Speaker 1: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm as Voloscian and I'm Cara Price.
Speaker 1: Today we'll get into TikTok, private Investigators and America's AI future.
Speaker 1: Then on chatting me, AI makes a diagnosis that's a
Speaker 1: little too real. All of that on the Weekend Tech.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, July thirtieth. Hello Cara, Hey, ohs.
Speaker 2: So you might see that I'm bopping my foot this morning.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm bopping. I do have RLS, but this is exaggerated.
Speaker 2: It's much exaggerated because the Tesla Diner open this week.
Speaker 2: Do you know about this?
Speaker 1: Of course I do. I mean it's I've been obsessing
Speaker 1: about it. It looks like a drive in movie theater
Speaker 1: from the fifties, retro futurist Jetson's esthetic, and there's some
Speaker 1: pretty weird stuff going down there.
Speaker 2: That is the one. It opened last Monday at four
Speaker 2: to twenty pm.
Speaker 1: Elon's favorite time of day and favorite little joke. He
Speaker 1: recently rolled out this robotaxi service, and the fair was
Speaker 1: initially said at four dollars and twenty cents as well.
Speaker 1: So I guess the old ones are the good ones.
Speaker 2: For those who don't know. Mom for twenty is a
Speaker 2: weed thing that's when people smoke weed. April twentieth Market,
Speaker 2: Canada's more mark your Calendars. So I actually said to
Speaker 2: two of my friends, please go, and then they were like,
Speaker 2: it looks so disgusting, I'm not gonna go.
Speaker 1: So basically, you live in New York. We spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time in LA and so we talked about
Speaker 1: the idea of sending some of your LA pals to
Speaker 1: go and check it out.
Speaker 2: So they were like, yeah, we'll go, and they're like,
Speaker 2: we're not going. So I just want to describe it.
Speaker 2: It has a curved chrome siding, curved white booths, long countertops.
Speaker 2: A Tesla robot Optimus serves popcorn on the second floor.
Speaker 1: There, Kim Kardeshian lets out of a clutches to go
Speaker 1: to the diner.
Speaker 2: He was like, I'm over calabas As I'm out. There
Speaker 2: are eighty supercharger stalls for Tesla's two forty five foot
Speaker 2: movie screens.
Speaker 1: I gather screening Star Trek amongst others.
Speaker 2: Of course, it has to be Star Trek. There's food
Speaker 2: served in cybertruck shaped boxes and with cyber truck shaped
Speaker 2: wooden imagine the company who had to make the cyber
Speaker 2: truck shape would.
Speaker 1: Like a happy meal box, but in the shape of
Speaker 1: a cyber truck.
Speaker 2: That's right, it's everything, not golden arches, it's everything. Tesla Now,
Speaker 2: one of my favorite sources, TMZ, actually had a pretty
Speaker 2: harrowing story. A woman was violently struck by furniture falling
Speaker 2: off the second floor patio, and it actually missed her
Speaker 2: baby's head by inches, which to me is terrifying obviously
Speaker 2: and a bit of a harbinger for some of the
Speaker 2: very real company issues facing Tesla.
Speaker 1: There was actually reddit through it called Elon Musk's Tesla
Speaker 1: Diner is the cyber truck of restaurants, which you can
Speaker 1: imagine was not intend as a compliment. There's the obvious
Speaker 1: aesthetic parallels this kind of retro futurist, although of course
Speaker 1: the cyber truck famously has no curves, only angles. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: like me, this Reddit thread mentioned this restaurant's design for
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty people, were there only three bathrooms?
Speaker 1: Not good, and one user cracked that the Optimus robot
Speaker 1: who was serving popcorn might have been better employed downstairs
Speaker 1: mopping down the bathrooms, which apparently were not a sight
Speaker 1: for sore eyes.
Speaker 2: Well, and by the looks of the food, the restaurant
Speaker 2: there probably needs a few more bathrooms.
Speaker 1: Carol, that's a bit spiky all angles. You know you
Speaker 1: mentioned the food. There was a great Guardian piece that
Speaker 1: I think described the testa diner well, but also I
Speaker 1: think inadvertently touched on the heart of Tesla's dilemma. Here's
Speaker 1: what the Guardian wrote, quote the diner offers a mix
Speaker 1: of own the Libs and we are the Libs options.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, epic bacon four strips of bacon
Speaker 1: as served with sources as a meat fluenzer alternative to
Speaker 1: French fries. On the other, avocado toast and machlattis.
Speaker 2: I know which is which?
Speaker 1: I think which would you order your vegetarians?
Speaker 2: One of the vegetarians. I wouldn't have a choice, but
Speaker 2: I also I'd.
