Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for Tuesday,
Speaker 1: April eighteenth, twenty twenty three. Yesterday SpaceX had to scrub
Speaker 1: its planned orbit old test of the Starship spacecraft. Starship
Speaker 1: is a two stage launch vehicle. The second stage also
Speaker 1: serves as a spacecraft that's capable of carrying a crew
Speaker 1: or you know, cargo. It is the most powerful launch
Speaker 1: vehicle ever built to date. It is capable of producing
Speaker 1: nearly twice as much thrust as NASA's Space Launch System,
Speaker 1: which is its latest launch vehicle. But Starship has not
Speaker 1: yet left the ground. SpaceX has test fired Starship engines
Speaker 1: in the past, igniting thirty one of the thirty three
Speaker 1: engines in a test, but those tests had the launch
Speaker 1: vehicle bolted to the platform, so you know, it didn't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. This was really just a test of the engines. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: the plan was to launch Starship into orbit. It would
Speaker 1: be an uncrude mission, so there's no one aboard, and
Speaker 1: it was meant to go into orbit and take a
Speaker 1: full orbit of the Earth, but that didn't happen. And ultimately,
Speaker 1: also this is important because it's different from how it
Speaker 1: will normally be operated. The starship was meant to have
Speaker 1: both stages crash into the ocean. Now, in normal operation,
Speaker 1: these components will return to Earth with a controlled landing,
Speaker 1: so that you can reuse the same vehicle repeatedly and
Speaker 1: thus bring down the cost of launching things into space,
Speaker 1: just like they've been doing with the Falcon nine. But
Speaker 1: this is a much larger launch vehicle, and for the
Speaker 1: first test, the plan was just to let it crash
Speaker 1: into the ocean. Unfortunately, none of that happened because a
Speaker 1: technical error in the form of a frozen pressurization valve
Speaker 1: meant that they had to scrub the launch and plan
Speaker 1: for later this week. SpaceX has posted on Twitter that
Speaker 1: it is now aiming to try again on Thursday, April twentieth,
Speaker 1: when the company hopes the engines will just blaze and
Speaker 1: shake free the shackles of gravity. Now onto Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: who appeared on Fox News in an interview with Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson yesterday. Part two of that interview will air today
Speaker 1: and they covered a lot of ground. Musk waved off
Speaker 1: Twitter's troubles and said that they were mostly due to
Speaker 1: just bad timing. I think a lot of folks would
Speaker 1: disagree that bad timing is the only or even primary
Speaker 1: cause for Twitter's woes, which are pretty widely distributed across
Speaker 1: things from having laid off eighty percent of the workforce
Speaker 1: to seeing around fifty percent of ad revenue drop out,
Speaker 1: seeing high profile accounts leave the service, Like, We've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of things happen at Twitter that I don't
Speaker 1: think relate just to bad timing. He also made an
Speaker 1: unsubstantiated claim that the US government has had backdoor access
Speaker 1: to Twitter that essentially government agencies, though I don't believe
Speaker 1: he named any in particular, could even look at people's
Speaker 1: private direct messages, that that was included with the access
Speaker 1: the government had to Twitter's back end. Now, he didn't
Speaker 1: produce any evidence for this claim, and if it is true,
Speaker 1: it's rather shocking that we didn't see any hint of
Speaker 1: that during the Trump administration, or that Trump himself would
Speaker 1: be banned from the platform. That seems odd if the
Speaker 1: government had that level of access and manipulation of Twitter,
Speaker 1: because It's not like Joe Biden has been president forever.
Speaker 1: He became president in twenty twenty one, and it was
Speaker 1: less than a year later that Musk started to buy
Speaker 1: up Twitter stock with the intent of ultimately purchasing the platform.
