Ed Zitron
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
This was all under official government activity. They built a apartment that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
So what you're suggesting is that the poorer people pay more and the richer people have found a way around taxes somehow? Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
The people with the signature are probably the one. Why are the kings so insulated? Well, is it just because they can deploy the army against the peasantry?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Bonnie, there's a juggler.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Foreign world famous Robert Juggler. It would be really bad if we had a foreign guy doing something to our government as well.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
That's what I wanted to establish. Is this child in France, can the child do things yet?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Better than AI. Fucking Macron.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Shit ton of tyranids. And you're just like, this is why you can't, like, your power is $100 pounds an hour.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
And someone who looks and sounds like both Beavis and Butthead knows my social security now.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Is that just, he promises it? He has him on, on him? Like, no, no, he's got tons of horses on him. Yeah. Just like,
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
So is there a logic behind the mirror room, or is it just so everyone could see you have mirrors?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Yeah. Fucking rude.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
People are so fucking unsafe. Mm-hmm.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Like- That's fine.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Because you're going to and from parties and working out how you dress.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
This is just CES, but French. Yes, yes.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
When you say they're warriors, what does that mean, though, for the nobility?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
So the economy literally centralized around a house.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
This is so awful, but also so cool.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
It's just like half the economy. Yeah. Like all of the, we have an entire thing of like housing furnishings.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Like multiple industries.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
This really is kinging it about as hard as one.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
If you're going to be a king, spend half of the economy, create multiple industries, make everything built in one country to make your house cool. To make your house cool. And then create a bunch of bizarre social rules inside it so that everyone's freaked out.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
You must come to my house. Build my house.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
And I think that is the thing with Elon Musk and all of these other damp fellows. They don't have the killer instinct of like an old school French atrocity merchant.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
No, no, no. It's just, Musk is trying to couch everything, like, oh, I'm doing this for the betterment of humanity. Louis is just like, we need more fucking children to build my party house. Go, go, go.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Go, go, go. What are you fucking kidding? They don't make chairs here. Fuck you. You can't leave the country until you fuck more.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Those are the only projects- It's not built fully yet, or are they just building more of it?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Yeah, just like there's a side Turk economy, and all of this, again, is to pretty much make sure a big house is built.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
So we're talking about boundaries.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
No consideration that the magic didn't work. It's just that you didn't use effective enough magic.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
And these people are, like, sleep deprived. They stink.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
So they're just, like, insane. Yeah, they're out of their minds. Well, they're already in an altered reality. Because they're living in this world where, like, you can't piss or shit. You can't, like, the wrong person can't hand a shirt. Of course they're open to magic.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Go to betteroffline.com. Download the podcast. Subscribe to the podcast. Go back. Download every single episode or else.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
And what do you know about Versailles? Oh, alarmingly little. Just the Treaty of Versailles and how well that went.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Anyway. I truly don't actually know. I just know that they all have sex with each other.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers and he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 165
No, it's funny how we both stumbled across AI products for kids like the same day during the exact same time.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 165
And it's interesting you say that because the first thing I did today was go to a panel at the Venetian titled Raising AI Kids Responsibly. which is maybe the best title for any single panel. Yeah, that's fucked up. The description was, a new generation of kids are being brought up with AI technologies as a part of their lives. How does this affect their learning, entertainment, and socialization?
Behind the Bastards
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Which is a good question. Yeah, we should be asking that. More people should. There was four people on the panel. Karen Ruth Wong from Ido Play Lab Partnerships. Nilo Lewick from Skyrocket Toys. Melissa Hunter from Family Video Network. And Joshua Garrett from Readyland. And I'll talk about all these different companies and people in a sec.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, so the panel started with Karen Ruth Wong from IDO, which is the company that first partnered with Sesame Workshop to start making online apps. So, you know, that was interesting to me because Sesame Workshop generally puts a lot of care into, like, you know, making media for children. is a company that works with them. So I was interested in what she was going to say.
