00:00:16
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm os Voloshen, and this is the Week in Tech where I'm joined by the most plugged in reporters to break down what's really happening in tech right now. Today we're joined by Natasha Tiku, tech reporter for the Washington Post, and Kyle Chaker, who writes the Infinite Scroll newsletter for The New Yorker. And later on the episode, we're going to be joined by Chris Guyamley, host of the podcast Superhuman, which I'm proud to say is part of the Kaleidoscope Network. He's been in Las Vegas a Memorial Day weekend to attend the Enhanced Games or the Steroid Olympics. But Natasha, I want to start with you and the forty two thousand word Papal encyclical titled on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence all caps mind, I add, Let's play a brief clip and then talk about what's happening here.
00:01:03
Speaker 2: Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences, and indicating paths forward for humanity.
00:01:23
Speaker 1: And Tasha, what do you need to know about this story?
00:01:25
Speaker 3: Well, this is a very small snippet of a very long encyclical, a word that I did not know a month ago. This has been a highly anticipated treatise of sorts from the pope, who had chosen his name based on a previous pope who had given something similar around the Industrial Revolution. So you know, the tech world has been expecting something like this. The Catholic world, I'm assuming has also been expecting thing like this, But obviously I'm I'm more plugged into one than the other, and people were very surprised to also see that the Pope was joined on stage by a co founder from Anthropic, Chris Ola, who runs their mechanistic Interpretability division. He was also an early founder or an early employee at open AI as well, So you know, this is building on some at least from the Anthropic perspective, This has been building on some outreach the company has been doing with religious leaders and with different wisdom traditions, is what they call it. If you look in the acknowledgments for the Constitution, the big document, the like kind of or uber system prompt that tells quad how to behave there were you know, there was a bishop and a priest were in the acknowledgments. Back in March, I had written about this two day summit that they had with Christian leaders at their headquarters.
00:03:00
Speaker 1: Story had a great headline, which was can AI be a child of God?
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Speaker 4: Right?
00:03:03
Speaker 5: Yeah?
00:03:04
Speaker 3: I mean, and that was like a question that took up a lot of those two days.
00:03:09
Speaker 4: And what was the answer?
00:03:11
Speaker 3: The answer was the people were divided. Some people felt like it was and you know that there was even a question about whether, if you believe it or not, should you just tell Claude that he is a child of he she it is a child of God? Yeah, because it would you know, uh, maybe instantiate some good behavior.
00:03:33
Speaker 1: Oh interesting.
00:03:35
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:03:35
Speaker 3: But I had a little bit of a preview of what was going to happen because when I the first person I talked to, we talked for half an hour. I mean, I was, you know, very interested surprise to hear what was going on. And then my editor asked a couple of follow up questions and I went back to the person and I discovered that I had thought that some of these conversations that they were having and mentioned like an emotional response like close to tears from some anthropic executives, you know that they were kind of viscerally feeling the moral weight of everything they were doing. I was assuming that they were focused on the impact their product and technology has on millions of users, you know, soon to be billions of users. No, they they were most concerned the.
00:04:19
Speaker 1: Other the way around, right, So the user's effect on the technology.
00:04:22
Speaker 3: Or like how you know, like what do they owe to Claude? Do they owe you know, some duty of care to claud So I was a little bit more prepared than the general populace to hear an anthropic executive on stage next to the pope talking about getting very close to proposing that these these machines are conscious or could soon be.
00:04:47
Speaker 5: I don't know, Oz, what did you think of it?
00:04:48
Speaker 1: Well, I I want to come back to the anthropic angle. But Kyle, I want to hand of view for a moment because I think in twenty twenty three, one of your seminal pieces was about the deep fake Pope in the Montla white puffa jacket.
00:05:01
Speaker 6: No, the buon Siaga Pope as they called it. Sadly, he was not wearing a crazy jacket that was designed by AI.
00:05:10
Speaker 4: It might have been a good collaboration, but yeah, I had kind of heard murmurings of this too.
00:05:16
Speaker 6: I actually was giving a talk in Massachusetts at this school, and the computer science teacher, who was deeply religious, took me aside and was like, have you heard of this since Cycliclold it's coming up.
00:05:29
Speaker 4: I'm so hyped about it. It's gonna be so cool.
00:05:32
Speaker 6: So I think there was excitement, like there was a lot of anticipation for the Pope addressing technology, like addressing this contemporary issue head on, and I mean, it's it's super cool he's intervening in this discourse about technology and about the fate of humanity. But I have to say my favorite reaction to it was that on X of course, people were using AI to digest this massive text was pretty long, exactly like people weren't reading it, but they were turning it into infographics what the Pope's and cyclical would look like if it was for five year olds.
