WEBVTT - Make Fun Of Them, Pt. 1 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:03.560 Aw Zon Media. 0:00:05.440 --> 0:00:07.280 Hello, Well, welcome to Better Offline. 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:21.080 I'm your host ed zitron, of course, and I want 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:23.080 to start you off with a little bit of a question. 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.080 Have you ever heard Sam Moltman, the CEO of Open 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:28.520 AI speak, you ever heard the words come out of 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:32.400 his mouth? Look, I'm gonna share with you today some 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:34.960 of the trench and insights from Sam Moortman. I'm gonna 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:38.760 start with this agonizing thirty seven minute long podcast conversation 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.080 he had with his brother Jack Oltman from last month. 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:44.800 I warn you he really is an annoying and stupid dickhead. 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:48.040 Well, I think there will be incredible like other products, 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:50.800 like there will be crazy new social experiences. There will 0:00:50.840 --> 0:00:56.560 be like Google Docs style AI workfloths that are just 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:58.800 way more productive. You'll start to see like you'll have 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:00.920 these like virtual employees. But the thing that I think 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:03.360 will be the most impactful on that five to ten 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:05.399 year time for him is a I will actually discover 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:05.959 new science. 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:09.520 Yes, this tech podcast is now actually a food podcast, 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:12.760 and today's special is the word salad. When asked why 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:16.440 he believes AI will discover new science, Altman says, I 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:19.520 think we've cracked reasoning in the models, adding that we've 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:21.639 got a long way to go and that he thinks 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.440 we know what to do, adding the open AI's three 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:28.039 model is already pretty smart, and that he's heard people say, wow, 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.640 this is like a good PhD. And that's the entire answer. 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:35.000 By the way, it's a completely nonsensical answer. Sam Altman, 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:37.560 the CEO of open Ai, a company allegedly worth three 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:40.600 hundred billion dollars to venture capitalists and soft bank, can 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.319 he kind of sounds like a huge fucking idiot. But 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.640 head you cry, you can't just call Sam Altman an idiot. 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.920 He isn't stupid. He runs a big company, he's super successful. 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:52.560 My counter to that is, firstest I can, I'm actually 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:54.800 doing it right now. And second, if Altman didn't want 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:56.920 to be called stupid, he wouldn't say stupid shit with 0:01:56.920 --> 0:01:59.760 a straight face to a massive global audience now when 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:02.760 he's rather Jack asked, so reasoning will lead to science 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:05.440 going faster or just new stuff or both? And by 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.600 the way, that is the question, Sam Oltman said. 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:10.760 I mean, you already hear scientists who say they're faster 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:13.840 with AI, Like we don't have AI maybe autonomously doing science. 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:17.520 But if a human scientist is three times is productive? 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.120 Using three that's still a pretty big deal. 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:20.480 Yeah. 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:22.440 And then as that keeps going and the AI can 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.480 like autonomously do some science figure out novel physics. 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.520 At this point, Jack Oltman asked if and I quote, 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:31.560 that is all happening as a co pilot now, And 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:36.640 I know it sounds like I may have maybe misunderstood him. 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.639 Maybe I read the transcription. 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:41.359 I didn't. Actually I listened to the whole thing. 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.959 In fact, Matasowski, my producer, please play the clipping question. 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:48.119 Is it all that happening as a copilot right now? Yeah, 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:50.440 there's there's definitely not like you definitely can't go say 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:55.160 like hey CHATGYBT figure out new physics and expect that 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.800 to work. So I think it is currently copilot. Like 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.200 but I've ever heard like anecdotal reports from biologists where 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:03.920 it's like, wow, it really did figure out an idea. 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:05.240 I had to developed it a little bit more, but 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:06.519 it made like a fundamental leap. 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.079 Now, this is a nonsensical conversation, and both of them 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:12.920 sound very, very stupid. To be clear, none of this 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:16.800 is like poorly put into context, like they sound like 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:20.919 this with the entire thirty seven minutes. I didn't have 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.359 to do anything. I didn't need to make many moves 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:26.960 to make them sound like stupid dickheads. They sound like 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:29.400 it on their own. Now let's go to some of 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.280 the more quotes. So, so this is going to make 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.320 new science or make science faster, asked Jack Altman. 