Speaker 1: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm as Voloscian and I'm Carera Price.
Speaker 1: Today we'll get into the headlines this week, including Nepal's
Speaker 1: failed social media band turned government takeover, and a look
Speaker 1: at the newest generation of tech founders. Then on chatting me.
Speaker 3: Chasubt has become kind of like a partner that makes
Speaker 3: managing health and lifestyle simple.
Speaker 1: All of that On the Week in Tech. It's Friday,
Speaker 1: September twenty sixth.
Speaker 2: Hello, Cara Hias.
Speaker 1: Nice to see you. It's been a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: where we've been remote, you've abandoned me. It's good to
Speaker 1: be back with you in person.
Speaker 2: Dirty gritty New York City.
Speaker 4: Speaking of dirty grit in New York City, how often
Speaker 4: you go to Brian Park?
Speaker 1: Why not to go inside Brian Park? But I take
Speaker 1: the subway to Brian Park once a week on Thursday's
Speaker 1: Goo Therapy. But this week and you're trying not to
Speaker 1: go anywhere because this un week has completely unga, snarled
Speaker 1: traffic and the.
Speaker 4: Dirtiest word in the New york Er Dictionary unga.
Speaker 1: Why do you ask, though, because.
Speaker 4: Brian Park is not where the Center of Fashion is
Speaker 4: in Manhattan. It is where I found my most beloved
Speaker 4: new toy. Her name is Belonce.
Speaker 1: Belonce.
Speaker 4: She's actually not she doesn't belong to me, but she
Speaker 4: is the robot lawnmower of Brian Park.
Speaker 1: Well, she's got a good name.
Speaker 4: I wish I came up with the name Belonce.
Speaker 1: I did not.
Speaker 4: I read about it in the Washington Post and then
Speaker 4: I actually went to the park to check it out.
Speaker 1: You did some reporting.
Speaker 2: She's gorgeous. How in the flesh she's gorgeous?
Speaker 1: Is there anything significant about Belonce other than her fabulous name?
Speaker 4: Nothing is insignificant about Belonce. She's a four thousand dollars rumba, essentially,
Speaker 4: and she's run via an app which tells her when
Speaker 4: and where to mow. So you tell her where to go,
Speaker 4: she does her thing, and then very cutely, she rolls
Speaker 4: herself back to her charger after a few hours. And
Speaker 4: I think it goes without saying that all of these
Speaker 4: electric robot lawnmowers are much in quotes greener than their
Speaker 4: gas guzzling human controlled counterparts.
Speaker 1: My mother also has a semi autonomous robot lawnmower at
Speaker 1: her house. I'm not sure if that's because of her
Speaker 1: concern for gas guzzling. But it is interesting how these
Speaker 1: kind of almost sci fi type robots have become so
Speaker 1: normalized that people think you're crazy for going to look
Speaker 1: at one in action. I am curious though. Obviously in
Speaker 1: the previously owned garden, you know, a Belonce going about
Speaker 1: her business is racally safe. But I can imagine the
Speaker 1: cut in trust of New York City, you know, vandalism, theft.
Speaker 4: All dirt, the grimy crime of New York City. Actually,
Speaker 4: that Belonce wouldn't be safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was worried about her.
Speaker 2: Well, she is safe.
Speaker 4: You want to know why there's a ton of security
Speaker 4: in brime. She's also not the first she has peers.
Speaker 4: There were several others tested, including l lawn James got.
Speaker 1: Who comes up with this? Mum? If you're listening, Karen,
Speaker 1: do you have any suggestions for what the garden lawnmower
Speaker 1: could be rechristened?
Speaker 4: Okay, so I have actually five because one of our
Speaker 4: genius producers asked an AI chatbot for a few more
Speaker 4: lawn pun names.
Speaker 2: Here we go. My favorite, Trimothy Shallome.
Speaker 4: Mozart, Yeah, fine, eh, post Malone, ye ye grass, light Year,
Speaker 4: and fine, another great one a lawn musk.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite. MS. Okay, we got it.
Speaker 4: So that is my lighthearted contribution for today. If you
Speaker 4: are in New York City, go check out belonce. She'll
Speaker 4: be waiting for you. I have to switch gears a
Speaker 4: little bit for my next story. How familiar are you
Speaker 4: with Discord.
