WEBVTT - Will I Regret Having an AI Voice? Featuring Evan Ratliff! (And his AI voice) 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:06.559 You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:13.680 and iHeartRadio. Hey there are podcast listeners. Welcome to Part 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.759 Time Genius. I am Monga's particular. My good pal Will 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:19.360 is off at the beach this week on a well 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:23.120 deserved break. But don't you worry. I am not alone 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.040 in the studio. We have our wonderful engineer Dylan Fagan 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:29.080 back there keeping me company. And I do think he's 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.280 a little crestfallen without Will here because he's just holding 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:35.680 a big sign that says seven more days till Will 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:39.320 comes back. It is okay, Dylan, He'll be back soon, buddy, 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:43.080 I promise. Also, this is kind of a special episode 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:46.800 because we are here with journalist and podcast host Evan 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:49.960 Ratliffe and he's telling me all about his new show, 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:54.040 shell Game, which is so good. In it, Evan creates 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:56.120 a voice clone of himself. He hooks it up to 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:59.200 an AI chatbot and sends it out into the world 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:03.000 on all sorts of weird experiments, from meeting his family 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:07.240 to talking to scammers, which the AI does with enthusiasm, 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:10.960 to even having it meet a therapist, all to understand 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:14.240 better what AI voice can do, what it can't do yet, 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:16.959 and what to expect from a future when more and 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:20.840 more people we encounter aren't real It is fascinating. I 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:22.800 think you're gonna love it. And if you stick around 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:26.200 after the interview, we are airing the first episode right 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:27.800 here on Part Time Genius. 0:01:27.920 --> 0:02:08.160 So enjoy. 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:54.160 Evan. So we are old friends. I have admired your 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:55.840 work for a very long time. One of the things 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:58.240 I'm amazed by is your ability to be involved in 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:01.400 things that are so beloved, especially by journalists, you know, 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.400 like pop Up magazine, Atavist long form podcast which you 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:10.040 just ended and the outpouring was remarkable and wonderful, And 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:13.200 I'm really excited to talk about shell Game, your new project. 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:14.120 Thanks. 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:16.480 Thanks, I'm also very excited about It's the most fun 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:18.360 I've had doing anything in a long time. 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:20.080 I think that's what I was going to say, is that, 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:23.080 like it feels so fun, Like you're enjoying yourself on 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:26.720 tape in a way that is undeniable. You can hear 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.960 that mischief and that fun and that playfulness coming through 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:31.720 the tape. But take me back and stuff and tell 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.400 me how you got into this sort of space of 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:37.600 reporting in terms of like technology and scams and things 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:38.000 like that. 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:41.080 Well, I sort of started out getting interested in scams 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.800 by accident, because when I first became a journalist, I 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:47.600 worked at Wired Magazine, and one of the first assignments 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:50.880 that I ever got was to go cover this company 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:52.639 that had been written up in the Wall Street Journal. 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:54.320 I won't go too far into it, but their idea 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.240 was to like send the internet over power lines. And 0:02:57.880 --> 0:02:59.320 I went to Texas. It was like one of the 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:01.280 first reporting I ever got to take. I was so 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:04.960 excited and I talked to them and it really baffled me, 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:07.520 like they couldn't explain what they were doing very well. 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.160 And I came back and I went to see my editor, 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:12.960 who at the time was this guy Alex Heard, his 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:16.080 legendary editor. He's the editor of Outside magazine now. And 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:17.720 I sort of laid it all off for him, like 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:19.560 every time I tried to get to explain something like 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.200 it kept like slipping through my grasp. And he was like, 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:24.600 have you thought about that it might all be a scam? 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:26.839 And I was like what, He's like, it could all 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:28.560 be a scam. I was like, it was in the 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:31.840 Wall Street Journal and he was like hmm. And I 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:34.600 realized it was a scam and like the whole thing 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:37.320 was just like smoke and mirrors, and they had raised 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:39.320 tens of millions of dollars for it, but they actually 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:40.800 couldn't do any of the technology. 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:42.240 So I went back to. 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:47.120 Texas, reported it again as a scam and did a story. 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:49.560 Was one of my first stories, and like that really 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:53.040 changed something in my brain, maybe made me too skeptical sometimes, 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:56.320 but the idea that like something that you were going 0:03:56.400 --> 0:04:00.120 to just straight up tell as like ge whiz, I 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:03.680 can't believe they're doing this amazing thing actually was all 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:05.920 just a fraud. Like it really changed the way I 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:08.000 looked at the world and it got me interested in 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:09.520 sort of like what else out there is like this? 