Speaker 1: And I infer from Musk's comments that he believes tools
Speaker 1: like chat, GPT and Google Bard and Microsoft Being represent
Speaker 1: dangerous implementations of AI, perhaps even representing an existential crisis,
Speaker 1: and that his AI tool would somehow be different from
Speaker 1: these and peaceful and beneficial to humanity by just recognizing
Speaker 1: that humans are pretty nifty. Musk himself recently showed support
Speaker 1: for a proposal to put a halt on AI development
Speaker 1: for six months, and some people have said that might
Speaker 1: not have been so much about trying to make things
Speaker 1: safe for AI development, but rather it was intended to
Speaker 1: give Musk's own efforts a chance to catch up to
Speaker 1: everyone else because they were way ahead of the game. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I found most of what Musk said to be speculative
Speaker 1: and difficult to believe. Now I will say this, I
Speaker 1: do think chat, GPT and other AI tools are potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous insomuch as they can be used to do stuff
Speaker 1: like spread misinformation or help craft malware and to perform
Speaker 1: other malicious acts. But companies like open ai are at
Speaker 1: least trying to put protections in place to prevent that
Speaker 1: from happening. So far, those protections haven't been very robust
Speaker 1: and people have found ways around them, but they're still
Speaker 1: trying to prevent that. I do not see chatbots as
Speaker 1: being an existential threat. There's nothing inherent in chat GPT
Speaker 1: that gives it incredible power. It seems really compelling and
Speaker 1: powerful and somewhat scary because it appears to communicate the
Speaker 1: way we do. But that is the extent of what
Speaker 1: chat GPT does. Like, it's not able to take action really,
Speaker 1: and it's ultimately generating responses on a probabilistic scale. In
Speaker 1: other words, it's predicting what the next word should be
Speaker 1: and then putting it there. It's not thinking. So I
Speaker 1: think Musk is conflating generative AI stuff like chat GPT
Speaker 1: and Google Bard with AI as a whole. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things where you're like, you say,
Speaker 1: all ducks are birds, but not all birds are ducks, right.
Speaker 1: All generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence, but
Speaker 1: not all of artificial intelligence is generative AI, and I
Speaker 1: think some of the more dangerous implementations of AI have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with large language models and chat ponds. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more to talk about with AI,
Speaker 1: so let's just move on. Sundhar Pachai, Alphabet's CEO, appeared
Speaker 1: on Sixty Minutes this week to essentially say that AI
Speaker 1: is going to be disruptive, that it will impact lots
Speaker 1: of jobs, including knowledge based jobs, so jobs like my job,
Speaker 1: and it's not up to the tech industry to figure
Speaker 1: out how to do that responsibly. All right, So that
Speaker 1: that last bit was probably a little bit of interpretation
Speaker 1: on my own part. What he actually said was that
Speaker 1: it's up to society to figure out regulations and laws,
Speaker 1: to create the borders within which AI can operate, and
Speaker 1: to make sure that the rules quote align with human values,
Speaker 1: including morality end quote, and that quote it's not for
Speaker 1: a company to decide end quote. This is really interesting
Speaker 1: coming from a leader of a company that used to
Speaker 1: have the motto don't be evil. Of course Google shed
Speaker 1: that motto years ago, so you could say that doesn't
Speaker 1: really apply anyway. One would think that creating AI that
Speaker 1: does not cause harm would in the long run be
Speaker 1: in the best interest of a company in that business.
Speaker 1: But I guess that's just crazy talk. Anyway, what PITCHAI
Speaker 1: is saying goes beyond chat bots and into broader implementations
Speaker 1: of AI. And while I disagree with him about the
Speaker 1: role companies should play visa v making sure AI doesn't
Speaker 1: cause harm, I do agree that AI is going to
Speaker 1: have an increasingly undeniable and disruptive impact on countless jobs
Speaker 1: and tasks. Now, this does not necessarily mean that the
Speaker 1: impact will always be bad, or that it will definitely
Speaker 1: eliminate jobs, although that is certainly a possibility. My hope
Speaker 1: is that we're gonna push AI to augment rather than
Speaker 1: replace human employees. Otherwise, well, let's just take this to
Speaker 1: an absurd conclusion. Right. Let's imagine we're in a world
Speaker 1: where AI is doing all the work. Humans have been
Speaker 1: replaced by AI. So humans are out of the equation
Speaker 1: because they no longer are needed to have work be done.
Speaker 1: So what is the AI doing work? For? For what purpose?
Speaker 1: For whom is the AI doing work? If there are
Speaker 1: no more humans working, what is the AI doing You
Speaker 1: don't have consumers anymore because you don't have income right,
Speaker 1: people aren't doing jobs, so they're not making money, so
Speaker 1: there's no real economy, which means no one can buy
Speaker 1: anything because no one has income. The companies would cease
Speaker 1: to exist because there's no way for them to even
Speaker 1: make money. At this point, money is meaningless. There's no money,
Speaker 1: no one has a job. So it seems to me
Speaker 1: like that absurd conclusion would quickly fall in on itself
Speaker 1: without the implementation of something like, I don't know, universal
Speaker 1: basic income, then you could reach that Star Trek future
Speaker 1: right where nobody has to work, everybody makes the amount
Speaker 1: of money they need to be able to do all
Speaker 1: the basic things that we need to do, and then
Speaker 1: we spend the rest of our time pursuing whatever it
Speaker 1: is we want. But we don't have universal basic income.