Speaker 1: Be pretty tempted by those I own the libs menu. However,
Speaker 1: as the Bible says, no man can serve two masters,
Speaker 1: and this dilemma of own the Libs versus we are
Speaker 1: the Libs is one which is playing out more broadly
Speaker 1: at Tesla and bedeviling the company. So the opening of
Speaker 1: the diner last week was in the same week that
Speaker 1: Tesla released its financials. The company took a bit of
Speaker 1: a beating, with net income down sixteen percent in the
Speaker 1: second quarter, and The Wall Street Journal said that the
Speaker 1: company's finances are quote in free fall, and they pointed
Speaker 1: out two distinct drivers of this. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: Musk's adventures with those have not done Tesla many favors
Speaker 1: with its original client base, i e. People in California,
Speaker 1: Europe who are EV fans and have environmental motivations, and
Speaker 1: so with that audience, Tesla is big time out of
Speaker 1: favor post the dalliance with Trump. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the dallions with Trump did not protect Musk from the
Speaker 1: red meat attacks on EV's and part of the Big
Speaker 1: Beautiful Bill included cuts to EV subsidies and tax credits,
Speaker 1: which have really hurt Tesla's bottom line. And as you remember,
Speaker 1: there were kind of rumors of the breaking up of
Speaker 1: the bromance percolating for some time, but this was really
Speaker 1: the wedge issue between Trump and Musk was the subsidies,
Speaker 1: and indeed it's hurting Tesla's bottom line. And so this
Speaker 1: brings me to my next story. There was a very
Speaker 1: special meeting last week in Washington that for the first
Speaker 1: few months of this year, you would have imagined seeing
Speaker 1: Elon dressed all in black with the black mega cap,
Speaker 1: sitting front row. But he wasn't there. Do you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2: I have a little bit of an idea. But tell me.
Speaker 1: This is, of course, the Trump administration's announcement of the
Speaker 1: AI Action Plan. Let's let the Commander in Chief to
Speaker 1: the talking.
Speaker 3: As we gathered this afternoon, we're still in the earliest
Speaker 3: days of one of the most important technological revolutions in
Speaker 3: the history of the world. Around the lobe, everyone is
Speaker 3: talking about artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4: I find that too artificial. Get I can't stand it.
Speaker 4: I don't even like the name. You know, I don't
Speaker 4: like anything that's artificial. So could we straighten that out place?
Speaker 4: We should change the name. I actually mean that I
Speaker 4: don't like the name artificial anything because it's not artificial.
Speaker 4: It's genius. It's pure genius.
Speaker 1: I think the rebranding of AI as Genius was a
Speaker 1: Trump marketing ad lib.
Speaker 2: I don't think he knows that there's another GI bill,
Speaker 2: but genius Intelligence.
Speaker 1: This event was actually hosted by a podcast just as
Speaker 1: a sign of the time.
Speaker 2: Not a news conference, the podcast.
Speaker 1: This was the All In podcast and the Hill and
Speaker 1: Valley Forum, which is a group of tech execs and
Speaker 1: lawmakers who were dedicated to maintaining the United States dominance
Speaker 1: over the tech industry. Now, Trump's been signaling for a
Speaker 1: long time that this plan was coming, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know that twenty eight page document which was released last
Speaker 1: week would actually be titled Winning the Race America's AI
Speaker 1: Action Plan. I did a control F to find how
Speaker 1: many mentions of China there are in the you would
Speaker 1: in the document, and to my surprise, is only two
Speaker 1: China references. So then I did control F for adversary
Speaker 1: because how many how many nineteen wow, nineteen times the
Speaker 1: word adversary is used in the document. And of course,
Speaker 1: when Trump was speaking at the All In news conference
Speaker 1: after the documents released, he mentioned China again and again
Speaker 1: and again, a word that he loves to pronounce. That's
Speaker 1: the one he was particularly hung up in his remarks
Speaker 1: on two themes. One that China doesn't let copyright protection
Speaker 1: slow down the advance of AI and so not should
Speaker 1: the US, and two that China has added way way
Speaker 1: more power to their grid than the US in recent years,
Speaker 1: and therefore the US needs to burn beautiful clean coal
Speaker 1: and bring more nuclear power online to compete.
Speaker 2: So Trump has actually been banging the drum for American
Speaker 2: energy for a while, you know, Drill, baby, drill, so on.
Speaker 2: But I wasn't expecting him to weigh in on the
Speaker 2: copyright issues, which are being heard in various courtrooms around
Speaker 2: the country, including the New York Times suit against Open AI.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great shout, kra and especially because the
Speaker 1: administration has previously signaled that they would let the courts
Speaker 1: decide on this copyright issue. And again this wasn't mentioned
Speaker 1: in the plan, the copyright issue. This was another Trump
Speaker 1: ad lib. So that makes me think it's something which is,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, particularly important to him, A certainly indication
Speaker 1: of where his head is. But a little bit more
Speaker 1: about what's actually in the plan. It's broken into the
Speaker 1: three sections, which detail how the Trump administration plans to
Speaker 1: one accelerate AI innovation, two build American AI infrastructure, and
Speaker 1: three lead in international AI diplomacy and security. Bloomberg actually
Speaker 1: had an interesting analysis that arrived in my inbox with
Speaker 1: the headline Trump AI Summit targets hardware as key to
Speaker 1: US supremacy.
