Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It is time for the tech news
Speaker 1: for Tuesday, November seventh, twenty twenty three. First up, last week,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that the company we Work was rumored to
Speaker 1: be headed for bankruptcy. Now the company has filed for bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: So at its height, we Work was worth somewhere in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of forty seven billion with a B dollars.
Speaker 1: Currently it's worth less than fifty million dollars. That is
Speaker 1: an incredible fall from grace. We Work is not actually
Speaker 1: a tech company. It was treated like one. It was
Speaker 1: treated like it was a tech startup, but you know,
Speaker 1: it is just all about buying or leasing office space
Speaker 1: and then subleasing that to customers. We Work was already
Speaker 1: in a rough spot before the pandemic even hit, and
Speaker 1: obviously in the wake of the pandemic, Corporate America has
Speaker 1: changed its approach to work in quite a few places.
Speaker 1: So this doesn't actually mean that we Work is totally
Speaker 1: going to go out of business. That's not what bankruptcy means.
Speaker 1: What it means is that the company is going to
Speaker 1: receive protection against you know, it's various creditors because it's
Speaker 1: in deep, deep debt. And reps are saying that the
Speaker 1: plan is to reorganize the company and to have as
Speaker 1: little disruption in business as possible, while it will likely
Speaker 1: have to get rid of certain properties, you know, sell them,
Speaker 1: offer or cancel leases or whatever, they want, to keep
Speaker 1: as many properties in operation as possible. At least that's
Speaker 1: what the reps are saying. Personally, I think we Work
Speaker 1: as a business plan has never been so super strong.
Speaker 1: The whole concept isn't a new one, and it typically
Speaker 1: has pretty small profit margins. So I'm not saying it's
Speaker 1: impossible for we Work to find stability, but I'm personally
Speaker 1: pretty pessimistic about it. Open Ai held its first developer
Speaker 1: conference yesterday. They called it dev Day, and early on
Speaker 1: open Ai kicked things off by giving developers an incentive
Speaker 1: to make apps built on top of the GPT technology
Speaker 1: through a five hundred dollars credit. The company showed off
Speaker 1: some new capabilities to developers, including a simplified way to
Speaker 1: create customized GPT agents using natural language which is pretty
Speaker 1: incredible really. Open ai is also going to launch an
Speaker 1: online store where developers will be able to sell their
Speaker 1: custom GPT agents to customers. The company also announced it
Speaker 1: would offer protection to developers against copyright infringement claims, so
Speaker 1: open ai says it will cover costs or those kind
Speaker 1: of legal claims against developers. The company also announced that
Speaker 1: it hit a huge milestone of one hundred million weekly users,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like things are just getting started, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure is the source of anxiety for a lot
Speaker 1: of creative types out there who are already concerned that
Speaker 1: models like GBT may be devouring their work and ultimately
Speaker 1: will set up technologies that compete directly against them. Tech
Speaker 1: explores Rob Nichols has an article titled do you trust
Speaker 1: AI to write the news? It already is and not
Speaker 1: without issues. So in this article, Nichols tells the story
Speaker 1: of how Microsoft reposted an article that was originally published
Speaker 1: in The Guardian. So, in the repost of this article,
Speaker 1: Microsoft also enabled an AI generative tool that automatically created
Speaker 1: a poll and connected it to the news story. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: this news story was about the murder of a young
Speaker 1: woman in Australia. Named Lily James, and the poll was
Speaker 1: asking readers to speculate about the nature of her death,
Speaker 1: which is absolutely horrifying. Right. It's clearly negligent on the
Speaker 1: part of Microsoft to allow that through, and The Guardian
Speaker 1: had no involvement with the use of this AI tool.
Speaker 1: As Nichols points out, media companies are experimenting with AI
Speaker 1: to generate stuff like poles because poles are proven to
Speaker 1: boost engagement, but they also take time away from staff.
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of when I was working for houstuffworks dot
Speaker 1: com and we would have things like quizzes and galleries
Speaker 1: and this kind of stuff that took a lot of
Speaker 1: time to create. They did create a lot of engagement,
Speaker 1: which is why the company loved them so much, but
Speaker 1: it meant that we weren't actually spending time doing stuff
Speaker 1: like researching and writing articles, which is really what most
Speaker 1: of us wanted to do. So why not offload those
Speaker 1: kinds of somewhat mindless tasks to AI? As the story indicates,
Speaker 1: the subject matter of the news article is incredibly important.