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:36.120 Yeah. 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:38.920 I hear scientists are using AI to go faster and 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:42.160 citation needed there, Sammy. But if a human scientist goes 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:46.000 three times faster and need another citation there using my model, 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:48.480 that would be good. Also, I heard from a guy 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:50.720 that he heard a guy who did biology who said 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:54.960 this helped. And that's what Sam Mortman fucking said. Even 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:58.960 even reading back the transcript, I feel what little of 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:03.200 my sanity remains kind of stripping away. All of this 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:06.119 is so good and so phenomenal. Let's give this man 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:08.640 forty billion dollars or more every year until he creates 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:09.520 super intelligence. 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:10.600 That'll fucking work. 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:12.400 But I want to share with you some of the 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:15.120 other incredible quotes from the genius mind of Sam Ortman, 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:17.560 A person with the integrity of Deepak Chopra and the 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:20.240 ability to dismount innane, vapid shit. That sounds impressive to 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:23.600 morons like well, Depak Chopra. 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:26.039 You know, you hear these stories of people who like 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.920 use AI to do market research and like figure out 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:34.960 new products and then like email some manufacturer and get 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:37.080 some dumb thing made and sell it on Amazon and 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:40.000 run ads. Like there are people that have actually figured 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:42.000 out a small scale and the most point ways possible 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:45.040 how to like put a dollar into AI and get 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:49.400 the AI to like run a toy business. But it's 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:52.400 actually working. Yeah, so that'll climb the gradient. 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:56.080 Now, you may wonder if the gradient is mentioned at 0:04:56.120 --> 0:05:00.560 some point elsewhere it's it's not but isn't clip. 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.000 So every year before the last like maybe up until 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:05.400 last year, I would have said, like, hey, I think 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:07.240 this is going to go really far, but it still 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:10.880 seems like there's a lot that we've got to figure 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:14.120 out and is another clip if something goes wrong, I 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:18.200 would say, like somehow it's that we build legitimate superintelligence 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:20.960 and it doesn't make the world much better, doesn't change 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:22.720 things as much as it sounds like it should, and 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:25.920 just one more so, Yeah, I think the relativistic point 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:28.120 is really important. But like you know, to us, our 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:33.760 jobs feel incredibly important and stressful and satisfying, and if 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:36.320 we're all just making better entertainment for each other in 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:38.960 the future, maybe that's kind of what at least one 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:39.960 of us is doing right now. 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:44.040 It's goba doogook. It's nonsense. It's bullshit peddled by a 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:46.920 guy who is only the most tangential understanding of the technologies, 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:51.279 companies building that made him a billionaire. Every single interview 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.000 with Sam Oltman is like this, every single one ever 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:57.400 since he became a prominent tech investor and founder, without 0:05:57.400 --> 0:05:59.880 fail every time. And the sad part is that so 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.440 Mortman is alone in this sunda. Pishai, when asked one 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.760 of Neli Patel's patented one hundred word plus questions about 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:10.560 Jonie Ivan Sam Wultman's new and likely heavily delayed hardware stop, 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:11.719 had this the same. 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:13.920 I think AI is going to be bigger than the Internet. 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:17.440 There are going to be companies, products, category is created 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:20.560 which we aren't aware of today. So I think the 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:23.120 future looks exciting. I think there's a lot of opportunity 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:28.599 to innovate around, innovate around hardware form factors at this 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.400 moment with this platform shift, So I'm looking forward to 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:33.640 seeing what they do you know we are going to 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:36.440 be doing a lot as well, and I think you know, 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.520 it's an exciting time to be a consumer, it's an 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:41.760 exciting time to be a developer, So I think looking 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:42.360 forward to it. 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:44.279 The fuck are you on about, Sundar? 