Speaker 1: Guys from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is tech stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm mos Voloscian and I'm Cara Price. Today We've got
Speaker 1: two big stories to break down for you. First, could
Speaker 1: China unseat the US in more than just AI and
Speaker 1: catch up in pharmaceuticals too? Then inmates phone calls with
Speaker 1: loved ones are being used to train AI that then
Speaker 1: monitors their behavior.
Speaker 2: Then we'll tell you about a few other stories that
Speaker 2: caught our eye this week, like how the UK police
Speaker 2: want to cross reference CCTV footage with government databases, and
Speaker 2: how the youngest female self made billionaire made all her money. Finally,
Speaker 2: we discussed giant blueberries and why the company is selling
Speaker 2: them is valued at a billion dollars.
Speaker 3: Then on chat to me, there was concern, you know,
Speaker 3: when two nuclear armed states are on the brink that way,
Speaker 3: that this could escalate and explode not just regionally but internationally.
Speaker 1: All of that on the weekend Tech. It's Friday, December twelfth.
Speaker 2: Hello Cara, Hi Ahs, do you follow art Basil.
Speaker 1: I've never been Miami, I know, but I'm fascinated from Afar.
Speaker 1: It's like the most hype.
Speaker 2: It is the hype beast event of any time in
Speaker 2: human history.
Speaker 1: Last time it broke the internet was with the like
Speaker 1: twenty million dollar banana. That was last year or two
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 2: Probably was for you offensive. It was very offensive. So
Speaker 2: let me ask you a question. Have you seen the
Speaker 2: robot dogs I have?
Speaker 1: Okay, robot dog?
Speaker 2: Would you like to describe them a little bit? What
Speaker 2: you saw?
Speaker 1: Okay? So you remember the Boston Dynamics dogs. Yes, they
Speaker 1: were these sort of uncannily dog like robots that kind
Speaker 1: of pranced a little bit like like not like the accidents,
Speaker 1: like what are those greyhounds like little greyhounds great guns?
Speaker 1: So imagine robot baby prayhounds with very raalistic masks that
Speaker 1: depict teche billionaires.
Speaker 2: You described it perfectly.
Speaker 1: Well together in a kind of pen.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. So it's an odd group of people
Speaker 2: dogs in this pen. It was Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and also a dog
Speaker 2: of the artist people who created the dogs. The masks
Speaker 2: that you were talking about are made by a special
Speaker 2: effects artist, nam Landon Meyer, and they are these hyper
Speaker 2: realistic faces. Is exactly face exactly like human faces.
Speaker 1: So I saw the images, but I didn't really know
Speaker 1: what is this all actually about.
Speaker 2: So basically people wanted to make the point that it
Speaker 2: used to be that we saw the world interpreted through
Speaker 2: the eyes of artists, but now Mark Zuckerberg and Elon
Speaker 2: in particular control a huge amount of how we see
Speaker 2: the world. So he wanted to show that basically they
Speaker 2: are the cultural conduits of our time.
Speaker 1: And what do they do apart from run around the pen?
Speaker 2: So this is what I love. So they run around
Speaker 2: the pen, but when you watch them, you can kind
Speaker 2: of see them, what's the word that I'm looking for,
Speaker 2: shitting out pictures that are in the style of the
Speaker 2: artists that they are depicting or the tech bro So,
Speaker 2: for example, the Andy Warhol robot dog will produce an
Speaker 2: image that looks like a silk screen, and Picasso's is cubism,
Speaker 2: Elons is black and white, and Zucks, to quote people
Speaker 2: looks like the metaverse.
Speaker 1: Wow, So are they are the dogs? Are they taking
Speaker 1: photos of stuff they're seeing in the audience and then
Speaker 1: turning them into works.
Speaker 2: Of arts works of art? That's correct, but the actual
Speaker 2: dogs themselves are selling for one hundred thousand dollars each.
Speaker 2: Imagine just having someone in your house and they're being
Speaker 2: a little Elon musk dog running.
Speaker 1: Around taking photos of your guests and then pooping them
Speaker 1: out crazy. I gather though, that the Bezos dog is
Speaker 1: not for sale and doesn't poop. That's because he's King
Speaker 1: of the Teche Brothers.
Speaker 2: That's because he's king of the tech Bros. I just
Speaker 2: thought it was an interesting story to start with because
Speaker 2: I think that People is making an interesting point.