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.320 And so I've always kind of covered scam since then, 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:16.039 had con artists and just like deception and identity and 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:19.560 technology rolled up together, that's my favorite thing to focus on. 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:24.039 Yeah, I mean, were you a skeptic before you came 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:26.320 into this project I've wired? 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:28.120 I mean I was a little bit of a tech 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:29.839 skeptic because it was the height of the dot kom boom, 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:31.320 So I mean, yeah, that's how that's. 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:31.800 How old we are. 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.039 That's when I started my career, and so I was 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:39.680 skeptical of the hype around all of the dot COM's 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:41.680 at the time, because I was sort of entering this 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:43.120 world in which like everything's going. 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:45.800 To change forever, and I was a little skeptical of that. 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:47.760 But I was actually like, I love technology, and I 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:50.840 loved trying new things, and I had worked a little 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:54.080 bit in technology before I became a journalist, so I 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:58.000 was very appreciative of technology. I was an optimist about technology. 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:00.880 I had a little skepticism about the business aspect of it. 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:04.240 But truly my interest in scams came from that story. 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:07.320 That's incredible. You know, growing up, you think just because 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:09.480 it's in print, it has to be real, right, And 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:12.719 that learning that even the Wall Street Journal, even like 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:16.040 these incredible institutions, can get things wrong or don't have 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:18.680 those layers of fact checking or whatever, and that a 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:22.239 really great scam artist can get past that is pretty stunning. 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:24.720 Yeah, and also a thing that you don't know until 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.279 you get into journalism, or you don't you might not know. 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:29.920 It is just sort of how many types of journalism 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.320 there are, how many types of story even on the 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:36.360 same topic there can be. So someone who is sent 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:40.000 just to profile a guy or a woman who invented something. 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:42.960 That's just a different type of story than someone who 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:45.560 is sent to sort of like investigate whether that thing 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:46.080 is real. 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:47.800 And it might be a different type of reporter. 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:49.360 It might even be the same reporter can do I 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:52.320 know reporters who've done both. I've probably done both. But 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:55.760 how you're approaching something it can make a huge difference. 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:58.000 And you actually see this in how AI is covered now. 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:00.839 There's like sort of the like they may new announcement 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:03.280 type of coverage, and then there are people who are 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:05.240 trying to dig in and figure out, well, what's going 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:07.960 on with AI right now and what is really happening 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:09.800 and how far can it go and et cetera, et cetera, 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:14.000 And people tend to consume them all the same. Sometimes, Yeah, 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.320 they're not like they're They're a totally different animal. 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:22.440 That's really fascinating. So tell me about Vanished, which is 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:26.520 obviously this piece that you did that's really well known 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:29.120 in the magazine community and also feels like the start 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:31.039 of what you're doing with shell Game. 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:32.240 Yeah. 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:35.800 So Vanish was now fifteen years ago, almost to the day, 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:38.560 a couple of weeks from now, it is Craifteen years 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.320 ago was when I actually left on it. So Vanish 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:44.680 was this project where I wanted to investigate what it 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:46.400 was like to fake your own death. That's sort of 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.640 where it came from. But again it was this. It 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:53.360 was this sort of like ven diagram of technology and 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:56.840 identity and privacy and surveillance, all of these things sort 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:59.640 of wrapped up into one story. And the idea was, well, 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.440 I could write about someone who faked their death, which 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:04.320 I did. I did a story about someone who had 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:06.400 attempted to fake their death and got caught. But the 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:08.400 problem is people who fake their death they either get 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:09.440 caught or they get away with it. 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:12.880 I have to get caught both. They're problematic for yeah, 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:14.240 they will get very far. 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:16.480 Or they're god and you can never figure out that 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:18.360 they actually fake their death because everyone thinks they're dead. 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:18.960 Yeah. 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.440 So basically I just thought, well, what if I try 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.480 to do it myself, you know, for a limited period 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.920 of time. So I tried to essentially disappear from my 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.800 identity into a new identity, not go entirely off the grid, 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:36.240 but actually live under this new identity. And then the 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:38.560 twist was, well, if you're going to live under new identity. 