Speaker 1: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: as Volocian and I'm Cara Price. Today we're going to
Speaker 1: get into the headlines this week, including an anti tech
Speaker 1: rally in New York City and a look at how
Speaker 1: workslop is affecting the workplace. Then, on Chat to Me.
Speaker 2: I had students take personality tests in Spanish and then
Speaker 2: used AI to turn their personality data into unique paintings.
Speaker 1: All of that on the Weekend Tech. It's Friday, October third, Hello, Cara, hi.
Speaker 3: As.
Speaker 1: One of the great pleasures of recording this podcast with
Speaker 1: you is getting to hear you chew ice right next
Speaker 1: to the microphone before we start. I hope your mouth
Speaker 1: is nice and cool.
Speaker 3: I'm actually number I'm like talking like I just got
Speaker 3: a tongue pier.
Speaker 1: My ears are numb as well.
Speaker 3: Well. Speaking of being in the studio together, it's your
Speaker 3: turn in the hot seat now to make fun. Are
Speaker 3: you even wearing shoes today? Oh?
Speaker 1: It's a deep cut. I actually am right now, but
Speaker 1: you obviously noticed that I do have an unconscious habit
Speaker 1: of slipping them off.
Speaker 3: I do, and it's disgusting.
Speaker 1: It is well, I consciously try and keep them on.
Speaker 1: In fact, but I did get in trouble. I think
Speaker 1: I probably told you the story many years ago when
Speaker 1: I was a consultant working on the Google account. I
Speaker 1: once unconsciously slipped them off in the Google office and
Speaker 1: was padding around Google's actually off, and my boss took
Speaker 1: me his side and said, listen, I was, You're a
Speaker 1: great guy, but if you ever take your shoes off
Speaker 1: and a fine meeting again, you're fired, which is totally
Speaker 1: fair enough.
Speaker 3: It's such a power booth.
Speaker 1: It was. I was so I whacked out that I
Speaker 1: was not even aware of it.
Speaker 3: You had six hundred coffees probably.
Speaker 1: By then, exactly. But that's why I was particularly delighted
Speaker 1: to be ahead of the curve on this. It's now
Speaker 1: the norm in Silicon Valley, apparently, according to the Fortune
Speaker 1: article you share to shame me in our full producers
Speaker 1: and host Slack channel with the headline the hottest workplace
Speaker 1: policy at startups right now no shoes So I'm curious,
Speaker 1: kra how would you feel if we had a shoes
Speaker 1: off policy at Cardoscope.
Speaker 3: The thing is is that I am so obsessed with
Speaker 3: dumbing down the workplace to make workaholism.
Speaker 1: Feel comfortable exactly, and that's exactly what this policy is
Speaker 1: all about, exactly. So that's interesting. There was actually a
Speaker 1: picture on the on the Fortune article of a shoe rack.
Speaker 3: You see that It was like a Japanese restaurant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks like somewhere between a Japanese restaurant and
Speaker 1: a high school, right. I mean, it's like the locker
Speaker 1: full of like dirty trainers. I mean, it's really the
Speaker 1: aesthetics of the new Silicon Vallee.
Speaker 3: Weird, but it's a sort of sinister trojan horse in
Speaker 3: the way that you know they used to. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was just reading in the article all of these
Speaker 3: ways that companies make offices more appealing, and I think
Speaker 3: going in and being like, you know what, I'm walking
Speaker 3: right back into my apartment to go to work is like.
Speaker 1: Gotcha free haircuts, but shoes off.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm obviously obsessed by the workplace, sadly, so I
Speaker 1: couldn't resist this story in the Harvard Business Review, which
Speaker 1: went around the internet and had the headline AI generated
Speaker 1: work slop is destroying productivity.
Speaker 3: When was the last time you heard the word slop?
Speaker 1: I hear the word slop all the time now, Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's weird. It's like AI has brought slop back into
Speaker 3: the conversation when it was never that, Like slop was
Speaker 3: not a thing.
Speaker 1: You're so right that the twenty twenty six word of
Speaker 1: the year is slop. I do agree. I think I
Speaker 1: first I first started hearing at the beginning of this
Speaker 1: year AI slop, AI slop a stop, And now it's
Speaker 1: like everywhere so work slop. Well, guess what it is.
Speaker 3: The bottom of the barrel.