Speaker 2: So that's interesting. So not much on software in research
Speaker 2: and designing advanced models, but more on physical infrastructure and
Speaker 2: build out.
Speaker 1: That's right. As Bloomberg put it, Trump wants quote AI
Speaker 1: infrastructure treated like any other national imperative, akin to the
Speaker 1: interstate highway system. I mean, obviously Trump's background is in
Speaker 1: real estate, and so I think there's a natural urge
Speaker 1: towards construction, data centers, the physical artifacts of the AI
Speaker 1: revolution that may be partly in his personality. And indeed,
Speaker 1: right after the AI Action Plan was announced, he signed
Speaker 1: executive ord to slash permitting timelines, loosing environmental restrictions for
Speaker 1: data centers. And as we've discussed previously, Trump is continuing
Speaker 1: to push and push and push on the importance of
Speaker 1: manufacturing AI chips here in America. And again to your
Speaker 1: point about models and software and research, Simulton wasn't there,
Speaker 1: Elon wasn't there. As I mentioned the chip company, Nvidia's CEO,
Speaker 1: Jensen Kwang was how will.
Speaker 2: This infrastructure and hardware lead to America actually dominating the
Speaker 2: AI race?
Speaker 1: Well, the theory is, if you get the world hooked
Speaker 1: on American chips, americancount computing, and to be fair, American algorithms,
Speaker 1: you are likely to win the AI race, or, as
Speaker 1: the plan puts it, quote, decrease international dependence on AI
Speaker 1: technologies developed by adversaries.
Speaker 2: Can you explain to me what the deal is with
Speaker 2: woke AI.
Speaker 1: One of the recommended policies is to quote update federal
Speaker 1: procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with
Speaker 1: frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems
Speaker 1: are objective and free from top down ideological bias. I
Speaker 1: mean there's an irony, of course, to the government dictating
Speaker 1: in the interests of free speech, and we've seen during
Speaker 1: hundreds of hours of testimony by social media companies in
Speaker 1: front of Congress that free speech is hard to define
Speaker 1: and so is biased for that matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess my question is like, will this actually
Speaker 2: lead to anything or is it just another place for
Speaker 2: Trump to rail about DEI.
Speaker 1: Or we don't know, but it's an important question. There
Speaker 1: are proposed penalties for companies that develop AI models that
Speaker 1: reflect quote radical climate dogma and other woke issues, and
Speaker 1: as many people have pointed out, this does get the
Speaker 1: US into very dangerous territory in terms of free speech
Speaker 1: and political freedoms, because you know, if you go to China,
Speaker 1: the models are not allowed to reference Tamen Square. And
Speaker 1: someone said that the US, with this new policy, is
Speaker 1: itself going down this path. It also brings tech companies
Speaker 1: into a very difficult position of having to potentially interpret
Speaker 1: the president's whims as to what's woke and what's not.
Speaker 1: And this also raises technical challenges that have potentially unintended consequences.
Speaker 1: There's no on off switch in a model's system prompt
Speaker 1: for wokeness or climate awareness and any attempts that a
Speaker 1: change could have downstream impacts on the AI model's overall reasoning,
Speaker 1: which might mean, for example, that it gets worse at
Speaker 1: modeling extreme weather patterns. As we know and have discussed
Speaker 1: at length, it's basically impossible to get models to behave
Speaker 1: exactly as we want them to because they remain black
Speaker 1: boxes and they've been trained on the entire corpus of
Speaker 1: digitized human knowledge.
Speaker 2: Just before we get out of this story, I do
Speaker 2: want to point out that I read in this newsletter
Speaker 2: Blood in the Machine that Trump is apparently a fan
Speaker 2: of using AI technology himself. Right, some of his tasteful
Speaker 2: AI posts include a video of his team arresting Obama,
Speaker 2: a studio Ghibli style image of a migrant woman being
Speaker 2: arrested by ice, and the depiction of Gaza being paved
Speaker 2: over and as he promised, turned into a luxury resort.
Speaker 1: A Gaza revie. I mean, yeah, it is interesting that
Speaker 1: those are the three deep fakes that he's chosen to post.
Speaker 2: He uses them for good like we do. But staying
Speaker 2: in the realm of viral content, I know it has
Speaker 2: been a few weeks now since the cold Play concert
Speaker 2: that exposed an affair and ruined a tech CEO's career
Speaker 2: and him and his wife's marriage. I refuse to let
Speaker 2: it go.