Speaker 1: It's a tech Burrows world. We just shouldn't it.
Speaker 2: This is me high fiving them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also, I mean, look, so people really shot to
Speaker 1: fame during the height of the NFT craz That's right.
Speaker 1: He sold one a single NFT for I think sixty
Speaker 1: nine millions dollars.
Speaker 2: Which speaking of something that Bess could shot out that
Speaker 2: amount of money.
Speaker 1: And I believe some of the images that the dogs
Speaker 1: poop out our NFTs that you can also buy. And People,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned earlier, is also one of the dogs.
Speaker 1: So I think he's poking fun at himself and his
Speaker 1: ovre a little bit absolutely right here too. And I
Speaker 1: mean you could say this is absolutely grotesque and.
Speaker 2: People are paying money for it.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the guy is a master capturing
Speaker 1: people's attention, getting the hype cycle, and forcing people to talk.
Speaker 1: When was the last time you saw an article in
Speaker 1: page six questioning how the tech oligarchs made us see
Speaker 1: the world through their filter.
Speaker 2: He did it, He did it, He did it.
Speaker 1: Good on you people. Yeah, I'd like to move on
Speaker 1: now from big tech to big farm and specifically take
Speaker 1: investments in and around pharmaceuticals. A while back, I read
Speaker 1: this piece in the Ft which asked the question why
Speaker 1: is AI struggling to discover new drugs?
Speaker 2: Because why is AI struggling to find new drugs?
Speaker 1: Well, that's a good rually tell me. I didn't really
Speaker 1: realize this until I read the ftpiece. Obviously, I'm fully
Speaker 1: aware of all the investment in AI drug discovery now,
Speaker 1: but it turned out there was kind of a first
Speaker 1: wave in the like twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen period
Speaker 1: where hundreds of millions of dollars was invested, And the
Speaker 1: kind of period when you would normally expect a drug
Speaker 1: to come to market is about ten years.
Speaker 2: So if my math is right, we should be seeing
Speaker 2: like a whole bunch of new drugs come onto the
Speaker 2: market now.
Speaker 1: That's right, But we're not and according to the Ft,
Speaker 1: there's a few reasons for that. One is money. Essentially,
Speaker 1: these companies couldn't bring their product to market quick enough
Speaker 1: to keep raising money to keep their companies alive, and
Speaker 1: investors lost patients. I mean, to be fair to these companies,
Speaker 1: drug discovery and the trials to actually bring drugs to
Speaker 1: market are incredibly expensive, which is part of the reason
Speaker 1: why these big farmer companies have such a lock on healthcare,
Speaker 1: because they're the only people who can afford these cycles.
Speaker 2: Right, right, right, So it was more of a funding issue. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: I think it.
Speaker 1: Was a funding issue and also a technology issue. I mean,
Speaker 1: don't forget Back in the day, the AI tools were
Speaker 1: nowhere near where they are today, So you basically have
Speaker 1: to choose one problem and develop a specific AI to
Speaker 1: tackle it, whereas now you have these broad AIS that
Speaker 1: can tackle multiple problems simultaneously. So basically, according to the Ft,
Speaker 1: the decade long clock kind of got reset in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of the chetchipt moment two twenty twenty three, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. So what happens next, Well, we'll have to
Speaker 1: wait and see whether this great promise of AI to
Speaker 1: deliver new drugs takes place in the next five to
Speaker 1: seven years. One veteran chemist interviewed in the piece said
Speaker 1: the drug discovery is quote probably the hardest thing mankind
Speaker 1: tries to do. Another person said, who's actually a founder
Speaker 1: of one of these new generation drug companies? Quote? I
Speaker 1: used to say we were the industry with the highest
Speaker 1: failure rate of anything but Space Explorer space. And then
Speaker 1: she goes on to say space explorations started to work.
Speaker 2: Wow to see, Yeah, that's very interesting.
Speaker 1: I read another piece in the Ft, also discovery. I
Speaker 1: love the Ft and I guess I love drugtor Sorry.
Speaker 1: The question this piece asked is will the next blockbuster
Speaker 1: drug come from China?
Speaker 2: Well, that's really interesting. So there's almost like a parallel
Speaker 2: arms race in pharma and AI with China.
Speaker 1: And the INTERSETXT and you can kind of see American
Speaker 1: farmer companies begin to make very substantial investments in China.
