Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. He 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 Area.
Speaker 1: It's time for the tech News for Tuesday, February twenty first,
Speaker 1: two twenty three, and we're going to start this episode
Speaker 1: off with a news segment that I would like to
Speaker 1: call Blame the Robots. So the Washington Post published an
Speaker 1: article by pranschu Verma titled AI is starting to pick
Speaker 1: who gets laid off, which is perhaps a bit sensationalized
Speaker 1: once you read the actual story, but maybe only a
Speaker 1: little bit sensationalized. All right, So here's how this all unfolds.
Speaker 1: There are software packages and various services and algorithms that
Speaker 1: some hiring managers rely upon in order to do kind
Speaker 1: of a pass filter across job applicants in order to
Speaker 1: narrow down the search. There are companies that offer that
Speaker 1: very service, and it starts to make sense if you're
Speaker 1: hiring at a company that gets a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you're a popular company, you have
Speaker 1: fairly rare job openings, and you get lots, like maybe
Speaker 1: thousands of applicants per job that you list, Well, you
Speaker 1: probably need some help whittling down the applicant list to
Speaker 1: get to a manageable pool of potential hires, right like
Speaker 1: you need something to separate the cream from everything else.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to do, especially at really high volumes.
Speaker 1: And so these services and software packages essentially reduce applicants
Speaker 1: down to data points and they kind of have to.
Speaker 1: And depending on how tough that filter is, folks can
Speaker 1: get weeded out. Sometimes a lot of folks. May you
Speaker 1: get down to, like less than a dozen applicants out
Speaker 1: of thousands has to be pretty brutal. Well, this article
Speaker 1: postulates that we could see the reverse come into play
Speaker 1: as well, that a company might lean on similar software
Speaker 1: and services to identify the people who contribute the least
Speaker 1: to the company or perform at a level that's considered
Speaker 1: to be below their peers. Therefore, they could be candidates
Speaker 1: for layoffs when the corporate overlords deemed that it is
Speaker 1: time to reduce headcount in these troubling times. And therein
Speaker 1: lies the story, right that an algorithm might determine that
Speaker 1: you are expendable instead of your human boss. And I
Speaker 1: am aware that I'm making an assumption here that your
Speaker 1: boss is in fact human, some program, you know, some
Speaker 1: freaking robot has determined that you're getting laid off. It
Speaker 1: sounds positively dystopia, doesn't it. And with big tech companies
Speaker 1: laying off thousands of folks over this year and the
Speaker 1: previous year, it's easy to imagine managers shrugging off the
Speaker 1: responsibility of telling someone they no longer have a job
Speaker 1: by leaving it to the old zeros and ones of
Speaker 1: a presumably objective and emotionless system. But this in turn
Speaker 1: brings up other problems. As I have mentioned in tons
Speaker 1: of episodes, one of the many problems we have in
Speaker 1: AI systems can come down to unintended bias within the
Speaker 1: system itself. So if the system is biased, it could
Speaker 1: end up targeting employees of specific ethnicities or backgrounds. Now
Speaker 1: Vermat makes this argument in the Washington Post article. He
Speaker 1: says that if the algorithm were to, say, determine that
Speaker 1: people of color have a higher incidence rate of leaving
Speaker 1: their jobs, that a person of color is more likely
Speaker 1: to leave their job than say, they're white colleagues, well,
Speaker 1: then the system might naturally start to target employees who
Speaker 1: happen to be people of color for the purposes of layoffs.
Speaker 1: But then you're getting into very dangerous legal and ethical territory.