Speaker 1: I've had about Discord for many years. I've never actually
Speaker 1: used it a gamer. I'm not a gamer. I know
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a live platform for simultaneous discussion,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, my life is so sad that the closest
Speaker 1: analogy I can think of is the work productivity tool Slack.
Speaker 2: Slack is a game for you.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, you're like, oh, you mean Slack's Ega Genesis. Well,
Speaker 4: the reason I ask you, and I think you'll be
Speaker 4: interested in this. Discord recently played a very big role
Speaker 4: in a revolution.
Speaker 1: I actually I actually heard about this a little bit
Speaker 1: intil some headlines. This is in Nepal, that's right.
Speaker 4: So in the course of a week, the country banned
Speaker 4: social media, erupted in gen z led protest, ousted, their
Speaker 4: prime minister, solicited recommendations for an interim replacement on chat GBT,
Speaker 4: and then elected an interim leader on discord.
Speaker 1: Talk about tech stuff.
Speaker 2: It really is a tech stuff story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know that much about Nepal. I know
Speaker 1: it's in the Himalayas. I know it's where Mount Everest is. Yes,
Speaker 1: it borders China and India. But why did this happen there? Like,
Speaker 1: what's the background?
Speaker 4: So actually Nepal was traditionally a monarchy, right, but a
Speaker 4: democratic government was founded less than twenty years ago. Nepal
Speaker 4: is the second poorest country in South Asia, the first
Speaker 4: being Afghanistan. And a few weeks ago there was a
Speaker 4: massive TikTok trend among youth and Nepal called hashtag Nepo kids.
Speaker 4: So social media users were posting videos showing the wealthy
Speaker 4: lifestyles of the children of Nepal's leaders. So think images
Speaker 4: of politicians' kids posing in front of Christmas trees made
Speaker 4: out of Louis Vuitton and Cardier boxes. These images were
Speaker 4: being juxtaposed with images of the day to day struggles
Speaker 4: of regular people in Nepal. So there are images of
Speaker 4: malnourished children, floods, decimated housing, and overall poverty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's quite a stark juxtaposition. And I can't imagine
Speaker 1: government ministers felt too good about their children being juxtaposed
Speaker 1: with children suffering malnourishment and poverty. No, and it.
Speaker 4: Actually it led to the government banning twenty six social
Speaker 4: media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook, purportedly in the
Speaker 4: name of battling fake news, hate speech, and online fraud,
Speaker 4: which obviously people are not buying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't buy that either. When did the band
Speaker 1: come into effect?
Speaker 2: On my birthday?
Speaker 1: September fourth, hap your birthday?
Speaker 4: The following Monday, Thousands of young people took to the streets.
Speaker 4: So some government buildings were burned down, including the Prime
Speaker 4: Minister's office, and according to Reuter's there was a violent
Speaker 4: crackdown and about seventy two people were actually killed in
Speaker 4: the protest and subsequent fires.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this sounds like, I mean, eerily familiar in terms
Speaker 1: of the Arab Spring of fifteen years ago. What happened
Speaker 1: next in Nepal?
Speaker 4: So the social media ban was reversed almost immediately after
Speaker 4: protests began, and on Tuesday, September ninth, the Prime minister
Speaker 4: resigned and fled the country. Then the military pretty much
Speaker 4: took over and put a curfew in place. And so
Speaker 4: you know, what do people do when they're force to
Speaker 4: stay inside, They go back on life, That's right, they
Speaker 4: go online. So over one hundred thousand people, including a
Speaker 4: number of organizing groups, spent several days on Discord working
Speaker 4: to come up with an interim leader who the military
Speaker 4: would actually cooperate with and accept. There were discussions taking
Speaker 4: place on Discord, filled with you know, everything you'd expect
Speaker 4: on discord, memes, insults, and there were some genuinely earnest
Speaker 4: you know, suggestions and polls.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: Young activists argued over the future leadership of the country,
Speaker 4: and some even turned to chat GPT for help. You know,
Speaker 4: one group asked chat to identify potential candidates for the
Speaker 4: interim leadership position, and so when they were provided a
Speaker 4: list of qualified candidates, they went back to chat gpt
Speaker 4: and asked it to debate the strengths and weaknesses of
Speaker 4: each candidate.
Speaker 1: Well and chat gate good advice, it seemed to you know.
Speaker 4: Chat gpt actually provided many qualified candidates, including one woman
Speaker 4: who had been selected by a dominant gen Z collective
Speaker 4: to lead negotiations with the military. This was Sushila Karki.
