Speaker 1: Read, Taylor, I want to ask you to open this
Speaker 1: week's episode. Would you shop online if you didn't actually
Speaker 1: get anything in the mail. But I'm asking because I've
Speaker 1: recently read about these dopamine sites out of South Korea
Speaker 1: that let you look through non existent products with made
Speaker 1: up reviews and promotions that you can add to your cart,
Speaker 1: click buy, track your packages and never receive a thing,
Speaker 1: No money spent, just the satisfaction of buying something online.
Speaker 2: No you got, Taylor.
Speaker 3: I think I already do this with Zillo every night
Speaker 3: where I'm you know, perusing multimillion dollar houses in Pasadena
Speaker 3: adding them to my favorites.
Speaker 2: Like I don't do the Zilla thing because there's nothing
Speaker 2: on the market here in the day area, but I
Speaker 2: would know. Like what I would do, though, is could
Speaker 2: I order stuff but not have the package just show
Speaker 2: up at my front door, so that, like all my
Speaker 2: neighbors know that we're just like those horrible people who
Speaker 2: order like twenty things on Amazon every.
Speaker 4: Day that the note packages thing.
Speaker 2: For sure, I still want the product stuff.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm as Volocian and this is the week in Tech
Speaker 1: where I'm joined by the world's most clubs and reporters.
Speaker 4: To break down what's really happening in tech right now.
Speaker 1: Today, we're joined by Taylor Lorenzo use a mag and
Speaker 1: Read Albergotti, tech editor at Centophore.
Speaker 2: Welcome both, great to be here, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: Great to have you both, As always read, the FCC
Speaker 1: moved to ban Chinese humanoid robots and quadrupeds from entering
Speaker 1: the US, which I can't read without laughing. But I mean,
Speaker 1: what's what's going on here?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: How serious is this story?
Speaker 1: What what does it have to do with US robot
Speaker 1: makers lobbying efforts?
Speaker 4: And what's gonna happen next?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is this is another sort of
Speaker 2: it's its industrial policy protectionism. I guess we shouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're already are no buy D Chinese cars
Speaker 2: in the US and it and on its face, you're
Speaker 2: you're you'd sort of put into that box and you say, okay,
Speaker 2: this this makes sense. We want US robot makers to
Speaker 2: to kind of have a clear run at this. But
Speaker 2: I think there's a there and and granted like there
Speaker 2: will be exceptions to this, right, this is not like
Speaker 2: this is not a law. This is you know, this
Speaker 2: is this is policy coming out of the White House essentially,
Speaker 2: but like on its face, you there are these big
Speaker 2: questions like a bunch if you go into any sort
Speaker 2: of like AI company that's doing anything in the physical
Speaker 2: world and in the Bay Area right now, they've got
Speaker 2: these Chinese robots like sitting around from all these different companies,
Speaker 2: and they're you know, some of them are cheap, like
Speaker 2: ten thousand apiece, and they're doing all sorts of testing
Speaker 2: on these things, right They're they're essentially building software and
Speaker 2: the and the hardware is what they use to you know,
Speaker 2: to gather data or just test out their their algorithm.
Speaker 2: So I think it's actually like potentially detrimental to innovation.
Speaker 2: So this is all and it's the same thing with
Speaker 2: like the same issue with these Chinese open source models.
Speaker 1: Right It's like, I want to talk about the open
Speaker 1: source models, but let's stay with the robots for a
Speaker 1: little bit. I mean, the detail about the quadrupeds was
Speaker 1: the one that really really caught my eye because I
Speaker 1: kind of thought the four legged robots were only for
Speaker 1: YouTube videos that I didn't realized they were threat to America.
Speaker 2: I saw I was in Boston a couple of weeks
Speaker 2: ago and I saw some people walking their their robot
Speaker 2: dicers that looked like, yeah, they looked like they were
Speaker 2: sort of like MIT researchers or something. But no, I
Speaker 2: mean it's it's like the same issue though. It's the
Speaker 2: same principle, which is like you try to you try
Speaker 2: to stop the you know, the Chinese from encroaching in
Speaker 2: the US market, and then you sort of like also
Speaker 2: hinder your own innovation. So these things always come at
Speaker 2: a cost. So I think that the trick is going
Speaker 2: to be figuring out how to thread that needle right, Like,
Speaker 2: do what you need to do, you know, if you're
Speaker 2: the White House, to to sort of protect US companies,
Speaker 2: stop the Chinese from i don't know, dumping robots if
Speaker 2: that's even a thing, but then also allow US researchers
Speaker 2: to still, you know, to still be able to innovate
Speaker 2: and come. You know, you don't want like a situation
Speaker 2: where there's like one or two robotics companies in the
Speaker 2: US and if they don't, if they don't just happen
Speaker 2: to win this race outright, you know, the US is
Speaker 2: way behind.
Speaker 1: This will be like the cause in the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: when the when in nineteen eighteen nine, Right, the US
Speaker 1: will have all of these like Dusty Treban style robots
Speaker 1: call the Tita. Have you been following the robot element
Speaker 1: of this story.
Speaker 3: Yes, I've been following. And does this mean that rumbas
Speaker 3: are banned? I saw some headline basically implying.
Speaker 2: That I have a Chinese I have a Chinese robot vacuum.
Speaker 2: That's really really good. I think it's a way outperforms
Speaker 2: the rumba. So I hope, I hope that's not the case. Look,
Speaker 2: I think this is like all of these policies. It's
Speaker 2: just the thing to remember is that you can do
Speaker 2: whatever you want to try to stop China these tech
Speaker 2: and you know, stop them from i don't know, catching
Speaker 2: up or ripping off American technology. The US will not
Speaker 2: win unless it can move faster than China on innovation.
Speaker 2: That is the most important thing about this race, and
Speaker 2: I think it often. I think it often gets sort
Speaker 2: of forgotten or pushed to the side.