Speaker 1: That's a piece that's missing. And meanwhile, if everyone's pushing
Speaker 1: for this future where AI is replacing everything, where does
Speaker 1: that get us in the long run? Sure, in the
Speaker 1: short term, you could say we've cut way back on
Speaker 1: costs because we fired all the human employees, so we
Speaker 1: don't have those costs anymore, But that doesn't sustain itself
Speaker 1: for very long at all. I don't know. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just missing the big picture here. All right, Well, while
Speaker 1: I'm spiraling in this weird future reality, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. Okay, we're back now. Before the break, I
Speaker 1: talked about alphabet and Google's CEO talking about AIS impact.
Speaker 1: Of course, Google could be looking at a very specific
Speaker 1: situation in which AI could have a potentially negative impact.
Speaker 1: In fact, it already has had a negative impact on Google.
Speaker 1: So apparently last month, Google employees got word that Samsung
Speaker 1: is considering ditching Google Search for Microsoft Bing, which of
Speaker 1: course is augmented by chat GPT. There's our AI angle. Now,
Speaker 1: if Samsung did do this, if Samsung chose to switch
Speaker 1: from Google Search to Microsoft Bing, that would be a
Speaker 1: huge blow to Google's dominant market share in the search space.
Speaker 1: For years, Google has enjoyed being the eight hundred pound
Speaker 1: gorilla in online search, which honestly, that's an understatement. So
Speaker 1: according to Statista, which you know you keep that in mind,
Speaker 1: like that's just one source, Google Search took up nearly
Speaker 1: ninety seven percent of the mobile market share in January
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. Now that's mobile, not search overall, but
Speaker 1: ninety seven percent. So if that's true, if ninety seven
Speaker 1: percent of mobile devices use Google Search, as like the
Speaker 1: default search, there's really nowhere to go but down. You're
Speaker 1: not really going to creep up. You certainly are in
Speaker 1: the realm of being called a monopoly, and it'd be
Speaker 1: very difficult to argue against that. Right. But if you're Google,
Speaker 1: you do not want to see those numbers go down
Speaker 1: because that's bad for your business. So the word that Samsung,
Speaker 1: a massive important player in the mobile space, could turn
Speaker 1: to Bing instead of Google then sent a panic through Google,
Speaker 1: which The New York Times picked up on and then
Speaker 1: published an article about it. And so that panic then
Speaker 1: spilled out from Google internally to Google shareholders, and yesterday
Speaker 1: the company saw stock prices dropped by around four percent.
Speaker 1: As for revenue, according to Gizmoto, Samsung switch could mean
Speaker 1: Google misses out on around three billion dollars of revenue
Speaker 1: per year. Yaousa. That's a huge amount of money. Of course,
Speaker 1: Google rakes in more than one hundred and sixty billion
Speaker 1: dollars per year, so it's still an enormous company. But
Speaker 1: maybe Pachai was warning us about AI because Google's hoping
Speaker 1: to push out its own AI augmented search tool in
Speaker 1: order to keep Samsung's business and keep that strangle hold,
Speaker 1: particularly on the mobile search market. Bloomberg reports that a
Speaker 1: couple of research papers show chat gpt is pretty good
Speaker 1: at figuring out whether news will be good or bad
Speaker 1: for a company's stock price. So one of the two
Speaker 1: papers analyzed how well chat gpt could analyze statements that
Speaker 1: came out of the Better or Reserve to determine if
Speaker 1: they were quote unquote hawkish or dove ish, and the
Speaker 1: other paper analyzed chat GPT's ability to parse financial news
Speaker 1: headlines about companies and then figure out whether those headlines
Speaker 1: were a good indicator for the stock price or a
Speaker 1: bad indicator. And apparently the finding show that chat gpt
Speaker 1: is pretty darn good. It's sussing that stuff out, you know,
Speaker 1: almost as good as a trained human analyst would be.
