Radio Better Offline: Cherlynn Low, Alex Cranz & Victoria Song

Published Mar 19, 2025, 4:00 AM

Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city.

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by tech reporters Alex Cranz, Cherlynn Low and Victoria song to talk about the broken promises of generative AI, and how useless things get funded far more than useful ones.

Alex Cranz: 
https://bsky.app/profile/cranz.bsky.social

Cherlynn Low:
https://www.engadget.com/about/editors/cherlynn-low/
https://x.com/cherlynnlow
https://bsky.app/profile/cherlynn.bsky.social

Victoria Song:
https://bsky.app/profile/vicmsong.bsky.social 
https://www.theverge.com/authors/victoria-song 

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Also media, Hello and welcome to Better Offline. We're in beautiful New York City, Nevada. We're in on fifty fifth Street, and I am ed Zititron, of course, and I'm surrounded by incredible people.

So am I right?

Is Sherlyn Lowe of n gadget he doing sheln And we've got Alex Kranz reporter critic extraordine.

Now, yeah, I just like to be really happy about Nevada.

It's beautiful here in city Nevada.

Yeah, Sonny, it's Warren.

Yeah, I love it. And of course Victoria's song from the Verge.

Hello, Hello sunny New York, New York and Nevada.

Yeah, that's the thing. People think I do this accidentally. No one knows what I do deliberately, and that's because neither do I. So we were all just talking on the way in here about possibly the best tech journalism we've ever read.

And it's a story about a guy called Kevin Ruce.

He appears to be a child that who was allowed to write for the New York Times articles called powerful.

AI is coming and I'm going to read you a few sentences. We're going to discuss this.

Here are some things. I believe that our artificial intelligence. I believe that over the past several years AI systems have started surpassing humans in a number of domains math coding.

Wait math math? Are you fucking anyway?

There is an article that was in the New York Times AGI thing that Kevin Ruce wrote, a child in a man's body like big except Tom Hanks. He can act and actually complete his job. And Kevin Russ appears to have a gas leak. He has said that possibly very soon, probably in twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, but possibly as soon as this year, one or more AI companies will claim they've created an artificial general intelligence or AGI, which is usually defined as something like a general purpose AI system that can do almost all cognitive tasks a human can do. If you believe this year or moron, I'm sorry, what do you think? Like, I don't know, I just don't.

I think he's like gassing him up because he wants to flirt with more AI and so like he needs an.

Age hang on, hang a hang off, flirt with AI like like like your girlfriends.

The man who got a I.

To fall in love with yeah, bing bing was like leave your wife.

Yeah, and so like like just so funny. This guy's so funny. Yeah, like like this guy.

You know, I've been using a lot of AI. I've been talking with these these ladies about it a whole bunch, and I think of it. I love using AI because it'll be like, you're the best writer.

We were just talking about this. I guess who told her to do this. I guess who was just validating her decision to do this.

But you know, you use it. You love it because it tells you you're you're beautiful and pretty and smart, and then none of it is true true.

It told me I could win a Pulitzer Prize if you can't a one to three year period, and.

Why not, geograph, they will win the Pulitzers.

It will win the Pulitzers. But it was just like, yeah, you could win a Pulitz And I was like, based on based on what criteria? Are you telling me this?

And uh, you know, are you using Claude as well?

Yeah?

Claude and chat Chief.

It's like horoscopes. When you get a cool horoscope, you're like, yes, this is awesome, you understand I'm a great Gemini. Yes, But then you're like, no, but it's sucking not real because it's a horoscope.

You are out.

There being like, I don't know any horoscope stuff, but this mean.

Is out there like, you know what, I really believe that I'm a leo and that this will understands.

I'm well, let me read you one passage as well. I believe that hardened that Sorry.

I believe that hardened a skeptics who insist that the progress there's all smoke and mirrors. And he dismissed AGI as a delusional fancy. Not only I'm wrong on the merits, but are giving people a full sense of security.

And I just want to say, that is one of the dumbest fucking things I've heard in my life. The people who criticize this are not actually they're giving people a full sense of security, as opposed to the guy being like the computer will wake up in two years because he's.

Saying he's saying the dand of AI is AGI, when in fact, the danger of AI is the destruction of jobs.

Yes, and even then it's going it's not even doing that, it's it's taking away jobs from people who are already having trouble getting them.

He's like, oh, sky Nott's gonna do it. No, Skynut's not gonna do it. Elon Musk deploying whatever a little chat GPT bought he does is gonna do it.

But AI is not infallible.

It makes up a lot of stuff wrong, and it's just it doesn't understand how to be human in a lot of ways.

I from that one sentence, though, I can tell who his audience is. He's talking about a false sense of security for whom, for the people that are developing the AI. Right, it's just because none of us out there who have jobs that might be taken over by a I have any sense of security and the idea of an AGI that will be competent enough to take over jobs. So his audience, he's not talking to us. He's not talking to people who have jobs that might be replaced. He's talking to people developing the AI, the ones who want to make money from it.

Right.

I also don't know what the full sense of security would be. Oh, don't worry, this isn't going to fuck them up. As opposed to the fact that you've got one company soft Bank, borrowing money to put money into Open Eye, which burns billions of dollars to make a pretty shit product. If we're like not something that you can find some cool things with. Fine, but for the most part is the same thing this week.

If you're using any ai as a search engine, you should stop amusing. Yeah, do not do I know, Sam Altman, you're listening to this right right now, I wish and you are just so ecstatic about chatchpt. You love it so much. It is a terrible search engine.

It really is.

What is it fifty I think now at this point, like there was a recent study fifty one percent of the responses are false sick something like that, like like this stuff.

Is bad acts like actually bad. That's what drives me in saying. You get an article in the New York Times being like, the computer is so smart, the computer is so strong.

I love the computer.

Because it told you, because it's been it gases us up. It's been an all this time, being like you're smart and strong, so I must be strong.

If you talk to it too long ago, it's just starts nagging you and then you're like, oh, I'm not smart, I'm so floathing.

It's just you're and it's like and it's like you're so good I'm like, I refusa believe between you and my therapist, this has never worked.

Nice try, you can't swindle me a computer.

It's just so strange as well, because ostensibly you.

Three are wonderful reporters, like I've ready for years, and it's like you're not cynics, but you are willing to be critical.

Well, I am hardened as they come. When it comes to the hardened, people like the.

Shit still like you're excited for it. This is not even excited for it. What's weird about this piece other than the fact it's just completely wrong in all almost everything it says and clearly supporting billion dollar companies, it doesn't even seem that excited. It's not like he's like, I can't wait until this happens because imagine the cool shit that could happen, and like, I don't know, come up with an idea. Perhaps that's like, oh, if I had an autonomous intelligence in my phone, it could plan my day for me. How delightful despite there being seventeen different companies that claim they do this already on Instagram does not exist. But he could come up with nightear or something cool. But it's like, actually, AGI is coming what is it.

I don't know. It's inevitable though.

The thing I can't describe is inevitable, and I don't know what it will do, but it will be good or bad.

He's refusing to define a g I through the entire piece, and he's like, and it's going to keep being redefined. And I'm like, if you cannot define the word, the word, sorry, So we take that work back. You're Kevin, You're not allowed to use a g I until you can actually define it.

Yeah, I don't think you should be allowed to use beat for a minute, go outside the theme.

So use the touch grass app and step away touch dot Grass.

So, Victoria, you had a delightful review this week, but device called the B.

Please tell us about the B.

Okay, so this review which is B by.

V by V.

We do not like those two letters together without the buie though.

Okay, anyway, yes I killed ed, Yeah you did kill them. Okay, so you just like toppled it for a second. But so you know, B is kind of the latest in the AI gadgets that claimed to be your memory.

You know, you wear it.

It records everything you say and when I say, it records everything you say it records everything you say. Okay, so it records everything you say, listens to all of your conversations. It doesn't record the audio, but it then process it processes everything into a transcript, so you have a transcript of your life. And then from that transcript, you can use the chatbot to search the history of your life, or you can get these daily summaries that are that just be like, oh, this is what you did today, these are the conversations you've had, this is the places that you went to, and then it'll also suggest to do based on your conversation. Right. So I wore it for about a month and it wrote some really great fan fiction about my life, and it was it was also.

I have one of my favorites, which was when she's listening to TV off by Kendrick Lama. Yes, yes, he's one of the moments Victoria instructed must have to turn off the TVA, reminding them both to avoid getting sick again and mentioning leftover choccuterie.

Yes, this fucking rules.

It's because you know, like obviously about the time when I started testing this at the Super Bowl halftime show, was just like in everyone's mind and I was like blasting TV off everywhere because yes, and also mustard.