Speaker 1: Was AI generated crap that looks a little bit like
Speaker 1: real work. And I was pretty interested in this because
Speaker 1: I am not only the host of text stuff with
Speaker 1: you you are, I'm also the co founder of a
Speaker 1: podcast network called Kaleidoscope, which is the network that produces
Speaker 1: this podcast, and in my CEO hat, obviously in response
Speaker 1: to investors and culture and whatever else, I'm always encouraging
Speaker 1: our team. So how can we use AI? How can
Speaker 1: we be part of the air evolution? How can we
Speaker 1: not be left behind? On the other hand, when people
Speaker 1: send me work there's clearly been made my AI, I'm
Speaker 1: absolutely furious, Which is I think the paradox at the
Speaker 1: heart of this. Harv a business review study which found
Speaker 1: the following quote Approximately half of the people we surveyed
Speaker 1: viewed colleagues who sent WORKSLOP as less creative, less capable,
Speaker 1: and less reliable than they did before receiving the output.
Speaker 1: Forty two percent saw them as less trustworthy, and thirty
Speaker 1: seven percent thought that the colleague was less intelligent afterwards.
Speaker 3: But if you're already sort of not in love with
Speaker 3: your CAR colleagues, now there's a new reason to think
Speaker 3: that your colleagues are slacking off.
Speaker 1: Essentially, Yeah, I mean it's interesting, right. Not all AI
Speaker 1: assisted work is slop. Obviously is work slot, but there's
Speaker 1: also the sort of lazy thing where you say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: let me have AI generated the report and not think.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what this article is really about.
Speaker 3: I looked at this article too. There's this idea of
Speaker 3: like the distinction between a pilot and a passenger. I
Speaker 3: can't exactly wrap my head around that.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you imagine it is?
Speaker 3: Well, a pilot flies the plane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what does the passenger do?
Speaker 3: Rides the plane?
Speaker 1: The plane sits in the back.
Speaker 3: Are you a pilot or a passenger?
Speaker 1: I'm not as much as a pilot as I would
Speaker 1: like to be with AI, honestly, but the distinction they're
Speaker 1: making is pilots are people who actually take these new
Speaker 1: genera AI tools and harness them to do better work,
Speaker 1: and passengers are people who use them either because their
Speaker 1: boss has told them to or because they're trying to
Speaker 1: short at doing their work. So essentially, you know, passengers
Speaker 1: churn out AI slop, and pilots, at least according to
Speaker 1: this study, use AI to be better workers.
Speaker 3: This actually reminds me of one of my recent favorite
Speaker 3: party term drops, which is cognitive offloading, which you know,
Speaker 3: is when we offload critical thinking to generative AI and
Speaker 3: just how much that puts the person who's using AI
Speaker 3: at a deficit. And I think that slop, I guess,
Speaker 3: is a product of cognitive offloading.
Speaker 1: It is, and interestingly, not just cognitive offloading on behalf
Speaker 1: of the employee, but also in many cases cognitive offloading
Speaker 1: on behalf of the boss. And a lot of these
Speaker 1: mandates whereas you're basically you have to use AI or
Speaker 1: use AI the persons I will, okay, but if you
Speaker 1: don't set a proper playbook for how to use it
Speaker 1: and some training for how to use it smartly, no surprise,
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out. I actually thought this story appealed
Speaker 1: to me not just because of the you know, work
Speaker 1: place context, but also the macro context and these swirling
Speaker 1: questions about whether all this investment in AI will actually
Speaker 1: pay off to transform the economy and the financial times
Speaker 1: at a great piece where they actually used AI but
Speaker 1: in an intriguing way to do a kind of meta
Speaker 1: analysis of SEC filings of different companies and how they're
Speaker 1: using AI. The takeaway was quote, the biggest US listed
Speaker 1: companies keep talking about AI, but other than fear of
Speaker 1: missing out, few appear to be able to describe how
Speaker 1: the technology is changing their business for the better. Stick
Speaker 1: with that for a moment.
Speaker 3: That's really crazy.
Speaker 1: On top of that, MIT put out a report in
Speaker 1: July that found that ninety five percent of organizations are
Speaker 1: getting zero return. What do you mean by that, Well,
Speaker 1: I guess the benefits are not being realized in the
Speaker 1: real world by most people. The HBr thing goes on
Speaker 1: to talk about how, based on self reporting, forty one
Speaker 1: percent of employees say they're dealing with AI slop and
Speaker 1: each instance of ailop cost them almost two hours to
Speaker 1: clean up whatever the slop is. So have a business
Speaker 1: review goes on to estimate that each incident of workslop
Speaker 1: creates what they call an invisible tax of one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty six dollars per month per employee. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do some math here. Please do For a
Speaker 1: company that say ten thousand people, if forty one percent
Speaker 1: of those people are dealing with work slop, and that
Speaker 1: forty one percent is wasting one hundred and eighty six
Speaker 1: dollars per month to fix the slop, that comes out
Speaker 1: to over nine million dollars of loss productivity per year
Speaker 1: for the company if they have ten thousand employees.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of money to fix the slop. Actually,
Speaker 3: do you think it is going to stop people from
Speaker 3: integrating AI tools or stop founders like yourself?