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:41.400 It's actually pretty easy if no one's trying to find 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.960 you under your own identity. So we sort of generated 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:46.640 a way for people to be looking for me, which 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:48.360 is that they could win a prize of five thousand 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.320 dollars if they found me, three thousand dollars which would 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:55.520 come from me, which increases. 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:57.240 That's incredible. 0:07:57.560 --> 0:07:59.280 That was that helped incentivize me. 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:02.360 And so off I went, and I was trying to 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.200 stay vanished for a month, and I did all these 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:07.360 different things, like I went across the country. I hitchhiked 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:10.200 and I took Greyhound busses. I sold my car, I 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.120 changed my appearance. I was living under a different name, 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.600 I had different social media accounts, and I almost made it. 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:18.360 I was living in an apartment in New Orleans and 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:21.200 I had rented under this fake name, but then they 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:23.160 caught me. So and then I'm still a little bit 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:27.640 disappointed about that. I did lose the money. But the story, 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:30.880 I think, really did delve into all of these issues 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:33.520 about privacy and what happens to your data. And this 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:35.400 was you have to remember, this is fifteen years ago, 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:39.000 so it was not as well known how much information is. 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:41.200 Out there about you. What do these databases have? What 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:41.840 can people find? 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.520 People found out everything about me, for my social Security number, 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:47.800 do every address I'd ever lived at, to friends and family, 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:50.320 all the things you can find out in databases and 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:52.680 on social media. So they tell me a lot about that. 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:55.640 But also, like I loved the process of immersing myself 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:58.800 into a story and kind of creating a story to 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:01.280 try to illustrate something. So it's always been on my 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:01.840 mind since. 0:09:02.200 --> 0:09:04.840 Well even there there's this sense of playfulness, right, Like 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:06.840 you changed your appearance in some ways. 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:07.679 Can you talk about that? 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:09.400 Yeah, I mean I did a lot of things that 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:15.319 probably weren't even necessary, but but partly I mean there 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:17.280 were a lot of people looking for me. I mean 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:20.280 you could never quite quantify how many, with tens of 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:24.840 thousands were following it, and then like at least hundreds 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.040 were like actively looking for me, Like people drove from 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:28.719 Las Vegas to La to. 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:29.120 Look for me. 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:31.400 People in New Orleans were looking for me. I went 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:33.640 to a US soccer game in Utah. There were people 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:36.520 in the crowd looking for me, waiting outside the stadium. 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:40.160 So there was some need to change my appearance, and 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:41.480 I started with I grew a beard. 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:43.280 I don't usually have a beard. I can't really grow 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:43.800 a great beard. 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:46.280 But I grew beard, and then I dyed it, and 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:49.000 then I shaved it into a goatee, and then I 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:51.960 shaved that into a mustache, which did not look good. 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:55.320 And then my sort of coup de graph, my disguise 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:58.240 as was I cut my hair in a sort of 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:02.280 mail pattern baldness fashion. I had shaved the top, shaved clean, 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.079 and left the sides as if I had lost hair. 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:10.480 That's my favorite part of it all is that you 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.959 got well because I had a friend a little after 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:16.720 high school he decided to like shave his head when 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.079 everyone was kind of doing that, and then and then 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:26.160 it just never grew back. You had no fear about well. 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:27.920 Part of what I. 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:30.760 Learned was if you were losing your hair on top, 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:32.800 like as they say, it's a good idea to just 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:34.560 kind of like accept it and go with it. Because 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:36.520 I mean, people actively made fun of me. I mean 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.640 I looked more ridiculous than a person who had actually 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.560 their hair was thinning. Like I looked a little bit strange. 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.080 I got second glances from people everywhere I went, and 0:10:45.080 --> 0:10:47.080 people took photos. I took a photo of me that 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:49.840 he sent me like years later, being like, oh yeah, 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:51.320 I read this thing and I saw you in the 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:52.760 airport and I just took a photo of it because 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:56.440 you looked really bad and I thought that shave his head. 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.800 So Vanish is all about this digital trail that we're 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:04.920 leaving and kind of moving beyond it in a way, 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:07.760 or trying to get past it. And and the shell game, 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.600 which is so much about AI and it is really 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.880 about using everything that you have online, from the way 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:17.400 you speak, to the way your mind works, to all 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:20.480 the digital information. So are harnessing that together. Tell us 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:23.679 how you got into this project, how you came up 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.319 with the idea and and in a way, what you're 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:27.040 trying to do with it. 