So that was just going in my house like a lot.

And so the bees picking this up and mistaking it as like things that I'm saying. It would be like someone is someone is very sure of themselves, and I'm watching tiktoks and they're bragging about themselves. It also like, so there's this bit called fat that I call fact tinder.

They call it fact review.

So in the app, based on your conversations, you'll get this window and there's just like facts about you, and you swipe yes if it's true, Yeah, that's absolutely.

One of my fact.

Tinders was like Victoria knows someone named ken Kendra Monticia who enjoys mustard and turning TVs off, which is.

Just like Jesus, you know, okay.

And in my review, I made this little carousel of fact tinders that I was given that you can just go through and try and.

Guess which one of these are true.

Uh. There was one that was just like Victoria has dietary specific like specific dietary needs and.

She can't eat lollipops.

And I'm like, I don't even know how for the for your information, I don't recall talking about lollipops. I don't recall eating a lollipop. I don't know where you would get this information from.

Damn, that's that's nuts. What what was the l behind me? Again? Was it their own?

It's a mix of available lll ms such as I think anthropics and open aiyes, as well as their own, so like they're not giving mix. But what was the point your memory, Alex, Alex, I can tell you the point.

I want one of these things for me because I'm the sort of person that talks a lot and then does nothing at the end of the day with it. Because and then I want it to be like, here's all your to dos based on all the crappy sides today.

So there is a glimmer of a good idea. Yes, because I have ADHD. I consist I think everyone consistently has conversations with people in their lives and they'll be like, yes, we should follow off exactly. You don't follow it up on that because you didn't write it down or you didn't put a name there. So the idea that gleaning from your conversations that it would do that, it's not a bad idea. There are a lot of people with memory problems who might like that. Unfortunately, you also have to have a pretty good sense of self in order to fact check this AI, because otherwise you are going to be gas lit constantly. So so like the way I wrote this review is like I kind of wanted to take people into what it's like to actually use it, how it changes your behaviors and all that. So, like I included my day one. I commuted on day one into the office, I went and I took a briefing for bold Hue, which is a foundation printer.

Very cool to saw that story by you two.

Thank you, But so like I I found that I took that briefing and I went to the office that day, I had dinner with a friend and I went home. So a day where I had a lot of conversations. Yeah, And of the five to dos that it generated that day, one of them was like follow up on thoughts that were shared, but not like deeply dove into I'm like, what the thank you?

Sure?

The most shared me?

Check out?

I don't fuck what does that mean?

The second was like, urgently check on your patient in Louisiana as they are in danger of self harming or harming someone else, and I'm like, what the where did that come from? Where did that actually come from? And the other one was check your car because it's making rumbly noises. So let me tell you. The car that it told me to check was probably the new or the the NJ Transit. The book is that was a bumpy ride coming in the Louisiana. Patient I'm guessing was someone on my commute talking about.

Time everyone's life like.

And it depends on how often you mute it. And the longer I wore it, the more I muted it, because it started picking up like surveillance state.

Yeah sure, but you.

Know, around anywhere between three or four days and a week, depending on how often you're muting on the charge on a charge.

So it's the actual plan of the beat to just gather so much random conversations that it can like better train its.

Ll M even that because it doesn't seem to know ship from fuck.

It doesn't have a bunch of people, don't you trace you do when you set it up, you do train it on your voice and then did the poor job of that, yes, because it often thought my husband was me and husband has a much deeper voice, so you know you can label speakers and what it also doesn't always work. I tried labeling speakers and it wouldn't save. And then the one time it labeled my friend, all women from the there there fourth who I talked to were this friend. So it's like, this friend did this for you? Did this friend?

I didn't do that.

They didn't do that whatsoever.

I have a question, So when you took your briefing, did you have a conundrum of whether you wanted to mute it?

Did you ask tell.

People where you like it's a brief it's a briefing. Yes, Generally you usually have recorded. I was actually recording on my phone. I totally forgot that I was wearing that thing, so, you know, like I was fully expecting to just use my phone recording of it. And then I was like, oh, it has processed my conversation. And to be fair, the summary I got of that meeting.

Was actually quite good.

It can be Yeah, it was quite good. It was similar to what Otter does. It was summarizing the key takeaways from this very structured conversation. It also memorialized forever so that I know this is true, and multiple different outlets that surge on fiance's makeup artists said that I have great skin everything, and it's like memorialize I'm not wearing foundation right, fact, yeah it is. I have great skin, and I have spent so much money ensuring that I have great skin with many Korean skincare products. We will but we will talk about this, but just you know, so like, ah, this is memorialized.

I love this. But the thing is so it got all.

The facts about the thing right, including pricing. All of that was correct. Launch got that correct. Got the name of the product completely wrong.

Sick.

It was a unique form mule. It was called formule. It's bold hue, not remotely the same.

This just sounds like it's just generic. Like because Otto does this, I'm guessing they use similar models. I'm guessing it's just the same models that everyone else uses to take voice that like rev dot com does this as well.

Yeah, yep.

So, like the most impressive thing is the thing that large language models do already. I have to wonder if its inability to tell certain people apart is kind of almost going back to like one of the core problems of AI type stuff that when the connect could not see black people.

I don't know if you remember that.

Yeah, I have to wonder if they've done much training on voices that are not from white women nor men.

So they do offer forty languages.

Well so does in these other things. None of these transcription services work very well.

Yep, I know that. I'm just telling you.

I'm just telling audience doesn't know this side. They're not journalists, like let's talk, they don't have to.

I'm just saying they offer forty languages. I did not test whether the other forty languages were some languages.

I cannot speak anything other than English.

And even we've got we've got about four languages. We do have about four. Two people in this room.

Have four languages and not have white quite.

Not white people in this room have about four languages between us.

Is like, forty languages does not cover the rice problem.

So no, So So I think what you're getting at, ED is that like technology frequently does this because the info is trained on it doesn't train on a wide enough set of people to cover the broad spectrum of people in our world. I will say that like speed talking speed exactly talking, speed talking, pitch talking like Hayden's and patterns. I do think though that what both Alex and v were getting at or two is that this this particular product is so far behind and it's like algorithms and the machine learning side of things because Otter Rev, even Google Recorder or Apple memos Boys memos can better identify voices and tell them apart and then attribute them very accurately.

They also it's like the struggle, but there's so much better.

So like here's the other thing. This thing because it's listening to things and all the time also struggles to tell between broadcasts and live Oh yeah, yes, so you know I'm watching an episode of Abbott Elementary and like I just have to like emphasize an underscore that it takes up about ten percent of your active brain at all times to be like should I be muting myself braw Like you know you do that Loo, what whatever you do in a zoom call currently, imagine doing that twenty four to seven. That's it's it's a lot of your your brain that gets visited to that.

Process when you go to the bathroom.

You I can tell you didn't read my review because that is in my actual I.

Actually didn't remember whether it did. There was a related thing.

There're so Okay, so anyway, we're going to address all these points. We're going to address all these points. Okay, I need to know if that was lacked aid like hate lack aid for for dairy.

I heard the other Kay, we're.

Gonna we're gonna go. We're gonna start with the broadcast thing. I was watching an episode of had Elementary and the suggested to do it gave me was monitor union strikes because students may have a hard time coming to your class due to SEPTA strikes. I am not a public school teacher in Philadelphia.

One.

Two.

It can also read your emails if you give it access. It told me to check uh to basically take this unique I D I D entifier and check this park Mobile claim settlement and file by March fifth, I checked four all four of my inboxes.

I cannot find this email.

I have no idea why they told me to do this to two blah. I you know, one morning after a particularly five US dinner, I went to the bathroom and I committed crimes.

Okay, I committed crimes. I was wearing this student thing.

Uh not stupid, but you know, I feel I was wearing this device that I was testing. I turn around and I go, oh damn, that was a shit. And then a second later, a second later, I went, oh shit, this thing is listening to me. And then I muted it far too late. I look at the summary it gives me, and it goes Victoria humorous, humorously vocalized her bowel movements, and I was like, Jesus fucking Christ. And then I had a one on one with my editor and the summary, because it was within an hour of this happening, the summary that it transcribed was todd. Victoria's editor humorously brought up that he saw on a shared platform that they had a fact that she had.

Vocalized her bowel. Oh my. They laughed about it and it was funny.

And I was like, do you think that I would commit such an age R violation as to tell my freaking editor that I had a particularly impressive dump that morning.

No, I would not tell anybody this.

