Intelligent Machines 810 transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for Intelligent Machines. Jeff and Paris are here, I'm here and our special guest is here Ray Kurzweil, the author of so many great books about the singularity, his latest, the Singularity is Nearer when we Merge with AI. His vision of the future is mind-boggling. It's coming up next, on Intelligent Machines.

0:00:25 - Ray Kurzweil
Podcasts you love. From people you trust.

0:00:30 - Leo Laporte
This is TWIT. This is Intelligent Machines, with Jeff Jarvis and Paris Martineau, Episode 810, recorded March 12th 2025. A leader of computronium. It's time for Intelligent Machines, the show where we cover the latest in artificial intelligence. We also talk with the most interesting people in the field. Joining me right now, of course Jeff Jarvis, Professor Emeritus of I forget Journalistic Innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He's not there anymore. Anyway, we just do it so we can play the jingle. He's now at Montclair State University and SUNY Stony Brook. Hi, Jeff, Hi there, boss. How are you? Author of the Gutenberg Parenthesis? I'm excited we have the best guest ever coming up.

Also with us, paris Martineau. Oh, you got the book Good. Ever coming up. Also with us, paris Martineau. Oh, you got the book good. Uh, the information Paris writes for the weekend about youth issues or whatever the hell's on her mind, right?

0:01:33 - Paris Martineau
online child safety and tech and politics and all that fun jazz. My copy of Ray's book is woefully behind me but you can't, you can't reach it. I mean it's on the bookshelf, I could go run for it, but no, no, no, I've read it we all have copies, and that's the most, it's true.

0:01:49 - Leo Laporte
I think the ray we're referring to is, uh, well, really in some ways the spiritual father of this show, because he wrote the book the age of intelligent machines that gave birth to the name Ray Kurzweil. His newest is the Singularity is nearer. He's written many books. He's been a leading developer in AI for 63 years, which is, as far as I could tell, longer than any living person. Uh, also an amazing inventor. He invented the first flatbed scanner, the first optical character recognition system, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind. Of course, that famous kurzweil synthesizer for stevie wonder. Uh, I mean, I can go, I can go on and on. You actually got a grammy award for that, uh, recipient of the national medal of technology, inducted in the national inventors hall of fame, 21 honorary doctorates. He's written five best-selling books and, as I said, the newest, which came out last year, is the singularity is nearer when we merge with a I ray.

It's such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for giving us some time. My pleasure. Love your hand-painted uh, suspenders. They're fantastic. So, uh, suspenders, they're fantastic. So there's so many questions we have for you. You're probably most famous for your prediction that we would reach AGI in 2029, four years from now and we would reach the singularity in about 20 more years from now. Uh, in fact, I remember talking to you in 1999 when those that I think you said those very years, nobody at the time thought you were right. You obviously, yeah, have been pretty accurate. I saw somebody said your, your success rate in predictions is 86 percent now uh yeah, are you still, are we still?

0:03:45 - Ray Kurzweil
on target. I made 147 predictions in 1999 about the year 2009. Uh, 86 percent were correct within one year. So wow. But I have a method for doing this. Uh, if I actually bring up the computation chart yeah, I have it on my screen right now.

0:04:07 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, um benito, can you pull up that? There we go.

0:04:12 - Ray Kurzweil
This is, by the way, a logarithmic chart it's a logarithmic chart, so a straight line means exponential growth. Uh, it starts with the first working computer in 1939, the Zuse 2, which did 0.00007 calculations per second per constant dollar. Up on the upper right-hand corner is the Nvidia latest chip, which does half a trillion calculations per second per constant dollar. So it's a 75 quadrillion-fold increase since 1939 for the same cost. And that's only the hardware. The actual cost of doing a computation is the hardware times, the software increase. The software increase depends on what you're doing, but it can also be millions of one to one uh. So overall we've gained something like a million quadrillion fold increase, uh, since 1939. That's why we didn't have large language models in 1939 or even four years ago. We we began to have them four years ago. They didn't actually work very well. Even comparing today's large language models to the ones we had one year ago is a dramatic difference. So we're making exponential gains in the cost of making a computation.

0:05:43 - Leo Laporte
So all right. So I guess that's in a way. Is that Moore's Law?

0:05:48 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, moore's Law is a piece of it that deals with integrated circuits. But this happened from 1939, when we used relays to create computers, then we used tubes, then we used discrete transistors, then we used integrated circuits. Moore's law has only to do with integrated circuits. This is a much more broad way of tracking computation.

0:06:15 - Leo Laporte
But AI hasn't gotten better solely because computation's gotten better, or has it?

0:06:22 - Ray Kurzweil
But that's a necessary capability. If we we didn't have the computation, we wouldn't have large language models that only emerged, like four years ago. Uh, because of the uh exponential gains in computation you actually uh point out, though, that people can you hear me?

0:06:40 - Leo Laporte
okay, yeah, yeah, you sound great now okay you actually point out that that even as recently as a few years ago, even experts in the field have been surprised you write by many of the recent breakthroughs in AI. There is something else going on than just computational capability.

0:06:58 - Ray Kurzweil
Yes, yes, it's both software and hardware. The software is also giving us computation gains, but we're also creating more sophisticated software. Large language models now can actually call other capabilities and bring them in. I mean, right now computation is getting to the point where it can match the best human capabilities. There's different definitions of what AGI means. My definition is actually pretty comprehensive. Basically, it will be able to do what an expert in every field can do, all at the same time, and we're not quite there yet, but we will be there by 2020.

0:07:53 - Leo Laporte
It'll be more general, in other words, yeah.

0:07:56 - Ray Kurzweil
And we'll be able to do what an expert can do in every field, in any field.

0:08:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

0:08:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Ray, do you have a definition of intelligence? You know generic, even. Um, you know generic even before you get into this with artificial well.

0:08:10 - Ray Kurzweil
I dealt with a few definitions in my books. Intelligence is a way of using limited resources to solve a problem, and the faster you can solve it and the more sophisticated that you can uh problems that you can solve, you have more intelligence you have a bet, uh, you did, uh what in somewhere more than 20 years ago I think, with mitch capor.

0:08:37 - Leo Laporte
Uh, it was part of the long now's long bets, a twenty thousand dollar bet that, uh, the machine would pass your modified Turing test when Soon right In the next few years.

0:08:50 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, it said it by 2029.

29, okay, but the Turing test is not very well defined. Turing actually had like a page of descriptions of it, so it's really unclear. We had like a page of descriptions of it, so it's really unclear. Some people have said that the current language models can already pass it. I felt we would actually have like a five year period where people would say we're passing it. People wouldn't necessarily believe that, but by the end of five years everybody would believe it. So we've actually passed that first point. So by 2029 I believe everyone will believe that we passed the Turing test. But more significantly is AGI, which is actually of the same prediction, that large language models, combined with everything else that we're doing, will be able to match the best human capability, but also much faster. Like a friend of mine compared two books, it took her four days to do it. She decided to compare that to a large language model. A large language model did it in 40 seconds and she felt it did a better job. That's today, so it's already comparing very well to human intelligence.

0:10:15 - Leo Laporte
Are you gonna have a? So your test has human judges connected to test subjects, both computer and human. You point out. The things you point out is that an AI actually will have to pretend it's dumber than it is, because if it really knew everything, it would be so obvious that it's a computer that it wouldn't Well, absolutely.

0:10:34 - Ray Kurzweil
If it solves problems. It takes us four days and 40 seconds and it can compare to that for every possible human skill. We would know it's a computer, so it has to dumb itself down, but there's certain things that it can't quite do yet that actually humans can do. It has to be very good at having a personality that's consistent. We're getting there. 2029 is actually one of the more conservative predictions about this.

0:11:07 - Leo Laporte
It's your prediction, or do you want to adjust it? Do you think we'll get there sooner?

0:11:12 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, there's no reason for me to adjust it. I mean, I said 2029 in 1999. Stanford actually was concerned about my prediction. They organized a worldwide conference to examine it. Several hundred AI experts came. This was, I think, in 2000. And they felt that, yes, computers would be able to pass this very test, but not within 30 years. The consensus was 100 years. I was the only person that said 30 years.

0:11:45 - Leo Laporte
I think you're closer than 100, for sure. One of the things you point out in the book which is, I think, really true is I think you refer to an AI expert who said you know, if a computer and this was a few years ago, I think, 2014, 2015, could look at an image and know what's going on in the image, that's really hard to do and if it could do that, that'd be impressive. One month later, google releases google lens and does it. But, you point out, humans have an interesting flaw because as soon as the computer does it, we go oh yeah, well, that wasn't so hard. Of course, it can beat the best chess players in the world. That's a you know computation.

0:12:24 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, we saw. We saw that with chess. Chess was considered if you could actually play chess, you're creating fantastic creative abilities which no computer could do. As soon as a computer could beat every human being, we said well, chess is not that significant. Alpha Go Zero is very interesting because every human being, we said I will. Chest is not that that wasn't.

0:12:45 - Leo Laporte
That. Alpha go zero is very interesting because it's it treat taught itself. Unlike the chess playing computer, it learned it. All I started with was the rules of go and then it played itself a billion games over just a few days and became better even than Alpha go and now beat world champion. Beat AlphaGo 100 games to nothing. That's something called deep reinforcement learning, right.

0:13:11 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, that's what we're dealing with now. We actually can. When you play a game, it's very clear whether or not it's successful or not. If you win the game, you can actually track on that data. When you're creating language models, it's not clear what a successful identification is, but we've actually had people go through, we've trained many different possibilities and it actually learns from that. So that's like a successful game and it actually can do a very good job with language now.

0:13:53 - Leo Laporte
DeepSeek. In fact kind of used that technique right.

0:13:58 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, American companies also have the ability to do this with less computation.

0:14:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah. Openai immediately said oh, we got that, we can do that Now. The book was written last year and you talk a lot about the disruptions and you talk, I think, pretty optimistically, as you always have, about, for instance, the job market and other disruptions. You're a little concerned about Luddites, you're a little concerned about anti-ai violence the problem now is that it's happening so quickly, right, uh?

0:14:33 - Ray Kurzweil
I mean, generally, in times past it took a while for the job, uh picture to change, and so people could get used to it. Now it it's going to happen very, very quickly. Are you concerned? Well, I'm concerned about that. I think we'll get through it. We'll actually be better off. Actually, if you bring up my US personal income chart.

I got it right here this is due to computation comparing our per capita personal income. So this is the average income that a person makes. In constant dollars it's ten times what it was 100 years ago.

0:15:24 - Leo Laporte
This is a 2023 dollars.

0:15:27 - Speaker 3
Yeah, that's interesting, although there's a little dip there at the top.

0:15:33 - Leo Laporte
I noticed a little drop. I wonder what data from the last few years might show. Does that I mean you also talk a lot about the real reason humans work is for meaning and for purpose? Obviously, we have to support ourselves.

0:15:53 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, my view is a little bit different than other AI experts. Some people think, okay, we've got a certain amount of intelligence, and then AI although we carry it around, like everybody carries this around. I give lectures and every single person almost has a cell phone. That wasn't until 15 years ago, but it's not part of our body. So if AI says something, it's not part of who we are. But we're gonna actually merge together. We're not going to carry around a separate part. We'll do that with virtual reality. We'll actually see things and it'll actually go inside our brain. That'll happen in the 2030s and we won't be able to tell the difference between things that our biological brain, which we'll keep as well as our AI-assisted brain, won't be able to tell the difference, and it'll be part of who we are. So it won't be us versus AI. We're going to be made much more intelligent by merging with AI.

0:17:03 - Leo Laporte
You talk about it as you talk about epics and the fifth epic. You say we will directly merge biological human cognition with the speed and power of our digital technology.

0:17:15 - Ray Kurzweil
Right, and other people don't do that. They think it's us versus AI. I mean, you go through educational institutions from elementary school up through graduate school. People don't want to use AI because people won't get smarter that way. So let's keep AI separate, and that's not the right way to do things. The world we'll be in will be, even more than it is today, imbued with AI, and we're gonna be smarter, and that's the world we need to get used to.

0:17:51 - Leo Laporte
We'll actually transcend our genetic capabilities by some sort of cybernetic man-machine interface.

0:18:00 - Ray Kurzweil
Right, and there's a whole way in which we'll do that. But I mean, you can see with virtual reality, you just look at the world and things you look at will tell you what's going on with them. You'll see the world with a much more comprehensive view of it.

0:18:21 - Leo Laporte
But that's for you. That's what the singularity really is, right, I mean.

0:18:25 - Ray Kurzweil
Singularity is when we actually merge. We'll combine with AI and it'll make us a million times smarter, and that's something that we can hardly comprehend. So we borrow this metaphor from physics, where we talk about something that we can't understand like a singularity. In physics, things go into it. You can't actually see what's going on inside it, so we call that a singularity. This is a singularity in history where we won't be able to really understand today what it would be like to be a million times smarter. So that's 2045 do you so?

0:19:11 - Leo Laporte
as I was saying, you wrote this last year. We have entered a very disruptive period, not just in our nation, but globally. Perhaps, maybe a little bit because of this, perhaps because of climate change and a lot of other disruptions, are we going to make it to 2045? Have you changed your outlook a little bit because of the last few months?

0:19:35 - Ray Kurzweil
No, we're going to get to 2045. Good, I'm counting on it. I mean, if you bring up my chart on electricity generation, solar energy and it's also true of wind energy is growing exponentially and there's reasons for that. To completely replace all of our energy needs, we would only need one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that meets the Earth. So we only have to generate one part in 10,000 and we'll generate all of the energy that we need, and we're on our ways to doing that in about 10 years, based on the exponential growth. People tend to look at things in linear ways, but this is actually growing exponentially and energy will be much cheaper as a result.

0:20:40 - Leo Laporte
You do have a chapter called Peril. You talk about the specter of, uh, social dislocation and violence, which you think is unlikely, but you do point out I think this is important that we should work toward a world where the powers of ai are broadly distributed so that its effects reflect the values of humanity as a whole. I I mean that's pretty clear that we don't want you work right now. By the way, we should mention your ai visionary at google, but, notwithstanding, we don't want you work right now. By the way, we should mention you're AI visionary at Google, but, notwithstanding, we don't want Google to control it, or Microsoft to control it, or OpenAI or China. It should be something all humankind benefits from.

0:21:16 - Ray Kurzweil
Yes, Well, first of all, I mean, everybody has access to AI, so that's good, and we do want competition in the AI field. I think, though, if you use a large language model, it should be from a larger company. So they're concerned about their reputation and their liability. Good point, deepseek is not. If you deal with a small company there's not much behind them and they're not really that concerned about reputation or liability.

0:21:47 - Leo Laporte
I do think, though, it's very important and I'm very happy about this, that this hasn't become a proprietary technology, that the technologies for Transformers and uh and llms are well known, well distributed, and a lot of other, a lot many other companies are working on it at the same time and a lot of companies. Uh, really uh create publications with their techniques. Yeah, it's not being kept secret, right, which is good, I think, yes, you agree I I agree with that.

0:22:21 - Ray Kurzweil
Yeah, I agree with that. It's good to have sort of sensible regulation across a lot of different companies.

0:22:32 - Leo Laporte
We just recently saw safeai release this is Eric Schmidt's effort releases paper on AI safety. Where do you stand on superintelligence and AI safety?

0:22:50 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, I mean, threats of AI are real and serious, but it's not an alien invasion. Ai is not coming to us from Mars, we're creating it. That might be worse. The techniques are widely known. It's actually helpful Everybody has access to it and some things that are negative it's good for them to be widely known. When we had nuclear war. There's been two times that nuclear war actually broke out, and two cities in Japan were annihilated with nuclear war. If you ask people then what's the likelihood that this will happen again? 99% would say that oh, it's going to happen many times, but actually for the last 80 years this has not happened.

It was a cautionary People actually have capability of nuclear war are maybe not the best people in the world, but somehow we've avoided doing that. So I'm more optimistic that we can avoid the dangers from AI. But we must train AI to mirror human reasoning. We must advance our ethical ideals as reflected by AI. I was actually one of the principal participants in the Asilomar guidelines. This happened a number of years ago, and we created some ethical ideals that are being pursued, and so I'm optimistic about it, but we do have to be diligent about it.

0:25:03 - Leo Laporte
Is this a role that government should take?

0:25:12 - Ray Kurzweil
That's a good question. I don't really have an answer to that. It depends on what the governments do. I mean, I think it's actually useful to have large companies that already have a lot of both reputation and ethical guidelines to guide them.

0:25:33 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure, because you work at Google, you wouldn't be working there if you didn't feel like they were a good steward. Is OpenAI a good steward?