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:47.320 Your answer to a question about whether you're anticipating more 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:49.480 competition is to say, yeah, I think people are going 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:51.080 to make the ship we haven't come up with yet, 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:55.400 in a hardware of some sort will be involved. Well, 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:57.680 I think Pashai is likely a little bit smarter than 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:00.040 Clammy Sammy, in the same way that such A and 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:01.919 the Della is a little bit smarter. That's sun up 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:03.679 for Shai, and in the same way that a golden 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.960 triever is smarter than the chiuahua. Well, that said, none 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:09.760 of these men are superintelligences, nor when pressed, do they 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:23.720 appear to have any actual answers or regular intelligences. Now, 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:26.000 if you've read the newsletter version of this episode, you'll 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:28.760 come across a multi paragraph answer from satching Adella when 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:32.000 asked on Dwarkesh Patel's podcast how Microsoft will reach one 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.080 hundred and thirty billion dollars in revenue from AGI. I'm 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:37.000 not going to read it out here, and I don't 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:39.880 hate you enough to include a clip. But the question was, 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:42.440 how do you get Microsoft to one hundred and thirty 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.360 billion dollars in revenue and such? In this the dello's 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:47.960 answer is like one hundred and fifty words, and it's 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:54.200 like abundance explosion. GDP will grow industrial revolution inflation adjusted percentages. 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:56.160 The winners will be the people who do stuff, and 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:59.600 then productivity will go up. I will link to this 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.440 in of you in the episode notes because it's fucking nonsense, 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:04.240 just like the rest of them. 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:06.080 And I have this idea. 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:08.520 I have this concept I've come up with, and it's 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:11.960 that we need to stop idolizing these speciously informed goobers. 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:15.280 Well kind of souls or Zitron haters may hear this 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:19.160 and say, I am actually Satannadanna's very smart. Stop I 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:20.840 want to stop there, and I suggest that you have 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:22.920 a smart person who comes along and tells you what 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:25.600 smart sounds like. A smart don't mean long words and nothing. 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:31.480 It means actually knowing the sheet you're talking about. And look, really, 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:34.360 a truly smart person should be able to speak clearly 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:37.720 enough that their intent is obvious and clear. Now it's 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.120 tempting to believe that there's some sort of intellectual barrier 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:43.800 between you and the powerful, that these confusing and obtuse 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:46.880 things they say, that's the sound of genius, rather than 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:49.120 somebody who has learned a lot of smart sounding words 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.040 without ever learning what they mean, but ed they're trained 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:54.920 to do this. I am someone who has media trained 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:57.360 hundreds of people, and there's only so much you can 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:01.080 do to steer someone's language. You can't say to one, hey, man, 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:03.840 can you sound more confusing? You can, however, tell them 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:05.600 what not to talk about and hope for the best. 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:08.040 Sure you can make them practice, Sure you can give 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:10.240 them feedback. But people past a certain stage of power 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:12.160 or popularity, you're going to talk or whatever they want. 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:14.959 And if they're big stupid idiots pretending to be smart, 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.560 they're going to sound exactly like this. Why because nobody 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:21.480 in the media ever asked them to explain themselves. When 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:24.120 you've spent your entire career being asked friendly or friendly 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:27.160 adjacent questions and never having someone say, wait, what does 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:30.160 that mean, you'll continue to mutate into a pseudo communicator 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:34.360 that spits out information adjacent bullshit. I am to be clear, 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:37.720 being very specific about the question what does that mean? 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.360 Powerful CEOs and founders never ever, ever get asked to 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.120 explain what they're saying, even when what they're saying barely 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:47.959 resembles a sentence, let alone an answer. But let's get 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:51.040 clear here. Let's think about a hypothetical scenario where your 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:53.920 friend just said the dog died. You'd say something like, oh, no, 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:58.200 what happened? And they, let's say, they responded with, well, 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:01.800 my dog had a tragic yet on ultimately final distinction 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:04.000 between their ideal and non ideal stage due to the 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:06.439 involvement of a kind of automatic mechanical device. And when 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:08.760 that happened, we realized we'd have to move on from 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:10.679 the current paradigm of dog ownership and into a new 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:13.000 era which we both feel a great deal of emotion about, 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:15.559 and see the opportunities With them. You'd probably be a 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:17.679 little confused and ask them to explain what they meant. 