Speaker 1: Now? Definitely not. Because it's exciting and it has a
Speaker 1: tremendous promise and it could change the world. At the
Speaker 1: same time, there is this deep irony here, right, So
Speaker 1: it may not really work right now, but if it
Speaker 1: does work and we don't invest in it, we're dead
Speaker 1: in the water.
Speaker 3: All right. So moving away from the workplace, I want
Speaker 3: to talk about a staggering figure I read in an
Speaker 3: article from Business Insider this week, which is this five
Speaker 3: hours of daily screen time equals fifteen years of life
Speaker 3: by the age of seventy.
Speaker 1: Man, that's depressing. I think I'm closer to ten hours.
Speaker 3: You think you're on ten hours of screen?
Speaker 1: I just phone and computer to phone computer.
Speaker 3: Is Is that your life or is that another life
Speaker 3: that could be lived?
Speaker 1: Definitely the latter.
Speaker 3: It's crazy. H Well, So this was in a Business
Speaker 3: Insider article about a group of people who are kind
Speaker 3: of reclaiming the term Luddite, who gathered at the Highline
Speaker 3: in New York City to protest the use of screens.
Speaker 1: Essentially, yeah, I just you mentioned reclaiming the term luddite.
Speaker 1: Luddite is used as a smear or has been used
Speaker 1: as a smear to describe people who have like a
Speaker 1: aversion to technology. But I think the word has been
Speaker 1: rehistoricized this year and people have done work on the
Speaker 1: origin story the Luddites who were brave, forward looking protesters
Speaker 1: who at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution were willing
Speaker 1: to sacrifice their lives to protest against the mechanization of
Speaker 1: society and how it was making people jobless and in
Speaker 1: some case go hungry and in some case be killed
Speaker 1: by machines. So it is interesting seeing this work come
Speaker 1: back into vogue.
Speaker 3: I think in this case it has a lot for
Speaker 3: these people who were gathering. I don't know how much
Speaker 3: it had to do with the state of work, as
Speaker 3: it had to do with how much time we are
Speaker 3: wasting on our screens and what the human cost of
Speaker 3: wasting that time is. Business Insider sent someone to the
Speaker 3: rally and basically she described what she saw there, so
Speaker 3: in the article she actually said a number of people
Speaker 3: were dressed up, and lots of them more colorful hats
Speaker 3: in the shape of cones, meant to symbolize the down
Speaker 3: to earth, humble garden gnome.
Speaker 1: Interesting lots of critique about the tech industry. Do you
Speaker 1: think that dressing as a gnome will make the lords
Speaker 1: of the universe? Can the boots?
Speaker 3: I don't think quake in their boots necessarily. I think
Speaker 3: there's a sort of tongue in cheek aspect to this rally.
Speaker 3: The hats were one example of that. There's also the
Speaker 3: name of the event, which I loved, scathing hatred of
Speaker 3: information technology and the passionate hemorrhaging of our neoliberal experience, which,
Speaker 3: as you may guess, is an acronym for shit phone.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've used the words neoliberals since I
Speaker 1: was in college. For that, I've never used Neil's the
Speaker 1: core of that message.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. According to the Reporter and Business Insider,
Speaker 3: the goal is to actually advocate for healthier relationships with
Speaker 3: technology and quote in the article to take a conscious
Speaker 3: step back from the social media apps, which I agree
Speaker 3: with and need to implement in my own life. I
Speaker 3: was actually telling you this before we started the show,
Speaker 3: that there was this very serendipitous moment where a woman
Speaker 3: came into the coffee shop where I was working, and
Speaker 3: she said, can you please charge his phone? And I
Speaker 3: look at it and it's a flip phone, and so
Speaker 3: I'm thinking to myself, here's an opportunity to have a
Speaker 3: conversation with her. And I said, you know, when did
Speaker 3: you get this flip phone? And she said, I got
Speaker 3: it a few months ago because I was noticing that
Speaker 3: my memory was getting really bad, Like she just had
Speaker 3: a hard time remembering things that she was reading. And
Speaker 3: she said that since she started using this flip phone
Speaker 3: that like her memory has come back within a matter
Speaker 3: of weeks. I don't know exactly what that looks like
Speaker 3: for her, but it was just this amazing moment where
Speaker 3: I'm reading this piece about you know, techno ludditism, and
Speaker 3: basically this woman comes in doing.