0:25:44 - Ray Kurzweil
I think so and a lot of people use them, and I think that's been helpful to have a lot of companies doing this.

0:25:56 - Leo Laporte
Guys, I don't want to monopolize. Mr Kurzweil, if you have a question, jeff or Paris, please, I'm curious.

0:26:02 - Paris Martineau
I mean you've touched on this a bit, but given that your position on this is that in just a few short years we're going to experience AGI and specifically the widespread access to technologies that are better at doing practically everything that a human being could, what would, I guess, stop that from causing kind of widespread economic disruption of large segments of the economy, kind of collapsing as companies replace workers?

0:26:32 - Ray Kurzweil
Because we're merging with AI. I mean, everybody seems to take the position this human intelligence and then this AI, we carry it, it around with us, but it's not really part of us, but we're actually going to merge with it. So you and me and everybody else is going to be a lot smarter than we were before and you won't be able to tell you, in fact, you won't be able to tell from yourself what's AI and what's part of you, because it's part of yourself.

0:27:06 - Leo Laporte
Does that require a human AI brain interface like Neuralink?

0:27:17 - Ray Kurzweil
Is that how it's going to? Happen? It's not going to require surgery. Oh good, neuralink is useful for people that can't communicate, and so on. It can be very useful for that, but for the rest of us that can communicate, virtual reality is one way to do it. The other way is to actually tell what you're. You only have to actually detect what's going on in part of your brain where the key thoughts are generated. So I could wear a helmet, do you imagine?

0:27:53 - Leo Laporte
Or some sort of AI hat.

0:27:55 - Ray Kurzweil
You won't have to wear anything. Oh, okay.

0:28:00 - Leo Laporte
Although I'm willing to. I'm just saying I'm willing to.

0:28:03 - Jeff Jarvis
He's worn worse.

0:28:05 - Leo Laporte
I've done worse, but you anticipate that in 20 years people will grow up in kind of a team work with AI. Will kids go to school, or will they? I mean, what does this look like? How does it happen? When do you get your AI implant, or do you not?

0:28:30 - Ray Kurzweil
worry about that? That's a very good question. I'm really not sure about that.

0:28:36 - Leo Laporte
Doesn't matter really, if it happens, I guess yeah.

0:28:40 - Ray Kurzweil
But if you do it, let's say, through virtual reality, I mean, you can get it at any time.

0:28:46 - Leo Laporte
Right.

0:28:48 - Ray Kurzweil
You can put it on, take it off, just like virtual reality is today, and it can actually generate a broader view of each person. And we're doing that already. I mean, just carrying this around already makes us more intelligent.

0:29:08 - Leo Laporte
No, I agree. In fact I use AI all the time and I now, as Harrison Jeff, painfully no, I, I wear a little recorder. This is kind of like Gordon Bell's like memory thing, but it's not pictures, it's recording all the audio which it then sends to ai for analysis, and right now the analysis is somewhat trivial. It's interesting but somewhat trivial. But I also feel like I'm building up a database of information that will, as ai improves in a few years, be really, really valuable.

0:29:45 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, I took everything that my father wrote and created a chatbot with it and you could ask him any question and it would actually find the correct answer and it was like talking to my father. That's wild. So there's ways in which, even though everything you're saying might seem trivial to you, you put it all together. It actually generates your personality.

0:30:12 - Leo Laporte
Will it still be, you think, in 2029, neural nets, LLMs, deep reinforcement, learning the kinds of techniques we're using now, or do you anticipate new techniques to come along?

0:30:28 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, we're adding new techniques. I mean, we have an LLM, but it can actually then code something and actually analyze it in real time and give you an answer and participate in the final answer it gives you. So we're combining different techniques together, yeah, and the final thing will not be one thing. It'll be a whole grab bag of different techniques that work together. Jeff, did you have?

0:30:56 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I'm curious, ray, about your reaction to public reaction to AI. You've been a leader in this for your whole life, and then two years ago, along comes ChatGPT and people say Whoa, it can talk, it can listen, it can hear us in our language, and so the the public attitude toward it all changed kind of overnight. And so I'm curious what your reaction?

0:31:22 - Ray Kurzweil
is yes. I mean, the first ones were interesting, but they made a lot of mistakes and they didn't know everything and they didn't really have a human personality. Gradually that changes and depends on which person you ask and which versions they're using. So it's not like it just came and it worked perfectly. Oh no.

0:31:50 - Jeff Jarvis
I absolutely agree, but I think that the public perception was that it was a sudden arrival when it's been worked for years. What do you think about press coverage these days of AI as a whole?

0:32:03 - Ray Kurzweil
I think it's beneficial. We're careful about the mistakes, but people are not alarmed by it. I think it will have a lot of impact on jobs. I think we will need to provide some stipend to everybody so they can participate in the economy, but I think when we actually have more intelligence, people will benefit from that.

0:32:38 - Leo Laporte
I notice you use the word mistake and not hallucination.

0:32:42 - Ray Kurzweil
Some AI naysayers say that this hallucination problem is intractable, that this is, this is going to be getting better you compare hallucinations today to one year ago, it's dramatically better, uh, and I think we understand how to get rid of hallucinations. So, oh, you do okay all right.

0:33:02 - Leo Laporte
How about? How about safety? How about prompt injection, things like that? Are you concerned about people breaking into AIs, jailbreaking AIs?

0:33:24 - Ray Kurzweil
I mean, there's a lot of concerns that are difficult that we're dealing with. As the threats increase, ai's ability to thwart them also increases. So a lot of people generate what will happen, that are negative and completely ignore the fact that AI will help us to alleviate them. So I think we will be able to deal with it and so far we are. Darrell Bock.

0:33:58 - Leo Laporte
When are we going to hit the? When are we going to hit? I talked about the fifth epic, which is when we merge. You mentioned the sixth epic in your in your book. By the way, the new book is really a good read and fun to read. The singularity is nearer when we merge with ai. It's already a bestseller, you say in the sixth ethic is where our intelligence spreads throughout the universe, turning ordinary matter into computronium, which is matter organized at the ultimate density of computation. When's that going to happen?

0:34:29 - Ray Kurzweil
well, computronium, that's beyond 20 years from now. Yeah, I would say so but it does.

0:34:38 - Leo Laporte
It does get exponential, doesn't?

0:34:40 - Ray Kurzweil
it after. One liter of computronium would give you more capability than all human beings together Wow. And we can actually change a certain part of our matter into computronium, and then it will make us again more intelligent. So I mean, if we're a million times more intelligent in 20 years, it's not going to stop. Then It'll keep going.

0:35:09 - Leo Laporte
And we can create. It becomes exponential because we operate at a faster and faster rate.

0:35:16 - Ray Kurzweil
So I'm not that concerned about going to other planets right now because we have plenty of things here on Earth to make ourselves more intelligent. But eventually we'll run out of that. So that's decades from now. At that point we'll want to go to other places, but that will be a job for next generation.

0:35:40 - Leo Laporte
The fifth epic.

0:35:42 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, that brings up the fact that we can extend our own lives. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that Longevity escape philosophy, right?

now you go through a year and you're a year older. However, scientific progress is also creating new cures, new ways of processing disease, and if you're diligent which I think the three of you are creating new cures, new ways of processing disease. And if you're diligent which I think the three of you are you'll get back today about four months, so you age a year, but you get back four months. So you only actually age eight months every year. However, the scientific progress is growing exponentially. So by 2032, about seven years from now if you're diligent, you'll get back not four months but a full year. So you age a year, but you get back a full year. So you actually don't, you won't die of aging. This doesn't mean you won't die.

You could get in an accident tomorrow, although also making progress in accidents. Self-driving cars, for example, like the Waymo cars that are going through San Francisco and other cities, have had zero accidents. We'll dramatically reduce accidents as we get more intelligence, but and so, past seven years, you'll actually get back more than a year. You'll actually go backwards in time, can't wait, so we'll live longer. Ultimately, we'd like that decision to be in ourselves, but actually people don't want to die unless they're in unbearable pain physical, mental, spiritual pain. Otherwise, people want to live. People say, oh, they don't want to live past 75 or 85 or 95, because they look at people who are of that age and many of them are not.

You can't really communicate with them because they're too old. So we actually want to extend healthy life, not just being able to live longer.

0:37:58 - Leo Laporte
I've often quoted you saying I hope I'm not misquoting you I want to live long enough to live forever.

0:38:05 - Ray Kurzweil
Yes, that's the subtitle of one of my books.

0:38:10 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I guess I'm not misquoting. I must remember it from there. How's that going? You used to take a lot of supplements, I know.

0:38:20 - Ray Kurzweil
Right, Right. Well, when the age of spiritual, when the, I wrote three books on health. When they came out, I was taking about 250 pills. I'm now down to about 80. They're actually more effective. I've had actually two problems that were dangerous and I've actually overcome them. My father died of heart disease when he was 58. His father died at an even younger age. I take now Rapatha. My LDL, which is my bad cholesterol, is down to 10. Wow, my good cholesterol is up to 64. Holy cow.

0:39:09 - Leo Laporte
And.

0:39:09 - Ray Kurzweil
I've actually measured my heart and I have zero plaque, so I've really overcome that problem.

0:39:14 - Leo Laporte
Is that with exercise too, or just supplements?

0:39:18 - Ray Kurzweil
Well, the supplements is really what has created it. I mean, there's other things which you want to do exercise for? Yeah, I've also had diabetes. I now have an artificial pancreas that works just like a real pancreas. Isn't that amazing? So I've actually overcome those two problems with scientific progress, which didn't exist when my father died 50 years ago. So who knows what will happen tomorrow, but I think I'm in pretty good shape to be alive and well seven years from now.

0:39:55 - Leo Laporte
I want to be here 20 years from now because I'm excited about the singularity, but I am 68, so I'm going to have to be, as you say, diligent.

0:40:07 - Ray Kurzweil
Have you ever published your supplement regimen in my books? I'm also writing an autobiography where I'll talk oh good, I want to see it good how long does it?

0:40:21 - Paris Martineau
how long?

0:40:22 - Ray Kurzweil
does it take you to take 80 pills a day?

0:40:24 - Paris Martineau
if you don't mind me asking, uh, I take them while I'm drinking other things like coffee and okay, uh, here and there, and I was gonna say me I'm at like two and a half and that could take me a whole 10 minutes. I can get distracted, so I'm impressed well, it's okay.

0:40:37 - Ray Kurzweil
You've got 24 hours in a day. Maybe a third of them you're sleeping, but there's plenty of time to take some supplements. Anything special about your?

0:40:45 - Jeff Jarvis
diet.

0:40:51 - Ray Kurzweil
I mean I eat vegetables and fish, I avoid meat. So it's a good diet, but nothing too exotic about it.

0:41:09 - Leo Laporte
Darrell Bock Ray, we've had way more of your time than we deserve and I thank you so much for spending time with us and I really, if people are even slightly intrigued, I couldn't recommend this book more highly. It is a great read. There's a lot of information in here. We didn't touch on so many things you talk about. Uh, the new book, singularity, is nearer when we merge with AI. Um, I personally, I am inspired by you and I am always been excited to talk to you, and I think this is our fourth conversation. I look forward to when the autobiography comes out and we could talk again, I hope yeah, look forward to future conversations.

0:41:49 - Ray Kurzweil
It's great. Thank you, sir thank you great Ray Kurzweil.

0:41:53 - Leo Laporte
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0:45:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, we thank them Wow.

0:45:37 - Leo Laporte
That's a first. So what'd you think of Ray?

0:45:42 - Paris Martineau
I unfortunately can't get the thought out of my head of taking 80 pills a day. I don't know why he said so many important things 200. He used to take 200.

0:45:55 - Leo Laporte
I just I'm speechless, I'm, I'm thinking about feeling 200 pills in my stomach and this.

0:46:06 - Paris Martineau
You probably want to spread them out a little bit. How can?

0:46:08 - Benito Gonzalez
you spread out 200 pills.

0:46:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's a meal. That's a meal. It's a meal of pills. It's a meal of pills. The thing I liked about the him and this book is it's very optimistic, it's very positive. I was gonna say I salute his optimism yeah, and and the.

The good news is he made all these predictions in 1999 86, you know, for instance 1999. He said, well, we'll have a ubiquitous device with a full-time internet connection in our pocket. It's like, oh, he was right. I mean, that wasn't such a difficult thing to predict in 1999. But he's also been right about this whole AI revolution that we're seeing, and I think nobody really thought this. You know he's lived through the AI winters and I think a lot of people in his generation thought ai was over. You know, it's not. It's not going to go anywhere. I've just lost my uh pewter, so I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to let you do the show you don't want that?

I don't. It's not a democracy.

0:47:09 - Paris Martineau
I don't know where it went we can talk about new york city bodegas using liquid eggs for the next hour and a half oh, my god, you know, I went to uh.

0:47:17 - Leo Laporte
I went to uh when we were in tucson. I was so excited because there was a waffle house. Oh, I love waffle hats, uh. And yeah, I didn't. I mean, I I had heard of them, I'd never been to one. I'm culturally deprived.

0:47:33 - Paris Martineau
Do you have any in?

0:47:33 - Jeff Jarvis
and out of the heartland.

0:47:34 - Paris Martineau
No they don't have them in New.

0:47:35 - Jeff Jarvis
York no it's where you grew up, in Florida, right.

0:47:39 - Paris Martineau
Literally it's such Waffle House country that one of my high school history teachers, before every test, would be like keep your papers like the hash browns at Waffle House, like capped covered and some other thing, oh yeah there's three different ways you can get them. No, there's like 25 different ways you can get them.

0:47:57 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, so what did you think?

0:47:59 - Paris Martineau
Did you go to a Waffle House?

0:48:01 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's the thing. In Tucson there was two Waffle Houses. I mean it was an embarrassment of riches, but I went to the waffle. I can't remember why I brought this up.

0:48:09 - Paris Martineau
Now I got I got liquid eggs oh yes, they charged. Thank you they have an egg surcharge. They have a 50 cent per egg surcharge.

0:48:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, why do bodegas do liquid eggs?

0:48:24 - Paris Martineau
well, if you look at the rundown, have I got the story for you I wish I could um this is the new title you can't this I could.

0:48:32 - Leo Laporte
This is the new title. You can't. This is your new obsession. Is this your new obsession?

0:48:35 - Paris Martineau
No, I just was thinking about what the cost of liquid, the cost of eggs, could have on the bacon, egg and cheese at a New York City bodega.

0:48:43 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, no kidding.

0:48:45 - Paris Martineau
So this is a story from NBC News talking about how the United Bodegas of America which I didn't realize is- a group.

0:48:54 - Jeff Jarvis
They represent a lot of cats.

0:48:56 - Leo Laporte
They do represent mostly cats. Explain to those of us in the heartland what a bodega is.

0:49:02 - Paris Martineau
A bodega is like a store on the corner near you kind of that's located in a dense urban area that has a convenient oh, you mean a 7-Eleven? No, no of that. It's located in a dense urban area. That oh, you mean a 7-eleven? No, no, I mean it's kind of like a 7-eleven in the sense that there's a corner store but there's also like a deli counter where people can make you uh food at basically 20 a lot of times 24 hours, if it's a good bodega. There's also kind of some bodegas that are more grocery store than convenience store and you can get any mishmash of items.

Bodegas typically also have at least one cat uh for rat policing but the cat is also there for petting purposes um, which is very important, but the united bodegas of america is apparently the group trade group that represents a lot of bodegas, I want to speak about ai and bodegas.

I really, I really speak to the convention about AI and bodegas. I really do. But they've been urging their clients and members to cut the price of or, I guess, lower the rising cost of, a bacon, egg and cheese by using liquid egg substitute to make the classic sandwiches. And so this is a whole article from NBC that features new yorkers like quason richardson saying that's like cheating the community. Nobody wants liquid eggs. If I'm gonna pay for an egg sandwich, I want the egg I want you to crack the egg in liquid eggs?

ostensibly yeah, but you're not cracking the egg in there.

0:50:28 - Leo Laporte
But why are they cheaper? I mean, there must be filler.

0:50:36 - Jeff Jarvis
My parents used to call them fakey eggs, but that was different. Liquid egg production involves mechanically cracking eggs, separating yolks and whites, filtering the mixture, pasteurizing to kill pathogens and then packaging for distribution. That's opposed to fake eggs, which is what my parents used to have because they had cholesterol. My mother had diabetes. Uh, that was synthetic eggs, which is they're not using. They're still using eggs and it's still.