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't call chat gpt superhuman. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's doing something that people cannot do. However, chatbots can
Speaker 1: analyze way more information at a much faster rate than
Speaker 1: a human can do. And moreover, it's possible that individual
Speaker 1: investors could start to lean on tools like chat gpt
Speaker 1: to figure out which investments could be safe bets, which
Speaker 1: ones could be long shots, and which ones might just
Speaker 1: be throwing your money away. So if you can get
Speaker 1: the same sort of guidance from chat GPT that you
Speaker 1: would normally need a professional analyst to provide, well, that
Speaker 1: definitely can change the game. And it's possibly bad news
Speaker 1: for the analysts out there because their jobs could become
Speaker 1: one of the ones potentially impacted by AI. SONY recently
Speaker 1: held its World Photography Awards and chose photographer Boris Eldigson
Speaker 1: as the recipient of an award in the Creative Open
Speaker 1: category for photography. Eldigson has declined to accept this award
Speaker 1: because he says the image he submitted was not in
Speaker 1: fact a photograph he snapped, but rather a computer generated image.
Speaker 1: Eldigson says that his intent was to test a major
Speaker 1: photography competition to see if the field is ready to
Speaker 1: distinguish between photographs taken by human photographers and computer generated imagery,
Speaker 1: and he described his state of mind as that of
Speaker 1: a cheeky monkey, his words, not mine. I can certainly
Speaker 1: appreciate that, And while I'm sure that this matter will
Speaker 1: spawn a lot of criticism for L. Dexon and the competition,
Speaker 1: I think his intentions were good ones. His actions show
Speaker 1: that things like competitions, we really need to take into
Speaker 1: consideration the possibility of AI aided or generated design as
Speaker 1: part of that competition, or figure out how we prevent
Speaker 1: it from being part of the competition if that's our desire. So,
Speaker 1: Eldigston said that the photography world needs to have an
Speaker 1: open discussion about AI's place in photography. Does it have
Speaker 1: a place? Should AI generated photography even be considered photography
Speaker 1: at all? If not, how do we detect it to
Speaker 1: prevent someone with access to a powerful image generator from
Speaker 1: dominating what is otherwise meant to be a fair competition
Speaker 1: between human photographers. So these questions aren't just hypothetical now
Speaker 1: that image generating technology has reached a sufficient level of
Speaker 1: sophistication so that it can pass itself off as a
Speaker 1: human created work. A spokesperson from the World of Photography
Speaker 1: organization appears to contradict at least some of Eldigson's statements,
Speaker 1: claiming that he had made it clear that a generative
Speaker 1: tool at least played a part in constructing the image,
Speaker 1: and that they in turn thought that it was interesting,
Speaker 1: and that he had quote unquote fulfilled the criteria for
Speaker 1: the category and that the organization only withdrew from conversations
Speaker 1: with him after he said that he had purposefully attempted
Speaker 1: to mislead the competition and then declined the award. So
Speaker 1: whether the organization was aware of the AI involvement, maybe
Speaker 1: the extent of the involvement was miscommunicator, I can't really tell,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like the organization says, no, we knew
Speaker 1: what was going on when we gave him the award.
Speaker 1: He just declined it, whereas he's saying, I submitted this
Speaker 1: as my own work, but in fact it was AI generated.
Speaker 1: I don't know who's telling the truth or where it's
Speaker 1: getting lost in this article. It may be that it's
Speaker 1: a little more complex than that, and I just don't
Speaker 1: understand it all yet. Okay, one more generative AI story. Recently,
Speaker 1: a person using the handle ghost writer used Generative AI
Speaker 1: to create a song featuring the generated voices of Drake
Speaker 1: and the Weekend. The song is called hard on My Sleeve,
Speaker 1: and it became a kind of viral sensation on platforms
Speaker 1: like Spotify and TikTok. So the voices sound like Drake
Speaker 1: in the Weekend, but they are generated by AI. So
Speaker 1: some refer to this as deep fake audio. Neither artist
Speaker 1: was involved in the actual making of the song, and
Speaker 1: it raises a bunch of questions about image and personality rights.
Speaker 1: So here in the United States, we don't have any
Speaker 1: laws at the federal level that protect personality or image rights.
Speaker 1: So you have no right to your image or to
Speaker 1: the expression of your personality the federal level. Anyway, some
Speaker 1: of the states do, but not the federal level. So
Speaker 1: if you were to create a deep fake audio for
Speaker 1: some song and you were using someone else's voice for it,
Speaker 1: there's nothing illegal about that at the federal level. There
Speaker 1: have been companies that have made copyright strikes for deep
Speaker 1: fake audios, but you can't copyright a voice or a personality.
Speaker 1: So I guess they're just using that because it's the
Speaker 1: only weapon they have right now for those kind of cases.
Speaker 1: But it really shows how the US needs to revisit
Speaker 1: concepts like image protection and personality protection laws. All right,
Speaker 1: that's it for this episode. Before I run too long,
Speaker 1: I just want to say I hope you're all well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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