Speaker 1: Nichols goes on to reference various media companies that are
Speaker 1: even going a step further. They're leaning on AI to
Speaker 1: actually generate articles, not just supplemental material, but full on
Speaker 1: news articles. And I've talked in the past about again
Speaker 1: how my former employer How Stuff Works did that for
Speaker 1: How Stuffworks articles. I have not actually been back to
Speaker 1: the website for a few months now to see if
Speaker 1: that's still the case, but that's what it was like
Speaker 1: in the summer. Nichols argues that AI's shortcomings can create unfortunate, tragic,
Speaker 1: and even dangerous consequences, and I think that's right on
Speaker 1: the money. With a very strong editorial staff, you could
Speaker 1: potentially weed out articles that are misleading or harmful, But
Speaker 1: at some point you're asking editors to act both as
Speaker 1: an editor and as a writer to rewrite pieces, and
Speaker 1: then you start getting into these unmanageable workloads. So I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely convinced that it even makes sense from a
Speaker 1: business perspective. It certainly isn't going to help things like
Speaker 1: editorial morale. Meanwhile, the News division of CBS has launched
Speaker 1: a unit dedicated to investigating things like deep fakes and misinformation,
Speaker 1: particularly from generative AI. The unit has the name CBS
Speaker 1: News Confirmed, and they will have actual real life human
Speaker 1: beings at the helm. Thankfully, Claudia Milne and Ross Dagan
Speaker 1: are going to oversee the department. The company is looking
Speaker 1: to hire experts in journalism and AI. Again, this is
Speaker 1: really encouraging, y'all. I mean not to get on a soapbux,
Speaker 1: but journalism in general has taken a real bad hit
Speaker 1: over the last couple of decades. And to see a
Speaker 1: company say, no, we want experts in journalism and in
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence so that we are taking a responsible and
Speaker 1: accountable approach toward reporting on this kind of stuff, I
Speaker 1: think that's a huge step in the right direction. And moreover,
Speaker 1: this is something that's arguably already in necessity because generative
Speaker 1: AI tools are pretty sophisticated, and they are widely distributed,
Speaker 1: and they are largely unregulated, So it is something that
Speaker 1: we do need to be put in place in order
Speaker 1: to prevent harm from being committed across entire populations. Microsoft
Speaker 1: announced a partnership with in World AI to create Xbox
Speaker 1: developer tools that well, I mean within World AI. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've already guessed it. They're going to integrate AI
Speaker 1: in various ways in the game development cycle. So the
Speaker 1: idea is that developers will be able to create AI
Speaker 1: powered elements in their games, including stuff like AI generated
Speaker 1: stories and quests, and even characters. Tom Warren of The
Speaker 1: Verge wrote about this, and his piece actually surprised me
Speaker 1: because originally I assumed that these AI tools would only
Speaker 1: cover the actual game development phase on the back end,
Speaker 1: that developers would be able to use these tools to
Speaker 1: flesh out content in a game, while the human writers
Speaker 1: would focus on the most important parts of the game.
Speaker 1: So your human writers might be crafting a really satisfying
Speaker 1: and emotional story, right, and you might offload things like
Speaker 1: random NPC conversations to your AI so that you're not
Speaker 1: spending a ton of time just generating minds that players
Speaker 1: may or may not ever encounter. But according to Warren,
Speaker 1: the tool will also allow quote and AI character engine
Speaker 1: that can be integrated into games and used to dynamically
Speaker 1: generate stories, quests, and dialogue end quote. Now, maybe my
Speaker 1: interpretation is off, but by my reading, that sounds like
Speaker 1: it could mean that you could have these active within
Speaker 1: a game, not just in the game development, but in
Speaker 1: the game itself, so that as you're playing the game,
Speaker 1: you are encountering characters who are dynamically generating dialogue. At
Speaker 1: that moment, as opposed to having done it during the
Speaker 1: game development phase and then humans say yes, let's include
Speaker 1: that in the game, or no, that doesn't really work,
Speaker 1: let's strike it. If it's something that's truly dynamic, then
Speaker 1: it may be like in the game itself. So you
Speaker 1: could have a conversation with a character and it could
Speaker 1: be totally different than someone else who's playing the game
Speaker 1: and having a conversation with that same character. That to
Speaker 1: me is really interesting. Now that's assuming that my interpretation
Speaker 1: is correct, and I could be wrong. But if I
Speaker 1: am right, that means that we could see an end
Speaker 1: to NPC spouting off the same lines over and over,
Speaker 1: which would mean that we would have no more memes
Speaker 1: like I used to be an adventurer like you, and
Speaker 1: then I took a arrow to the knee. Microsoft said
Speaker 1: that developers will determine if and to what extent they'll
Speaker 1: use AI, so it's not like this is mandated, and
Speaker 1: obviously this is also a very sensitive topic. You can
Speaker 1: frame this as a way for developers to make better
Speaker 1: use of their time and to be more efficient, but
Speaker 1: you could also frame this as a way to take
Speaker 1: work away from people. Right, whether it's a voice actor
Speaker 1: with a simulated voice, or game developers or writers, et cetera.