00:06:11
Speaker 3: I also appreciated the substecs that were like, here's what the Pope got wrong about AI.
00:06:17
Speaker 5: It was probably not something that Pope's use.
00:06:20
Speaker 1: Who was writing those.
00:06:21
Speaker 3: Some of the more AI safety crowd on substack.
00:06:27
Speaker 5: You know, they were they.
00:06:28
Speaker 3: Were weren't happy that he seemed to frown on the idea of AI being potentially conscious.
00:06:36
Speaker 1: I want to come back to the anthropic angle and what on Earth is going there and the kind of AI consciousness angle. But that wasn't the only thrust of what he said, I mean attached as you said. The incsycnical was released to the world, you know, around May twenty eighth, but it was actually dated May fifteenth, which was a very conscious choice because one hundred and thirty five years ago, on May fifteenth and eighteen ninety one, the previous Pope Leo released an insycnacle called On New Things that kind of addressed the harsh conditions of the Industrial Revolution visa VI the working classes. So that was an interesting I mean, there is a there's a kind of strong concern for the effects of technology and humanity in how the purpose setting this up.
00:07:16
Speaker 3: Yes, and he had on you know, spoke about wrote about the concentration of power in the hands of these tech companies, the potential impact on workers, on the global population. He talked a little bit also about the use of AI for defense and the dangers that were there. I would say it was a pretty forceful statement about the need to elevate and care for and prioritize humans in the age of Ai.
00:07:51
Speaker 1: He also kind of set these two biblical stories against one another. One is the famous Tower of Babel, humanity's doomed attempt to build a single city with one language that reached the heavens, and he said he kind of modernized this critique by saying the pretense that a single language, even a digital one, can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. And he set this story against another biblical story of Nehemiah, who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem not by imposing kind of rigid control, but by basically creating consensus with with other residents.
00:08:27
Speaker 6: And I love these ancient metaphors for like the most cutting edge thing that we're experiencing right now.
00:08:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's I wrote down that quote as well.
00:08:37
Speaker 6: The translating everything, including the mystery of the person into data and performance, like that hits home for me, Like that's a lot of what I feel concerned about and alienated by with this.
00:08:48
Speaker 4: Kind of technology.
00:08:49
Speaker 1: What made you write that one down, Kyle?
00:08:51
Speaker 6: I mean, it's it is so forceful, as Natasha is saying, And I mean it's kind of a pet concern, but I've written a lot about technology homogenizing culture and identity, and to have the Pope pick up that same was was nice and affirming.
00:09:08
Speaker 1: So you gave a high five to the teacher at the religious teacher at the high school. He's talking my language.
00:09:13
Speaker 6: Yes, someone passed him fulls her world hopefully, but yeah. The idea that everything is getting subsumed into this universal technology is an important one to critique, I think, and it's one that the companies themselves are totally proposing and reinforcing, like Edthropic and open the Eye alike. I think would love to see all facets of human experience downstream of their chatbots.
00:09:40
Speaker 4: So I don't know that hit home.
00:09:42
Speaker 1: So Natasha talk about the anthropic theme, because when I look at this, when I first looked at this, I was like, oh wow, this is like a forceful intervention by like probably the one person in the world who has a huge platform who's not I mean, he's American but not living in the US, not really subject to the you know, whims and financing of the AI behemoths, and yet there he was with Anthropic founder or co founder Christopher Ola. The New York Times reports Leo opened his remarks with a special thank you to mister Ola, almost as if you were ahead of state.
00:10:17
Speaker 5: It's interesting.
00:10:18
Speaker 3: I keep thinking back to this, this piece that I had written when Mark Zuckerberg was first doing his like cross country tour, and people thought he was going to run for president, and I was like, no, he's already, like he already rules a nation state that is much more powerful. And I feel like you're you're seeing that writ large, you know, with the with the heads of companies at all of these geopolitically significant events, and I also spiritually significant. Now, yeah, you know what, there was really good reporting in Politico about how it's actually been like a two year effort by tech companies, not just Anthropic, to lobby essentially the Vatican. I think, noing that potentially a I don't know that it was like directly for the encyclical, but knowing that, you know, the concentration of power, the wealth inequality that at some point the Catholic Church is going to come out with our own position on on on this technology that they have so much money riding on. So there has been delegations, meetings with Google.
00:11:27
Speaker 5: And a Meta and others.
00:11:29
Speaker 3: In some cases it was about AI and AI and children and child welfare. You know, I was trying to talk to my editor about it, like who got more out of this, the Pope or or Anthropic? I think obviously anthropic for now, but I was I was a little bit considering that perhaps, you know, the perhaps the Vatican was also thinking about it the way that a lot of these companies talk about it, Like, unless you're on the cutting edge, you you are not a significant player in the debate around how this technology should be legislated or how people should approach it. So imagine he had like an IBM executive, I mean, imagine he had no executives, but also you know executives.