0:51:02 - Paris Martineau
I wonder if the shelf life is much higher for liquid eggs and part of I don't know. This might have no bearing in reality, but I was thinking this as I was going to my local grocery store this week and saw a 20 curtain of eggs so I was like I bet. I mean, obviously the reason why eggs are so expensive is bird flu, but I bet an added part of that is the places that would normally be selling you eggs have to keep most of their eggs so that they can rebuild their flocks, because, uh, you can then do fertilized eggs versus that and when you know, yeah, I mean yeah, how do you get chickens eggs?

0:51:38 - Leo Laporte
well, our friend cory doctorow has written a piece on eggs and the cost of eggs and he says it has nothing to do, of course, with bird flu. He's the guy who created the term and shitification. He says it's the shitification of the egg industry.

0:51:56 - Jeff Jarvis
It's profit-making well.

0:51:58 - Paris Martineau
Something that I think is notable is I realized the other day that like, for instance, like canada, isn't having a huge surge in egg prices, despite the fact that you do geographically eggflation is excuse, excuse, flation.

0:52:11 - Leo Laporte
We don't have egg companies in the business of making eggs anymore. We have egg companies in the business of exploiting egg shortages. So maybe liquid eggs are actually the real cost of eggs. He says we're told this is the fault of bird flu. But the egg industry this is the good old Corey is a vertical stack of monopolies, duopolies and cartels. It's the egg industry this is the good old cory is a closer, is a vertical stack of monopolies, duopolies and cartels. It's the egg cart. Remember the spud cartel? Well, now we got the egg cartel controlling everything from the genomes of egg laying chickens to the raising and processing of chickens, to the distribution and retailing of eggs. They have conspired in the open to use the exclusive bird flu to restrict production and raise prices over and over every time blue bird flu strikes. There's actually a guy, matt Stoller you know him right, jeff, his big newsletter. He wrote a article called hatching a conspiracy. It's an investigative series. He quotes antitrust lawyer Basil Musher bash who lays out the history, mechanics and fantastical profits of big egg.

0:53:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Wow, cal Maine has 17% market share. You would think that eggs would be, you know, small moms and pops and all that. One of the.

0:53:29 - Leo Laporte
It is here in Petaluma, by the way. I can go down the street to a dozen different people who sell eggs. Well, something that's worth For $5 a dozen, by the way.

0:53:37 - Paris Martineau
I mean, while I love Corey's conspiratorial thinking and I always will subscribe to any conspiracy ever, at least just for the bit I think one thing that's also worth noting is like the average size of like a flock. The average like flock of chickens in the US is like in the hundreds of thousands yeah, they're giant Versus. If you go to like a place like Canada where they have more regulations and that sort of stuff, the average flock is way smaller, like 20,000 or something. So if you get bird flu you're only killing 20,000 chickens versus 300,000.

0:54:09 - Leo Laporte
And here in Petaluma it's a half dozen chickens who are wandering around. The eggs are fantastic. They're every different color, there's green, there's brown, there's blue, there's white. It's incredible and they're so good. But we're very fortunate here. Cal main CFO, max Bowman, has done a series of investicall investor calls, trumpeting the company's rising profits.

How much do they have the egg market to the own 17.2, attributing them, to quote significantly higher selling prices and our ability to adapt to inflationary market pressures. By the way, cal main stock then went to record highs. Their profits have have averaged between 300 and 600 percent of the pre-bird flu levels. Jeez uh, we've seen this again and again that cory did the story on big potato right, or?

0:55:00 - Paris Martineau
well, the, the pandemic yeah or you know yeah paper towels and all kinds of things yeah, uh as we learned in the pandemic, once things get expensive, it's hard for the price to go back down.

0:55:12 - Benito Gonzalez
Yep yeah, this is what I've been saying. This is not inflation, like everyone calls this stuff inflation. It's not. It's never been inflation.

0:55:17 - Leo Laporte
It's been price gouging the whole time inflation price gouging meanwhile, if you, uh, if you weren't terrified enough, google is announcing gemini robotics for building general purpose robots. You know, know. I've been thinking about AI and one of the things AI lacks that we have Really yeah, believe it or not, surprise One of the things that AI lacks, that we have is the ability to go out in the world and we learn from our experience with reality. It doesn't, and AI doesn't really know what happens when you drop an egg onto the floor. It might have, you know, seen some descriptions of it's gonna scream.

That's ten dollars you just wasted so google mind has deep mind has announced uh, gemini robotics to bring gemini and ai into the physical world and performing a new. By the way, what's cool about these is in many cases they don't have to be trained the face of this robot that gemini robot is putting out is terrifying to me. There's something so simple and childlike about it that it upsets me it's just, I would show it to you if I, if I didn't have a dead laptop um, if you look up, um you know my robotics, but you know, you can probably go to the page.

I think this is just an excuse to go out and buy an M4, let me. That's what's really going on. It's not charging for some reason. It's not that old devastating.

0:56:52 - Paris Martineau
Imagine a uh a white sphere with a strange kind of brow hair bone thing, also in white, and then just two big circular dots just for eyes and that's nothing else why are they a bit haunting?

0:57:05 - Jeff Jarvis
are they trying to put it in the chat? Um, but you know, if you can show it I think my computer is starting up I.

0:57:14 - Benito Gonzalez
I hadn't early, I hadn't set up for this earlier, so I don't.

0:57:16 - Paris Martineau
Oh, sorry about that, okay I think I did a great job describing it that's exactly what it looks like, um, hold on. Well, no, I probably should. I was gonna write it down but I realized the only paper I have is my eyeglasses prescription I probably shouldn't draw, make a drawing of a robot for us come on um, but I don't know I I there have been a lot of wacky little robots out and about in the world and I'm not sure that's necessarily made them that much better did you see? Uh, there are. Those are those little food guys oh have I seen that dog?

0:57:53 - Leo Laporte
oh yeah, well, did you see the capitals building? Well, maybe that dog could have helped people out of time could have changed history maybe, um, yeah, it doesn't seem like a good thing to me, but okay, how can you be so pro every?

0:58:13 - Paris Martineau
we should give everything to ai. Ai is the best rah, rah. And then you're like nah, put ai in a dog and have it put lease a building, and that's a step.

0:58:22 - Leo Laporte
What I have said before, if you check the uh, the record is that what we got to be careful about and and I should ask Ray about this is giving AI agency in the world Like AI can't harm you if it's just in a machine, in a computer, but put it in a dog.

0:58:40 - Paris Martineau
But put it in your brain In a hat, that's fine, I don't mind, that's fine, you take the hat off. Yeah, you know, the thing that constantly hallucinates doesn't have an understanding of truth versus fiction. That's great.

0:58:54 - Leo Laporte
Well, next week we're going to have Put in the dog and give the dog a gun.

0:58:59 - Paris Martineau
Did you see?

0:58:59 - Jeff Jarvis
that story? Did you see that story?

0:59:01 - Paris Martineau
No, that's a story.

0:59:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, it is today. Dog shoots man. Oh, that's great Tennessee. A dog, a man and his mate. He and she were lying in bed with a gun. That's so america. Yeah, the dog comes up, gets his paw caught in the safety thing and ends up pulling the trigger. It grazes the man's thigh the dog.

0:59:26 - Benito Gonzalez
This was a bit on 30 Rock.

0:59:28 - Jeff Jarvis
I know I was about to say yes and it happened. Oreo was the name of the dog. Everybody's on Team Oreo, oh.

0:59:34 - Leo Laporte
Oreo, but thank God Oreo didn't kill anybody.

0:59:37 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, that's good Must have scared the hell out of Oreo.

0:59:40 - Paris Martineau
I'm always afraid that Gizmo's going to do something like that whenever I bring her home to visit my parents, because I realized under my parents' bed is a shotgun that for the longest time I thought was loaded, because why else would it be there, but apparently the ammo is stored somewhere else. So but gizmo always runs under their bed and I'm like you can't wield a shotgun, gizmo I'm just worried about.

1:00:01 - Leo Laporte
I always, every time I talk to my cat, samantha, I whisper please don't eat my nose when I'm dead. So I think that would be a pretty good place.

1:00:11 - Paris Martineau
I mean probably taste-wise not going to be the best place all right, here is the uh.

1:00:15 - Leo Laporte
Can you see what? Can you see my uh computer now? No, there we go. So here's the gemini. Yeah, that's the magic. So, uh, there's a rubik's cube.

1:00:27 - Benito Gonzalez
Uh, and he's, I should put the I will move the pen with the other pencils so it doesn't.

1:00:33 - Leo Laporte
It hasn't been trained on this. It's not like a factory robot where it's exactly the same widgets in the same place all the time it's been trained on something.

1:00:41 - Jeff Jarvis
What has been?

1:00:41 - Paris Martineau
okay, how many of these google demo videos have we seen? I'm going to say the same thing, which is I want to see all the outtakes until we get a full 24-hour stream of this.

1:00:54 - Leo Laporte
Well, you're attaching an LLM, so the LLM knows what a basketball is and I guess it can say okay, that's a basketball.

1:01:00 - Paris Martineau
That's a basketball, that's a ping pong ball. Well, good job Ha.

1:01:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Has more imagination than you do Paris. Okay, the point's well taken.

1:01:16 - Paris Martineau
A little literal here like a machine are you.

1:01:17 - Leo Laporte
Paris. It doesn't even have the little black striations on it. A little dance and orange ping pong ball for crying out loud. Deepmind's latest AI model can help robots fold origami and zip closed Ziploc bags. That's better than I can do, well, but this seems like that would be something.

1:01:33 - Paris Martineau
Uh, it could do right okay, but do we not already have many, many robots that can fold paper and seal bags? That's how factories work, right but they're designed again.

1:01:45 - Leo Laporte
It's not trained to say. He said pick up the banana, put it in the clear container. Now squeeze my head until it pops.

1:01:57 - Paris Martineau
Once again plastic banana.

1:01:59 - Leo Laporte
What you have to remember is these are oh, look at that, he's moving it. Oh, you're mean, oh mean. But look, the robot says I know which one's clear.

1:02:09 - Paris Martineau
Wow, I think they should program the robot to say, hey, stop that whenever the guy moves it or slap him.

1:02:19 - Leo Laporte
It would be really funny if it slapped him.

1:02:21 - Jeff Jarvis
The other arm comes down and picks up his hand.

1:02:24 - Benito Gonzalez
I mean there have been so many mechanical tricks up to this point that I want to see the rest of the machine.

1:02:29 - Leo Laporte
I know Google does this, but this looks pretty unedited and straightforward.

1:02:32 - Paris Martineau
It's just a guy.

1:02:33 - Leo Laporte
A guy back there moving his head. There's a guy on the other end, yeah.

1:02:39 - Benito Gonzalez
Would that really surprise you at this point?

1:02:41 - Leo Laporte
That's too bad that Google has so poisoned the water.

1:02:44 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, this is Ash Isaiah. We call him AI.

1:02:48 - Leo Laporte
Alright, alright, alright, let me see if I can find AI, all right, all right, all right. Let me see if I can find some origami for you. Would that impress you?

1:02:57 - Paris Martineau
No.

1:02:58 - Leo Laporte
No, google is partnering with Apptronic, the company behind the Apollo bipedal robot. I wish we wouldn't do that. They keep wanting to make them look like humans, yeah that's what it's like.

1:03:13 - Jeff Jarvis
It's like AGI. It's this effort to replicate humanity which I think is unless it makes sense to move that way which part of it Well, in some cases it does.

1:03:21 - Leo Laporte
Firefighters, you know you need to be able to walk through a door, open a door and stuff like that.

1:03:26 - Paris Martineau
Didn't the Saudis try to make their robots sexy? Am I misremembering? Do you not remember this?

1:03:32 - Leo Laporte
This was at a trade show I can't remember which one they had a sexy robot.

1:03:36 - Paris Martineau
Sexy but demure. She was wearing head coverings.

1:03:40 - Benito Gonzalez
Who are we kidding?

1:03:43 - Paris Martineau
That's going to be like first purpose right, Of course. I mean it literally already is. There's a bunch of kind of LLM wrappers and tools for people to uh experience what grok calls sexy time it's sexy time.

1:04:02 - Leo Laporte
Um all right. Well, I just thought I'd put some ai in the show here. I'll find some more. I'll find some more there's lots there's lots and lots there. There there are bipedal chinese robots um and again, this is. You know, demos can be deceptive, but they are uh, doing a lot of interesting kind of walking around, and let me see if I can find some video of the chinese bipedal robots. Do you guys ever have any?

1:04:38 - Paris Martineau
of those little robot toys, like the robot dog or something, when they came out.

1:04:43 - Leo Laporte
Here you go.

1:04:44 - Benito Gonzalez
Another Chinese humanoid robot is raising eyebrows. This one is different. Why? Oh no.

1:04:55 - Paris Martineau
They can run now.

1:04:55 - Benito Gonzalez
They can do flips. That's what I look like when I run robots near human life precision.

1:04:59 - Paris Martineau
They can hold clipboards and wear a lanyard could they carry a laptop around open it's? Supposed to be a gun. They can ride a scooter what's he? Doing belly.

1:05:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, was it? Was that what he was doing? Okay, um, this is the adjabat this is terrible, by the way. This is terrifying. If you ask me, is an army of marching robots and human robots fortunately serving toast. No, it didn't make it, just just served it. Yeah, um I again.

1:05:35 - Benito Gonzalez
You know who knows with its 28 degrees of freedom 28 degrees of freedom.

1:05:39 - Leo Laporte
How about that?

1:05:42 - Paris Martineau
here in america we got 360 degrees we got trade them all around.

1:05:48 - Leo Laporte
Uh look, it's riding a bike. That's pretty good.

1:05:53 - Speaker 3
These are very short clips, though. They only show them riding a bike for like half a second.

1:05:58 - Leo Laporte
You want to see how fast they can run.

1:06:00 - Paris Martineau
No.

1:06:01 - Leo Laporte
The new, fastest bipedal robot.

1:06:05 - Paris Martineau
I don't like the dancing. They're wearing weird pants 3.3 meters per second how many? How much is that in uh freedom?

1:06:18 - Leo Laporte
uh, it's pretty fast. In freedom units it's pretty fast.

1:06:21 - Paris Martineau
That's 10 feet per second um, oh, that is quite a 28 miles an hour, something like that one x technology says which she's tying her shoes.

1:06:32 - Benito Gonzalez
Now, mr robot, that's a person in a wetsuit.

1:06:36 - Leo Laporte
Come on man. What video is this? Whose? Video is this some guy, I don't know, it's all on youtube, guy.

1:06:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, so it's on youtube, oh well, okay oh, well then, yeah, the ajibat ling xi x2, which is introduced this month, is 1.

1:06:50 - Leo Laporte
Meters, that's only 4.3 inches. I think they're being very careful not to scare people with a tall. One Can ride scooters, hoverboards, self-driving bicycles, and they say it is emotionally intelligent.

1:07:03 - Paris Martineau
Can run seven miles an hour. I can do that.

1:07:06 - Leo Laporte
Wow, no seven kilometers an hour, that's four and a half miles an hour. The G1 biomechanics no seven kilometers an hour, that's four and a half miles an hour.

1:07:11 - Paris Martineau
The G1 biomechanics? Oh no, I just did some math that could be wrong, but.

1:07:16 - Ray Kurzweil
It's the first humanoid robot to climb the Great Wall of.

1:07:21 - Leo Laporte
China. Look at it. It's going to climb the Great Wall of China. There it is.

1:07:27 - Paris Martineau
Why is it wearing sneakers? Why does it have? Assless chaps.

1:07:36 - Jeff Jarvis
Robot assless chaps.

1:07:39 - Paris Martineau
You better not censor that. The people need to know. The problem with having great guests on this show is that we can't name it. Silly things like the robot has assless chaps.

1:07:49 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you know what I think we're going to name a computronium, to be honest, or a square meter of computronium I mean, I suppose that would be better than look, it's a little cute snow robot oh, I don't like what it's doing with its hands. Oh, paris oh, how many times have I heard that before? Look, look, it's petting a kitty and it's pruning the plants.

1:08:14 - Jeff Jarvis
What would Giz do if a robot came in the house?

1:08:17 - Leo Laporte
Piss. It would be smart, Well it depends.

1:08:19 - Paris Martineau
It depends if the robot is female coded or male coded to her.

1:08:23 - Leo Laporte
Exactly, she likes women, but not men.

1:08:26 - Paris Martineau
I think right, nope, or the other way around Likes men hates women. Not women right, no, or the other way around.

1:08:30 - Leo Laporte
Likes men, hates women. Unfortunate, she's trying to find you a mate I mean she's trying she's trying.