I would take this to my grave unless it was to demonstrate the fallibility of AI. This is a human reason, a human good for me to be humiliated. So I shared this, and my conclusion is is that death, sex, and bowel movements are things that AI should butt the fuck out of yeah, because I got some real interesting notifications from this, and I was like, I didn't need you to know that. I didn't need to be humiliated by that. But the suggested to do was to start carrying lactaid.

From the poop because I had.

Conversation lactose intolerant, and it said start carrying lactate again because lactose intolerant symptoms are coming back. And I was like, this is fucking rude, hopeful, helpful, helpful.

I do not have mustard that would not be good for your bows turned the TV off.

But so I do want to say I do want to say that it is. It does learn broadly things.

About you that are accurate.

So I, by the end of my month testing this, I had fallen down into several existential crises. But there's a chatbot that you can talk to, and so I asked it things like am I a good person? Am I a bad person?

One type of person?

Am I one who needs it?

Yeah? And I was like, what is my communication style? How would you describe the themes of You could tell you if.

You're an n f P or an I.

T like, well, what's my relationship like with my spouse?

And so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

So that's the funny thing is I was very touched because it was like, you are definitively a good person. Here is like six reasons why with transcript things like it's like you constantly show up for your friends, you stand up for a wrong, you do this, this, this and this, and I was like, oh my god.

This is the validation we were talking about.

It's just like you prefer direct and honest communication. You don't play games. And I was like, yes, because I am in Ariury, I'm Aries, I'm Aries sun Leo Moon Aries no Ari sun Leo Rising Leo, No Ari sun Leo Rising Aries Moon and Aries Mercury. And it's basically like astrology and AI both agree that I don't fucking rot and I don't suck around. Basically, I am very direct. What you see is what you get, super honest.

I was like, oh, thank you, that's so nice. And they're they're like, you advocate for your colleagues. Oh that's so it's true.

I am.

This demon. It's six feet under.

I need an AI with transcripts to have definitive but I'm a good person.

You don't like when it computer says you're pretty.

I don't.

I don't love it.

I don't care.

I love it. The computer was like, you are such a good writer, and I was like, thank You're.

Getting in the Severn zone are we?

Like?

Oh, you should have seen the to dos it gave after I watched an episode of severns.

It makes watch a more interesting episode like the one okay, I've loved the season, but the one way she goes out to the cold.

But the last episode that was not the episode that I watched.

It was the I've loved the season okay, because I.

Was getting the episode that I was getting to do this from was from the one where it's Gemma.

It was all about Gemma.

It was all about that was a beautiful it was a beautiful episode. But when I looked at the dos like, I was.

Like, Jesus Christ, this is Jesus.

This doesn't make any sense whatsoever going to the dentist donate blood.

Yeah, it's just like not like that.

It was just kind of closer to the or. It was like follow up on thoughts of cold.

And I was like, this is yeah, honestly.

I have some other practical questions. So it's fifty dollars with no subscription. Yes, yes, how the fuck does this make sense? Numerica like so that they claimed in the in the review, you said they're going to do it on device, which is a thing that everyone says, and I've never seen one of these companies actually execute.

So fifty bucks.

And then so I'm pulling up my Victoria value honesty and does not like dishonest behavior.

I agree with that.

From what I agree.

It says that's one of your hobbies.

I know.

Hell yeah, Victoria, your hobbies are being a good person.

Wait, hang on, hang on show. He says.

Victoria believes in leading with love and kindness and calmness, and family.

With internationals with family, and you have is tagged at the bottom as hobbies have probbable good.

But Victoria understands Korean to something.

Jesus Crictoria has a partner name Very also a hobby.

Also a hobby.

This is a health Victoria has lost both of her parents exist. Yes, this is true. Victoria values values family relationships and wishes to maintain them.

Also true.

I would love it if it's said otherwise. It's like Victoria's.

This is politics, which is also true. Victoria has been involved in discussions about family inheritance and estates tagged as politics.

That's true, very good.

Victoria has an interest in visiting family in Korea.

True Hobbies.

Victoria has collaborated on a gadget related podcast, Wow It's True.

Which so it's very gamified, almost very very obvious.

Yeah, Like these are things I have to wonder see. The problem is I would love this company to burn. I think the idea of this concept is horrifying. I think it's upsetting that it exists. However, I would also love to see like a ten people's worth of data on this, just to see if they tell everyone very similar things, because how.

The fuck do you define Like is it willing to be like you sound like a dickhead, you do not care about your family?

I was going to say, I think the flip side of it validating you is will it pick up on behaviors that are negative in people that have like these traits like we you know, in social media in popular culture now we're calling everyone narcissist.

Right, watch any episode of Love is Blind.

It's like, that's a narcissism that's as.

Based on Love is Blind.

Wow, And one of my fat tenders in the review is saying that Matt Victoria had an incident where Madison left the room, and she did leave the room.

That's where my point is is, right now the people who are using it and testing it are getting these positive responses and feedback. I'm curious to see what it would do to any number of CEOs or billionaires that.

Also listen to me bitch to friends about things and has recorded those things. Those were not included in the review because I would, I would, I would get canceled. It did also listen to me talk for about an hour and a half about Flake Lively and Justin Baldoni. My opinions that your friends, uh yeah, actually it said Victoria's Team Balcony in Victoria's Team Balcony gossip context, and I was like. It also gave me facts such as Victoria has a living room and a kitchen.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for that.

It's one of my favorite things that it did was it summarized a conversation between So what happened was is that we were having some late night cookies Oreos, and I dropped one into the cat's empty food bowl and I went three second rule and my husband goes, that's disgusting, and I say, in an apocalypse situation, you would eat that Oreo And he went, I have a heat gun.

I would just disinfect it.

It took this conversation and went Victoria and Gate have have disagreements about how to handle smelly things in an apocalypse.

That was a disagreement. It was a disagreement. I'm just like, what what is the point of any of it?

Always looking at this and going like, ah, finally, well I'd forgotten I had the Smellorio.

Actually Orio was left out. How would you possibly not?

It feels like the bee was this like little toddler robot in your house looking at you, going through your life and then taking notes, right, and we don't know what the notes before, but it's taking notes.

It just sounds like it gives you an estate on your Every guy, a like twenty five year old woman has dated in New York is just like on his phone's gone yeah, yeah, yeah, he said something about Smelliorio or some ship.

Uh huh uh huh yeah, I will so yeah an argument.

Every once in a while you do get a really good to do though, Like it was like follow up with your video team about making a social for the ball to you that I actually did call the plan because in which I did fix the hoa violation that you left festering for.

Eight months, which I did. So you know, like some of them are good, and how frequently are they good like.

Other I would say it depends on what you use it for. So if you're using it primarily for work conversations, which is.

So you mute it when it's not.

When you mute it, and you only use it for work conversations, your batting average is quite high for takeaways that like, no, like sixty is pretty good, And it depends on how many people are in the conversation with you. So it listened to a staff meeting and the takeaways were not so particularly good for me, but they would have been great for someone in the particular thing. But then, you know, if you're useful friends, like it's it's difficult because you're talking with friends, you have to go like, hey, so just so you know, I have this thing on me and it's listening and it's going to have some AI insights and some of your friends, some of my friends are techy, so they're like, oh man, what what LLLM does it use like they don't mind. My bestie is just like another one of your fucking just sure, go ahead whatever.

My friends, Yeah, one of your do dads, go go off.

My husband, however, was very much like, it is not useful enough to invade.

My privacy that the people around you.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask, is like, is fifty dollars worth like fifty dollars to invade your privacy forever? To give all of your not just all like your bowel movements, Yeah, everything to a company you don't know worth it?

I mean they Okay, I have to come on here and say I did ask about the privacy. It's not like I didn't ask that.

I'm going to ask that they are working on a local phone, only my.

Working working on that.

I'm just saying criticizing, Yeah, I know, I'm just saying.

The other thing is that everything is encrypted in transit and at rest Good they have a third party party auditing their privacy protocols every so often, and then no audio is stored. It's just processed and then you get transcripts, which you know. Sometimes I was like, I would actually like audio proof that my cousin made me cry so that I could shove it in their face in the future.

But but it's still doing a transcript, so.

It's still the transcript is not always correct. It's not always crazy.

What's crazy is this company raised seven million dollars a year ago.

I can't believe, and it.

Took them this long to come up with a product.

The kind of works that money could be built, like, saving so many lives.

I'm sorry, I'm saying burn it.

You feel warm at least you know.

No, I will say, I think seven million dollars they produced hardware. Yes, that's that's the thing they did for seven million dollars. I mean, that's almost imprest.

It's almost impressed. But that's kind of the review of AI though. Yeah, but but no, I think it's almost impressed.