Speaker 1: For example, Novo Nordics, the company who developed a zepig,
Speaker 1: paid a Chinese company up to two billion dollars to
Speaker 1: license a next gen weight loss drug. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's that's kind of parallel thing where China
Speaker 1: was the factory for US innovation for so long and
Speaker 1: now are starting to really develop and refine and make
Speaker 1: better products, or at least equally good products, faster and cheaper.
Speaker 2: So how are they doing this?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it's kind of that thing where the
Speaker 1: government says this is a priority, and also we'll just
Speaker 1: cut through all of the red tape required, will make
Speaker 1: trials easier, will make recruiting for trials easier, will approve
Speaker 1: the construction of new facilities in days rather than months
Speaker 1: or years. They basically said, this is a government priority
Speaker 1: to become a leader in pharmaceuticals, and therefore we will
Speaker 1: remove absolutely every obstacle, whether it's financial, whether it's regulatory,
Speaker 1: to bringing drugs to market fast. And looks like it's
Speaker 1: signing to work.
Speaker 2: So what does this mean for the US?
Speaker 1: Exactly? Well, these Chinese drug makers are now developing drugs
Speaker 1: two or three times faster than most other countries. They're
Speaker 1: still a long long way off. Like the twenty largest
Speaker 1: farmer companies in the world don't include a single Chinese one.
Speaker 1: The top ten are very much dominated by the US.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's another area where strategic competition is
Speaker 1: starting to make itself known. And crucially, one in four
Speaker 1: generic drugs consumed in the US, like tylan Nol has
Speaker 1: ingredients that come from China to manufactured in China. So
Speaker 1: you can see this real point of leverage brewing both
Speaker 1: with access generic drugs, but also China can overtake the
Speaker 1: US as the drug innovator record. It's kind of another
Speaker 1: area where the US ability to create the most valuable
Speaker 1: IP in the world is under threat.
Speaker 2: So as I want to bring you a story that
Speaker 2: really pissed me off, which is not something that I
Speaker 2: share all the.
Speaker 1: Time year that's time I heard you say something that yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: well you.
Speaker 2: Know, my therapist says, I'm not quick to express anger.
Speaker 2: But this is this was actually a story I read
Speaker 2: and I felt like viscerally angry about it. So it's
Speaker 2: from the MIT Technology Review and it's about how private
Speaker 2: prisons are now training AI on prisoner phone calls.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 2: You know, when you make a phone call from prison,
Speaker 2: there are two companies that essentially allow you to do that.
Speaker 1: And they charge you like a lot regions.
Speaker 2: So it's a huge amount of money.
Speaker 1: That's right for the privilege or someone even say, the
Speaker 1: human right of being on to talk to your family.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, do you know how big this business is?
Speaker 1: I know there's a despicable number of people in cost
Speaker 1: raids in the US.
Speaker 2: The inmate calling system is a one point two billion
Speaker 2: dollar business.
Speaker 1: Just the calling system, that's correct.
Speaker 2: The story focuses on a company called securest Technologies. They're
Speaker 2: one of two companies that specialize in the prison phone system.
Speaker 2: The thing that really caught my attention in this article
Speaker 2: is that Securist has been investing in voice recognition products
Speaker 2: since twenty nineteen and AI products since twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: which means they've been training their own lms on these
Speaker 2: phone calls.
Speaker 1: So they own the basically the whole batch of recordings
Speaker 1: and can use it for whatever experiments they want to run.
Speaker 2: I mean, the experiment that they apparently are running is
Speaker 2: building large language models that are going to help law
Speaker 2: enforcement track and basically predict ifs are going to happen
Speaker 2: on the basis of what people are talking about in
Speaker 2: their prison phone calls. It's surveillance on a level like
Speaker 2: you know, you think about panoptic power, and this is
Speaker 2: like the panopticon having another reason to be a panopticon. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so we know that llms are being piloted in certain markets,
Speaker 2: but we don't know which markets. And actually, the securest
Speaker 2: president Kevin Elder told the MIT Technology Review that securists
Speaker 2: monitoring efforts have helped disrupt human trafficking and gang activities
Speaker 2: organized from within prisons, among other crimes, and said its
Speaker 2: tools are also used to identify prison staff who are
Speaker 2: bringing in Contraband what.