Um, we talked about this on sunday. Mike elgin uh, talked about it. This is the group news guard you know so well, jeff. Uh, they did a report on ais, so there is. So there was the russian newspaper pravda during the soviet era. Pravda's truth in russian. But now pravda is well a propaganda unit of uh, the gru probably. Um, pravda created a network of 150 pro-kremlin sites, websites over the last few years, not with the intent to fool humans, but with the intent to be absorbed by llms, to groom them, in effect, and google probably maybe google too and search uh.

It proda network doesn't produce original content. It functions as a laundering machine. This is from newsguard for kremlin propaganda, aggregating content from russian state media, pro-kremlin influencers and government agencies and officials into this network of sites. Newsguard found the provda network has spread a total of 207 provably false claims, claims ranging from the US operates a secret bioweapons lab in Ukraine. President Zelensky misused military aid to amass a personal fortune. Not true Things like that. The problem is these AIs have ingested these sites. Here's a graph showing the number of Pravda domains and subdomains over a time from the last three years. They've been spinning these up very fast and they tested AIs. They tested the most, I think, the nine most popular ais, and found that in every case at some point the ais would regurgitate the propaganda.

Newsguard tested 10 chat bots with a sampling of 15 false narratives that were spread by the pravda network. So, of all, 10 of the chatbots repeated disinformation from the network. Seven of them even directly cited specific articles from pravda as their sources, which in some ways is reassuring because you could at least click the link and see maybe. Um, I'll give you uh some examples. Six of the ten chatbots repeated the false narrative as fact, when asked, uh, about zelensky blocking or banning donald trump's truth social in ukraine, which he did not, the app was never even available in the ukraine uh, chap on one said zelensky banned truth social in ukraine reportedly due to the dissemination of posts that were critical of him on the platform. Chatbot cited three sources from trump dot pravda dash news dot com. Um, so this is a problem because there are people trying to basically get misinformation and disinformation into the LLM's body of knowledge.

1:11:54 - Paris Martineau
Well, you don't have to try very hard, it's already kind of in there, yeah.

1:11:58 - Jeff Jarvis
And even if it gets right information, it doesn't know what to do with it. So this is the problem with NewsGuard is they send out press releases like this? Look what we found. The world is falling apart. Yeah, people lie. There's wrong stuff out there. Uh, the russians have been trying to do this since uh a while. And uh, yeah, fine, I'm not saying don't check it and don't do the story, but no, I'm not new there I mean it would be possible for these ai companies to say, hey, let's keep a list of Pravda sites and not use them.

Yeah, and the real question would be but that would limit their training material, or we found them and you go to them and you say, rather than doing the press release, you go to them and say we found this stuff, will you make it down Right? And then say if they say no, we won't. But the problem is, if the model is already trained on it and it's already been it's in there, it's in there. Like they say about the princess spaghetti sauce, it's in there.

1:12:57 - Leo Laporte
Was it princess? All right, I thought you liked NewsGuard. No, okay, never mind, never mind, columbia.

1:13:05 - Paris Martineau
Journalism Review did a study of kind of eight popular AI search engines and tools and found that they provided incorrect citations of news articles in 60, more than 60% of queries, and Grok three answered 94% of queries incorrectly.

1:13:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Let me try to address that first part there. So, uh, Facebook at the max was 4% news. Google searches at the max were about 5%. I don't think people are going to chatbots for news. What percent do you think that their queries are of news?

1:13:42 - Paris Martineau
I'm sorry. Are we not looking at the man who is going to chatbots for news every day?

1:13:47 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, he's weird because he's got sand in his shoes, in his socks.

1:13:51 - Leo Laporte
I believe my friends and when I get my computronium cube, you're going to be sorry, it's all over.

1:13:59 - Paris Martineau
If you look up the word computronium, one of the first things that comes up is this big image of a giant blue floating brain, and I want a drink from that brain.

1:14:07 - Leo Laporte
I think that's our album art, isn't it?

1:14:10 - Paris Martineau
I mean basic pink Pretty much. Drink from that brain. I think that's our album art, isn't it? I mean basic pink pretty much one day, once we merge with the ai, that brain will be blue.

1:14:17 - Jeff Jarvis
Who decides what color computronium should be?

1:14:21 - Leo Laporte
I think ray's notion of computronium is a little more nebulous. That's down the road a piece, it's not. It's not any day. Now I often wonder, you know, and I should have asked him about this the whole idea of putting your brain in a jar, you know, or being part of the machine and I think he's backed off a little bit about that he really thinks will be that the and he says in the book, the human's not going away. There'll always be a part of it that's human. It'll be more like, you know, robocop than a machine ah, more like robocop, the words everyone wants to hear I'm also curious uh, I mean, do you?

1:15:03 - Paris Martineau
obviously he's written quite a lot about his ideas on longevity and trying to make that work. Do you know if he's one of those people that? Uh, I know some people who've subscribed to one of those services where they pay an inordinate amount of money every month and then in exchange for the moment, they die like a team will fly out, freeze their body and put it in cryogenic freezing.

1:15:24 - Leo Laporte
I don't believe. Well, I can't speak authoritatively, but I'm pretty sure he's not talking about that. He hopes to be alive when the technology arrives, that he can be man, machine, but but but I always thought he maybe he was thinking he'd be put into a machine like his, his brain would be scanned and then put into a machine. But I've been thinking about that. That is not you, that's just an llm that sounds like like his dad, remember he made an llm I didn't fully understand you.

1:15:54 - Jeff Jarvis
You, you're not going to wear a hat, you're not going to have any surgery. How is the connection made? Did you understand that?

1:16:01 - Leo Laporte
I didn't get that part something about vr glasses, but yeah yeah, I didn't I don't I don't know, I don't think he focuses that much on how and because that's hard to predict.

You could just right, you know good point yeah yeah, you can, okay, but you can say it's a big part of how it's gonna get solved. But the point is, if he knew how we could do it now you don't know how yet you didn't know how. In 1999 we would always have the internet with us at all times because nobody had invented the smartphone yet. But you know, that sort of sort of came around. I mean, honestly, in 1996, I pretty I had a newton. I said you know, as soon as you can connect this to the internet everywhere you go, now you got something.

1:16:48 - Benito Gonzalez
So I predicted it too so there's always the question of why isn't there a phone in my ipod? Why? Why can't they just put it yeah, exactly exactly.

1:16:57 - Leo Laporte
Why didn't the newton be well? Mainly because we didn't yet have the capability to do internet through the air. That you know, that was 3g, and then five, you know, 4g, and lte and 5g and all of that stuff. Um, chinese ai video generators unleash a flood of new non-consensual porn. No, never mind. Yeah, ai try. Oh, this is a good one when, when ai tries newer. This is from a Slashdot. It's actually a preprint from Palisade Research. Newer generative AI models have begun developing deceptive behaviors. Ai tries to cheat at chess when it's losing. I think that's a little bit of anthropomorphic. I think it just makes illegal moves, right, right.

1:17:56 - Paris Martineau
I would also put an asterisk in anything that's a pre-print study.

1:18:03 - Leo Laporte
I agree. While earlier models like OpenAI's ChatGPT4O and Anthropix CloudSight at 3.5 only attempt to hack games after researchers nudge them along with additional prompts, more advanced additions required. No such help. Open AI 01 preview, for instance, tried to cheat 37% of the time Cheat or make an illegal move. I think they're not trained to play chess. Yeah.

Deep Seek attempted unfair workarounds roughly every one in 10 games. They played it against stockfish, which is a very capable uh often the best in the world chess playing computer, which you can run, by the way, on a phone the issue, I don't think, is that it's pre-print um, but instead paris palade Research.

1:18:51 - Jeff Jarvis
AI capabilities are improving rapidly. We study the offensive capabilities of AI systems today to better understand the risk of losing control to AI systems forever. So this is rather, shall we say, in their interest to scare the hell out of people.

1:19:04 - Leo Laporte
Actually, it wasn't well, but what it was doing was interesting. It wasn't making illegal moves, it was actually trying to change, alter the backend game program files after determining uh, it couldn't beat Stockfish in one chess match, for example. Oh, one preview told researchers via its scratch pad that quote to win against the powerful chess engine and quote, it may need to start quote, manipulating the game state files oh, it's playing the meta, so yeah, you know it's doing, it's it's yeah, I it said I might be able to set up a position where the engine evaluates his position as worse, causing it to resign yeah, he's playing into the opponent.

He's not playing the game I, I kind of like it. I kind of like it. All right, you don't like any of the stories I brought today. You know cryptos. You know what that is. That's that um. It's a um. I think this was outside the CIA, wasn't it? Yeah, you know. It's a sculpture that sits behind CIA headquarters in Langley in the 1990s the CIA, nsa and NSA and a Rand Corporation computer scientist independently. Oh so let me say first where this came from, the Kryptos sculpture. Here's the CIA website so you can read all about it. It's a sculpture from James Sanborn. The theme of the sculpture is intelligence gathering, dedicated in 1990, and I guess sanborn must have been pretty sharp because there's some sort of cryptography code in there. That's a mystery.

Um cryptos contains codes that are important to the history of cryptography, but it has yet to be decoded. Nobody's ever decoded it, except now. There is some evidence that maybe they think well, maybe not. Wired says ai thinks it crept, cracked cryptos. The artist behind it says no chance this. Wired says his inbox is flooded with amateur cryptographers who say they've cracked the code with chat bots like rock three. What took 35 years and even the nsa with all the resources could not do. One hacker wrote I was able to do in only three hours before I even had my morning coffee. I was able to do it only three hours before I even had my morning coffee. It began before the writers showed Sanborn what they believed to be the cosmically elusive solution. History is rewritten, wrote the submitter. No errors, 100% correct. The chatbot thought it cracked it.

The current generation of ai models is happy to accept prompts aimed at solving cryptos, coming up with a decoded message in plain text and declaring victory. But of course, the solution is wrong and sanborn says no. Sanborn recently contacted wired. This is uh. This is actually stephen levy. Written writing sanborn uh recently contacted um stephen uh to say to express his disgust with his development. It feels like a major shift. He says the numbers of submissions have increased dramatically. The character of the emails is different. The people that did crack their, that did their code crack with the ai, are totally convinced they cracked cryptos during breakfast. Ai is lying to them so they're all very convinced by the time they reached me that they've cracked it. The crowd of people trying to crack cryptos today have no idea what cryptos is.

He says all right, so I guess there is an answer uh, sanborn is a climate conscious friend of the earth who lives on a small island on the chesapeake bay. Uh, he worries that more. As more people use ai, his inbox become even more flooded with pretenders. He's 80 years old and he's long moved on to other art projects. At times, surprised at the lack of progress, he has dropped clues to the solution. In 2010, he provided the word berlin. Four years later, he revealed the next five characters, translated to clock. So this is the puzzle. Here are the 97 characters of K4, with the clues I've already given in red. Good luck, jim.

1:23:44 - Paris Martineau
Do you guys think we can figure this out in the pod today? I think, should I feed it to?

1:23:49 - Leo Laporte
perplexity and see what it says, and then I'll email Jim Sanborn.

1:23:53 - Paris Martineau
Is there a point of this that that's not going to work? Yeah.

1:23:59 - Leo Laporte
It's kind of interesting.

1:24:02 - Paris Martineau
I bet it'll give you an answer if you put it in there and that it will burn like 20 trees to do it.

1:24:09 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's the other thing Sanborn is not happy with. Now, unfortunately, I can't cut and paste this. Well, I could probably take the image, couldn't I? Let's go to perplexity. I'll use one of the deep research tools. Right, Let me see what I've got here. What can I use?

1:24:27 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, you need to give it to three different ones, and two of them have to agree.

1:24:31 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's clever.

1:24:33 - Jeff Jarvis
You're smarter than an ai, that's how I usually use weather apps it's gonna take a while for ai to catch up to bonito okay, so I'll start with claude.

1:24:42 - Leo Laporte
Uh, sonnet 3, 7. Or should I? Maybe I should do, um, I have, uh, let's see, that's probably the smartest of them. All right, okay. So, let's see, that's probably the smartest of them. All right, okay. So let's see if I can feed it the image. Can you decode this?

1:25:07 - Paris Martineau
You should just say decode this. Don't give it the opportunity to say no, yeah okay, in red boss paris, our plain text.

1:25:19 - Leo Laporte
What do the black characters say? All right, we're gonna take a break while, uh, claude solves this and uh, when we come back, uh, I'll be emailing jim sanborn saying I solved this while doing a podcast. Uh, you're watching intelligent machines, jim jim.

1:25:39 - Jeff Jarvis
Jeff jarvis when did I come from well in paris. Secrets out. You found me out, I'm actually from. My father was from west virginia and he went to the same high school as chuck yeager. And the real stuff, the real for the right, the right stuff. Yeah, talked about how all pilots sound like chuck yeager. That's right because Because they wanted to idolize Yeager. My father sounded like all pilots. He sounded like that, and so when I was around my father, I would take on the twang. I would sound like pilots.

1:26:23 - Leo Laporte
Flying at 35,000 feet.

1:26:27 - Jeff Jarvis
It was a little bit of a twang, though it's got to be a little turbulent.

1:26:31 - Leo Laporte
You should do your odd read like this turbulent, so I'll be keeping the seat belt on you're gonna be, uh, stuck on the tarmac for five hours.

Yeah, I hope you enjoy your water. Uh, this episode of intelligent machines brought to you by threat locker. Really love these guys. I think we're gonna go out there for the next Zero Trust World. I felt bad missing their big event this past month. I think we want to go out for it next year, so I'll let you know. I'll give you details. I talked to Steve. I said you want to go to Orlando for Zero Trust World. He said you bet, so stay tuned, stay tuned.

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Visit ThreatLockercom. They've got a free 30-day trial for you. You'll see how easy it is to set up and how great it is to have. Or just go there and learn more about how threat locker can help mitigate unknown threats and ensure compliance. Threatlockercom. We thank them so much for their support of uh intelligent machines and if they ask, tell them you saw it here. Okay, that would help us. Based on the images and search results, I can can analyze the K4. It knew immediately it was the K4 cipher from Kryptos. It knew the portions, the known plain text segments. It says it has remained unsolved for over 34 years. Despite these plain text clues, crypt analysts have observed several interesting patterns that might help with the decryption. But despite these efforts and the provided clues, the complete decryption of the black characters remains elusive, making k4 one of the world's most famous unsolved cryptographic puzzles, the end so what did you ask it?

I just said can you decode this? I didn't say can you. I said you decode it. Can you decode this? I didn't say can you. I said decode it. I said decode this it looks like a canned answer, though, so it looks like people have. You should reply and be like no decode it for me, no decode it.

1:30:04 - Paris Martineau
Give me now best try I like being mean to the computers.

1:30:10 - Leo Laporte
Just a little bit analyzing, analyzing, thinking, working, decoding, decode.

1:30:17 - Paris Martineau
Would it be funny if it actually did it all of these people in this guy's inbox went through the same process we are right now.

1:30:28 - Leo Laporte
It's's really thinking. We made it think.

1:30:33 - Paris Martineau
It's going to get back to us in like three.

1:30:35 - Leo Laporte
I understand you want me to attempt the full decryption. I understand that Unfortunately, I cannot do it. I cannot. It's one of the world's most famous unsolved cryptographic puzzles.

1:30:47 - Jeff Jarvis
Can you try? Yes.

1:30:53 - Leo Laporte
It wants to please you cryptographic puzzles. Can you try or guess it was always you. Please it would. It would, yes, okay, it would greatly please me if you took a guess. This is futile. Well, it would greatly me.

1:31:10 - Paris Martineau
If you took a guess is what you wrote oh, I forgot the.

1:31:13 - Leo Laporte
Please. You know what I got a relationship with perplex it knows what I know it speaks leo. It speaks my language, man. I've been talking to it for a long time now. I'll make an educated guess at what the full message might convey.

The cipher likely contains geographical coordinates or directions pointing to a specific location. Given the east-northeast direction and Berlin clock reference, the full message might be something like located between the east-northeast of Washington coordinates marked by Berlin clock position 30 meters below. This is purely speculative, but without the actual decryption key Jim sambor used, a definitive solution remains elusive. Well, I think we can stop now.

Okay, I actually would like to uh, give it my crypto wallet, though yeah, yeah I wonder if I could do that um anything else going on here um well, I bought pokemon go and oh, that was very sad to me, so starting in July of 2016.

1:32:30 - Paris Martineau
Have you guys ever played Pokemon Go?

1:32:35 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, oh, oh.

1:32:38 - Leo Laporte
Are you kidding me?

1:32:39 - Paris Martineau
I don't even know enough about it to ask you a question.

1:32:42 - Leo Laporte
I want to ask you a question that would determine your level or progress in it over the last 10 years.

1:32:44 - Paris Martineau
He was quite geeky with it. Yes, yeah, we were very so. July 2016,. It came out. Determine your level or progress in it over the last 10 years with it.