Speaker 1: It's as if you're targeting these specific people because of
Speaker 1: their race. Also, I'm not sure how well an algorithm
Speaker 1: can actually judge a person's contributions. Presumably stuff from employee
Speaker 1: reviews and such would play a big part, But in
Speaker 1: highly collaborative work, a person could act as the sort
Speaker 1: of lynch pen that keeps a team working really well together,
Speaker 1: even if they themselves don't have the highest numbers on
Speaker 1: whatever the deliverables are. So in my opinion, relying on
Speaker 1: AI to make or even guide decisions regarding layoffs is
Speaker 1: really a bad move all around. It can make sense
Speaker 1: in the applicant phase, but in layoffs I would say
Speaker 1: avoid it. It doesn't look good for the company. It
Speaker 1: could ultimately lead to choices that will harm the overall
Speaker 1: organization in the long run. In this article, Verma mentions
Speaker 1: that while folks at Google wondered if perhaps they had
Speaker 1: been laid off due to an algorithm choosing them because
Speaker 1: there didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to
Speaker 1: the layoffs, the company denies making use of anything of
Speaker 1: the sort. There's kind of a distinct lack of cases
Speaker 1: where we know that an algorithm definitively played a part
Speaker 1: in layoffs. However, Verma in the article also cites a
Speaker 1: survey that showed ninety eight percent of HR managers there
Speaker 1: were three hundred of them participating in the survey, had
Speaker 1: said that they plan to rely on software and algorithms
Speaker 1: to help make such decisions about layoffs this year. So
Speaker 1: even if you were to argue it hasn't happened yet,
Speaker 1: it looks like it's going to happen real soon. My
Speaker 1: guess is we'll see some high cases where some company
Speaker 1: relies too heavily on algorithms and it'll come back to
Speaker 1: haunt them, perhaps only in PR, but it will be
Speaker 1: a big blowback, and then maybe then we'll start to
Speaker 1: see people form best practices around the whole thing. I
Speaker 1: still think it feels a bit like shirking responsibility in
Speaker 1: my opinion, If the top brass decides that layoffs are necessary,
Speaker 1: then they are obligated to make each and every layoff
Speaker 1: decision transparent and honest, I think they owe their employees
Speaker 1: as much. And it's really infuriating because you'll see managers
Speaker 1: who get a directive saying you have to apply this
Speaker 1: artificial bell curve to the employees who are reporting to you.
Speaker 1: We heard a story about that just a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago, where a director actually essentially was fired for
Speaker 1: refusing to follow that because it arbitrarily requires managers to
Speaker 1: assign people as low performers even if you don't have
Speaker 1: any low performers on your team, and that just again
Speaker 1: seems inherently unfair. I feel like relying on AI to
Speaker 1: make these choices also is inherently unfair and can miss
Speaker 1: some really important factors that may not reduce down to
Speaker 1: pure data. But we've got a lot of other AI
Speaker 1: news to get through today. A lot of it is bad.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. And our next story comes from
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt University. The Peabody College at Vendorbilt, and that college's
Speaker 1: Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion send out a message
Speaker 1: to students in the wake of the terrible shooting at
Speaker 1: Michigan State University. And clearly this was a delicate task
Speaker 1: that needed empathy and support. I needed a message that
Speaker 1: showed that Vanderbilt's staff have students and their welfare at
Speaker 1: the top. Of their priority list, so of course they
Speaker 1: use chat GPT to help craft the message. This pretty
Speaker 1: much sent me spiraling, y'all, because passing the buck to
Speaker 1: AI to handle things that are this important, things that
Speaker 1: intrinsically involve a very human connection, it just feels beyond
Speaker 1: shortsighted and crass to me. At best, you could say
Speaker 1: this was a poor decision, but at worst it implies
Speaker 1: that leadership has little to no regard for students and
Speaker 1: instead we'll just lean on the robots to handle the
Speaker 1: tough stuff. Anyway, the end of the message contained the
Speaker 1: line paraphrased from open ais Chat GBTAI Language Model Personal Communication,
Speaker 1: and at least the word paraphrase indicates that there was
Speaker 1: human involvement in taking the generated message and shaping it
Speaker 1: properly for students. So it was a collaborative effort, you
Speaker 1: could say. But still, the fact that staff tapped AI
Speaker 1: in the first place to help with such a sensitive
Speaker 1: matter doesn't look good. It looks like people who want
Speaker 1: to avoid the hard stuff, and hard stuff isn't the
Speaker 1: human connection stuff, the stuff that has incredible impact on
Speaker 1: emotion and mental health, whether it's layoffs or counseling people
Speaker 1: in the wake of a violent act like the shooting
Speaker 1: at the University of Michigan. That is the wrong way
Speaker 1: to use AI, in my opinion. That is inherently the
Speaker 1: realm of humanity and to off source that to AI's
Speaker 1: it shows such a huge disregard for the people who
Speaker 1: are ultimately the recipients of those messages that I think
Speaker 1: it's unconscionable. Now the Associate Dean and Assistant Dean who
Speaker 1: are part of this process have both stepped back from
Speaker 1: that office of equity, diversity and inclusion, which is probably
Speaker 1: for the best, but yeah, this was a really bad
Speaker 1: use case for AI. Last week, the representatives from around
Speaker 1: the world attended the Summit on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in
Speaker 1: the Military Domain or re aim our AIM and we've
Speaker 1: talked about how incorporating AI into military processes and hardware
Speaker 1: raises really difficult questions regarding safety, accountability, escalation, and more.