Speaker 3: I totally agree with Red and yeah, I mean I
Speaker 3: was just reading this article on the Verge talking about
Speaker 3: like what's actually sort of included in this span and
Speaker 3: it's significantly broader than you would think. I mean, Obviously
Speaker 3: we're talking about the humanoid robots and the quadrupeds, but
Speaker 3: it's not just that, it's it's far broader. This ban
Speaker 3: covers basically any new software controlled robot that travels over
Speaker 3: the ground or weighs more than four point four pounds,
Speaker 3: including the DOC, and that can perceive its own environment
Speaker 3: and has wireless which is basically any robot vacuum like
Speaker 3: it's it's a lot of like household devices. Like I
Speaker 3: think people don't realize as well just how much stuff
Speaker 3: comes from China, Like how like automated I have this
Speaker 3: like automated you know, like watering system thing that I
Speaker 3: got from Amazon. I'm sure it's some Chinese little robot thing.
Speaker 4: Oh you did.
Speaker 1: We were talking about the garden last week and you
Speaker 1: were talking about wanting a gunting robot. And now you've
Speaker 1: now you filled the trigger.
Speaker 3: Exactly and I've ordered a Chinese gardening you know, watering thing.
Speaker 3: Probably that's potentially going to be illegal, legal, but but
Speaker 3: I know I snuck in right under the van. I
Speaker 3: just think, like, I mean, what Reid said is true.
Speaker 3: I think this is ridiculous. Like I understand from a
Speaker 3: consumer perspective, you know, with the electric cars. Okay, protecting
Speaker 3: our car industry in some way, but you know, at
Speaker 3: some point, robotics are becoming so pervasive, and this just
Speaker 3: seems like, you know, we we need to compete harder,
Speaker 3: like we can't. We're I feel like we're the declining
Speaker 3: and we're just trying to like protect this declining industry
Speaker 3: and we need to allow our researchers to compete. And
Speaker 3: and that means that you know, giving technologists access to
Speaker 3: this cutting.
Speaker 1: Head technology on the kind of robotspan Is this like
Speaker 1: kind of a thing that people expect to be in
Speaker 1: forced or is this kind of like a staking of
Speaker 1: some political kind of pulturing.
Speaker 4: Do we do we have any idea?
Speaker 2: Well, I like I was sort of getting at earlier.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is this is just you know, these
Speaker 2: are just orders coming out of the White House. So
Speaker 2: it's not like this is not a law. And I
Speaker 2: think they always they you know, like I think at
Speaker 2: some point they're going to go, oh my god, like
Speaker 2: this is way too broad. We got to find loop.
Speaker 2: You know, there's gonna be loopholes or or carve outs
Speaker 2: for specific areas, like you know, this is what always happens.
Speaker 2: It's like this this shoot from the hip sort of
Speaker 2: you know, proclamation policy, I guess strategy, and then and
Speaker 2: then you go back and make all it. And the
Speaker 2: same thing happened with tariffs, right It's like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: we have all these tariffs. And then it's like, well,
Speaker 2: this thing's carved out and that thing's carved out, and
Speaker 2: you eventually get to like, I don't know someplace where
Speaker 2: it's where it's logical. So I just take all of
Speaker 2: it with a grain of salt and just figure it's
Speaker 2: all going to change.
Speaker 3: I just think in the meantime, the damage is done.
Speaker 3: I mean, the tariffs are good example, that was like
Speaker 3: a huge economic shock. It caused prices to increase for consumers,
Speaker 3: like it did cause a lot of I would argue
Speaker 3: harm to our economy. And I think when we do
Speaker 3: things like this as well, like yeah, maybe you're right
Speaker 3: read and I agree, like it will have to be
Speaker 3: rolled back in some way because it's nonsensical. But in
Speaker 3: the meantime, it's hurt innovation in the meantime, it slowed
Speaker 3: us down. In the meantime, it's created liability for startups
Speaker 3: that don't want to take on any liability. So it
Speaker 3: just seems bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it'd be one thing if they did
Speaker 2: this and they're like, and we're going to put you know,
Speaker 2: more money into academic research.
Speaker 4: That was my next question.
Speaker 1: So is there going to be is there any commensurate
Speaker 1: effort to stimulate the American robotics industry. I so Deep
Speaker 1: Mind had an announcement today about some some new kind
Speaker 1: of robotics program and obviously read you we talked about
Speaker 1: robotics with applied intuition last week on the show. So
Speaker 1: it seems like there is like some action in the
Speaker 1: American robotics sphere.
Speaker 2: Of course, this is a huge industry. There's tons of
Speaker 2: private money going into it. But I think if you're
Speaker 2: the US, like the private sectors going to do what
Speaker 2: it's going to do, the levers that they can pull,
Speaker 2: I think are an academic research. Right. That's where like
Speaker 2: if you think the robotics race is over, like I
Speaker 2: think that's insane. Like I think there's still a lot
Speaker 2: of innovation that's going to happen, and it's maybe not
Speaker 2: all going to come from the private sector. Like if
Speaker 2: you want to do something policy wise, like you know,
Speaker 2: push forward research, right, basic research that's going to you know,
Speaker 2: help advance this industry. There's so many different areas that
Speaker 2: would speed things up. It's it's long term thinking, though,
Speaker 2: right and I think that's what Washington is really short
Speaker 2: on right now.