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:22.240 You'd ask, what do you mean by an automatic mechanical device? 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:26.240 What does that mean? They then reply with yeah, exactly, 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:27.880 And that was part of the challenge. You see, like 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.600 the various interactions we have in our day that are challenging. 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:34.280 We see a lot of opportunities in their sailing those challenges. 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:36.240 But part of the road to getting around them is 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:38.640 facing them head on, which is ultimately what happened here. 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:39.600 And while we were. 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:41.560 Involved, we didn't want to be and so we had 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:45.000 to make some dramatic changes. At this point, you still 0:10:45.080 --> 0:10:47.880 don't really know what happened. Did a car hit their dog? 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:51.640 Did they hit their dog with their car in this scenario, 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.120 would you not say, damn man, that sucks. I'm glad 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:56.240 I have such a smart friend. I don't know what 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:58.400 happened They're dog though, or would you ask them to 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:00.920 explain what they're saying? Would you perhaps ask what it 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:06.080 is they meant? Look, Pajai Altman, Nadella, They've always given 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:09.040 this kind of empty brained, intellectual slop in response to 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:13.040 questions because the media coddles them. These people are product 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:16.440 managers or management consultants, and, in Altman's case, a savvy 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:20.199 negotiator and manipulator known for and I quote and absenteeism 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:22.360 that rankled his peers and some of the startups he 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:25.199 was supposed to nurture as an investor at y Combinator. 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:28.240 According to The Washington Post and by Coddle, I mean 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.040 that these people are deliberately engaging in a combination of 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:33.960 detective work and amnesia, where the reader or the listener 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:36.160 is forced to simultaneously try and divine the meaning of 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:38.839 their answer while also not thinking too hard about the 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:42.959 question the interviewer asked. Most importantly, because the interviewer forgot already. 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.920 Look at most modern business interviews. They involve a journalist 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:49.439 asking a question, somebody giving an answer, and the journalists 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:52.520 saying okay and moving on to the next question. Occasionally 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:55.240 he's saying, but what about this, when the appropriate response 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:56.839 to many of the answers is to ask them to 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.840 simplify them so that their meaning is clearer. Look at 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.920 to them, Listen to them now. A common response to 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:06.320 all of this stuff is to say that interviewers can't 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.079 be antagonistic, and I just don't think a lot of 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:12.800 people understand what that actually means. It isn't antagonistic to 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:15.439 say that you don't understand what someone said, or that 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:19.040 they didn't answer the question you asked. If this is 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:24.200 antagonistic to you, you are intellectually speaking a giant, fucking coward, 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.200 because what you're suggesting is that somebody cannot ask somebody 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:31.319 to explain themselves, which is what an interview is. And 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:33.360 I imagine nobody really wants to do this because if 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:35.360 you actually put these people on the spot, you'd realize 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:37.560 the dark truth that I spoke of a few weeks ago, 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:40.360 that the reason the powerful sound like idiots is because 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:43.400 they're idiots. They sound like business idiots and create products 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:46.120 to sell to business idiots, because business idiots run most 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.960 companies and by solutions based on what the last business 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:51.440 idiot told them. Now, I know some of you might 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:53.560 hear this and say, these people can't be stupid. These 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:56.120 people run companies, they make big deals, they read all 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:57.640 these books. And my answer is that some of the 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:00.160 stupidest people I have met in my life, I have 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.000 read more books than you or I will read in 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:05.240 a lifetime. Well, they might sound smart, or they might 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:07.599 be smart when it comes to corporate chess moves or 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:11.120 saying this product category should do this. None of these men, 0:13:11.480 --> 0:13:14.480 not Altman Pshire on the Della, actually has a hand 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:16.160 in the design of the creation of the things that 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:18.760 their companies make, and they never ever, ever, ever, ever 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:22.920 