Speaker 1: Reps from many countries, including the United States and China,
Speaker 1: but excluding Russia, which wasn't invited and Ukraine did not attend.
Speaker 1: They were invited, but clearly have other things going on
Speaker 1: at the moment. Anyway, these representatives all met to discuss
Speaker 1: the issues of AI in its role in military operations.
Speaker 1: At the conclusion of the summit, all but one of
Speaker 1: the representatives of the countries that attended signed an agree
Speaker 1: to commit to developing AI military applications that quote do
Speaker 1: not undermine international security, stability and accountability end quote. So
Speaker 1: what was the one nation that abstained. That would be Israel. Now,
Speaker 1: don't like heap tons of criticism on Israel, because there
Speaker 1: are critics who say this entire meeting was largely for show,
Speaker 1: because according to critics, there was nothing in the summit
Speaker 1: or the agreement that is legally binding for any of
Speaker 1: the countries involved. So, in other words, the critics are
Speaker 1: saying that the reps are all like, yeah, yeah, totally
Speaker 1: AI killing people would really be bad. Let's totally not
Speaker 1: do that, but they would have no real accountability to
Speaker 1: follow through on that promise. Further, the agreement did not
Speaker 1: include certain AI assisted or controlled systems that are already
Speaker 1: in use, like AI controlled drones, And so there's concern
Speaker 1: that this agreement, while represents little more than just putting
Speaker 1: on a show to say, yes, we're all aware of
Speaker 1: this and it is a bad thing. Now, Honestly, I
Speaker 1: heavily suspect that several countries, including the United States and
Speaker 1: also China, will continue incorporating AI into military applications, including
Speaker 1: weaponized AI. I would be absolutely shocked if they didn't
Speaker 1: continue down that pathway, because there's a very real fear
Speaker 1: that if you don't do it, the other guy will,
Speaker 1: and then there will be an AI gap. Now maybe
Speaker 1: I only think that because I'm a child of the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties and I saw how this very similar
Speaker 1: scenario played out with nuclear armaments, because boy howdy, was
Speaker 1: that a thing. So I would love for us to
Speaker 1: avoid the mistakes of the past. But I really am
Speaker 1: skeptical that that's going to happen, because again, unless everybody
Speaker 1: is hell accountable and agrees to not further that work,
Speaker 1: someone is going to. And if someone's going to, then
Speaker 1: everyone is going to because otherwise you are at a disadvantage. Okay,
Speaker 1: with all that doom and gloom out of the way,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. When we come back, I've
Speaker 1: got some more news items to talk about. We're back now.