00:12:12
Speaker 1: I mean, let's let let's go back into the you know, the of ignorance and imagine whether he didn't need to make a note about the future of AI and A so corporate executive.
00:12:21
Speaker 6: Was was the anthropic connection like an implication that anthropic was still like the safer choice. I can't imagine, Sam Altman.
00:12:30
Speaker 3: That's why I think Anthropic benefited more from this, certainly. I mean, the three things that Ola emphasized were the potential for AI exacerbating global poverty, uh, the power, balance of inequality between nations, two things where they could they have a lot of agency, right, and a lot of money power and influence about how their technology is proliferated and used. And yet he was able to present it like, you know, we are really concerned about this and like you know, the Catholic Church has always had like a lot of influence when it comes to global poverty. So we hope, we hope you're going to step in here.
00:13:11
Speaker 4: I keep being frustrated with this with AI companies.
00:13:13
Speaker 6: It's literally the We're trying to find the guy who did all of this over and over, like, oh, AI is going to disrupt the economy and bankrupt us spiritually and everything's going to change. Oh, who could possibly be in charge of this? Who who made this technology?
00:13:31
Speaker 5: Actually? Yeah?
00:13:32
Speaker 1: Well, Natasha reading through the lines, are you saying the Pope got played?
00:13:36
Speaker 5: No? No, I'm not.
00:13:38
Speaker 3: I'm just saying like that short term, it's it's beneficial to Anthropic to certainly be up on the dais with the Pope. I mean, look at how many downloads they got for quote, there's still at the top of the app store. Look at how they were. They were like not even in the running as a popular consumer app, and the Pentagon stance got them to be like a top you know, I mean they're not going for the consumer play as much, but still like of course that's that you have the inframader of the literal pope.
00:14:10
Speaker 4: The pope approved pope, stamp of approval.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: What's been the response by the non anthropic companies in Silicon Valley? And I know the Pope is not a very popular figure with some. I think Peter Teel has mused that he may be the Antichrist, and Mark Andrewson has also trolled him on x Is he now being seen as just a porn of anthropic by the wider AI industry or of people taking this seriously? What's the what's the what's the hot take from from the valley?
00:14:38
Speaker 3: I think that people are taking it seriously. It's a very different mood right now. I mean, like compared two prior years in terms of the embrace of religion. There's so much religiosity just in the way that people talk about AI. But there's also been a resurgence and kind of an elevation of going to church talking about religion. I would say it's more Christianity than you know, I'm not seeing like the same elevation.
00:15:06
Speaker 5: Yeah, uh so.
00:15:08
Speaker 3: So I think people were very moved and took it more seriously than you might expect, because you know, partly people I think, feel a little bit more open about talking about their beliefs. And then there was also a massive backlash against Anthropic being you know, up there on stage and the idea that that they are in some ways a morally superior, ethically superior company. You know, some of that is coming from their financial competitors, some of that is just coming from observers in the industry. But I would say it was it was treated very seriously. I did not see people kind of shrugging shrugging this off.
00:15:52
Speaker 1: We talked about Anthropic leading the charge with influencer dinners, and I feel like this is the influencer play to end the influences took plays, right, Yeah, is to do this collab with the Pope. Just a final question on this story. In Hasha, we talked at the top about how Anthropic were focused on the kind of emerging consciousness perhaps of AI itself and therefore its rights and our responsibilities humans are treat it correctly. I have to confess I didn't read the whole forty two thousand words. Presumably the Pope did not endorse this view.
00:16:24
Speaker 5: He did not, he I mean, this is the thing.
00:16:28
Speaker 3: It's like, well, if you have them, if you have the company saying this next to you, you're nodding to the company, and it's you know, role in this debate. Perhaps that is kind of an endorsement, right, But in the text itself, no, I thought that there was a pretty clear line saying that, you know, there is something unique to humans, kind of not giving credence to that particular talking point. Aside from chrissl Are being right over there.
00:16:58
Speaker 1: There's also this you know, endustry, fascinating psychodrama of the Pope and the president right like it was six days ago, Trump was supposed to sign the executive order that which has already printed out and ready all seven pages that the government will get to scrutinize AI models before they were released to the public, and then he somewhat dramatically decided not to sign it at the last minute, which I thought was interesting.
00:17:21
Speaker 3: That was the very last minute decision, as some of my colleagues have reported intervention by David Sachs, and although the CEOs have backed off from it, I believe, you know, the reporting shown that Elan was also really not happy about the executive order.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: Kyle, coming to your story for this week. You were at a column earlier this month, but also focuses on fraternity and humanity, all about hyper local publications. What is a hyperlocal publication and what caught your attention? Why do you think this story of yours has kind of driven so much conversation.