Speaker 3: I mean, I also just think of like the drama
Speaker 3: over the H one B visas and the way that
Speaker 3: we're treating immigrants. And there are so many talented scientists, engineers,
Speaker 3: roboticists that you know, might be from India, might be
Speaker 3: from other places that we've also pushed out of our country,
Speaker 3: and I think, I mean, I know that's affected startup's
Speaker 3: ability to recruit. I was just talking to somebody last
Speaker 3: night who is living in Canada and what is has
Speaker 3: a job in a Mameric can start up but can't
Speaker 3: start because of this visa process. This is just it's
Speaker 3: really ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a this is like
Speaker 2: such a challenge because I mean, what you really want
Speaker 2: to do is like is not sort of bam the
Speaker 2: Chinese robots, but find the people who are really the
Speaker 2: most talented people in China building the robots, bring them
Speaker 2: to the US, have them build the robots here. But
Speaker 2: then there's this worry that they're all spies. Or they
Speaker 2: all will be spies, right, and and there is I mean,
Speaker 2: these are legitimate concerns, but I think there's like a
Speaker 2: I mean this happened in that you mentioned the Soviet
Speaker 2: era too. I mean this happened in the Soviet era
Speaker 2: like the US because of its system, because of its
Speaker 2: open system, you know. There it makes you know, spying easier,
Speaker 2: and so that's just a downside. But then that open
Speaker 2: system leads to like massive innovation, so it's always a
Speaker 2: trade off.
Speaker 1: I got of liked on that word open. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about open source models. I think for the third week
Speaker 1: in a row this is a textuff record, but the
Speaker 1: news keeps rumbling on. So another Chinese export, of course
Speaker 1: is open source models from Chinese companies like Zai and
Speaker 1: moonshot Ai.
Speaker 4: Why is it study in the news for so long?
Speaker 1: And also read you wrote about this concern about censorship
Speaker 1: an Ai models Chinese models that may be unfounded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was this research study I wrote about yesterday
Speaker 2: from CTGT which does this interpretability research, like looking at
Speaker 2: how these models actually work so they can build you know,
Speaker 2: products for the private sector that are sort of harnessed
Speaker 2: and don't go off the rails. They did this experiment
Speaker 2: where they took a deep seek model and they fine
Speaker 2: tuned from that model and then tested the before and
Speaker 2: after Chinese censorship and found that the censorship was essentially
Speaker 2: gone once they once they built this new model, the
Speaker 2: base of it was was an open ai OSS like
Speaker 2: open weights model, and then it was fine tuned or
Speaker 2: taught from deep Seek. And so there have been this
Speaker 2: this talk of like subliminal messages being passed on from
Speaker 2: the teacher model to the student model. It gets it
Speaker 2: gets pretty technical and you can get into weeds. But
Speaker 2: like the long story short is like we need more
Speaker 2: research on this. But what it looks like is I
Speaker 2: think these these Chinese models are actually like not as
Speaker 2: much of a propaganda risk as you think because they
Speaker 2: will get changed and filtered through all these different techniques.
Speaker 2: And it also goes to this research point. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is like really interesting research that wouldn't happen unless
Speaker 2: there were these Chinese open source models. So it's another
Speaker 2: I guess point in favor of the pro open source people.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I just think that like it's
Speaker 3: it's really concerning to me that like our response is
Speaker 3: to ban things like I you know, I watched everything
Speaker 3: that happened with TikTok. I covered the musically sale to
Speaker 3: Bite dance, which the government was totally fine with, and
Speaker 3: then they turned around five years later and they were like, actually,
Speaker 3: we're gonna ban TikTok, you know, based on nothing really
Speaker 3: except that they it was keep challenging meta products, you know,
Speaker 3: like there were all these like sort of like made
Speaker 3: up concerns about China that never came to fruition. And
Speaker 3: similar to the Chinese open source models. I mean, we
Speaker 3: did have a lot of research on TikTok and there
Speaker 3: ultimately was just no evidence of anything that the government
Speaker 3: was claiming. And I just it's like if they had
Speaker 3: proof of these things and if they were doing these
Speaker 3: research and showing wow, the Chinese open source models are
Speaker 3: really like biased. So this could be really dangerous for
Speaker 3: American companies because if X Y z all right, then
Speaker 3: I think, you know, we could have a talk about it.
Speaker 3: But in this case, it just it's it seems like
Speaker 3: these speculative fears and as read mentioned earlier, it feels
Speaker 3: very cold war. It feels very like punching at ghosts,
Speaker 3: and I just I really worry about the damage that
Speaker 3: we're doing to our own tech landscape.
Speaker 1: In the meantime you mentioned, I think Markackerberg did two
Speaker 1: interviews this week, with one of the New York Times
Speaker 1: and one with the Journal, his first first media appearances
Speaker 1: since since his uh since his feed me guest lecture
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: He was basically complaining about the dominance of of open
Speaker 1: a and ionanthropic.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Is that? Is that a fair summary of what the
Speaker 4: media tour was about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's two minds of this. I mean, one,
Speaker 2: you know, Meta or Facebook has always been sort of
Speaker 2: a pro open source company. They've developed a bunch of
Speaker 2: open source you know, protocols, and but on the other hand,
Speaker 2: I mean you have to sort of take this as like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean they're behind in the air raight, so like
Speaker 2: of course, I mean they're going to just be in
Speaker 2: favor of whatever slows their competitors down. So you know,
Speaker 2: there's that.
Speaker 1: There was a headline in the in the New York
Speaker 1: Times Silicon Valley splits over closing the borders to Chinese AI.
Speaker 1: So read is what you're saying that people who want
Speaker 1: to close the borders to Chinese AI are the ones
Speaker 1: who are currently winning and the ones who don't want
Speaker 1: to close the borders of Chinese AI, the ones who
Speaker 1: only losing a no note.
Speaker 3: To me, it's you know, that's a kind of misleading headline.
Speaker 3: To me, it feels very like Anthropic versus everyone else
Speaker 3: in tech. I mean, you had Google, like every single
Speaker 3: tech company kind of signed this open letter right against
Speaker 3: that sort of I felt like was a big subtweet
Speaker 3: of Anthropic. Dario comes out, He's like, Oh no, we
Speaker 3: don't like really want to be an open source models,
Speaker 3: but also we kind of think they're dangerous and we
Speaker 3: kind of I think like dark to me, like I
Speaker 3: see Anthropic running the meta playbook exactly where they have
Speaker 3: this dominance in the market right now and they're trying
Speaker 3: to sort of do regulatory capture to maintain it.