Speaker 4: She's seventy three years old. She's not, you know, a
Speaker 4: young discord user herself. She's a former Chief Justice and
Speaker 4: well known anti corruption crusader, and according to the Sri
Speaker 4: Lankan Guardian, Chatchept advised the quote, she seems likely to
Speaker 4: command trust across different groups and could help oversee reforms
Speaker 4: and the path to fare elections.
Speaker 1: And so far, so good.
Speaker 4: You know, after some chaos, the discord community decided to
Speaker 4: have her be the new interim leader of Nepal. And
Speaker 4: she's actually putting together a cabinet right now and will
Speaker 4: hold elections for a new prime minister in about six months.
Speaker 1: This is an amazing story. This is uncanny online, offline
Speaker 1: metaverse discord chatchpt, real life protests, new leaders. I mean,
Speaker 1: what's so interesting to me about this story is just
Speaker 1: how borderless it is. For example, the mascot of this
Speaker 1: revolution is the pirate flag from the Japanese anime series
Speaker 1: One Piece. Have you watched One Piece?
Speaker 2: I know about it, I'm aware of it.
Speaker 1: So CNN describes it as quote the swashbuckling story, and
Speaker 1: I always loved the swashbuckling story. To the swashbuckling story
Speaker 1: of the charming pirate captain Monkey d Loofy and his
Speaker 1: misfit straw hat crew. CNN continues to one piece fans.
Speaker 1: The flag symbolizes Lufi's quest to chase his dreams, liberate
Speaker 1: oppressed people, and fight the autocratic world government. That flag,
Speaker 1: from a Japanese anime series has now been seen flying
Speaker 1: not just in Nepal, but also in Indonesia and the Philippines,
Speaker 1: countries that are both recently had their own gen Z
Speaker 1: uprisings over government corruptions. I was in an uber this
Speaker 1: morning in gridlock traffic in Midtown, so got chatting. My
Speaker 1: driver was from Nepal, Lucky, and so I asked him,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you think about this story? He said, Look,
Speaker 1: this isn't really a story about Nepal. This is much
Speaker 1: bigger than Nepal. This is about a group of people,
Speaker 1: young people who refuse to be bound by the political conventions,
Speaker 1: the political institutions, or the political establishment of their country
Speaker 1: and instead insisted on having their voice and on a
Speaker 1: new political reality. And his point was this is really borderers.
Speaker 1: And he even said it could happen here. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it really could happen here, but the optimism
Speaker 1: which he brought in the excitement reminded me of the
Speaker 1: early days of the Arab Spring, which obviously followed by
Speaker 1: what people talk about as the Arab Winter. But it'll
Speaker 1: be interesting to see what happens next.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, for year, social media companies talked about
Speaker 4: how their platforms could democratize the Internet and bring people together.
Speaker 4: And in the US, as we know, they've mostly proven
Speaker 4: to be divisive and polarizing, you know, que the recent
Speaker 4: discussion about the rhetoric and online communities that motivated Tyler
Speaker 4: Robinson who is now in custody for killing Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 4: But in Nepal they were able to have a transparent
Speaker 4: exercise in direct democracy, of course, with the help of
Speaker 4: Discord and unbelievably generative AI.
Speaker 1: And this brings me to our next stories. So while
Speaker 1: gen Z and Nepal is interested in using AI and
Speaker 1: discord a topple government and bring more direct experience of democracy,
Speaker 1: gen Z in America is focused on getting rich.
Speaker 2: Who isn't true?
Speaker 1: Who isn't So basically, there was a great story in
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal that I read. I mean, the
Speaker 1: headline was AI startup founders taut a winning formula, no booze,
Speaker 1: no sleep, no fun. And what the story is really
Speaker 1: about is how back in the early two thousands there
Speaker 1: was this like hustle culture there was. It was celebrated
Speaker 1: in the movie The Social Network. You know, it was
Speaker 1: this time of college dropouts and the consumer internet was
Speaker 1: being born. People were living in dormitories and you know,
Speaker 1: doing business with each other and kind of sacrificing that
Speaker 1: the normal pleasures of youth to build these companies that
Speaker 1: became Facebook and Google or whatever else and became you know,
Speaker 1: multi multi billionaires. In the intervening time, Silicon Valley kind
Speaker 1: of settled into a normal you know, corporate America. People
Speaker 1: had great benefits, they're normal working hours, they made great money,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, and that seemed to be kind
Speaker 1: of the new norm. And you saw this like generation
Speaker 1: of people who were you know, not all about hustle culture,
Speaker 1: about you know, have a balance in their private lives.