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:30.840 Well, I actually I came up with a kind of 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.520 version of the idea a couple of years ago when 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:35.280 I was I was working on this last the last 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:37.960 year I did was called Persona. The French Deception was 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:39.480 the full name of it. It was about this French 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:43.040 Israeli con artist, scammer, phone scammer. 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:46.040 But before that I was there and I didn't I 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:50.160 didn't say both Persona and the Mastermind, which which you wrote, 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:53.240 are just two things that I referenced a lot, and 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:56.679 just such great, great FEUs of media in general. So 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:58.760 the listeners should go listen to those things, but tell 0:11:58.760 --> 0:11:59.440 me where you're going for. 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:04.200 Here, you Well, Persona almost never never happened as it 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:06.520 as as it ended up, because the idea I had 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:08.440 was a round voice cloning, and there was like a 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.160 really rudimentary voice cloning that you could do, and I 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:15.000 wanted to do something with it, and I thought, well, this, 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:16.920 this will make good audio. But it just it wasn't 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:20.440 good enough and it sounded really computer generated, and so 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:22.360 it just wasn't really working. So then we turned to 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:24.280 a different story and actually did it for Persona. So 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:25.840 it was already like a little bit on my mind. 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:30.040 And that was pre chat Gypt being announced and the LM's, 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.440 the large language models, you know, becoming so prevalent and 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:36.640 everyone using them, and to be honest, like I got 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:40.200 kind of bored and fed up with LLM talk, like 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:42.240 I was just sort of after a while, it just 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:44.120 seemed like, Okay, I know what this is, and I'm 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:46.599 tired of reading about it. I'm tired of hearing about it. 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:48.880 But voice cloning started to get better. This company called 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:50.480 eleven Labs, which is sort of the state of the 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:52.320 art launch, and people were playing with it, you know, 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:55.160 cloning their voices. But then at a certain point I 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:58.880 started thinking, like, why am I ignoring this? Like I 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:02.680 just feel like there's something inside me that is resisting it. 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:05.000 And it's partly because it's a little bit scary. People 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:07.240 are scared about what it'll do to your job, what 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:10.160 it'll do to creativity, you know, all of the issues 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:13.280 around it. And I feel like I was sort of inside, 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:15.600 like viscerally hoping that it would just kind of go away, 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:18.360 you know, like I hope this in two years from 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:20.280 now people will be like this is like NFT's like, 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:22.760 no one cares about this anymore. And then I just 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:25.920 u There's actually this quote from Roger Angel, who's the 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.720 New Yorker baseball writer, where one time he just said, like, 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:31.480 you got to live in the times you're in. He 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:34.040 was like, I know people who don't have a television, 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:35.440 but to me, you got to live in the times 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:37.880 you're in. And I kind of like I was like, oh, yeah, 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:40.560 that's how I should be. I should be trying this stuff. 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:44.200 So I tried the voice cloning, and then it was 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:46.160 pretty interesting, and I messed around with it and I 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:49.000 would leave it on someone's voicemail and they would, you know, 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:50.560 say like I'm going to be late, and it would 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:51.880 be me, and then when I got there, I'd be like, 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:54.199 that wasn't me, that was actually this voice clud I did. 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:58.320 And that's what's pretty fun. But like that got old 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.640 pretty soon. But then people were tired of you being 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:07.280 late everywhere. Obviously not that late. In fact, I just 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.040 want to point out I made myself late so I 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:11.199 could leave the voicemail. 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:12.240 I didn't do that. 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:16.640 I just stood around the corner for like five minutes. 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:21.880 Incredible anyway. Then I just then I thought, well, what 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:23.640 if I could make a phone call with this thing? 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:25.360 And that's what really set me off. 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:27.120 I thought, well if I can make a phone call 0:14:27.160 --> 0:14:29.520 with this thing, and then I could, like what if 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:30.920 I could hook it up to an LLM and the 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:33.280 LLM could just be the brain of the thing. And 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:35.520 at first I couldn't figure out how to do it. 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:37.720 And then there was like a plug in where a 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:39.320 guy had sort of made this plug in where you 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:41.840 could you could let eleven Labs, the company that makes 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:44.600 the voice clone, talk to chetchipt like use as your 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:47.400 voice in CHATCHPT and I was able to kind of 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:50.160 tweak that connected to a phone line and suddenly I 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:52.720 could call people with this clone. And once you have 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:57.320 something like that, it just feels like I've uncovered a 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:01.240 secret about myself and about the world, and now I'm 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:03.000 just going to dribble it out to people over the 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.720 next six months. That's really what I felt like. I 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:09.720 didn't tell anyone, Like my wife Sam found out obviously 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:11.280 because then I started talking about all the time and 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:13.040 I would call her with it. Yeah, But like I 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:15.680 didn't tell any of my friends about it because I thought, well, Okay, 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:17.720 now I'm gonna start calling people with this thing and 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:20.120 see what happens. So mostly it was just like fun. 