Speaker 1: Do prison advocates, I mean, there was a potcast. They
Speaker 1: hate it.
Speaker 2: They hate it. A woman named Bianca Tileck from the
Speaker 2: organization Worth Rises, I think set it really the best,
Speaker 2: which is she said, there's literally no other way you
Speaker 2: can communicate with your family. Not only are you not
Speaker 2: compensating them for the use of their data, but you're
Speaker 2: actually charging them to collect their data.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it does kind of stick in your
Speaker 1: crawl a bit, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It sticks in my cry, you could say, yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean what infuriates me is that if inmates want to
Speaker 2: communicate with the outside world, they have to play within
Speaker 2: this system. Like they don't have a choice of how
Speaker 2: they're making phone calls, and so while they're informed that
Speaker 2: their messages are being recorded, they aren't informed about how
Speaker 2: this data is used at all.
Speaker 1: Now, do you think the reason this story strikes us
Speaker 1: both is because we are such sort of empathetic people,
Speaker 1: or is it because in some sense it's a grotesquely
Speaker 1: magnified pastiche of the experience of being a citizen in
Speaker 1: the twenty first century.
Speaker 2: I do think that yes, this is a magnified version
Speaker 2: of a surveillance capitalist state that we all live in,
Speaker 2: that we experience on a daily basis giving away data
Speaker 2: for free.
Speaker 1: I guess the difference is that we technically theoretically can
Speaker 1: use duc dot go instead of Google and not right.
Speaker 2: We have tools that help us dog GPN.
Speaker 1: We have a choice which most of us don't exercise.
Speaker 2: Choice within our non choice exactly.
Speaker 1: Whether this is like, you know, well, your choice is
Speaker 1: not to communicate. I guess yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's just I understand I suppose I understand the
Speaker 2: need to stop human trafficking, for example, or I have
Speaker 2: the understanding that it's important to stop you know, drug trafficking,
Speaker 2: or you know, a legal contraband coming into a prison.
Speaker 2: This just seems like the easiest, most crass way to
Speaker 2: possibly surveil people.
Speaker 1: I also think, you know, it's such an easy thing
Speaker 1: to productize and say, like put these super predators in
Speaker 1: prison listening on these on their calls, and then this
Speaker 1: infallible technology AI tool will tell you who's the baddest
Speaker 1: of the bad And it's just like really, It's.
Speaker 2: Also like, is this where we need to be applying
Speaker 2: AI tools? Like that's I just feel like money?
Speaker 1: What about rehabilitation?
Speaker 2: Rehabilitation programs? Precisely so, while I don't think twice about
Speaker 2: accepting cookies or giving away my data, I do at
Speaker 2: least have the choice to care without completely cutting myself
Speaker 2: off from the outside world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if I think you make a good point, which
Speaker 1: is like you can support the goals of law enforcement,
Speaker 1: like we don't want human trafficing all these things you've mentioned,
Speaker 1: and still have questions about this pick particular technique. I
Speaker 1: mean to me, the kind of framing question which we're
Speaker 1: going to come back to after the break in the
Speaker 1: story I'm going to tell you is philosophically, would you
Speaker 1: rather live in a world with no privacy or in
Speaker 1: a world with no crime?
Speaker 2: That's a good question.
Speaker 1: We're going to come back to it, and we're also
Speaker 1: going to talk about the world's youngest female self made
Speaker 1: billionaire and why people are getting addicted to giant fruit
Speaker 1: and we're back. Do you know the phrase one nation
Speaker 1: on the CCTV.
Speaker 2: I know the phrase one nation under God.
Speaker 1: That's one nation on the CTV was another contemporary artist
Speaker 1: who was the People of the.
Speaker 2: Pre NFT era Banks Banks c Yes.
Speaker 1: This phrase was graffited by banks outside London Post office
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. According to conservative newspaper in Britain,
Speaker 1: the Telegraph, the UK could be on a path now
Speaker 1: to becoming one nation under AI enabled CCTV thanks to
Speaker 1: a new proposal from the Labor government.
Speaker 2: Say more about this.
Speaker 1: So, according to Telegraph, which is not a fan of
Speaker 1: the Labor government, less sweet and just put our cards
Speaker 1: on the table. Yeah, Labor is proposing that police be
Speaker 1: allowed to compare photos of crime suspects from CCTV doorbells
Speaker 1: and dash cams against facial images on government databases, including
Speaker 1: the passports of forty five million Britons.