Speaker 1: There's this deep concern that some game studios could choose
Speaker 1: to go with the cheaper AI option rather than to
Speaker 1: pay you know, those pesky human beings to do the work,
Speaker 1: and among gamers there's also a concern that AI generated
Speaker 1: games will not measure up to the top tier of
Speaker 1: titles that human beings have made in past years. On Saturday, XAI,
Speaker 1: the artificial intelligence startup from x Obsessed Elon Musk, launched
Speaker 1: a chatbot called groc Grook. If you're curious what sets
Speaker 1: groc apart from other chatbots, well, to the shock of
Speaker 1: absolutely no one, it's a bit of a potty mouth.
Speaker 1: It takes a more grouchy and vulgar approach to answering questions,
Speaker 1: almost as if the chatbot is insulted that's being bothered
Speaker 1: to answer those questions in the first place. In some cases,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk was very coy about gosh I wonder who
Speaker 1: decided that the chatbot should have an attitude anyway. Xai
Speaker 1: has indicated that the actual chatbot will have a couple
Speaker 1: of different modes. It'll have the fun mode, which presumably
Speaker 1: is the one that has all the attitude, and then
Speaker 1: I'm guessing it'll have an alternative that'll be a little
Speaker 1: more straightforward and standard, something that's more in line with
Speaker 1: the other chatbots that you can find out there. Musk's
Speaker 1: plan is to release the chatbot to ex premium subscribers
Speaker 1: once it emerges from beta, which is pretty darn funny
Speaker 1: because for ages, Musk has argued that one of the
Speaker 1: biggest problems with Twitter are the bots, and now he's
Speaker 1: releasing one to Twitter. But whatever, Okay, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsors. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with some more news in just a moment. We're back. So.
Speaker 1: Lucas Ropeck of Gizmoto has an article titled Cruz robotaxis
Speaker 1: require remote human assistance every four to five miles. As
Speaker 1: that headline suggests, it has been a bumpy road for
Speaker 1: the autonomous taxi company, and you've got to remember it.
Speaker 1: Cruise is also owned by General Motors. Just recently, the
Speaker 1: state of California revoked Cruse's license to operate autonomous vehicles
Speaker 1: due to concerns that the company vehicles were quote an
Speaker 1: unreasonable risk to public safety end quote. This news story
Speaker 1: is that apparently staff at Cruz frequently have to intervene
Speaker 1: and provide what was called remote assistance to Cruise vehicles
Speaker 1: due to the tendency to encounter situations that the vehicles
Speaker 1: aren't able to navigate. Tiffany Testo, spokesperson for Cruz, said
Speaker 1: this happened every four to five miles of travel among
Speaker 1: the company's vehicles, so not four to five miles per vehicle,
Speaker 1: but rather across the fleet every four to five miles,
Speaker 1: there was a need to provide remote assistance. Ultimately, the
Speaker 1: story seems to reinforce that we're still pretty good ways
Speaker 1: from a future of truly autonomous vehicles and that human
Speaker 1: intervention is still a necessary component. I will add that
Speaker 1: it wasn't very clear what extent that assistance goes to, right,
Speaker 1: whether it's just providing a little bit of data and
Speaker 1: then the car takes care of everything else itself, or
Speaker 1: if it goes so far as to require remote operations.
Speaker 1: TikTok is ending its Creator Fund on December sixteenth, So
Speaker 1: in case you're not aware, the Creator Fund is a
Speaker 1: pool of money. Currently it is valued at around two
Speaker 1: billion dollars, and TikTok uses that pool of money to
Speaker 1: issue payments to creators who generate a ton of videos
Speaker 1: from their work, so or a ton of views, i
Speaker 1: should say, for their videos. So the whole idea was
Speaker 1: this would be a direct way for TikTok stars to
Speaker 1: monetize their work because in the past they really had
Speaker 1: to hustle. Right, they could go viral, but there was
Speaker 1: no way to make money off of that unless they
Speaker 1: also landed a sponsorship deal with a third party. The
Speaker 1: Creator Fund was meant to be a more direct path
Speaker 1: to monetization, but it didn't get very good reception. Lots
Speaker 1: of creators complained that when they did receive a payout
Speaker 1: it was pennies on the dollar. They were barely making
Speaker 1: any money at all, and it wasn't worth the amount
Speaker 1: of work, nor did it reflect the tremendous number of
Speaker 1: views some of these folks were stacking up. So that
Speaker 1: program is going to go away on December sixteen. However,
Speaker 1: TikTok does have an alternative in place called the Creativity Program,
Speaker 1: and it sounds to me like it's pretty similar to
Speaker 1: the Creator Fund, except this one is specifically focused on
Speaker 1: longer form videos, stuff that's at least you a longer
Speaker 1: than a minute, and I'm not sure if this also
Speaker 1: means that TikTok will be better when it comes to
Speaker 1: storing creator data. It came to light earlier this year
Speaker 1: that some creator financial data, like personally identifying and very
Speaker 1: private financial data of creators, was being stored on servers
Speaker 1: in China. This was despite the fact that TikTok representatives
Speaker 1: had been claiming that all that kind of information would
Speaker 1: only be on servers in the United States or in Singapore.