Speaker 4: More about the letter, Taylor, just before we go too far?
Speaker 3: Sure so that So Jensen Wang, CEO of Nvidia, joins
Speaker 3: Twitter big. By the way, I just have to say
Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg's on Twitter promoting his Wall Street Journal op
Speaker 3: ed like Jensen's on Twitter. I feel like Twitter has
Speaker 3: gotten peak lately. I love to see all these tech
Speaker 3: CEOs on there. But so Jensen joins Twitter and po
Speaker 3: this open letter, which obviously is you know, shared to
Speaker 3: the website whatever, and it is a defensive open source
Speaker 3: open weight models. Obviously Nvidia has a strong you know,
Speaker 3: business interest in this as well, but it becomes this letter,
Speaker 3: this open letter becomes this sort of like rallying cry,
Speaker 3: and you have just dozens and dozens of tech companies
Speaker 3: sign on to it, you know, by the by the weekend,
Speaker 3: like every almost every major tech company it'd signed on
Speaker 3: to it, including all these startup you know why, y Combinator,
Speaker 3: et cetera, a bunch of startups. So it felt like
Speaker 3: basically the entire tech industry had united to advocate for
Speaker 3: open weight AI models to be accept to remain accessible.
Speaker 3: And then Anthropic came out. Dario issued this this blog
Speaker 3: post saying basically like trying again doing the meta thing
Speaker 3: where it's like, oh, we don't really want to ban TikTok.
Speaker 3: We just think it's a national security thread and it
Speaker 3: should be eliminated and probably we shouldn't be able to
Speaker 3: download the United States and so like That's kind of
Speaker 3: how his letter read to me. I don't know what
Speaker 3: read thought, but it was like, oh no, no, no, we
Speaker 3: don't mind open Wait we just think it's incredibly dangerous
Speaker 3: and you know, I don't like to you know, that's
Speaker 3: probably not worth the resk or whatever.
Speaker 1: So read on Smiley, I want to hear your tape
Speaker 1: of first. Can one of you help us under sound
Speaker 1: difference between open source and open weight?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's just a this is just a
Speaker 2: semantics thing really because these models don't reveal their underlying
Speaker 2: data sets. And so people in the open source community
Speaker 2: took issue with that term because it's like, well, it's
Speaker 2: not totally open, but you know, you can still for
Speaker 2: all intents and purposes, they're open. I use yeah, I
Speaker 2: use open source all the time because I think it
Speaker 2: just confuses people to a lot of people to say
Speaker 2: open weights. But but you know, there's a there's a
Speaker 2: sort of debate there. There was a big debate about
Speaker 2: this in the open source community. But no, I mean,
Speaker 2: I basically agree with Taylor on this. I think the
Speaker 2: one thing I would sort of take issue with is
Speaker 2: like I actually think that anthropic people in Dario, like
Speaker 2: they're like true believers and they really are scared of
Speaker 2: like AI and what's going to happen if you know,
Speaker 2: you have these open models that can have all the
Speaker 2: guardrails and protection stripped away from them that eventually We're
Speaker 2: not there yet, but eventually, I think pose like a
Speaker 2: large amount of risk in cybersecurity or bioterrorism.
Speaker 3: Doesn't it make us safer? Like, isn't the argument, like
Speaker 3: the argument that I've seen from security people and Alex
Speaker 3: Damos was talking about this sort of a long time
Speaker 3: security guy at Metali. Actually it strengthens everyone to have
Speaker 3: these open source models out there and available because it
Speaker 3: allows I mean the Hugging Face incident is a perfect
Speaker 3: example of this, Like when you have these guard bills
Speaker 3: and you have these restrictions and we're only allowed to
Speaker 3: use anthropic robe and ai basically like it actually made
Speaker 3: it makes it more dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the hugging Face example was when open Aiy's cyber
Speaker 1: tool kind of went semi rogue in a non properly
Speaker 1: send boxed environment and hecked hugging Face and Hugging Face
Speaker 1: couldn't defend themselves within the US models because of the
Speaker 1: god rails, and so they used a chiny models to
Speaker 1: defend themselves, which we talked about last week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's where I would also agree with you,
Speaker 2: like I just my only point was, like, my only
Speaker 2: point of disagreement with you was, like, I actually think
Speaker 2: it's not just some sort of cynical regulatory capture point.
Speaker 2: I think they actually believe in this stuff. I don't
Speaker 2: think their conclusion though, is always right. Like I agree
Speaker 2: with you that, like you can't plug this dam. Like
Speaker 2: these models, these open source models will you know, find
Speaker 2: their way into the country. The Chinese will continue to
Speaker 2: distill from American AI unless there's some new breakthrough that
Speaker 2: you know, allows AI frontier models companies to stop that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, I think the only answer is, like,
Speaker 2: if these open source models are a threat to cybersecurity,
Speaker 2: we better be plugging as many cybersecurity holes as we can, right, Like,
Speaker 2: we have to protect against this reality rather than try to,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, like plug the dam or
Speaker 2: just bury our heads in the sand and hope that
Speaker 2: somehow we can ban this and stop you know, technology
Speaker 2: from marching forward.