Speaker 2: What yeah, So why are they proposing this?
Speaker 1: Well, it comes back to the story we were talking
Speaker 1: about before the break, right, Like they're proposing this because
Speaker 1: they say that having CCTV cameras everywhere in Britain which
Speaker 1: are hooked into the mainframe of the passport photo database
Speaker 1: will allow it to be possible to stop crime in
Speaker 1: real time, to take sexual predators off the streets before
Speaker 1: they offend again, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But some are saying,
Speaker 1: I think, frankly, including me, hold on a second, when
Speaker 1: I wanted to get my passport, I didn't consent to
Speaker 1: having my face be available for a live panoptic prison system.
Speaker 2: Well, very similarly to what we were saying is that
Speaker 2: when prisoners consent to make phone calls that are being recorded,
Speaker 2: I can't imagine that they are thinking these recordings will
Speaker 2: be used to train lllms.
Speaker 1: And there's all these problems of bias in these facial
Speaker 1: recognition systems, which we start talking about. What we've talked
Speaker 1: about it to a blue in the face, but haven't
Speaker 1: really been addressed or properly addressed, which is, if you're
Speaker 1: a person of color, you're much well ke's be misidentified.
Speaker 1: But again there's this like technological logic where because it's
Speaker 1: tech enabled, people believe it's true. And it brings me
Speaker 1: back to that question about like, yes, in theory, like
Speaker 1: I would like people who are dangerous criminals to be
Speaker 1: very quickly taken off the streets for the event. But
Speaker 1: do I want the police to have unfettered access to
Speaker 1: the whole passport database? I mean, in a just society
Speaker 1: where you have confidence in the government, a democratic government
Speaker 1: whose values you share, maybe this is okay. Maybe, But
Speaker 1: what happens when this falls into the wrong hands.
Speaker 2: Right exactly exactly?
Speaker 1: You know, there's just there's so many ways to turn
Speaker 1: this into a system for extreme evil.
Speaker 2: I think, and we saw it happen with Wigers, with
Speaker 2: the weaker minority in China, Like it can happen very easily.
Speaker 2: It's not like it hasn't happened easily. There was an
Speaker 2: entire system that the Chinese government had called ijop, which
Speaker 2: is essentially to collect data from tons of sources that
Speaker 2: are being used by average Chinese citizens. So it's it's
Speaker 2: not crazy to imagine.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I think it's you know, the irony
Speaker 1: of this whole story is ten years ago we were saying,
Speaker 1: oh my god, China has built this surveillance stage and
Speaker 1: official recognition of our life. I'm not awful. It's just
Speaker 1: an ironic moment where our political systems are under so
Speaker 1: much strain that we have this aspiration to things that
Speaker 1: filled us with horror alto recently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's have a question for you. How many
Speaker 2: female billionaires can you name?
Speaker 1: Is Nancy pelosia billionaire? You know there's a fund you
Speaker 1: can use to track Nancy Pelosi's trades and make them yourself.
Speaker 2: Really, Oh, I have never seen that on the train.
Speaker 1: Okay, but but Nancy Pelosi did not.
Speaker 2: Nancy is definitely not one I trolling. So this week
Speaker 2: I was trying, like I was trying to think, like,
Speaker 2: who's a female billionaire? Who's a female billionaire? And I
Speaker 2: was thinking about it because the world has a new
Speaker 2: billionaire and she just happens to be the youngest female
Speaker 2: self made billionaire to date.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And for the sake of our show, she works in technology.
Speaker 1: Wow. I'd love to have her own who is?
Speaker 2: She told me we should we should have her on.
Speaker 2: Actually she's really interesting. So last week, you know, we
Speaker 2: talked about polymarket, which is the online prediction market that
Speaker 2: continues to kind of discuss me. But the woman who
Speaker 2: is now a billionaire co founded poly Market's competitor, which,
Speaker 2: as you know, is caw she that's.
Speaker 1: Correct, which sounds like a breakfast here like used to
Speaker 1: eat called kashi.
Speaker 2: But I remember Cashi made me so ill. You would
Speaker 2: eat Cashi. I love that cereal. So Calshi is similar
Speaker 2: to poll Market in that people can make bets on
Speaker 2: everything from you know, sports, to elections to the weather.
