Speaker 1: Media, enter the mind gym and pick up some brain weights.
Speaker 1: It's time for Better Offlines coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show, and.
Speaker 2: I am your host ed Zitron.
Speaker 1: We're back here in the plaza and beautiful Las Vegs
Speaker 1: Nevarda bringing you another episode. It is Thursday and we're
Speaker 1: still covering cees. We are still here with an amazing
Speaker 1: assortment of guests from the tech industry. We've got an
Speaker 1: open bar, we've got tacos, a place to sit down
Speaker 1: for members of the media, whether or not they join
Speaker 1: us on the microphone. And of course we've got some
Speaker 1: new contestants and some old contestants revisiting guests. My first is,
Speaker 1: of course, Chloe Radcliffe, standup comedian and actress from He
Speaker 1: is this thing on.
Speaker 3: You're never going to get rid of me. I'm like
Speaker 3: bed buds.
Speaker 1: I love it with Cradley Booper and of course Matt
Speaker 1: Bender Mashball joins.
Speaker 3: Us say hey three times in a row.
Speaker 2: What's up?
Speaker 1: And then the wonderful to Vendra Hadowar, Evan Gadget HEO,
Speaker 1: let's go. And you said you wanted to talk shit
Speaker 1: on Dell, so let's.
Speaker 3: Give the man.
Speaker 2: Give us the history.
Speaker 4: So last year, Dell did this the dumbest thing I've
Speaker 4: seen a tech company do in a very long time.
Speaker 4: They were like, Hey, we all these brands. Yeah, you
Speaker 4: know and love XPS, that thing that's been selling for decades.
Speaker 4: People love it. Let's kill all that. Let's call all
Speaker 4: computers Dell, Dell, pro, Dell, Promax. Those names may sound familiar,
Speaker 4: they're a little apply. Yeah, And when that was announced
Speaker 4: last year, I was at a press conference and Michael
Speaker 4: Dell was there announcing all of this, and my first
Speaker 4: question to him is like, what do you have to
Speaker 4: gain by copying Apple? Like, what are you doing here?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: He did not have a good response to that. Fast
Speaker 4: forward a year, every other PC manufacturer shipment's growing, Dell
Speaker 4: down because nobody knew what the hell Dell was producing
Speaker 4: this year, especially the people who wanted an XPS. So
Speaker 4: they turned they turned around, they brought back the XPS brand.
Speaker 4: They're actually doubling down on it and all so fixing
Speaker 4: all the stupid issues we've brought up in our reviews
Speaker 4: over the last few years too.
Speaker 2: So it's double vindication. What I guess back, what are
Speaker 2: the things that they've messed up? What if they fix
Speaker 2: have you seen the XPS lately? I have not.
Speaker 4: So they did this thing. Sometimes designers go a little crazy.
Speaker 4: They're like, what if what if you couldn't see a
Speaker 4: track pad? What if it was just all wrisk pad?
Speaker 4: So they did that. They made an invisible track pad
Speaker 4: that works and it looks cool, but it's hard to
Speaker 4: use because you can't tell where it begins.
Speaker 3: It's hard to use because a huge part of using
Speaker 3: a track pad is being able to see.
Speaker 2: I feel it, at least feel I have a problem
Speaker 2: with my MacBook Probe.
Speaker 1: The track put pad is slightly bigger than usual. It
Speaker 1: is nasty, clammy wrists get on it. But an invisible
Speaker 1: one I would snap that thing.
Speaker 4: But also, at least with a MacBook right, you have
Speaker 4: an edge.
Speaker 3: You can see what it is. You can see that.
Speaker 4: You don't even need to see it. You need to
Speaker 4: feel it, right because you're not looking at the track.
Speaker 5: I could see I could see an invisible track pad
Speaker 5: working if they made like the technology to just extend
Speaker 5: it so that area is a track pad.
Speaker 3: I mean you're saying, is that's not the case.
Speaker 4: A lot of it is a track pad, but the
Speaker 4: very edges aren't. Anyway, what they did with the new redesign.
Speaker 4: They put just little little notches so you feel it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And these are just like basic usability things.
Speaker 2: To think about. They could have.
Speaker 4: They could have done that first, but anyway, And also
Speaker 4: the function row on the Dell xps is for the
Speaker 4: last couple of years was this like capacitive touch thing.
Speaker 4: They weren't real keys. There were buttons that kind of
Speaker 4: changed when you hit a button and they disappeared in
Speaker 4: bright sunlight. You couldn't see them. So like your function keys,
Speaker 4: the volume button, all that stuff just disappeared. And I
Speaker 4: talked to that. I was like, did you guys not
Speaker 4: go outside? Did you not bring this computer outside?
Speaker 3: Don't see you're talking to computer eduering didn't go outside?
Speaker 2: But like wait, but did they say whether they did?
Speaker 4: They were like it was COVID and we were designing,
Speaker 4: you know. It was like the excuses were it was
Speaker 4: kind of a rough time to design. I think sometimes
Speaker 4: some companies let their designers go crazy. Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 4: out Apple. Apple. The thing about Apple is that they
Speaker 4: they at least tend to think about usability and practical functional.
Speaker 1: The company best known for its usability. Yeah, like very
Speaker 1: consumer facing. They don't like changing things up other than
Speaker 1: liquid gloss, which fucking sucks.
Speaker 4: You could argue about liquid glass. Yeah, but they're charging
Speaker 4: the mouse on the bottom. Oh that's like Johnny I bullshit,
Speaker 4: but Apple itself doesn't tend to do Yeah, so anyway,
Speaker 4: that's they're just keys. Now, they're just keys. And they
Speaker 4: these new the XPS fourteen and sixteen or a lighter
Speaker 4: than ever. This XPS fourteen is like about three pounds,
Speaker 4: which is pretty great. Yeah for a fourteens laptop. So yeah,
Speaker 4: total vindication. They fixed a lot of the issues. The
Speaker 4: branding is back. It is funny talking to people at
Speaker 4: Dell because all the executives and the marketing people like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 4: this rebranding's gonna go great, and all the underlings, like
Speaker 4: all the people who've been working on these computers and
Speaker 4: have dedicated decades of their lives with their like what
Speaker 4: what is happening here? Like I built XPS machines, you know,
Speaker 4: And they felt really bad about it. So on every level,
Speaker 4: the branding, the rebranding was a failure. XPS is back,
Speaker 4: and I'm happy about that. And we just got to
Speaker 4: tell Dell for like that whole when I saw them again. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we were right, We told you, we told you this.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a misinformation going on around Dallas well because
Speaker 1: everyone's saying, oh, Dell claim that they're backing off AI
Speaker 1: branding and people don't like AI. Apparently, David Girard, you
Speaker 1: chased this down, Journalius, Javid Girard, Jesus Christ. He apparently
Speaker 1: that was never said. And Dell is full scale AI
Speaker 1: like anyone who thinks that they're not. They have forecasted
Speaker 1: twenty five billion dollars of AI server sales this year.
Speaker 1: Do not believe Dell's lies. Do not let them lie
Speaker 1: to you and claim this isn't the case. They are
Speaker 1: fully AI piled and will be punished by the dark
Speaker 1: gods when the AI bubble bursts.
Speaker 4: I've had some interesting conversations with people at Dell who
Speaker 4: were pissed off at Microsoft and pissed off about the
Speaker 4: AIPC push because it's literally all marketing bullshit, as you've
Speaker 4: covered extensively, that has not led to actually useful futures
Speaker 4: for people. So, yeah, Dell is invest in AI. What
Speaker 4: I have noticed is that they're not saying AIPC. They're
Speaker 4: not out there shipping saying like hey, we got the
Speaker 4: latest co pilot plus systems because nobody cared. Nobody cared
Speaker 4: about copilotplus.
Speaker 3: They try, saying they try.
Speaker 4: Just here they did, and now it's just like, hey,
Speaker 4: you know what's great a computer? A computer that works?
Speaker 3: What if a computer? Yeah?
Speaker 4: What if?
Speaker 3: What if a computer was a thing that you could
Speaker 3: see the things at the keys?
Speaker 4: You could see it, you could feel the track pas.
Speaker 3: Basically, I will say that from my now you know,
Speaker 3: this is my first year at CESU, from my relative
Speaker 3: limited exposure to the kind of products that get shown at.
Speaker 2: The ce S.
Speaker 3: Somebody being like, hey, do you want a laptop that
Speaker 3: you have no idea where you're touching on it? Do
Speaker 3: you want a laptop that has a bunch of buttons
Speaker 3: but you're going to have to use it in pretty
Speaker 3: limited facilities to make sure that you know exactly what
Speaker 3: you are clicking. That's the new product is.
Speaker 4: The whole world can be described by like, I think
Speaker 4: you should leave sketches, right, yea car sketches. I want
Speaker 4: a car where the steering wheel doesn't fly off. And
Speaker 4: that's basically what we're saying.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's it's literally there's two cys is two
Speaker 1: I think you should leave sketches.
Speaker 3: It's that.
Speaker 2: And it's also a guy who just walks around going
Speaker 2: what the hell is that?
Speaker 3: What the hell is that? Her niece smart.
Speaker 2: Glasses that goes that's a flower paw.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, who walks into his pantry and goes, oh,
Speaker 1: what the fuck do I cook?
Speaker 4: The I've got too much shit on me sketch. Yeah, yep,
Speaker 4: I just can't serve. That's Victoria song.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The just too many wearables, too many wearables. Although we
Speaker 4: had a good chat with the guy from a Pebble
Speaker 4: who's back. Everyone likes Pebble good wearables. Actually, I said,
Speaker 4: I said smart rings were bullshit last year and I
Speaker 4: still believe that. Sorry, Victoria, but the Pebble smart ring
Speaker 4: kind of cool.
Speaker 3: What do you think is bullshit about smart rings?
Speaker 4: The form factor means they can never really do much.
Speaker 4: The battery life is always gonna be.
Speaker 3: Sorry form factor you mean being ring.
Speaker 4: It's a ring where it can never have like a
Speaker 4: big battery. It can never be that. So it's very
Speaker 4: limited in terms of what you can do. And all
Speaker 4: the rings we've seen, I know you've worn a couple
Speaker 4: of like they're just they're fine, but you know what's better.
Speaker 4: It's just a smart watch, is this not? As it
Speaker 4: doesn't feel a.
Speaker 2: Push on you on that. I find smart watches very annoying,
Speaker 2: and I agree, like my weird, fucking like oddly dainty wrists.
Speaker 2: I mean that, like the see muscle there, thank you clothing,
Speaker 2: thank you Chloe, just destroying me.
Speaker 1: Like my Apple watch for some reason, just doesn't get
Speaker 1: a full connection no matter how tight it's interesting and
Speaker 1: like this ring for the most part works, but even then,
Speaker 1: like it's I still don't get a full connection sometimes
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't really yeah, even then it doesn't recognize
Speaker 1: a full workout.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's it kind.
Speaker 4: Of wearables are personal, Like that's the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're all weird, Like what what we like to
Speaker 2: touch with textures we like?
Speaker 4: I think I've learned. I just don't like ring stuff,
Speaker 4: you know, so like that's just.
Speaker 2: It's hard to make a generous product in that way.
Speaker 5: The thing is, too, you have to be the type
Speaker 5: of person who wears whatever that wearable is, like the
Speaker 5: non tech version of it too, Like I don't wear watches.
Speaker 5: I want to wear smart watch. I don't wear rings.
Speaker 5: I want to wear a smart ring. I don't wear glasses,
Speaker 5: So I want to wear smart glasses.
Speaker 4: That's a big one too. Smart glasses also kind of bullshit.
Speaker 4: But the Pebble thing is kind of cool because the
Speaker 4: Pebble guy was always like, first off, their thing was
Speaker 4: eat ink smart watches, like back in twenty fourteen. Yeah,
Speaker 4: those are coming back. He's bringing back that's been so
Speaker 4: Pebble used to have these smart watches that lasted for
Speaker 4: weeks and just they were very basic. They could like
Speaker 4: upload notifications.
Speaker 2: He used to kindle. Yes, so it's like that. It's
Speaker 2: like that, but watch.
Speaker 4: Not really an LCD screen but more like papery.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's the Piper screen.
Speaker 3: And I can read my book on my watch.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I don't think you.
Speaker 4: Could read your notifications on your watch for sure. But
Speaker 4: he's bringing back that because what happened was fitbit butt
Speaker 4: Pebble Google butt fitbit, and he went to Google and
Speaker 4: just like, hey, you're my software, my Pebble software. Nothing's happening.
Speaker 4: Can you open source at and Google for once did
Speaker 4: a good thing. I was like, yes, the open sources
Speaker 4: so nice. Now now the pebblic guy can go back
Speaker 4: and make hardware using that software. So the pebble watches
Speaker 4: are back. But he has a ring that looks really cool.
Speaker 1: But the thing is with the ring from what I pod,
Speaker 1: you have to physically hold it down.
Speaker 4: Well, so the ring all it does, it does one
Speaker 4: thing you're supposed to do it really well, you hit
Speaker 4: a button on the ring. It takes notes.
Speaker 2: Yes, do you have to physically hold it down?
Speaker 3: Then? I don't know if we also we looked this
Speaker 3: up and I was saying that I because I as
Speaker 3: a comedian, usually my phone background says document everything. I
Speaker 3: record every single set that I do and stand up
Speaker 3: in my voice memos like I use the notes and
Speaker 3: the voice memos in my phone are the two things
Speaker 3: that like.
Speaker 4: Yes, unlock my perfect for you, Perfect for Me supposedly
Speaker 4: will last two years.
Speaker 3: Except also I love to like sometimes I'll just record
Speaker 3: a meeting and not tell the other person. Now that's
Speaker 3: legal in the state that I live, but it's a
Speaker 3: way for me to be like, Okay, I remember, like
Speaker 3: if I'm practicing pitch for a show that I'm trying
Speaker 3: to sell or whatever, I'm like, I just want to
Speaker 3: be able to be in the moment, but also remember
Speaker 3: how I did this and how they react to and
Speaker 3: what questionures they asked? Whatever, Anyway, this ring sounds like
Speaker 3: a thing that I would use. Yeah, then I looked
Speaker 3: up what it looks like and it really does look
Speaker 3: like ye my ring that definitely does not have a
Speaker 3: microphone in it.
Speaker 2: So I did just look this up.
Speaker 1: You just have to click it once to record it,
Speaker 1: and it's seventy five bucks. I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: I actually kind of want this because I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to surreptitiously record people. But I absolutely like, usually got
Speaker 1: an idea thirty seconds before I meant to fall asleep,
Speaker 1: I remember thirteen things I would like a reminder for. Yes, now,
Speaker 1: perhaps I wonn't be wearing a ring at that time,
Speaker 1: but for seeably I'll walk around be like, shit, I
Speaker 1: need to remember this, shit, I need to remember this.
Speaker 1: Or even just if I could say an idea and
Speaker 1: it says here it's an on device LM yep, and
Speaker 1: that I find quite interesting because.
Speaker 4: Not going to the cloud, not going to the cloud, not.
Speaker 1: Melting giraffes as a means of powering GPUs.
Speaker 3: On which device on a ring on your phone?
Speaker 2: That's kind of what I'm trying to work out, and
Speaker 2: we don't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't. We just got a whole LLM in
Speaker 4: a ring.
Speaker 2: No, that's kind of what I can get there.
Speaker 3: It's I'm asking such like podun kill bill, can you've
Speaker 3: plait a whole robot on that ring?
Speaker 2: I actually will push back. That's not a podunk question.
Speaker 1: That's a perfectly fucking reasonable one, because especially when we're
Speaker 1: being told we need eighty nine data centers, we must,
Speaker 1: we must knock down entire neighborhoods and put up a
Speaker 1: data center the size of I don't know New York
Speaker 1: City for meta. I understand the question. I'm going to
Speaker 1: assume that this thing needs you need to connect it
Speaker 1: to your phone, and your phone it has I.
Speaker 3: Don't fit a whole AI on your phone.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, but I'm guessing it's a very simplified, transcription
Speaker 1: specific one.
Speaker 2: But I do not know.
Speaker 3: It might it might.
Speaker 5: It might store the recordings on the ring in case
Speaker 5: you don't have the connectivity of your phone in the moment.
Speaker 1: Now it says completely on device, you don't require an
Speaker 1: Internet connection.
Speaker 5: Okay, perfectly, I'm about this ring right here, right now.
Speaker 4: The show seventy five bucks March twenty twenty six, last
Speaker 4: two years now that's the thing. It's not rechargeable. So
Speaker 4: what once you once, once it's done, you send it
Speaker 4: back to them?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 4: Because he is very much like I think this is true.
Speaker 4: We have too much shit to charge, Like I'm just
Speaker 4: tired of it. So he's like, Okay, what if a
Speaker 4: ring lasts two years and if you actually are still
Speaker 4: using it by then send it back and maybe get
Speaker 4: a replacement. Actually that is probably better than holding onto
Speaker 4: a charger that you will know.
Speaker 5: I actually what happens a year and a half in though,
Speaker 5: if it's got less of a charge in that last thing.
Speaker 1: It can record roughly twelve to fifteen hours of recording
Speaker 1: and it lasts for two years.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I don't know if you're a journalist.
Speaker 3: Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait it.
Speaker 1: Runs out fifteen hours recording total. No, no, no, you
Speaker 1: can that's what it says here on the website. I
Speaker 1: mean I'm not to be able to offload.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have not gone to the specific leve it,
Speaker 4: but it definitely he wants to.
Speaker 3: Hold twelve to fifteen hours total and then you can
Speaker 3: dump that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you just we have the technology. Clear.
Speaker 5: This is now I'm an article on not my outlet,
Speaker 5: but Android authority uh with. It's expected to last for
Speaker 5: up to two years with normal usage, and normal usage
Speaker 5: is described as ten to twenty times per day, recording
Speaker 5: three to six second voice notes.
Speaker 2: I wanted to love this. I wanted to so bad.