Speaker 3: I just want to say, though, like on the true
Speaker 3: believer point, like I totally agree with you. I think
Speaker 3: Dario and a lot of people they're effective ault as
Speaker 3: true believers, but it is also very convenient for their
Speaker 3: business interest And I do think that, like, you know,
Speaker 3: in a lot of ways like Meta, where there were
Speaker 3: true believers in the sense that they thought that it
Speaker 3: was like a dangerous open internet and connecting the world
Speaker 3: would be dangerous, and that's how it was like before Meta,
Speaker 3: it was all sort of like chaotic and the chaos
Speaker 3: of like forums and blogs, there's disinformation. So Meta's whole
Speaker 3: thing was like, we're going to clean it up. We're
Speaker 3: going to provide this standardized experience, like we're going to
Speaker 3: be the one to connect the world and it's going
Speaker 3: to be amazing. And I think part of it is,
Speaker 3: like I mean, and maybe I'm more cynical about all
Speaker 3: of it, but I do think there's this like paternalistic
Speaker 3: power fantasy as well, where it's very much like I'm
Speaker 3: the one that can bring artificial intelligence. I'm the responsible
Speaker 3: one that can oversee it. And I just reject that,
Speaker 3: especially from people like Dario.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of Yeah, there's a lot of paternalistic
Speaker 2: fantasies and tech for sure, I mean, and it is, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like trying to boil the ocean. Really,
Speaker 2: it's just like no one person, no one company is
Speaker 2: going to be in charge of safeguarding all of this right,
Speaker 2: And I don't even think I mean, I think even
Speaker 2: government is just like almost moving too fast. And I
Speaker 2: think this partially is because like we don't legislate anymore,
Speaker 2: we just write executive orders. But it's like the people
Speaker 2: are talking about, you know, distillation being and being ip theft, right, Well,
Speaker 2: that essentially means that like when these Chinese models do
Speaker 2: make it to the US and people start using these
Speaker 2: open source models, they won't be allowed to distill them,
Speaker 2: which back to this research study, is how you get
Speaker 2: rid of all this censorship which is real in these models,
Speaker 2: like they are very biased toward you know, the CCP
Speaker 2: point of view. So I mean you're like in all
Speaker 2: these every move that you make, you're like cutting off
Speaker 2: one of your options to deal with this problem, which
Speaker 2: I think is a you know, is a problem.
Speaker 3: Which could be solved by competing. Like I just I'm like,
Speaker 3: why don't we actually try to compete. Why don't we
Speaker 3: invest in research? Why don't we invest Like China has
Speaker 3: this long term vision and has really facilitated innovation and
Speaker 3: prioritize their you know, education system to build you know,
Speaker 3: the skills necessary to build the next generation technology, and
Speaker 3: I just feel like America, it's like, what are we doing?
Speaker 3: We're making gambling apps? And what is Andreas and Horwitz funding?
Speaker 3: Are they funding next generation technology? I don't know, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. I just like America feels like
Speaker 3: just it's like rickety old cart that's like falling apart,
Speaker 3: and I'm just like, is anyone going to fix it?
Speaker 2: Well? I think that I think the rickety old cart
Speaker 2: is is like actually fine, Like there's there's a America's
Speaker 2: never been perfect, right, and it happens in that like
Speaker 2: innovation happens in a very sort of like haphazard and
Speaker 2: just rebated way. And my point is just get out
Speaker 2: of the way.
Speaker 1: There was a great book called Breakneck, which I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if either you read. A big guy called Dan Wong,
Speaker 1: and he basically counterposed the Chinese Communist Party with the
Speaker 1: history of American presidents and basically as a huge preponderance
Speaker 1: of engineers in the who became you know, supreme leaders
Speaker 1: versus lawyers who became presidents. And you know, his point was,
Speaker 1: if you live in China and you look out the
Speaker 1: window and a year has gone by, you might see
Speaker 1: a new city out of the window and if you
Speaker 1: live in the US, like the best you can hope
Speaker 1: for is a new coffee shop. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think there is something. There's something to there's a
Speaker 1: conversation which is bigger than the technology conversation, really about
Speaker 1: like how do you, like, how do you create a
Speaker 1: national culture that promotes innovation without but also without the
Speaker 1: all of the bad things.
Speaker 4: That happen in China.
Speaker 1: Just before we go to the break there, I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you both. You know, we live in an
Speaker 1: attention economy and we're all you know, all three of
Speaker 1: us work in it. But it's very rare that a
Speaker 1: story rumbles on for three weeks, Like why why is
Speaker 1: everyone still talking about these Chinese open source models and distillations?
Speaker 1: Is just because it's the behind the story is questions
Speaker 1: about like the next open Ai ipo and the anthropic
Speaker 1: ipo or is it about the China US Great Palace struggle?
Speaker 1: Story is always fascinating, like why people still own this?
Speaker 2: Well my one theory and okay, I'm kind I'm kind
Speaker 2: of just going off the cuff here, but like I
Speaker 2: think it's a great question. This AI conversation has sucked
Speaker 2: all of our attention into it, right, It's become everything.
Speaker 2: And so you know, when you have a controversy like
Speaker 2: this and there isn't some major breakthrough that's drawing our
Speaker 2: attention away, like we're going to focus on this stuff
Speaker 2: for longer. But I think as soon as, like, you know,
Speaker 2: we see some new corner turned and there's a shiny
Speaker 2: new thing to go after, we will like that. That
Speaker 2: will that will be the thing everybody talks about. Maybe
Speaker 2: it'll happen later this year, maybe in January. It seems
Speaker 2: like January is it just has some major breakthrough every year, right,
Speaker 2: I wasn't thinking of c yes, but just like every
Speaker 2: like January it was like it was like the reasoning
Speaker 2: models happened, and then like last January it was like
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, the harnesses were just working and
Speaker 2: you could build, you know, build all this technology. I
Speaker 2: think something like that's going to happen, and you know,
Speaker 2: we'll forget about this for a while.
Speaker 3: I hope so. But I feel I'm scared that we're
Speaker 3: going to get distracted by that shiny new object and
Speaker 3: fundamentally not fix all the issues. That sort of reads
Speaker 3: mentioning this idea of not investing in research, Like I
Speaker 3: do think the US has as a major problem with
Speaker 3: long term vision and maybe that's how our political system
Speaker 3: set up, I don't know, but or sort of our
Speaker 3: economic system, but certainly it's it's a problem.
Speaker 4: When we come back.
Speaker 1: Substock has pushed back against a new AI detection feature.