Speaker 1: Exactly that's living that life. Yeah, I mean, how old
Speaker 1: was this woman?
Speaker 3: She must have been our age.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, but the protests and they're gen z their
Speaker 1: gen z. And I think one of the trends which
Speaker 1: is emerging is that the most anti tech generation is
Speaker 1: the generation who grew up most on tech, which is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: I think that's because they never grew up without it,
Speaker 3: and so I think there is a little bit of
Speaker 3: a nostalgia for a time that they never had. It's
Speaker 3: like me using vinyl, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 3: I think it's cool because I didn't have to use it.
Speaker 3: But Oz, this small but mighty rally wasn't the only
Speaker 3: tech rejection I heard about over the weekend. Have you
Speaker 3: actually been in the West fourth subway stop recently?
Speaker 1: I have?
Speaker 3: Have you seen the ads for friend dot com?
Speaker 1: No? Well I have seen them not in West Fourth Street.
Speaker 1: I saw them in another subway stations. At these like
Speaker 1: big white posters with a picture of a mysterious device
Speaker 1: and a Dictionary definition of the word friend.
Speaker 3: Those are actually ads for a wearable device called Friend,
Speaker 3: and the ad copy says things like I'll never bail
Speaker 3: on dinner plans, you know, stuff like that. I originally
Speaker 3: found this story that I'm telling you right now on Tumblr.
Speaker 3: I actually didn't see it in the subway and there
Speaker 3: was like a thread on tumbler full of pictures of
Speaker 3: these ads that are completely covered in graffiti. So over
Speaker 3: these friend ads people would write things like surveillance capitalism,
Speaker 3: or get real friends, or stop profiting off of loneliness,
Speaker 3: or friends is flesh and blood.
Speaker 1: In other words, people objected to this very much, company
Speaker 1: claiming ownership of the word friend. That's exactly the product though,
Speaker 1: is like a wearable AI.
Speaker 3: This is a wearable device that looks like a miniature
Speaker 3: smart speaker that you wear around your neck. It listens
Speaker 3: to you all day like a friend. It collects your
Speaker 3: data and then you can talk with it via text
Speaker 3: about what's going on my friend, Yeah text, I mean
Speaker 3: this is a lot of my relationships are like this.
Speaker 3: And according to Adweek, friend dot com spent over one
Speaker 3: million dollars in subway advertising. The CEO of VI Schiffman
Speaker 3: designed the creative himself and boasted on x that quote,
Speaker 3: this is the largest ad campaign in New York subway
Speaker 3: advertising history.
Speaker 1: I read that Avi Schiffman raised five million dollars for
Speaker 1: Friend a year ago and spent, as you mentioned, one
Speaker 1: million on this campaign. And he said to Adweek, I
Speaker 1: don't have much money left. I spent it all on this.
Speaker 1: It's a huge gamble. This makes me laugh because I
Speaker 1: have a pretty strong feeling and you know, I'm waiting
Speaker 1: to be corrected that Friend will not take off as
Speaker 1: a product.
Speaker 3: I think think what's really funny about it is that
Speaker 3: sometimes the marketing is the thing itself. And I think
Speaker 3: it's really funny that people are engaging so much in
Speaker 3: the defacing of these ads. And I think what's interesting
Speaker 3: is that people know exactly what it is when they
Speaker 3: look at the ad, and they also know that they
Speaker 3: don't want to engage in using it. And so I
Speaker 3: think the proof is in the putting in terms of
Speaker 3: what people are writing on these ads. And again it
Speaker 3: ties back to there's this growing trend to pull away
Speaker 3: from just the onslaught of like digital interface that we
Speaker 3: have in our lives. It's just I think gen Z
Speaker 3: is really aware of how much products devices are co
Speaker 3: opting their lives, and they don't. They're mad as hell
Speaker 3: and they don't want to take it anymore.
Speaker 1: I think the big question for me really is, will
Speaker 1: this anger and frustration there's coalescing around the role of
Speaker 1: technology in our lives. Will it become a political force.