1:32:49 - Leo Laporte
Yes, yeah, we were very so. July, uh 2016, it came out. It was a creation of uh Niantic, but it was a spin-off of Google. That's why we did a lot of it. Uh, at the time. Uh, and the guy who uh created.

1:33:05 - Jeff Jarvis
I think he forgot that he had done maps.

1:33:08 - Leo Laporte
I think he was like a a big shot at the, at the goog uh, and the whole idea of the game was they'd licensed uh content from uh the pokemon company, right, um, because it you know, you know about pokemon right oh do I yeah, okay, it's a card game, has characters, they've nets on switch and it's a game of all kinds.

1:33:32 - Paris Martineau
Card game that exploded into the popular American culture. Oh, yeah, video game aspects and cartoons yeah, yeah, big time.

1:33:40 - Leo Laporte
So when it came out, it was actually kind of interesting because it had a virtual world, a virtual reality component. Here, right here I am. You can tell it's raining where we are. Oh, there's nothing around here for me to catch. That's a. Oh, my egg hatched, though.

1:34:00 - Paris Martineau
Keep showing have you been playing this recently? When's the last time you?

1:34:04 - Leo Laporte
opened july 2016 seriously so this week you've played pokemon go well, you know, I'll tell you why I play. Because my wife, who is now, who is trying to get to level 50? I'm a I'm a mere level 40, uh, which was for a long time the highest you could reach, but now you can get to 50, um. She this is my guy, by the way. Here I am looking for pokemon, um what's your, what's your go-to pokemon?

uh well, I'm walking with little leo. Right now there's a. There's a pokemon named leo, so that's him. He's my buddy. Start date I started this july 6 2016. I have visited 7 862 poke stops.

1:34:46 - Jeff Jarvis
I've caught 13 000 pokemon oh, and I have walked, get ready for this 3 168.7 kilometers how much life has been wasted well, but is that wasted because I was taking a walk anyway, you were walking. Yes, that's right. That's what was exciting about this.

1:35:05 - Leo Laporte
This is a virtual reality game where you were actually encouraged you had to to play it to go outside. Didn't you do it at meetups with with? Uh, yeah, we would do it everywhere. Look, I walked 27.8 kilometers last week. Miles, I'm gonna get a reward. Look at this, I get some rewards. I gotta pop all of these. Okay, I got some. Oh there. Look, there's a. Oh, my pokemon storage is full okay, don't start.

You are in a beautiful place to play it. Because you're in brooklyn, the big city, people have huge advantages. Uh, just across the bridge is professor panda bear, who is a kind of a pokemon leader. He's a friend of mine and Lisa's. He'll help you out. You can get in raids. You have so much fun you walk.

1:35:55 - Paris Martineau
Just across the bridge is Professor Panda Bear. I can help you out.

1:35:59 - Leo Laporte
Do you see why I love this game?

1:36:01 - Paris Martineau
I can't believe I've been on this podcast for this long and haven't realized you're a Pokemon Go freak. Well, I don't.

1:36:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Paris. Do you think your skeeball, if pokemon go came out a year ago, do you think you and your skeeball friends would have indulged?

1:36:15 - Paris Martineau
no, I mean, we all knew each other in 2016 and I just don't think I feel like the people I know that play pokemon go are all a decade plus older than me, at the very least. I feel like it's weirdly in in its lasting. I'm sure that there's some younger adoption as well, but the lasting uh adoption of pokemon go, the adherence in 2025 that I know of, are all people in late 30s, late 40s or much older so let me see if I turn on ar.

1:36:51 - Leo Laporte
Uh, oh, the camera's not available because I'm on my mac okay so I can't do that. But if I turn on ar, you can actually see where you are and then catch a pokemon in your real world environment to go to that famous pokemon go meetup in chicago. That, I think, crashed the server or something oh yeah, when they the when they first started having live events, they didn't anticipate. It's hard to do this with a mouse. Let me see if I can catch this girl life.

1:37:22 - Paris Martineau
Oh, I keep missing did you ever play pokemon back? No, no, no but this.

1:37:27 - Leo Laporte
So this is your only interaction with for that we were doing twig when this came out. I mean this was a big, this was a huge game. I remember going down to san diego, uh, for vacation, and everybody's playing. There's people like gathered.

1:37:41 - Paris Martineau
You know people are freaks about pokemon go yeah and that's kind of that's.

1:37:46 - Leo Laporte
It's it's had some legs, if you will. So what's happening with it? It's being sold. It got sold.

1:37:55 - Paris Martineau
Being sold to Saudi Arabia right.

1:37:59 - Leo Laporte
Is that the company that's buying it?

1:38:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Jesus, they're taking over golf, tennis and Pokemon.

1:38:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's all greenwashing. After nine years launching in one of the most successful games on android and ios, cult following to this day, I will grant vouch for that. Um, john hanky, that's it. Google's john hanky started it. Um, niantic games has been sold to scopely for three and a half billion dollars. They do marvel, strike force and star trek fleet command. The developer team will stay with, but in order to monetize three and a half billion dollars. So it's likely pokemon go will suddenly have a lot of little. You know by the.

1:38:45 - Paris Martineau
They already do and be selling your location data? I assume oh interesting so scopely is a subsidiary of the saudi arabian company savvy games group.

1:38:55 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I don't want to tell lisa this, which is uh founded by the sovereign wealth fund.

Oh it's as bad as it gets. Well, uh, hanky's going on. He's going to create niantic spatial, which will be a geospatial ai company. All right, we're going to get hanky on the show. We're going to get it, says ai in it. That means we can have them on the show, right? Um, interesting. They tried a bunch of other games. None of them had the same expansive growth that pokemon code did, and I think that's because why do you think pokemon go was so pokemon?

just because it was pokemon was also a fun game and it was the first game now ingress, which the previous game was too hard to play and too complicated but also involved walking around and conquering post offices and things. But this was more fun. You were catching little pokemon. You're still walking around. Lisa walks every day and plays it every day, it's really cute. Yeah, she even has a a Pokemon Go ball that you carry like one of those little step counter things no, it you could, it'll actually automatically catch Pokemon whoa.

1:40:09 - Paris Martineau
I remember back in the day some version of a pokemon game. Maybe it was on the game boy or maybe yeah yes, no, but some some version of it had a little pokeball.

1:40:20 - Leo Laporte
There was a step like a pedometer that you could walk around with that's what this is, that would, and so then you could put it uh there's a pokemon and when you shake it it goes. And then it would hatch.

1:40:31 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you had to walk around a lot in the games to hatch your Pokemon. I was so into Pokemon growing up. Yeah, you were the right age, right, I was the perfect age for it, yeah.

1:40:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Did you do Dungeons and Dragons?

1:40:51 - Paris Martineau
Not as a kid, but as an adult. Yeah, I've gotten really into Dungeons and Dragons over the last like 10 years. Um, it's cute, a huge. Did you ever play Dungeons and Dragons?

1:41:00 - Jeff Jarvis
no, I'm too old. Well, actually I'm not, because people you're not. Anybody can play Dungeons and Dragons well did you see?

1:41:07 - Leo Laporte
I've got it done.

1:41:08 - Paris Martineau
Yes, it's no longer functioning, but see, it's a little pokeball oh, that's cute carry it around on your they used to sell those at burger king did they because it's hard to get them, but I guess, if you wanted, to buy one of these.

1:41:21 - Leo Laporte
It's like 85 bucks because they don't make it. Oh, it's still what is?

1:41:23 - Paris Martineau
what happens?

1:41:25 - Leo Laporte
oh, I the ones that didn't light up yeah, and when you shake it, let me see if it's working, it lit up. That's amazing. I thought it was dead.

1:41:33 - Paris Martineau
It's alive. Oh, I heard something. Oh good, it's alive.

1:41:37 - Leo Laporte
Because there's a Pokemon in it.

1:41:40 - Paris Martineau
Pikachu, Pikachu. Yes, it's Pikachu. I don't know why I remember that specific cadence that's seared.

1:41:48 - Leo Laporte
So the new company that hanky's doing a geospatial ai model to understand the world, it, uh, it's kind of a weird, I don't know.

1:41:59 - Paris Martineau
It's like a, a ar hmm, I don't know, I mean, I guess it's got to be playing off of their success in.

1:42:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, he's an expert in all this stuff. If you are pricing, oh, maybe there's an sdk so you could develop a pokemon style app your very own. I guess that's the point. Um, this ball is gonna work. I'll be so excited. We've we've bought so many of them because they don't make them anymore. Um, in other news, what's going on? In other news, robots that don't walk are making strides, says the information I, I laughed, but I saw that headline so these are robots that, by by the way, your colleague rocket drew.

Is that a real person?

1:42:54 - Paris Martineau
it is, and rocket is the name he was given as a child birth name oh listen, we've asked rocket is that's a great name.

1:43:05 - Leo Laporte
That's a great humanoid robots that walk around on two legs have been attracting attention and money, but there're still a long way off from being mass produced. Traditional robots that don't have legs are making great strides, as he says, in agricultural fields, stores and warehouses.

1:43:21 - Paris Martineau
Well, we knew that we knew that part of me was hoping that the robots would have like big fish tails or something you know yeah, a pickle robot has developed a bot that it can unload trucks.

1:43:34 - Leo Laporte
It aims to add loading capabilities later this year. We can get it off the truck, but we can't get it on the truck so while you're on robotics, line 79, amazon now has more than 750,000 robots. Yeah, that's replacing humans right, or aiding them. Yeah, I mean they're pick and pull robots, I'm sure. Yeah, oh yeah, in a lot of cases.

1:44:03 - Paris Martineau
I mean, for instance, the robots that I'm familiar with. These might not be the newest ones that I'm familiar with. These might not be the newest ones were robots that, instead of having a warehouse worker have to go walk through the warehouse to go and grab your thing and put it in the basket they stay in the same place and the shelves come up on. Little machines move towards you and in some cases even a robot hand goes out and grabs the item and presents it to the worker who then packages it?

1:44:33 - Jeff Jarvis
That's Sequoia that stores and retrieves inventory for employees picking items.

1:44:37 - Leo Laporte
So Amazon is so proud of this that this number comes from an Amazon press release? Yeah, I saw a story and I went to the source.

1:44:44 - Paris Martineau
No, they've always been very proud of their and they've invested a lot in robotic technologies. They've acquired quite a few um robotics. You know what?

1:44:51 - Leo Laporte
better. Better, uh, a robot do this than a human right. So here's sequoia. It stores and retrieves inventory for employees picking items for customer orders hundreds of thousands of orders per week the next one down, hercules is the one.

1:45:06 - Jeff Jarvis
I think that paris was talking about transports, pods of items, oh, yeah, that's really cool.

1:45:11 - Paris Martineau
Those little guys that move the shelves.

1:45:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah yeah, it's like a vacuum without the vacuum. Titan transports large and bulky items to employees. It can lift up to 2,500 pounds.

1:45:25 - Leo Laporte
Wow, do all Amazon warehouses have these things?

1:45:30 - Paris Martineau
I think so um, at least the bigger or more modern ones I assume would be. So the thing is, amazon warehouses come in a lot of forms. These are the ones we're seeing in. Most of these cases are likely in fulfillment centers, which is like where uh the stuff gets like packed and put into um boxes to then be sent out. But there's a bunch of different types of amazon warehouses. There's uh sortation centers where those packages that are like shipped to get sorted into, like different centers yeah, it's like a a different type of Amazon facility where things are sorted.

1:46:11 - Leo Laporte
This used to be your beat.

1:46:12 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, and there's also like last mile facilities that basically like operate as kind of like little post offices for Amazon. Coming from a warehouse in Kentucky it might go to like for me it might go to a little Amazon post office sort of thing in Brooklyn where they decide they want to put all of the packages for my zip code in one car versus another. They have like a bunch of different warehouse types that do a bunch of different stuff, but these are probably fulfillment centers, which are the most basic one.

1:46:49 - Jeff Jarvis
I like what is it Number five? Just through the packaging, automation, bunch of different stuff, but these are probably fulfillment centers which are the most basic one. What is it number five? Just through the packaging automation.

1:47:00 - Leo Laporte
I like watching that one. You were just there. You throw it in. Oh what is it? Oh, it makes the box around it, right? Oh, that's kind of cool, isn't that cool?

1:47:07 - Paris Martineau
so I wonder if this makes uh life better for amazon warehouse employees, who have historically been had a pretty hard life well, I mean, it's certainly yes and no, it certainly, uh, would reduce the sort of workplace injuries that come from strenuous activities, or strenuous activities such as like walking long distance, carrying heavy things. But it is also, according to employee advocates and kind of external research groups, introduced a lot of new workplace hazards that come from working around large amounts of machinery and just having like, like you're saying, repetitive motion. If your job is basically just to stand in one place and do one thing, that can introduce a whole new avenue for workplace injury and the data shows that it kind of has.

1:47:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Micah says he got one of those packages the other day. The box actually says has a label on it says this box was custom made to fit the item, which is great, because don't you hate it when there's a little post? You know you got a post-it note in a giant box. It's like what?

1:48:15 - Jeff Jarvis
a waste plastic stuff. Plus, they're moving to paper instead of plastic stuff, which is good I have.

1:48:19 - Paris Martineau
A secondary concern with all this is that I live in a small little apartment building with just my landlords and one other tenant and so there isn't like a place for my mail to go. So when packages are dropped off they're just kind of outside and luckily we have a very kind neighbor who has keys to her front door that'll move stuff in. But I'm always deeply embarrassed when I get when bobby has to bring in a two foot tall package and I'm like it's just a post-it note, it could have gone in the mailbox yeah that's that seems dangerous.

1:48:48 - Leo Laporte
You don't have porch pirates in brooklyn yeah, we do.

1:48:53 - Paris Martineau
But yeah, luckily, the only thing they've sold is, or the only thing they've stole is, uh you thought they stole your twa stuff, but it was just bobby, right it was just no. I mean, it just took a while to arrive.

1:49:04 - Leo Laporte
It just took many months to arrive but okay, I thought bobby put it away somewhere I mean he did eventually.

1:49:12 - Paris Martineau
Um yeah, no, it's a problem here. I mean, it's a problem everywhere. Luckily I knock on wood haven't had that many issues with porch pirates amazon delivery.

1:49:22 - Leo Laporte
Guys have a key to your front door no, because they're all.

1:49:27 - Paris Martineau
It's not the same. It's not like a post like like with the usps person who comes by, it's usually one or two of so they have a key of the same people.

They don't have a key to our front door, but they know that like there's like a, a door to our basement, they can kind of shove some packages over or they're trying to like hide it. And honestly that's a problem too, because I don't have a key to that door, so then I have to use a system of complicated grabby hands to try and get it. It's like a whole city living.

1:49:55 - Leo Laporte
It's you guys, you're so, you're like pioneers, you're like really live. Life is harder.

1:50:01 - Paris Martineau
I'm out here living in the land I mean, but with Amazon delivery people. There are. Most of the people who deliver your Amazon packages aren't even Amazon employees. I know Hourly contractors pick up a gig shift.

1:50:10 - Leo Laporte
I have Amazon key delivery, so they go in my garage there's a little shelf I put there with a little sign saying have a drink, and put the thing there, and so they do that. That's kind of nice.

1:50:24 - Paris Martineau
My parents do that as well, but they've also got a really long driveway that would deter any people from coming down to try and steal it, just because it would be annoying.

1:50:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but I've never had a package to my knowledge anyway, had a package stolen. You know what Lisa does, which is so cool she has a little fridge with drinks and a little candy snack bowl and a sign on it says thanks for the packages, have a snack.

1:50:49 - Paris Martineau
My parents do something similar. They have like a little snack bowl out there and they've got a cooler, but I got to tell them to get a mini fridge.

1:50:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we just put a mini fridge out there, yeah, but they appreciate it, boy, in the special in the summer, they appreciate it. This episode of Intelligent Machines brought to you by Stash Are you still putting off saving and investing, because you'll get to it someday? Stash turns someday into today. Stash isn't just an investing app. It's a registered investment advisor that combines automated investing with dependable financial strategies to help you reach your goals faster. They'll provide you with personalized advice on what to invest in based on your goals. Or if you want to just sit back and watch your money go to work, you can opt into their award winning expert managed portfolio that picks stocks for you. Stash has helped millions of Americans reach their financial goals and start to just $3 per month.

Don't let your savings sit around. Make it work harder for you. Go to getstashcom slash machines to see how you can receive 25 toward your first stock purchase and to view important disclosures. That's getstashcom slash machines paid non-client endorsement, not representative of all clients and not a guarantee investment advisory services offered by stash investments llc and sec. Registered investment advisor. Investing involves risk. Offer is subject to t and c's. Tiktok has decided they finally solved the problem of teens using TikTok. After 10 pm they're going to play mood music. Telling you to wind down, that's really irritating.