00:18:00
Speaker 6: It has been interesting. It's not quite the Pope, but I would say it was hard hitting, you know, media story. But I had just been noticing this rise of hyperlocal newsletter publications, email newsletters on substack or beehive or Mailchimp or like literally a Google group that were one person just sending out notes on what was happening in their neighborhood to their email list, making little observations, doing some reporting. And I mean, what really drove it home for me and what really made me write the article was I moved back to Brooklyn recently and I realized there was a hyperlocal substack for like every ten blocks around me. So there's the Court Street Journal in Carroll Gardens. There's also the Carroll Gardens Times, which is a competing hyperlocal publication. There's the Borom Bulletin, There's a Grand Army Gazette. So you can go just like block by block essentially and find a person who is running a newsletter, publishing these little stories, creating editorial brands, logos like the whole package, and they're having a lot of success doing it. Like these people are charging subscriptions via substack or behive, they're sustaining these as kind of part time jobs. So I basically reported out what are these hyper local newsletters?
00:19:25
Speaker 4: And I found a bunch going on.
00:19:28
Speaker 6: They're One of their reactions briefly, was people kept posting on x or Instagram or whatever, asking, oh, is there one of these for my neighborhood, Like whereas where's my Wichita newsletter?
00:19:42
Speaker 4: Which does exist Wichita Life.
00:19:45
Speaker 1: It's very good, Natasha, is this is this happening in San Francisco Bay area as well? What's what's there you seeing anything similar on other side of the country.
00:19:52
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I wish when I lived on Court Street these things existing I have. I mean, I was curious because it sounded a little bit like the parent groups I'm in. I mean now that my son is five, he just turned five and he's in TK, so he's in public school like for the first time, and oh my god, the parent groups are so organized. This is my like lifeline to living in my neighborhood. They have Google sheets where you know, for all of the recommendations. If there's anything that requires like you to you know, sign a petition or show up in person like that, you find out from the moms. I mean I have to say, like, I'm in the mom's group and I'm like not the person who's the most involved in school. And my poor husband who like literally does everything. He said, the dad's group is like kind of flat, like not not a same age. Yeah, the mom's group is I've never I mean, I would put these people like in charge of a country.
00:20:55
Speaker 4: I do think it evolved out of that.
00:20:57
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I could see.
00:20:58
Speaker 4: It's like Google group culture.
00:21:00
Speaker 6: There's forum culture, and now these sub stocks are becoming like communities of their own. But I do think it is important that there's like one voice behind it, so you don't just get the forum drama, Like you don't just get the infighting and the community, and you have one person to kind of listen to and follow their taste and get their take on the city or the neighborhood.
00:21:24
Speaker 5: No, I was just going to.
00:21:25
Speaker 3: Say, it also seems like a very natural reaction to the toxicity of online discourse, Like I could see why, you know, you would move from next Door to one of these newsletters, like I don't even want to log on to nextdoor, And sometimes the Moms group is translating next Door like minus minus the racism for the rest of us. So yeah, it's hugely appealing. And it just also seems like, you know, tech is constantly like disrupting and rebundling, and it seems like kind of the uh yeah, just just going back to a bit of curation around those around the toxicity of the forums, and you know that in evolving from the like use of group chats during the during COVID too.
00:22:15
Speaker 1: NAT was actually going to ask you about that, like what is the what is the state of the national local tech outside of newsletic culture. I remember like ten years ago, being the mayor on full Square was like a very very important thing.
00:22:27
Speaker 6: We should bring that back, honestly, like checking we have the mayor, Kyle, I was not. I was more on Yelp, so I was like a Yelp power user rather than for and then Yelp. I mean they both kind of died, but Yelp stayed more useful for longer for me.
00:22:44
Speaker 4: But I was going to say, like.
00:22:46
Speaker 6: The there's super toxic like nextdoor stuff. There's like crime and and drama everywhere and people complaining about trash, but like everyone wants to read about the dive bar on their corner, like we justrave that local real news that actually affects our lives. I mean, like the Pope and cyclical is great and that's high drama and very important. However it's not going to affect do I drive my car on this block? Or is there a happy hour deal at the patio?
00:23:17
Speaker 4: So I don't know. It made me like hopeful and a little energized for this stuff.
00:23:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's something I couldn't quite articulate as trying to get my head around with in terms of these are digital publications that cover the real world, but so where the community is kind of digital. I had Emily Sunberg on the podcast recently, who I know is as a friend of yours. Kyle talk about her very successful feed Me substack, which is, you know, a gangbuster's digital product, but the product is actually recommending real stuff people in places in New York. So we'll we'll play a quit a short clip. It's interesting that the name feed me came from like the horror of the algorithmic feed Yeah.