This seems the most no, no, no disrespect, a pointless, deeply flawed product, product only two steps above the rabbit.

This feels like some shit above the rabbits.

Very interesting. This is like fifty This is some indie fraud.

Yes, exactly, that's worth the.

Five because it worked better than humane what it said it was going to.

Okay, that's fair. It's just a fifty bucks.

It's exactly.

Well, it's also because yeah, that and also humane mate way greater claims and promises. Rabbit also made very great claims. I want to point out that, like I'm I find it funny that, like, there's a lot of concerns of invasions of privacy, and I get that that for people around me there is an invasion of privacy. I was intrigued by the fifty dollars because, like Victoria, sometimes I do want, like the audio recording of things happening in my life.

There is a receipts, Like I said, there, but Alter, what do you have.

In your pocket? What are two on the right here in front of us?

I have nothing but good luck and stars in my eyes. It is, yeah, something that's always recording, Alex. You don't think, like maybe myself in Victoria, I'll all spee for myself, do you? Which is that I feel as if everywhere I go every day, I am more at risk of like needing to back up my experience, to defend myself to like, And that's why that sort of device always felt appealing to me.

And maybe because I think, could you in an enterprise sense, it does make sense if you're a lecturer. If you're a lawyer, if you're you know, and you need someone no lawyer in their right I'm okay, not a lawyer in their right mind. At a lawyer in their minds in their wrong mind. But just like just someone who takes a lot of meetings and needs a lot of notes from those meetings, Like there is there is like a use case there, yeah, with.

With but the problem is with those I understand. What you're getting at is like doctors and lawyers, here's the thing they need that they need, well, hippo accuracy. If you get a nuanced thing wrong in the law, that tends to be what Laya's love problem.

So that's why I'm saying, there's like a glimmer of an idea there, Like I think there's the glimmer.

Often it's just sucking there's an idea.

Glimmer of an idea.

Is the suggestion of a good thing.

It's not the good thing, the concept of a plan.

Yeah, it's just like if you spend a month constantly reviewing your own life and fact checking, what how.

Does that leave you feeling not well?

It was like I felt insane a little bit because I was constantly fact checking, and I was constantly like when I actually thought like it was reading my text messages for a while because like I was like, these are private conversations I had and text messages on encrypted platforms.

How is it even knowing to generate?

Well, this did really affect my behavior over a month because I realized that like an offhand comment, it can just glean so much for me. That was just frightening to me because I would say like a thing in passing to my husband and be like, oh, here's an update on that, and it would just and I was.

Like, oh shit. And so I've actually been very.

Quiet the last month, like I don't speak anymore to myself after after the poop to the poop one, after Poopgate and bathroom crimes, I was like, I do not have to say things anything to me.

Oh my god.

I meant to ask if in the Christian process where that the sounds of plops getting crypted too? But I guess, you know, I would love an audio file of that for myself.

That's horrifying.

Like I think that there is a larger thing here though, that this is a classic tech guy idea.

It's like, what is an idea.

I'd have, Oh, I want to memorize everything that's happening around me and be able to analyze it and then do these insights. It's actually a very cruel way to live because we say things offhanded.

We forgetting is.

Like very important part of being fallible.

Our existence is not something that is written down in its entirety. And indeed, I don't know how useful it is having everything written down.

It's not at all a thing unless you're like a researcher. Yeah, one hundred years from now is absolutely gonna know, love to know. Alvey responded to her, like the answer the anthropologist. Two hundred years from now, it's gonna be like analysts just like, thank you for giving me all of this.

They've listened to this, and we need to dig up victories about now.

And that's the only reason.

Like, if you're an archivest, I'm sorry, listen, Okay, No, I didn't be did.

Anyway anyway, I would.

Just like to note that I am avid diarist at a journal like a journal would another way of saying I write diarrhea, Fuck you guys, anyway, I write a diary daily, I journal regularly.

Journal regularly. So this past month.

I have journaled every single day, and it's the things that I write down and that I remember as memorable are not always.

The same thing that this thing picked up.

Because a lot of my thoughts and things that are important to me and memory ras that are like meaningful to me are completely silent. So my my, my philosophical question is if if it doesn't happen out loud, if you have a society where we're all wearing these devices, if you say nothing out loud, does it count as your memory?

Right?

And this device would say no, it can't know that from you.

It's also a very crude analysis of memory itself. Human memory is insane. Yeah, it is like it's the things we remember are done in chunks. The experience of being alive, at least for me is it's not like my thoughts like and now I'm on the podcast now or so the thing it's like, I apparently people who those people are no, because you like to be normal.

What's it like to.

It's just I don't have an internal's more adjacent to Cornholio for me. But I actually you mentioned something earlier though, Sherlyn, and I want to go back to, which is you said this thing about feeling the need to document things around you. Can you go into like what is the the thing pushing you through that?

I mean, it's a witnesses.

It's because I feel as if I maybe am part of my life.

I've I've talked to both of you about this before.

Where I encounter things and then I feel as if I get question about them afterwards and people don't believe me. Right, So like journalism brain, it's journalism brain. It's microaggressions being thrown your way daily, being a lady's being a woman. It's like the things that we have to think about all the time. So like I feel as if if I had a wearable microphone or camera on me all the time. This is why I review the Humane with great enthusiasm.

At first.

It's I feel as if if one of those people who ca't calls me across the street, I had like documented evidence of that and I could bring it up like how many times it happens a week? I could have like valuable knowledge on my hands to be like when people question if I if it really happens that much, I can be like, look at all these instances. So for that reason, I have a lot of things that document parts of my life. I to your point, Alex, I have phones that record a lot of my conversations when I feel they're important. Right, there's my security camera outside. I'm like, whatever it captures emotion. I have it triggered on emotion censor and it records everything. And I'm like, oh, I don't pay now for the backup that like allows me to go back in time and look at them all the day.

But if I did, I would sit there and look all the time.

I think that experience is not every woman or every person who feels that way.

But I don't know.

Something in my upbringing or my culture like has led me to.

Feel there's there's a fine line, because I do think that when you do that, when you are constantly reviewing the documents of your life, it can be not so great for your mental health.

Absolutely, it's super like.

My conclusion is that like part of being a human is understanding when you need to forget things right.

Move on, and instead you're inviting an AI to do that for me.

A really poorly implemented honestly because of how yeah, how badly it fails you, You're having a poorly implemented AI right, intending to profit on f you in ways we still don't know, because fifty dollars to have that mini AI, like they're burning cash, So where are they making their money that I think?

I think there is plans down the line to subscription, subscription, Yeah, of course, right now.

That is the way of every single one of these products. We see this again and again there's something that like really moves Silicon Valley and they get really really excited. In this case, it's AI, and they're like, how can we commodify this? How can how can we how can we make money off of this? How can I go and make money off of this ship? I think that all the time. I'm unemployed right now. Awesome, but it's this constant thing. And then they released this product that is pretty terrible. You give it a five. It is clearly not finished, and it is for such a small group of the population. How on earth do they expect anyone in the normal world who's just out there existing, who goes to Walmart all the time and doesn't listen to podcasts all the time, be like, Yeah, I want to take this little fifty dollars thing that's going to charge me money monthly and wear this on my and record everything I do.

The normal post.

No one would no, no normal person.

Such it is such brain worms that this.

Is, like but you have that a lot, and like they only think about the positive of it, and like, no, they don't, like all they're thinking about the negative.

They're not positive.

Let's be really clear. They're not thinking about the positive of it. They're thinking about how can I make money? Yes, growth, how can I grow?

That is?

It is its growth all cost thing that is.

And it's ruining this world.

But I mean when they market it, they tell you all the good things it can do, but they never like really get into the fact that Like but I mean, listen to me cry like pretty heavily after I got into a fight. I'm sorry, And then I had to review the transcript and then look at it and then just like have it analyze how I was feeling, because it was like the one sad one for when Amazon.

As someone who's recorded one of her own firings before. You don't want to listen to that.

Oh, I've recorded a breakup before.

That was great.

You don't you know, don't I did it for legal reasons.

That's unhinged. You know me, I am hid.

I want to like, you're lucky you recorded all our conversations.

Honey, No, no, here's it. I will clarify that I recorde. I don't go and review every day.

I think that that's really detrimental to your I do it for like the receipts and and yeah, and in that break up example, I don't think I actually recorded it. I wrote down every single word.

And that's different. Just to be clear, Yes, yes, it's just that it's a huge invasion.