Speaker 1: I still have a couple more AI stories, but these
Speaker 1: are not quite as apocalyptic as the ones we started
Speaker 1: off with. The one is that Clark's world magazine, which
Speaker 1: has been publishing fantasy and science fiction stories online since
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, has temporarily stopped accepting submissions. Why
Speaker 1: because apparently the magazine has received too many AI generated submissions,
Speaker 1: and until they have access to better tools to detect
Speaker 1: those kinds of things, they have chosen to hold off
Speaker 1: accepting anymore. That's both understandable and it stinks. Not that
Speaker 1: I think the magazine made the wrong call here. I
Speaker 1: think this is the right call, but rather it stinks
Speaker 1: because there are genuine authors and would be authors out
Speaker 1: there who have great stories to tell, and they're seeing
Speaker 1: an outlet closed off to them, at least for now,
Speaker 1: and it's all thanks to AI generated stories. Now, I
Speaker 1: think in most cases the AI generated stuff has to
Speaker 1: be a collaborator kind of relationship, because in my own
Speaker 1: experience the stories generated by AI they aren't very good. Like,
Speaker 1: grammatically they work, and you know, you get some interesting
Speaker 1: descriptions and stuff, but the actual stories tend to be
Speaker 1: pretty mundane and uninteresting. I imagine that most folks who
Speaker 1: are using AI are leaning on it for stuff like
Speaker 1: generating initial ideas, maybe shaping a certain part of the
Speaker 1: narrative at least any stories that are difficult to determine, Oh,
Speaker 1: this was made by AI, right, if they haven't done
Speaker 1: any massaging, it often is pretty easy to detect that
Speaker 1: it's AI, or the very least, it's easy to detect
Speaker 1: that's not a very good story and it wouldn't pass
Speaker 1: the bar for publication. But still, here's another example of
Speaker 1: how AI can end up harming creative types, whether it's
Speaker 1: from the unauthorized copying of their style or displacing them
Speaker 1: from the creator community. Insider reports something that I think
Speaker 1: most folks already have a pretty good handle on, and
Speaker 1: that is the emergence and reception to chat GPT probably
Speaker 1: means we're going to see a whole bunch of copycats
Speaker 1: in the very near future. And to be clear, chatbots
Speaker 1: have been a thing for years. I'm sure you're all
Speaker 1: aware of that. In fact, someone who is once in
Speaker 1: the business of reporting on tech, a person whom I
Speaker 1: know and respect and like very very much, ended up
Speaker 1: working at a company that developed sophisticated chatbots. But these
Speaker 1: were tools that were intended for narrow use cases, something
Speaker 1: that would work well within the confines of a particular
Speaker 1: company's services and processes. The stuff we're seeing now is
Speaker 1: made to be more general purpose, and with that comes
Speaker 1: the problems of reliability and accuracy as well as transparency.
Speaker 1: It is easier, not easy, mind you, but easier to
Speaker 1: build a reliable and accurate tool that works within an
Speaker 1: enclosed system, like the customer service arm of a consumer
Speaker 1: facing company. But it's another thing when it's just you know,
Speaker 1: free range AI chat bot. And meanwhile, the guy who
Speaker 1: runs the company that made chat GPT has said repeatedly
Speaker 1: that he thinks chat GPT isn't that good, or at
Speaker 1: least it is far from perfect. And yet we're currently
Speaker 1: living through a buzzy, height heightened age of chat GPT
Speaker 1: and its peers like like Barred from Google. Tech Runch
Speaker 1: has a piece titled the AI photo app trend has
Speaker 1: already fizzled, new data shows and you should totally check
Speaker 1: out this article. The author of the piece, Sarah Perez,
Speaker 1: lays out some of the data, including download numbers and revenue,
Speaker 1: and she shows that while the text to image AI
Speaker 1: tools initially made a really big splash when they started
Speaker 1: to emerge, particularly late last year, excitement has dropped off
Speaker 1: considerably since then. There's been a lot of backlash in
Speaker 1: the space, ranging from artists who are understandably upset to
Speaker 1: see their style co opted by AI, to users who
Speaker 1: are concerned that the tools can create inappropriate images far
Speaker 1: too readily, and that any restrictions that are designed to
Speaker 1: limit that sort of stuff aren't always the best. Whether
Speaker 1: those actually played a big part in cooling this trend,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was just that folks were getting tired
Speaker 1: of the shiny new thing and they had already moved on,
Speaker 1: I am uncertain, but my guests is that we're going
Speaker 1: to see the space continue to evolve, perhaps with fewer
Speaker 1: players as this goes on, if some of them find
Speaker 1: it too difficult to cover costs with the declining revenues.
Speaker 1: But I don't think AI generated imagery is going to
Speaker 1: just go away at this point. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: one fun story, or at least in my opinion, it's
Speaker 1: fun that relates to the AI generated imagery involves a
Speaker 1: robot from Carnegie Mellon University. So it's a robot arm
Speaker 1: that has the name Frieda, which yes, is both a
Speaker 1: tribute to Frieda the artist, and is an acronym that
Speaker 1: stands for Framework and Robotics Initiative for developing arts, and
Speaker 1: it also generates images based on text prompts. Only in
Speaker 1: this case, the images it makes are not digital images.