Speaker 2: But if you're thinking a journalist and you do what what,
Speaker 2: so fifteen is equal like thirty thirty minute interviews, that's
Speaker 2: you're never going to record.
Speaker 4: It's not for interviews.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're not going to record a full interview.
Speaker 4: That was for you on the toilet. This is for
Speaker 4: you in the shower.
Speaker 2: Do you have a lot of thoughts there?
Speaker 4: It's toilet thoughts, it's shower thoughts. The storage thing we
Speaker 4: have the ability to date like that that could be solved.
Speaker 1: But I'm just kind of like, if this is if
Speaker 1: this is meant to be for quick thoughts, fine, but
Speaker 1: I'm just like, as someone, especially because it does the transcription,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, that would be really useful.
Speaker 2: But I guess you can do that with the Apple
Speaker 2: Watch down.
Speaker 5: But also three to six second voice notes. I mean,
Speaker 5: is that really saving you the time that you couldn't
Speaker 5: just whip out your phone and type it yourself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm kind of like, actually does that up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do actually think that being able to say
Speaker 3: like a very quick thing captain's log. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: do think that that is cool. The use case that
Speaker 3: I would be using it for is if I I
Speaker 3: am always like writing down in a conversation, if somebody
Speaker 3: says a very smart thing or like analyzing something in
Speaker 3: a really cool way, I'm always like, hold on, I
Speaker 3: want to write that down. And so if I could
Speaker 3: just be like, hey, can you explain, like explain to
Speaker 3: me why this movie didn't wasn't wasn't effective in the
Speaker 3: way that we both felt that it wasn't effective. But
Speaker 3: I am not articulate enough to be able to put
Speaker 3: this into words. But you, my boyfriend, who is a
Speaker 3: smart director, can say it into my ring. And but
Speaker 3: that explanation is going to take sixty seconds. Like I,
Speaker 3: I do think that there's a use case and that
Speaker 3: it's well sixty seconds though, is your sixty second note?
Speaker 3: Is your entire use the last years?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. I would be doing that in
Speaker 3: my mind too.
Speaker 5: If you give me a time frame like this, if
Speaker 5: you want this the last two years, you need to
Speaker 5: use it no more than sixty ten times you're going
Speaker 5: to have your phone, But every time I use it,
Speaker 5: I'd be like, oh, this was just number six, Do
Speaker 5: I really want to go and push it for the
Speaker 5: next note?
Speaker 3: And that is how you know that you did not
Speaker 3: grow up with money.
Speaker 2: I still.
Speaker 3: That's a very clear class.
Speaker 1: I will give them credit and that they specifically say
Speaker 1: this is not designed to record your whole life or meetings.
Speaker 1: It is very much a reminder thing. I can kind
Speaker 1: of see it. And they're all numerous times where I
Speaker 1: will just be sitting there and be like, oh, I
Speaker 1: have an idea, like what if Ben wois Blanc interrogated
Speaker 1: Cuba for example? But like the use ones too, but
Speaker 1: it's I also like typing, but again different if I
Speaker 1: can see different strokes of different folks, that's fine. And
Speaker 1: also Chloe does literally do this. She's like, can you
Speaker 1: say that again?
Speaker 2: So I can run this might be a Chloe Radcliffe
Speaker 2: approved device potentially.
Speaker 4: How the way I do reviews is often I'm like
Speaker 4: out just like dictating thoughts into my phone. So that's
Speaker 4: like often the thing. The other thing I'll point out
Speaker 4: is that you know we the lifespan is the thing,
Speaker 4: like will people want basically a disposable device. But what
Speaker 4: if I think you send it back to them, it
Speaker 4: gets recycled, the battery gets recycled, good for them. Electronics
Speaker 4: recycling not that great, but matter than just need.
Speaker 3: To put it in the mail.
Speaker 1: Like it's just see the moment I'm told I have
Speaker 1: to mail or something, I just want to I want
Speaker 1: to jump off a fucking bridge.
Speaker 2: Like I was just like, oh, you want me to
Speaker 2: go to the post office. Let me just let me,
Speaker 2: let me Dwyer mode.
Speaker 4: You get a self self you know, label or whatever,
Speaker 4: you drop it.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, you gotta print. You gotta print.
Speaker 4: You know they have there's that startup that does the
Speaker 4: thing for returns right now where you get a barcode
Speaker 4: and you just bring it to like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that ship. That's cool. Wait with like Amazon
Speaker 2: returns and as.
Speaker 5: Long as you go to the ups store with coals
Speaker 5: as well, I think, okay, yeah that's Amazon.
Speaker 4: There's also another company that just doesn't.
Speaker 3: Amberjack.
Speaker 1: Amberjack is a shoe company I used, and they have
Speaker 1: it where it's just you scan. It was like you
Speaker 1: can take it to coals or something, which is cool.
Speaker 1: Like it's weird, Like there are little things like that
Speaker 1: which are really useful.
Speaker 2: Like I said, this is a dyspractic physical coordinational disability.
Speaker 1: Putting together, like opening a package isn't fun. Packing a
Speaker 1: package sucks. Is like the pain box.
Speaker 2: For me.
Speaker 1: It's like if you're like, return this with a label,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you want me to touch the thing with
Speaker 1: the knife on it and the type.
Speaker 4: It's also like that's where millennial breakdown happens. It's like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is a task, not so much that takes time.
Speaker 2: Let me explain thispraxia though. Yeah, it's not like it's
Speaker 2: like a task.
Speaker 1: It's picking up a box and putting tape in a
Speaker 1: straight line is genuinely difficult.
Speaker 2: Like my brain.
Speaker 1: It's in like the more complex it is, like it
Speaker 1: actually like is upsetting. Like it's meant like I'm sure
Speaker 1: the few dispractics who listen like yeah, fuck you dude,
Speaker 1: boxes suck, but it is really like that, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to describe because it sounds like I'm just being
Speaker 1: a baby. I wish I was. I wish this was
Speaker 1: just me being like ooh, coot put a book together. No,
Speaker 1: it's really fucking difficult. It's really it's so difficult for me.
Speaker 1: So it's like, oh, I gave you a label.
Speaker 2: You gave me a death sentence.
Speaker 4: To the point of what you're saying there, we have
Speaker 4: the technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two weeks is cool.
Speaker 4: You have a Cura code. You bring it to the story.
Speaker 4: They're like, I'll deal with this problem for you, which
Speaker 4: is can you walk away happy? Millennial?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes, I was okay, I want to In defensive millennials,
Speaker 3: are you a millennial?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, in defensive millennials. I think the reason I
Speaker 3: don't want to do a task, for sure, you're not wrong,
Speaker 3: I'm not Yeah.
Speaker 4: The things that the simple things that pile up that
Speaker 4: take five minutes to do.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, totally. But I think the reason that we
Speaker 3: this is sort of off topic and I'm finding it
Speaker 3: in the moment, so come with me on this, right.
Speaker 3: But I think the reason that we are so uh,
Speaker 3: that tasks are feel like so alienating and so off
Speaker 3: putting is because we we are Oh boy, she's taken
Speaker 3: a swing here, let's go to I think we are
Speaker 3: because of our generation's interaction with the Internet's like rapid
Speaker 3: expansion and social media's rapid expansion. We're sort of the
Speaker 3: first generation that was expected to do suddenly like twice
Speaker 3: as much in a career, in raising a family, in whatever.
Speaker 3: That like, we are the generation, the first generation where
Speaker 3: it's like you're expected to be your own whole small business.
Speaker 3: And I think the prior generations excuse me, had more
Speaker 3: she's taken us swing had more free time, yes, and
Speaker 3: like that life was slower and so that like you
Speaker 3: could say and forty five minutes once a week, I
Speaker 3: do my little pasts, and like even if you can
Speaker 3: be like I don't like doing them, but it's like
Speaker 3: you have that forty five minutes and there's not this
Speaker 3: like constant hammering in the back of your head. That is,
Speaker 3: you could be doing these higher scale things for your
Speaker 3: job or for your life that are made possible because
Speaker 3: of the constant access to the internet.
Speaker 1: Ye, and your job is also not in your pocket
Speaker 1: all the time, That's exactly. And it's like also boomers
Speaker 1: and well Gen x is of course hearing this will say, well.
Speaker 2: When I grew up, my parents just left me at
Speaker 2: home and we.
Speaker 1: Have just entertained ourselves and we just also cynical, and
Speaker 1: of course we could buy houses and college actually guaranteed
Speaker 1: you a job, and college was cheaper and housing was cheaper.
Speaker 1: I guess not in the nineties, but even then it
Speaker 1: was easier to get a house.
Speaker 4: And I mean, you're starting a millennia, you're starting a generational.
Speaker 3: I don't fuck it.
Speaker 2: Y boomers.
Speaker 4: Booms got us here, by the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, GenX, we need you, we need you, we need
Speaker 3: but they.
Speaker 4: Got us here because they're in action.
Speaker 2: Yes, gen x Is are the problem. There, we are.
Speaker 1: I think both of them had that hand. I think
Speaker 1: boomers in the sheety decisions, but gen x Is are
Speaker 1: the ones with their inaction when they chose, and they
Speaker 1: were gen X's who did.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, if even if you look at like the
Speaker 5: like how like the generations fall politically now, Like you know,
Speaker 5: the cliche is like all you boomers were the worst
Speaker 5: or whatever, But if you look, there's a lot of
Speaker 5: boomers who are very like anti Trump, and I don't
Speaker 5: see the same with gen X. In fact, gen X
Speaker 5: is the one that went the other way during the pandemic,
Speaker 5: like well everyone else was like, oh, I can't believe
Speaker 5: how Trump is doing what Trump is doing during the pandemic,
Speaker 5: gen X was going like I can't believe I have
Speaker 5: to steal it.
Speaker 3: My shitty kid who I can't send off the school.
Speaker 3: I'm right wing now, I mean that's literally.
Speaker 1: And also boomers will do the whole thing. We're just
Speaker 1: gonna get people. I'm gonna get some emails.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of boomers who are like, back
Speaker 2: in my day, I could just walk into a star
Speaker 2: and say, good sir, I'd like a job nights like
Speaker 2: Kardia Jeb why.
Speaker 1: But the same time, and there was a lots of
Speaker 1: like old people who were like, just go and get
Speaker 1: a job.
Speaker 2: It's that easy.
Speaker 1: The gen x is if you make a post of
Speaker 1: Blue sky En I've done this several times, just be
Speaker 1: like make fun of gen x as being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get home, my parents weren't there, so I'd make
Speaker 1: myself dinner and I'd entertain myself all day every day,
Speaker 1: and I was so independent. There will be gen x's
Speaker 1: who respond and be like, yeah, that's actually true, and
Speaker 1: you should like they get very personal about em I
Speaker 1: don't know, you lived through some of the best music
Speaker 1: as well, like fucking stop.
Speaker 5: I mean we're right, yes, I mean all the super rich,
Speaker 5: fucking tech assholes are gen xers, Like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to your idea, what you what you were saying
Speaker 4: about back to me, back to the millennial. Correct. I
Speaker 4: think you're absolutely right, But also there's other aspects of it,
Speaker 4: and people talk about it. It's the way millennials went
Speaker 4: to school, because we went to school in this like
Speaker 4: real in America in this really optimized, like the sort
Speaker 4: of goals that you had to chase were very specific,
Speaker 4: whole gifted and talented crowd like we were seeing basically.
Speaker 3: Which I was one, yes, the same, but that was not.
Speaker 2: It really was not.
Speaker 3: No, it was not you see.
Speaker 4: Online like the the gift in tal adults. We're like, oh,
Speaker 4: that was kind of wrong. That maybe kind of broke
Speaker 4: us in terms of how we.
Speaker 3: Do you mean through the world the high expectations based
Speaker 3: on us and the expectation of perfectionism or like how
Speaker 3: that metastasizes exactly.
Speaker 4: All that, Like we were built for school and for
Speaker 4: taking tests and then sent to the real world.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, and do you think other generations? Oh?
Speaker 5: Absolutely if you think about it, like why why did
Speaker 5: all the first internet culture come from millennials? And that's
Speaker 5: because like gen X was at the age.
Speaker 4: That's there's.
Speaker 5: I don't know because we're no, but I'm talking about
Speaker 5: like meme culture, and all lives.
Speaker 1: Sorry, that's I think I know what you're saying, which
Speaker 1: is our lives were digital in a way.
Speaker 2: There's not.
Speaker 4: Yes here. Here's what's interesting is that we're getting too
Speaker 4: millennial focus because we're all millennials, I guess. But also,
Speaker 4: we knew what the world was very young. Okay, thank you,
Speaker 4: good to know.
Speaker 3: Hollywood Castrian.
Speaker 4: We knew what the world was before the Internet. We
Speaker 4: saw what the world became with the Internet, and we're
Speaker 4: expected to be as experts at it post internet, so
Speaker 4: we saw the full breadth of it. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 4: why like gen zers and young kids do not know
Speaker 4: the world before and it's kind of tough to describe
Speaker 4: what that was.
Speaker 2: We also were children during nine to eleven and were
Speaker 2: in like children.
Speaker 4: Teenagers, but yes, the world fell apart.
Speaker 2: Ages are still children two thousand and eight as well.
Speaker 1: Like I think that it's understated, like because two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, I moved to America that year and it
Speaker 1: was very much like Welcome to America. No, it happened
Speaker 1: as I moved, not because I don't know. I moved
Speaker 1: and it was just like, oh, hey, you know the
Speaker 1: whole thing you were told about, you got to college.
Speaker 1: Everything will be fine, fuck you, just exactly. And I
Speaker 1: don't think other older generations realize how stark that was,
Speaker 1: how hot, Like there Jen x UMA's probably remember before
Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security existed, like and I just
Speaker 1: think the expectations of hyper digitization and the constant expectation
Speaker 1: and notifications stuff like that. I think it's really easy
Speaker 1: to color Millennia's like, oh, you're so oh you want
Speaker 1: your little treats and all this. No, we're being harassed
Speaker 1: by everyone is now harassed by everything all the time.
Speaker 2: We're aware of it every yes, and we know and
Speaker 2: we remember.
Speaker 3: It could have been different. Yeah, I don't remember when.
Speaker 1: It's frustrating as well, because by the way, Michael Dell
Speaker 1: gen X Yeah, just and we're and just.
Speaker 3: To be clear, this is mister Dell of.
Speaker 4: The company, one of the richest men in the world,
Speaker 4: by the way, like he's up there. He's also the
Speaker 4: guy behind trump Bucks.
Speaker 3: How have I never heard of Michael Dell? Oh? Is
Speaker 3: he the guy who founded del Yes.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he's It's weird because they went through this thing.
Speaker 1: Is will rotate shortly, but it's this weird thing where
Speaker 1: Dell went through this real shit house era when they
Speaker 1: were just complete dogshit their computers sucked, and then they
Speaker 1: went took themselves off of the public markets private again,
Speaker 1: fixed things, everyone loved them again, and then they went
Speaker 1: public again and then they appeared to be like thinking
Speaker 1: about being ship, but they're back to being okay, and
Speaker 1: they bet their whole future on AI.
Speaker 5: It's just one of my earliest computers were Dell, and
Speaker 5: I remember they were really big and then they sort
Speaker 5: of everyone else beat them in everything, and then no
Speaker 5: one wanted it and they had that really to me,
Speaker 5: they had that time period where they were the computer
Speaker 5: that at least I did, I automatically associated with, like
Speaker 5: the older crowd, older people because especially as like the
Speaker 5: gaming PC became big and then building your own PC
Speaker 5: became big, Dell was still out there, I feel like,
Speaker 5: doing like old school type marketing too specific audiences during
Speaker 5: a time period where like everyone was moving beyond that.
Speaker 1: And then they bought Alienware, which was this insane company
Speaker 1: where they'd be these had a day my dad.
Speaker 2: My dad bought me an alien where once, and I
Speaker 2: fucking loved it.
Speaker 1: It was this insane like I don't know how like
Speaker 1: three foot tall giant thing with like a swinging door
Speaker 1: and a big alien head in there for like a
Speaker 1: teenage boy with no friends.
Speaker 3: It was it was this was mostly what does the alien.
Speaker 2: It's literally just a gaming PC, but it looked like
Speaker 2: a tube. It was more tubes.
Speaker 3: His wrists are so muscular, God damn it.
Speaker 2: They just get body shaving.
Speaker 1: No, it's it's interesting though because hearing them, it just
Speaker 1: and as we'll transition into the next episode obviously, but
Speaker 1: it's like it feels like all these companies are having
Speaker 1: a midlife crisis, and I think you know what.
Speaker 3: I mean, like maybe they are.
Speaker 4: They are, well, that was the time the millennial midl
Speaker 4: like crisis.
Speaker 6: It's like, give us room, very young, okay, but yes,
Speaker 6: and coming up now and add just for gen X's
Speaker 6: it's going to be for something called dot beers.
Speaker 1: It's going to allow you to have a social network
Speaker 1: where you crow about how you were such an independent
Speaker 1: child and how you remember when MTV was good.
Speaker 3: That is actively losing subscriber.
Speaker 1: No, Genexas will email me now and be like, actually,
Speaker 1: you know what, I watched Liquid Television and I was cool.
Speaker 2: We're back in the room.
Speaker 1: We're back with a wonderful cast of course at Tristan
Speaker 1: stand up comedian Chloe Radcliffe, Matt Binder of Mashable, and
Speaker 1: Devendra Harda even Gadget and you know what I do
Speaker 1: Actually kind of like this gen X and midlife crisis
Speaker 1: happening with AI. It kind of makes sense because it's like,
Speaker 1: you look at all these companies and they're all like, fuck,
Speaker 1: how do we keep growing? The rock economy I've written
Speaker 1: and said about. But it's also a degree of like, wait,
Speaker 1: what do people want anymore? Because we got so rich
Speaker 1: because gen X is able to keep a late wealth
Speaker 1: in the way that millennials couldn't.