Speaker 1: Stay with us, Welcome back, Taylor. Subset recently launched a
Speaker 1: feature on that app which acts like a kind of
Speaker 1: AI detective fit us in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, Substack partnered with this company called Pangram, which
Speaker 3: is a startup that is basically they build themselves as
Speaker 3: like the slop detector of the web, and so they
Speaker 3: have probably the most sophisticated AI detection tools and they've
Speaker 3: just actually they're working on visual AI detection tools in
Speaker 3: terms of images, but they're really good at detecting AI
Speaker 3: use in writing and so basically substack is trying to
Speaker 3: make it easier to click and determine how much of
Speaker 3: an article is written by AI or it's really good
Speaker 3: at determining if one hundred percent of the article is
Speaker 3: AI generated, which I think is valuable because I did
Speaker 3: a partnership with Pangram myself actually where they gave me
Speaker 3: access early access to their API last year or well
Speaker 3: it wasn't even last year, it's like four months ago.
Speaker 3: And tech moves fast, and you know, up to forty
Speaker 3: percent of articles in the tech category, which is what
Speaker 3: my newsletter is in.
Speaker 4: We're fully AI generated, fully AI generated.
Speaker 3: Fully AI generated, So it's really taking over.
Speaker 4: Is this in response to consumer demand?
Speaker 1: Is like this of a substac leadership concern that if
Speaker 1: they let AI proliferate for too long on substack, ultimately
Speaker 1: people will migrate away from substack Like where was it
Speaker 1: was a demand signal kind of driving this?
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know the total thinking behind it.
Speaker 3: I did interview Chris Best, and.
Speaker 4: What he said is like the CEO of subsc right.
Speaker 3: The CEO of Substack, who said, you know, we want
Speaker 3: consumers to basically have more information and know and like
Speaker 3: this is our way of kind of not doing like
Speaker 3: trust and safety, but kind of like making our platform
Speaker 3: more transparent. I think there's a lot of scams and
Speaker 3: spam kind of info. I mean, as I wrote in
Speaker 3: my piece, like one of the most popular subsacts in
Speaker 3: the past year was this like fake conversation between Elon
Speaker 3: Musk and Keanu Reeves. It literally never happened, but it
Speaker 3: was AI generated slop that went megaviral that people still
Speaker 3: share to this day as if it was real. The
Speaker 3: politics category is overrun with AI generated content, so I
Speaker 3: think it's about giving consumers more transparency. I don't know
Speaker 3: that it's totally led to that. I feel like it's
Speaker 3: caused a bit of chaos, but that's certainly the goal.
Speaker 4: So this is not just the detective, It's not X.
Speaker 4: It's that this is more sophisticated.
Speaker 1: Do you think I'm curious for both of your take
Speaker 1: as people who write newsletters, like is all AI writing
Speaker 1: AI slop?
Speaker 3: I get a few AI generated newsletters that I really love.
Speaker 3: There's like a social listening tool that I get the
Speaker 3: newsletter up, and it basically gives me like a roundup
Speaker 3: of trending posts and automatically sort of pulls yeah, like
Speaker 3: trending content in I like Vibe coded my own one
Speaker 3: that like it's mostly it's I trust AI for like
Speaker 3: analysis and scraping, and it's honestly better than like a
Speaker 3: lot of the ones that I subscribe to. I mean,
Speaker 3: I subscribe to a lot of human newsletters as well,
Speaker 3: but I think that like AI can pick up these
Speaker 3: small detections, you know, in sort of trends. I At
Speaker 3: the same time, I think it's all about transparency, right,
Speaker 3: and what does the consumer think they're getting. Do they
Speaker 3: think that they're getting one hundred percent human No, AI
Speaker 3: used it all, but they're actually getting slop. Okay, that's
Speaker 3: going to cause a negative experience. But I think increasingly
Speaker 3: it's somewhere in the middle. And that's kind of where
Speaker 3: things get tricky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think it's all slop, but I do.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you guys. I mean I can
Speaker 2: tell when something's like AI generated.
Speaker 3: I can to Most people can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most people can't, but you get it. There's a
Speaker 2: rhythm to it that sort of like becomes familiar, especially claude,
Speaker 2: like if there's a specially exactly style and you read
Speaker 2: X and sometimes I'm like, well, this is actually an
Speaker 2: interesting point that this person's making. It's also just this
Speaker 2: is just AI generated, and like, I don't know what
Speaker 2: to think about it.
Speaker 3: So one thing that I thought was interesting is this
Speaker 3: person on ax has been doing and I want to
Speaker 3: write about this myself and I haven't. But the big
Speaker 3: thing on YouTube right now is AI generated scripts. So
Speaker 3: Almost every big YouTuber is using AI to auto generate
Speaker 3: their scripts. They're not even tweaking them. They're literally just
Speaker 3: generating the script and reading it. But they're a human
Speaker 3: reading it. So audiences, this person was tweeting out the
Speaker 3: response to your audiences and what I've noticed as well
Speaker 3: one hundred percent positive. They seem to prefer it. Actually
Speaker 3: they are saying incredible analysis, phenomenal. Wow, I can't believe it.
Speaker 2: And how do you know those aren't bots?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I trust me. I have gone deep
Speaker 3: and I have used AI on one of my own
Speaker 3: multiple of my own scripts, and people praise those AI
Speaker 3: scripts far more than my human scripts. So and I
Speaker 3: didn't use AI like one hundred percent, But like people
Speaker 3: seem there's something about the AI cadence that, like normally
Speaker 3: people online seem to really like. And if you look
Speaker 3: at these like viral articles as well read I generated,
Speaker 3: So there is something And I don't think most most
Speaker 3: of those people do not realize that they're consuming AI.
Speaker 3: And I think that was the issue with substack as well,
Speaker 3: like and I think, but that's the thing they I
Speaker 3: don't know that they want to know that it's they
Speaker 3: get kind of they won't believe it, you know, when
Speaker 3: you say, hey, this is one hundred percent AI generated,
Speaker 3: like they kind of don't want to accept that.