Speaker 2: Exact life balance, a balance.
Speaker 1: Now there are new fortunes to be made, and there
Speaker 1: are new threats to the stable assumptions of what it
Speaker 1: was to be you know, a knowledge worker in your
Speaker 1: early twenties. And so with a vengeance, this hustle culture
Speaker 1: seems to have returned.
Speaker 2: So what does that look like exactly?
Speaker 4: You know, are founders sleeping under their deaths, working all
Speaker 4: the time, have no social I mean, that's that's what
Speaker 4: I think of when I think about sort of early Facebook.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly that, but that someone that are even younger
Speaker 1: than they were. So The General profiled an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old from Kazakhstan named Arlan. He dropped out of school
Speaker 1: in his junior year of high school after creating an
Speaker 1: AI tool that led him getting a summer research job
Speaker 1: at Stanford. After that, he was accepted to why Combinator,
Speaker 1: which is this very famous startup incubator that helped develop
Speaker 1: companies like door Dash and Airbnb. He said that being
Speaker 1: steps to why Combinator been his dream since he was ten.
Speaker 2: Years old, which was eight years ago.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Jeez, that really puts his perspective to From there,
Speaker 1: Arlan received a million dollars in funding and moved from
Speaker 1: Kazakhstan to San Francisco again. According to the Journal, he
Speaker 1: always carries his laptop with him and works quote while
Speaker 1: out walking, during dinners, at the laundromat and on the.
Speaker 4: Toy because we're moving fast and breaking things, because we
Speaker 4: have add.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean, obviously the phone in the toilet
Speaker 1: is a particularly bad habit, but I think Arlan is
Speaker 1: like debugging software, I think, rather than texting. The journal
Speaker 1: reported that even after dinner with other founders, Arlan will
Speaker 1: go to meetings with potential clients until one am. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be in the sprint mode always. I
Speaker 1: never tried to divide working on startup and my social life.
Speaker 1: And Arline even convinced his father brother to move to
Speaker 1: the US where they're working on their own AI startups. Again,
Speaker 1: he's eighteen years old.
Speaker 4: What does he mean when he says he never tried
Speaker 4: to divide his startup in a social life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so you know, it's not like he
Speaker 1: never socializes with other people. Like the startup founders obviously
Speaker 1: understand that having a network is a key part of succeeding.
Speaker 1: They don't waste their time and they don't socialize for fun.
Speaker 1: But apparently one of the things which is in vogue
Speaker 1: as a way of socializing is something you know quite
Speaker 1: a lot about, which is book clubs.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that you run a book club I do.
Speaker 1: What do you think motivates your members? To be part
Speaker 1: of the book club. It's called Bellatris.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you.
Speaker 4: Check it out on Instagram and on the websitewwwl tris
Speaker 4: dot com. I think when we started at what motivated
Speaker 4: people was this idea that we were increasingly on our
Speaker 4: phones all the time. Like in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 4: when paperbacks really started to hit the market, people were
Speaker 4: worried that people would be.
Speaker 2: Reading too much.
Speaker 4: Much. Now, I think a lot of people have said
Speaker 4: to me, you know, I'm devoted to reading in the
Speaker 4: way that I'm devoted to exercise, in the sense of
Speaker 4: it's bringing my mind offline in a way that not
Speaker 4: much else is.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the interesting things in Silicon
Speaker 1: Value there's this thing going on where there's interest in
Speaker 1: Roman history and military history and all this this kind
Speaker 1: of idea that to be a successful founder, Yes, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of hustle, but also kind of living in
Speaker 1: the world of grand ideas and intellectual frameworks and stuff
Speaker 1: is also important.
Speaker 4: One of the things that's surprising about this article, and
Speaker 4: you're describing in it, is like I was under the
Speaker 4: impression that gen Z was like quiet, quitting and taking
Speaker 4: time for themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that comes back to what I was
Speaker 1: saying at the beginning, which is there's probably like there
Speaker 1: may be a bifurcation between like elder gen Z and
Speaker 1: younger gen Z. I mean, life was economically before the
Speaker 1: air evolution, like the corporate job market was much more
Speaker 1: secure than is now, and also like new fortunes were
Speaker 1: not being made, like the tech companies were so dominant.