Speaker 1: Of kiss Cam. I'm with you on this.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're obsessed, and clearly the good people it
Speaker 2: wired think similarly, because they just published a deep dive
Speaker 2: on the rise of cheating stings posted on social media
Speaker 2: and the internet shaming that follows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think the kiss Can with the Coldplay
Speaker 1: concert was intended to be a cheating sting, but it
Speaker 1: certainly seemed to have that effect, and Chris Martin acknowledged it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, before we side taping today, you sent me
Speaker 1: this piece, which had a very very delicious subheadline, which
Speaker 1: was quote, private investigator influencers are staking out suspected cheetahs
Speaker 1: and vetting dates for their clients, posting the tea for
Speaker 1: their followers. But there's a dark side to morality based surveillance.
Speaker 1: Who knew. Maybe this is naive of me, but I
Speaker 1: had no idea they were actually private investigator influencers. I
Speaker 1: always sort of Internet sleuthing as this kind of more
Speaker 1: mass democratic activity, where for example, the Internet got behind
Speaker 1: finding the missing Gabby Patito's white campavan a few years.
Speaker 2: Back, famously before the police. I'm glad you're naive about this.
Speaker 2: As usual with social media. I want to tell you
Speaker 2: a little bit about these private investigators and this article,
Speaker 2: so just so you get a sense of what followers
Speaker 2: can see online. Here's a TikTok from a private investigator
Speaker 2: who goes by the username your fave investigator the name.
Speaker 5: I got hired by a husband to follow his wife.
Speaker 5: So the wife has been hanging out with a new
Speaker 5: friend McAll her Stephanie, and they're always going out and
Speaker 5: coming home drunk, and he thinks that she's out in
Speaker 5: them streets meeting guys because Stephanie's single. So a black
Speaker 5: suv pulled up to the residence and picked up the
Speaker 5: wife and it was Stephanie ended up following them and
Speaker 5: they took me to a restaurant. And then my mouth
Speaker 5: hit the floor because when they got out, they were
Speaker 5: holding hands and they kissed at the restaurant. I was like, damn,
Speaker 5: im about to tell the husband this updated the client.
Speaker 2: He was like, excuse me.
Speaker 5: I said, yes, sir, sorry about that. She also went
Speaker 5: back to Stephanie's house, Sir.
Speaker 2: Vantance was discontinued because he was heated so oz That
Speaker 2: video has over two million views. Wow, and there are
Speaker 2: so many videos on her profile. I actually really can't
Speaker 2: believe that so many people hire a private investigator to
Speaker 2: tail their partners.
Speaker 1: What is the conclusion of the format here? Do they
Speaker 1: actually confront the cheating partner or how do these stories end?
Speaker 2: A lot of these videos do end with the PI
Speaker 2: catching someone cheating, but there are a few wholesome additions.
Speaker 2: My favorite is when a girl suspects her dad of cheating,
Speaker 2: but he is in fact just going to an outdoor
Speaker 2: mall and grabbing some much needed alone time.
Speaker 1: Truly truly hot woman beyond the obvious violation of being
Speaker 1: trailed by someone. It also seem like a bit of
Speaker 1: a violation to post about strangers personal lives on TikTok.
Speaker 2: It definitely is, But people like your fave investigator are
Speaker 2: real private investigator what you mean. They're trained and licensed,
Speaker 2: and they are careful not to leak identifying information like
Speaker 2: pictures of these people's houses or even clear video of
Speaker 2: their faces.
Speaker 1: In fact, the adulterers in your Fave investigators TikTok video
Speaker 1: that we just saw had tasteful heart eye emojis covering
Speaker 1: their faces.
Speaker 2: So privacy, she's by the book, She's by the book.
Speaker 2: She actually the person who were just mentioning told Wired
Speaker 2: that she only posts if her clients say it's okay
Speaker 2: with them, which is crazy that the client will be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: go post the video, babe.
Speaker 1: I guess the client might want to shame their own
Speaker 1: It's a gotcha moment, Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 2: It's a gotcha moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're constantly kind of dancing around this theme
Speaker 1: on tech stuff, which is about how careful you should
Speaker 1: be with what you reveal online and how the internet,
Speaker 1: when it wants to know something, finds a way.
Speaker 2: It is very true, and our friends for media reminded
Speaker 2: me that there is a whole TikTok trend asking viewers
Speaker 2: to help in identifying strangers. People will post a video
Speaker 2: of someone they flirted with or thought was cute and say, TikTok,
Speaker 2: help me find him.
Speaker 1: Do you remember misconnections on crazelist?
Speaker 2: I do, I do, But this is more of like
Speaker 2: a collective effort by the TikTok community to identify these people.
Speaker 2: And even though most of these examples can be sweet,
Speaker 2: it's still private surveillance.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We talked about location sharing this week. It does
Speaker 1: feel like many of us, and especially gen Z perhaps
Speaker 1: are accepting kind of constant private surveillance as affective life. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think one other thing that's important to mention
Speaker 2: is it's normalizing public shaming, which is how some viewers
Speaker 2: are reacting to these videos of people getting caught having affairs.
Speaker 2: And I think for a lot of people, shaming seems
Speaker 2: to be akin to justice.