Speaker 2: Boomus.
Speaker 4: It's it's all fomo. It's all fomo about what's next.
Speaker 1: Fomo with disconnection from anyone like that. Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Oh it was a rough time during COVID. We didn't
Speaker 1: go outside. Fuck off.
Speaker 2: You could still step outside, just once, just be like
Speaker 2: a scar.
Speaker 3: You know, it's so funny. I spent all of COVID
Speaker 3: outside because that's where you didn't get the germ.
Speaker 4: For a while.
Speaker 3: It was better to be talking about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's where you're just taking a laptop outside or
Speaker 2: do you not have an overhead lamp.
Speaker 3: It was that was very stupid.
Speaker 4: But to what is happening to all these companies because
Speaker 4: I've I've been covering them since twenty ten, I've been
Speaker 4: following the tech industry forever. They're all desperate. They're all
Speaker 4: desperate of missing out on the next big thing. Because
Speaker 4: Microsoft missed out on mobile, they tried desperately to kind
Speaker 4: of get that back, like Windows Mobile, all these things
Speaker 4: making Windows eight, But no, that was Apple, that was smartphone, arraw,
Speaker 4: that was tablets. They never quite got into that. But
Speaker 4: they also didn't realize people like people like computers. Maybe
Speaker 4: you should double down on that, which is what when
Speaker 4: Theo's eleven was Whendows twelfth kind of became the thing.
Speaker 4: But that was the mobile eerror. Then there was like
Speaker 4: tablets and stuff, it's wearables. For a while people were
Speaker 4: hot like, oh, this is gonna be the next big thing.
Speaker 4: It's a niche. It's a very small niche.
Speaker 2: You wear them. Then that not everyone wears the same thing.
Speaker 4: To map and this point, what's happened is that the
Speaker 4: world revolves around our phones because these are the most
Speaker 4: personal computers we have. It's my best friends, it's your
Speaker 4: best friend. It holds all your deepest secrets and inner thoughts.
Speaker 4: It connects you to the world. So how do you
Speaker 4: go past phone? The next stage of computing? To them
Speaker 4: is okay, a thing that processes data at obscene levels
Speaker 4: that we don't fully understand. But it seems like black magic,
Speaker 4: and that's what AI.
Speaker 1: But it's so funny though, because they're like, well, what
Speaker 1: do we replace a device that's all about personal stuff
Speaker 1: and our communication with others and our ability to condense
Speaker 1: our thoughts and access media. We like, well, what if
Speaker 1: we took away all personal choice and data entry of
Speaker 1: any kind?
Speaker 2: Would they like that?
Speaker 1: But I actually what you were saying that, I just
Speaker 1: had a thought. These companies missed out on MOI mobile.
Speaker 1: Microsoft didn't miss out a mobile, They made a ship
Speaker 1: mobile phone by acquiring Nokia. And Windows Phone sucked. And
Speaker 1: it's like, why do people like the max so much?
Speaker 1: Because it because it was good, because the UI was good?
Speaker 1: Why a people like the iPhone because the UI was good?
Speaker 2: It took so long for Android to even be half fast.
Speaker 2: It was the T mobile. G one was the first,
Speaker 2: and it was so far behind, and they were so
Speaker 2: far behind for long, and Windows Phone was an insane
Speaker 2: create it was just this like tiles. It was Windows
Speaker 2: eight but in a phone, and.
Speaker 4: I will say it was cool. It was cool because
Speaker 4: it was different, but they again missed out on some
Speaker 4: practical functionality like Windows phone.
Speaker 2: The bjorc is cool and different. But I would not blame,
Speaker 2: but I would not.
Speaker 1: I would not be like playing be York at an
Speaker 1: NFL game like would in a commercial. I'm saying that,
Speaker 1: like there are journalists and specifics and it's like something.
Speaker 3: But if if we're connecting with broad like middle, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 4: Here sing surface now, which is at the NFL games.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, the surface.
Speaker 1: It's so funny having surface things that, especially with Aaron
Speaker 1: Rodgers just smashing them.
Speaker 2: But it's like they don't they like, well, what do
Speaker 2: we do? We'll do off spin. It's like make it good,
Speaker 2: make it good.
Speaker 4: I can understand. We're gonna go into history here for
Speaker 4: the kids. But Microsoft was making mobile shit for a
Speaker 4: very long time, right, the the ipack as well, right,
Speaker 4: the ipack all that stuff. But it was BlackBerry era, right, Okay,
Speaker 4: rewind to like late nineties. It was like Personal Assistance,
Speaker 4: right PDAs. Yeah, the palm pilots all those things. Evolution
Speaker 4: of that was BlackBerry. Microsoft was doing stuff within pocket PC
Speaker 4: and like they made a couple of ones, but they
Speaker 4: never really talk.
Speaker 2: And they were like little laptops, so they were they
Speaker 2: were like.
Speaker 4: Little keys or like little BlackBerry.
Speaker 2: Clones could but used like a little pen you could use.
Speaker 4: Some of them had like a stylist two. But the
Speaker 4: thing is BlackBerry was hot because data was bad, and
Speaker 4: BlackBerry created the technology to have quick digital messaging to
Speaker 4: all your friends. Go watch the movie BlackBerry, which is
Speaker 4: not fully historically accurate, but gets the.
Speaker 2: Tech I founded the show.
Speaker 4: But the movie BlackBerry Wonderful Amazing has one of the
Speaker 4: guys from him. It's always sunny in there too, and
Speaker 4: he's just like wonderfully offensive and like really gives his
Speaker 4: nice check out that movie. But BlackBerry innovative innovators delaydelemma
Speaker 4: came for them because they didn't believe you could have
Speaker 4: a phone that was all screen and that was iPhone.
Speaker 2: That's difficult, genuinely.
Speaker 3: Do you mean like they had considered they were like
Speaker 3: should we make phone all screen?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Because BlackBerry, and they were like, no.
Speaker 3: No, we not make keyboard.
Speaker 2: Who was Dennis for me in Philadelphia? Plays my friend
Speaker 2: Jim Person.
Speaker 4: Want to blow up.
Speaker 5: I remember when I was in high school, the big
Speaker 5: phone at the time where those like the screen that
Speaker 5: flips sidekick I think it was.
Speaker 4: Called phones were so cool. Before the iPhone, phones had
Speaker 4: all this like cool stuff I had. I had a
Speaker 4: Helio Ocean which which flipped up vertically and also flipped
Speaker 4: sideways like sidekick. Amazing stuff. And then the iPhone came
Speaker 4: out and it was like, okay, all screen but also apps.
Speaker 4: Your phone is now a computer. It's not just like
Speaker 4: a limited thing with garbage version of the Internet. It's
Speaker 4: the full Internet. And then cellular speed's got better, so
Speaker 4: like Internet in your pocket, full computer in your pocket.
Speaker 4: You cannot deny that that's the best thing. So Microsoft
Speaker 4: just was never able. They didn't catch up to that
Speaker 4: quick enough. We talked about Android being shitited early on.
Speaker 4: It was, but within a couple of years they kind
Speaker 4: of did the Windows thing where Google just like had
Speaker 4: the software and had other people come and make the hardware,
Speaker 4: and Android took over the world, like Android had dominated
Speaker 4: cell phone smartphones pretty quickly, pitty quickly on. But it's
Speaker 4: hard to deny. Everyone is chasing, like what is the
Speaker 4: next thing. They think AI is the next thing, And
Speaker 4: I'm glad that there are people out there like we're
Speaker 4: looking at this and like this is bullshit, this is
Speaker 4: not good.
Speaker 3: But yeah, are they sure?
Speaker 5: Like are they really convinced that what's amazing is that's
Speaker 5: not right? Because so Mashable published. I didn't do the interview,
Speaker 5: but we spoke to the Novo CEO and we asked
Speaker 5: him about people who are anti AI and AI skeptics,
Speaker 5: and his answer to that was basically, you can't avoid it.
Speaker 5: Just you won't be able to avoid it. And it's like,
Speaker 5: that's not the that's that. But it's also not like
Speaker 5: a ring door won't be able to avoid.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's the ring.
Speaker 2: It's the whole thing of people inevitable.
Speaker 3: Right do you believe in this product? Well, you can't
Speaker 3: avoid what's coming. I mean, you know, we sell it, Yeah,
Speaker 3: likedn't sell it, But it's I think I I, having
Speaker 3: not read the interview, I could imagine being like sort
Speaker 3: of having the attitude of like, I don't who gives
Speaker 3: a ship if you if you don't believe in this,
Speaker 3: it's happened. We've invested billity and deal with it, and
Speaker 3: who why is it on me to convince you you
Speaker 3: you can sit there and bang your drum as long
Speaker 3: as and I don't mean this to I don't mean
Speaker 3: to be on AI side, but like I can't imagine
Speaker 3: sort of it, who gives it. I appreciate the honesty
Speaker 3: the answer, But if.
Speaker 2: Your job is literally to market it to it channel.
Speaker 5: Like Apple, if when the iPhone first came out and
Speaker 5: people asked about the iPhone, like are people really good?
Speaker 5: Apple didn't go like it's inevitable. They were like, well
Speaker 5: try try it and you'll you'll see.
Speaker 4: I will say, Steve Jobs famously an asshole.
Speaker 3: You're holding it to back them up.
Speaker 2: The messaging was you'll get used to it, like the
Speaker 2: Apple way was, you'll get you this we know better.
Speaker 2: But that's not what AI is saying. That it's happening.
Speaker 2: And the funny thing is about AIS was if AI
Speaker 2: was I can say to my computer load this, do this,
Speaker 2: and it actually did it every time, that'd be fucking sick.
Speaker 3: Well that's what That's.
Speaker 2: What Microsoft's pitching you. But the they are lying it
Speaker 2: just like I swear to fucking God, I thought public
Speaker 2: companies couldn't just fucking lie. But I can only do
Speaker 2: it about it.
Speaker 4: If you're all in the same grift, it doesn't matter, right.
Speaker 4: And also what what we're learning is that rules don't matter,
Speaker 4: just don't apply to the rich and the powerful.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing gravity does, and I think they
Speaker 1: will be punished all uh like when when the stocks
Speaker 1: in videos kind of down, today's kind of fun watch.
Speaker 1: It's also funny as well because none of it really
Speaker 1: clicks with what uses desire. Because what uses theizarre right
Speaker 1: now is I wish my phone just fucking worked. I
Speaker 1: wish every app didn't need to ping me fourteen times
Speaker 1: a day to say have you thought about using me?
Speaker 4: I think just work? It is just just just do
Speaker 4: what I ask you to do.
Speaker 3: What when you're saying that the companies themselves don't even
Speaker 3: fully believe what? What's what more is.
Speaker 4: I've talked to a whole bunch of excators. I bring
Speaker 4: this question to every big company I talked to, and
Speaker 4: early on the Microsoft was doing copil, I was like,
Speaker 4: this thing doesn't work right, Like you're you're making me.
Speaker 4: You make me want to use copilot as like a
Speaker 4: search engine, but I cannot trust it. It's not always
Speaker 4: delivering correct information. If I bought a calculator that said
Speaker 4: two plus two equals five. I would throw it away
Speaker 4: because it's garbage. And the Microsoft people were like, it's
Speaker 4: a work in progress, we're gonna get better, and that
Speaker 4: that they're making you accept a certain level of bullshit
Speaker 4: because they can't stop. They've invested too much in it.
Speaker 4: They practically are invested in half of open AI, so
Speaker 4: like they can't stop. It's too big and their stock
Speaker 4: is being rewarded for it, so they can't say.
Speaker 3: Anything but okay, and again just to play devil's advocate
Speaker 3: and that this is not this doesn't the views reflected
Speaker 3: here are not my own. I can you know, I
Speaker 3: look at what AI take, images take image production for example,
Speaker 3: what the images that AI could create four years ago
Speaker 3: versus the images that a I can still still images
Speaker 3: that AI can create today are unrecognizable. But Trinity, they're
Speaker 3: so much better when they were producing the dog shit
Speaker 3: images four years ago. If somebody was like if I
Speaker 3: you know, like if you do the same calculator thing,
Speaker 3: and then they're like, well, yeah, it's a work in progress,
Speaker 3: and in four years the calculator is going to say
Speaker 3: two plus to equals for every single time. Again, I
Speaker 3: think that that is a fair response.
Speaker 2: That's the thing though, this is one I've answered a lot.
Speaker 1: This is one where I'm like, oh so that made
Speaker 1: sense maybe two years ago, so it made sense, like
Speaker 1: I would say, it stopped being rational to do that,
Speaker 1: like maybe I mean at latest March last year, so
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, I would say, right up until I
Speaker 1: mis generation with GPT. That was when you sprank bonk.
Speaker 1: I know people are gonna say nano, but nano banana.
Speaker 1: I went in an entire day without saying nana banana,
Speaker 1: which is now on televisions.
Speaker 2: It's just like bana is Google's image genera.
Speaker 3: Like the best, the best one on the mods and.
Speaker 1: People like, look, it can generate a picture of a
Speaker 1: woman for some reason that I'm using.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like it's like tube generation.
Speaker 2: Y oh god.
Speaker 4: And they can't answer the basic question about the entire
Speaker 4: idea of imagery generation, which is what I But the.
Speaker 1: Thing is it's not like it's but the thing is,
Speaker 1: it's not having these meteoric jumps yet four years ago
Speaker 1: sort of twenty yeah.
Speaker 3: You're saying, you're saying, like the curve is leveling, Yes.
Speaker 1: So we've reached the point of diminishing returns. Because the
Speaker 1: way these models get better is two ways. One you
Speaker 1: feed data enter them. Two you tweak the models. By
Speaker 1: they you basically tweak their outputs. You say, don't do this,
Speaker 1: do this. Yeah, things with images, you're right up against
Speaker 1: the wall. Now they've got about where they can get.
Speaker 1: And their thing they'll say, is like, look, we've made
Speaker 1: some realistic looking images. The problem isn't making one realistic image.
Speaker 1: It's doing the same thing more than once reliably, maybe twice, thrice,
Speaker 1: a hundred times. It's being able to have a consistent
Speaker 1: visual image. And you can kind of do that, but
Speaker 1: it takes a shit ton of computational power. And as
Speaker 1: we run up against the realm of running out of money,
Speaker 1: that's become the problem. But also most of them have
Speaker 1: hit diminishing returns because we've run out of data.
Speaker 2: We are out of data. You mean, feed of things
Speaker 2: to feed into the thing, slap for slop slot, well,
Speaker 2: pig food for the slot.
Speaker 3: For the pigs too, food they can make to poop.
Speaker 4: But here's the basic question about image generation, Like, I
Speaker 4: don't care how much better it's getting. Yeah, I don't care.
Speaker 4: Who gives a shit about? Why does this exist?
Speaker 5: That's the thing like with so much of this, like
Speaker 5: the like when we talk about like the calculator that
Speaker 5: you know has to get the math problem correct.
Speaker 3: Well, there's the use case for that is it gets you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, with AI generation and an AI video image generation
Speaker 5: and video generation, it's sort of just like Okay, you
Speaker 5: can do it, but what is the purpose?
Speaker 4: Like like the guys are like, oh, you can make
Speaker 4: a wallpaper for your TV.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't turn my keb on for a wallpaper. I
Speaker 4: don't care.
Speaker 3: It's like who gives a who gives like the point
Speaker 3: for me?
Speaker 5: Like like people like, oh, you can take a picture
Speaker 5: of selfie yourself and insert yourself and different. Well, for me,
Speaker 5: like when I want to look at a picture of myself,
Speaker 5: it's because I want to remember that experience that I experienced.
Speaker 5: But what if I put myself in an AI image
Speaker 5: generator and it puts me in front of the pyramids
Speaker 5: in Egypt?
Speaker 3: Why the fuck do I care? I don't know no
Speaker 3: memory there of me doing that.
Speaker 1: I saw a really evil one where it's like a
Speaker 1: guy showing his grandmother with de men. She like a
Speaker 1: picture of her with Jimi hendrakes parody. The following is parody.
Speaker 1: I think that person should be fucking told I.
Speaker 3: Know, I'm so glad you brought that up, because I have.
Speaker 2: You should be in fucking pret you disgusting, fucking months stuff.
Speaker 5: Facebook consistently hammers me with recommendations of groups for people
Speaker 5: who are asking people to like clean up their family
Speaker 5: photos and stuff. And those groups are now full of
Speaker 5: people who come in and go, oh, my daughter or
Speaker 5: grandma or whoever in my family died and this is
Speaker 5: the only photo I have of them, can you make
Speaker 5: a color or fix it? And now all the responses
Speaker 5: are people putting it through the AI image generators, and
Speaker 5: they spit out things that don't really look like the
Speaker 5: deceased family member. And some of these people love it,
Speaker 5: and some people can put them in like the deceased
Speaker 5: family member picture in a video generator that.
Speaker 3: Generates yesifying that grandfather.
Speaker 5: But it's like, you know, at some point, these image
Speaker 5: generators are going to distort your memory of the actual person,
Speaker 5: because because if you only have one photo of someone
Speaker 5: and that photo was cleaned up quote unquote, but it
Speaker 5: changed how your family member looks, and you're constantly looking
Speaker 5: at that photo. It's gonna eventually actually fuck with your
Speaker 5: real memory of what that person looked like or sounded like,
Speaker 5: for like the voice cloning stuff. And it's like, I
Speaker 5: think that's so fucking unhealthy. And they're gonna have a
Speaker 5: world of people who remember their own ancestors as people
Speaker 5: who did not even exist because they.
Speaker 3: Don't have an actual.
Speaker 5: Photo in their brain of how they actually look they
Speaker 5: had the AI generated photo of them.
Speaker 3: I completely agree, and I'm sure that this is already happening.
Speaker 3: And then I and this is where I get a
Speaker 3: little nihilistic. This ise where I get a little depressed.
Speaker 3: I wind up going my impulse as a millennial who
Speaker 3: experienced the world's pre in you know, or pre ubiquitous internet.