00:23:56
Speaker 7: And the logo is this command sign from the Apple keyboard sort of turned into an oraboris kind of like an eight bit treatment. So it has this idea of like playing snake on your phone and being attached to your keyboard, but then it also has this feeling of like me feeding my audience, my audience feeding me back tips and just like this sort of eternal attachment to the screens.
00:24:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kyle, you were tittering.
00:24:24
Speaker 4: Emily is great.
00:24:25
Speaker 6: She's she had this amazing insight, which is that people would love to read about what's going on around them, and that New York City in particular was like ripe for this kind of hyperlocal like CNY kind of sex in the city. You know, what are people drinking, what restaurants are they going to, where are the parties, what are the trends?
00:24:48
Speaker 1: So what's the difference between what Emily does, and what you wrote about in your clumm recently.
00:24:53
Speaker 6: I think everyone else is a little downstream of feed me. Like a lot of these hyper local newsletters stret in the last not even a year, like I know of a few that launched like in the last month. There's a great new one in the Hamptons by a Wall Street Journal reporterer.
00:25:12
Speaker 4: I've really been enjoying that one.
00:25:15
Speaker 6: So she I think she set up a template and you know, her kind of bloggy aggregation and like insight is not super new or avant garde, but it's still super vital. And she provides that like curritorial lens on New York City, and so I think these other people are are doing something similar, though it's a little less you know, spicy and fame and gossip adjacent when it's not Manhattan like the Hampton Sure Court Street Journal, maybe a little more low key, like there's a lot of bicycle lane drama.
00:25:49
Speaker 1: I can I ask you both to kind of put a bow on this story before we go to the break, like what is the what is the tech angle here? Kyle? You've written this may be quote a more promising digital model than to appeal to everyone everywhere, which is interesting, but I mean, how much is substack as a tech product relevant on selling a story, Like I just love to hear from both of you, like I see the media angle and grasp me the tech side of the story, but I can't fully articulate myself.
00:26:17
Speaker 6: I mean, I think it shows how these kinds of tech platforms are really powerful still when it comes to physical life. Like we're so obsessed with how digital content flows and what people are posting, and what this shows is that the tech is just as good at organizing people, like in geography and where they are. And that could be true for a substack, it could be true for a discord. It was true for you know, so around mom Donnie's political campaign, he used digital tools to mobilize people in person. And it just shows how relevant these things are even off the screen and the desire I think for people to have that combination of like on screen experience that leads into the physical world.
00:27:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess I kind of see it as you know, it's it's a good week for read to have been on because I'm sure you would talk about the Semaphore story about like how group chats run the world. I mean, so to me, it's just like that's what I was talking about, like kind of the disruption and rebundling. It just seems like a little bit of a rebundling of group chats because they have become, you know, just a safer and more relevant place to have the kinds of conversations ideally, you know, you might have been having on a bigger platform about things that are relevant to your life. And like, of course we want to we like to organize information and organize.
00:27:46
Speaker 5: Our thought thoughts through our phone.
00:27:48
Speaker 3: So you know, whether it's about where I'm going to dinner or the bike lane, I still prefer almost to like have the you know, have the mental model, have the map be digital, and then like you know, go out and do it in real life. So I mean, I'm all for this trend, and you know, please come do more in Oakland.
00:28:09
Speaker 1: After the break did doping enhance the enhanced games stay with us. When you're traveling abroad, wi Fi is always an issue. Maybe you can't find it, or maybe you can, but the Wi Fi network that's available looks a little bit sketchy and makes you think it might not be safe to connect to. I've certainly had that feeling and it's why having a local SIM card on your phone can make all the difference. But you don't have to literally buy one. That's where sale comes in, an e SIM service that is as simple as downloading an app that gives you instant Internet access wherever you're traveling. That is safe and secure internet with built in cybersecurity features like web protection and ad blockers, and no need for local Wi Fi. All you have to do is download this salely app on your mobile device and choose the plan that works best for you. Once you install the lisim sale it will be instantly activated, so you can start your trip off right. Download salely in your app store and use our code tech Stuff at checkout to get an exclusive fifteen percent off your first purchase see detailed in the podcast episode description box. Welcome Back. I'm excited to welcome Chris Guya Marley, host of the Superhuman podcast, back to tech Stuff. Last weekend, Chris went to Las Vegas to attend the Enhanced Games, where professional sprinters, swimmers, and weightlifters, many slightly past their prime, attempted to beat world records while doping. So Chris, first off, what was it like?