Speaker 2: But unlike poly Market, which was crypto based, Cawshi is
Speaker 2: based in the US dollar and received approval from the
Speaker 2: CFTC the Commodity's Futures Trading Commission in twenty twenty. Poly
Speaker 2: Market received the approval in September twenty twenty five, but
Speaker 2: only after being fine I had one point four million
Speaker 2: dollars for operating in unregistered markets.
Speaker 1: You sounded like doctor Eva in Austin powers four million dollars. Interesting.
Speaker 1: So cow She recently caught my eye because they announced
Speaker 1: a partnership with CNN. That's right where Cina is basically
Speaker 1: gonna broadcast caw she live predictions on things which are
Speaker 1: going to happen, which some people within CNN were pretty
Speaker 1: upset about, because you know, the idea of of of
Speaker 1: journalists becoming sort of jockey and like, you know, odd
Speaker 1: to make Betty.
Speaker 2: What is that called insider trading that potentially called.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it could be. I want to know
Speaker 1: more about this female founder who is she? What's her name?
Speaker 2: Her name is Luana Lopez Lara and her co founder
Speaker 2: is named Tarik Manser. She's trying nine and Luana's backstory
Speaker 2: is like something out of a Russian spy novel. She
Speaker 2: was trained as a professional ballerina in Brazil extreme discipline,
Speaker 2: and even turned pro in Austria for nine months, but
Speaker 2: then she was like, I'm out of here. I don't
Speaker 2: want to be here anymore, and went to study computer
Speaker 2: science at MIT, and that's where she met Tark Wow.
Speaker 1: And they founded this company, Kalshi together.
Speaker 2: They did I like this from a piece that I
Speaker 2: read about it that he basically noticed that she was
Speaker 2: sitting up front in class and was like, that's the
Speaker 2: girl who's going to be a billionaire. Yeah, exactly. But
Speaker 2: according to their website, both Luana and Taric worked at
Speaker 2: financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and observed that many financial
Speaker 2: decisions were driven by predictions about future events. And then
Speaker 2: they thought it was odd that there wasn't a straightforward
Speaker 2: way to trade directly on event outcomes, so they set
Speaker 2: out to create a place for this type of direct exchange.
Speaker 1: That's interesting you mentioned I think half joking that Polymarket
Speaker 1: disgusted you. But we talked about this last week in
Speaker 1: respect to people betting on like you know, the outcome
Speaker 1: of Russia Ukraine battles over individual.
Speaker 2: Towns and Zelensky sue.
Speaker 1: But I said to you then, which I will repeat now, like, yes,
Speaker 1: that is in a very poor taste. But to what
Speaker 1: you just told me, it democratizes the types of bets
Speaker 1: that government and banks in a sense already make and
Speaker 1: just makes them very visible in consumer facing.
Speaker 2: That's right. There is a little bit of a like
Speaker 2: let's take on the man energy to this whole thing.
Speaker 2: I just think the story is really interesting because when
Speaker 2: you think of tech billionaire, what do you think, like,
Speaker 2: what's the model? Right? Man and sometimes boy for me, yeah,
Speaker 2: but you don't think of woman or girl, not to
Speaker 2: be so binary. But no, I think I agree with you,
Speaker 2: you know, And so I think this idea of like
Speaker 2: socialized bedding on the basis of like maybe what a
Speaker 2: government is going to do, even though it's still mostly
Speaker 2: sports focused, is really important for us to keep talking
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: And also to your point about Calshi and Polymark, I mean,
Speaker 1: these are two of the most valuable private companies or
Speaker 1: very extremely valuable private companies that are not AI companies.
Speaker 1: They're both valued, I think are over at ten billion dollars. Yes,
Speaker 1: you want to know another unicorn that's been promising around
Speaker 1: place my subconscious. It's a company called Fruitist, who make
Speaker 1: giant fruit.
Speaker 2: It's so funny. There was a I don't know if
Speaker 2: you ever saw this, but it's there's these kind of
Speaker 2: bougie bodegas in New York City and there was a strawberry.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was astonished at the cost of this strawberry.
Speaker 1: It was a strawberry I think nineteen dollars something like that,
Speaker 1: single strawberries.
Speaker 2: And what that tells me is there's a market for it.
Speaker 2: But whatever, I'm sorry to interrupt you, Well, you want
Speaker 2: to talk about.