Behind the Bastards
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And basically, she talked not about any products that her company's making, but instead research into how AI is affecting Gen Z, how Gen Z wants to interact with AI, and talked about a whole bunch of research that her company has been doing for the past few years on what people my age and younger, what their attitudes are towards this thing that has become an increasingly encroaching lives.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 165
I'm just going to play a series of clips. Couldn't be more excited.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 165
Yeah, the very first thing, this is literally like minutes into the panel, this is like after they do their introductions, the first thing they talk about is how Gen Z is both an early adopter of new tech, but they're also kind of the most AI critical right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's cringey. Yeah, like how it feels cringey, and not just that, how it's affecting people's sense of humanity.
Behind the Bastards
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and viewing this like, you know, in some ways as like an obstacle to get over, but also this is, I'm not sure how I feel about, about like, you know, Karen and the company she's representing here. Cause in some ways I felt like she was probably actually good.
Behind the Bastards
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She just had to frame all of the things she was saying as like shocking revelations to all these tech bros be like, actually it turns out kids surprisingly don't want their lives run by AI. Yeah.
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I actually like what she was saying. It's just her presentation of it felt kind of odd at times because of who the audience was.
Behind the Bastards
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Maybe like 2080. So like a little bit of like, yeah, we have to sell some of this. But mostly it felt like trying to inform people about how this isn't really what people want. And, you know, it has a lot of actual like drawbacks. Here's a clip of Karen talking about the sort of questions that they're asking kids to, you know, get data on how they feel about AI.
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Being able to live life for yourself is a badge of honor.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 165
No, it's super interesting. And even the first thing she said about you lost some friends. Do you want an AI to counsel you or talk about your feelings? Or do you want a friend replacement? And no, people don't want a friend replacement. And this even odder question of AI swiping your Tinder for you, trying to figure out what your preferences are. No, Gen Z wants to live life for themselves.
Behind the Bastards
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It's odd. Because that's what being a person is. That's what being a person is, right. But it's odd how that's framed as a surprising revelation. Wow, these kids want to live lives. So, yeah, it was kind of an odd panel to go to. She highlighted that the key areas of tension in AI for Gen Z is twofold, creative expression and human relationships.
Behind the Bastards
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These are the two biggest things that people are concerned about is how it will affect your ability to, you know, make art, be creative, and what it means for, like, you know, relationships as a human being, right? Especially if you're being asked questions about, you know, would you let an AI, like, meet someone that you want to date first? Have...
Behind the Bastards
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Have them go through, like, a first, like, fake AI date to, like, get through, like, icebreaker questions or something?
Behind the Bastards
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Well, and the data that this person was talking about showed no, like people actually don't want these things. Like this actually isn't what anyone wants out of life. This isn't what anyone wants out of this technology, right? Like we use AI all the time, you know, like, like, you know,
Behind the Bastards
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like autocomplete it has a whole bunch of like you know pretty basic uses yeah it saves me from having to spell certain words too many times yeah but we don't want it to like go on dates for us and the whole part of being human is having you know a degree of bad experiences and that that helps shape us as people and this isn't like a hurdle to get over this is like a part of what it means to be human and she kind of talked about that a little bit more uh in this last clip that i'll play
Behind the Bastards
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No, but there's a whole bunch of interesting stuff there. Gen Z has great fears about being replaced. Yeah. You know, like having, having like a workforce replacement. Gen Z prefers to actually, like, make connections and network with other people our age and actually, like, share opportunities. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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In previous panels, this was something that was also talked about, how millennials were way more, like, selective about, like, sharing, like, employment opportunities because they were, like, so focused on, like, making sure that they make it. And there's a lot more, like, open collaboration and sharing opportunities.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, yeah. No, talking about, you know, like, designing for friction. Like, there's value in something being challenging.
Behind the Bastards
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One thing she kind of closed on in this section is talking about how Gen Z does not trust AI to understand the nuance of their lives. especially in this age of like tech optimization, like that misses a part of what it means to like, you know, feel proud of yourself and the work that you've done. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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Something she talked about at the very end of the panel was like how they hadn't factored in like, like Gen Z, you know, and people in general, right. Well, we'll feel proud about, you know, making a piece of art. Yeah. And they don't have that same sense of pride for an AI generated image. No. Whether it's like a screenplay, whether it's whatever.