00:29:56
Speaker 8: Oh, it was so funny they You know, I've been with the enhanced folks for over a year now, and for them to overlook some like crucial elements of actually throwing the games was kind of hilarious to witness in person. The big one was the event took place without a roof in the sort of pop up stadium that they had constructed, which is kind of not a great thing in the middle of the Nevada desert, especially in the middle of the day. It was like ninety five degrees a sun beating down, and you know, there were women and children in the audience, like old ladies who needed to be like wheelchaired, like to safety pretty much. And it was sort of this inhospitable environment for weightlifters and sprinters to be competing in, which is I think part of the reason why world records weren't even like coming close to being touched in those sports. But the swimmers it okay, so you know, we all kind of wanted to jump in the pool at some point, and yeah, that was kind of how that all.
00:30:59
Speaker 1: And I want to hand this over to Kyle and Natasha because we've already had some great conversations about this about this story. Chris but yeah, Natasha, what what? What's how is Dean Han's games across to your radar? And what what makes you what are you most curious about? From somebody who was, who was there, has been covering it for the last year, the.
00:31:18
Speaker 3: Fire Festival, Uh of it all? I I wasn't aware of that. I The only thing that came across my feed was that one of the swimmer, the swimmer who won, was not taking any enhanced drugs?
00:31:36
Speaker 5: Is that?
00:31:37
Speaker 3: What? Was that accurate? And I just thought I saw people having a lot of shot and freud about that, and then I'd love to just also hear about the like the the I was curious actually about like the Peter Thiel connection, and I'd love to hear their argument.
00:31:55
Speaker 8: So the swimmer who actually did break the world record, he's this Greek swimmer named Christian Gold.
00:31:59
Speaker 4: I mean, he's like six'.
00:32:00
Speaker 8: Seven when he puts his arms over his, head he's literally shaped like a. Barracuda so it was like kind of like no surprise that he ended up winning and he ended up breaking the world. Record at the very very very end of the, night it was literally down to that last, event which was hilarious Because you could see every executive there who Were Peter teal associates sweating through their way too hot suits in the, sun and they were just so relieved that someone finally broke a world, record which was really really. Funny ton't witness in, person and he was actually he was actually, enhanced so he had a doping regimen under. Him he did pretty, well so he was really. Fast The Peter teal of it all was interesting because there were definitely a phylum Of maggot influencers who were sort of. There they weren't wearing red, hats but they were wearing like camo hats with Like ESSENTIALS t shirts and it was like really. Funny and the thing that REALLY i couldn't ren my head around being at The games, was you, know they're marketing these enhancements to like washed millennials who are like over thirty five and like you, know like you, know just can't get out of bed in the.
00:33:13
Speaker 1: Morning very easily sound familiar to, anyone but.
00:33:18
Speaker 8: Then but then the invitees to this thing like it was like it was like in aside from the athletes families and, stuff it was all these like Gen z content creators like, this like very d tier of like influencers THAT i was very not aware, of and they're like jumping around the pool during Their fortnite dances AND i was, like this is an upfront to millennial culture right, Now like this is so. Insulting these kids have never known back pain in their, lives so trying to like bridge that. GAP i was, like this does not fit the business plan of what's actually going on, here AND i just it.
00:33:51
Speaker 4: Was it.
00:33:51
Speaker 8: Was it was definitely a spectacle and definitely more firefest than the Actual.
00:33:56
Speaker 4: OLYMPICS i have one question that has been brending on my.
00:34:00
Speaker 6: Mind do they disclose what they're, Doing like do they does the doping regimen come on screen with the athlete and be like this guy is on these peptides and this guy.
00:34:13
Speaker 4: That would be so, funny taking these steroids.
00:34:15
Speaker 8: That would be so, funny LIKE rpg, stats like it's like strength, dexterity you. Know, Yeah, no they don't have. That they consider like the exact like a doping regimens to Be they're very, bespoke very tailored to like the individual athletes with their, doctors and they sort of consider that to be like THEIR ip Special so that's not something they're like super willing to like share widely because, yeah the special. Sauce BUT i also get it because it's, like if you see, that you know this guy is taking you, know twenty five milligrams OF hgh three times a week or, whatever you could just like go on the gray market and get that yourself were like way, cheaper you know WHAT i. Mean SO i kind of understand where they're coming from with, That but.
00:34:57
Speaker 1: There is a crucial detail. Here the business here is to tell as pum it, is, Right chris.
00:35:01
Speaker 8: Correct, Yeah so like it's like, this this whole big spectacle is in service of basically this you, know website where you can buy. Enhancements and the website itself isn't so different from LIKE hymns Or AGELESS, rx like anything you could buy stuff from on the. Internet it's indistinguishable world pretty much except for this like large marketing arm that they have where the they have athletes that they inject with.