I think I'm What I'm really frustrated by is this is another example of a totally unfinished product. We're seeing this again and again again. We saw it with Apple this last week, where we've got Gruber and German and a lot of these other people coming out there saying, hey, something's wrong. When you've got Gruba being like, but exactly, you've lost Gruber, that means you have you've failed. And we're seeing that like if Apple is out there rushing a product when they know it's not ready, especially all of the stuff they don't have the use cases, it's like what we saw with VR. I spent years covering VR waiting for that moment and everybody said, it's just around the courner. Is it here yet?

No, I just wanted to chat thank you.

Is it because V is in her name?

Because she does a lot of.

VR cover it's Victoria Reality.

I've seener work a lot of different glasses.

A lot of smart glass.

Twitter and also the company that made this. By the way, the founding team came from Twitter. Oh sorry, They helped ship Twitter spaces, you know, that beloved product, and some sort of video chat app called Squad. Okay, the Squad, the anti pro startup is creating a safe space for teenage girls online. And uh wait a second, let's see who's who founded this?

Esther core for it.

I think she's the woman that helped elon Musk. Anyway, the point is these fucking people don't care at all. They're not seeing there being like, how would this be helpful? Because because the most helpful thing would make sure it was really focused, that it was able to discern a professional and but they probably can't do it because it isn't impossible.

Ah, It's it's.

Just people care to about people, people with money and cared about other people. We would be spending this money on cancer research where the NIH grants are being cold and stalled right now, or they would focus it on improving the.

Healthcare system of this country. But people do not care.

They care about taking their money and growing it for more money for themselves.

That which I hate.

But I don't expect people to suddenly become good people overnight, especially if they have money. But there is just like one thing where it's like you have to at the very least create a good product experience for people. And the thing that frustrates me the most when I review products is that I feel like there's just this Pollyanny Pollyannish like view of what life is from these people in Silicon Valley. Right.

It's just like I I.

Have had a life of great suffering and they think it's like, uh, you know, I've been through a lot of shit, Like both my parents died, my dog died, my entire family, immediate family died in the last five years.

Oh my god, I'm so sorry.

It's fine. It's not but it's fine. I have like a lot of.

Traumatic stuff that has happened, and it's kind of changed my perspective of these kinds of devices because life is not pretty.

There are just moments.

Where there are moments where it's very hard and where these sorts of to dos. I can imagine a time where, like when I was in the height of my grief, where I would have loved a thing to remind me to do stuff, to listen to the conversations that I was not processing, to give me those to dos, Like, there are moments, and I think there is a desire for something like that that AI could ostensibly at some point when it actually works a lot of asterisks here that could help people. And I think if people want to pursue that, that's great, But you can't do it without acknowledging the fact that not every moment in your life is going to be pleasant. That are going to be embarrassing, there's going to be heartbreak, there's going to be these negative experiences that you don't necessarily want summarized to you in a way that you're going to have to review and feel. Gas did your ex gaslight you guess what the AI is going to gaslight you are? How it gets how that horrible douche gaslight you and like that kind of thing is just not necessarily great, and but you get it across so many different.

Put on my business person hat. It's not just bad. I literally it's a bad hat. It's a little top had let me get my monocle out. It's not just it's bad for people, it's a bad product. Like like, let's be clear, a lot of these products we've seen again and again and again trying to do AI, trying to make it. Google's done some decent work in this space with the with decent, but most of these products continue to be bad. They continue to.

Be searching that like what with Google, I'm sorry.

Alone, there was that thing where you could, like you could like erase a person out of magic eraser. Yeah that's not though, Yeah, it's generating.

Is that general?

It's not in the era of so Google's done that before the rise of.

What else did it do?

This is, by the way, this is also the industry that the entire economy is built on top of it. Just to be clear, And these are some of the most well credentialed tech people and we're all just going.

Hang on, pause, pause, I want to pivot to all of that by saying there is a good product that that's built to help people feel better.

You're pointing at me for for AI, No, No, that's the thing that's no.

I want to talk about.

You want to talk Mexican standoff of pointing at each.

Other so hard.

They are rarely that they're in the spider you're the spider man, but they're not similar anyway.

Yeah, wait, who's going going to go?

I have been using this app. I encountered it through a coworker who wrote about it for us. It's called Finch. Is an app that's like a self care app, right that. Yeah, so by taking care of yourself, you're taking care of this pet, you're helping it grow. And what it is is these the most gentle suggestions of to dos in a day, whether it is as simple as get out of bed, brush your teeth, drink water. You complete them, you get points, you grow your pet. Whatever, is a gentle reminder of things you want to do throughout the day, and you can reward yourself. And it is developed by and here's the crucial difference, two independent developers that were college buddies that were just trying to help motivate each other. And I think that is an example I can point to of tech being able.

To help people. Because I also read the separated.

I mean that is a that is a great example, and and a lot of different things there. It was it's two people. It's not seeking its growth capitalism and it's not it doesn't sound like it's using a lot of generative AI AI.

It has a point, is a very focused product with a core mission in mind of helping people, and that is something I can stand by.

Yeah, but I think most of these products we're seeing is particularly in the as.

Especially from the big companies and the vcs.

They are everybody is out just doing this money. Everybody's just saying how do I grab?

Because their motivation is different exactly.

Of course they're asking that, and what are they all doing? Why are they all doing this? They're all trying to chase the iPhone. They're all trying to chase something that happened in two thousand and seven, And let's point out, in two thousand and seven, the iPhone was a way more even in its shittiest state, two thousand and seven was a way more well thought out, well produced product than any of the product was so.

Different, and it also fixed really big. Ok.

I got exactly, I got the original iPhone, little nerd. I didn't have friends, but I did have money saved up from writing, and I boy it and I remember showing people visual voicemail and people going, holy shit, that's amazing, because voicemail at the time was this defunct product where you had to like dial in and hit a button.

I do misrecording my voicemail message though not I do.

It's good. You can barely understand me half the fucking time.

So unless I'm on this show, I hope, But like, you could send text messages and it didn't involve you doing like the weird hitting the numbers thing were obvious.

Love the Tina, Sorry, okay, Yeah, it's just intention right, yeah, intentional.

It's a real people problems experienced by.

Humor exactly exactly right now. All we are doing is we are creating things, and everybody's sitting around saying, wow, I wish that you know a universal problem. Everybody wants to chronicle every moment of their life, Sherlin, does.

Do you actually don't? Yeah, you actually don't.

You want to chronicle important moments at some point, you don't want to chronicle every moment.

Now And also, no offense, Sarloin is one person.

Yeah, I am the most important, but I am one person. You are one person.

You are like that is a very small group of people, and they're like everybody wants to do that.

There was a much higher level problem, though, which is they are not being like, well, you know what, people have problems with remembering things. They're like, yeah, we can't fucking fix that. We actually can't fix that, Like, we can't we can't fix that? Well, people have problems with communication? Yeah, well we really also can't fix that.

What can we do?

Record every thing and hope something fucking comes out. I don't know these worms with their money give it to me.

I really.

They took the nugget of a good idea, which is where you have been saying the glimmer of a good idea, and then stuffed. They needed money to make the good idea of work, and the only way to get that money is to say AI is the way.

I agree.

I think there's also another step, which is they actually can't do the good idea.

I don't think they're capable of doing it, because the good idea.

Would be like, hey, listen to what's going on and just tell me what things you think I might forget it. Can't do that because the only thing they can do is have a big sludge of information, chuck it at a large language model and hope something comes out other than like, I don't want to watch the Garbo movie, which is a quote from your articy, Yes, the.

Garbo movie as it ends with us from my very ninety minute long or so.

I worry. I don't want to buy my cat, Babu. I talk to him like a person. It's gonna be like, eh, you told Bob, I.

Also talked to my cat as a person, and it said that I had a rough and tumble ride with them discussing childhood memories because it mentioned my cat pet right, and I'm like, Petie's my cat and I was talking to the cat and I say.

Oh, who should we your babyish? No, it just said that I have a dog named Edie.

Oh great, nailed it, Yeah, like how saying that like eds talked to how who he calls mister beautiful.

And he really is he acts like the most beautiful cat he is.

I would imagine your fact tinder would say ed knows someone named mister beautiful and he is fluffy or something.

Like mister perfect, mister beautiful and someone It's just and I think that's what it really is. We all are coming up with like distinct problems that can be solved, and this is not what large language models do, and it's very difficult to get them to do specific things, as proven by the fact that none of the products exist.

You can't solve being human. Yes, that's the thing, is like we're all human.

I said this in a previous episode with you at the CUS episode where I don't even think the robotics need to be humanoid in nature yet.

Okay, it's not an efficient form.

Exactly, body exact or a repetitive movement.