Speaker 1: They're not computer generated images. They are real world paintings.
Speaker 1: You have a robot that paints with actual brushes and
Speaker 1: actual paint It creates works of art based off text
Speaker 1: input and directions. According to tech Spot, it takes about
Speaker 1: an hour from the point where the robot receives input
Speaker 1: in the form of the text to the point where
Speaker 1: it begins to paint, because it actually has to plot
Speaker 1: out how it's going to physically paint this. How are
Speaker 1: the brushstrokes going to go, how long are they going
Speaker 1: to go, how much pressure is going to be used?
Speaker 1: What style is it going to follow? And that's very
Speaker 1: understandable because as we all know, there are different strokes
Speaker 1: for different folks, because the world don't move to the
Speaker 1: beat of just one drum. Shout out to me if
Speaker 1: you get that reference. Anyway, The roboticists and engineers are
Speaker 1: quick to say that Frieda isn't an artist. FRIEDA is
Speaker 1: a collaborator. FRIEDA is not creative. FRIEDA just follows instructions
Speaker 1: as best it can pay the subject of the art
Speaker 1: in the style that was dictated by its collaborator. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I just thought this was a neat take on AI
Speaker 1: generated images. Somehow it feels different that because it's, you know,
Speaker 1: a physical painting. It's something that you could hold or
Speaker 1: put into a frame and hang on a wall, or
Speaker 1: you know, something you could rip apart in rage as
Speaker 1: robots get another art commission and you don't. Now, finally
Speaker 1: we're off of the AI stories and we can get
Speaker 1: to everything else. So next up. Part of the big
Speaker 1: news this week is Meta really shook things up on
Speaker 1: Sunday announcing that the company is introducing a subscription service
Speaker 1: called Meta Verified. It's just in the testing phase now,
Speaker 1: and you know, the plan is to widely deploy it,
Speaker 1: but we'll see if things go poorly in the test
Speaker 1: markets that Meta is trying out at the moment. But essentially,
Speaker 1: this subscription service is a verification tool. Users would have
Speaker 1: to submit proof that they are who they claim to be,
Speaker 1: using government issued ID for example, and in return for
Speaker 1: twelve bucks a month or fifteen bucks a month if
Speaker 1: you're doing it on iOS or Android, because Google and
Speaker 1: Apple take their own cut of the fee. You then
Speaker 1: get a little blue badge on Facebook and or Instagram
Speaker 1: saying you're bona fide. On top of that, badge subscribers
Speaker 1: will also have access to services that are meant to
Speaker 1: protect against imposter accounts. They're supposed to get better customer support,
Speaker 1: and they're supposed to get improved discoverability when folks are
Speaker 1: actually searching for them, which am I opinion, is stuff
Speaker 1: that should really be standard for all users, whether they're
Speaker 1: paying a subscription or not. I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: bullpucky to say one of the benefits to verification is
Speaker 1: that meta will make sure other folks aren't trying to
Speaker 1: impersonate you. I mean, arguably, this is a bigger problem
Speaker 1: for notable folks like celebrities and brands. And I'm not
Speaker 1: talking me, I'm talking real celebrities. I have no illusions
Speaker 1: that I'm a celebrity, but I've still seen plenty of
Speaker 1: instances of friends being impersonated as someone has either gained
Speaker 1: access to their account or created a copy account in
Speaker 1: an attempt to phish for data. Like this is still
Speaker 1: something that affects the average person on these platforms. It's
Speaker 1: not just for the celebrities. But yeah, I'm that's facing
Speaker 1: issues with the revenue for a lot of different reasons,
Speaker 1: so it's not surprising that the company is now introducing
Speaker 1: the subscription feature. It just feels like the quote unquote
Speaker 1: benefits of the service are things that really everyone on
Speaker 1: the platform should have access to by default. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just being unreasonable here. Today Microsoft will attempt to defend
Speaker 1: its planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard in the EU in
Speaker 1: a meeting that's behind closed doors and Brussels. Previously, EU
Speaker 1: regulators indicated that they would block the purchase, saying it
Speaker 1: would result in less competition in the video game space
Speaker 1: and allow Microsoft to engage in actively anti competitive practices,
Speaker 1: such as preventing other platforms like Sony PlayStation from having
Speaker 1: access to popular video game franchises like Call of Duty. Earlier,