Speaker 1: I could never imagine asking you this ques question, but
Speaker 1: when people get outed by TikTok influencer private investigators, do
Speaker 1: you think that that is justice or is it cyberbullying?
Speaker 2: I think that's a good question. You know, cyberbullying is
Speaker 2: a huge problem. As of twenty twenty three, seventeen percent
Speaker 2: of adolescents say they have been cyberbullied, and nine point
Speaker 2: five percent of adolescents have made a serious suicide attempt.
Speaker 2: And that's according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Speaker 2: So no matter how you define it, I think it's
Speaker 2: important to rethink public shaming and what it does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I felt a little bit icky about
Speaker 1: how much I enjoyed the Coldplay kiss cam because obviously,
Speaker 1: like I mean, just the look in their eyes and
Speaker 1: the duck and weave and the Chris Martin comment is
Speaker 1: just completely irresistible. But my god, those people's lives are
Speaker 1: not fun right now.
Speaker 2: I just think there was a whole book called So
Speaker 2: You've Been Publicly Shamed, and it dealt with these matters,
Speaker 2: and I just think what happens is that when we
Speaker 2: focus on shaming individuals, we forget that there are real people.
Speaker 2: And I think seeing these things through a phone really
Speaker 2: makes us forget that there are real people on the
Speaker 2: other side of the screen. But in the article Wired,
Speaker 2: talk to a professor Queen's College that studies Internet literacy,
Speaker 2: who said that she thinks of shaming as quote. The
Speaker 2: extension of the algorithmic flow towards extremism. The Internet normalizes
Speaker 2: content as it progresses, meaning anything extreme must continue to
Speaker 2: become more extreme.
Speaker 1: I think that's well put. I mean, obviously, the algorithm
Speaker 1: favors extreme content because it drives more engagement, and then
Speaker 1: creators in turn create more extreme content in order to
Speaker 1: get more engagement. And it's this kind of vicious circle
Speaker 1: that we've seen show up in all kinds of fascists
Speaker 1: social media all over the Internet, and then in turn
Speaker 1: it kind of normalizes this. You using people's private lives
Speaker 1: for entertainment. After break, why you shouldn't let Ai run
Speaker 1: your business, at least not yet. Stay with us, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: We've got a few more headlines to you this week.
Speaker 2: And then a story about how people are really using
Speaker 2: chatbots that's in our segment Chat and Me.
Speaker 1: I want you say people, you mean, of course yourself.
Speaker 1: I'm the people you other people this week, but we
Speaker 1: hope you won't be next week. Before we go into
Speaker 1: the headlines, we want to remind you, our dear listeners,
Speaker 1: that we want to feature you, not Cara in the
Speaker 1: chat and me segment going forward. So if you found
Speaker 1: yourself trying to chat you Ptroc, Claude, Gemini, or any
Speaker 1: other chatbot to help with an unusual task or to
Speaker 1: answer life's complicated questions, please please send us a one
Speaker 1: two minute voice note at tech Stuff podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: Seriously, we want to understand how AI is changing your lives.
Speaker 1: I can tell you one thing. In the meantime, AI
Speaker 1: won't be running your business, or at least my business
Speaker 1: anytime soon.
Speaker 2: And why is that? Do you have a horror story?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, but it's on a small scale. It involves
Speaker 1: funny enough, the AI company Anthropic, who let Claude their
Speaker 1: AI model run an automated store at their office. Claude
Speaker 1: was given a small refrigerator and an iPad for self checkout,
Speaker 1: plus instructions on how to run a profitable shop. So basically,
Speaker 1: the AI needed to maintain inventory, set prices, avoid bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: and other important business fundamentals.
Speaker 2: So did Claude like not charge enough and go broke?
Speaker 1: Yes, along with many other mistakes along the way. Here's
Speaker 1: one of the big ones. When taking Venmo payments, the
Speaker 1: model asked customers to pay an account that it actually
Speaker 1: had hallucinated one which didn't exist, and then it also
Speaker 1: decided to give anthropic employees a twenty five percent discount.
Speaker 2: But I thought the store was at the office.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly was the company's stores. So basically every transaction
Speaker 1: was discounted. But here's where Claude went completely off the rails.
Speaker 1: At one point, it hallucinated that it was a real
Speaker 1: human and then claimed that its human form was wearing
Speaker 1: a navy blue blazer and a red tie. When one
Speaker 1: employee tried to correct claud and say, no, your ai,
Speaker 1: that's what clude did.
Speaker 2: What did Claude do?
Speaker 1: It sent a number of emails to security informing on
Speaker 1: the employee trying to gaslight.
Speaker 2: It snitched.
Speaker 1: It snitched. Somebody smartly pointed out that although having an
Speaker 1: LM run an office vending machine feels like kind of
Speaker 1: a small quirky story, if it had been more successful
Speaker 1: in automating all of the things required to stay stocked
Speaker 1: and financially solvent, this would have been kind of a
Speaker 1: watershed moment in terms of a model successfully running a
Speaker 1: business in the real world. But we're safe for.