Speaker 1: Did you follow the moment with the Canadian politician this week, Yes,
Speaker 1: here's a more natural, flowing version of that section that
Speaker 1: reads like legislative speech rather than.
Speaker 4: A series of short points. Madam speaker. One of my
Speaker 4: concerns who.
Speaker 1: Went viral reading the instructions from Clode a Loud in
Speaker 1: his political speech.
Speaker 4: I mean, but it's funny.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those things where it's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, he was caught with his pants down.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, like probably ninety nine point
Speaker 1: nine percent of politicians used AI to enhance their speeches
Speaker 1: or even write them, So it's a funny, like funny
Speaker 1: that people were so like panicked or like captivated. I
Speaker 1: guess it's very embarrassing for him, but it was also like.
Speaker 3: Well, it's also like, is AI writing our policy? Like
Speaker 3: this is my stance on all of it. It's like
Speaker 3: I think that by doing like, I think that there's
Speaker 3: not enough transparency. I think there's not enough discussion. I mean,
Speaker 3: I did a Q and A with Substack about this yesterday,
Speaker 3: Like I think we Joe Wisenthal had a good tweet
Speaker 3: a while ago. A while ago he was basically like,
Speaker 3: this is all happening, and we're not going to put
Speaker 3: the genie back in the bottle. We need to accept
Speaker 3: that AI is being used in all these ways and
Speaker 3: we should have discussions about sort of what that means.
Speaker 3: And I think that's much better than the sort of
Speaker 3: witch hunting, which I also see happening and I think
Speaker 3: has sort of happened with Pan Graham now, where it's
Speaker 3: like people just go around like, oh my god, oh
Speaker 3: my god, this AI was used to I was used
Speaker 3: and I was like, okay, but what does it matter
Speaker 3: if AI was used for this like niche thing, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Like, let's have a real discussion
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 4: How it creators On substeck reacting to.
Speaker 3: Pangram, it runs the gamute. Some people are like so
Speaker 3: mad because again they use AI and they weren't disclosing it.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of consumers, it really depends on
Speaker 3: your audience. You know, ironically, no one really cares about
Speaker 3: the tech, like the tech the tech newsletterspace like tramas
Speaker 3: posted like that full AI generated like you know, article
Speaker 3: basically on X everyone knew it was AI generated and
Speaker 3: Elon Musk was a great article. Like people were like,
Speaker 3: as kind of as read said, people were like, Okay,
Speaker 3: Tamath is colo siding this analysis, and so I find
Speaker 3: it valuable. So but people in the politics category, and
Speaker 3: it's more like the lifestyle things like food and sort
Speaker 3: of lifestyle influencers that have been relying on AI, like
Speaker 3: their audiences are not taking kindly to it. And I
Speaker 3: have a very left leaning audience that rulently hates AI,
Speaker 3: so I've been tried to be very transparent with them.
Speaker 4: Is that a point of tension between you and your audience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've lost like a significant amount of subscribers just
Speaker 3: by saying, hey, I'm a tech reporter, so I'm going
Speaker 3: to use these tools for research, and I will alway
Speaker 3: always write my articles like human but I will always
Speaker 3: be transparent. But just so you know, I report on
Speaker 3: technology that means using technology, and this has gotten me
Speaker 3: canceled on Blue Sky multiple times.
Speaker 2: I think in the in the end, though, this is
Speaker 2: in some sense positive because there's always been sort of
Speaker 2: an inauthentic nature to you know, social media to politics,
Speaker 2: and I think this is actually driving people more towards
Speaker 2: like a yearning for authenticity, and that's like part of
Speaker 2: what the anti a AI hate is, right, And we
Speaker 2: saw this with the latest you know, Christopher Nolan movie, right,
Speaker 2: who's sort of rejected CGI and filmed this movie in
Speaker 2: seventy millimeter IMAX like that, and people, I still can't
Speaker 2: get tickets to the seventy millimeter right for months, And
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, I think that's I sort of
Speaker 2: think that's a positive, Like this is this is moving
Speaker 2: us in the right direction for humanity. It's it's and
Speaker 2: it's and it's like I even sort of like the
Speaker 2: fact that even if something's AIG generated, like people can say, well,
Speaker 2: the ideas behind this and the messenger here, I know,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna take it at face value. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to worry about like what tools were used to
Speaker 2: generate this. I'm gonna actually think about it as long
Speaker 2: as there are people who are thinking critically, like in
Speaker 2: policy and positions of power. That's good read.
Speaker 1: Do you think your sem how would your semaphoe audience
Speaker 1: feel if if you said, Okay, starting next week, I'm
Speaker 1: going to use AI to as like as like a
Speaker 1: full partner to write this newsletter.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think people would really care
Speaker 2: as long as it's ultimately like I'm signing off on
Speaker 2: every part of it, right, the writing of the writing
Speaker 2: part of journalism is like a tiny part of journalism.
Speaker 2: Like I actually would love if AI could just take
Speaker 2: all of my interviews and my notes and my ideas
Speaker 2: or you know, maybe my brains my verbal brainstorming to
Speaker 2: my AI agent and just make like an amazing article
Speaker 2: that's you know, perfectly edited. Like that would be great.
Speaker 2: They'd be huge time saver, right, And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: but you have to think critically about it, like you
Speaker 2: you can't just you know, put stuff out there without
Speaker 2: without like actually going through. It's not good enough yet, right,
Speaker 2: Like I'm sure Taylor agrees. Like I've tried, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm constantly trying. And it's good at some stuff, like
Speaker 2: we use it for copy editing, et cetera. Like it's
Speaker 2: it could be a time saver, but like it's not
Speaker 2: there yet. It can't it can't generate you know, full articles.
Speaker 3: I think AI is also very good at sort of
Speaker 3: optimizing for AI, And I think, like when I talk
Speaker 3: to YouTubers, about why so many YouTubers use it for scripts.