That's it.

Also, they're not even making the you like so much of this what frustrates me, even with the Kevin Ruce thing, it's like, no real problem solved. What could a conscious an agi could theoretically listen without recording and go, okay, I think you might need a reminder on this because I know you these motherfucker Actually that is the ultimate problem with this.

It doesn't know you, were all. Yeah, it actually doesn't know you.

That actually reminds me of when I was testing the Meta ray band Live Aid. But I was testing that and so it's a live AI, it's multimodel. It can look at what you're looking at, and you can ask a questions and it'll see what you're seeing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

There are actual use cases for that.

I've had many many blind and low vision people reach out to me saying that could change their lives, and yes, which is cool. Create something good, that is good.

I love that.

But you know the demos that they were like suggesting that I try or whatnot. I looked at my room. I was like, tell me how I could make this room look less sad basically, and they was like, oh, you could put art up. You could have a plant, you could have some rugs.

And I was like, Jesus christy a.

Random white guy, and they'd be like, oh, fucking yeah, what art.

Should I should I use it?

I had not had to ask like five or six different questions, just digging and digging and digging for this.

AI.

Well, let's be co just an artist. I asked my best friend. She said, you would love x y Z. I loved x y Z. I bought it immediately.

Actually intelligent.

It doesn't have it doesn't look around and go okay, looking at the format of this room. It's just frustrating because it is the it's the info slot. It just is just collecting diet and going see.

I actually I was telling Sherlin about this earlier. I had a great moment where somebody was like, oh yeah, I used clawed ai as there pissed, and I was like, you're un hine, I love you. And so I was like, I'm gonna talk to Claude AI and I was talking to it and I was, you know, I was telling her about how things were going and everything, and I was like, I would really like it if you would recommend a book to me that that kind of speaks to the experiences I'm having right now. And immediately it was like Goldfinch and I was.

Like, Goldfinch, I'm not familiar with.

I read that book?

Why that book? This book is a Bill Dung's Roman from Donna Tart, author of Secret History. Is about this little boy named Theo whose mom like dies in a terrorist attack at the met and he like steals the juph art like and it goes through his life.

Of just being like.

And I'm obsessed with a manic pixie dream girl and the thing, and then I do a bunch of prime and at the end of the book he's just like, well, I've made life decisions.

Anyway.

It was like I read. I looked at that and I was like, well, this is a terrible fucking suggestion. And so I said, okay, just a movie to me, and it goes Silver Linings Playbook.

I was like kids, And honestly it was the.

Best moment in my entire experience with this thing, because before that I'd been like, Wow, this starts to get me. And I started almost like believe the AI understood me, even though I know for a fact it's stupid and it doesn't. And then it said Goldfinch and Silver Lining's Playbook, and I was like, oh, right.

You're still wrong.

You are a stupid robot. You are incapable of making the connections that humans make, and you are so far from it that you would recommend these two because all you did was you saw on the internet someone said Goldfench and self actualization or some shit, and so clearly it's gonna when.

You victorize every fucking fact and you go just this is just like human based. You're a relational database with legs.

Yeah, And I love that moment because it immediately said, oh, yeah, this is a fucking robot.

You're going close to something that's not real.

Yeah, and immediately pulled me out of it. I was like, this is hysterical. I love this and I stopped using it for a minute because, like, immediately it broke you out of the illusion. And I love that moment because it reminded me these things suck. They're not human.

Well well hang on, hey, there was a point up until that that you really this doesn't suck though.

Oh no, yeah, I love it. Like I said, I love this thing because it is a big it's like a validation machine. Yeah, it's a big validation machine. And just like a horoscope, it makes me feel pretty. And then it relcommends silver linings playbook or Goldfinch, and I reminded that it's a horoscope.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, you were saying something.

I was just going to say that.

This was the point in the conversation we were having just now, Alex, where you and I were both like, it is all still logic programming.

It is all still input output. It is as much and.

As sophisticated as the output seems, it is still input output, which is the basis of the most computing right, and it's like until it's so called things for itself, that agi question isn't there like the its not it's never going to be because it takes the human brain to be capable.

Also is not doing what we don't even on the stand intelligence. But it is relational data. But it's very, very complex, and I realize someone's gonna listen to the fun go outside, but it's it's like it's relational things. It's just looking going well based on what you've said, I think this and I don't. And as a thing with no experiences, I'm gonna say fucking short like it's dollfinch doll, it's.

About growth, about life. Therefore assign it to alex.

Like emotions, like we don't even understand emotions.

How we don't even small enough to be like house moving castle, which weld cheer me up anytime.

Yeah, if it had said that, I would have been like, damn, I wouldn't be here right now because I'd still be just talking to Claude. AI would be getting married. Well, we have a date.

Sets sending me screenshots of like the club, and I'm just like, hah, I love that for you girls, but just like it's also like I'm monitoring because you get too crazy and do it.

I'm just gonna be like, it's not real.

I know of people who use it, and I've read of cases on redular p will use it as their mental health replacement.

Like the standard, and it's not. I think we are aware it's not.

I worry for the people out there who are not, who are talking to Chad Gubt like it is definitely.

I was just thinking it's.

That's the New York Times audience.

This is why actually connects to why so pissed off of Kevin. He should know better, but a lot of people don't. The reason that I think a lot of right wing YouTubers have taken over like how men thinks, because a lot of people just looking for something to tell them what they want to hear, and this is the biggest machine to do that.

The validation you were talking about will validate them and.

Not challenging at all. It's not. It might challenge you in the most gentle way.

Never challenged me. It just told me I was great. And then although it told me like areas I could slightly improve, oh, like a performance.

Actually get rid of my typos that told me and then I'll win a pull.

Oh my god, I tell you that all the time.

Mothers love to tell people.

I know.

I have tried, by the way, to use it like like a mental health and I've had to just be like be ruder, push back, and it can barely do it cannot fucking keep up with my swag. I just demolish it. Well, I just I brutalize it. It's got nothing.

There's like this Korean term called nunci, and it means it means like you should be able.

To read a room emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence. It's like nunci is like I like, I'm not good at translating, but it's like eyepower.

Or something like that.

Cool, and so like Korean parents will will tell you, like what you don't you have? NUNCI is because you should be able to look at the room and see what's going on, see what people are saying, read between the lines, and make conclusions based on that. Yeah.

I can't do that, but and that's exactly the problem to being executive. Problem loaves language models. It literally cannot read the room. All it can do is read this blob of text, this thing and go. Based on all of the training I've done from stealing the Internet, I think that.

You will win a Pulitzer or you.

Or can syntactically your writing is similar to someone who has won to pull.

So comparing and that's all that it is.

It's just just each year the Pulaza looks for like the most similar thing to the last year.

Yeah, because that's how human beings make.

And it's only a chapter and it's like that chapter when you're a Pulitzer.

Yeah, but when you ask it, it's like I never stole anything.

Showing, so you covered the I actually have somehow missed this because I didn't want to know the Alexa Ai, what are they fucking doing?

The Alexa man one of these people. I read an interview with Nelai Patel and I didn't get any information. So if you could tell me.

With Panos Pane, I'm assuming the new hardware achieve at or senior vice president I think of devices and services at Amazon.

Anyway, God, you has to speak with him.

And also did an interview where I basically learned nothing because Panos is that kind of an enigma by.

The way he just talks. Oh yeah, he is charming.

I think enigma is a very kind way of saying guy who doesn't say anything despite his paycheck, but fair enoughraining.

That's media training, and I had to admit that I tend to be suck written by that. I'm the sort of person will fall so so ALEXA and apologies to everyone that has an echo speaker, please go meet your speakers right now. But lexup Plause is the redesigned version of the assistant that Amazon has been promising forever. Right so it's been like we're going to use lllms, We're going to use generative to make a more conversational language flow between you and the assistant. And you can pause yourself in between talking or speaking your comments or like correct yourself mid sentence or say a lot of things and not use contextual like follow up questions and that sort of thing, and it should pause us. That is supposed to be like very handle complex tasks, where you can stack tasks. You can also what I find so like, uh oh, look at my ring camera feed and see if any like huskies showed up, or if anybody walked my dog today or something.

That sort of thing. Still simplistic nature.

Set multiple timers.

You know what, here's the thing.

At that event, we had a hands on quote in air quotes because we didn't actually get hands on. We were just shown a lot of demos and were it felt very rehearsed. I don't like that sort of event. I don't call it hands on because we didn't use it ourselves. So anyway, eyes on. I was most intrigued, however, by Amazon's promise of how it's going to integrate with third party services, which is one of the things that these assistants are historically the.