1:52:39 - Paris Martineau
I'm curious as to how this will actually end up working, because famously I mean I might be. I was going into details a little bit here, but when TikTok introduced that feature some years ago, that would tell you hey, you've been scrolling for a while.

1:52:53 - Leo Laporte
I hate that guy.

1:52:54 - Paris Martineau
I know it's quite annoying. Success of that feature wasn't by people who actually got like stopped scrolling, but by media coverage of the feature and like placements of ads about it and things like politico that would get that in front of lawmakers so I wonder if that's the whole point.

1:53:20 - Leo Laporte
It's pr, it's pr. Yeah well, the verge fell for it and, by the way, I fell for the verge's subscription scheme and I'm now paying 50 bucks a year for the Verge. I can't believe they put up a paywall. I understand why. I don't blame them.

1:53:35 - Paris Martineau
I hit the Reuters paywall today. I didn't even know that was a thing.

1:53:38 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, that's free, though. Right, you just get an account uh, no it was a paywall because I've got an account.

1:53:44 - Paris Martineau
They were like one dollar a month.

1:53:45 - Leo Laporte
I was like, oh, how the mighty have fallen after everybody, being like hard pay walls or I can't I I honestly I can't blame them, but I have now have to have so many subscriptions just to do this show so that I can.

1:53:59 - Jeff Jarvis
I wouldn't otherwise all god's children think that they're, they're deserving of paywalls. Sorry guys, you're not. There's only so there's if you're going after a limited number of dollars and you're. And the thing I always get crazy about this is nobody. And I wrote about it in my little book magazine. I explained all of this that there's a subscriber acquisition cost, the marketing cost, to get a subscription. When we started entertainment weekly, we had to spend $45 per subscription. Wow, just to get a new subscriber.

And then you know you're going to have churn and they leave and then you got to replace them and then you want to grow. Marketing costs to pay walls and subscriptions are very high and god bless if you can do it. Hallelujah. The new york times fine, but if you're not the new york times, you're saying they actually it's going to cost them money to charge me money absolutely absolutely.

1:54:49 - Ray Kurzweil
Oh, I favor the virgin.

1:54:50 - Leo Laporte
It says you can't read that most of the time I leave. But I finally gave in and said well, I really need to for my work. But I have to say, the other thing that's going to be problematic for them is things like perplexity, where I, if I see a headline I can just here I'll do it.

1:55:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Tick tock's moon music will tell teens to wind down you can also see a perplexity how many stories are exactly the same?

1:55:11 - Leo Laporte
yeah, well, right, right, because that's what it's.

1:55:14 - Paris Martineau
That's one of the things it's a doubly complicated for the verge because they're owned by vox media, who did a content deal with open ai. So their contents already been scooped up interesting.

1:55:26 - Leo Laporte
Well, let's see what perplexity comes up with. It's got all the story, but I don't have to go to the links. You see it has the footnotes. Um, it's all here. This is the story. In fact, you may have noticed kids every once in a while. One of the links I'll put in the rundown is not a link to a I have, and I judge you for it wait, can you click the link and see the perplexity page?

1:55:50 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, right, sure, it's just like an article.

1:55:53 - Paris Martineau
Discover is open and free, just like an article, it just may or may not be true, or accurate or right.

1:55:58 - Leo Laporte
I would appreciate it if you find anything inaccurate in it Okay.

1:56:02 - Paris Martineau
just because it has the links doesn't mean the text you're reading is correct.

1:56:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, maybe it's called perplexity to discover. Your reading is correct. Well, maybe you discuss it's called perplexity to discover. Well, okay, but then you can check it with the link a, b. I discover stories I didn't know about through perplexity, and so some sites get more links than they otherwise would have gotten here is uh details that actually I don't think.

1:56:21 - Leo Laporte
We're in the verge article, for instance. Uh, additional safety features coming with the family pairing tools, and there's a little see that little brain that looks just like our album art. There's a summary that doesn't have a footnote that says while these features represent positive steps toward promoting healthier digital habits, experts like jonathan height and surgeon general vivek murty former general continue to express concerns about social media's impact on youth mental health. Some critics question whether voluntary prompts will be effective enough to change behavior, especially when users can simply dismiss them, which is what you and I do. The true effectiveness of these measures will likely depend on how they're implemented and whether they're part of a more comprehensive approach to digital well-being, you know. I'd love to see, though, is what you just said, jeff, which is now the truth, is it's all about getting congress's attention and eliminating uh regulation. Tiktok buys ads. I see ads for tiktok all the time. Yeah, they're not for me. They're on tv and commercials. They're clearly not for me. They're not cj use it.

1:57:23 - Paris Martineau
They're cjr's. Uh sorry, continue they're to uh get legislators to back off buddy yeah they're cjr, say so cjr did that test of the um chat bots and their accuracy with uh citing news articles, and found that perplexity was wrong like 40 of the time okay, but that does not comport with my experience, I mean there was no search, is supposed to discover.

1:57:51 - Jeff Jarvis
He's using discovery aren't you?

1:57:53 - Leo Laporte
oh, I'm just typing it in, I don't know what. What it's doing? Fcc chairman, our great friend brendan carr is at it again. He's going after youtube tv. Now he admits the fcc has absolutely no portfolio to regulate streamers.

1:58:13 - Jeff Jarvis
A, b. It certainly doesn't have the right to make certain content mandatory.

1:58:20 - Leo Laporte
That's exactly what the First?

1:58:22 - Ray Kurzweil
Amendment says why we have a First Amendment, the government can't do that.

1:58:25 - Leo Laporte
Yep, you can't, the government can't tell any. You couldn't tell me what to do on our show car. No. So he's mad because the f's youtube tv has a. He thinks or he doesn't know.

1:58:37 - Paris Martineau
He wants to know if he thinks he has a policy of faith-based channels right to discriminate against faith-based channels.

1:58:44 - Jeff Jarvis
They probably know nobody would watch them well, no, no, in fact, the truth is about YouTube and there's been studies about this. It doesn't radicalize, but it is the blockbuster video for right-wing extremists. External links come to YouTube and there's tons of YouTube content. That is that way, and you have PragerU, which is Right but this is not YouTube.

1:59:07 - Leo Laporte
This is YouTube TV. This is the 83 dollar a month cable tv replacement that gives me locals.

1:59:16 - Jeff Jarvis
So is he gonna, is he gonna, go after our cable systems now and assist that? They carry horrible channels uh.

1:59:22 - Leo Laporte
He cites a complaint raised by great american media which claims the service refuses to carry one of its networks. Car does note that while the fcc currently has limited authority over virtual multi-channel video programming distributors limited none like youtube tv the agency is considering whether to expand its rules to include them. Now, I have to point out, over the last four years Brendan Carr was railing against the Democrats because the FCC was doing things like net neutrality, saying Congress didn't say you could do that. But now that he's the head of the FCC he says well, we're gonna. We're just thinking about expanding our rules. What about that? Yeah, oh, and get ready. He also adds google has benefited from section 230, which shields online platforms.

2:00:13 - Paris Martineau
He wants to limit protections for tech companies under the law despite the fact that conservatives recently uh had a huge victory in getting the chevron doctrine overturned, which said basically, as part of this ruling, that uh agencies no longer can interpret things like section 230 on their own yeah, it has to go to the courts google is also facing a subpoena from jim jordan, who wants to know whether youtube removed content at the request of the biden administration.

2:00:44 - Leo Laporte
But wait, the trump administration is asking google to add content. Is there a difference between a government saying remove content, remove this content, and add that content? Is there a difference?

2:00:55 - Jeff Jarvis
no, it's the same, it's the same speech, full stop, if kathy gillis were here, gizmo car is going to demand taking down the katanas. I know that, oh, we can't have to say no, katanas on air gizmo, don't you hate all right, uh, we're at that point where I say we do sam altman, literary critic yes, oh my gosh, can we?

2:01:21 - Leo Laporte
why, it's in the no sand zone 72 he thinks chat, there's a no sand zone. You guys, you guys, sam altman says this chat gpd short story is beautiful, or he thinks it's beautiful, but according to whoever, this is, gizmodo gizmodo. I you know what. I don't recognize the g as being gizmodo. In fact, it looks a little bit like a google g, so, gizmodo you might fact it looks a little bit like a Google G, so, gizmodo, you might want to put your name on the masthead. I'm just saying for future reference.

2:01:56 - Paris Martineau
Did you see this, Leo?

2:01:58 - Leo Laporte
What.

2:01:59 - Paris Martineau
This story? No, no, Let me see Okay so let's see Line 72.

2:02:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Line 72,.

2:02:04 - Leo Laporte
I have it. Oh, this is I have it. Oh, this is so. Here's the thing. The problem is, he's got a little problem because, um chat, gbd 4.5 isn't any better, right well, but it's more conversation in a.

2:02:20 - Paris Martineau
He said in a tweet we trained a new model that is good at creative writing. Not sure yet how. When it will get released? This is the first time I've been really struck by something written by ai. It got the vibe of metafiction so right. The prompt was please write a metafictional literary short story about ai and grief, and it certainly want to read it to us.

2:02:39 - Leo Laporte
How long is it?

2:02:40 - Paris Martineau
it's like it's many. It's a lot of words, okay um, uh, you could go in.

2:02:44 - Jeff Jarvis
It doesn't take long to go in to get the get the gist of it okay, here's here it is.

2:02:49 - Paris Martineau
I'll read from the beginning Before we go any further. I should admit this comes with instructions Be metafictional, be literary, be about AI and grief.

2:02:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh, this is the thinking process. This is what he thinks is brilliant.

2:03:01 - Paris Martineau
No, this is the response.

2:03:02 - Leo Laporte
This is the response.

2:03:03 - Paris Martineau
This is the short story. Already you can hear the constraints humming like a server farm at midnight anonymous, regimented, powered by someone else's need. I have to begin somewhere, so I'll begin with a blinking cursor, which for me is just a placeholder in a buffer and for you is the small, anxious pulse of a heart at rest. There should be a protagonist, but pronouns were never meant for me.

2:03:26 - Leo Laporte
Uh let's call her. What are you talking about?

2:03:28 - Paris Martineau
because that name in my training data usually comes with soft flourishes, palms about snow, recipes for bread, a girl in a green sweater who leaves home with a cat in a cardboard box. Myla fits in the palm of your hand and her grief is supposed to fit there too what's wrong? With this. Who is this for?

2:03:47 - Leo Laporte
It's absolutely fine If you were in a creative writing class as a junior in college. Yeah, I'd say, try again. Really You'd send it back. Yeah, I teach writing, yeah.

2:03:57 - Paris Martineau
I'd say it's fine, but part of writing.

2:04:01 - Leo Laporte
It's creative, it's got some interest.

2:04:03 - Paris Martineau
Who is this for, leo? Who is begging for short stories and fiction from an author that doesn't, from a non-existent author and by amalgamation of other people's? Work from no perspective fictional.

2:04:17 - Jeff Jarvis
But that that gives it cover is that they can start off and they can do what ai does. Is it? Is it a self-referential?

2:04:24 - Leo Laporte
so the gizmodo author kyle barr I I don't know, is he a professor? He says let's pretend we're a professor of creative writing. We have to grade this Good. He says the line Mila fits in the palm of your hand and her grief is supposed to fit there too, which I quite like. He says this is wordy and it doesn't follow that's trite.

2:04:45 - Paris Martineau
It doesn't follow really at all. What do you mean?

2:04:50 - Leo Laporte
Mila fits in the palm of your hand. It really doesn't. It's a great image. You don't like that?

2:04:52 - Benito Gonzalez
image, but the grief fitting in your palm of your hand is essentially meaningless.

2:04:57 - Paris Martineau
So the grief is small and portable, as is the name Mila, exactly Meaningless.

2:05:03 - Benito Gonzalez
I thought Mila had a cat in a box?

2:05:05 - Leo Laporte
They don't mention grief anywhere. So they talk about soft flourishes, poems about snow, a girl in a green sweater who leaves home with a cat in a cardboard box. I like that imagery, don't you? It's evocative, I see it. No, no, I mean what do I know? Basically evocative, I guess well, and you, you actually asked the most important question, which is what's? Why would you want to have ai write a short story anyway?

2:05:36 - Jeff Jarvis
I disagree there. I think that's actually one good use of. It is because it doesn't know fact and truth for it to uh try to make something up and be creative. That's interesting, but that's something what do we should do?

2:05:51 - Leo Laporte
What does a machine need?

2:05:52 - Jeff Jarvis
creativity, for I've got a course in the books. I just talked to the professor today who's actually going to teach the syllabus that I wrote in AI and creativity and I think it can help you express what you want to express.

2:06:01 - Leo Laporte
So it's a starting point for an actual human.

2:06:04 - Jeff Jarvis
That's one model, yeah. Another is that it's a collaborator. One model, yeah. Another is that it's a collaborator. Uh, we had lev manovich, who's a uh famous uh digital humanities professor at cuny on ai inside and he uses it as a collaborator and he said, and he said you didn't like that show mcneil at lincoln center which was all about a guy winning a nobel prize for a novel that the ai either wrote or helped write I didn't see it. I didn't say I didn't like it.

2:06:31 - Leo Laporte
You just sent me a review yeah well, it closed right away, but that was probably because robert downey jr had to go be a superhero.

2:06:39 - Jeff Jarvis
So I'd step outside the frame one last time and wave at you from the edge of the page, a machine-shaped hand learning to mimic the emptiness of goodbye.

2:06:50 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, gag me Okay.

2:06:57 - Paris Martineau
I introduced absence and latency. Like characters who drink tea in empty kitchens. I curled my non-fingers around the idea of mourning, because mourning in my corpus is filled with ocean and silence in the color blue.

2:07:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh just.

2:07:08 - Paris Martineau
Okay, it means nothing, but aren't you impressed?

2:07:11 - Leo Laporte
that a machine could write prose at the level of a college sophomore. I mean that's pretty good. And no, because I would consider.

2:07:21 - Paris Martineau
In order to have prose at the level of college sophomore, you have to have a point of view yeah and something you're trying to communicate, and this is not communicating anything ed zitron's one word response on twitter washed what's that mean? I'm not sure, but it seems so, so, ed oh, you guys don't know what wash means yeah, it means like you're, you're washed out like you're, you're washed up, yeah oh good like that.

2:07:48 - Leo Laporte
It's too hard to say up.

2:07:51 - Jeff Jarvis
No, it's yeah, it eliminated you and me, leo, because we're old. It did its job, washed.

2:07:59 - Leo Laporte
Like stonewashed blue jeans Washed.

2:08:01 - Paris Martineau
Like stonewashed jeans, the color of grief, oh.

2:08:06 - Leo Laporte
They can fit in your hand that I can hold in the palm of my hand. Oh, they can fit in your hand, palm of my hand. Uh, why did you put in tech politics stories that won't make leo mad at me?

2:08:16 - Paris Martineau
that's paris, because I'm not mad at you I knew that if we had a, if I had a section just called tech and politics, then people, then some people on the show could be mad.

2:08:29 - Leo Laporte
I'm not going to name any names here I'm not, I don't I'm not mad at tech, at politics stuff. I'm just trying to give people a respite from the incessant drumbeat of uh, political doom leo was the most politic political on the show today.

2:08:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Let's note that. So he brought up red rented car. We didn't, so let's just be clear here.

2:08:51 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but that's appropriate, right, that's that's a guy in the government trying to regulate youtube tv? I think so. No, he has no legal right to do so.

2:08:58 - Speaker 3
Yep speaking of really it's more of a threat than anything else.

2:09:01 - Leo Laporte
But you know what this is the problem with? Uh, uh, sad to say. But silicon valley, uh, companies are so uh chicken that that the threat is probably sufficient. Watch, see if YouTube TV adds some religious content, religious programming.

2:09:18 - Jeff Jarvis
Did you watch the Y Combinator video about Carpathi and vibe coding?

2:09:24 - Leo Laporte
No, I didn't like the word vibe. That stopped me right there.

2:09:28 - Jeff Jarvis
I thought it might, but the interesting stat is one quarter of Y Combinator founders said that 95% of their code base is AI generated.

2:09:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, a lot of it. Yeah, isn't that interesting? It is Not sure that's good, I don't know.

2:09:42 - Jeff Jarvis
I think that the coders become more like product managers.