Speaker 3: They're like, well, because the algorithm I'm playing for the
Speaker 3: YouTube algorithm, the algorithm is ingesting my script and making
Speaker 3: a determination about it. And if I say optimize it,
Speaker 3: include these keywords include this cay to like, do include
Speaker 3: these things that perform well for this algorithm, Like I
Speaker 3: I think that's where it, you know, shines.
Speaker 4: I guess it's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean it shows up when you look at when
Speaker 1: you look at like the top performing stuff on YouTube,
Speaker 1: by the way the headlines are done, and the and
Speaker 1: the thumbnails and the titling and like the kind of
Speaker 1: like scrunged express like curious expression and stuff like. It's
Speaker 1: it does feel like as I'm not a I have
Speaker 1: to confess to I'm not like a super user review too,
Speaker 1: but like when I look at those thumbnails, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is like this has been so optimized.
Speaker 4: For something that I am not. It's kind of an
Speaker 4: interesting experience.
Speaker 2: Well, if you think about the way that these models
Speaker 2: were built with reinforcement learning, they had you know, thousands
Speaker 2: of people sitting there just clicking. I like this version
Speaker 2: more than that version. You know, they put a lot
Speaker 2: of money into essentially like finding the common denominator of
Speaker 2: reader listeners. So it sort of makes sense that they
Speaker 2: prefer the AI generated content, which I think it's back
Speaker 2: to this like thing that a lot of journalists and
Speaker 2: and maybe even creators forget, which is like you're you're
Speaker 2: writing this for the reader, not for yourself, right, And
Speaker 2: I think another thing people get really upset about that's
Speaker 2: not AI is when like you just take forever to
Speaker 2: get to the point, and you know, there's certain publications
Speaker 2: that are really bad about this, and like I just
Speaker 2: end up skipping the first three paragraphs of every article
Speaker 2: they write because it's all just you know, basically written
Speaker 2: for the satisfaction of the writer, not for the reader.
Speaker 2: And so we could probably all learn something from me.
Speaker 1: With that in mind, I think we better wrap up
Speaker 1: this episode, but I want to get I want to
Speaker 1: get the last word to Taylor, because I saw you
Speaker 1: you nodding about read saying that writing's only a small
Speaker 1: fraction of journalism, like what's your what's your final word
Speaker 1: on that?
Speaker 3: So I you know, I'm a bad writer, I'm dyslexic.
Speaker 3: I'm a much better writer now than I was. But
Speaker 3: a huge reason, I mean, it was like it was
Speaker 3: really hard for me to even consider being a reporter
Speaker 3: because I thought you had to be a good writer.
Speaker 3: And this really well known editor told me at one point,
Speaker 3: you know, basically there are journalists like the job of
Speaker 3: a journalist is to expose new information, and no one
Speaker 3: will care if you're a bad writer if you can
Speaker 3: get scoops. Like, if you can expose new information, editors
Speaker 3: will hire you no matter what because they'll rewrite your
Speaker 3: stuff and it's fine. And I started to do that
Speaker 3: and that's what got me hired in media, and my
Speaker 3: writing got better over the years, and I think it's
Speaker 3: like good now. But I'm never going to write for
Speaker 3: the like the New Yorker long Form or some you know,
Speaker 3: Like I'm not really that kind of journalist. And there
Speaker 3: are journalists that are amazing writers, right, But I think,
Speaker 3: like what Reid said, I feel the same way. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I wish I could just feed all this stuff in
Speaker 3: have the AI kind of put it together. The goal
Speaker 3: to me is to like get that new information out
Speaker 3: there and kind of let that inform inform the world.
Speaker 1: I feel that's always the deepest cut against the Stannyokagen
Speaker 1: that still hear like rumors that they always hand in
Speaker 1: the shoddiest copy and like the most successful ones to
Speaker 1: do the least good job of handing in good drafts.
Speaker 1: But maybe that's maybe that's what you're getting.
Speaker 2: I am just maybe you can still give Taylor the
Speaker 2: last word, and you can edit this out if you
Speaker 2: want to. But I I wish more journalists would take
Speaker 2: their article before sending it to their editor and run
Speaker 2: it through whatever their favorite chat butt is and say
Speaker 2: what am I missing here? What are my blind spots?
Speaker 2: Where are my biases? And like, actually take that because
Speaker 2: that is I find super helpful.
Speaker 3: Totally. I think, like I mean, I just think like
Speaker 3: we should embrace these tools if they can help us
Speaker 3: improve our jobs. And also we need to understand these
Speaker 3: tools to report on them, especially as technology reporters. And
Speaker 3: I said this in my interview with Substack, but there's
Speaker 3: a lot of people that I see, especially online, that
Speaker 3: are very performative about AI. I will say, and I
Speaker 3: know that they're using it in their personal lives. I
Speaker 3: know that they're using it and they're getting online all
Speaker 3: day and saying all this slop. And I just I
Speaker 3: to me, that bothers me because I'm like let's just
Speaker 3: be on and say that you use it sometimes it's
Speaker 3: not the n to the world, Like let's have a
Speaker 3: discussion about it, but don't just get online all day
Speaker 3: and stoke the sort of fires of the AI hate
Speaker 3: and then like sort of quietly try already lose it
Speaker 3: on the side, like that's silly.
Speaker 4: That's all we have time for this week, Taylor read, thank.
Speaker 2: You great to be here as always, thanks for having us.
Speaker 4: For tech stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm mos Voloshian. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis.
Speaker 1: It was executive produced by me and Julian Nutter The
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and Katrina norvelve iHeart Podcasts. Jack intlument to this
Speaker 1: episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. A special
Speaker 1: thank you to Taylor Lorenz and Read Albergotti. Please check
Speaker 1: out all the work be put out into the world.
Speaker 1: We're lucky to call them friends of the Pod.