Speaker 1: There's all that focus on how you needed anti trust
Speaker 1: regulation otherwise no new companies would emerge. And then jen
Speaker 1: Ai came along and it just shattered the landscape. And
Speaker 1: so now you have these extraordinary you know, dreamers like
Speaker 1: our Land moving from Kazakhstan to try and make it
Speaker 1: in the valley. It's something that's always happened, I think,
Speaker 1: But this you know, return of hustle culture with a
Speaker 1: vengeance is really interesting. There was a bit in a
Speaker 1: story that really made me think, which is that a
Speaker 1: bunch of the young founders refer to this concept of
Speaker 1: nine ninety six. Do you not? Nine ninety six is?
Speaker 4: I do? But please describe it because I want people to.
Speaker 1: Know, well, nine ninety six is actually a concept that
Speaker 1: emerged in China, and this was basically a kind of
Speaker 1: work as hard as you can nine am to nine pm,
Speaker 1: six days a week, so every day you one day
Speaker 1: off and otherwise you work twelve hours a day. And
Speaker 1: this was kind of like a little bit of a
Speaker 1: boogey man of like people look at China and think,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is a whole generation of young
Speaker 1: people who are killing them by working too hard in
Speaker 1: the tech sector, and you know, actually suicides, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of horrible kind of ansidiary reporting around this
Speaker 1: nine ninety six culture. But it's now evidently like a
Speaker 1: meme not so dissimilar to the Pirate flag, been absorbed
Speaker 1: by a certain sector of youth population of Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: as something to aspire to. And I just find that
Speaker 1: really really interesting.
Speaker 4: It is very strange because we came of age in
Speaker 4: a time where burnout culture was such a buzzword. This
Speaker 4: is literally touting burnout culture as the way to live
Speaker 4: and as the way to make money, which is interesting.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you think of prior generations of immigrant populations,
Speaker 4: like burnout was a way to build wealth in this country.
Speaker 4: If you came to this country and if your relatives
Speaker 4: were meant to come to this country, it wasn't like
Speaker 4: if you owned a dry cleaner, for example, you.
Speaker 1: It nine ninety six was there was another work.
Speaker 4: Life balance at the dry cleaner. And I think what's
Speaker 4: interesting is it's the type of businesses that people are
Speaker 4: building that has changed. But there has always been a
Speaker 4: mentality in this country of like, we come to America
Speaker 4: to make wealth.
Speaker 1: See I think you're right to your point. AI is
Speaker 1: exactly that. Like it's a chimera, like it's a dream,
Speaker 1: it's anything you want it to be. And so it's
Speaker 1: literally a moment where like for a certain group of
Speaker 1: people it feels like anything's possible, although of course the
Speaker 1: reality is most of them will be very burnt out
Speaker 1: and not have very valuable businesses at the end of it.
Speaker 4: You know, your pal Jeff Hinton, who was a tech
Speaker 4: stuff guest and the so called godfather of AI, recently
Speaker 4: gave an interview to The Financial Times where he said, quote,
Speaker 4: AI will make a few people much richer and most
Speaker 4: people poorer. So I think we kind of are aware
Speaker 4: of this on a macro level, but it's interesting to
Speaker 4: see it play out in the Petri dish of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 4: You know how hard these kids are willing to fight
Speaker 4: for a slice of the AI PI while like all
Speaker 4: of these entry level jobs are being slashed.
Speaker 1: After the break, some more headlines. The FDC is taking
Speaker 1: Amazon to trial, Albania has an AI minister of corruption,
Speaker 1: and Russia has an AI generated television show. Then on
Speaker 1: Chat to me Chat helps one tech stuff listener navigate
Speaker 1: a scary diagnosis. Stay with us. We're back, and in
Speaker 1: honor of you, m week, We've got a couple more
Speaker 1: global headlines for you. But first, Kara, are you an
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime member?
Speaker 2: I am?
Speaker 1: Do you remember when you signed up? Oh?
Speaker 2: God, years ago, years ago?
Speaker 1: Probably the free delivery gotcha easily.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too, just hauling it prime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like I want to be the prime USDA.
Speaker 1: H yeah, so that's a good thing. Prime. However, the
Speaker 1: Federal Trade Commission is taking Amazon to trial this week
Speaker 1: overclaims they tricked millions of people into signing up for Prime.
Speaker 1: I did it with my eyes open, but apparently millions
Speaker 1: of others did not. And the laws it was actually
Speaker 1: first filed, interestingly during the Biden administration back in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, but the trial just started on Monday.