Kind of like the agentic exactly.

That word.

I don't like. It's not the same web forms.

So let's set aside the agentic question for a moment and talk about the third party integration.

Yes, panis what does it do?

But I hope i'm more yes, Sorry Pados. There are three parts that Daniel rash bosh there's VP.

I apologize for the last name thing mentioned.

So one was the API s right, it will work with people that it knows it's partners with Uber, Spotify, et cetera, to API into its assistant so that you and say something like, oh, give me an Uber for whatever or get me just be very natural with how you talk to your assistant. The second is uh agentic, so it's gonna have This was funny to me.

Alexa, a chatbot talk to other chatbots.

On the internet and they will just talk to each other on your behalf.

Why would want them?

I respect the ship out of you, but I must say, you just said the magic words of it will do.

It's supposed to, well, it claims listen, you get out of my face because I write carefully.

Speak when I speak. I don't edit after anyway. It's supposed to.

I do sound like that.

Thank you.

It's supposed to I don't do it British the assistants talk to each other. We've seen no demonstrations of this well, I mean we saw an on stage question or an uber for or or you can order food through Amazon?

Who wants to do who wants to take exactly?

Who wants to do this?

Because if I'm going to ask it to order an uber, is it going to be like Siri where I asked it to call my mom and it called my aunt that I haven't talked to in fifteen years, and then it's totally different.

They supposed to be.

Yeah, but how can you even call an Uber on it.

So here's here's here's the demo they gave, and I'm sure I think that was what Victoria was going to get through the demo they gave were like, oh, what was that restaurant I liked? And then like Alexa plus will be like, oh, make me a reservation that second one, So instead of having to like what.

The's almost useful of.

Yeah, a lot of a lot of assistants are supposed to get close to do.

It, except for you're expected to put your trust.

Yes, then it will get it correct every single.

Point of that, and it is not capable of that.

True.

Have the children this yes?

Well no no, no, Prime Prime subscribers get it for free.

You have to pay if you're not a Prime subscriber, which you like, I wondered. But one of the demos like so I wasn't there, but I was listening through uh audio, I was streaming. So basically there was like one demo where it was like, oh, can you find me tickets to this Red Sox game for Oh that's a little too pricey?

Can you set an alert?

And basically David was like, I already found tickets for that exact game for fifty six dollars.

Online, right, you can do it faster by Google sture yourself.

And then there's also just like, oh, you know, tell me what time so and so's flight is coming in, okay, send it to This kind of feels like that's not how uber at JFK works, right, right, right, exactly.

It kind of feels like this was designed for mid level executives who can't afford their own assistant.

Yes, it sounds like it was designed to do this fucking event.

I guess.

Yeah, this just sounds like it was they designed enough things to demo an event.

I agree with you.

I'm not criticizing you. I don't know.

I want to point out that I was getting to a point, which is that none of this was interesting to me because it's been done Slash, been attempted to be done.

Slash.

You can do it better. It's been doing this for five years exactly, big, big work, and it didn't worked.

Work was notably a big phony when it did it, when it had the it AI that called.

The restaurant reservation people are fake. Well, I don't know, because I haven't looked at it myself. I just find that a lot of the I have used it myself to get them the Malla projects.

Yeah, great restaurant to make a reservation, just.

Like I keep coming back to this thought of who is this actually for, because I don't know. The way I live my life is not like I'm like, what was that restaurant?

I like?

And I need to make a reservation at the restaurant I like enough to make a reservation, but not enough to remember it.

You're getting to a point that I've had with A problem that I've had with AI is that you know, you have to know how to prompt it.

Yes, but that's what you want.

That's what Amazon's trying to solve with the new Alexa thing, because trying to yes exactly like.

Which I I'm sorry, I had a long conversation with someone else.

I invented that type of yes exactly.

So you get us to learn how to talk to our assistance in a very specific way. Now you want us to talk naturally to it. As if that's not learning a whole autotype behavior. It's a whole as if it's going to work like I'm talking to my friends.

It's not.

I can get like all kinds of insense about this.

I was testing what was it. I got a demo of Project Astra back yeah, yeah, and I was just like talking to it and they're like, no, no, you can talk normal and.

Project yes, you remember, I have the one team from Google freaking freaking years of going hey Google, sorry, hey Google, Alexa you.

Know like that exactly very I.

Am so excited for a bunch of your listeners every day.

We need a warning at the start of this episode to nobody.

Okay, all its fault better production.

It's on your listeners for listening to you without I will.

Get if I remember which I want.

Sorry.

At the same time, I was gonna say, yeah, project it's interesting. I don't know if it will work it, but Astra is Google's like experimental implementation of Gemini, where you can use your phone's camera to point it around the room and then it'll remember things that saw. Even if I want to be really clear about.

I want know, like if I had a dollar for every single time a tech zac said multime, I'm just like.

I want to be really clear on something. They have been They've been promising this stuff for fifteen years at this point. Alexa came out in what twenty fourteen or yeah, twenty fourteen, that's when they first announced this. There's a big reason we haven't seen huge changes even with fairly good generative AI and fairly good large language models that can listen to us and really understand our speech. And that is because computers still can't process all the stuff. Because if you and I are both in the same room and you're asking Alexa for that restaurant, yeah, and I'm saying no, no, no, don't forget the restaurant.

What maybe can only do a one stream of data?

Okay? From the Verge.

June thirteen, twenty sixteen, Apple opens up Siri to app developers. This ship is near for a decade.

I mean, look, I will I take I will take note against that, like nothing has changed, because I think the echo speaker alone has changed the way A lot of disagree does it do I speak to my speaker A lot I do. Like it's hands free control, a smart home control for me. Yes, elderly people, you, people who are people with accessibility issues, mobility issues, they can use that and it works well. And they're working with voices to make it better for people to speak embedment.

And I agree that sounds important, but.

It's it's no I think, I think voice control, I don't mean ALEXA. I will say all of these products currently are not as good as what they suggest exactly. They are not.

They can't make promises like there's that they that.

They sew their oats on things like that, and you're right to say that, by the way. But they're like, oh, you can't hate this because the elderly.

No no, no, no, no, you can. You absolutely doing it universal, right. It's like smart glasses when they first came out, everyone was like.

Fuck that Google glass was cute though no still my LinkedIn picture anyway.

Just but it had use cases in enterprise for a long time. And that's because it had a specific use case for a specific time, and it's too expensive.

And how often was it actually used for that? Because that's the thing they always say, it's got play in the.

Enterprise, How much play? How much revenue? How much do you.

Know how many people are putting on a HoloLens right now to turn some sort of wrench on a pipe like zeros zero.

That's a good minute there.

But like, there's nothing wrong with some of this tech just being very use case specific and just this if they were selling it on that if they were being honest and making it, but they're making it something for everybody.

That's how they make the money universe want to.

They don't even make the money now, just lost billions of dollars.

But they don't even like it's not that it's to get a higher valuation from the stock market. It's all just for investors to be like, well, they're going to do something in twenty years. I mean, that's the entire.

Is in our li So like, what was the other thing that came out this week that they're gonna add, like live translations to the air pods possibly and all of that sort.

Of which I think is already on Google.

They talk about how like AI can enable translation. I've tested a bunch of live translation stuff and it's only good for like where is the bathroom? Here is your business supposed to have real conversations? And I wrote about this one the Humane came out and absolutely could not for its life translate a single fucking thing.

I said, as like, it's.

Wrong, who don't speak the fucking language?

That too?

But then, like you know, the other thing is it's just like there are times where I wish that I had some sort of like AI translation in my life, my life that I could trust, Like when my mom was sick. The thing that they don't tell you about the neurodegenerative diseases is that you will lose your second language as it happens. So my mom lost her ability to speak English. My father lost his ability to speak English as well. They raised me so that I did not speak Korean. Well, I can understand it, but I can only say like bigel put, I'm hungry.

So they can understand you, but you can't and get them to understand.

So it was like my family, I mean, we operate as if I am Chewbacca, the English speaking Chewbacca, and everyone else speaks Korean and we understand each other. I am Korean Chewbacca in my family, but in a case, just give me.

A phrase in Korean Chewbacca that would be.

Like I I'll just be like so, actually, I like my Korean is such that in my brain that Like one time I was in a taxi cab with non Korean speakers and he was asking us a question and I understood him and I told him where to go. I don't know the words I use, but I told him where to go accurately and my friends were like, you lying bitch, you speak Korean, and I was like.

No, I really, he can't.

Just blacked out.

I blacked out and I just told you, well, it's like when Ron used parcel tongue in the Number of Secrets.