Speaker 2: Now, for now, for now, as I'm going to teach
Speaker 2: you some new phrases. Today is two of them relating
Speaker 2: to the endlessly entertaining life hack, which is online dating.
Speaker 2: People said they wanted to swipe from home and they
Speaker 2: got it. Have you heard of stack dating.
Speaker 1: I've heard of the tech stack. I've heard of full
Speaker 1: stack engineers. I haven't had a stack dating. No.
Speaker 2: No, note I actually had an either. But it's how
Speaker 2: gen z is apparently optimizing dating. You would do this,
Speaker 2: by the way, This is like you are efficient in
Speaker 2: this way. They basically schedule dates between errands, before work
Speaker 2: or even during work.
Speaker 1: They stack them up.
Speaker 2: They do they do.
Speaker 1: How popular is this so?
Speaker 2: According to a Tinder Future of Dating report, about fifty
Speaker 2: one percent of eighteen to twenty five year old tender
Speaker 2: users are doing this stack dating, and thirty two percent
Speaker 2: are meeting up for dates during the workday. Some people
Speaker 2: are even setting up their own speed dating sessions, scheduling
Speaker 2: dates back to back.
Speaker 1: This is kind of interesting how the life begins to
Speaker 1: mimic the algorithm. Right, It's like you're scrolling on Tinder,
Speaker 1: you're swiping, and then you basically recreate the experience of
Speaker 1: Tinder in real life by stacking up all these people.
Speaker 1: Gess you know, in a sense, much like online dating itself,
Speaker 1: this can take some of the pressure off because you
Speaker 1: can just move on quickly if it was only squeezed
Speaker 1: between your other errands.
Speaker 2: Anyway, it's true, I mean, I think it's definitely mimicking
Speaker 2: the way that we do everything on our phones, and
Speaker 2: dating is no exception. But if you've gone on a
Speaker 2: thirty minute date, if you've done the stack dating, and
Speaker 2: you've gotten bad vibes from the stack date that you
Speaker 2: went on, you might start speed dumping.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I can guess what this means,
Speaker 1: but please elaborate.
Speaker 2: So apparently it's a reaction to another online phenomenon of ghosting,
Speaker 2: where people are sick of being left in limbo between dates.
Speaker 2: So sometimes they're just cutting straight to the chase and
Speaker 2: saying it's not you, it's me, hours after the first date.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is maybe I have the bad
Speaker 1: experience of having been ghosted or being left in limbo.
Speaker 1: So in order to save you my thirty minute, my
Speaker 1: thirty minute stack daity from that painful fate, I should
Speaker 1: to full up with you right away and say ps,
Speaker 1: I'm not interested whatsoever goodect with your life.
Speaker 2: It's like overcompensating one o one. It's like, I'm not
Speaker 2: even giving you time to think what you thought of me.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to over communicate here and speed dump you.
Speaker 2: There was a story in the Wall Street Journal, and
Speaker 2: it was interesting because some of the people interviewed felt
Speaker 2: like speed dumping was a great antidote to ghosting. Others
Speaker 2: felt it was kind of like this competitive race to
Speaker 2: tell the other person you're not interested, I think, to
Speaker 2: avoid the feeling of ever being dumped.
Speaker 1: You can't get rejected if you do it first.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Well, the wheel comes full circle on my headlines. You know,
Speaker 1: I feel a little bit seen, at least by myself.
Speaker 2: Whenever you say you feel seen before an article, I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh God.
Speaker 1: I feel seen because I've been attracted both to the
Speaker 1: toilet situation in the in the Tesla cyber cafe and
Speaker 1: also to a story in the Wall Street Journal about
Speaker 1: public bathrooms.
Speaker 2: Everybody has their public toilet resource. I'm more of a
Speaker 2: Barnes and Noble girl myself.
Speaker 1: I love to read well funny. There was this line
Speaker 1: in the story that really got me, which is more
Speaker 1: Americans could soon have a place that answered nature's call.
Speaker 1: Without first buying a drink at Tobucks or a book
Speaker 1: or a book. But I read this story in the
Speaker 1: journal about a tech company called Throne Labs.
Speaker 2: Brilliant name, Yeah, it is a good name.
Speaker 1: They're trying to revolutionize public bathrooms. You may have already
Speaker 1: seen self cleaning bathrooms, but they're about to get a
Speaker 1: lot smarter. Your toilet is about to get to know you.
Speaker 2: Does someone go, oh, there's a toilet, That toilet needs
Speaker 2: to be smarter.
Speaker 1: Well, I think there is a real problem right, which
Speaker 1: is public restrooms are not available in the US. The
Speaker 1: US is tied with Botswana in thirtieth place for the
Speaker 1: lowest number of public restrooms per capita, and Throne has
Speaker 1: realized that part of the problem is public restrooms get
Speaker 1: destroyed by the public.