Speaker 2: Why does the FDC think that people were tricked?
Speaker 1: Well, you want to hear from the comp I do.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to read it.
Speaker 1: The complaint filed by the FTC says, quote Amazon used manipulative, coercive,
Speaker 1: or deceptive user interface designs known as dark patterns to
Speaker 1: treat consumers into enrolling and automatically renewing prime subscriptions. Cancline
Speaker 1: subscription was made intentionally more difficult than signing up for one,
Speaker 1: and the complaint calls the cancelation process quote labyrinthine is
Speaker 1: how you say labyrinth thine, labyrinthine.
Speaker 2: I think it's labyrinthine, labyrinthine.
Speaker 1: Get this. Internally at Amazon, the cancelation process was called quote,
Speaker 1: an unspoken cancer, and it was referred to as the
Speaker 1: Iliad flow, as in the Greek epic poem about a
Speaker 1: hero's journey through the protracted Trojan war.
Speaker 4: I love these nerds, That's why, I mean, just internally
Speaker 4: what they call things.
Speaker 2: But what does the Iliad flow entail?
Speaker 1: Well, it kind of entails what you'd do, imagine, which
Speaker 1: is being extremely hard to get from A to B.
Speaker 1: And they knew, and they knew, and they were making
Speaker 1: a joke about it. But specifically, the complaint says that
Speaker 1: in order to go through the process of unsubscribing. On
Speaker 1: the site, customers had to navigate through four pages, six clicks,
Speaker 1: and fifteen various options. And there are also a ton
Speaker 1: of sort of chances along the way to unknowingly stop canceling,
Speaker 1: warnings about losing benefits, promotional offers, all intended to distract
Speaker 1: you or convince you not to cancel. Whereas guess how
Speaker 1: many clicks it takes to sign up for Prime?
Speaker 4: Not a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm actually surprised it wasn't just one, but absolutely Since
Speaker 1: the court filing, Amazon has actually already changed the process.
Speaker 1: There's now a well labeled and easy to understand cancelation page.
Speaker 1: But the outcome of the trial is still worth keeping
Speaker 1: an eye on because it could impact the future of
Speaker 1: canceling subscriptions for all kinds of companies. And it is
Speaker 1: unbelievably hard and annoying to cancel subscriptions. The worst subscription
Speaker 1: cancelation I ever had was the Times Literary supplement We
Speaker 1: had to Call, We Have.
Speaker 2: To Call, which is run by Abacus.
Speaker 4: If I'm not mistaken, it's actually I've watched my mom
Speaker 4: almost being brought to tears by cancelation.
Speaker 2: It's evil. Some of the cancelation.
Speaker 1: Tactes are evil, dark patterns.
Speaker 2: It feels malicious, high listeners.
Speaker 1: This is oz. I wanted to let you know that
Speaker 1: the day after we recorded the episode, there was actually
Speaker 1: an outcome to the trial. Amazon settled with the FTC
Speaker 1: for two point five billion dollars. By settling, they admitted
Speaker 1: no wrongdoing. But we'll keep an eye out on what
Speaker 1: this outcome means for subscription cancelation overall. But now back
Speaker 1: to our episode and our next short headline. How much
Speaker 1: do you know about Albanian politics?
Speaker 2: Literally nothing, which is embarrassing, but nothing.
Speaker 1: Not that embrassing. I've actually been to our not too
Speaker 1: long ago. It's really quite a fascinating country that's had
Speaker 1: a meteoric rise post communism. It's in this very strategic
Speaker 1: location between East and West, and so you know, the
Speaker 1: US and Europeans are quite supportive. But there's also terrible
Speaker 1: problems with organized crime. And actually a lot of the
Speaker 1: drug trafficking through the port of Rotterdam from South America
Speaker 1: is controlled by Albanian organized crime. And recently Albania became
Speaker 1: the first country in the world to appoint an AI
Speaker 1: generated government minister.
Speaker 2: How does that work?
Speaker 1: Good question? I'll start with her name, Della, which means
Speaker 1: sun in Albania. That's Della has actually been around since January.
Speaker 1: She started life as an AI assistant designed to help
Speaker 1: people navigate online government services.
Speaker 2: So she's actually worked her.