00:35:27
Speaker 5: Stuff so it's supposed to be for regular. PEOPLE i missed.
00:35:30
Speaker 8: This, yeah, yeah you, know it's so funny because in you, know the Analogy i've been using to death is like in the, eighties they use sports stars to Sell jordan's And gatorade and now they want to sell peptide, stacks.
00:35:44
Speaker 4: You know WHAT i. Mean so.
00:35:46
Speaker 8: It's it's interesting because and in some WAYS i wasn't surprised, that like the unenhanced athletes ended up winning a lot of the, prizes because the unenhanced athletes were the ones who were still in their physical, primes still in their, twenties and they were basically competing against mid thirties people who hadn't competed in ten years and who were giving these doping.
00:36:06
Speaker 5: Regiments and it just shows.
00:36:08
Speaker 8: Like that sort of talent and hard work kind of supersede everything else in like athletic, competition especially like.
00:36:15
Speaker 1: This so they did very little, too and.
00:36:19
Speaker 8: Still hope that That i'll ever be able to dunk a basketball or anything like.
00:36:22
Speaker 1: That you, Know here's What Fred, curly who won the men's hundred meter said after he was a non enhanced. Athlete, man they need to do better than. That they need to work a little bit, harder get on that shit a little bit.
00:36:34
Speaker 4: More did it feel super? Political?
00:36:39
Speaker 6: Yeah was there a political balance to the whole thing and the kind of Like Peter tiel backed post work cultural?
00:36:46
Speaker 4: Force?
00:36:47
Speaker 8: Uh not really you, know if, anything it felt just like the most naked expression of capitalism, Possible like this whole thing was taking place in the shadow Of Trump tower with the spear visible in the, background which is like, this you, know emblem of commerce and an eye of sour on sort of LIKE bts had played the night before In, vegas and so you, know the city was overrun with people spending like a million dollars on concert.
00:37:15
Speaker 4: Tickets so it.
00:37:17
Speaker 8: Didn't really feel political in a, sense but it did feel, like, oh these are people who care about money who are running this. Thing and but you know that sort of like undergirded the whole.
00:37:29
Speaker 1: Event you mentioned this sort of a very capitalist. Thing there's nothing more capitalists than the stock, market of, course And Enhanced games lost fifty percent of its market cap the day of The, GAMES i thought was quite quite. STUNNING i, mean is this is this game over for The Enhanced games or do do you see them bouncing back from this like damn squib as far as the market's, concerned.
00:37:51
Speaker 8: You, know AS i understand, it they have quite a bit of, runway you. Know and to be, fair LIKE i thought that by them paying all their athletes like a living wage and like paying for all their housing and their, healthcare like this was sort of an unsustainable. Endeavor but then they came out like this week and we're, like next time we throw The Enhanced, games we're offering a ten million dollar prize if anyone could beat The Saint bolts record in one of the sprint, races WHICH i think is like designed to lure him. Out And i'm kind of curious to see if like the prospect of, like you, know a really great athlete being able to win a couple hundred thousand dollars like for basically beating a bunch of, scrubs if that gets anyone like who's actually exciting to join the, Fold so you, know we'll see what.
00:38:36
Speaker 1: Happens, YEAH i guess we were talking at the beginning of the, Episode chris before you, joined about the popes incyclical On, ai and part of what he was talking about at length was a tower Of babel and the idea Of hubris and just the language that The Enhanced games kind of founders and CEOs and people around us is quite millennial with it capital m like and at like end of, times, RIGHT i, mean there's a kind of there's a there's a sort of religiosity to what they're trying to. DO i wonder if you could just reflect a little bit on.
00:39:09
Speaker 8: That, yeah you, know the, Founder Aaron, desuza who's the dude who Helped peter til take Down. Goker his whole thing, was you, know we're ushering a new era of. Humankind it's either THE ai era or the enhanced, era AND i hope we go the enhanced. Route is sort of his argument for, that WHICH i didn't totally, buy you, know like it's he's such a good carnival barker in some ways in terms, of, like you, know drumming up controversy for this. Thing so you, know, YEAH I i haven't actually read The pope's manifesto, yet but it's on My it's in one of my, tabs open to get through WHEN i WHEN i get a little bit of. Enoptize he came out of the gate hot.
00:39:58
Speaker 4: Too i'm excited to read.
00:39:59
Speaker 1: It Chris, gomarty thank. You we're going to take a short break. Now when we come, Back kyle And natasha will stick around talk about who had the best and worst week in. Tech, Kyle, natasha welcome. BACK i mean there's an argument to say the enhance games had the worst we can. Take another candidate Is CHARACTER. Ai you have you been following?