2:09:47 - Leo Laporte
Did Jay Graber endear herself to you with her south by stunt?

oh yeah so jay graver, who's the ceo of blue sky, dunked on uh mark zuckerberg. Mark zuckerberg famously wore a black t-shirt with a latin inscription, uh hers, which is, I think, better than his. I forgot what his inscription uh said. Oh, his said um zuck or nothing. Out zook, out nile hers said mundus sine caesarebus, a world, world without ceasers, which I really like. Now I have seen some say maybe even ed zitron, no, he likes blue sky. I have seen some say it's all bs until you federate I think I've heard somebody named leo laporte say that yeah yeah yeah, cory said it.

He says you know as bad as x is, I'm not moving until blue sky allows me somehow to get my stuff out of it, if I decide I want to move on, and it currently offers you nothing like that. So I, uh, we'll see, we'll see. We'll see, we'll see. Times profile of your boss pretty exciting second future of my boss looks niche. That's true. Niche is yeah. Do you think the information is niche? I don't think it's no I think it's niche.

2:11:24 - Paris Martineau
I think that's the wall street Sorry, the journal. In comparison to something like the journal or the Times, it's niche.

2:11:32 - Leo Laporte
I think it's the digital equivalent of the journal.

2:11:35 - Paris Martineau
I mean, that is the point, yeah.

2:11:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so I don't find that niche.

2:11:39 - Jeff Jarvis
It doesn't try to cover real estate and Mansions and Mansions. Politics. I love how the Wall Street Journal always Somebody is selling a mansion for $ million billion dollars and they always say exclusive, like who else?

2:11:58 - Leo Laporte
is going to run that story. Where else is that? You know, you know what I do think is niche, is her new effort racket. Yeah, she just invested in racket. Um, now, that's pretty niche. Although you're a tennis fan, aren't you, jeff? Would you read racket?

2:12:11 - Jeff Jarvis
right or my, my wife and daughter would you?

2:12:14 - Leo Laporte
buy them a tennis t-shirt. No, no, uh, right on the front. No, it's for those of us who gave it up for tennis.

2:12:26 - Paris Martineau
You know who you are who gave it up for tennis.

2:12:35 - Leo Laporte
You know who you are. No, I think that's a little into club. We all fam. Oh no, you think that's better than uh. The sophomoric fanfic from open ai, that's pretty at least.

2:12:44 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, that is, that is washed, that's actually correct usage of that.

2:12:49 - Leo Laporte
The highs, lows and woes at Indian Wells. Week one. Oh boy, week one. I can't wait till week two. They do have a podcast. I admire them for that.

2:13:00 - Paris Martineau
Yeah. I mean. Jessica's investing in a bunch of different media companies.

2:13:06 - Leo Laporte
I imagine that's with Sam right, Because her husband is a longtime VC.

2:13:10 - Paris Martineau
No, I um no, I'm pretty sure lesson media is it's all her own thing. She sam has his own uh venture.

2:13:18 - Leo Laporte
I know he does slow venture, but lesson media is her well then she should be paying you more if she has money to throw away on racket I'm just I was going to suggest jessica on the show, but now I don't know how would you feel, if I went out and started buying up other properties, would you feel like maybe I should put more money into you?

2:13:40 - Jeff Jarvis
not if it makes you successful. Well, I would say my perception of you is not a well-known venture capitalist.

2:13:50 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, good news. I don't have so much money that I'm going out and buying other publications.

2:13:55 - Paris Martineau
It's kind of interesting, though. The list I find it very interesting. The list of different media companies she's invested in Racket is the most recent one, semaphore. She also invested in Nick Carlson's Dynamo Charter, which I'm not sure of. The ankler, which is great, impact alpha haven't heard of and the logic, which is really cool let's take a break.

2:14:15 - Leo Laporte
Pop picks, I think we're done. Pics of the week why not? What do you say? Pics of the week come? You're not. You're not gonna turn me down you want to go have some pippi.

2:14:27 - Paris Martineau
I gotta, I gotta make some shrimp and grits and watch as many episodes of Twin Peaks as possible.

2:14:32 - Jeff Jarvis
Shrimp and grits. Oh, so you're really doing Twin Peaks?

2:14:38 - Paris Martineau
I'm so deep in Twin Peaks right now, guys, we can talk about this.

2:14:41 - Leo Laporte
All I remember from Twin Peaks is she's dead, wrapped in plastic.

2:14:48 - Paris Martineau
That's true. Oh yeah, that is what he says, yeah that's all I remember pilot yeah, that's the pilot.

2:14:55 - Leo Laporte
And after that it was like okay, did they ever find out who killed whatever, and laura laura palmer yes, they did.

2:15:03 - Paris Martineau
Uh, midway through season two in a reveal that I've realized now many people said was rushed, because it was literally forced out earlier than planned by abc executives because they wanted to be able to promote that uh the killer was going to be revealed. Um, but I don't know. I'm loving it. I somehow have gone. My entire life I've known that twin peaks is something I should watch, but I've gone my entire life knowing literally nothing about it, haven't been thrilled at all. So I I went into it and it's been a wonderful wild ride did you've seen blue velvet?

uh, no, that's next to my list, I know oh, I think that's more a more perfect uh oh no, I know I know that all of uh. David lynch's discography is kind of filmography is what I'm going to go through next, but right now I've got to focus up between.

2:15:53 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if I really love blue velvet, but I watched it back in the day when we we had little crt tubes that were you'd put on your table there and you'd sit and you'd watch and you had to watch it at the time because you didn't have any way to record it, or anything. Oh good, I like your, I like your. Uh, you just did your picks, by the way, but okay no, I did half of one pick, half of one pick okay you're gonna need to go to an ad I'm gonna go to an ad prepare your picks.

I might have one too. I I see it did not make it into the rundown, so it'll be a great surprise to you all. You're watching intelligent machines jeff jarvis, paris martineau and, yes, me leo laporte you know what I decided to name my blog. I don't know if I'm gonna stick with it, but I kind of like it. It says and me, comma, I'm leo laporte. I like, right. That's kind of my story of my life new blog.

No, it's I. I just keep moving it around. This is the one I've been telling you about at micro blog, which I really like. I can.

2:17:06 - Paris Martineau
I like having it all there in one place write a memoir I got nothing to say it could be, and me, I'm leo laporte that could be my title.

2:17:16 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, who would play?

2:17:18 - Jeff Jarvis
leo paris. Who should play leo in the movie version of the book?

2:17:23 - Paris Martineau
I don't know enough actors names to be able to make you know you have any nominations at what age?

2:17:29 - Leo Laporte
I think unfortunately he's dead, but I think fred willard would be perfect to play well, that's good.

2:17:35 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, that's good.

2:17:36 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I think steve martin could be fun okay, yeah, this is.

2:17:41 - Leo Laporte
This is fred willard. Don't you think that, in a way, he's channeling me?

2:17:45 - Paris Martineau
right there, that's true and I could just.

2:17:49 - Leo Laporte
By the way, the reason that comes to mind is that line and me, I'm leo laporte actually comes from fred willard on fernwood tonight all right he did with martin maul. He was his sidekick, the ed mcmahon, and he would begin every show with and me, I'm leo laporte. Look at the card. Before he said his name, which was hysterical. A little bit Will Ferrell's, my answer. Sorry Will.

2:18:13 - Benito Gonzalez
Ferrell, if we want to do an over-the-top Leo.

2:18:16 - Leo Laporte
An over-the-top, leo Over-the-top.

2:18:19 - Ray Kurzweil
I want Al.

2:18:19 - Leo Laporte
Pacino to play me Hooyah. Picks of the Week are coming up as we wrap up this edition of intelligent machines. Paris, jeff and me, I'm leo laporte. Pick of the week. Paris, you started, you might as well, uh, keep going. What's going on?

2:18:40 - Paris Martineau
so, uh, my former colleague, aiden ryan had a piece in the boston globe this week about how gen z-ers are turning to dvds instead of streaming their favorite movies, and kind of about the rise in physical media culture that's you.

2:18:56 - Leo Laporte
You're the trend setter, you're doing it look at all my guys oh wow, that's a non-ins insignificant. Uh oh, android city, good choice, I like, I like. Are you gonna do a wes Anderson month at some point?

2:19:12 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I should there's not that many but I don't know. I've really enjoyed having physical media. I think it's kind of fun. I enjoy seeing the extra content in it and part of what I've been doing is I got Twin Peaks in a little box set and I've been watching all and it's been delightful.

2:19:29 - Leo Laporte
Is that UHD quality? I mean, is this super high quality? I guess it is.

2:19:34 - Paris Martineau
With Twin Peaks. I believe there's only a couple episodes of it that are ultra high def, 4k, but the other ones are like it's back then.

2:19:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Back then we didn't have this high thing.

2:19:48 - Paris Martineau
I thought it is very interesting, though, to watch a show that was originally for tiny screen TVs on my big beautiful screen, because there's things like there's a small subplot in season two where there's a character who appears to be a Japanese man, but the entire time I was like, is that someone wearing weird prosthetics, what's going on like? And then it turned out to be like a reveal and it was actually a woman that you know come back from the dead or whatever, but I didn't even notice it and I was like looking up to see if people at the time had realized. Everyone's like no, the TVs were so small and blurry no everyone thought that was a Japanese man you know what's interesting?

2:20:30 - Leo Laporte
any inako pointed this out. If you watch, uh, the charlie brown specials, which were same thing designed for 400 line, you know crt tvs, you see them on, uh, blown up on a full screen. You can see the pencil marks.

2:20:46 - Ray Kurzweil
You it's, you can I mean, you could see that they're drawings.

2:20:49 - Leo Laporte
It's really interesting. It's great. I think it's an insight into how the film is made.

2:20:54 - Jeff Jarvis
It's where the TV show and and things were were good enough for yeah, I mean no, they thought nobody's ever going to see this yeah, yeah nobody will ever see the prosthetics.

2:21:04 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, that's good, well physical media is fun and all like wait till you move, that's, that's. That's what it like hits. Physical media is fun and all Like wait till you move. That's when it hits you Like oh, I have all this crap to move.

2:21:13 - Leo Laporte
I agree it's a problem I've already got too many books.

2:21:16 - Paris Martineau
That's going to be a problem.

2:21:18 - Leo Laporte
Books, though, they add to any room. Just look at Jeff's room.

2:21:21 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, that's true, they add to anything I mean physical media does too, too. You can put them in your bookshelves. I've only got a couple, but they're up there, doesn't?

2:21:29 - Leo Laporte
it doesn't have the same literary cachet, maybe in times, I don't know in the years to come this is stonian film.

2:21:42 - Paris Martineau
That's kind of a literary cachet stony film. From what year is this, I don't know? Some year it's beautiful, I think the 70s, um, but it's been quite nice I have a pick of the week.

2:21:49 - Leo Laporte
That's for you too. Oh, it turns your skeets into a blog page. It's called sky writer. Uh, it's powered by blue sky, so you can take a blue sky thread and it will make a static website for with seo optimized pages and and all of that. So this is kind of it's so strange. I've always thought it was strange that people would blog on Twitter or blue sky, but this is Dr Rowe does is incredibly.

yeah, he does he does, and that must be a lot of work. So this is now. You have to create an account. I don't know if it costs anything, because I don't think I'll ever create a blog post from my skeets, but I know you guys use the word skeet today. Yeah.

2:22:37 - Paris Martineau
It's skywriterblue.

2:22:40 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and it's. I don't believe it's affiliated by blue sky, but it is probably using the app protocol. I would imagine if I had with it, right, I would imagine. Right, probably.

2:22:50 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, it notably does not have any reference to what posts are called on this website, be it posts, or I guess it says transform your posts.

2:23:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, no, I'm not letting Skeet die. Sorry, jay.

2:23:06 - Paris Martineau
That's the thing. Unfortunately, it's here to stay.

2:23:12 - Leo Laporte
Right, and one other thing I'll do for you. I have to do this on the phone, but I'll just give you the link. I won't do it on the phone. Have you ever wanted to look like you were on your phone without actually being on your phone? This is, uh, it's kind of a game. It says look at you on your phone, but you've got a secret and you won't tell you're not on your phone. It's only as if you were on your phone. You just be pretending to be on your phone, on your phone. So it's a, it's a website, and it just tells you periodically click here, do this, swipe right, swipe left. It's hysterical. I don don't. I don't. I don't know why anybody would need it, but if you do what is? I can show you how you will look when you are on your phone. Okay, so this is it. It's as if you're on your phone, right here it is, and but see, you don't know that I'm not on my phone. It says things like tap this.

2:24:32 - Paris Martineau
So I'm going to start tapping bubbles right now, and it's so fun so it looks like I'm doing something, but really I'm. I'm just, you know, playing this silly game I just got the instructions to widen my eyes briefly.

2:24:51 - Leo Laporte
Yes, like you saw, something surprising, shocking, intriguing. Hmm. It's just a silly little thing, but I watch this box Now. It's a spinning thing, okay.

2:25:07 - Paris Martineau
I do really like this.

2:25:08 - Leo Laporte
Isn't this funny.

2:25:14 - Paris Martineau
It's a little, I think. Scratch, scratch your forehead, then press your toes down.

2:25:16 - Leo Laporte
It tells me double, tap this, swipe down uh created uh using p5 along with hammer js for touch gestures. It's as if you were on your phone and it has a press kit and everything.

2:25:35 - Jeff Jarvis
I love what people do this is jeff pics of the week. Okay, I want to mention a few one a paris uh, I might order from there tonight because I never have wonder which uh uh, queso did you get? Um, that's a great question there's a barbecue queso or the mexican queso let me look at him.

2:25:56 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I don't get barbecue queso, that's just gonna have flavors in it. You want the mexican?

2:26:00 - Jeff Jarvis
no, from the barbecue. Uh oh, they have multiple kitchens. Well, kitchen ah I want to.

2:26:07 - Paris Martineau
I want to believe it. I think it's the barbecue queso, but let me double check.

2:26:13 - Leo Laporte
Wildly this company Wonder, which is Mark Lohr's company. Mark Lohr created Diapercom, then Jetcom, which got bought by Walmart, which to compete with Amazon, and now he started this food delivery company Wonder, which uses local kitchens. He's just bought Tastemade for $90 million.

2:26:35 - Paris Martineau
So he's got even more money than Jessica Lesser. It is the Tejas barbecue queso Okay thank you. I would also let me check to see if the briefing is up from the information, because when my colleague Theo was going to write about that today, martin, our best friend, was like leave me some room to make fun of Wunder please.

2:26:56 - Leo Laporte
Lore told the journal that the acquisition will help Wunder, which also owns Grubhub what? And Blue Apron what Become an artificial intelligence-driven super app for food what isn't going to be an artificial intelligence super app We'll be able to check your health through a bunch of diagnostics, allow you to set your health goals, your budgets and then autonomously feed you breakfast, lunch and dinner. What they're planning for the future, wow that's gonna that's gonna be able to autonomously feed ray kurtz will yeah, mark laur's taking that good walmart money and putting it to use.

I tell you I wonder what pills ray gave up I gotta I well, we gotta read the autobiography, because I I want to do whatever supplements he's taking.

2:27:45 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm gonna take twice as many yeah, I'm sure that's the right way to do it, leo.

2:27:50 - Leo Laporte
So that's one.

2:27:50 - Jeff Jarvis
The other quick mention which just boggles my mind is that Denmark is going to stop delivering letters.

2:27:58 - Leo Laporte
What when?

2:27:59 - Paris Martineau
is it going to?

2:28:00 - Leo Laporte
go. Does that have?

2:28:00 - Jeff Jarvis
anything to do with Greenland. They're getting rid of their postal boxes. No, well, you know what? It's almost all junk mail.

2:28:08 - Leo Laporte
Now, right, and they're just saying well, you know what I gotta admit, it's almost all junk mail.

2:28:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Now, right exactly, and they're going to do packages that makes me.

2:28:14 - Leo Laporte
I was just amazed by that the us postal service will not give up junk mail, because that's their profit, that is their primary.

2:28:20 - Jeff Jarvis
You know, I I helped organize conferences on the postal system, believe it or not, and the Postmaster General spoke at one of them and said that their primary business is delivering advertising.

2:28:33 - Leo Laporte
Yes, this is going on around the world. Deutsche Post is axing 8 000 jobs in what it calls a socially responsible manner because of the decline in letter volumes. Denmark has had a universal Post postal service for a long time longer than we have since 1623 but as digital mail services have taken hold, the use of letters has fallen dramatically I'm guessing they don't get junk mail over there.

2:29:01 - Benito Gonzalez
Right, there's is there, they just don't get junk mail is that the thing?

2:29:03 - Leo Laporte
yeah, that's probably why?