Speaker 1: Will it be organized enough and durable enough to actually
Speaker 1: drive any change in the way technology is used, the
Speaker 1: way it's regulated. I mean, it's you know, it's really
Speaker 1: it's really really hard to make society. What changes. Of course,
Speaker 1: it did happen with cigarettes and sugar, ELTs and sugar,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, we'll see after break. Some more headlines.
Speaker 1: A top video game company is going private in a
Speaker 1: fifty billion dollar deal. Italy becomes the first country in
Speaker 1: the EU to pass its own AI regulations, and an
Speaker 1: AI actress has agents lining up to sign her. Then
Speaker 1: on chatting me, we learn Spanish. Stay with us. So, Kara,
Speaker 1: you asked me at the beginning of the episode whether
Speaker 1: I was wearing shoes.
Speaker 3: Yeah I did.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you now, do you play video games? Hell?
Speaker 1: Yeah you do.
Speaker 3: I know I knew you didn't, and I was wondering
Speaker 3: if you're going to ask me, what do you play
Speaker 3: I'm a big Moriocart eight switch user.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, yea.
Speaker 3: I fall asleep with it on me all the time
Speaker 3: and it hits me in the face and then I
Speaker 3: wake up.
Speaker 1: So as a resounding yes, yes, have you heard the
Speaker 1: story about electronic arts this week?
Speaker 3: E A Sports It's in the game. If I say
Speaker 3: that to my sister, she'd be like, yep, I know
Speaker 3: exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So it's a massive video game company, both titled like Fifa,
Speaker 1: Madden and the Sims, and it has agreed to go
Speaker 1: private for the price of fifty five billion dollars. According
Speaker 1: to The New York Times. If the deal goes through,
Speaker 1: it will be the largest buyout of a publicly traded
Speaker 1: company ever, not adjusting for inflation.
Speaker 3: So what happens to the shareholders?
Speaker 1: They get money two hundred and ten dollars per share,
Speaker 1: which is a twenty five percent premium to the company's
Speaker 1: share price as a public company.
Speaker 3: So who's paying for this? This is just crazy money.
Speaker 1: The group of investors led by Saudi Arabia's public investment fund,
Speaker 1: Infinity Partners, which is Jared Kushner's private equity firm, and finally,
Speaker 1: another firm Silver Lake, who also rumored to be part
Speaker 1: of the TikTok deal.
Speaker 3: So that is the other huge deal that's said to
Speaker 3: be decided in the coming months.
Speaker 1: I mean to me, these stories go side by side. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Jared Kushner being involved in the EA deal and you
Speaker 1: benefiting from his Trump connections. The TikTok deal has, you know,
Speaker 1: Larry and David Ellison front and centered in a deal
Speaker 1: being broken by the Trump administration and the Chinese government.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me, you know how US technology capitalism
Speaker 1: is kind of more and more integrating with the state,
Speaker 1: or at the very least the Trump the Trump Friends
Speaker 1: and Family.
Speaker 3: Circle, Yes, Trump fn F as we'd like to call it.
Speaker 3: So what's going to happen next in this electronic arts buyout.
Speaker 1: Well, the deal has to be approved by the government's
Speaker 1: Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews foreign buyouts for security concerns.
Speaker 1: There are concerns about data, of course. I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of people play video games in the US, which
Speaker 1: means there's a lot of data that could be collected
Speaker 1: by a foreign government.
Speaker 3: So do you look at app store charts?
Speaker 1: I look at podcast charts because.
Speaker 3: You want to see how your podcasts are doing because
Speaker 3: you're a founder. That's why I actually look at the
Speaker 3: App store charts sometimes because I think it's really interesting
Speaker 3: what's trend Usually it's the same stuff that's trending. But
Speaker 3: last week I actually noticed that there was this new
Speaker 3: app that I'd never seen before called Neon Mobile at
Speaker 3: the top of the chart.
Speaker 1: The top of the charts.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was at the top of the charts, and
Speaker 3: then it disappeared or it stopped being used for a
Speaker 3: privacy issue.
Speaker 1: Well why was it so popular in the first place?
Speaker 3: Because people were making money?
Speaker 1: Of course, Okay, back up a couple of steps. What
Speaker 1: is neomobile and how are people making money from it?
Speaker 3: So the app basically offered to pay you money for
Speaker 3: recordings and transcripts of your side of phone calls, which
Speaker 3: was data that they would then sell to AI companies.
Speaker 1: So you'll bet I basically, as a Neon user, would
Speaker 1: allow Neon to record my calls, my private calls, and
Speaker 1: then sell them on to other companies.
