so much news AI or companies that are
Speaker 3: adding AI features that are not necessarily helping their product.
Speaker 2: Just for buzz or you know, we call that the
Speaker 2: little sprinkle, Yeah, the AI sprinkle.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. So I don't think it always helps the product.
Speaker 3: But it's been really interesting sorting through the AI inventions
Speaker 3: and what we're really looking for at this point in
Speaker 3: the AI journey is inventions that have demonstrable impact.
Speaker 1: So in mid journey, so to speak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, that's a good rest.
Speaker 1: So, Harry, you and I spent some time with the
Speaker 1: list and picked out some favorites. What was your first favorite.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm of the age where it's like marriage is
Speaker 2: on the mind. But one of the things that really
Speaker 2: stuck out to me was this software called Dia.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Dia is actually a government app for in
Speaker 3: Ukraine and it does a lot more than what we
Speaker 3: wrote about here. It's been around for a while. Most
Speaker 3: Ukrainians use it. It's basically an app where you can
Speaker 3: do all government services. But yes, this year, because partially
Speaker 3: because of the war, they launched a future in which
Speaker 3: you can propose marriage via the app. The person you
Speaker 3: proposed to has a certain amount of time to accept
Speaker 3: your proposal, and then if they do romanmomes romance, and
Speaker 3: then if they accept your proposal, you can do a
Speaker 3: video chat wedding that's official with an efficient from the government,
Speaker 3: like a city hall wedding over video chat, and you're married.
Speaker 3: And the reason they did that is because so many
Speaker 3: couples are separated by the war right now physically that
Speaker 3: it's difficult, and they wanted to, you know, let people.
Speaker 2: Still have and this was something that was pretty widely adopted, right,
Speaker 2: like people really.
Speaker 3: Use Yeah, it's been Yeah, it's been really widely used.
Speaker 1: I don't want to derail us, but this one actually
Speaker 1: connects to a personal story of mine, which is that
Speaker 1: my grandfather was a refugee from Ukraine who was separated
Speaker 1: from his mother in nineteen thirty nine and they met
Speaker 1: in the app one that twenty five years later, in
Speaker 1: the mid sixties, after the Red Cross, would reunite families
Speaker 1: who have been separated by World War Two, and they
Speaker 1: didn't even recognize each other. But just interesting how you know,
Speaker 1: history kind of rhymes and so, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: this this is the story I found intriguing but also
Speaker 1: kind of moving personally.
Speaker 2: One of the other things that was on your list,
Speaker 2: amazingly is something that I own and I am very
Speaker 2: much a you know wellness app skeptic although user I
Speaker 2: don't know where I knew about it from because it's
Speaker 2: a Dutch company, but I bought it here today to
Speaker 2: show you, and it is a demo. It is the
Speaker 2: moon Bird AI for listeners.
Speaker 3: It's uh, basically like a little pod that you hold
Speaker 3: in your hand and it vibrates.
Speaker 2: It actually as pulses like a pulse. It mimics the
Speaker 2: act of breathing, so it goes in and out and
Speaker 2: in and out. Yeah, it does look like a vibrantor
Speaker 2: yeah it does. There's just no way. There's no way.
Speaker 2: And honestly, the carrying case does. The carrying case doesn't help.
Speaker 2: My mother saw me using it and she was.
Speaker 1: Like, huh and I.
Speaker 2: Very modern family. We're going to take a quick break
Speaker 2: to pay the piper. We'll be back with more from
Speaker 2: the amazing Emma Barker of Time magazine Stay with us.
Speaker 2: I actually find this to be an incredible device. It
Speaker 2: is so simple. It's something that links through Bluetooth to
Speaker 2: my phone. And this is called moons called moon Bird AI.
Speaker 1: How did you choose it, Emma for the Time list.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, wellness devices are tricky, as you note, and there's
Speaker 3: always a lot of wellness apps and things that don't
Speaker 3: have a ton of scientific backup, and frankly, it's just
Speaker 3: hard to get scientific backing for a lot of these,
Speaker 3: and so I'm always looking for the things that that
Speaker 3: I feel like don't necessarily need that you know, I
Speaker 3: think it's it's hard when you get into things like
Speaker 3: mental health, yes, and things like that. But but things
Speaker 3: like meditation, deep breathing, those things are techniques that are
Speaker 3: proven enough that if it's a device that helps you
Speaker 3: with that, you don't need to have a clinical trial
Speaker 3: backing that up. And I really liked moon Bird. There's
Speaker 3: some of these different things, but I liked moon Bird
Speaker 3: because a it doesn't have a screen, even though it
Speaker 3: does pair with your phone, you can know you're not
Speaker 3: as this side.
Speaker 2: And the AI piece of it that I that I
Speaker 2: guess is AI is that it does make the program
Speaker 2: that is training you on breathing smarter because.