Speaker 1: This is this is a real uh yeah, brags to
Speaker 1: Rich's journey for Della. She has reached promoted to cabinet
Speaker 1: minister in charge of public procurement. Essentially, she'll be analyzing
Speaker 1: government contracts for corruption. Would you like to meet her?
Speaker 2: But I'm dying to meet her. Also, this feels ripe
Speaker 2: for corruption.
Speaker 1: Well we'll get We'll get to that in a minute,
Speaker 1: but first, here's d'ella.
Speaker 3: The samoanchuitor Anti coustets I Kim Kalandur.
Speaker 2: So this is an AI generated person that I'm looking at.
Speaker 1: This is an AI generated person wearing traditional Albanian dress
Speaker 1: against the backdrop of the Albanian flag and the EU.
Speaker 2: Flag its state sponsor TV.
Speaker 1: She's talking in Albanian, but luckily there are subtitles. She says,
Speaker 1: some have labeled me unconstitutional because I'm not a human being.
Speaker 1: That hurt me, not for myself, but for the nine
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy two thousand interactions I had with citizens
Speaker 1: whom I served as part of E Albania ABBE. This
Speaker 1: is well, that's the beginning of her career when she
Speaker 1: was bootstrapping, Yeah, exactly. She emphasized that as an AI
Speaker 1: she has no ambitions or personal interests, which makes her
Speaker 1: perfectly suited to the job of making sure government contracts
Speaker 1: impartial and corruption free. The Prime Minister of Albania, Eddie Ramer,
Speaker 1: said Diella would help make Albania quote a country where
Speaker 1: public tenders are one hundred percent free of corruption, one
Speaker 1: hundred percent free of corruption. I methinks the Prime Minister
Speaker 1: does protest too much, and some citizens of Albania are
Speaker 1: also quite dubious. One Facebook user quote in The Guardian said,
Speaker 1: in Albania, even Diella will be corrupted.
Speaker 4: I mean talk about AI hallucination, AI corruption, I think
Speaker 4: is the next frontier. You know, it's funny that you
Speaker 4: bring this up, because my next headline is also about
Speaker 4: state sponsored AI. I read this article in four or
Speaker 4: four media about a news satire show which recently premiered
Speaker 4: on Russian state TV, and it's apparently all AI generated.
Speaker 1: So what does state funded political AI slop entail?
Speaker 4: So, according to ads for the show. They've got a
Speaker 4: neural network deciding the content and topics for each episode,
Speaker 4: and then that same neural network uses AI to generate video.
Speaker 4: So it's been creating content like, you know, amazing stuff
Speaker 4: like President Trump singing songs, French President Emmanuel Macron wearing
Speaker 4: hair curlers and a pink robe. An ad for the
Speaker 4: show claims, quote the editorial team's opinion may not coincide
Speaker 4: with the AIS, though usually it does.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's it has to be?
Speaker 4: Poll It Stacker, which is the name of the show,
Speaker 4: is not just news but a tough breakdown of political
Speaker 4: madness from a digital host who notices what others overlook.
Speaker 4: Russia's Ministry of Defense actually owns the TV channel where
Speaker 4: it airs.
Speaker 1: I'm curious about this this show though, I mean it
Speaker 1: like obvious that it's made by AI. How does the
Speaker 1: AI show up in the show?
Speaker 4: Well, there's a data scientist named Kalev Letaru from Georgetown.
Speaker 4: He's the one who found the show originally, and he says,
Speaker 4: at times, if you don't know it was AI, you
Speaker 4: might never guess that it looks a lot like other
Speaker 4: Russian propaganda. And he says further, if they are using
Speaker 4: AI to the degree that they say they are, even
Speaker 4: if it's just to pick topics. They mastered that formula
Speaker 4: in a way that others have not. You know, there
Speaker 4: are parts that are unmistakable AI, like deep fake interviews
Speaker 4: with world leaders. In one of those interviews, Trump says
Speaker 4: he'll end the Russia Ukraine war by building a casino
Speaker 4: in Moscow with golden toilets. But the AI seems to
Speaker 4: have Trump's pattern of speech down pretty well. To quote
Speaker 4: him in one of these videos, all the Russian oligarchs,
Speaker 4: they would all be inside, all their money would be inside.
Speaker 2: Problem solved.
Speaker 4: They would just play poker and forget about the whole war.
Speaker 4: A very bad deal for them, very distracting.