Speaker 1: Microsoft Reps signed a deal with Nintendo Reps that legally
Speaker 1: binds Microsoft to bring Call of Duty titles to Nintendo
Speaker 1: platforms for ten years, and further that all titles will
Speaker 1: be available on Nintendo platforms the same day that they
Speaker 1: come out for Xbox platforms, with quote full feature and
Speaker 1: content parity end quote between these versions, meaning Nintendo won't
Speaker 1: have to be happy with a watered down version of
Speaker 1: Call of Duty. It's going to get the real thing,
Speaker 1: just like Xboxes. This puts pressure on Sony to make
Speaker 1: a similar agreement or else Microsoft could argue before the
Speaker 1: EU regulators that Microsoft has made attempts to ensure fairness
Speaker 1: between the various console companies, but Sony isn't playing ball
Speaker 1: on purpose in an effort to scuttle the deal, surprisingly,
Speaker 1: at least to me, the Communications Workers of America the CWA,
Speaker 1: a union organization here in the US, has also urged
Speaker 1: the EU to approve the acquisition deal. They say that
Speaker 1: Microsoft has been more receptive to attempts at unionizing than
Speaker 1: Activision Blizzard has, and that without Microsoft's oversight, employees and
Speaker 1: Activision could find themselves facing tough managerial resistance to unionizing.
Speaker 1: By the time you hear this, a decision has probably
Speaker 1: been made one way or the other. But as I
Speaker 1: write this episode, it has yet to be announced, and again,
Speaker 1: the meeting is behind closed doors, so it might be
Speaker 1: a little while before we find out what the results are.
Speaker 1: Corporate employees at Amazon are looking at decreased compensation this
Speaker 1: year like an actual pay now. The reason for that
Speaker 1: is because some of their compensation is tied up in
Speaker 1: stock units, so as part of their salary, Amazon corporate
Speaker 1: workers get stock in Amazon. However, Amazon stock price has
Speaker 1: taken some massive hits over the last year, and that
Speaker 1: means that the stocks awarded to corporate employees are worth
Speaker 1: much less than they were a year earlier. That's particularly
Speaker 1: tough because when Amazon structures its salary deals, they are
Speaker 1: at least partly based on the idea of the stock
Speaker 1: having a value of around one hundred and seventy dollars
Speaker 1: per share. So, in other words, that's part of the
Speaker 1: justification of yes, your salary is X amount of dollars
Speaker 1: instead of why, because you're also being compensated by stock
Speaker 1: units that are considered to be worth one hundred seventy
Speaker 1: dollars per share. However, at the time of recording, Amazon
Speaker 1: stock is currently at ninety four dollars fifty eight cents
Speaker 1: per share, so a little more than half of what
Speaker 1: it was when these salary figures were first calculated. So
Speaker 1: if the cash part of your salary is dependent upon
Speaker 1: the fact that the rest of your compensation is coming
Speaker 1: in the form of stocks that were calculated at one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy bucks per share, it means you're getting
Speaker 1: significantly less per year on top of that, the company
Speaker 1: has been laying off thousands of employees. I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised if there were some managers over at Amazon who
Speaker 1: were giving wistful glances toward chat GPT when it comes
Speaker 1: time to communicate these issues to their team members. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple more stories to talk about, including
Speaker 1: one that's going to get me all head up again.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, I'm going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break, and so are you. But we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Okay, here's where Jonathan gets upset for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: All right, So our next story is that torrent Freak
Speaker 1: reports that filmmakers are demanding to know the identities of
Speaker 1: certain reddit members who have been active in subreddits and
Speaker 1: talked about content piracy like the illegal downloading and distribution
Speaker 1: of films and such. Hey, y'all, here we go again.
Speaker 1: Like I've been through this a few times because I
Speaker 1: remember the good old napster days. All right, So the
Speaker 1: filmmakers want to hold pirates accountable and that is understandable, right,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't want their films to be pirated,
Speaker 1: and that makes sense, Like this is not just art,
Speaker 1: its commerce, and to see people get access to something
Speaker 1: without legitimately paying for it. That is a problem. However,
Speaker 1: the arguments that filmmakers and studios make are at best facetious.