Behind the Bastards
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Someone gave an example of like, you know, I have a kid who does creative stuff. They edit videos, right? And there is AI tools that make editing videos like easier. But if the AI does all the work, they don't feel happy about that. Like they don't feel proud. They don't feel like they've actually achieved something. And you have to feel proud about the work that you've done.
Behind the Bastards
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So like there's actually a sense of like ownership over like the art that we create. An exact quote was, quote, you can't eliminate life formative aspects, unquote, which is like, yes, like all life. Yeah. You don't ever do anything. I'm happy someone at CES is saying this. The fact that it needs to be said at all.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, I think the last thing that she talked about was like Gen Z aren't technophobes, but they do have strong boundaries. Yeah, good. And they have to reinforce their own sense of self because we're constantly being bombarded with, you know, slop content, influencers, podcasts, live streams, like everything, you know, TikTok, social media.
Behind the Bastards
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So we have strong like boundaries on how tech like integrates into our lives. And a lot of the way these tech bros want AI to like become more invasive. We are not super into it.
Behind the Bastards
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And we're back. So unfortunately, that panel wasn't just talking about how kids maybe don't want AI to run their lives. It also had two other people from AI products. The first one that I'll mention is called ReadyLand, which I think partnered with Amazon to some degree. It at least uses like Amazon Alexa's.
Behind the Bastards
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It's essentially a choose-your-own-adventure storybook with an actual physical copy that Alexa will read to you, and you can talk to it. So you can talk to characters and choose different pathways. I was more skeptical out of that at first because I just don't like AIs reading books to kids.
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But this became more of an interactive story thing, and it actually seemed kind of good at what it was doing. And then... the guy behind it clarified, ReadyLand is not using AI to generate new content for kids.
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It's all like pre-programmed like human paths, you know, just with so many variables already built in based on, you know, like if you're making food in one of these books or like, you know, a kid wants to go on like a weird side quest, the AI already has like stuff ready for how to handle that. He knows how to say these words. He knows how to stitch together these things.
Behind the Bastards
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But it's not actually generating new content itself. If everything is pre-baked, it can just be assembled in many different ways. So every time you read a book to the kid, it'll be slightly different because the kid will respond to certain plot elements. The kid can talk to characters, ask questions. So this was actually pretty interesting.
Behind the Bastards
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The fact that it's simply just not even generating new content makes it miles better than any of these other AI kids' products.
Behind the Bastards
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Exactly, yeah. So it's actually a pretty interesting piece of technology. And it's not just Alexa reading a storybook. It has a large interactive element, which that makes the Alexa part actually useful. And then there was this other product. What was this one called? It's from a company called Skyrocket Toys. Poe the AI teddy bear or something like that.
Behind the Bastards
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Poe the AI bear, which does generate live content with guardrails, he did say. Oh, good. But the AI content both comes from the input and the output. He talked about guardrails. He said, you know, ChatGPT does have internal guardrails, but the reliability is suspect. Yeah. Which there certainly is, considering just last week there was a piece of news about ChatGPT helping someone build a bomb.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, yeah. Which they used in just this magical city. Yes. So he did say that guardrail reliability can be suspect, but there is a difference when you have certainly more child-friendly features turned on. But he admitted that moderation is part of the challenge. I don't know. Basically...
Behind the Bastards
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How this works is you have an app synced up with this AI teddy bear that talks with a not very pleasing voice. Oh, I got to hear it. Do you want me to pull this up? Yes, absolutely. Okay. But basically you put in a whole bunch of story inputs being like, I want the story set in this place. I want it featuring these types of characters. I want this archetype to be the villain.
Behind the Bastards
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It has like dozens, if not hundreds of like archetypal things that you can like click. And then the teddy bear will generate a new story. So it is generating new content, but with like pre-baked characters.
Behind the Bastards
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So then it'll stitch together the story. The weirder you make the variables, the weirder the story is going to be. Let me play a clip for Robert here.