Speaker 1: It's funny, you know, big fears when when gerative AI
Speaker 1: really took off, that we would all be tricked and
Speaker 1: transfixed by deep fakes of world leaders and you know,
Speaker 1: political events would be dictated by fake media. Instead, what
Speaker 1: seems to have happened is that deep fakes have kind
Speaker 1: of evolved the medium of the meme. Like instead of
Speaker 1: a meme, now you kind of create a deep fake
Speaker 1: scenario of the thing you're trying to make fun of
Speaker 1: and it's funny that, you know, Trump is talking about
Speaker 1: building a casino in Moscow in this Russian satire AI show,
Speaker 1: because on Trump's own AI satire social media channels, he's
Speaker 1: making content about turning Gaza into a riviera. So there's
Speaker 1: a funny like you know, doubleness here where it's odd
Speaker 1: that the primary expression of deep fake content right now
Speaker 1: is political satire. And now it's time for our final
Speaker 1: segment of the day, Chat and Me. Today's submission is
Speaker 1: from Jeremy, who is an early adopter of Chat GPT,
Speaker 1: a self described chat evangelist, and of course a tech
Speaker 1: stuff listener.
Speaker 4: I like anyone who's a self described tex stuff listener.
Speaker 1: I like anyone who text stuff listener, not self described
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 4: So, while Jeremy uses Chat for all sorts of tasks,
Speaker 4: there's one in particular that he thinks is of note.
Speaker 3: One of the biggest ways it helps me. It's like
Speaker 3: health tracking both me and my dog. Actually, what I
Speaker 3: do is I log my Apple Watch stats after hikes, workouts,
Speaker 3: and then I upload that information into chat GBT and
Speaker 3: it just breaks those numbers down in a way that
Speaker 3: actually makes sense to me. So I can kind of
Speaker 3: see my progress over time.
Speaker 4: There is a plot twist coming. Jeremy doesn't just track
Speaker 4: his workouts. He also tracks his food with the help
Speaker 4: of chat GPT, and he actually is a really powerful incentive.
Speaker 3: I was recently diagnosed with pre diabetes, so I'm trying
Speaker 3: to kind of be a little more careful what I eat.
Speaker 3: Instead of just guessing what I eat and the nutritional
Speaker 3: value of information, I basically just log my daily foods.
Speaker 3: Whatever I eat, I take a picture of what I eat,
Speaker 3: and I just uploaded the chat GPT and it kind
Speaker 3: of just breaks all their down. You know, the calorie corp, sugar,
Speaker 3: protein are there.
Speaker 1: You know, I can imagine if you're dealing with a
Speaker 1: diagnosis like pre diabetes, not only do you have to
Speaker 1: come to terms with this new health reality emotionally, you
Speaker 1: also very practically have to build a new routine that
Speaker 1: takes into account all kinds of new health priorities. You know, obviously,
Speaker 1: the doctors can give you strict guidelines about what to
Speaker 1: do in order to make sure your blood sugar levels
Speaker 1: don't spike in terms of proteins and fats and carbohydrates.
Speaker 1: But actually what Jeremy's doing is translating that into real life,
Speaker 1: seeing what chatchpt says about it and how that may
Speaker 1: track with the guidelines he's trying to follow. We've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about medicine and AI, and the classic is
Speaker 1: always like, can the AI outdiagnose a doctor, which in
Speaker 1: many cases it seems like it can, but the majority
Speaker 1: of medicine is not really diagnosis. It's actually preventative health
Speaker 1: and patient compliance with doctor's recommendations and stuff. And so
Speaker 1: this is actually the first I really heard of not
Speaker 1: using AI so much just to diagnose an illness, but
Speaker 1: actually to turn it into a tool to help manage
Speaker 1: your condition. And I think it's pretty cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a little bit like your medical concierge that
Speaker 4: leaves the doctor's office with you exactly.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 1: Don't forget. We want to hear from you, our listeners,
Speaker 1: so please send your chat stories to our inbox tech
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week for Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Kara Price and I'm os Voloshin. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Eliza Dennis Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It
Speaker 1: was executive produced by me Kara Price and Kate Osborne
Speaker 1: for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. The Engineer
Speaker 1: is Beheit. Fraser and Jack Insley mixed this episode. Kyle
Speaker 1: Murdoch wrote out theme song.
Speaker 4: Join us next Wednesday for Textuff the Story for a
Speaker 4: look at a beloved American industry that is benefiting and
Speaker 4: being destroyed by AI Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Please rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 1: and reach out to us at tech Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. We love hearing from you.