Speaker 3: My instinct is that like, their brains going to be
Speaker 3: fucked up by shit like that because and it feels
Speaker 3: good in the moment, And so they keep doing the
Speaker 3: drug And why wouldn't you if the drug dealer keeps
Speaker 3: coming to your house. Of course, it is going to
Speaker 3: be very difficult to say no. It's much easier to
Speaker 3: say no when the drug is not inside your house
Speaker 3: all the time. And so they're gonna keep doing the drug.
Speaker 3: They're going to fuck up the brain. They're gonna have
Speaker 3: these this insane relationship with memory and with emotion and
Speaker 3: with human connectivity. And then I want to say, and
Speaker 3: at some point they will, in their heart of hearts,
Speaker 3: understand that this is bad. In years, decades. I'm not saying,
Speaker 3: you know, they'll wake up one week, yeah, but like
Speaker 3: at some point in their old age or in their
Speaker 3: middle age, they will go, Wow, this is bad. I
Speaker 3: don't know how to describe this. I don't know how
Speaker 3: to articulate this, but I can feel in my heart
Speaker 3: that something is disconnected from what the human experience should be.
Speaker 4: I think that's partially what we're doing right now, because
Speaker 4: people are using these tools and not fully thinking about it,
Speaker 4: and there are just so many philosophical questions about us,
Speaker 4: like how do we process information, we process memory, how
Speaker 4: does this work within our society? What's the anthropological impact
Speaker 4: of all this falsified information? Like there's immediate harms of nothing.
Speaker 4: We can't trust reality anymore, we can't trust anything because
Speaker 4: they can just make up fact. But also the eventual
Speaker 4: harms is that the idea of memory is just gonna disappear.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, but.
Speaker 5: Another thing I've seen, And then this is the really
Speaker 5: really depressing one, Like someone will ask for something like
Speaker 5: they'll post the photo of their you know, child who
Speaker 5: died it like you know, nine months, three years whatever,
Speaker 5: and they'm like, oh, I'd love to see how they
Speaker 5: would look if they made it to like forty.
Speaker 3: And it's like, no, don't do that, No, no, no,
Speaker 3: right exactly, don't do that.
Speaker 5: You have the actual image or videos of them when
Speaker 5: they existed and who they were and what they were,
Speaker 5: and just keep that in your memory. Don't look at
Speaker 5: this person who never will or did exist right that
Speaker 5: they're generating.
Speaker 3: It's just odd and the same, all.
Speaker 1: Of that photo editing stuff, and in particularly the new
Speaker 1: things where you can be like, okay, add saw to
Speaker 1: the photo, make look like in America, give my grandmother
Speaker 1: giant abs, like all of the things that you can
Speaker 1: do with AI.
Speaker 3: Now all right now, now, now you've got my.
Speaker 2: Make my yoke my grandma a phrase to remember all
Speaker 2: of you.
Speaker 3: Yes, yoke my grandma.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. I genuinely believe all of this
Speaker 2: is going away. No one, no one other than the.
Speaker 1: Is really willing to fully go. I think all of
Speaker 1: this goes away. I think everything dies within two years.
Speaker 1: I think all I think that there is going to
Speaker 1: be the big egg face moment, and no one is
Speaker 1: really no one wants to take the logical point, which
Speaker 1: is the people who are dependent on these things are
Speaker 1: not going to have a thingy anymore unless they're going
Speaker 1: to put deep seek R one on their laptop of
Speaker 1: like thirty seconds between responses, because I think all of
Speaker 1: this is just I think every image is like a
Speaker 1: few but my theory, I'm just this is gutt instincts.
Speaker 1: I think it's like a few bucks per image, and
Speaker 1: I think and I hear MT Technology revied a article
Speaker 1: middle of last year. Images are more cheaper than text,
Speaker 1: but there's still very expensive but nothing I was surprised too,
Speaker 1: but I forget the actual thing. But all of this,
Speaker 1: like the video generation stuff that's gone away.
Speaker 3: First, So and and sorry that a couple dollars per
Speaker 3: imagery whatever is.
Speaker 2: For them to produce.
Speaker 3: Being paid by open AI, or it is.
Speaker 2: For those paying for the GPS to run.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, okay, And that's another thing though.
Speaker 5: Most of the AI generated stuff you see out there
Speaker 5: not professional work obviously, but like things people post on
Speaker 5: social media or whatever. They're just using like the free
Speaker 5: version of a lot of exactly because no one. No
Speaker 5: one wants to actually, unless you're using it again for
Speaker 5: professional purposes.
Speaker 3: No one is paying its fo my grandma for free.
Speaker 3: No one wants to pay for the subscriptions.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing. Open ai asked this big thing.
Speaker 1: People love to eam and be like what if they
Speaker 1: did adds? If you are someone who's emailed me about
Speaker 1: it that you're like, seventy five thousands, Wow, what if
Speaker 1: they did adds? Here's the problem the information and a
Speaker 1: great story this week was nine hundred million week connective users,
Speaker 1: though they bullshit those numbers. Eight hundred million of those
Speaker 1: are outside of the US, thus their lower value advertising clients.
Speaker 2: So yeah, most of them are free. They're just and
Speaker 2: the most exciting. And the funny thing is is even
Speaker 2: the ones that hey are the most enthusiastic who cost
Speaker 2: you the most money. Open ai loses money even on
Speaker 2: their two hundred bucks a month one.
Speaker 1: So the more the more you like something, the worse
Speaker 1: you are as a customer. It's usually the opposite.
Speaker 2: It's usually like your power user of Facebook doesn't cost
Speaker 2: them that much because it's basic. It's just so the
Speaker 2: way a website works is like Facebook is.
Speaker 3: No, all right, ed, I know I'm a lady, and
Speaker 3: I know I'm not in tech. No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 5: So when you when you should be in a buck,
Speaker 5: so picture a computer.
Speaker 2: No no, no no, don't maybe be sarcasting and be
Speaker 2: like do you do you know what CAMI is?
Speaker 1: So it's when you run a website like Facebook, where
Speaker 1: you access a page with some videos. The streaming doesn't
Speaker 1: require it's like a CPU and like require storage and
Speaker 1: RAM like in a big server. That is intensive because
Speaker 1: they have shit tons of users. But because like shit
Speaker 1: tons of users, it's just because you have a lot
Speaker 1: of them. It's not because the process of serving you
Speaker 1: Facebook or Instagram is super expensive to do. It's expensive
Speaker 1: because they have so many people. The problem is with
Speaker 1: AI is that having one user who's particularly demanding is.
Speaker 3: Extremely expenctually an every bearing costs on the company.
Speaker 1: Exactly because GPUs are extremely they are cost intensive. They
Speaker 1: require a lot of energy, but they also put out
Speaker 1: a shit ton of heat, which requires a bunch of cooling.
Speaker 1: And the bigger the data center, the more intensive the cooling.
Speaker 1: And I had someone email me the other day saying,
Speaker 1: really big data centers can cause like the giga what
Speaker 1: once can cause like weather effects with the amount of
Speaker 1: heats that.
Speaker 4: This, and they're affecting the local communities.
Speaker 3: And just to clarify what you were saying earlier about
Speaker 3: when you when you're saying the logical endpoint of your
Speaker 3: pessimism about AI or whatever hell you want to frame it,
Speaker 3: the logical endpoint is that all of this goes away.
Speaker 3: You're saying it collapses is from a financial standpoint, yes,
Speaker 3: but what that? But then the logical endpoint of that
Speaker 3: is that the company's anthropic open AI what I'm chat
Speaker 3: GPT go, Well, we don't have the money anymore to
Speaker 3: run these data centers correct. And the data centers are
Speaker 3: what are required to when somebody types in your my
Speaker 3: grammar yea, yeah, we need the data center to be
Speaker 3: having to have the electricity on and have the air
Speaker 3: conditioning running. Yes, and that when somebody's not paying those bills,
Speaker 3: then I can't get my grammar yoke correct.
Speaker 1: And there's no economic reason to do it because the
Speaker 1: the vedrous point, the only reason they're doing this right
Speaker 1: now is because their.
Speaker 2: Stock value is growing.
Speaker 1: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta they've seen their stock grow, not
Speaker 1: because of AI revenues, they don't talk about those, but
Speaker 1: because AI is so big, so huge and so yoke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone's talking AI. But the moment and the thing is
Speaker 1: I've heard people say, oh, well, it's a chat GPT bubble,
Speaker 1: it's not an AI bubble.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. Oh yeah, it's a really.
Speaker 3: Right how does somebody thread that needle?
Speaker 1: Because they're fucking stupid. The argument is that, well, open
Speaker 1: ay is the worst business of all time. It burns
Speaker 1: money forever. They have no profitability, but all the other
Speaker 1: ones will be okay, there will be other winners. The
Speaker 1: problem is is that this is a vibees based thing,
Speaker 1: and now what happens to the vibe when the main
Speaker 1: business that everyone knows like eight hundred and nine hundred
Speaker 1: million weekly active users compared to everyone else where they
Speaker 1: have like twenty Now you may think you've heard Microsoft
Speaker 1: say they've got hundreds of millions of Copilt. You've heard
Speaker 1: Google say hundreds of millions of Google Gemini. That's because
Speaker 1: they put them in their main products. But even then
Speaker 1: their shareholders are just going to go, right, why are
Speaker 1: you spending on this fucking money on this why are
Speaker 1: you propping up these insanely expensive things? And if you
Speaker 1: wonder why I'm so confident about this, none of them
Speaker 1: talk about the revenues or the costs, right sure.
Speaker 5: The thing also though, is if AI was did disappear,
Speaker 5: what do customers? What do consumers lose out?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: What what is the care?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the things that people may use in their
Speaker 5: everyday life, like like AI transcription or voice to text.
Speaker 5: We're at the point now where those models actually can
Speaker 5: just live on your personal computer. You don't need an
Speaker 5: outside server at all, You don't need a company to
Speaker 5: pay a monthly fee to.
Speaker 3: You can just download a model.
Speaker 5: It's a few gigs and you have your own voice
Speaker 5: to text and your own transcription. It's that other more
Speaker 5: intensive stuff that are just like little toys that no
Speaker 5: one really needs that will just go away.
Speaker 4: To me, that that that is the logical outcome by ways,
Speaker 4: like the big AI will die off to a certain
Speaker 4: degree that will lead to widespread economic devastation. But yes,
Speaker 4: like that will be hard.
Speaker 2: It's going to be great financial crisis in mind.
Speaker 4: Could be worse than financial crisis, could be a depression
Speaker 4: level hit on the world economy. So that worries me,
Speaker 4: but in for when it comes, because all these companies
Speaker 4: but the idea of local, the idea of like local
Speaker 4: AI and stuff that's just like, Okay, my watch is
Speaker 4: a little better, I can transcribe to my computer that
Speaker 4: lives locally. That does happen.
Speaker 2: That's already one piece of bad news.
Speaker 1: Though, the only reason those models are being worked on
Speaker 1: right now is because the big ones, And once those
Speaker 1: big ones go away, they're not going to have any
Speaker 1: fucking reason to do them. They don't care about transcription,
Speaker 1: they don't care about the easeful stuff they care about.
Speaker 4: They still need a reason to sell you a new
Speaker 4: laptop every y and I.
Speaker 2: Someone think this is going to be enough of one,
Speaker 2: and I my thing is like, I'm not sure how
Speaker 2: we're going to intellectually reconcile with this, because this is
Speaker 2: the world panshitting competition.
Speaker 4: It's also everything is so fucking stupid right now, like
Speaker 4: every every level. If you we've been in the CS
Speaker 4: bubble but looking at the wider world right now, yeah,
Speaker 4: so yes, it's so dumb, Like we Trump invading Venezuela
Speaker 4: was how we started this year. I was born in Guyana,
Speaker 4: South America. The country right next to Venezuela and it's
Speaker 4: probably right next on like because they just found oil.
Speaker 4: So xill I was like just out there taking all
Speaker 4: that stuff right now.
Speaker 3: Put it back. We didn't find anything.
Speaker 4: Things links are so stupid right now. So that's why
Speaker 4: I do kind of feel like, yes, we're going to see.
Speaker 1: It, but this is and I know this sounds hard
Speaker 1: to reconcile. I think this is going to be stupid. Oh,
Speaker 1: just because hear me out. Every major CEO.
Speaker 2: Has added AI has talked about a It's all they
Speaker 2: talk about is AI. Every major tech company AIAIAI and
Speaker 2: a bunch of people we work for, not me personally,
Speaker 2: but tons of people we work for. People have said
Speaker 2: that AI is the future. World leaders, AI is the future.
Speaker 2: Everyone said AI the future, and I think all of
Speaker 2: them are wrong. What are we meant to do with
Speaker 2: that information? Because this is Trump politics. Okay, there's voting,
Speaker 2: there's like a process.
Speaker 1: This is like for now the sure But the foundations
Speaker 1: of economic movement, but also knowledge in the world and
Speaker 1: like consensus, reality and paradigms themselves have been based on
Speaker 1: the idea that the people running the money, people running
Speaker 1: businesses are somewhat intelligent that would not be fucking wrong.
Speaker 1: And what's become obvious is almost nobody knows anything ever.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean this in the cutesy like oh,
Speaker 1: bosses don't know stuff. I mean these people have just
Speaker 1: been fucking wrong, like wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, just
Speaker 1: like AI will do this.
Speaker 4: But it's not. It's not just say I I will
Speaker 4: tell you that. Like when I started covering technology and
Speaker 4: doing drenals, and I was mainly like writing about startups
Speaker 4: at the time, like, oh cool, these kind these guys,
Speaker 4: their ideas are so interesting. They've gotten billions of usually
Speaker 4: millions of dollars of investment. I was talking to you know,
Speaker 4: Kevin sisterm and the Instagram guys when it was just
Speaker 4: four dudes. I was like, oh man, they must be
Speaker 4: so smart and so interesting. No, usually rasually, not usually,
Speaker 4: just like you have You're a nerd who knows how
Speaker 4: to code, who came up with like one interesting idea,
Speaker 4: and the vcs were just throwing money at you. And
Speaker 4: and even when it comes to like business, big business
Speaker 4: in general, people rise to the top not often through
Speaker 4: their skill. It's through they've been there long enough, or
Speaker 4: they're a good enough company shell logical.
Speaker 1: My point is, imagine if the Great Financial Crisis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Microsoft was in housing, Google was in housing. I was
Speaker 1: always in housing, Disney entered housing, everyone bought houses, and
Speaker 1: everyone was selling houses, and everyone was offering mortgages. I
Speaker 1: wanted mortgages, mortgages with the future of every single business
Speaker 1: in the entire world.
Speaker 2: Everyone on LinkedIn was saying I'm a housing expert. Now
Speaker 2: that is it.
Speaker 1: Except when they said housing, they meant cat litter boxes
Speaker 1: because I'm joking.
Speaker 3: But it's like, yeah, what if everyone went was wrong?
Speaker 2: Wrong?
Speaker 1: Wrong in a way that's not political. It's just obvious
Speaker 1: that so many people we thought were smart were just
Speaker 1: like able to do mad libs.
Speaker 3: I have a question about the leaders who have backed AI. Right, Okay,
Speaker 3: as I see it, there's two categories that I understand,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to ask about what is the middle category.
Speaker 3: The middle category category that I understand is tech ceo
Speaker 3: who has whose company has some vested financial interest in
Speaker 3: AI being successful? Right, totally get it? Absolutely, Like why
Speaker 3: would Google add Gemini shove their products great? Because they
Speaker 3: are like they are. They see a potential financial benefit
Speaker 3: we'll find.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they were also Google's holding off. Google is trying
Speaker 4: to be cool and chill about it, and then opening
Speaker 4: eye kind of blew the doors open, and then they
Speaker 4: had to brush everything out.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeahah, okay, that category. I understand. Then CEOs of
Speaker 3: companies who have been sold the lie of AI can
Speaker 3: make your whole company work better. That I also completely understand, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, Salesforce saying, I guess this is sort of
Speaker 3: an example of the middle cuttery. Somebody at Salesforce being like,
Speaker 3: we're gonna add AI and AI is flashy and sexy
Speaker 3: and that's a new and it's it's the best thing,
Speaker 3: and then turning to home Depot and being like, now
Speaker 3: you should pay us extra because our new Salesforce category
Speaker 3: or our new Salesforce product has AI and that's going
Speaker 3: to make your life better. And home Depot goes great, awesome,
Speaker 3: will pay more for them. But that I understand. I like,
Speaker 3: I understand the the.
Speaker 2: But even those don't truly make sense.
Speaker 3: But keep going right, right, right right, And I like
Speaker 3: disagree with the efficacy, but I understand the messaging. They're
Speaker 3: what CEOs or what company have added AI trumpeted AI,
Speaker 3: you know, championed AI that are not in the category
Speaker 3: of their company is a direct financial benefit benefactor to
Speaker 3: the technology or or like a direct owner of the
Speaker 3: technology versus technology.
Speaker 1: Disney Disney right right, right, being one of the most
Speaker 1: journalist outlets, and they will claim, oh AI will generate stories.
Speaker 2: They don't.
Speaker 1: And I actually pushed back on the things with Salesforce
Speaker 1: because there's a really cool thing, well, sales was it.
Speaker 1: I will choose another company. In my head, Salesforce is
Speaker 1: so special, but like a software company in this case.
Speaker 1: The really simple thing I'll say to that is even
Speaker 1: they don't make sense because it don't work. It don't
Speaker 1: do that like it don't it, don't do it. It
Speaker 1: don't do fingy like you say the whole thing copil
Speaker 1: Solon doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's never worked.
Speaker 3: It works enough. No, it doesn't.
Speaker 4: It is good enough for people to be using it.