Behind the Bastards
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No, so it doesn't sound good. So yeah, they generated a story set in CES in Las Vegas. And he would occasionally interrupt the bear to explain what it was doing. So that was the other product. Not nearly as polished or really as thoughtful as the AI storybook. But, you know, maybe if you are tired of having to, you know... talk to your kid.
Behind the Bastards
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You can just get one of these teddy bears to throw in front.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 165
One other thing I will add is that the ReadyLand guy, the AI storybook, specifically when talking about the importance of guardrails, he said that there's multiple levels to safety, right? An AI kid's robot that swears, right, is one thing that's pretty easy to avoid, actually. That's pretty easy.
Behind the Bastards
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And you can just block out certain things from happening. You can build that in. But another aspect that's really important to safety is the accuracy of the things it's saying. What if it's saying something that's supposed to be some factual statement about the world that just isn't true or could actually lead to danger?
Behind the Bastards
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What if it tells your kid to do something which is actually kind of dangerous? Or what if it says... Not even directly telling them, but, you know, it says something that if the kid then tries to do that, it's really dangerous. And, like, this is why their storybook program, you know, does not generate new content. So everything it says is, like, already pre-approved.
Behind the Bastards
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Like, it already is going to have, you know, like, verified content. Like verified, safe, you know, sentences versus this AI teddy bear because it is generating new content. You know, it could, if things go horribly wrong, you know, talk about drinking bleach, you know, theoretically, you know, just like something, you know, like things can go wrong.
Behind the Bastards
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So it's not just about, you know, avoiding bad words or talking about sex or, you know, those types of like inappropriate things. It's also making sure it's not like hallucinating or saying things that could like lead to like dangerous situations.
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Yeah, no one wants this. Even six-year-olds are like, eh, I would prefer just a regular toy I can play with.
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We can even maybe order one and see what we can get out of it. Yeah. All right, we're going to go on another break and return to talk once again about AI products for your children.
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Like the video, like taking this thing everywhere the kid goes. It's like the kid's main interaction with the world.
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Is with this little rolling like plastic Furby. And yeah, like talking about like expressing like love. And how damaging this must be for a four-year-old to have the first thing that it constantly expressed love and affection for is this little rolling robot that you're going to throw in the garbage in four years when you're too old for it.
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How traumatizing and deeply fucked up that's going to be for your sense of self and love and affection.
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No, it's it was honestly I've seen a few like disturbing things, you know, all of like the the new drone tech to have like solar powered drones that can stay in the air to drop bombs is like bad. But like this type of stuff is like really dehumanizing. It really like viscerally upsets me.
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Yeah, because we're like four days in Vegas now. We still have one more day of CES.
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Hopefully tomorrow we'll have our final of our like on the ground coverage with our CES best in show. So end on maybe a high note. So see you there.
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think they're down crypto finds a way to squirm into your life it really is the zombie of the tech world yeah because it's dead and yet it's undead it's constantly trying to crawl back somehow the fact that it's dead makes it more dangerous now exactly it's it's specifically a zombie i will try to figure out what's the vampire but but specifically crypto is the zombie yeah
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Well, that's debatable. I think there was some very curious irregularities in multiple swing states. Straight forward from here.
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Best of CES, I think, was definitely the VLC media booth at Caritha Park, where they had big traffic cones on their head, wearing them like wizard hats with huge cloaks.
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Because putting subtitles on pirated media can sometimes be really hard. So they said, we have something that analyzes the audio that's being spoken in whatever media you're watching, and we will put subtitles up for you. We walked off. And we're like, so what do you have here? Like, we are not selling anything. We have nothing to sell you. And it's beautiful.
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And they're by far the coolest because of something, Robert, you said to them.
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Oh, no, no. No. Quite the contrary. I feel a magnetic attraction.
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And similarly, obviously all of the AI stuff for kids, all of like the AI slop is like obviously bad. We've talked about that a lot already. The other thing that's like kind of like the worst is similar to what you said, Ed, like a level of surveillance tech. I tried out multiple AI systems that are supposed to like detect and predict behavior. based on facial expressions or gesture.