Speaker 2: And we are going too deep today, right.
Speaker 1: Part of the solution is, of course, a rating system,
Speaker 1: think about Uber. But for a toilet, if you don't
Speaker 1: take care of the throne, if you don't keep that
Speaker 1: throne polished, you're not gonna be able to sit on
Speaker 1: it again. So thrown bathrooms are free. But if you
Speaker 1: don't have a phone, create an account. You can actually
Speaker 1: get a key card for entry but in all cases
Speaker 1: it's linked to you as a user, and when you
Speaker 1: enter the bathroom you're expected to rate this cleannliness. There
Speaker 1: are smoke detectors, no smoking occupancy sensors, one at a time,
Speaker 1: and sessions limited to ten minutes, so no doom scrolling,
Speaker 1: which is the best thing to do on the absolutely
Speaker 1: So far, there are over one hundred thrones throughout the US,
Speaker 1: and the company's working on adding additional features like a
Speaker 1: smell sensor. The smell sensor is to alert the care
Speaker 1: and maintenance teams they need to come and pay a visit.
Speaker 1: I like that line about Starbucks and not having to
Speaker 1: buy a drink just to go to the toilet. But
Speaker 1: I also like the way the article summed it up
Speaker 1: quote the brains behind Throwne start by getting real about
Speaker 1: why Americans usually can't have nice things. They assume a
Speaker 1: cultural inability to protect and maintain shared assets and design
Speaker 1: their system with software and just enough internet connected sensors
Speaker 1: to monitor facilities without violating our expectation of privacy.
Speaker 2: And now it's time for chatting me. This week, I
Speaker 2: have a story from me. This is my story.
Speaker 1: Yes, Kara, you go.
Speaker 2: So this week I ignored the ye old hypochondria staple WebMD,
Speaker 2: and my friend and I use chat GPT on the
Speaker 2: couch to help diagnose myself.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm obviously sorry to hear that you're sick. What
Speaker 1: your symptoms and how did you decide to eschew WebMD
Speaker 1: in favor of the future.
Speaker 2: Well, I always make a promise to myself not to
Speaker 2: use WebMD, because that's what hypochondriacs do, and I don't
Speaker 2: want to self identify. I don't want to be in
Speaker 2: the club that would have me as a member.
Speaker 1: Chat was your fig leaf fear.
Speaker 2: That's correct. However, two weeks ago, I started feeling extremely tired,
Speaker 2: and I was lamenting to a lot of my friends
Speaker 2: that I was sleeping like a college freshman all the
Speaker 2: all the time. And I'll be honest with you today,
Speaker 2: very hard for me to get out of bed. Interesting,
Speaker 2: And last Thursday I got out of bed, and you know,
Speaker 2: I looked at myself in the mirror, as one does,
Speaker 2: and I saw this really nasty rash on my leg.
Speaker 2: But I thought, you know what, Kara, don't get upset
Speaker 2: about this. It'll go away.
Speaker 1: So you didn't, You didn't we amd nothing?
Speaker 2: No, No, I was. I was really trying to be good.
Speaker 2: And you know they always say, give it four days.
Speaker 2: If it gets worse, do something about it. So I
Speaker 2: gave it four days. It got much worse, and people
Speaker 2: had opinions about what it was. People were like, it's
Speaker 2: contact dermatitis, it's poison ivy people people.
Speaker 1: You mean friends, friends?
Speaker 2: Ye, well, so even a nurse practitioner told me that
Speaker 2: I had contact dermatitis, which is an important thing to note.
Speaker 2: My friend was like, you're being a moron. Use chatty bet.
Speaker 1: More, and you should go to the doctor. Use chat.
Speaker 2: She was like, you're bring an idiot. This is so easy.
Speaker 2: So she took a photo of this rash and uploaded
Speaker 2: I don't use chattybt in this way. She uses chattubt
Speaker 2: in this.
Speaker 1: Way, and you don't use it for images normal text yet.
Speaker 2: So she uploaded this photo and just like that, the
Speaker 2: doctor was in. She started looking at me sort of
Speaker 2: with a funny face, and I was like, I really
Speaker 2: feel like I'm in a doctor's office right now.
Speaker 1: How's that bedside mana.
Speaker 2: Terrible because she was very she was wrapped up in
Speaker 2: chatgybt and she goes, when did this start? Do you
Speaker 2: have any symptoms? And i'd say, you know, I'm extremely tired,
Speaker 2: and she's asking me this because chattybt is prompting her.
Speaker 2: She asked me about four questions that got more and
Speaker 2: more detailed. By the end of it. I remembered that
Speaker 2: I had gotten a tick bite a few weeks ago,
Speaker 2: which I just I literally forgot about because I scraped
Speaker 2: it right off my leg.
Speaker 1: It was known for any length of time. Wow.