Speaker 1: Now by that, I mean you'll hear filmmakers and studios
Speaker 1: cite huge figures for damages, like millions and millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: that these in damages that these companies and these filmmakers
Speaker 1: experience due to piracy. But the truth of the matter is,
Speaker 1: you cannot say that with any kind of certainty. Those damages,
Speaker 1: on the face of it, assume that the people who
Speaker 1: pirated the content would have otherwise purchased a ticket, or
Speaker 1: subscribe to a service or whatever, and so piracy, based
Speaker 1: on this argument, amounts to lost revenue. Thus the damages right, like,
Speaker 1: we would have sold x number of tickets, except that
Speaker 1: this number of people pirated it, and therefore we're out
Speaker 1: x number of dollars. Except you don't know that. You
Speaker 1: do not know if the person who pirated something would
Speaker 1: have otherwise sought a legitimate way to view the material.
Speaker 1: You don't know that you actually lost out on money.
Speaker 1: Maybe that person would just have gone without seeing it
Speaker 1: at all. So that's not I mean, you can't you
Speaker 1: can't accuse people of not going to see a movie,
Speaker 1: right Like, I haven't gone to see Aunt Man in
Speaker 1: the Quantum Maniacs or whatever it is. But Marvel can't
Speaker 1: come to me and say, hey, you failed to see
Speaker 1: the movie at the theater, so we're going to find you.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense. So you can't argue that
Speaker 1: the pirates would have otherwise gone and paid legitimate money
Speaker 1: to go and see stuff. Therefore the companies out of
Speaker 1: money because maybe they wouldn't maybe they just wouldn't see
Speaker 1: it at all. So pirting a film or a series
Speaker 1: is not the same thing as someone stealing like a
Speaker 1: physical something like a TV from a big box store. Right.
Speaker 1: That is a physical item. There is only one of
Speaker 1: that specific television in the world, and once it's gone
Speaker 1: from an inventory, it is gone. It is not magically
Speaker 1: replaced by a digital duplicate. Right. That is something where
Speaker 1: you can look at that and say, yes, this amounts
Speaker 1: to real losses. That's a lost sale, if not to
Speaker 1: the person who stole it, to person who would have
Speaker 1: ultimately bought it. That you could say, and you could
Speaker 1: point to that and say these are real damages. You
Speaker 1: cannot do that with digital media. The government accountability of this,
Speaker 1: or the United States agrees with me, you cannot do that.
Speaker 1: Does it amount to damages? Is there a loss of revenue? Undoubtedly, yes,
Speaker 1: there is definitely a loss of revenue, but there's no
Speaker 1: way to determine the extent of that. And because filmmakers
Speaker 1: and studios depend upon these inflated numbers that represent the
Speaker 1: quote unquote damages that they incurred as a result of
Speaker 1: piracy to try and become like a bludgeon against pirates,
Speaker 1: to cow people into avoiding piracy, it unfairly targets people
Speaker 1: who may or may not have actually caused any damages
Speaker 1: at all. You just don't know. That's the thing is
Speaker 1: that because you don't know, you cannot make firm claims
Speaker 1: of damages. And yet time and again we see filmmakers
Speaker 1: and studios do this. Now, that is part of it.
Speaker 1: I should also mention that Reddit is resisting these urges
Speaker 1: to hand over user data. And just in case you
Speaker 1: were curious, if you were to do something like I
Speaker 1: don't know, use a VPN and create a unique email
Speaker 1: address and only use your VPN when you're accessing something
Speaker 1: like Reddit, and you register for Reddit using the unique
Speaker 1: email address, that isn't tied to anything else of yours.