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And this is really tricky. There was one at Eureka Park. It's a South Korean company that's powered, I believe, by Samsung with money. And also they've access to like their training data. They're called Visomatic. And specifically why this exists, it is a camera that you can put on a computer. It will detect where your face is pointing and where your eyes are paying attention to.
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And the reason why this exists is for online test taking. It's so people don't look at their phone to cheat. So it tracks where your eyes are moving. And if your eyes look down too much, it's going to flag it as someone's possibly cheating. So this was obviously introduced after the pandemic. There's a lot of online test taking.
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Samsung uses this tech themselves for any kind of online exams that they as a company will put on, whether it's for people, students, employees. But they also had other features where you could switch it. I assume it's doing all the same work. It just displays differently on the monitor.
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Instead, it can do object detection, what you're wearing, and the general behavior analysis if you seem like you're behaving suspiciously, which is something that we tried at the SK booth, which also is a Korean company, for their own surveillance detection. But I asked Visomatic, what kind of use cases do you see for this beyond test taking? They're like, yeah, general surveillance.
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Like, yeah, we... we want to learn how to like predict or like analyze potentially suspicious human behavior. As we were walking by the SK version, one quite funny thing is as I walked by it first, it first identified me as a blonde woman holding a cup. It then changed and said blonde person, which I think is pretty, it's pretty neat. Very progressive.
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It could sense the pronouns. It's like, Hmm, Maybe not a woman. Maybe not a blonde person. But yes, that was something that was quite well done, specifically the vis-a-matic stuff. Very functional. It could tell when I was looking at the screen, when I was looking at my phone. It could tell from various angles what I was holding, what I was looking at, where my attention was being directed.
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It was very well done. It was very accurate, but possibly scary.
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Okay, so I'm going to introduce our special white woman correspondent, Zai, to give us some exciting breaking news in the white woman tech development world.
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They're European. They're called ELI. ELI Health. That's E-L-I.
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Yeah, we will certainly as soon as possible test this compared to the regular like mail in blood tests, which is like the current way to do it. But that requires shipping your blood to a laboratory. And, That's maybe not always the best or even like convenient. So being able to test this just at home without chipping any of your DNA to some random laboratory would be really, really cool. Right.
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No, we tried to expect as much intel as possible about kind of what their future plans are, but not specifically like in that level. But privacy, like they seemed like they had a reasonably good understanding. Of course, because it is your own like DNA and hormones.
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You know, like I do not know if this company is even thinking about trans people if it is trans friendly, but it could be used by trans people regardless.
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That was the first thing I said as soon as we walked away. I was like, this product wins the Cool Zone Media Award for the most white woman product. It specifically reminded me of like, if you see a slice of cheese on your windshield, you're already targeted. Run away. This is...
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This is that exact demographic of people who think they're going to get trafficked in your local Olive Garden parking lot. Gang-stalked Americans.
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It's like a crocodile tail. As soon as it ejects, it whips around, immobilizing anyone in the vicinity.
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There's small improvements for consumer tech, right? This is a very consumer-based, or it's supposed to be a consumer-based tech show. There's products like the Shox headphones, which every year get a little bit better. I tried out Bone conducting headphones last year, which are very good. They work underwater.
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Yeah, very cool stuff. This year they have what they called air conductive. I don't quite know how it works, but it does work. I can hear it if you're standing like two, three feet away. There's no sound bleed, but I hear music in the middle of my head despite having to not put an earbud actually like in my ear. They're super useful. They work great. Really good sound quality.
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Like small improvements, right? It's not necessarily like revolutionizing hearing, but it's very small improvements. Whereas the other kind of big trend, which isn't necessarily like wholly consumer-based, it's kind of what these larger companies are trying to move towards, is I feel like they're trying to replace... friendship with this form of technology and AI-enabled technology.
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You used to have friends. To get recommended new music, you used to have friends to tell you about new stuff that they're interested in. No longer. Now you have an AI agent that can do that for you. You don't need friends to help talk about you had a rough breakup. Instead, you can have a short-term replacement using AI. You can have a friend replacement, a girlfriend replacement.