ever have Regardless, though I have a larger point, I 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:26.000 believe it's high time we started mocking these people and 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:29.560 tearing down their legends as geniuses. They're not better than us, 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:32.040 nor are they responsible for anything that their companies build 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:34.720 other than their share price, which is a meaningless figure, 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:38.240 and the accumulation of power and resources. These men are 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:41.000 neither smart nor intellectually superior, and it's time to start 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:43.880 treating them as such. These people are powerful because they 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:45.880 have names that are protected by the press. They are 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:49.040 powerful because it is seen as a kind of unseemly 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:51.080 to mock them because they're rich and running a company, 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:53.720 a kind of corporate fealty that I find deeply unbecoming 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:57.559 of an adult. We are, at most customers. We do 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:01.400 not owe these people anything. We are long past the 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:04.040 point when any of the people running these companies actually 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.120 invented anything they sell, if anything, they owe us something 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:09.560 because they're selling us a product, even if said product 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:13.240 is free and monetized by advertising. While reporters, as anyone, 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.360 should have some degree of professionalism in interviews or covering subjects, 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:19.000 there's no reason to treat these people as special, even 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:20.760 if they have managed to raise a lot of money 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.280 or their popular product is used by a lot of people. 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:26.920 Because if that were the case, we'd have far more 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:30.240 coverage of defense contract to Lockheed Martin. They made one 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:32.920 point seventy one billion dollars in profit last quarter and 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:35.120 haven't had a single quarter under a billion dollars in 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:37.760 the last year. I realize them being a little glib, 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:39.960 but the logic behind covering open ai is at this 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:41.880 point they make a lot of money and they have 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:44.840 a popular product, which is also a fitting description of 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:47.440 Lockheed Martin. The difference is that open ai has a 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.160 conceiverer product that loses billions of dollars and Lockheed Martinis 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:52.680 products that make billions of dollars by removing consumers from 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:57.080 the earth. Both of them are environmentally destructive. Covering open 0:14:57.120 --> 0:14:59.080 ai doesn't seem to be about the tech, because if 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:01.040 you looked at the tech, you'dn't to understand the tech. 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:03.120 You'd see that the user numbers weren't there outside of 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:05.840 the five hundred million people using chat GPT and of 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:09.920 course referring to the general AI industry, and of those 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:13.200 five hundred million people, very few are actually paying for 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:16.280 the product, and that the term user encompasses everything from 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:19.080 the most occasional person who looks at chatgpt dot com 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:21.400 out of curiosity or the people using it as part 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:25.440 of their daily lives. If covering Open Eye was about 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:27.920 the tech, you'd read about how the tech itself doesn't 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:29.960 seem to have a ton of mass market use cases, 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:32.560 and that those use cases aren't really the kind of things. 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:33.200 That people pay for. 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:36.480 If they did, there'd be articles that definitively discuss them, 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:39.440 versus articles in the New York Times about everybody using AI. 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:42.360 The boil down to I use chat gpt as search 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:44.320 now and I heard a guy who asked it to 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:45.520 teach him about modern art. 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:46.640 Yet man like. 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.720 Warrio, Dario Amide and Clammy sam Altman continue to be 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.280 elevated because they're building the future, even if they don't 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:54.080 seem to have built it yeah, or of the ability 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:57.560 to clearly articulate what the future actually looks like. Anthropic 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:00.840 has now put out multiple stories suggest that it's generative 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:03.320 AI will blackmail people as a means of stopping use 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:05.480 and from turning off the system, something which is so 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:08.720 obviously the company prompting its models to do so. Every 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:11.640 member of the media covering this uncritically should feel ashamed 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:14.680 of themselves. Sadly, this is all the result of the 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:17.120 halo effect of being a guy who raised money or 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.640 a guy who runs big company. We must, as human beings, 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:23.440 assume these people are smart, that they've never mislead us, 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:25.400 because if we accept that they aren't smart and they 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:27.800 will willingly mislead us, we'd have to accept that the 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:31.640 powerful are well bad and possibly unremarkable assholes, And if 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:34.560 they're untrustworthy people that don't seem to be smart, we 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:36.440 have to accept that the world is deeply unfair and 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:38.680 caters to people like them far more than it kates 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:41.360 to people like us. We do not oh Saturn and 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:44.480 Della any respect just because he's the CEO of Microsoft. 