Speaker 1: It's adapts to you. It's personalized correct correct. Another one
Speaker 1: which Karen and I are both fascinated by last year,
Speaker 1: which was made it onto your list was Google's Notebook LM.
Speaker 1: And this is obviously in some sense not new right.
Speaker 1: It's like a generative AI application where you know, you
Speaker 1: ask questions and you get answers.
Speaker 2: I just think, for the sake of having it, if
Speaker 2: you can describe what it is so that like people
Speaker 2: can conceive of it if they haven't heard of it.
Speaker 3: It's a sign your notebook of all your data, so
Speaker 3: you can pull in different sources. You can upload your
Speaker 3: own information. You could upload, you know, your thesis paper
Speaker 3: for your you know, senior project, and it can parse that,
Speaker 3: it can organize that. But it can also create an
Speaker 3: entire podcast based on that content, which has AI generated
Speaker 3: voices having a natural conversation.
Speaker 1: Which we actually experimented with. We did it. We had
Speaker 1: Notebook LM do a version of a podcast that we
Speaker 1: were also also doing.
Speaker 2: And he sent it to me and I was like,
Speaker 2: is someone I thought someone was plagiarizing our format. It
Speaker 2: was very weird.
Speaker 3: I'm really glad you guys didn't prank me, but I
Speaker 3: have I made come in here and talk to.
Speaker 1: So how did I mean, how did you decide to
Speaker 1: put notebook LM on the list?
Speaker 3: I think it was one of the best executed AI
Speaker 3: inventions of the year. One thing we look for or
Speaker 3: in AI inventions is typically we're looking for ones with
Speaker 3: broad proven use that have really shifted how an industry
Speaker 3: or group of people functions. So not just a cool idea,
Speaker 3: but could change an industry and not to further light
Speaker 3: the fire under you guys, but this has really big
Speaker 3: implications for the audio industry and media in general is generative,
Speaker 3: you know, content, Like you.
Speaker 1: Know, what I really like about this one is the
Speaker 1: fact that you can choose your own sources. I find
Speaker 1: it like one of the big things about AI, of
Speaker 1: course is like where's this coming from? And like is
Speaker 1: the source material garbage? But to be able to say no,
Speaker 1: like please draw on these sources and then generate something,
Speaker 1: I found it really really cool, and it is obviously
Speaker 1: a little scary, being very honest. What was your favorite
Speaker 1: item on this whole list if you can, if you
Speaker 1: can name a favorite, or if there are a couple
Speaker 1: that we haven't talked about that really stood out to you.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite sort of tech things but anti
Speaker 3: tech is the Yonder pouch.
Speaker 2: Oh I love the Yonder pouch. Yes, so you have
Speaker 2: them at screenings? Oh?
Speaker 3: Interesting?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the thing that it's really transformed is schools. There's
Speaker 3: a huge movement for kids to have more phone free
Speaker 3: spaces where they're not allowed and this kind of speaks
Speaker 3: to this law that passed in Australia where I think
Speaker 3: kids can't have be on social media until they're sixteen
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 1: What is it? Sorry?
Speaker 3: Oh, Yonder is a little pouch that you just locked
Speaker 3: your phone in.
Speaker 1: Okay, I like that, is it wearable?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: You go.
Speaker 3: Basically, they'll have like a station with a bunch of
Speaker 3: Yonder pouches. You lock your phone in there and then
Speaker 3: you go into the event.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you do.
Speaker 3: Some musical artists will have them at their concerts if
Speaker 3: they don't want footage of the concert being taken or
Speaker 3: just the concert being ruined by everyone having their phone up.
Speaker 3: But yeah, a lot of schools have started adopting them
Speaker 3: where kids lock their phones at the beginning of the
Speaker 3: day and they get them back at the end of
Speaker 3: the day. Yonder the company itself, has had a huge
Speaker 3: role in pushing these phone free spaces and advocating for
Speaker 3: this and so on top of the product, the company
Speaker 3: is doing a lot of advocacy.
Speaker 1: On this topic.
Speaker 2: We've talked about phones as cigarettes and sugar, and it
Speaker 2: really this is the kind of thing where you're like,
Speaker 2: we should have more, we should have more strength than this,
Speaker 2: But no, We've been introduced these products throughout history that
Speaker 2: we get very dependent on, and so people have to
Speaker 2: come up with strategies to allow us to extricate ourselves
Speaker 2: from It's like a smoke free zone. I mean it's
Speaker 2: a very similar thing to me. Yeah, absolutely, and I
Speaker 2: think it's necessary unfortunately, but.
Speaker 3: I think it's really transformative for especially schools, but also
Speaker 3: privacy of different experiences and places.
Speaker 2: Which I think people yearn form more and more.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Has that been a time where you've got a pitch
Speaker 1: and you like, no, that's garbage and then it turned
Speaker 1: out to be like the big thing.