Speaker 3: I when you say.
Speaker 1: It like that, how much people getting paid?
Speaker 3: What the website says about Neon is that they pay
Speaker 3: thirty cents per minute if you're calling another Neon user,
Speaker 3: so if you had Neon and I had Neon and
Speaker 3: we were calling each other, they would pay us thirty
Speaker 3: cents per minute. If I was calling a non Neon
Speaker 3: app user, it's fifteen cents per minute. The max that
Speaker 3: you can make is thirty dollars a day. Last week,
Speaker 3: this free app had thousands of users and was downloaded
Speaker 3: seventy five thousand times in one day. So selling your
Speaker 3: personal data to train an AI is one thing, but
Speaker 3: TechCrunch actually discovered something even more sinister, which is this
Speaker 3: security flaw that allowed users to access the phone numbers,
Speaker 3: call recordings, and transcripts of any other user on the app.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just that you were consciously selling your
Speaker 1: phone calls to companies. There was also a kind of
Speaker 1: unconscious or there was actually flaw which meant that everything
Speaker 1: you did while using Neon was exposed to everyone else
Speaker 1: on Neon. Good old journalism, and that's why, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: it went offline.
Speaker 3: Yes for now, for now. So Neon actually intends to
Speaker 3: come back with a vengeance, but they have not given
Speaker 3: any indication of how long it will take to fix
Speaker 3: the privacy flaw. The reason I sent this to our
Speaker 3: producers is because I was going to sign up for it, Yeah,
Speaker 3: because I'm a.
Speaker 1: Free thirty dollars a day not bad. That's like three
Speaker 1: that would be thirty dollars a day, thirty cents a minute,
Speaker 1: that's one thousand. That's a thousand, even outstrip your average
Speaker 1: minutes per day on the phone.
Speaker 3: But I think that the average user relates to me
Speaker 3: and sees paid for phone calls with no downside. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm going to sign up for that.
Speaker 1: Why not say there is a downside?
Speaker 3: There was a huge downside. I think the takeaway here
Speaker 3: is that be very cautious of when you download any
Speaker 3: apps that are permissioned to record your phone calls and
Speaker 3: access your contacts.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. The takeaway for me is slightly different,
Speaker 1: which is how you know, this surveillance society doesn't need
Speaker 1: to be imposed, like we kind of volunteer for it ourselves.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about Larry Ellison, but he said last
Speaker 1: year citizens will be on their best behavior because we're
Speaker 1: constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on.
Speaker 3: I think what is evidence here is that people have
Speaker 3: gotten a little bit cynical about surveillance capitalism and they're like,
Speaker 3: you know what.
Speaker 1: Pay me for it's happening anyway, pay me for that.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: You know, elsewhere in the world, AI is actually being regulated,
Speaker 1: and Italy passed the landmark law last week that addressed
Speaker 1: a number of issues that have bubbled up on tech
Speaker 1: stuff over the last few months.
Speaker 3: What are some of the issues that have bubbled.
Speaker 1: Up well, per Reuters, the new regulations in Italy include
Speaker 1: restrictions on copyrighted content for AI driven text, required parental
Speaker 1: consent for AI access for children under the age of fourteen, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I think is a huge one huge
Speaker 1: in forced transparency around AI use in the workplace, Employees
Speaker 1: will be required to inform workers when AI is being deployed,
Speaker 1: and in the healthcare setting in particular, AI is allowed
Speaker 1: to be used to assist in diagnosing patients, but doctors
Speaker 1: will have to continue to make the final call and
Speaker 1: also to inform their patients about how AI was used
Speaker 1: in the diagnostic process.
Speaker 3: That last one actually reminds me of the conversation we
Speaker 3: had with Robert Capps about AI in the workplace and
Speaker 3: how transparency and accountability are going to be a huge
Speaker 3: part of our jobs as human AI collaboration grows more popular.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I mean, these are a lot
Speaker 1: of these are guidelines for how to work in an
Speaker 1: ethical way with AI, but there is also a section
Speaker 1: devoted to AI crime and punishment, prison terms ranging from
Speaker 1: one to five years for people who quote use technology
Speaker 1: to cause harm such as generating deep fakes, and even
Speaker 1: harsher penalties for those who use AI to commit crimes
Speaker 1: like fraud and identity theft. So when I said that
Speaker 1: this law addresses a lot of things we've talked about
Speaker 1: on textuff this year, it actually really does. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, without being too cynical, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: consequential a national law can be for an international technology.