Speaker 1: But Forbes investigated this and found that at least some
Speaker 1: of it was showing up on servers in China, which
Speaker 1: is concerning. Sony is following Microsoft's lead by discontinuing the
Speaker 1: PS four and PS fun integrations with x also known
Speaker 1: as Twitter. Microsoft ended integration for the Xbox way back
Speaker 1: in April. Sony has not commented on the reason for
Speaker 1: ending integration with x but if I had to guess,
Speaker 1: I would say it has something to do with X's
Speaker 1: change to its API or Application programming interface. So back
Speaker 1: in April, Twitter at that time shut down most of
Speaker 1: the features that were found in the free tier of
Speaker 1: its API. Instead, they introduced these very hefty paid tiers
Speaker 1: and the enterprise level tier had potentially really hefty price tags.
Speaker 1: Wired reported last May that some companies could be looking
Speaker 1: to pay as much as forty two thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: month in order to make use of this enterprise API. So,
Speaker 1: assuming Sony was incurring substantial fees to allow for x integration,
Speaker 1: it's no wonder that they've decided to shut it down now.
Speaker 1: It's more surprising that it actually stuck around half a
Speaker 1: year longer than Xbox did, so that's something. Now. You
Speaker 1: might remember that Epic Games, the maker of the insanely
Speaker 1: popular title Fortnite, got into a massive legal battle with
Speaker 1: Apple regarding how Apple handles payments within iOS. That is
Speaker 1: still not fully resolved because while a judge ruled mostly
Speaker 1: in Apple's favor, the judge did give Epicic some considerations.
Speaker 1: That whole case is now headed toward the US Supreme
Speaker 1: Court to weigh in on it. Meanwhile, Epic is now
Speaker 1: pursuing a similar legal strategy against Google. So, like Apple,
Speaker 1: Google strategy and mobile is to funnel payment options through
Speaker 1: Google itself, and that allows Google to take a commission,
Speaker 1: sometimes as large as thirty percent per payment. Epic argues
Speaker 1: that Google's policies are anti competitive, and that they hurt
Speaker 1: consumers and they drive up prices. Whether the court will
Speaker 1: follow the path that the Apple lawsuit took remains to
Speaker 1: be seen. Complicating matters is the fact that Google is
Speaker 1: currently in the hot seat with the US government in
Speaker 1: a much larger antitrust investigation. You know, I've often talked
Speaker 1: about how the way NFTs got rolled out was a
Speaker 1: total disaster that while I don't necessarily think NFT technology
Speaker 1: has no place in the world, the way it has
Speaker 1: been introduced was really really dumb. They didn't really amount
Speaker 1: to much more than a digital receipt, despite promises that
Speaker 1: NFTs were going to enable all sorts of interesting implementations. Instead,
Speaker 1: it just became a speculative circus that ultimately ended in disillusionment,
Speaker 1: with the texts reputation suffering a massive and maybe even
Speaker 1: fatal blow. But despite all that, there are still true
Speaker 1: believers out there. Some of them are pretty badly burnt.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that they were burnt by NFT
Speaker 1: values crashing. I mean they literally got burnt. You see,
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong there was this big event called Apefest,
Speaker 1: which was for devotees of the board Ape Yacht Club
Speaker 1: NFTs and while there, a bunch of attendees reported that
Speaker 1: they later suffered really bad pains. Some of them even
Speaker 1: weren't able to see. And while I haven't seen any
Speaker 1: definitive proof about the matter, the speculation is that the
Speaker 1: venue hosting this event was using these powerful UV lights
Speaker 1: as part of its lighting rig and those lights overexposed
Speaker 1: attendees to UV radiation, so they essentially got sun burnt
Speaker 1: inside and they even suffered burns to their eyes. According
Speaker 1: to Jess Weatherbed of The Verge, a totally different event
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong that happened way back in twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: had a similar problem. Folks discovered that the venue was
Speaker 1: using UV lights that were meant to be used to
Speaker 1: disinfect stuff, so they were emitting UV at a much
Speaker 1: higher intensity than say, your average black light. Now, just
Speaker 1: to be real here, I'm wishing everyone affected a swift
Speaker 1: recovery because it just sound it's awful. And that's it
Speaker 1: for the Tech News Today for November seventh, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.