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It's all these things that are trying to replace the core concept of friendship, even as a baby, even as a toddler. Your first friend doesn't need to be people you meet outside.
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It can be this little hovering robot you have in the living room that can also organize your fridge, tell you what you need on your shopping list, roll around your house in the middle of the night with cameras, and that could be your first friend. It's replacing the core concept of friendship.
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It's this move towards complete optimization of every aspect of human life, make it as smooth as possible, that completely ignores what it means to be human.
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Like, do they need chat GPT for this? I saw this other company that was like, it was designed to help you get over the loss of your pet. Where you could pump tons of photos of your pet into this AI machine. into this AI generator, and it will generate new images. And this is proven to help you move on from loss, which is literally a Nathan Fielder joke from like seven years ago.
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It's seven years ago. And like, no, you should talk with your friends about that. That's why you are a human. That's how you can move on from loss. You have to make new connections. Poorly AI generated images of your cat aren't going to help you move on. Like why? Why?
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Replacing friendship is the thing that I see a lot of the tech world wanting to do. Maybe because they don't really understand real human relationships that aren't innately transactional. I'm not sure. But that is a huge trend that I've seen multiple people mention. All right. Zai?
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And we discuss that way more in depth on Better Offline.
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Clapping his hands, eating his 400 pills a day. Drinking his son's blood.
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If I said that to a doctor, they'd think I had a concussion. You sure would.
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Yeah, you shouldn't be allowed to drive if you say things like that.
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But also, they use Digital Twin, which is some enterprise software shit.
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Yeah. It means so many different things. It means literally a digital representation of anything. It doesn't even mean an AI agent.
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I've watched it a few times to hate it the amount it deserves.
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Why? We're just going to play one. Well, I mean, that's what it spat out. Yeah. Oh, my God. If there's three different versions, that's just they saved the product. Fucking hell. Everyone is the same length of shot.
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I just can't believe we finally have the technology to have three trucks driving somewhere.
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Raccoons? Why is there a satellite? Are they going to drop the ion cannon on the polar bears?
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And the way that they move is very weird. It looks kind of right, but kind of right looks very strange. It does.
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And they move a little bit, but not too much. Like, they're not going anywhere with the movement. It's just, like, they are doing something, and that's it.
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You think in 10 years they're still going to have these commercials? No. Because where's the snow? There's just Polar Bears walking around, like...
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No one's watching a Coca-Cola ride and being like, yeah! Wow. I've never had one of these before. Yeah, yeah. It's never a new experience.
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By the way, I'm sure what you're about to show me looks like a dog's arse.
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I love when cars go backwards when they're driving forwards.
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Why is there so many fires? All right, let's take a shot every time the car's on fire.
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I also want to just say when it swerved in that thing, it was driving like half a mile an hour. Yeah. That's how I run. Yeah.
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That cop was like he had his arms out. Two cops are chasing... Three cops. Look how they're running.
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Okay. What is going on with his feet? Wait. Wait.
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Wow, I'm so glad that we have the technology to do a thing where a guy gets chased by the police.
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I just want to know about these thousands of generations of script. That is interesting. I am very curious. Because I just don't believe that for a fucking second.
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By 2030, you'll be able to make a man wear the same clothes for an entire video. This has happened before with Sora. When they put Sora out, they're like, check out Airhead. Oh, my God. And the balloon changes every single shot. It's a different size and color each time. There are just people running in the background sometimes. And then they made a new one.
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You're like, oh, this is going to be good. It was worse and less consistent. And it... This is what they think of us.
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It's so cool that this costs, like, so much money as well. Just burning. There was some fucking GPU melting and then... In a data center in Arizona that's draining the local water.
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And also, the little pigs that watch Star Wars, including myself, they'll notice every minor inconsistency. Do you think that they're going to tolerate Luke Skywalker's and Watto and all their favorite characters?
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But also, I just want to read out some of the fucking people that use this model. We started working with creatives like Donald Glover, who I said was washed 10 years ago and I'm fucking sick of people. Awaken My Love was a good album.
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It's a bad song with a great video. Yeah, yeah. I thought his kind of R&B stuff was very interesting. Anyway, moving on.