Yeah, it's like that's my Korean.

No, no, no, Ron did it and got a final deathly halos.

Anyway, but like me speaking.

Korean, I agree, but yeah no, so like when you get to the translation thing, it can't do slang.

It can't of course.

Yeah that like I will admit when I did talk to the human Ai in Cantonese, it did do a colloquial better than any other language translator I've used, which is hilarious.

It feels like translation, though, is the most obvious one where it can't fail because the nuances of language, and so I have a coordinatial disability, despractice a spatial awareness. It really affects my ability to learn languages because structural concepts not so good. So learning I couldnt learn French. I failed French, Latin, German, Spanish. I'm like the school kept throwing him at me.

It's like a fuck you, I really got it failing.

I'm like the fail Master, and it was because like the way English works, it's very different. Also, I didn't care was very depressed, But it really was the structural stuff, like trying to learn enough language when you don't get those concepts. And I imagine latch language models also have this problem.

And add to the fact that not all languages are higher like English is a very low context language and Asian languages high context.

I don't even know what that means.

So what that means is a lot of these areas.

A lot of things are unsaid.

A lot of things are like how you talk to a person in Japanese and Korean, which are my languages that I studied, depends on are they older than you.

You're going to talk to.

Them differently, and there's no way for the language to express that.

You're going to be using things in that to express that. Or like if you if I say something to you in Japanese and I'm just like so classic business example that they give for Japanese is you ask a yes or no question and they got like, ooh, that might be difficult. That means no, okay.

Singlest is like this sing list has a saying ken is can which means it can't be done, Like it's an you can you can do this?

Yeah you can?

Yeay again, that's the thing. How is m men to pig you can? How is it supposed to know that?

Well, this is why not everyone at the un is wearing a bee at the moment or the Google headphones. This is why they have real human translators. We see these, we see this translating stuff work.

Like you're paying for the trust.

Yeah, yeah, you have to pay for the trust because Google Translate is really really great if I need to go double check something. But if there was ever a time where I needed to be like, hey I need to know what this is in Japanese, I am not asking Google Translate.

I'm texting very basic things like if you're saying like oh I have oh so. Another thing was like I would have friends visit me when I lived in Japan and they would be like, oh, I can't eat this for uh because I'm a vegan. I was like, we can't say that you're a vegan. They want to say that you have an allergy to meet and then they'll take it out.

That is a psychological allergy.

Yeah.

See, this is the thing that drives me inside about all of this because a look bit right back to hate and Kevin Ruce's work.

But it's like these people vigorously beating off about AGA.

It's like based on an entire industry of people saying, yeah, it sort of works, but it doesn't. And by the way, it burns billions of dollars and by the way.

Will it get better?

Yeah, probably not, but it will. My company is so powerful and strong and so weak and sick. It's the best thing ever. Also is dying.

And this is exactly what they said with VR. They said, you know what, give it a minute. If we just if we just keep going, everybody is going to everybody is going to be doing VR. Everybody is going to be moving on to AR and it doesn't happen because they're trying to force something. It's not the.

Phone, but it's kind of but it's kind of like VR in the sense that like for VR to work in the Ready Player one thing, which is fucking insane if you Already Player one.

To be real touch point.

Also terrible film, worst book, simple to remember all the things that you know, but also that film was a dystopia. The other thing is it's an extra sensory psychological experience. You would need things that need to do not even the beginnings of exit. You don't have something that can take over your senses and you can move in a space vastly different.

Accessibility in VR and augmented reality is like, really.

Tough, We're not even there.

And in the same way with AI, we don't have a thinking computer. This shit can't do anything on its own. You try and like, oh, agency here, fuck you, agents on nowhere. Stop using that word. Every time you use the word agent. Norman finks things anyway.

For reference to people.

Loves voices.

I love doing voice. I love voices.

It's just every time I hear from these fucking companies and how much money they have, and they're like, here is something that sucks.

It stinks. You should be so excited. You need to be excited for this. It sucks. It doesn't do the thing you want it to do. Can it do this?

No?

Will it do this?

Trust me, well, if you get us to our next round of funding.

But even if you're like amaz On or google on.

Yeah, the thing I hate most about all of this that beyond everything we've already said, and I think we've already kind of alluded to this with what you just said, ed, which is we're spending a lot of money on things that don't work, but we're in the process generating a lot of ways, generating a lot of like energy laws, all the server farms that are just going to take over this world just to back up and store all of that data that they're scoping in.

Like, that's the only reason I love AI is every time I'm like, am I pretty I know it is costing someone so much money? Little shitty like you're the cutest enviloyment.

In a furnace.

Yeah, yeah, you're destroy the environment.

It's like how many validation.

From how many bees have they sold that.

I don't know.

They're like they're in like a beta thing technically an Apple Watch app too.

You don't actually need to buy their hardcore.

This company rules. I fucking love this.

There's so how many Humane apins have cotton fire and then are now in the trash because they turned on the company. They said ten thousand units, they said something like that.

Humane was the biggest like dunce moment for members of the media. I'm not going to name. So many people are like this is going to be great.

Even though it was like, yeah, it's a seven.

Mad at me when I wrote my translation piece and they're like, we need to talk, and then I was like, let's talk.

They reached out or yeah they ghosted me.

Well they go to management consultants both like in dignity.

Anyway, we have to bring this to an end because we are running out of time and otherwise I'm just going to start reading the Kevin Ruce bit again that motherfucking I just.

As an irresponsible piece to it.

It is irresponsible, and I think that that is a good kind of place to get some final thoughts where it's like, it's not just that these things don't work and they stink and they're expensive, and they burn billions of dollars, they destroy the environment, they steal from everyone.

Not just that.

Sure, yeah, other than.

Those things, by representing them as imminently useful and helpful, the only thing you are doing is empowering the powerful and creating more cycles where useful things don't get funded and useless things get more money than ever.

And it's disgusting.

I actually, I know it sounds a little direct to be like the guy said the computer was too smart, but it's you're speaking on the New York Times. And it's not just him, it's Ezra Kleine as well, another fucking moron. Jesus fucking Christ. These guys put one just like put like anyone in this room. I think they do a much fucking better job. But it's just like it's empowering people who do not have anyone's best interests in mind or actually fixing anyone's real problems.

And or are out of touch.

Yes, I.

Still maintain exactly get a certain income you're not allowed to have online, Like you can't talk online because you're so out of touch for the rest of us. I don't want to hear it.

What's the number.

Way more than I make?

Well, yeah, or one hundred mili.

It's like a couple of million, right, Yeah, Like if you're like, oh, I can go spend twelve K on a first class ticket, you have too much money, so you can't talk anything.

No. It reminds me of the Sam Willman moment on This My Favorite Notebook podcast where he's.

Like, yeah, so I write my little notes and I crumple them up and I throw them behind me, and that's how really good acts. The house can keeper comes by and g I don't know where she come which means she's there all the time. And it's just like, first of all, you said in front of a person you have a housekeeper. Second of all, you could not remember when they're there, which means they're always there. A third of all, you're just creating Like your fucking AI, You're just creating trash information you throw around and expect someone else to clean up.

Loadsome little fucks. Anyway, great place to end it, shelon Where can people find you?

Angada dot com and I guess, uh, I don't know what social media platform. Just shout out blue Sky, Sherlynn b s Guide or Social Alex.

Uh.

Yeah, I'm about to spart, spart Yeah, sure, I'm gonna start this over again.

That's enough.

Yeah, Yeah, I am about to start a four week special engagement at Gizmoto. I'm gonna be hanging out with those folks and saying all sorts of things that really need to be said about technology, because oh boy, are we in a moment. And you can also find me on on all social media platforms until I make enough money where I don't have to use them.

Beautiful Victoria you can find me at Victims song on every social media platform and I write out the verge.

You can find me on the New York Times. My name is Kevin Ruce, and I will be saying multiple I am Kevin Ruce.

Now you can find me on all my social media platforms. Exit and there isn't another one, thankfully, because I think they.

Weren't you in the New Yorker though, aren't you in the New York recently?

Yeah? They catch up too spicy me.

They're like right at the beginning of it, I didn't think that he wasn't recording yet and he was like. I was like, yeah, it's kung pow chicken spicy, and they're like yeah. Thankfully he kept up. The bit was like is the plump chicken spicy? And the bit where I was like eating white rice and me going on hot ones and just drinking the milk.

Please don't kill me. But yeah, thank you for listening. At one.

It's been another radio Better Offline and Alexa play Tool forty six and two.

That's cruel some banks.

I don't care. One of the greatest songs of all times. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.

The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, m.

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