Speaker 4: My issues are you're a computer should be you should
Speaker 4: be like I gotta push back. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: There have been like eight different always in the last
Speaker 1: year where Microsoft's three sixty five co pilot can't do
Speaker 1: things like prepare PowerPoint.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's like specific failures, yes, but on the
Speaker 4: general failures.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on the general what's like the general general.
Speaker 4: What I'm saying is like, you ask Copilot or you
Speaker 4: asked Gemini, like a question, and it will get to
Speaker 4: your response. It is good enough.
Speaker 2: It will.
Speaker 4: He was like, hey, make me a chart of this data. Hey,
Speaker 4: that actually works. A lot of that stuff does. Maybe
Speaker 4: I'm not trustworthy, Like that's the thing that means it
Speaker 4: doesn't well, no, no, no, But there are variations of
Speaker 4: how badly.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, if there's a variation of how
Speaker 1: well something works, that just means it doesn't work most
Speaker 1: of the time.
Speaker 4: Sure, but hundreds of millions of people are still like
Speaker 4: using them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they're being they're being pushed into by everybody.
Speaker 4: But people like using the like for them, the degree
Speaker 4: of like as good enough as it can be for them.
Speaker 4: It's good enough. That's why we're pushing back though, and
Speaker 4: we're saying, like, you can't trust this data, you can't
Speaker 4: trust this stuff. They're not thinking about that, but they're
Speaker 4: just using it. So we'll continue this debate. It's not
Speaker 4: really a debate. We're shortly after this break. This next
Speaker 4: ad is for specifically boomers. It's called Where's My Pills.
Speaker 2: There's someone called to be really angry at this one.
Speaker 2: They're in the draw mate, and we return to our scene.
Speaker 2: I'm now joined by Edward and Graso Junior of the
Speaker 2: Tech Bubble newsletter. Hello, my friends, Chloe Radcliffe, of.
Speaker 1: Course the actress and stand up comedian who it's you,
Speaker 1: And of course Devinger Harder of Anger Jam.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 2: And I think we're in an interesting point in the
Speaker 2: in the.
Speaker 1: Show where we're all like getting to the end and
Speaker 1: we're realizing we have to go back to the real
Speaker 1: world and there's this thing of this AI thing and
Speaker 1: this whole, this whole situation where and to get back
Speaker 1: to the debate we're just having. It's like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: kind of works, but I don't think that people realize
Speaker 1: that because it only kind of works when they start
Speaker 1: what it actually costs, which is like probably two to
Speaker 1: five to fifteen times what they're charging. No one's going
Speaker 1: to want to pay for the half fast thing anymore,
Speaker 1: and many will not be able to pay for it
Speaker 1: at all. Like I was saying yesterday, a lot of
Speaker 1: these companies that are just thing bolted onto LLM die
Speaker 1: just immediately, like just they will.
Speaker 2: Turn to dust.
Speaker 1: Because imagine if the core fuel of a car of course,
Speaker 1: like double tripled cadrupled in battle in cost of course.
Speaker 3: I okay, interesting proposition here. Do you think two questions?
Speaker 3: Do you think that AI companies will start charging subscription rates?
Speaker 3: Uh before the financial implosion that you predict?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think that. Well, you've already kind of seen signs,
Speaker 2: and they're very unfair with this.
Speaker 1: No one likes this one. Both open AI and Anthropic
Speaker 1: of added priority processing to their API customers. API just
Speaker 1: refers to instead of you or me using like chat,
Speaker 1: GPT or claude, you as a company would connect your
Speaker 1: software with an API to their service and then run
Speaker 1: on top of it. Now, when you run something on
Speaker 1: top of these models, you're effectively just prompting them.
Speaker 3: A API stands for a application big interface.
Speaker 2: I there you go, Yeah, that's yeah. My brain couldn't
Speaker 2: think of the real one, so I can't.
Speaker 1: But it's like those companies cannot survive with a product
Speaker 1: with a cost race. I had a reader listener and
Speaker 1: reader reach out and actually tell me that you need
Speaker 1: priority processing if you're above a certain things, just your
Speaker 1: cost double there automatically. And I think the the other
Speaker 1: thing that people will say is, oh, the cost of
Speaker 1: models is coming down. Classic talking point Jensen Huang and
Speaker 1: is Nvidio thing his press conference said, or the cost
Speaker 1: of models is coming down. Yeah, but it's kind of
Speaker 1: like if the cost of fuel came down a bit,
Speaker 1: but your journey to work took fifteen times longer, because
Speaker 1: now when you use a new model, it isn't just
Speaker 1: spitting out on output. It's using models that use more
Speaker 1: computational power to give you slightly better results. So it
Speaker 1: may be cheaper it well, it's not. It takes longer.
Speaker 1: It uses more tokens just for simplifications sake. Sure the
Speaker 1: thing that happened that they generate to give you an answer,
Speaker 1: It uses a reasoning model, which uses more tokens to
Speaker 1: do the output. So while it might be cheaper on
Speaker 1: a token basis, you're using more of the fuckers, so
Speaker 1: it's not cheaper at all.
Speaker 2: It's actually more expensive.
Speaker 4: Yeah. We can argue a lot about the air industry
Speaker 4: like that's yeah.
Speaker 2: Sorry, some Indian thing.
Speaker 4: I will say.
Speaker 2: We are seeing the direct impacts of the rise of
Speaker 2: THEI right, go on, talk about memory and see the
Speaker 2: fucking HBI the memory. I'd love to talk about this.
Speaker 4: RAM prices have increased by three to four times across
Speaker 4: the board, which is insane, and that'll affect everything that
Speaker 4: affects phones, computers, whatever, cause.
Speaker 3: Like this every like everything because car is computer car.
Speaker 4: So any device needs some sort of memory. What is
Speaker 4: interesting is like we are seeing the direct impact of
Speaker 4: that already Dell's XPS fourteen, which should be a computer
Speaker 4: that costs under fifteen hundred dollars because of what it is,
Speaker 4: and that's what the competition is. And that was about
Speaker 4: the pricing Dell gave me when I first wrote my post,
Speaker 4: they set sixteen hundred. Next day an update, that thing
Speaker 4: is going to start at twenty fifty dollars.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, because because they're.
Speaker 4: Not going to say why, but I would logically think
Speaker 4: like that is going to be the highest cost for
Speaker 4: a lot of new systems. That is insane. That is
Speaker 4: a it's a premium ultraportable. Sure that thing should cost
Speaker 4: under fifteen hundred bucks or about fifteen hundred dollars. So
Speaker 4: we are going to see similar premiums like that.
Speaker 3: Are you sayings you need to get a new computer,
Speaker 3: do it now, because it's going.
Speaker 4: Worse, Do it immediately, and maybe buy used or refurbished
Speaker 4: which is my recommendation for everything. But yeah, buying a
Speaker 4: new system this year is going to suck.
Speaker 1: So we're going to do an episode on this next
Speaker 1: week with Steve Bug from Games and Nexus.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: So RAM in random axis memory a website is yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: this is the thing.
Speaker 3: No I want, I want this, don't.
Speaker 1: The best lesson Sophie and Robert gave me is explain everything,
Speaker 1: because even if you think you know something, you don't.
Speaker 1: So RAM is when you quickly need information to do
Speaker 1: a task on a computer, so you couldn't access the
Speaker 1: hard drive. No matter how fast the hard drive is,
Speaker 1: it's not fast enough to get something immediately.
Speaker 2: AI services are extremely.
Speaker 1: Demanding on something called high bandwidth RAM, which is just
Speaker 1: allows you to keep a bunch of memory stuff in
Speaker 1: the RAM so you can constantly access it.
Speaker 2: Because that's how LMS works. Someone's gonna email me and
Speaker 2: say a truncated that shut the fuck up. But it's Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: because of the demands.
Speaker 1: Of Nvidia building GPUs, of Broadcom building their own bullshit GPUs,
Speaker 1: AMD building their own bullshit GPUs, the.
Speaker 2: Price of RAM across the world has increased. Now eagle
Speaker 2: eared listeners may think I heard a story Edward about
Speaker 2: open Ai taking forty percent of the world's RAM. This
Speaker 2: story is bullshit, and everyone pushing it is a fucking liar.
Speaker 1: If you look on sk heinez and so open Ai
Speaker 1: did a deal quote unquote with sk Heinex and Samsung,
Speaker 1: two companies out in Asia where they were going to
Speaker 1: get hundreds of thousands of wafers of RAM, just the
Speaker 1: things that you can't into RAM, which is insane on
Speaker 1: its own, But it was a letter of intent, which
Speaker 1: is a concept of idea. It's like, if you and
Speaker 1: I are email, why do we do this? It means
Speaker 1: fucking nothing, And everyone's trying to blame that. No, what
Speaker 1: it is is just every GPU, anyone doing anything with
Speaker 1: GPS is.
Speaker 4: Just did you see the buying RAM, the new Nvidia supercomputer,
Speaker 4: the Vera Rubin thing. I hate that they're using these
Speaker 4: actual scientists to apply to these things. It seems so disrespectful.
Speaker 4: But one point five terabytes of RAM in this Vera
Speaker 4: Rubin supercomputer, and that's that's this. So it's like a
Speaker 4: one point five terabytes.
Speaker 2: How many of that? How one point five terabytes per
Speaker 2: how many GPUs?
Speaker 4: I'm gonna have to look into the specific HEREI there's
Speaker 4: a lot of chusing, and I believe it's in the
Speaker 4: fall that's in the full thing.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry not to be a woman who doesn't work
Speaker 3: in tech about this. This very an so supercomputer named
Speaker 3: after a lady, and we think it's disrespectful. Yes, tell
Speaker 3: me the name again, Vera Rubin Viera Ruben. Okay, the
Speaker 3: Vera Ruben computer is a big box and it's really powerful.
Speaker 3: And inside there's a smaller there's a little shoe box
Speaker 3: that you can keep all.
Speaker 4: The little yeah, and like little smaller computers are all
Speaker 4: tied together.
Speaker 3: Yes, tie together. Okay. RAM is like one box where
Speaker 3: you have all sorts of random things that you might need.
Speaker 3: It's like a chick I know, I know, but I'm
Speaker 3: just I'm picturing it in my head.
Speaker 4: If you if you imagine like city block, right, different
Speaker 4: blocks are different components. The RAM is the streets in
Speaker 4: between them to deliver information. Okay, So more RAM, bigger streets,
Speaker 4: high band with RAM, faster streets, faster traffic.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Okay, So that's the basic thing. It's just a shit
Speaker 4: ton of data. That's what I need.
Speaker 2: Why, oh my god, it's one point five terribies but
Speaker 2: fucking rack.
Speaker 4: O peract and there's a lot of racks in there.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of racks in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I fucking dicent will be full of like hundreds.
Speaker 3: Racks on racks on rag literally. Okay, but hold on,
Speaker 3: why is RAM a limited?
Speaker 4: There are only three companies in the world to make it,
Speaker 4: and you can have you go, But that's basically they're
Speaker 4: only three companies and nobody expected they were fine. We
Speaker 4: were fine, and nobody expected that. Why do you need
Speaker 4: so much? God damn ram? Nobody was prepared to do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And is RAM a physical thing that somebody makes?
Speaker 1: Yes, it's so the preparation, it's I'm going to fuck
Speaker 1: this up slightly, so deventure, please correct me if I get.
Speaker 4: Say, I am not an architecture. So there's a company.
Speaker 1: Called TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.
Speaker 2: I think I get that.
Speaker 1: Also, I respect companies that are just like what's your
Speaker 1: name business companies like fuck, yeah, just tell me what
Speaker 1: you do. They have these things with fabs and they
Speaker 1: basically build chips and there's a whole fucking supply chain
Speaker 1: of how chips are made.
Speaker 2: You get wafers of RAM.
Speaker 1: You caught them up sounds delicious, isn't you get? No,
Speaker 1: you get like a big sheet of you get a
Speaker 1: big sheet of memories. Yeah, and then you caught them up.
Speaker 1: Making chips is fucking cool.
Speaker 3: But you're saying this wafer is a certain amount of chips.
Speaker 3: You print the sheet. You may make a sheet of
Speaker 3: a thousand chips, and then a wafer is one hundred chips.
Speaker 1: A wafer is just the thing that you carp into chips.
Speaker 1: But really simple, just just you don't need to know
Speaker 1: that pit, just really simple. There is a limited amount
Speaker 1: of machinery to build RAM. There are what there's Skehix,
Speaker 1: Samsung and who else who makes them?
Speaker 2: Marvel, Marvel's. There's like three companies who make RAM.
Speaker 3: And we can't make more machines to make m It's.
Speaker 2: Just limited space there spent.
Speaker 4: It's going to take a long time to spin that up.
Speaker 1: One important detail. So making chips in general requires something
Speaker 1: called a clean room. So think about any scientific process
Speaker 1: that cannot be interfered with by any contaminants.
Speaker 3: Growing mushrooms in your garage, right, take it three.
Speaker 1: Hundred steps higher where it's just like if a single
Speaker 1: speck of dust gets in there, you fuck up millions,
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars, Like, it's really you have
Speaker 1: massive things, and to run these machines requires very specific
Speaker 1: talent that we don't have enough of. But also there's
Speaker 1: only a so an amount of space in the world,
Speaker 1: so we're just we're at the limits. And while they're
Speaker 1: building more fabs where you build these things, there's only
Speaker 1: so much. Right now, we have these fucking assholes who
Speaker 1: are like, I need one point five terabytes to give
Speaker 1: you an idea, Like I think this iPhone air has
Speaker 1: eight gigabytes of RAM. Terror byte is one thousand gigabytes
Speaker 1: of incorrect Yeah, correct, great stuff. So it's just like
Speaker 1: you have one big asshole taking all the chips. Now
Speaker 1: back to my I worry about the collapse thing we're
Speaker 1: gonna have. We have all of this allocation being done
Speaker 1: for one company. What happens those aren't selling anymore. We're
Speaker 1: gonna just have fucking chaos. But until then, the price
Speaker 1: of RAM is going to keep going up and it's
Speaker 1: going to be harder to get, which will make it
Speaker 1: more expensive, which will make every single consumer device more
Speaker 1: expensive without exception.
Speaker 3: And again, just to ask the stupid question when we
Speaker 3: say the price of RAM is going up. I could
Speaker 3: equivalently say the price per RAM chip.
Speaker 2: Is yes, exactly, sure, great, And it's kind of it's
Speaker 2: like it's a very simple supply chain things like if
Speaker 2: the price of wheels went up, cause would become more expensive.
Speaker 2: I realized that it's a city, but like it's a
Speaker 2: very simple thing and it's affecting everything, and I'm that's
Speaker 2: what pisses me off.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because like we can debate about like how useful
Speaker 4: AI is, but the direct impact to consumers right now,
Speaker 4: people building PCs, anybody buying a new computer, You're gonna
Speaker 4: be screwed in twenty twenty six. And I'm working on
Speaker 4: a piece right now about that because tell me, tell
Speaker 4: us more. Yeah, it's the same thing. It's AMD also
Speaker 4: announced their new high end supercomputer, you know, full I
Speaker 4: servers also gobs of ramp. So yesterday I sat down
Speaker 4: and I talked with one of the AMD executives about
Speaker 4: like what is the state of the computing industry, Like
Speaker 4: how do things look? And they admit, like, you know,
Speaker 4: it's going to be rough. People are probably if you're
Speaker 4: a PC owner and you're going to do an upgrade,
Speaker 4: you're probably not going to build a whole new PC
Speaker 4: this year. Maybe you'll just do a processor upgrade or
Speaker 4: GP upgrade or something. Even those are going to get expensive.
Speaker 4: But I think they're expecting a slowdown in this industry too,
Speaker 4: So it's gonna be it's gonna be tough.
Speaker 3: And the solution can't even just buy be buy used
Speaker 3: and refurbished because those prices.
Speaker 1: Those prices around and we're seeing the after effects of that. Actually,
Speaker 1: outside of this so weird example, but we're running out.
Speaker 1: We also don't have enough power. So gas turbines which
Speaker 1: they're using to power in these days send this, which
Speaker 1: you should not do but a doing anyway, are actually
Speaker 1: sold out for seven years, so they're buying old used
Speaker 1: gas turbines. I wouldn't be surprised if the used RAM
Speaker 1: market gets fucked too.
Speaker 4: It's already getting bad.
Speaker 2: But hell yeah, I mean, who do no one worries
Speaker 2: someone stopped making consumer ram, right of course Micron, Micron
Speaker 2: my dad, sorry, so.
Speaker 4: And I feel bad and Micron owned Crucial, and I
Speaker 4: feel was like the first ramstick I bought when I
Speaker 4: was building a computer, and like I have memories attached
Speaker 4: to that. My bigger worry, though, is they're lighting up
Speaker 4: nuclear power plants for this bullshit. And that's where it's like.
Speaker 2: I'm not worried about that. I'm worried more about the
Speaker 2: gas turbine.
Speaker 4: The gas is bad. The gas is bad because nuclear
Speaker 4: power will get that's going to be a big fight.
Speaker 4: But I we should we should have invested more in
Speaker 4: nuclear power. It may be too late, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Hold on, Yeah, you're saying bad to light up nuclear
Speaker 3: power plants because these are old things that might not
Speaker 3: be in good enough shape. Well, it's just more like
Speaker 3: you're not saying you're not anti nuclear.
Speaker 4: I'm not anti nuclear power. We need that power for
Speaker 4: other stuff and this power should be going to like
Speaker 4: residential uses. And it's literally gonna be sucked up by bullshit.
Speaker 3: But it's still and you're and why are the gas
Speaker 3: turbines back gasses?
Speaker 1: Because because gas turbines are basically calmode. No they're not
Speaker 1: the same, but like they have the same after effect
Speaker 1: of belching out gas. And Elon Musk's data centers are
Speaker 1: already ruining black communities because of this very specific thing.
Speaker 2: They're poisoning water.
Speaker 1: It's really fucking horrible. But also this ram thing I
Speaker 1: think is gonna be everywhere, and the PC industry was
Speaker 1: already in decline.