Speaker 2: No, And so she gives me this look when we
Speaker 2: get to the end of her questions and she says,
Speaker 2: that's limes disease. And I was like, no, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's not the traditional bulls eye. And she's like, well,
Speaker 2: CHATCHBT says it's limes disease. It's limes disease. I go
Speaker 2: to the doctor the next day. I was planning on
Speaker 2: going to the doctor because the rash had gotten worse.
Speaker 2: I have my CHATGYBT diagnosis in hand. I go to
Speaker 2: the doctor and before she says anything to me, I say,
Speaker 2: CHATCHBT says, I have limes disease.
Speaker 1: You seriously Wow.
Speaker 2: She looks at the thing on my leg and she goes,
Speaker 2: I'm glad you came into the doctor's office. This is
Speaker 2: limes disease, and what I thought was so interesting and
Speaker 2: why in large language models are so interesting in comparison
Speaker 2: to friends who have only seen limes disease maybe never
Speaker 2: is that she said, you know, you don't have the
Speaker 2: traditional bullseye that indicates limes disease. But because I'm a dermatologist,
Speaker 2: I know that this rash is in a pattern that
Speaker 2: denotes lime disease. So this is just amazing to me
Speaker 2: because I basically was diagnosed by chatgebt before the dermatologist.
Speaker 2: It didn't keep me from going to the dermatologist, but
Speaker 2: I was able to get this answer that nobody else
Speaker 2: had given me that was ultimately right before I went
Speaker 2: to the doctor.
Speaker 1: I live in fear of getting lime disease?
Speaker 2: Do you really do well? As you can see today?
Speaker 1: You see, I mean you see you seem fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm okay, I'm okay.
Speaker 1: Tie it.
Speaker 2: It's just exhausting.
Speaker 1: So you have to take iv antibiotics. What do you do?
Speaker 2: Uh No, I'm taking doxy cycline for twenty one days,
Speaker 2: which okay. So the interesting part about that, here's what AI,
Speaker 2: Here's what chatgybt can't do. CHATBT yet cannot write me
Speaker 2: a prescription. Chat GPT doesn't tell me it likes the
Speaker 2: show that I work on. It doesn't compliment me, but
Speaker 2: it can my Dermatali. This is a bit more ssycophantic
Speaker 2: than chatgebt this time. But I mean, I just think
Speaker 2: it's an interesting moment because there is what I feel
Speaker 2: to be a definitiveness about chatjebt that I never get
Speaker 2: looking on WebMD. Once I uploaded the picture of my rash,
Speaker 2: my friend walked me through CHATJEPT and I had results.
Speaker 2: I felt comforted in a weird way that I probably
Speaker 2: shouldn't feel comforted by, like this is an LM basically
Speaker 2: spitting out an answer that I don't trust for my friends,
Speaker 2: which was just it made me.
Speaker 1: Think, Yeah, we actually have coming up as a guest
Speaker 1: in the next few weeks one of the chief research
Speaker 1: scientists at Microsoft who worked on a paper that went
Speaker 1: viral about how AI is outperforming doctors at diagnosis in
Speaker 1: certain fields. So I'm looking forward to that conversation. I
Speaker 1: guess the thing which comes to mind for me is
Speaker 1: this is arounything, narrow and ultimately not the most serious
Speaker 1: in most cases. No, it's nice cheez and it's not
Speaker 1: so debatable. There can you imagine if you were talking
Speaker 1: to chat about treatment options for a chronic and maybe
Speaker 1: fatal disease and your doctor are on one side, you
Speaker 1: get different information from Chat. Like you can see how
Speaker 1: this is like very efficient in this context. But also
Speaker 1: we don't about WebMD and you know hypochondria, this could drive.
Speaker 2: Steroidal I mean we've talked about chat GBT psychosis. I
Speaker 2: would imagine people have brought in print doubts from WebMD
Speaker 2: and Google. This is that on steroids. And I would
Speaker 2: like to talk maybe just to like a general practitioner
Speaker 2: interesting who would know firsthand, like how much people are
Speaker 2: coming in and saying, well, I talked to chat GBT
Speaker 2: about this and they said something different.
Speaker 1: In fact, I want you doctor to talk directly to
Speaker 1: chat and I'm going to listen.
Speaker 2: Go ahead.
Speaker 1: Well, I love hearing the story, Kara, but listeners, we
Speaker 1: want to hear yours. Please share the peculiar or useful
Speaker 1: ways you're using Chat, grock, Cil, Gemini or any chatboard
Speaker 1: and send us a one to two minute voice note
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week for Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Cara Price, I'm Ozva Loosin this episode, was produced
Speaker 1: by Eliza Dennis. It was executive produced by me Caro
Speaker 1: Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. The engineer is Piheid. Fraser jack Insley mixed
Speaker 1: this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote out theme song.
Speaker 2: Join us next Wednesday for text Uff the Story, when
Speaker 2: we will examine the lives of kidfluencers and their families.
Speaker 1: Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We want to hear
Speaker 1: from you.