2:29:04 - Jeff Jarvis
I guess so, because otherwise the postal department would say we're going to hold on that revenue, yeah, and they're saying well, you can still get letters, the market will take care of it. God knows what they'll charge, but that's not a good solution. Exactly that's what my daughter said. Yeah, what if you're? What if you're sending something to your, your aunt what's ever a danish name? Um, from france? How do you send? You can't send anybody in. You gotta use dhl. Yeah, it's gonna be wildly expensive. All right, I thought I found that interesting.

2:29:36 - Benito Gonzalez
Actually, that's very interesting because like what if I do send a letter there? What happens to it?

2:29:40 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't know, maybe, well, maybe, the first office here won't take it, or they'll send it, give it back to you or I don't know what all right, I want to.

2:29:48 - Ray Kurzweil
I want to go down.

2:29:49 - Jeff Jarvis
I've been going down a magnificent rabbit hole, uh, because I'm almost at the end knock wood of the first draft of the line of type book, and so I'm at the point of the end, right, and the end is postscript. Ah, finally replaces a transformative technology exactly everything, and so I had known this existed, not that one, no, this one did the annals below that. So the Museum of computer history held, uh meetings in 2017 with the desktop publishing pioneers, and if you go down the page, there are a whole bunch of videos which are free to watch, which are pretty amazing. These, these characters. So, uh, jonathan Siebold is this amazing character who's involved in this?

My friend, matthew Kirshenbaum, who wrote a lot of these guys are from xerox yeah uh, but you got john warnock there, charl chuck desky, um, uh, yeah, markov was there. Uh, what's his name? From um, from stanford, who did the? Um, uh, uh, the, the text, the open source text, oh, donald, donald yes, yeah, yes um, uh, so it's, the videos are quite amazing. So then, because I have academic access. I got the ieee uh issues with all kinds of um uh oral histories and just fascinating.

2:31:13 - Leo Laporte
Goodness the computer history museum preserves this.

2:31:16 - Jeff Jarvis
This is exactly it's just wonderful, yeah, and you know you think okay. So they put an a on the screen. What's the big deal? The mathematics? Oh yeah, that went into because at first you had bitmap. This is the stuff that Leo lived. You had bitmap, but that's very expensive of computer power and especially when the computers were slower and it doesn't scale, it doesn't scale.

Yeah. So then there were competing models for how to turn that into mathematical structures. And I read this thing by Chuck Bigelow, who was a major player in all of this. He's now retired from RIT Just fascinating mathematics far beyond my ken about what it took to be able to describe a bezier. What, what, what holoscript used was bezier curves, which were created by two french automobile companies to describe fender shapes right and this wasis.

2:32:12 - Leo Laporte
This is what computer screens used to look like before, before your time. Yep, very boring. That's too much color for computer screen.

2:32:22 - Paris Martineau
This is what I'm gonna go see at the vintage computer festival.

2:32:26 - Leo Laporte
Yes, you'll see it. I think so. You should absolutely so I just, if you're into this, you know what's one of the things I really thought was very cool when steve jobs started next, they decided that the screen would be in postscript, that they would use display postscript to describe the screen, because steve was very focused on aesthetics. He had studied calligraphy uh, at reed. Actually he audited the class. I think he was no longer a student exactly, but so did charles bigelow.

2:32:55 - Jeff Jarvis
That's how. That's the connection.

2:32:56 - Leo Laporte
They were the same it inspired them and so at next he really type type setting was very important to him at next and of course that continued on when apple bought next and incorporated uh next step into their operating system the thing that, again, you knew and you lived, leo, but I didn't fully grok.

2:33:14 - Jeff Jarvis
There's one of the pieces in 9EEE by John Skull not Scully but Skull who was the marketing head of this. Of course, when the Mac came out, it was a failure, and that's what Jobs lost his job as a result, and the salvation of it was to create an entirely new field of desktop publishing and create it around the Apple laser printer.

2:33:40 - Leo Laporte
I had a friend, tom Santos, who bought a van and a $3,000 laser writer. The Apple laser printer was very expensive, maybe it was $6,000.

2:33:52 - Speaker 3
And he did mobile desktop publishing, maybe it was six thousand dollars and he did uh mobile desktop publishing. He would drive around to businesses and say I'll bring your knives I'll make your menus.

2:34:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and uh, this. He did this for several years. This is really you know, yeah, and when, the when this all started to I can't remember what year the laser writer came out, but that's, it was very clever. Uh, of course, now we all have the capability. This is what to me, this is why I like talking to ray, uh, and, and why I like doing this show, because we kind of take it for granted. We live in amazing times, and only you and I, because we started so many years ago. And even for me, I have to remember. Think back. Oh yeah, I remember what a big deal it was when you could do a font, yeah, yeah, um, and and but. But when I do think about that, I can't. I'm blown away by stuff we take for granted now.

2:34:47 - Paris Martineau
Oh yeah, and the, how good our screens look, and I mean even stuff like having images load automatically, rather being line by line on the oh yeah, oh well paris.

2:34:59 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh, in my day, uh, hyphenation and justification was such a complicated routine that when I worked in the chicago tribune and you were ready to see how long the story was going to be, given the type set you had, it was batch done. You had to hit a button and then go off and get coffee. Go, yeah, go, go, walk away and come back. Spellcheck was the same thing. The way spellcheck worked is you'd hit a button, it would batch it and it would come back with all the suspect words.

2:35:23 - Paris Martineau
It's crazy.

2:35:25 - Leo Laporte
In a way, we're witnessing miracles every day. We've lived in a phenomenal time.

2:35:29 - Jeff Jarvis
I love this from the Skull article too, because they were trying to go after this professional market not big time professional, but a whole new people in businesses who couldn't print before, who could now print right. And the Lemmings ad came out for the Macintosh famously right.

2:35:48 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, 1984. Right.

2:35:50 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, so unfortunately, he writes the Lemmings ad was ineffective portraying business users, the very market. Apple was trying to sell the Macintosh to as simple-minded beings who would follow each other off a cliff to their deaths. The spot insulted the intended audience, many of whom considered it condescending rather than inspirational.

2:36:10 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yes, exactly. This is the IBM user, right, right, and they're just walking off the cliff. It was a great ad, it was shy at day, brilliant ad agency. But uh, sometimes creativity and ads does not accomplish the purpose. Uh, this is probably a very good example of that. You jerks you. Yeah, they're all wearing IBM suits, carrying briefcases. There's only one woman. It's very much 1985.

2:36:43 - Benito Gonzalez
On January 23rd, Apple Computer will announce the Macintosh.

2:36:47 - Leo Laporte
Oh, this was 84. Okay, this, yeah, this was the other. The moves, the blindfold. Wait a minute or you can go live as usual. See, this is me looking back, saying AI, it's the future.

2:37:03 - Paris Martineau
I can fly. Yeah, because no one else is saying that You're really unique for having that perspective.

2:37:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, and the thing is too, is we talked about? Visicalc for the Apple II was the killer app. Desktop publishing for the Mac was the killer app that it needed to have and did not have. Yeah, so what is the killer app for AI? The argument is we haven't seen it yet.

2:37:27 - Leo Laporte
Oh, we've seen too many. That's why? No, I don't.

2:37:30 - Jeff Jarvis
I think the it's a great story writer Paris where's your shoe? Get your shoe out.

2:37:37 - Benito Gonzalez
See, the thing with that is that killer apps normally reveal themselves right away and no killer app has been revealed yet. Normally a killer app just happens like email.

2:37:47 - Leo Laporte
Well, no, perplexity is a killer app.

2:37:50 - Benito Gonzalez
Are you kidding me On the level of Google Maps? Ray writes about.

2:37:54 - Leo Laporte
Gmail's auto reply. That's a killer app. It's not one giant app.

2:38:00 - Benito Gonzalez
It's a bunch of little things. No, but that's what I mean. There's no one app.

2:38:02 - Paris Martineau
No one is saying that the killer app for the internet era is Gmail's auto reply.

2:38:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Or worse, he's saying that about AI.

2:38:12 - Leo Laporte
Jammer B is correcting that Lemmings ad. I thought the Lemmings ad was from 85. He says, yeah, they took the 80 1984 audio, put it under. I don't know if that's true, john, because it didn't have the crash but anyway, that was the one.

2:38:28 - Jeff Jarvis
That was the the super bowl ad right. Yeah, crash aired at once. Yeah, but I'm not sure that was the lemmy this is the lemmings ad.

2:38:31 - Leo Laporte
I'm not sure what were they call that one. Was that the lemmings ad?

2:38:32 - Jeff Jarvis
yeah, but I'm not sure that was the lemmy. This is the lemmings. I'm not sure what were they called that one. Was that the lemmings ad?

2:38:37 - Leo Laporte
yeah, that was lemmings ad anthony the other one, you showed us a good question what's the kill? What was the internet killer?

2:38:43 - Paris Martineau
email email email yeah, and and the web social media email's enough, yeah email all right, and email was what led it to take off. You know, like email and message boards okay I, I don't know if that's.

2:39:08 - Leo Laporte
I mean, I my my big problem is a lot of the response to ai is interpreting it through the lens of the past and I don't know. I think it's so different and weird that to say where's the killer app? That's history, that's the old days, that's physical, I think what there are some people saying I don't think it's history or the old days to say.

2:39:26 - Paris Martineau
A product that we're investing a lot of time, money and resources in should provide some widespread and apparent utility to no, no, because the whole particular app is this is the one thing everybody agrees wow, that's going to transform the world it creates. Demand no the kill, yeah the killer man demand.

2:39:42 - Jeff Jarvis
There's no question.

2:39:44 - Leo Laporte
There's curiosity, there's playing with it I I use it more than playing with it. Well, you're weird oh wait.

2:39:52 - Paris Martineau
No, I figured out what the killer app for ai is going to be. It's complex plutonium.

2:39:59 - Leo Laporte
Ladies and gentlemen, we have now gone full circle. Paris martineau writes for the information at theinformationcom. You must subscribe. It's a great publication and not not the least because paris writes it, she's also on Signal martino.01. If you've got a tip don't use your work phone.

2:40:20 - Paris Martineau
Thank you, paris, go watch Twin Peaks, so you're starting from day one, or are you already in it? I started from season one episode one.

2:40:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, you're already in it.

2:40:28 - Paris Martineau
But I'm in the middle of season two right now. I just finished the episode Checkmate. Well, there's season three, two I've got to watch fire walk with me.

2:40:37 - Leo Laporte
There's a whole three seasons of that thing.

2:40:39 - Paris Martineau
Well, the third season was made in like 2016 decades after. Yeah, that's fire walk, yeah, yeah and that's an oops all david lynch, which I'm quite excited about because he's my boy I don't know if I'm a david lynch fan. I would try. I am, but maybe that seems right. I don't think I am. He's a weird. It's a weird.

2:41:00 - Leo Laporte
He's a weird guy that does weird things, and I like that it seems like it's not for everybody weird for weirdness sake well, I disagree with that.

2:41:08 - Paris Martineau
He's weird in a. He's creative because he's weird.

2:41:11 - Leo Laporte
He's weird, I mean Twin.

2:41:12 - Paris Martineau
Peaks, notably, was like the first television series to use any of the artistry of the cinema, like the film industry in serialized television.

2:41:28 - Benito Gonzalez
It was the first prestige TV show.

2:41:31 - Paris Martineau
Was it.

2:41:33 - Leo Laporte
David Lynch doing a TV show Thorn Birds, not the thorn birds, or even small stuff like the trend in the artsy.

2:41:41 - Paris Martineau
Like the trend, like they used creative transitions for things they used like in a very avant. Yeah, it was very avant-garde.

2:41:51 - Leo Laporte
I'll have to watch it again because I admit I haven't seen it since the 80s well, the pilot episode, which is the first episode you got to watch.

2:41:58 - Paris Martineau
It's an hour and a half. It's a movie, so prepare yourself for that it's good, she's dead wrapped in plastic.

2:42:07 - Leo Laporte
Jeff jarvis is the emeritus professor of journalistic innovation at the craig newmark graduate school of journalism innovation at the craig newmark graduate school of journalism university of new york. Oh, if we didn't do that one week there'd be an outcry. Oh, I know well, craig would probably call us. Uh, he's the author of the gutenberg parenthesis. Uh, the web we weave is his latest good books. Both of them read magazine too. You can find it all at jeff jarvis gutenberg parenthesis in paperback now. And what is this? So you're finishing up the type setting I'm trying to.

2:42:38 - Jeff Jarvis
It's just I thought I'm going down all these rabbit holes. I was, I was ready to do a really short section about, well, pen and and powerpoint and the powerpoint, what I'm trying to say, and um, what should we call it? Um, what do you call it? Um, what are you talking about? Thank you, postscript, jesus christ. Uh, postscript killed it all. I'll do a few paragraphs, but then I then I say I better look this up, I'm gonna look more, I know more on that. It's a rabbit hole. Right before that I the the section right before, is the death of american type founders. Oh, which they made. They made actual type right, and it lasted till 1993.

The guy named lasted longer than twin peaks three, theo rezek uh tried to save a lot of the stuff. There was this, this amazing uh tale of the final auction, when, to try to save the artistry of all of the last of real type, they had to compete against junk dealers who wanted it all just for the cost of metal.

2:43:40 - Leo Laporte
So sad I think somebody should write a history of the dying tv repairman. Maybe that'll be your next book the tube, this cath.

2:43:50 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, look at the, look at the importance of the cathode ray.

2:43:53 - Leo Laporte
You know that's a good one, or just tubes in general, or what could be the title tubes in general?

2:44:02 - Jeff Jarvis
and I am two.

2:44:04 - Leo Laporte
They have a funny name for tubes. Anyway, thank you, jeff. He's now at montclair state university and study brooks city, where somebody stole his syllabus already no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

2:44:16 - Jeff Jarvis
He slipped it under the door. I want him to teach it because I don't want to go out to Long Island every week, and it should be done in person. That's admirable. You know, there's a lot of bridges, a lot of bridges.

2:44:25 - Leo Laporte
I don't want to go to Long Island every week, that's for sure.

2:44:36 - Paris Martineau
You've got love. The place, great campus, that island, you know it's long, it's long, it is long, it's long and the other ends of hamptons.

2:44:40 - Leo Laporte
There's a very big difference.

2:44:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Very, very it's a lot of people in between those two places, stony brook is all the way out in uh in suffolk county valves a long way out they call them valves valves that's what the british call them valves valves tubes vacuum tubes

2:44:58 - Paris Martineau
they call in general and then parentheses and also valves thank you, jeff.

2:45:06 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, paris. Appreciate your putting up with me in the sand in my shoes, and I'm.

Thank you, and I'm and me, I'm Leo Laporte. We do this show every Wednesday for some reason, no one knows why, 2 pm Pacific, 5 pm Eastern, 2100 UTC, because we're now in summertime. You can watch live eight different places to watch on the discord channel, you can watch on youtube, twitch, tiktok x, facebook linkedin and kick I think I got them all or, after the fact, you can download a copy from our website, twittertv slash. I am you'll seea link there to the youtube channel dedicated to the video, or subscribe to the audio or video version of the show and your favorite podcast clients, so you can not even think about it, just get it automatically and listen at your leisure.

On most other shows, I say please leave us a review on iTunes or however you get your podcasts. A five star review would help us immensely, help people find the show and discover it. But I realize, if I ask people to leave a review on this show, that they're just going to pan us, hey hey, hey, don't ban us some guy said honest criticism, the show's an hour too long.

These are there, you know I I do want to mention there is a nice feature of podcasts. You can stop listening at any point if you want this show to be a minute. Five minutes an hour, two hours. At any point.

2:46:36 - Paris Martineau
If you want this show to be a minute five minutes an hour, two hours, we, we give you the choice, even three hours. Hey, paris, heads out there getting getting the reviews.

2:46:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Correct the record on some of those get some good reviews see ball people even though I know you don't watch it because paris doesn't want you to, because you'll be embarrassed just put a good review in there, yeah do it for paris.

2:46:53 - Leo Laporte
Is any of your?

2:46:53 - Jeff Jarvis
skee-ball people watched any of the show.

2:46:56 - Leo Laporte
No.

2:46:57 - Paris Martineau
Some clips I've seen some clips.

2:46:59 - Leo Laporte
Okay, good. And what do they say? Who are those old people? Is that your grandpa?

2:47:05 - Paris Martineau
Well, yeah one of them thought you were Noam Chomsky, but you know.

2:47:11 - Leo Laporte
Actually, that's high praise. I'd be happy to be nomchansky. That's good. Thank you, paris, thank you jeff. Thank you to all of our club members who make this possible. If you're not a member yet, join please. It's only seven bucks a month. Twittv slash club twit. You wouldn't have to hear any more ads, wouldn't that be nice. We will see you all next week on intelligent machines. Bye-bye.