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And, of course, The Weekend, and someone called D4VD. Oh, his TV show was great. I'll work with creators on VO1 and form the development of VO2, and we look forward to working with trusted testers and creators to get feedback on this new model. How long are you going to get fucking feedback? It stinks.
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Oh, it's the end from Metal Gear Solid 3. What's he doing? Playing a concert? Grandad, calm down! I love these slash cuts. There's so many fast cuts. No, these fast cuts are because the next frame was unusable. Yes, actually.
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I like how also the old man does look very different each time. Very different old man. Yep, that's a different guy. That's a different guy.
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We'll say he's about to eat the microphone. Completely different. I've done it. Yum.
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This is the Better Offline bartender. I apologize. I apologize that you had to hit. I would like a drink. I also would like.
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We are in the Better Offline CES suite and we are all drinking. Because I just want to say I'm fucking disassociating after that. I'm so fucking sick. Every year of doing this nonsense and I look at these shit eaters and they show us that and they're like slurp down the slop. Oh, my God. It's hideous.
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I think I would rather... Hawk Tour has a more obvious use case than this shit. Hey, do you want to spend way more money to get something way worse? I actually can't get over the 75% check GPT. No, neither can I. Should it be more? No, it should be. Theoretically, it should be. It should be 100%. It should be 100%, yeah. Which means that a quarter... A quarter of it was just fucking unusable.
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Say that again? Meneminate. What the fuck? Yeah, that's a word. It's like when you find your cats vomited on the floor. Again, so first we see a diner called Meneminate that appears to be both on fire.
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Great AI voice. What is this Phantasmagoria-esque voice acting?
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We don't need to watch any more of that. Who is this for?
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If you watch this and have a positive reaction, they should keep you in a holding cell for a week. I'm deeply unhappy at the time we already spent watching this. We don't know what you're going to do next.
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Why do you think they think it looks good? It looks better than an Xbox. Yeah. And the idea is you typed a thing in and now a thing came out and that's magical.
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Can we attach... electrodes to panelists. To people's skulls?
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But also, to say that is, there's so many things they've said that just, they wouldn't survive a deposition.
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I would actually believe that was generated with ChatGPT. But, like, GPT 2.0.
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These people are too fucking smug. Yeah. These people sound too confident and too chummy and too happy to say things like this. That's not good. I don't like these people laughing about people losing jobs. No. They shouldn't have jobs.
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They have not. Or had structures fall to the beauty of the flame.
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The thing is, any of these things would be fucking fatal because you have to remove something from a model. How the fuck do we do that? We don't know how to do that. You have to throw away the entire model. You have to retrain. There's no way around it.
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You know what? This is the fucking problem with all of this, on top of how shit it is and how expensive it is. Which kind of AI are we talking about there, dipshit? That's not generative AI. That's not what that fucking was. And it still sucks.
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Oh, I love the movies and the future of them too. This is so good. This is so bad.
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All right. All right, Microsoft. Just once, I'd like on the panel someone to go and say, what the fuck do you mean?
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Exactly. That's their entire option. Mm-hmm. Somebody has the gun, somebody doesn't. Somebody knows the way the maze works and somebody doesn't.
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We shouldn't have a maze where I drop them in and one of them knows the maze and they have a gun?
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Sometimes sunlight creeps in through one of the corners. The Minotaur gets them only sometimes.
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I'm the Minotaur. Anyway, the gun maze isn't real. But also, most of their arguments mostly just come down to... well, you can't make an omelette without breaking it.
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oh god all right well that's the episode that's all i got folks that was my first day at ces 2025 huzzah yeah this is just my first day better off lines here all week um i'm gonna hear about stuff like this all week and i think i'm gonna be fully jokified i'm gonna wake up in the clown makeup on friday i'm gonna find the funnest thing to bring back for you i'm gonna find a an artist to put me in full joke no i'm not i'm gonna try to steal that ai enhanced grill yeah
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Open the door. Open the door. As someone who's done a lot of grilling, done a lot of spoken barbecue, I don't know what an AI would do. Is it going to talk to me in the six hours?