Speaker 1: That could be a way to avoid imperial entanglements. That
Speaker 1: being said, now, I say that because I don't like
Speaker 1: seeing companies go super hard against people. But I also
Speaker 1: firmly believe piracy is wrong. Okay, I do not condone
Speaker 1: piracy at all. I pay for the content I consume
Speaker 1: or I go without. I even bought a cheap region
Speaker 1: free DVD player so that I can import DVDs from
Speaker 1: the UK for series that just never get released over
Speaker 1: here in the US. Mitchell and Webb. Look, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at you, but I still end up buying the actual stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't just try and pirate it. I condemn piracy,
Speaker 1: but I also condemn an industry throwing its power around
Speaker 1: making assertions that it simply cannot support with evidence, at
Speaker 1: the cost of people who may not have ever gone
Speaker 1: to see your quantum maniac ant movie. Okay, I'm done
Speaker 1: with that. Finally, Hey, do you remember when you were
Speaker 1: a kid and you've got that meant in the box
Speaker 1: original iPhone, the two thousand and seven iPhone. Can you
Speaker 1: remember how excited you were, but part of you thought,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I shouldn't open this because this is
Speaker 1: a collector's item. No. Well, of course not because you're
Speaker 1: a sensible person. But it turns out if you had
Speaker 1: been less sensible and chose not to use the thing
Speaker 1: you've got for the purpose that it was intended, you
Speaker 1: could have made some crazy money. Why because at an
Speaker 1: auction this past Sunday, and unopened original two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven iPhone sold for more than sixty three thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: When that phone came out, it cost five hundred ninety
Speaker 1: nine bucks. Now, if we adjust that for inflation today,
Speaker 1: that would be the same amount as around eight hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty of today's dollars, so eight hundred sixty bucks.
Speaker 1: But it's sold for sixty three thousand dollars at auction.
Speaker 1: Actually it's sold for sixty three thousand, three hundred fifty
Speaker 1: six dollars and forty cents at auction, which is really specific.
Speaker 1: I don't typically see it go into the sense like that.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was a winning bid that came from overseas
Speaker 1: and it was a currency conversion thing. But if we
Speaker 1: adjust the iPhone for inflation, then the value of the
Speaker 1: phone increased by nearly seventy four times. If we don't
Speaker 1: adjust for inflation, the value increased by one hundred times.
Speaker 1: So why the heck didn't the person who owned this
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven iPhone ever open the box? Well, actually,
Speaker 1: there is a sensible answer to this. You see, back
Speaker 1: when the iPhone first came out in the US, and
Speaker 1: you may have forgotten about this, the Apple made an
Speaker 1: exclusive deal with AT and T. It became the exclusive
Speaker 1: carrier for the iPhone in the US. And the woman
Speaker 1: who had received this particular iPhone as a gift way
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and seven, a woman named Karen Green, Well,
Speaker 1: she had a service contract with Verizon, and it would
Speaker 1: have cost her a lot of money to cancel out
Speaker 1: of that contract and then start up with AT and T.
Speaker 1: That's a whole hassle. I don't know how many people
Speaker 1: have had to go through that process, but it can
Speaker 1: sometimes be really frustrating. So the iPhone that she received
Speaker 1: wouldn't work on Verizon, her carrier, So Green just never
Speaker 1: opened the darn thing. Instead, she kept it and kept
Speaker 1: it in good condition, and I'm sure she's very glad
Speaker 1: she did. Now. I guess if there is a moral
Speaker 1: to the story, it's if you do not want that
Speaker 1: nice tech gift, that someone gave to you. Keep it unopened.
Speaker 1: You never know when it'll be worth sixty grand. Just
Speaker 1: you know, don't hold your breath about it. All right,
Speaker 1: that's it for the tech News for Tuesday, February twenty first,
Speaker 1: two thousand, twenty three. Hope you enjoyed this episode and
Speaker 1: my various rants, and if you have suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: I should tackle in future episodes of tech Stuff. I've
Speaker 1: got one coming up that's going to be dealing with
Speaker 1: our old buddies, the activist group Anonymous. That's coming up soon.
Speaker 1: Just let me know. You can get in touch with
Speaker 1: me via Twitter. The handle for the show is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff HSW. You can download the iHeartRadio app, which is
Speaker 1: free to download, free to use. You navigate over to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff using the search field, and that will bring
Speaker 1: you to the text stuff page where you'll see a
Speaker 1: little microphone icon. You can click on that leave a
Speaker 1: voice message for me, or you can be like Nathan
Speaker 1: and find my email address hiding out there on the
Speaker 1: web and just send me an email, because that's how
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Anonymous. All right, that's it
Speaker 1: for me. I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff is an iHeartRadio production or podcasts from iHeartRadio, Visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.