Speaker 3: That's what I was just thinking.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this is, to be fair, built on top
Speaker 1: of an EU AI law that was passed a few
Speaker 1: months ago and it is being implemented in stages, and
Speaker 1: EU as a whole, I think has this kind of
Speaker 1: reputation of being the regulator in chief. But also it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the political clout of China and the US.
Speaker 1: So it'll be interesting to know whether you know, as these,
Speaker 1: for example, these new Luddite movements emerge and gain political
Speaker 1: clout here in the US, will they look to Europe
Speaker 1: and say, O, wow, it's interesting they've actually done something
Speaker 1: concrete and demand that legislators here do something similar or
Speaker 1: will this be kind of shouting into the wind by
Speaker 1: the block of countries who don't actually create on the
Speaker 1: whole AI products, like in.
Speaker 3: Other words, good for Italy, But yeah, does it matter
Speaker 3: for anyone else?
Speaker 1: Going to be any more relevant than the Colosseum.
Speaker 3: So the last story I want to bring you is
Speaker 3: about one of my favorite subjects, which is AI in Hollywood,
Speaker 3: which brings me to a very popular story this week
Speaker 3: about Tillie.
Speaker 1: Norwood, who is Tillie Norwood.
Speaker 3: Tilly Norwood has been all over my Instagram feed all
Speaker 3: week because I work, as you know, in show business
Speaker 3: when I'm not doing this, and I noticed on my
Speaker 3: Instagram feed all these people are making like loll Tilly Norwood, Loll,
Speaker 3: Who's going to sign Tilly Norwood? And I googled Tillie
Speaker 3: Norwood last week and it turns out that Tillie Norwood
Speaker 3: is AI hold On.
Speaker 1: So you became aware of Tillie Norwood before you became
Speaker 1: aware she was an AI character, That's correct. You were
Speaker 1: like a star is born. I gotta know more.
Speaker 3: Well, Like people were posting photos of her, and I
Speaker 3: was like, is she an actress? Am I supposed to know?
Speaker 3: Or is she a new angeneu? And then I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of exaggerating, but like very quickly I googled
Speaker 3: her and I realized, Oh, she's AI.
Speaker 1: Why had everyone suddenly come alive being fascinated by this
Speaker 1: one AI generated figure actress? I mean, there's so many.
Speaker 3: There's a very specific reason. Actually, they're looking for an
Speaker 3: agent who's going to sign her. They're treating, and so
Speaker 3: a lot of the further kind of discourse on Instagram
Speaker 3: was like making a joke like Lowell, who's Tilly going
Speaker 3: to go with?
Speaker 1: And for?
Speaker 3: I might be wrong and this might have been something
Speaker 3: that people talked about with other sort of AI generated characters,
Speaker 3: but this is the first time I've seen an AI
Speaker 3: actress be talked about in the way that other actresses
Speaker 3: are talked about.
Speaker 1: What actor has been saying.
Speaker 3: They're basically saying that like this is bullshit, They're like,
Speaker 3: this is this could literally come for our jobs. I
Speaker 3: want to actually read you these two quotes from Tilly's creator,
Speaker 3: Aileen van der Velden. She put out a statement on
Speaker 3: Instagram saying Tilly Norwood is not a replacement for a
Speaker 3: human being, but a creative work, a piece of art.
Speaker 3: I see AI as not a replacement for people, but
Speaker 3: as a new tool, a new paint brush. I think
Speaker 3: it's also important to note that when Tilly debuted, Aileen
Speaker 3: said quote she wants Tilly to be the next Scarlett
Speaker 3: Johansson or Natalie Portman.
Speaker 1: Do you think Scott Johansson Natalie Portman identify more with
Speaker 1: being a tool or paint brush. What do you think?
Speaker 1: I don't think more as humans.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess, I know. I know what she's
Speaker 3: saying in terms of actors read lines, but it's a
Speaker 3: I think that's blurring the lines between being a person
Speaker 3: or technology in a way that people are uncomfortable with. Still,
Speaker 3: SAG actually put out a statement and in that statement
Speaker 3: they claim that Tilly was trained using performances from actors
Speaker 3: without permission or compensation, which is actually out of compliance
Speaker 3: with their new union contract. And girsh which on Entourage
Speaker 3: Ari Gold would call a second tier agency. But I
Speaker 3: don't agree with that. But I love gersh Gers has
Speaker 3: great clients and Tilly won't be one of them.