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:22.920 It was like finding out something really fun that you 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:24.640 could do. That's how it started. 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:30.680 We've got more with Evan Ratlift right after the break. 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:45.680 Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking to 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.800 Evan Ratlift. Can you talk about what limits you were 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.200 putting on the AI and what your learnings were as 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:53.240 you were playing with it more? 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:56.360 Yeah, So, so I should say I kind of shifted 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:58.800 from what I just described, which is using this plug 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:00.000 in and I made my own system. 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:01.640 I'd use audio routing software. 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:02.400 And then I. 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:04.480 Discovered they are these calling platforms and kind of do 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:06.400 it all for you, but they just launched. They're all 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:09.680 very new. So I use this one called VAPPI, and 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.320 it basically takes your voice clone, combines it with a 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:15.280 phone number, hooks it up to any of the llms 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:17.240 that you want to use, and then you have what 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:19.400 what's called a voice agent. They call it a voice assistant. 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:20.840 Some people call it a voice agent. I call it 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:23.720 a voice agent. Sounds sounds fun, that has more intrigue 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:26.360 to it. So then I had a voice agent. I 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:28.200 could call anyone with a voice agent. I could receive 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:30.600 calls with a voice agent. So then the question is 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:33.640 like when it comes to prompts, like what are you 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:35.760 going to have it do? At the beginning, I would 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:38.080 have it called customer service line, So I would say, 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:41.720 you are Evan, You're calling a customer service line, and 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.800 you should try to resolve a problem that you have. 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:49.160 The problem depends on who you're calling, so whoever picks up. 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:51.240 And then I would have it called Discover Card or 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:53.680 United Airlines, and so it would just be that simple 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:55.760 prompt and I just wanted to see what it would do. 0:16:57.040 --> 0:17:01.920 But over time the prompts got more sophistic so eventually, 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:04.440 and I get into this in a sort of later episode, 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.119 Like eventually in the prompt it would have sort of 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:10.239 like behavior rules and then a role, So like the 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:13.800 behavior would be like speak like a human, don't repeat yourself, 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:17.800 make short answers, like all these sort of ways of talking, 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:21.359 ways of sounding more human, and then the role would 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:23.240 be you are Evan ratlife a journalists and that it 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:25.400 would have like all the information that you would need 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:26.560 to complete the call. 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:30.639 Yeah, there's always this worry that AI is going to 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:33.680 escalate problems that you're going to get like a doomsday 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.560 scenario from an AI overreacting or reacting to logically or whatever. 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:41.720 And what you hear in a lot of the tape 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:46.679 is that your AI is always calming down conflicts, resolving, 0:17:46.880 --> 0:17:50.520 like almost like shifting itself to be accommodating, which was 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:51.240 really interesting. 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:52.000 Yeah. 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:54.480 Yeah, And I mean in VAPU of the call platform 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:56.919 that I'm using, it has something called temperature. So if 0:17:56.960 --> 0:17:59.480 you turn up the temperature, you're basically increasing the randomness 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.880 of the out that it'll give. And if you crag 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:05.160 it all the way up. It will just spout gibberish, 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:08.359 like pure gibberish, just like strings of words. So you 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:09.919 try to find a balance in the middle of like 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:13.000 it's interesting and it could say something a little out there, 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:17.199 versus like it says totally unintelligible things. But eventually I 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:19.879 realized I could take two of these models of myself 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:23.359 and I just haven't talked to each other. And this 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:27.639 was sort of endlessly bizarre and surreal and fascinating for 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:29.600 me because I could just listen to like hours of 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:31.960 tape of someone who sounds like me talking to someone 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:32.560 who sounds like. 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:36.760 Me, where they refuse to get off the phone with 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:41.240 each other, right, they keep extending the conversation. 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:44.119 I keep trying to actend the conversation, especially if you 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:45.879 fail to tell them to hang up, and you have 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:47.840 to tell them that they have to hang up or 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:50.200