Speaker 2: I believe they were now it was last year it
Speaker 2: was they actually got I thought they were having my
Speaker 2: bad No, but only Dell was down.
Speaker 4: But here's the thing, for reasons we discussed.
Speaker 1: Surely won't everyone be down because more expensive and Apple
Speaker 1: smartphone sales, like every bit of this is gonna be bad,
Speaker 1: and they are already running out of ways to sell
Speaker 1: you a phone. My biggest example being like this, why
Speaker 1: else would they ship Apple Intelligence, which is the most
Speaker 1: mass radicalization event I've seen in tech. Just I've never
Speaker 1: met so many people like fuck ai them people who
Speaker 1: use Apple Intelligence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who are just like fuck this shit, I fucking
Speaker 2: hate this. Why I don't know why my phone is
Speaker 2: like sparkly rainbows and just wrong all the time and
Speaker 2: giving me a summary saying like eight uber's are coming your.
Speaker 4: Way, the notifications are bad. Apple wouldn't be doing that
Speaker 4: if other people weren't chasing all this. But they're being
Speaker 4: forced into it, and you know are they being forced
Speaker 4: They're kind of being forced into it because like why
Speaker 4: could they not be like because everyone talks stock prices, yeah, shareholders,
Speaker 4: stock price. Everyone's like, oh man, Apple slow to AI.
Speaker 4: I guess Apple doesn't have the innovation.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like someone didn't shit that pans yet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Apple rushed out Apple Intelligence. They got out there,
Speaker 4: they announced this super smart sery thing which was not
Speaker 4: They couldn't ship it, so they took a hit for that.
Speaker 4: They took a hit for the intelligence issues. Again, they
Speaker 4: were forced into that in a way. And hey, I
Speaker 4: blame them for thre the issues. But if Apple left
Speaker 4: its own devices as a company that is really slow
Speaker 4: about pushing and trying to change new things, I think
Speaker 4: they would at least try to make it less error prone.
Speaker 1: But and the point I was making was that Apple
Speaker 1: shoving Apple Intelligence in there was a sign that Apple
Speaker 1: doesn't really have anything else.
Speaker 2: And I will say this, people get so map when
Speaker 2: I like my devices. People.
Speaker 1: I get little emails of people being like fucking hill
Speaker 1: when I'm just like, yeah, I like my phone, and
Speaker 1: they're like fucking piece of shit.
Speaker 2: But it's like Apple Phone, good use it. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I would love an.
Speaker 4: Apple phone with great aspects of Apple Intelligence.
Speaker 1: Other than the liquid ass the new operating system that
Speaker 1: is so bad it makes want to scream. But it's like,
Speaker 1: it's just because we're and it's not because of Apple
Speaker 1: being a bad company, sir. It's just there's only so
Speaker 1: much you can do with a certain form factor. Your
Speaker 1: phone can only do so much.
Speaker 4: But there are things like, hey, voice memos instantly transcribed now,
Speaker 4: that is sick sick.
Speaker 2: Voice notes getting TransCards, it's fucking great.
Speaker 4: Can hit under calls now and those get trans that's
Speaker 4: happening because of an ARM device AI.
Speaker 2: And it's so that's great and that shit's dope, but
Speaker 2: that shit don't make growth happen like you're not. But
Speaker 2: also everyone does that now and that's the problem. It's like,
Speaker 2: how do you sell a new phone?
Speaker 1: So they're in this situation where how do we sell
Speaker 1: a new phone at a time when they're going to
Speaker 1: have to increase the prices on everything because RAM is
Speaker 1: more expensive because to make a new phone faster you
Speaker 1: need RAM.
Speaker 4: But also to fit models onto your phone you need
Speaker 4: more to RAM. You need more RAM because those models
Speaker 4: sit in memory and have to sit there and work
Speaker 4: all the time. They can't just like come off the story, ste.
Speaker 1: Do you remember in like twenty twenty twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: the supply chain crisis that was caused by like basic
Speaker 1: goods being delayed. Yeah, this is kind of like that
Speaker 1: for computer and we're going to see how many things
Speaker 1: have computer in it, televisions, phones, cars, I mean even
Speaker 1: the thing we're recording on right here, that that has
Speaker 1: RAM in it, That everything has RAM on it that
Speaker 1: has any electronics these days.
Speaker 4: That's my big worry of twenty twenty six is basically
Speaker 4: worse screwed when it comes to consumer But the thing
Speaker 4: is it will good for prices, screwed for prices, good
Speaker 4: for all sorts of things, but oh sorry, keep going well,
Speaker 4: companies may die out like think like things will just
Speaker 4: be bad, but yes, prices is gonna be where it starts.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is is that we're at a
Speaker 1: point when they're they're as you've seen you are at
Speaker 1: the Consumer Electronics Show, You've had a very egregious example
Speaker 1: of how these companies do not have a fucking clue
Speaker 1: what to sell you. They're still they're half heartedly coming
Speaker 1: up with ideas like the death of a relationship. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go per recar guess we fucking hate each other.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go on what was gonna be so happy.
Speaker 1: Everyone's trying to come up with a little idea to
Speaker 1: do something with and at a time when they're struggling
Speaker 1: for ideas to sell more things.
Speaker 2: To grow the core thing they used to build, the
Speaker 2: thing is becoming more expensive in a way that you
Speaker 2: can't circumvent.
Speaker 1: There is no way to fix this. Good example would
Speaker 1: be so in Video. I may have mentioned this is
Speaker 1: the previous episode I'm review here. So in Nvidia Crazy Thing,
Speaker 1: eighty eight percent of their revenue comes from selling these
Speaker 1: things for data centers. A much smaller percentage comes from
Speaker 1: selling GPUs for gaming devices, so an Xbox, for example.
Speaker 1: The problem is with that is they've already raised the
Speaker 1: price on the Xbox. They're probably going to have to
Speaker 1: do it again and those GPUs now in Video also
Speaker 1: has deals with other companies where they can take an
Speaker 1: in Vidia GPU for gamers and they can sell it.
Speaker 1: They can say it's an Video GPU, but it's got
Speaker 1: our label on it. We do special things with them.
Speaker 1: Problem in Video is no longer including RAM with them,
Speaker 1: so every single non Invidio GPU company has to now
Speaker 1: buy RAM separately. So their supply chain just got fucked up.
Speaker 1: Imagine if you're a car company and you.
Speaker 2: Buy a certain block of car and it has certain bits,
Speaker 2: but you customize it and they're like, yeah, man, sorry,
Speaker 2: we just don't do steering wheels here anymore.
Speaker 1: They got real expensive. You're gonna have to buy them
Speaker 1: from the steering wheel guy who is now charging more.
Speaker 4: That's already happened to some degree to stuff like light
Speaker 4: ar and things like. There was technology that was in
Speaker 4: Tesla's like this is Cordy pilot and self driving and
Speaker 4: then later expensive.
Speaker 1: But it's the thing, though, this is a really simple
Speaker 1: thing though. This is just the like part of the motor.
Speaker 1: This is the core component of the entire computing supply
Speaker 1: chain everywhere that is going to go up. We're going
Speaker 1: to see, to your point of Indra, shit just get
Speaker 1: more expensive and see who can withstand that pain?
Speaker 3: I mean, what do you what do you think the
Speaker 3: chances are that inflation actually causes some kind of spark
Speaker 3: conflagration before the financial collapse of the AIS.
Speaker 1: Will lead to the Yeah, this is a form of inflation,
Speaker 1: honestly on the compute industry.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, no, no, no, sorry, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, like you've talked about the financial collapse of
Speaker 3: the AI's system of borrowing money. Ye, yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 3: could go bad when if if keep going Yeah okay,
Speaker 3: this is like playing a clarinet solo in front of everybody. Okay, uh,
Speaker 3: that could that financial collapse could trigger if in video stops. Fuck,
Speaker 3: we were just talking about this last night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if in video stops.
Speaker 1: Most of in Vidia's revenue comes from people borrowing money, yes,
Speaker 1: with borrowed money.
Speaker 3: Yes, and if people if I mean, if if the
Speaker 3: bank's ever come calling for that borrowed money, they're doo
Speaker 3: dooo lens yes, or if in video stop, if there
Speaker 3: what is it? If their numbers go down, but if
Speaker 3: their revenue stop growing, if their revenue stop growing, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's the like financial system collapse, poential collapse. What do
Speaker 3: you think the chances are that this inflation just hits
Speaker 3: like general populous so severely before the actual before the
Speaker 3: in video financial with this computer I understand, but like,
Speaker 3: but like so severe, you know, I mean, people are just,
Speaker 3: people are.
Speaker 2: Just I think I get through it.
Speaker 1: I think I get what you're saying. It will cause
Speaker 1: two gut punches. It will be likely before the AI
Speaker 1: bubble burst, we will have a thing where anyone selling
Speaker 1: consumer electronics or even enterprise hardware, so just consume electronics
Speaker 1: for the enterprise. Their cost go up, so they will
Speaker 1: probably sell less because their customers will be unable to
Speaker 1: afford as much, which will cause a bunch of tech
Speaker 1: companies to not make as much money, which will lower
Speaker 1: the values of their stocks. This will then lead them
Speaker 1: to go AI AI, and then their shareholders will go, great,
Speaker 1: you've been saying that AI bullshit for three years, you
Speaker 1: got any money?
Speaker 2: And they go, what if I told you I had
Speaker 2: less money? Because it lost me? And at that point
Speaker 2: the world panshitting competition will end like.
Speaker 3: It's I guess I listen to all of this and
Speaker 3: I actually get my gut, which means almost nothing because
Speaker 3: I understand almost nothing of it. But my gut says
Speaker 3: that the thank you, that the the inflationary effects are
Speaker 3: going to actually be more immediate than.
Speaker 2: The AI body.
Speaker 3: I agree fully, And I guess I don't mean like, duh, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're happening now, but I mean like some degree of
Speaker 3: severity that that people decide is not tolerable. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: it will happen before the AI Bob. Sorry, we bently
Speaker 3: brought you into the No, no, no, you're good.
Speaker 7: I mean I think, I mean this raises me. The's
Speaker 7: something I've just been wondering where it feels like we
Speaker 7: just keep coming up into this problem where we are
Speaker 7: having uh, structural limitations imposed or you know, rushed up
Speaker 7: against because you know, the sector in one way or
Speaker 7: another is forcing allocation of resources, allocation of capital, demands
Speaker 7: of growth, allocation of energy to satisfy it. So you know,
Speaker 7: at what point does it end where you know, we
Speaker 7: we have a shortage of power. Now we have a
Speaker 7: shortage of RAM that seems to be in the short
Speaker 7: and medium term fundamentally unfixable.
Speaker 2: It is, and it's the demands of eternal growth. It really,
Speaker 2: it's just because here's the thing we talk about a
Speaker 2: lot this week about we just want to compute that works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that isn't going to grow the company guaranteed twenty
Speaker 1: percent year of a year, every single quarter. And it
Speaker 1: sucks because you should just be able to have a
Speaker 1: company that grows three percent every quarter. Yeah, the stock
Speaker 1: market should like that, but they don't. And as a result,
Speaker 1: when things consume, they must consume eternally to your point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the best example of this recently is
Speaker 4: the instant pot, right, Oh yeah, everybody loves an instant pot.
Speaker 4: It's too good. It's so good.
Speaker 2: Nobody needed to buy a new instant pots instant part
Speaker 2: when I hat of business well books, they got balled
Speaker 2: by private equity.
Speaker 4: Too, but also they could they couldn't hit that mass
Speaker 4: growth because instant pot too good. It just works.
Speaker 2: A pressure cooker is a pressure cooker.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they were one of the first digital ones.
Speaker 4: But it's still it works and it works.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 4: Oh sorry, you couldn't grow fast enough, you're dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it sucks because I don't know that I
Speaker 2: have this somewhat. I don't know. Maybe this is not
Speaker 2: Night List.
Speaker 3: Would they have died if private equity hadn't bought them?
Speaker 4: No, probably not.
Speaker 2: They were private, Yeah, they were. They were private.
Speaker 3: They can just keep chugging along it.
Speaker 2: They could keep it.
Speaker 1: If you're a private company, you don't have shareholp. I
Speaker 1: guess you have investors beyond a shareholders saying you have
Speaker 1: to grow. You don't have fucking Jim Kramer up your asshole.
Speaker 1: And it's it's unfortunate, But I think that there is
Speaker 1: a level of this. I hones, stay, I'm glad you
Speaker 1: brought this up. I think the thing that happens before
Speaker 1: the AI bubble is just the the ultimate slowdown, because
Speaker 1: what was it like the fact that like, it's kind
Speaker 1: of insane the Dell did such a big song and
Speaker 1: danced last year and then we're like, actually, JK, I'm kidding.
Speaker 4: That was a bit where it hurts. Yeah, they directly
Speaker 4: saw falling sales because and they could draw the line
Speaker 4: to the rebranding. Because of that, They're like, oh shit,
Speaker 4: what do we do? We got to refolk Is on consumers.
Speaker 2: Which is so bizarre.
Speaker 4: Though if only people loudly told them that this was
Speaker 4: a mistake from the beginning.
Speaker 2: If only there were articles at engadget dot com that
Speaker 2: they could have read in detail last year. But it's
Speaker 2: like that's that's really like, this is very bad, this
Speaker 2: ram crisis, this is bad. It's so I'm because it's
Speaker 2: so scary.
Speaker 7: What now then happens with because I think something that
Speaker 7: we've talked about also is I think, like you know,
Speaker 7: kind of like what you're saying off the top, the
Speaker 7: financial element of uh, the AI bubble is one that
Speaker 7: we can see it for what it is, but that
Speaker 7: there are multitude of ways in which they've been able
Speaker 7: to juggle, find some new frontier of.
Speaker 2: Growth, justify and more.
Speaker 7: These structural issues that we keep coming across feel non negotiable.
Speaker 7: So what effect do do you guys see them as
Speaker 7: being risk of some sort of breaking point? Yes, in
Speaker 7: terms of the AI infrastructure overbuild, in terms of adoption
Speaker 7: amongst consumers, I mean like like what like let's say,
Speaker 7: for let's say that nothing happens in terms of degradation
Speaker 7: of the financial conditions, Is the structural limitations that we're
Speaker 7: seeing there with the RAM sufficient to impose like a crisis.
Speaker 3: Yes, is basically what I'm you're saying. It's so much
Speaker 3: more eloquently than what I'm what I'm asking, But that's
Speaker 3: basically exactly what.
Speaker 2: I'm asking yourself. You were completely on the money.
Speaker 1: You were also at here's the thing, and I think
Speaker 1: Davindri you are thoughts in this as well. It's you
Speaker 1: you can get more of that money can be found elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Singaporean boys that the country's fund I remember the name
Speaker 1: for that they invested. They're going to invest in anthropic
Speaker 1: More money can be found. There's a limit but we're
Speaker 1: not at it. Yeah, they're on limits to power. And
Speaker 1: here's the thing, one point five fucking terrorbytes per. I'm
Speaker 1: going to guess V two hundred eight e eight GP
Speaker 1: whatever the tower, That's what.
Speaker 3: I was gonna guess.
Speaker 1: Of course, you're constantly like the GB three hundreds four
Speaker 1: point five million dollars at how the hell did the
Speaker 1: economics work?
Speaker 2: What do you mean data an ri t ed, I
Speaker 2: don't get this. People are saying that the cost of
Speaker 2: inference is going down, it's going up. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: high bam ri RAM.
Speaker 1: You're constantly in my text with yeah, you just won't
Speaker 1: stop talking about models.
Speaker 2: No, but it's just real simple.
Speaker 3: And videos are.
Speaker 2: Saying we're gonna build the biggest, fucking hugest tower ever
Speaker 2: and by the way, it's full of more RAM than ever.
Speaker 2: They haven't announced the price of then you big enterprise GPUs.
Speaker 2: I think they're going to be catastrophically more expensive because
Speaker 2: they have more RAM than ever. It's like everything, including
Speaker 2: the thing that needs debt, the borrowed money to keep going,
Speaker 2: is going to get more expensive. Consumer devices are getting
Speaker 2: get more expensive. To your point, ed, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they've been able to get away with it because you
Speaker 2: can find more venture capital. Man, you can find more day,
Speaker 2: you can find more assholes to loan your money. You
Speaker 2: can't find more ram. You can't find more power is
Speaker 2: not something you don't just like plug into the fucking wall.
Speaker 2: There are literal limits. And it's like we're now, we're
Speaker 2: now seeing the after that. I can't get over the
Speaker 2: fact they raised the laptops place five hundred bucks. That's
Speaker 2: fucking that makes it unaffordable for most people. That's that
Speaker 2: is a huge and this is this stops people upgrading
Speaker 2: and upgrade cycles of what make these companies live and
Speaker 2: die at a time when there's less real you can
Speaker 2: get a laptop from you even I could get like
Speaker 2: an M three MacBook Air and be pretty fucking happy.
Speaker 2: I'm using a three year old MacBook Pro and it
Speaker 2: fucking bangs. Is that ship that shits? That shit's flying?
Speaker 4: Computer that work?
Speaker 2: But the thing is why would I upgrade? And that's
Speaker 2: actually like that sounds like a kids see things that
Speaker 2: that's actually a huge question because I'm like a tech pig,
Speaker 2: like I'm a hog. I love my laptops and my goot,
Speaker 2: my dud dad's and my gizmos and shit, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't fucking need a new laptop. Why would any
Speaker 2: of that is going on?
Speaker 4: That is a good problem Like that is usually it's
Speaker 4: good for consumers. It's good for consumers, it's a good
Speaker 4: it's you made a good product that lasts. Unfortunately, that
Speaker 4: is bad for your overall revenues. But that's good that
Speaker 4: you you were capable of doing that. I wish more
Speaker 4: companies were capable of doing that, Honestly. I'm also thinking
Speaker 4: about like where we are the climate crisis isn't isn't
Speaker 4: slowing down?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Like, we're all these companies that for so long we're
Speaker 4: talking about, Oh, where we have all these climate gold
Speaker 4: we're going to reduce energy, we're going to be more conservative.