Speaker 1: Founder of Fruitists actually directly pushes back on what you've
Speaker 1: just said and said what I'm doing has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with champagne strawberries. But let me read you the
Speaker 1: headline from Fortune. Ray Dadio is backing a one billion
Speaker 1: dollar blueberry unicorn that sells berries nearly the size of
Speaker 1: golf balls. That's this huge. I want to live in.
Speaker 2: The fact that we can report on big fruit in
Speaker 2: the same breath as companies literally using large language models
Speaker 2: on the basis of prisoner phone calls. Is where technology
Speaker 2: is truly the craziest world to where we.
Speaker 1: Have the poorest taste of anyone in the world.
Speaker 2: Possibly.
Speaker 1: So when I first saw this was, oh my god,
Speaker 1: they made GM fruit wrong. These actually normal fruit, but
Speaker 1: super optimized by data. They've bought farms around the world.
Speaker 1: They've used AI to basically totally optimize the production, distribution, storage, etc.
Speaker 1: Of the blueberries. Founders Steve mcgamy has said, quote they
Speaker 1: actually pop when you bite into them.
Speaker 2: So we have gotten to a point in our culture
Speaker 2: where we literally can't stomach having any uncertainty around a
Speaker 2: blueberry like we need we need to actually use data
Speaker 2: to make sure that our blueberry is perfect exactly.
Speaker 1: That's exactly. And it's not just blueberries. There are raspberries
Speaker 1: and blackberries in development, and Fruits has stuck a cherry
Speaker 1: deal in China.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1: To your point though, about consistency, that is exactly the goal.
Speaker 1: Ceomagami refers to ending the problem of quote berry roulette,
Speaker 1: meaning no more inconsistency in berriers. And we can laugh.
Speaker 1: But fruit is sales have tripled in the last year,
Speaker 1: so to passing over four hundred million dollars. The company
Speaker 1: was considering going public, but with tarists they decided to
Speaker 1: pause that.
Speaker 2: Can I just ask a question, where do you buy
Speaker 2: these fruit like everywhere like Whole Foods? But is the
Speaker 2: brand called fruit Ist or are they.
Speaker 1: Say fruit is but actually they it doesn't. It's not
Speaker 1: like the nineteen dollars strawberry. It comes in regular packaging.
Speaker 1: I see. So you can get like a pack of
Speaker 1: like golf ball sized blueberries which is like eight dollars
Speaker 1: for ten, let's say, which is still expensive, but it's
Speaker 1: different from nineteen dollars for one. You know.
Speaker 2: I think one of the interesting things about this piece
Speaker 2: to me, and people have been writing a lot about
Speaker 2: this visa VI restaurants and menus, is that like GLP
Speaker 2: ones and Maha culture have really influenced what people demand
Speaker 2: in terms of the products that they eat or buy.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. So and this is you know you're
Speaker 1: seeing from Ceo mcgami's hymn book here because he said
Speaker 1: these are not berries to go on your muffins or
Speaker 1: your oatmeal. These are stand alone, snackable, berriessable berries. All
Speaker 1: other snack categories are seriously down since the launch of
Speaker 1: mpig and buried I think up so, yeah, I like
Speaker 1: these stories that have all the different Yeah, all the
Speaker 1: different things we talk about come together in a golf
Speaker 1: ball size blueberry that pops when you bite into it.
Speaker 1: So this week for chatting me, I'm bringing us a
Speaker 1: story that I heard at a conference last week called
Speaker 1: the Doha Forum. And yalde Hakim, who is the lead
Speaker 1: world news presenter for Sky News in Britain, was there
Speaker 1: and she was moderating a panel. But she opened it
Speaker 1: talking about a very strange experience of going viral for
Speaker 1: all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 3: So this interview was shared over a million times. I
Speaker 3: was seeing the interview itself just going completely viral within
Speaker 3: twelve hours. Then my producer sent me a message saying
Speaker 3: that this is the fake version of the interview.
Speaker 2: What do you mean? I thought she recorded an interview.
Speaker 1: She did, but the interview, not just the person's responses,
Speaker 1: but her questions were both deep faked.