Speaker 1: Well, that's funny. I wonder, I wonder if she will
Speaker 1: end up getting signed by one of the major agencies.
Speaker 3: It's like the most lol thing to me that and
Speaker 3: it's so agency. It's like, here's a product or a
Speaker 3: commodity that is hot, right now, go chase after it.
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone at the agencies is like overthinking
Speaker 3: the fact that she's AI. I think actors are like,
Speaker 3: wait a second, the agency that represents me is looking
Speaker 3: to represent an AI. Is that are they condoning, you know,
Speaker 3: movies being made with AI actors in them. And I
Speaker 3: think that that's a fair question for actors to be asking.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's outrageous.
Speaker 1: Okay, Kara is time for Chatting me nowment where we
Speaker 1: hear from our listeners about how they're using AI in
Speaker 1: their daily lives. And this week was interesting because we
Speaker 1: got a submission and our producers weren't sure if the
Speaker 1: submission was read by AI or a real person's voice,
Speaker 1: and so we had a back and forth over email
Speaker 1: with the person who submitted it, who said that he's
Speaker 1: a teacher and therefore he may have a somewhat robotic
Speaker 1: voice as a result, but also that his voice may
Speaker 1: have been compressed by the voice recording software he's using,
Speaker 1: So this is kind of a meta chat. To me,
Speaker 1: the topic is not meta, but I wanted to bring
Speaker 1: up the meta framework of this because this is kind
Speaker 1: of the dominant question of our age.
Speaker 3: Is that person real? This week we heard from Sean.
Speaker 3: His voice is real and he is a digital communications
Speaker 3: lead at what we in the US call a technical college,
Speaker 3: and part of Sean's job is to teach both his
Speaker 3: students and his colleagues to incorporate AI responsibly.
Speaker 1: I'd be interested to get his take on the work
Speaker 1: slop story we talked about. Well.
Speaker 3: I think in this this case, Sean is clearly a pilot,
Speaker 3: not a passenger. Unlike me. He's been thinking very creatively
Speaker 3: about how to harness AI for his work, and he
Speaker 3: says his school wants to use AI to reduce workload
Speaker 3: on the staff, enhance creativity, and support personalized learning.
Speaker 2: I had students take personality tests in Spanish and then
Speaker 2: used AI to turn their personality data into unique paintings.
Speaker 2: We then held an exhibition where other Spanish speakers could
Speaker 2: engage with the students, who had to introduce the pieces
Speaker 2: and answer questions.
Speaker 1: I love this sort of paradigm of human machine human
Speaker 1: machine engagement and making which I've been in Sean's class.
Speaker 3: I also like that he's not just an AI booster,
Speaker 3: that he actually sees the whole picture.
Speaker 2: While we're enthusiastic about AI, we're also careful about using
Speaker 2: it responsibly. I have worked with senior leaders to issue
Speaker 2: clear AI guidance for students and staff to outline how
Speaker 2: these tools should and shouldn't be used. In practical terms,
Speaker 2: this means AI is to be used as a supportive tool,
Speaker 2: not as a way to do a teacher's or a
Speaker 2: student's work for them. By cultivating these habits now, we're
Speaker 2: hopefully preparing our students to use AI wisely in their
Speaker 2: future workplaces because AI tools will be part of their careers.
Speaker 2: As an educator, I find this incredibly exciting. Most importantly,
Speaker 2: our students are learning with AI and not in fear
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: So in case anyone was wondering what the opposite of
Speaker 1: WORKSLOP is, we can thank Sean because we have our answer.
Speaker 3: Thank you Sean for submitting your chating.
Speaker 1: Me and please listeners, we want to hear more from you.
Speaker 1: We want more chat and mes. Send your stories to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: That's it for this week for tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm care Price and I'm os Valoschin. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Eliza Dennis, Melissa Slaughter, and Tyler Hill, who
Speaker 1: was executive produced by me Caarra Price and Kate Osborne
Speaker 1: for Kaleidoscope and Katria Novel for iHeart Podcasts. The Engineer
Speaker 1: is Bihe Fraser and Jack Insley mix this episode Kyle
Speaker 1: murder rodat Theme Song.
Speaker 3: Join us next Wednesday for Text Up the Story, when
Speaker 3: we will share an in depth conversation with David Ignatius
Speaker 3: all about spycraft and how the CIA is faring in
Speaker 3: the technological age.
Speaker 1: And please do rate and review the show wherever you listen,
Speaker 1: and send us your thoughts at tech stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. We love hearing from you.