Speaker 4: Once AI shit started happening, they shut up because all
Speaker 4: their all their stuff blew away. That didn't matter anymore
Speaker 4: because it was all AI all the time. And yeah,
Speaker 4: what what? The world right now is going to be
Speaker 4: more expensive when it comes to gadgets. The world in
Speaker 4: the future is going to be hard to live in
Speaker 4: because of all the stupid decisions happening right now. And
Speaker 4: I'm so angry about all of it.
Speaker 1: And we are now going to transition to our final
Speaker 1: thirty minutes of this episode. This next one is brought
Speaker 1: to you by gen Z dot Bears. Now you it's
Speaker 1: just a store where you can just buy zin to
Speaker 1: your door. I don't actually know what zin is.
Speaker 2: Please, if you're if you're one of my three Zoomer listeners,
Speaker 2: please email me what zinc is and how you consume it,
Speaker 2: and can you tell me what's cool as well? I
Speaker 2: haven't known what that was for ten years. And we're
Speaker 2: back in the room. We're back in the room.
Speaker 1: We've got the Vendra Hardawa from En Gadgets. We've got
Speaker 1: Edwin and Guiso Junior of tech Bubble newsletter have. We've
Speaker 1: got Chloe Radcliffe, actress star of is this thing on?
Speaker 1: I got targeted on an Instagram star is.
Speaker 2: What's great? Was? The clip I got was like Cradley
Speaker 2: boot being talked to. H Sorry, I'm we'll learn it.
Speaker 2: We'll learn it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, christ and going look you I'm and stand
Speaker 1: up and Cradlely Booper going what anyway?
Speaker 3: Stand up?
Speaker 2: Comedian Chloe Radcliffe and yeah, we're back talking about ram
Speaker 2: and the slowdown. And I'm gonna be honest, I know
Speaker 2: it seems bad now and it will be bad. The
Speaker 2: take industry needs this. The take industry needs to be
Speaker 2: punished for the growth lust because there is no there's
Speaker 2: no sustainable future doing this and this was also inevitable
Speaker 2: and I think it's scary.
Speaker 7: So they're just I mean, so then is the you know,
Speaker 7: if we if ideally what it delays on the products
Speaker 7: that are the most RAM intensive to give infrastructure a
Speaker 7: chance to fill a backlog and to give the next generation.
Speaker 4: There are rumors that they may revive old hardware. There's
Speaker 4: a rumor that in videos, RTX thirty sixty, which is
Speaker 4: a two three year old GPU, maybe back in market
Speaker 4: soon because it's using all older slower RAM too, so
Speaker 4: it's not using the newest, fastest stuff but less powerful
Speaker 4: GP yeah, way less powerful. But it's also like like
Speaker 4: two generations back. It is a sign that you have
Speaker 4: to bring back the past because the present is unaffordable
Speaker 4: and you cannot make it. So, I don't know, that's
Speaker 4: never happened before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I so we're never heard of that.
Speaker 4: We don't know if this is true, but this is
Speaker 4: the really I thought that was confirmed.
Speaker 3: So I okay, as my responsibility as my person I
Speaker 3: then think about how do normal people experience this, because
Speaker 3: normal people have heard AI a million times. We've heard
Speaker 3: ram is getting more expensive. But like I think I'm smart,
Speaker 3: and I didn't know any of this ship. I've heard
Speaker 3: these words, but I don't know the details. And so
Speaker 3: as a as a representative of normal people, as stuff
Speaker 3: gets more and more and more expensive, so far, the
Speaker 3: American population has just borne the load of more expensive life.
Speaker 3: People have. People complain about it. It's very frustrating. It
Speaker 3: negatively impacts people's physical health and they're to enjoy life.
Speaker 3: But like pretty much everybody has just sort of God.
Speaker 4: The people who can afford it eat the cost, but
Speaker 4: then we don't hear about the people who.
Speaker 2: But there's there's also a limit finish oppression.
Speaker 3: Yes, but I think the people who can't afford it
Speaker 3: eat the cost too, I mean.
Speaker 4: Like in other ways. But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: Really, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You're saying that for now there is a limit, And
Speaker 1: what it is is people are eating the cost inasmuch
Speaker 1: as they can. At some point, there's a limit because
Speaker 1: there are people who weigh like Apple's apop Max. I
Speaker 1: don't really think that that's like a regular person thing
Speaker 1: is like five hundred bucks, but those half ram in them.
Speaker 1: Modern headphones half ram inem Like, there are headphones that
Speaker 1: have RAM in them. Even cheap laptops have ram in them.
Speaker 1: Everything has ram in it. So yes, the cost of
Speaker 1: everything already went up and never came down.
Speaker 2: There is a point when people would just stop buying
Speaker 2: new electronics at all.
Speaker 3: And I have a thesis. Okay, so there's a point
Speaker 3: where people will stop by new electronics at all, and
Speaker 3: then there is some further point at which people will
Speaker 3: draw a line at inflationary prices overall, whether it's an electronic,
Speaker 3: whether it's in whatever. Because I'm sure that RAM shortages
Speaker 3: are going to affect things that don't have RAM in it,
Speaker 3: because the things that are used to ship those things
Speaker 3: have RAM in it.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like I right, I can imagine that this impacts
Speaker 3: price overall. And what we have seen in trend lines
Speaker 3: is that once prices go up, they stay up, they
Speaker 3: don't come back down for the most part.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that might actually not happen with RAM, I think,
Speaker 1: because if they My real crazy scenario and no one
Speaker 1: wants to think about, is AMD and video buying all
Speaker 1: this RAM what funck. They deal with it when no
Speaker 1: one wants to buy their bullshit anymore, All of these
Speaker 1: companies that have built massive allocations RAM won't have any usage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but other like consumer goods, I think once those
Speaker 3: prices go up.
Speaker 1: There this thing is if no one's buying them, they
Speaker 1: will have to because what we're talking about here isn't
Speaker 1: just like the top crust, it's everything.
Speaker 3: But so far people are still buying them. As we
Speaker 3: often people are tightening belts. But I think a lot
Speaker 3: of people are just spending way more money than they
Speaker 3: would have been and not saving and like because because.
Speaker 4: You're living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net, right,
Speaker 4: But I.
Speaker 3: Think a lot of people are paying the higher prices
Speaker 3: rather than not buying the items there.
Speaker 4: Are, Yeah to a certain agree like sometimes you need it,
Speaker 4: sometimes you need it. I do think we get to
Speaker 4: look at this culturally too, because people don't just sit
Speaker 4: down and read business news and make logical business decisions
Speaker 4: as economists think. We do think we respond to culture.
Speaker 4: We respond to like that's how things are reacting. And
Speaker 4: I think it is interesting that the youngs, the gen
Speaker 4: zs and all are looking back to pre smart phone culture,
Speaker 4: pre social media and how prevalent is this. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just like they grew up watching reruns of the Office, right,
Speaker 4: And then there's a lot of things about this they're
Speaker 4: theorizing is that this is a world they probably will
Speaker 4: never actually see, just like having a simple office job.
Speaker 4: That's like that. And there's a lot of like looking
Speaker 4: back towards retro stuff. I think culturally we will. We
Speaker 4: may regress a little. It's like going back to the
Speaker 4: old video cars, but like you regress back to Okay,
Speaker 4: we gave too much of our lives to social media.
Speaker 4: We will just take a step back back.
Speaker 3: Okay. So this is I was thinking about this on
Speaker 3: the plane to cees as I was like sort of
Speaker 3: collating some of my thoughts about tech and AI and stuff.
Speaker 3: And I actually think I lay much more of the
Speaker 3: sin at the feet of the constant entertainment feed, oh
Speaker 3: than I do at the feed of AI. I think
Speaker 3: that social media and the constant input of entertainment has
Speaker 3: numbed us and has has uh reduced us people's interest
Speaker 3: in making statements or engaging with societal ills. Yeah, by
Speaker 3: you know, orders of magnitude. And so I actually, to me,
Speaker 3: I'm sort of like, yeah, AI is whatever bullshit it is,
Speaker 3: But I actually think that the core of the social
Speaker 3: ills is the constant drip feed of entertainment that just
Speaker 3: turns your brain, that just dulls you to.
Speaker 4: And a lot of people are trying to take a
Speaker 4: step back from this information over load, and I think
Speaker 4: we will probably see more.
Speaker 3: I think we will see more of that. But so
Speaker 3: my thesis winds up being that I think the breaking
Speaker 3: point for people, for people living in this inflationary environment,
Speaker 3: I think that breaking point will be a lot higher
Speaker 3: than it would be without social media. I think the
Speaker 3: breaking point will take a lot longer than it would
Speaker 3: be without. It feels bad, but you can just pick
Speaker 3: something up and scroll through things that make your brain
Speaker 3: go big.
Speaker 2: So I agree.
Speaker 1: My thing is is they forced AI into every social
Speaker 1: networking app too. AI is everywhere, It's in your ear.
Speaker 1: I realize I'm doing my same bit I always do.
Speaker 1: But it's like when that disappears, gets weird, it kind
Speaker 1: of comes obvious it was bullshit that will filter into
Speaker 1: the feature kind of already seeing it, You're seeing you're
Speaker 1: seeing random people being anti AI.
Speaker 2: Now people I never.
Speaker 1: Talked about it, but two separate things, but it creates
Speaker 1: the kind of chaos that makes people be like, wait,
Speaker 1: why do I need new fucking up to want? Just
Speaker 1: go on e Bay and buy an hpoman from four
Speaker 1: years ago? I just buy an iPhone sixteen instead when
Speaker 1: I have or like what you have is fine, Like
Speaker 1: this iPad is over a year old and I will
Speaker 1: probably use it for another three years or more.
Speaker 2: I don't know what they could possibly do.
Speaker 4: iPad pro, by the way, a stunning example of a product.
Speaker 4: Apple spent years being like why does this exist? A
Speaker 4: super powerful iPad? Who will spend the money of a
Speaker 4: laptop to just get an iPad? And they spent so
Speaker 4: long figure out not what to do, like they had
Speaker 4: no idea what to do with anything. That's endemic of
Speaker 4: like another issue like them trying to push into bigger
Speaker 4: categories and more expensive products. But it's all kind of
Speaker 4: part of the same thing, like you got to push more,
Speaker 4: you need more the information overload. We were not We
Speaker 4: didn't evolve to processes must have much information. So I
Speaker 4: think that has had a cultural impact on our brains.
Speaker 4: COVID has like rewired people completely. You would think it
Speaker 4: would push us to be more, you know, more supportive.
Speaker 4: Most of their socialisport like try to come together, and
Speaker 4: it just broke our brains in other ways. So it's
Speaker 4: just like, I don't know.
Speaker 3: But I think that the reason it broke people's brains
Speaker 3: was facilitated by the entertainment feed. And I want to
Speaker 3: differentiate that from a social media platform where you can
Speaker 3: go and you know, talk to your friends and family.
Speaker 4: Truly, to me, it is they all kind of ended
Speaker 4: up becoming entertainment.
Speaker 3: This is but it's why I'm specifically different why I
Speaker 3: am using the words entertainment because I think that how
Speaker 3: would you define that a constant flow of entertainment that
Speaker 3: is instantly and always excessed.
Speaker 2: And this is this video or this text involved in this?
Speaker 2: Or is this only?
Speaker 3: I think video is so much more poisonous than I
Speaker 3: ate text. But I will say I think text is uh.
Speaker 3: I think text does a very similar thing.
Speaker 1: No, but video is much easier to cycle through and
Speaker 1: consume a bunch of information.
Speaker 3: Fust It's not even it's not even just the cycle through.
Speaker 3: It's that like I open Instagram. I opened Instagram this
Speaker 3: morning to do a work thing, to like find a
Speaker 3: specific producer and look at who she follows and be like,
Speaker 3: do I know anybody who? She like it's like a
Speaker 3: it's a networking, it's a useful tool. And I opened
Speaker 3: it and it's some two hours later, truly, truly true.
Speaker 3: And it's because like I see in the little carousel,
Speaker 3: I see this little fifteen second like a girl being like,
Speaker 3: here's what my boyfriend expected on New Year's and then
Speaker 3: here's what he actually we got.
Speaker 2: And it's like a very funny going around and like looking.
Speaker 3: But my brain, my brain is like I see, I
Speaker 3: see things.
Speaker 2: Move, and that makes me like, I like, I'm so
Speaker 2: fucking glad. I'm autistic. I'm so fucking glad.
Speaker 3: I see that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I got something else to do. I'm doing,
Speaker 2: I'm doing what I just it's so cool.
Speaker 3: I don't I see that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, trying to fuck this happened to me.
Speaker 2: I'm a like I'm a pig, but I'm not that
Speaker 2: kind of hog.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yea, yeah.
Speaker 4: Last night I was like I had hours free for
Speaker 4: for once, and see I was like I could watch
Speaker 4: a movie, I could do all this stuff. Sat down,
Speaker 4: started looking at TikTok and was like, you know what,
Speaker 4: this is comfy. This is nice. And also because my
Speaker 4: brain has been at like two hundred percent the entire
Speaker 4: so it just needs to like cool down.
Speaker 3: But it is such a crew with the like with
Speaker 3: like the brain. Then I'm gonna put on a movie
Speaker 3: and cool down in front of the movie, which is
Speaker 3: one bigger Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think the the pressure is just increasing on
Speaker 2: people and will eventually pop. And I think the pressure
Speaker 2: is increasing from all sides.
Speaker 3: I just think it's going to take a lot longer
Speaker 3: now than it would have with the technology we have.
Speaker 2: I will say that.
Speaker 1: The problem is the first of all, the real world
Speaker 1: was never meant to connect with finance this much. Most
Speaker 1: people were never meant to know what hb RAM was.
Speaker 1: No one was meant to know what a GPU was.
Speaker 1: Seven years ago. If you told you are somewhat to
Speaker 1: GPU was, they would call the police, like they'd be like,
Speaker 1: why are you saying strange words to me? You're a
Speaker 1: witch and no offense to witches. But it's just now
Speaker 1: everyone's kind of aware of this and it's in their
Speaker 1: head and every Barston company is saying, AI, you must
Speaker 1: do a I know will. You are stupid, You are
Speaker 1: a pig and a moron. Banana no No, there's a
Speaker 1: great video of a comedian I don't remember.
Speaker 2: It's just try banana now now, and it's just like,
Speaker 2: that's all I think of what this stuff is just
Speaker 2: harassing people. I think you're right in the It's going
Speaker 2: to take a little longer because people are so addicted
Speaker 2: to feeds, and the feeds are so intense it just
Speaker 2: numbs them. But I think that there is a degree
Speaker 2: of harassment from the AI stuff. That means that when
Speaker 2: this starts, the burst, it's going to be like fucking
Speaker 2: Chorus Sun and Return of the Jedi. I think people
Speaker 2: are going to be fucking excited to see this burn.
Speaker 2: I think people are just so fucking angry, and the
Speaker 2: fucking price of all electronics going up at a time
Speaker 2: when we're most the angriest we've ever been at the computer.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying I don't know the order of events,
Speaker 2: but I think this is I know this.
Speaker 4: The thing is, there's so much happening in the world,
Speaker 4: right Yeah, there's also the literal destruction of democracy right
Speaker 4: in front of us. Right there is war, we're being
Speaker 4: led by warmongers, and also the economy is collapsing. All
Speaker 4: this stuff is happening h I tend to look at
Speaker 4: like what what will be the broad societal ways, like
Speaker 4: we move through this and the only way is like
Speaker 4: we do have to like step away from the tech
Speaker 4: a little bit. Yeah, it's also like I don't know
Speaker 4: doing those social things that we didn't used to do,
Speaker 4: like we kind of stepped away from So I love libraries. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: libraries are great libraries. Fucking we let the we let
Speaker 4: a lot of people really shit on libraries and could
Speaker 4: also strip away their resources and stuff. It is things
Speaker 4: like that where you see the rest of your community,
Speaker 4: you can help each other, you learn together. That's the
Speaker 4: sort of thing I want to support moving forward, and
Speaker 4: we need that.
Speaker 2: I will also say, like I said this yesterday on
Speaker 2: the episode, it's like I am a rare thing of
Speaker 2: like the internet has allowed me to become a person
Speaker 2: rather than maybe.
Speaker 4: Less just one. That's like I was a socially anxious kid, yeah,
Speaker 4: and technology and the internet did help me.
Speaker 1: Like so yeah, and the thing is you just I
Speaker 1: think there's just a level of intentionality where it's like
Speaker 1: the feeds don't work on me. I get deep anxiety
Speaker 1: when I have an infinite scroll, Like I have the
Speaker 1: opposite it has the opposite effect on me. I'm like,
Speaker 1: why won't this end? I can't watch anything everything. I
Speaker 1: don't want to look at it because it's it's worrying me.
Speaker 1: This is bothering, which is literally everyone else is different.
Speaker 1: It's so strange. But it's like, these tools also let
Speaker 1: me talk to everyone in this room in an instant.
Speaker 1: They let me put on an insane podcast for twenty
Speaker 1: hours in a week and nobody stopped me. But there
Speaker 1: are actual beautiful things that technology can do. And what's
Speaker 1: great is you could use the same technology from five
Speaker 1: fucking years ago. I'm not even saying put your phone
Speaker 1: down and burn it. I'm saying use what you've got now,
Speaker 1: or use what just happened. Computers, putting aside all the
Speaker 1: growth capitalism stuff, computers are fucking great right now.
Speaker 4: There's are great. People are going back to personal music players,
Speaker 4: just like a thing that plays music, you know what?