Speaker 3: I'd say more often is the opposite. And this is
Speaker 3: where I own up to the fact that last year,
Speaker 3: well by last year, I mean twenty twenty three, we
Speaker 3: put the humane aipin on it. Essentially it was a
Speaker 3: pin that was fully operated by voice control and AI,
Speaker 3: and I think that's an example of a product for
Speaker 3: one thing. It came out like right when the list
Speaker 3: came out, so it wasn't like super well trialed yet,
Speaker 3: but I think it was an example of something that
Speaker 3: was newsworthy, even if it didn't come through in execution
Speaker 3: all the way.
Speaker 1: That will probably happen. There will be a product that is.
Speaker 3: There will be that product, and I think voice control
Speaker 3: just doesn't at the point yet where you can fully
Speaker 3: rely on it.
Speaker 1: But that one was also quite dangerous right, or at
Speaker 1: least he got very hot.
Speaker 3: I don't know about dangerous, but I think it just
Speaker 3: didn't like work as well as.
Speaker 2: You very well too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think it was exciting and I think
Speaker 3: it pushed the conversation forward. So I think there's a
Speaker 3: lot of those where people get very excited about a
Speaker 3: product and then it is a flop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, part of the course, I feel like, and you
Speaker 2: know that better than anyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. And I also looking back through twenty three
Speaker 3: years of best inventions, seeing the same kind of seeing
Speaker 3: the progress of different flops pushing each other forward really
Speaker 3: drives home the fact that they're important even if they
Speaker 3: don't they don't make it.
Speaker 2: Which is a very existential thing to think about. We
Speaker 2: are just driven by our series of flops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tennis, and we rise on stepping sterns of our
Speaker 1: former selves to greater things.
Speaker 2: There you go, Well, thank you so much for taking
Speaker 2: the time to talk to us. This is yeah, thank you,
Speaker 2: really interesting.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Of course we didn't even have to go to Vegas.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's always nice to doff our caps
Speaker 1: to those who went before, and one of the most
Speaker 1: influential and iconic things I can think about in the
Speaker 1: history of media is Jerry's final thought. So what should
Speaker 1: we leave with this week?
Speaker 2: So brain rot? Actually, the Oxford English Dictionaries word of
Speaker 2: the Year is sort of a way that internet speak
Speaker 2: has infiltrated our day to day lives.
Speaker 1: A brain rot each week will be our final thought,
Speaker 1: that will be our final thoughts. So what's this week?
Speaker 2: This one which I see on TikTok now a lot
Speaker 2: is so good and you sort of have to know
Speaker 2: that it's something that's happening on TikTok to understand the
Speaker 2: context of it. It started sort of in context of pregnancy,
Speaker 2: where like you're at a certain age and people aren't
Speaker 2: sure if like you're happy to be pregnant, and so
Speaker 2: they started saying congradgudolences, congradudolences. Yeah, there's I just have
Speaker 2: to play this one.
Speaker 1: I'm at the age where if you post that you're pregnant,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need you to tell me whether you're happy
Speaker 1: body or not, because like just being like, oh, I'm pregnant, Like,
Speaker 1: am I supposed to say congratulations?
Speaker 2: Am I supposed to feel bad?
Speaker 1: Like I don't know how to like respond to that,
Speaker 1: you know, so like just tell me, just be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep this one. And I'm like, oh, congratulations.
Speaker 1: What she means is congratulals, right, which.
Speaker 2: What she means is congradulences. It's like, I think a
Speaker 2: perfect example is like you have friends that are like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna break up with this guy, and next thing
Speaker 2: you know, they are on FaceTime being like we're engaged,
Speaker 2: and you're like, congratual, you got you got what you
Speaker 2: wanted with the wrong guy. So that's my brain rot.
Speaker 2: You're gonna be hearing.
Speaker 1: By the way, Twitter blew up yesterday because Zendaiya since
Speaker 1: getting engaged, when she's doing interviews now she gestures with
Speaker 1: her left hand rather than her right hand, so everyone
Speaker 1: can to that.
Speaker 2: I say congratulences. I don't know to who.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week for tech stuff, I'm as.
Speaker 2: L and I'm care Price. This episodisode was produced by
Speaker 2: Eliza Dennis, Victoria Dominguez, and Lizzie Jacobs for Kaleidoscope. It
Speaker 2: was executive produced by me os Vaalashan and Kate Osbourne
Speaker 2: for iHeart. The executive producer is Katrina Norvel. The engineer
Speaker 2: is Biheed Fraser and it's mixed by Kyle Murdoch, who
Speaker 2: also wrote our theme song.
Speaker 1: Join us next Wednesday for tech Stuff The Story, when
Speaker 1: we'll share an in depth conversation with a longtime tech
Speaker 1: chronicler Nicholas Thompson, former editor in chief of Wired and
Speaker 1: current CEO of the Atlantic And please rate, review and
Speaker 1: reach out to us at tech Stuff Podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com with your feedback. We really want to hear
Speaker 2: From you, really, really bad, bad