Speaker 3: What terrified me is the fact that these deep fakes
Speaker 3: have become better and smarter. For the last seven or
Speaker 3: ten years, we've been hearing about deep fakes, and what
Speaker 3: they could do to society and you know the impact
Speaker 3: it's going to have. But I suddenly saw something that, frankly,
Speaker 3: if you didn't know my voice, if you didn't know me,
Speaker 3: and if you didn't know my mannerisms, you would think
Speaker 3: that that clip was.
Speaker 1: Real and it wasn't any old interview that was being
Speaker 1: deep faked. Yalda's original conversation was with the sister of
Speaker 1: the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, and he's
Speaker 1: been in jail since twenty twenty three on charges of
Speaker 1: corruption that his supporters say are all politically motivated, and
Speaker 1: the conversation was about that and how he's being treated
Speaker 1: in jail. The way it was manipulated, however, was much
Speaker 1: more provocative, much more potentially dangerous, and that's what went.
Speaker 3: Viraltions that I had asked her had been completely changed, fabricated, manipulated.
Speaker 3: The focus was aggression towards India and an attack on
Speaker 3: the Army chief Arsimunir of Pakistan. And I think what
Speaker 3: was terrifying is the fact that we know that India
Speaker 3: and Pakistan went essentially to war in May. They went
Speaker 3: head to head following a terrorist attack in Kashmir. There
Speaker 3: was concern, you know, when two nuclear armed states are
Speaker 3: on the brink that way, that this could escalate and explode,
Speaker 3: not just regionally, but internationally. And this was further fueling
Speaker 3: the flame to the point where the Defense Minister of
Speaker 3: Pakistan responded to the interview the fake version as though
Speaker 3: it was real, and mainstream media in India picked it
Speaker 3: up and it made headlines across the country.
Speaker 2: This is what experts have been warning us about for years,
Speaker 2: that deep figs can be used to actually escalate tensions
Speaker 2: and break down trust between people and their leader. I mean,
Speaker 2: you think about we have a US president who reposts
Speaker 2: deep fakes all the time.
Speaker 1: Well, that's right, and we've become accustomed, i think, because
Speaker 1: of our president, to viewing deep fakes as kind of
Speaker 1: memes on steroids or comedy. Yeah, and almost a little
Speaker 1: bit desensitized to the kind of threat that people have
Speaker 1: been mourning of for years, that they could be used
Speaker 1: to manipulate public opinion and cause political catastrophe. And that's
Speaker 1: why I wanted to get Yelder on the show to
Speaker 1: talk about this, because it seemed like this deep fake
Speaker 1: really was taken seriously by major politicians in two countries
Speaker 1: that are nuclear armed and have been earlier this year
Speaker 1: on the brink of war.
Speaker 2: So how did she actually rain in the deep fake interview?
Speaker 1: Well, it's a bit of a to do, but she
Speaker 1: was able to use her platform to indeed ring in.
Speaker 3: The way that I dealt with it was first of all,
Speaker 3: putting a post up on my social media saying that
Speaker 3: this deep fake is fake and it's AI generated. That
Speaker 3: also got picked up. I also did some interviews on
Speaker 3: sky News platforms. They ran the original and the fake version,
Speaker 3: and I talked around it and clarified. But I think
Speaker 3: what is terrifying is the fact that this really does
Speaker 3: test our democracy, journalism, our work, and how we're going
Speaker 3: to have to deal with things in the future.
Speaker 1: This is quite a dramatic story of the intersection of
Speaker 1: humanity in AI and not something that most of us
Speaker 1: encounter in our everyday lives. But we do want to
Speaker 1: hear about your everyday lives and your interactions with technology.
Speaker 1: How are you using chatbots, how you're interacting with synthetic media.
Speaker 1: Anything you can share with us about how your life
Speaker 1: is being changed in real time by your interaction with
Speaker 1: new technology is what we want to feature on this show.
Speaker 1: So Please write to us at tech Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com.
Speaker 4: Will feature your stories and we'll send you a free
Speaker 4: T shirt.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week for tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm care Price and i'mos Voloshian. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced
Speaker 1: by Me, Carol Price, Julian Nutter, and Kate Osborne for
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and Katria Novel for iHeart Podcasts. The engineer is
Speaker 1: Behid Fraser and Jack Insley mixed this episode. Kyle Murdoch
Speaker 1: wrote out theme song.
Speaker 2: Please rate, review and reach out to us at tech
Speaker 2: Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We want to hear
Speaker 2: from you.