Speaker 4: That is beautiful. And the younger the kids right now,
Speaker 4: the thing people are saying is like they don't know
Speaker 4: if they're trusting an image that's a I that's an
Speaker 4: inherent distrust in AI and calling it out as a
Speaker 4: cultural object. I think that's fascinating too. So we are
Speaker 4: seeing the signs that there is going to be some
Speaker 4: sort of like pushback. Don't I don't want there to
Speaker 4: be like the Battle Starcalactica thing, right, or the dude the.
Speaker 3: Edge you get.
Speaker 2: It's just we're gonna get just a guy who just like.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: No, it's like, we don't have to go all the way.
Speaker 1: It's the tweet where the guy's like, what's the highest
Speaker 1: number one million? It's but at the same time, my pushback. Sorry,
Speaker 1: this is not a pushback. I'm agreeing with everything, but
Speaker 1: it's the way through this.
Speaker 2: Is to just be a little bit more fucking intentional
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 1: I know it's don't look at this. You're gonna look
Speaker 1: at it. Don't hate yourself, but be aware that something's
Speaker 1: being done to you with it. And also remember you
Speaker 1: can call any of your friends using these things. You
Speaker 1: can talk to any of your friends if you're feeling
Speaker 1: lonely and said you signal.
Speaker 4: They brought the landline back. One of the interesting products
Speaker 4: of like that was in the holiday season. I think
Speaker 4: it's more like uppity rich parents are doing this, but
Speaker 4: they're like, there's a startup that made handset and you
Speaker 4: can program like your friends to it. So your kids friends,
Speaker 4: it's a handset, they pick it up, they dial their friends.
Speaker 3: Court.
Speaker 4: I think there is a court. I think I think
Speaker 4: there may be a court. It's a handset.
Speaker 3: It's those phone numbers memorize.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's more like these are your trusted contacts. That's
Speaker 4: all this thing can call. It's back to the days
Speaker 4: where we were just like.
Speaker 3: Get plugged into your wall.
Speaker 2: Or is it? Because you can quite cynical about cs
Speaker 2: and my god, have we got another two hours today
Speaker 2: and four hours tomorrow and one hour on Saturday, so
Speaker 2: we will be there's also a degree of like, as
Speaker 2: much as we complain, I've got to hang out with
Speaker 2: my friends all we and I got to do it,
Speaker 2: and I got to record using a weird road cast to.
Speaker 1: Pro too of the best thing. It's amazing and we
Speaker 1: can record the audio. I have one for Mattasowski producing
Speaker 1: a beat on that.
Speaker 3: It looks like a.
Speaker 1: Soundboard as well. You can do all sorts of noises.
Speaker 1: But it's like you can do really cool shit with
Speaker 1: the computer now and you can talk to your friends
Speaker 1: with it. It's but the reason that things are shit
Speaker 1: is the people that are making the interfaces, the social
Speaker 1: interfaces are getting in the way. Understanding that and starting
Speaker 1: from that position is what makes things better for you.
Speaker 1: They're not gonna make it better for you. They're fucking assholes.
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg is overseeing a fraudulent operation. Ten percent of
Speaker 1: their revenue in twenty twenty four for Meta was from
Speaker 1: scams and fraud. That is a fucking reported thing. For
Speaker 1: Jeff Horwitz of Reuters, like that should tell you everything.
Speaker 1: It does not mean that the computer is inherently bad.
Speaker 1: What they've done to the computer is bad, and what
Speaker 1: we can do with the computer is the solution.
Speaker 2: In the you can pull.
Speaker 1: Together a bunch of people just using text an email.
Speaker 1: I fucking just did it this week. There are great
Speaker 1: things you can do it text text, text, go meet
Speaker 1: in real life. You can take fucking photos on your phone.
Speaker 2: Awesome. There are still good things to be done. I
Speaker 2: know this is so hokey, but I think it's hot.
Speaker 2: It's a good point.
Speaker 4: It's not about being completely anti tech. It's about it's.
Speaker 1: About being anti tech industry at the moment because it's
Speaker 1: like we like Pebble because Pebble's like, what if a
Speaker 1: device had a use case, and anyone's like, fuck this shit,
Speaker 1: what do you mean you won't grow by twenty two
Speaker 1: percent year of a year, every quarter, you piece of
Speaker 1: except these private doesn't matter and it's just by years
Speaker 1: at the moment.
Speaker 2: That's my big that's actually my better off line twenty
Speaker 2: twenty by verb by reefer By.
Speaker 1: You don't give these fucking companies another fucking dollar until
Speaker 1: they can prove that they can earn it, because that
Speaker 1: is the real problem. They want to grow forever. You
Speaker 1: want to grow forever and make useful shit. But the
Speaker 1: actual internals of the computer. I also will address something
Speaker 1: that people ema my occasionally, which is, oh, the computer
Speaker 1: industry used to be good whatever. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it used to be good, but it used to be bow.
Speaker 1: But there were beautiful things in the computer.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Part of how we got here is that we didn't
Speaker 4: ask cultural questions right. We didn't push back against certain elements.
Speaker 4: Like I was there when social media was just starting out.
Speaker 4: It was like, oh, yeah, look at this feed of information.
Speaker 2: It was so cool.
Speaker 4: But it was also we knew Mark Zuckerberg was a
Speaker 4: piece of shit from the beginning, but most there did not.
Speaker 4: Most people did not, but there were enough stories about oh,
Speaker 4: look at this kid who dropped out of Harvard and
Speaker 4: like did this thing, but there were stories about what
Speaker 4: he did before, how like the shitty sexist, like proto
Speaker 4: social network he made who he was. Like, those stories
Speaker 4: were out there, and I watched this kid who didn't
Speaker 4: finish college but also had no real awareness of the
Speaker 4: world be propped up by vcs in the entire industry
Speaker 4: as some sort of like boy king. And what he
Speaker 4: did was create a thing that just generated money, right,
Speaker 4: And that the entire point of Facebook two thousand, you know,
Speaker 4: late two thousands to twenty tens, was just as much
Speaker 4: engagement as possible.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 4: It was just that farming. And then everybody copied that,
Speaker 4: and that broke us because they didn't want to create
Speaker 4: something good. They just wanted to create something that addicted us.
Speaker 4: It's like cigarettes.
Speaker 1: It's that and the scourge of neoliberalism and the idea
Speaker 1: that everything everything, that the market is dominant. The market
Speaker 1: would never incentivize something bad. Again, Yeah, everyone took a lack.
Speaker 2: Of regulations in the twenty tens that that didn't help.
Speaker 2: You talk about killing baby Hitler, that's great. I think
Speaker 2: baby Milton Freeman and baby we're on a bag and
Speaker 2: put them on the top of the pile. We got
Speaker 2: all sorts of babies, a lot of baby. No.
Speaker 1: But it's But the thing is, it's like the incentives
Speaker 1: of the problem and the only thing we can do
Speaker 1: is consumers, is don't stop using tech. You I think
Speaker 1: that that's an unrealistic thing.
Speaker 2: Like, Chloe, it's your luck, like you have to use tech,
Speaker 2: especially as a stand up you kind of I have
Speaker 2: to use social media.
Speaker 5: You have to.
Speaker 1: There's just no other way around it. Don't buy a
Speaker 1: new phone. I'm done buying new fucking ship.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm going there.
Speaker 3: You haven't seen how broken my phone?
Speaker 2: No but going go and buy Chloe, Chloe, go on,
Speaker 2: buy a research. I actually think, I actually think I
Speaker 2: am done buying new phones. I'm going to buy the
Speaker 2: referb forever.
Speaker 4: I buy my my parents refer buy phones every couple
Speaker 4: of years from Amazon. Perfect. Yep, it works great. They
Speaker 4: the hardware lasts and then they're still like.
Speaker 2: Ship, No new ship unless it's cool, unless it's fucking
Speaker 2: new and cool and good Foxy. Yes, it's like really though,
Speaker 2: if you can buy new by used, go on eBay,
Speaker 2: go on whatever, Go on Craigslist, like go and buy
Speaker 2: from a regular person, circulate that money in the real world,
Speaker 2: take it out of the fucking stock market cash cat.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going a lil insane, but it's like I
Speaker 1: stand by it because it's like all of the new
Speaker 1: price is it going to go up?
Speaker 4: Yeah? And when it comes to social media, I think
Speaker 4: we can be more intentional. Right, It's like, for the
Speaker 4: longest time, people are making arguments like, Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: stay on X even though Elon Musk bought it and
Speaker 4: destroy Twitter. I'm gonna stand on the stand. Now it's
Speaker 4: a freaking sea sam generating garbage.
Speaker 2: Mae.
Speaker 4: It's like, I think we can start to make those
Speaker 4: moral choices where it's like, career wise, I would be
Speaker 4: better off staying on X probably, but you have to
Speaker 4: have some sort of like moral center, and I think
Speaker 4: where we need to ask more of that as ourselves
Speaker 4: right now. So yeah, get off of X.
Speaker 2: I'm honestly like, I want to stay on there for
Speaker 2: my fucking publisher and I might talk to them about it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: It's just like it's a horrifying pedo generator.
Speaker 4: You don't want to be there, and they're literally nobody's
Speaker 4: doing anything about the pornography and the sea sam being
Speaker 4: generated on it and that just exists. And they just
Speaker 4: got a bunch of new funding. They got rewarded for this.
Speaker 2: Well they did that so they could buy GPUs.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, actually I want to end with a fun idea.
Speaker 1: Here's a fun idea that I think everyone's gonna love.
Speaker 1: So here is how Elon Musk ruins his life using AI.
Speaker 1: So Elon Musk is doing. They just raised twenty billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Most of that is going to go to GPUs AI.
Speaker 3: For groc And where did they raise that from?
Speaker 2: Vcs vcsh fuck? I forget, like who exactly why the
Speaker 2: venture capitalist is it? It's mostly vcs in debt and Nvidia.
Speaker 2: So they're doing that to build more data centers. They're
Speaker 2: losing over a billion dollars a month just on the
Speaker 2: current thing. They're going to build more data centers, which
Speaker 2: will lose them even more money. Elon masks money mostly
Speaker 2: comes from leverage, which means just borrowing on his current
Speaker 2: holdings what He's not particularly liquid, and he's added the
Speaker 2: most money losing thing ever to a social network which
Speaker 2: already loses money and a slash groc on Reddit.
Speaker 1: Everyone there should be redacted. It's mostly just people generating
Speaker 1: horrifying things of women.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. Every time he does that, it's probably
Speaker 2: five to ten bucks. It's happening millions of times a day.
Speaker 2: This could actually lead AI could lead to the destruction
Speaker 2: of someone like that. And people say, oh, Elon Musk
Speaker 2: always finds more money. There are actual limits to Ed's point.
Speaker 2: There are actual limits.
Speaker 4: The thing I would say for people, Yes, he is
Speaker 4: still he is the world's richest.
Speaker 2: He's finding ways to do it because he's the richest
Speaker 2: man on paper. Yeah, and he got so much, like
Speaker 2: the Twitter deals thirteen billion dollars, there's fucking nothing compared
Speaker 2: to the bullshit data centers. I want everyone to just
Speaker 2: think about and laugh about the idea that this man
Speaker 2: is building big ass data centers to just under money.
Speaker 4: He keeps talking about Mars. Let him go to my
Speaker 4: to Mars. Let him be hoisted by his own Yeah.
Speaker 4: If you've read the beginning of Red Mars, you know
Speaker 4: it's totally great. There's some ideas there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Then that first prologue about what might happen to Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's and I realized that it's tough, and I
Speaker 1: know it's we come to the end of this block.
Speaker 1: I know we've been quite cynical. This is so hokey,
Speaker 1: and I do this every CS. The best thing you
Speaker 1: can do when you hear this stuff, when you're like
Speaker 1: I'm upset with this is love your friends harder. Telling
Speaker 1: me I love everyone in this room, genuinely, so happy
Speaker 1: to have everyone here. But it's like that that little
Speaker 1: thing that you think is so immaterial. We'll save lives,
Speaker 1: will make people's lives happier. Tell people you love their shit.
Speaker 1: Go online, use social media to say I think clubic
Speaker 1: you're insanely funny, and I've watched you only get funnyeh, Devendra.
Speaker 2: I've followed you work for like a decade.
Speaker 1: Edward and Graso Junior an insanely talented man, and I
Speaker 1: love reading your work and I love having you on
Speaker 1: the mic. These things are actually very easy to do
Speaker 1: and easier because of digital There is never go you're
Speaker 1: listening to this, go and fucking do that too. Literally,
Speaker 1: anyone you know, family member, friend creator, Tell them you
Speaker 1: love them, love their shit, and why. That is actually
Speaker 1: something that digital communication allows you to do today that
Speaker 1: will make the world better by used by used. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want a new thing, buy a used one,
Speaker 1: it's probably fine. That is the only way we begin
Speaker 1: fixing things. And these moral choices like Devendra mentioned.
Speaker 7: Or if I want to chat you bt rapper to
Speaker 7: tell me what color my shit is and if that
Speaker 7: is gonna be indicative of a health problem.
Speaker 2: You could just use Microsoft Copilot, which will be in
Speaker 2: a Windows laptop from a.
Speaker 7: Year Microsoft three sixty five. Could hear the laptop around
Speaker 7: and take a photo and then also at the same time,
Speaker 7: look at the chap.
Speaker 3: You got this.
Speaker 4: We're going to see some cool stuff like these with
Speaker 4: these local lll ms. We're gonna go back to punk tech, right,
Speaker 4: people building their own cool little minds make little cool
Speaker 4: things like We're going to be back there, their own
Speaker 4: little gadgets powered by punk tech. I want to see
Speaker 4: that more.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, I know it's fucking grim out there,
Speaker 1: and it really is. We are still One of the
Speaker 1: problems in society is we're hyper connected and full of technology.
Speaker 1: One of the cool things is we are as well,
Speaker 1: and there is a ton of tech that exists today
Speaker 1: that you don't need to worry about the future.
Speaker 2: That will do what you want to do. By us,
Speaker 2: I just tell your friends and family you love them,
Speaker 2: to creators, you love their work, share their ship.
Speaker 3: Give me a little compliments gift No I mentioned.
Speaker 2: Give friends little compliments that you can do that in seconds,
Speaker 2: that it doesn't matter where they are in the world,
Speaker 2: as long as they've gotten into that connection. It's so
Speaker 2: fucking hokey, but I think it's easy to miss. And
Speaker 2: I think like we come to an end. As we
Speaker 2: come to the end here, it has come to the
Speaker 2: end of this blog. It's worth saying that. And you
Speaker 2: know what, I only have one plug something Devendra. What
Speaker 2: are you working on the moment? What do you want
Speaker 2: people to read?
Speaker 4: And gadgets? Where where I'm doing this stuff? Check out
Speaker 4: our CS coverage. I also do a movie podcast, the
Speaker 4: Filmcast at the filmcast dot com. Can't wait to see
Speaker 4: your movie, Chloe, But maybe don't listen to my review.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Edwin Greiser Junior, what you're excited about writing? What are
Speaker 2: you writing at the moment?
Speaker 7: Working on this very weird essay for for prim magazine?
Speaker 2: Tell me.
Speaker 7: It's uh, I mean yeah, it's I've pitched the same idea.
Speaker 7: You know, I supposed to do this. I pitched the
Speaker 7: same idea two places, but I know one is gonna
Speaker 7: one is gonna actually say yes, and the other one
Speaker 7: and it's uh. One of my favorite speeches is MLK
Speaker 7: is a Letter to Christians. It's from the perspective of
Speaker 7: Paul writing to American Christians and warning and kind of
Speaker 7: like sussing out the society they have in warning about it.
Speaker 7: But I wanted to invert it, so I wrote a
Speaker 7: letter from a future where fascist won, and it's a
Speaker 7: letter from the fascist who won to the fascist now
Speaker 7: as a way to reverse talk about stuff that's.
Speaker 6: Going on now.
Speaker 3: That sounds yeah, I don't.
Speaker 7: I don't like researching it.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 4: It's been interesting.
Speaker 7: It's a fun experiment. Yeah, so stuff like that. I've
Speaker 7: been trying to do a lot more fiction experiments because
Speaker 7: I've been doing more readings lately. So good, it's excited
Speaker 7: for that.
Speaker 2: Fucking great, Chloe, Why are you playing? Wait?
Speaker 6: Then?
Speaker 3: I'm doing Cincinnati this weekend the ninth and tenth or
Speaker 3: tenth and eleventh, whatever. The Friday Saturday is Lincoln be
Speaker 3: in the then Washington, d C. The next weekend MLK
Speaker 3: weekend Thursday, Friday Saturday, and then that following week Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Speaker 3: Not a weekend. I'm doing my solo show Cheat in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: Come on out to that. After that Vermont for Collins. YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 3: Road Fargo, and I.
Speaker 1: Have been putting a link to getting a permanent discount
Speaker 1: to my newsletter. And in these things I've not done
Speaker 1: my paid newsletter. It's a chunk of my income. Please
Speaker 1: fucking God, subscribe to my paid newsletter. I really if
Speaker 1: I can in the years time, if I can double
Speaker 1: from here, I can just do this.
Speaker 2: Yes, really happy?
Speaker 7: Also subscribe their mind. Yeah, well I figure out a
Speaker 7: special we can do an a.
Speaker 2: Better than one. Yeah, really though, if you're gonna put
Speaker 2: your money into anything.
Speaker 1: Sean Paul Adams, who was a friend of the show,
Speaker 1: friend of the suite, He passed sadly last year. His
Speaker 1: son is epileptic, so we are honoring him by getting
Speaker 1: you to donate to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. His
Speaker 1: family and friends would deeply appreciate you doing so, and
Speaker 1: so would I. Thank you so much. We'll be back
Speaker 1: for two hours. In a few hours. This has been incredible.
Speaker 1: I love doing this show.
Speaker 2: I love you all. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 2: The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
Speaker 2: is Metosowski. You can check out more of his music
Speaker 2: and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, M A T
Speaker 2: T O S O W s ki dot com. You
Speaker 2: can email me at easy at Better Offline dot com
Speaker 2: or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast
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