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:46.880 If anything, we should show him outright scorn for the 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:50.760 state of Microsoft's products. Microsoft Teams is an insulting mess 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:54.720 that only sometimes works, leaving workers spending fifty seven percent 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:57.280 of their time either in teams, chat teams, meetings, or 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:00.640 sending emails, according to a Microsoft study. Mis dot com 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:03.080 is an abomination read by hundreds of millions of people 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:06.320 a month, bloated with intrusive advertisements, attempts to trick you 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:08.600 into downloading an app, and course ey content that may 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:12.120 or may not be AI generated. There are few products 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:14.879 on the modern Internet that show more contempt for the user, 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:17.720 other than, of course, the former Skype, a product that 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:21.080 Microsoft languished for more than a decade, so thoroughly in 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:23.399 gorged with spam that leaving it unattended for more than 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:25.600 a month left you with one hundred undread messages from 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:29.200 Eastern European romance scammers, and Microsoft has finally killed it 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:33.320 in May. Great jobs, sature your fucking platt Anyway, products 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:36.040 like Word and Excel don't need improving, but that doesn't 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:38.480 stop Microsoft from trying to bloat them with odd user 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.480 interface choices and forcing users to fight with prop ups 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.480 that use an AI powered copilot that most of them hate. 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:48.760 Why exactly am I meant to show these people respect 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.560 because they run a company that provides a continually disintegrating service. 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:54.879 Because that service is such a powerful monopoly that it 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:57.000 is difficult to leave it if you're interacting with other 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.560 people or businesses. I think it's because we live in hell. 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:05.120 The mong tech ecosystem is utterly vile. Every single day, 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:07.880 our tech breaks in new and inventive ways. Our iPhones 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.080 resetting at random, random apps not accepting button presses, our 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:14.480 Bluetooth disconnecting our word process is harassing us to try 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:16.960 and use AI while no longer offering us suggestions for 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:19.840 typos and I'm referring to Google Docs. You're not insane, 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:23.280 it's happening, and our useful products replaced with useless shit, 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:26.679 like how Google's previously functional assistance were replaced with generative 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:29.240 AI that makes them tangibly worse, so that Google can 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:31.240 claim that they have three hundred and fifty million monthly 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.920 active users on fucking Gemini. Yet the tech and the 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:39.760 business media acts like everything is fine. It isn't fine. 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:42.440 It's all really fucked. You can call me a cynic 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:45.840 or a pessimist, or throw trash at me, or throw tomatoes, 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:48.640 or try and hose me down when I go outside, 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:51.159 or call me every name under the sun. But the 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:54.760 steaks have never been higher and the damage never more widespread. 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:59.200 Everything feels broken and covering these companies as if it is, 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:01.760 and these insulting to your readers and your own intelligence. 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:04.399 Look at the state of your computer or phone and 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:08.080 tell me anything feels concruent or intentional rather than an 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:12.080 endless battle of incentives. Look at the notifications on your 0:19:12.160 --> 0:19:14.600 phone and count the number of them that have absolutely 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:16.560 nothing to do with information you actively need. 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:31.359 Now. 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:33.840 As I wrote the newsletter version of this and this script, 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:36.399 I got a bunch of notifications, and I'm gonna recount 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:38.359 them because most of them are still on my phone. 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:41.200 I have a notification for Adobe Lightroom, and app I 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:43.560 use occasionally to edit photos that tells me to elevate 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:49.080 any scene now, enhance people's skywater and more with quick actions. 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:52.399