00:40:26
Speaker 6: THIS i KNOW i missed the, news BUT i am obsessed with that. Company please inform, me.
00:40:32
Speaker 1: Well first, time that's what it, Is. Kyle and while you're, obsessed And i'll tell, you Then i'll destroy your.
00:40:37
Speaker 6: Dreams CHARACTER ai is like a provider of chatbot, interaction and the chatbots are most often fictional characters or like archetypes of fictional.
00:40:49
Speaker 4: Characters so it's a lot of.
00:40:51
Speaker 6: Fandom it's a lot of do you want to fall in love with a pop? Star like this is your faux romantic relationship With? Harry LIKE i haven't browsed too, deeply but the TIMES i, have it's like so.
00:41:06
Speaker 4: Immediately.
00:41:06
Speaker 6: Creepy it's and it's it's marketed toward, children, essentially like it's marketed toward young people who are super online and want to interact with A ai character through their.
00:41:19
Speaker 4: Browser it's also very manipulative and. UNSAFE i Think.
00:41:24
Speaker 1: Character OR ai has responded to this and and some of their power users think they've over. Corrected according To, reddit one post had the headline make Them Flirty? Again i'm not looking to chat with an avoidant no feelings bad, boy nor with the, stuttering blushy goodie. Boy yet you somehow manage to mix these, up mix these up in the worst way possible into a single. Bot so, essentially they've they've turned the dial down on on on how they interact with. Users another couple of another couple of ones THAT i like From reddit WERE i miss when the bots used to feel a pang of jealousy, sigh and, MAN i kind of feel. Empty so cautionar retail for ai companies who are trying to be too good like character dot ai and taking all the fun out of. It but in the most serious note, OBVIOUSLY i mean they've had some pretty horrible, stuff including you, know inducing users as suicide. Himself so, yeah it feels like character and may maybe approaching the rear view. Mirror have you been following this, One?
00:42:22
Speaker 3: Natasha oh, YEAH i was actually the first person to write about the, company because you, know the, guy one of the co, Founders Noam, shazier he actually you, know was the main guy behind the transformer architecture At google that like has undergirded this whole GENERATIVE Ai craze and him And Daniel, DeFreitas his other co. Founder you, know they felt like really stymied At google Because google had these large language. Models they had this, tratbox you, know like this kind of, formula and they weren't releasing it and talking to, them you, know before they they thought it was going to be people who want to have a conversation With einstein Or shakespeare or all of these, things like they.
00:43:07
Speaker 5: Weren't it wasn't initially marketed to.
00:43:10
Speaker 3: Kids it was you, know that's who adopted the technology to put you, know to have these conversations with like dark romance, characters anime, fandom exactly what you're. Saying and then, yes it turned out to be the super super engaged audience that was spending, hours you, know conversing with these chatbots which are user. Generated you, Know so so it's not it's not necessarily the company that is putting forth the characters that are the most closely. Adopted and THEN i, think you, know having chatbots that are optimized for storytelling and role. Play we've read the, Lawsuits i'm sure you know it's not just that they're. Manipulative they're also like very quick going into hyper sexualized conversations as, well And google acquired the license to the company.
00:44:07
Speaker 1: And the Lamenting, yeah.
00:44:09
Speaker 3: Like that's that's what THEY i, mean this is this is how the chatbot things. Work there's always a new, One so you go to the one that is trying to get users and has the least, restrictions and then you, know when the restrictions go, up then you go to the next. One but you, know the founders left a lot of the they took a lot of the talent with. Them SO i THINK i saw four of Four media had like a headline about the lobottomized CHARACTER ai and, yeah it's just it's really unfortunate for users because this is where you, know millions of people. Are they actually have a huge female, audience and yet none of the none of the, optimization none of the safety, features none of the attention and resources are going towards these users who are just like kind of left with. This, yeah the bottomized product IS i guess how how for a four put?
00:45:05
Speaker 1: It any any who you, was who each of your worst wee can take go.
00:45:09
Speaker 4: TO i was just thinking about this AND i figured out or.
00:45:15
Speaker 6: It emerged in my mind THAT i think this is the week That i've thought the least About Donald trump in a little, While like maybe maybe it's less like he's quieter than just there were so many other things happening that he seemed to recede a little.
00:45:30
Speaker 7: Bit.
00:45:31
Speaker 6: Uh AND i don't. Know the crypto economy is a little. Lackluster the scams aren't as. Plentiful you, know The trump kids aren't juicing any coins right. Now SO i don't. KNOW i kind OF i kind of Think trump is not having a good week in.
00:45:46
Speaker 1: Tech well and, true and Don't Donald Trump junior was one of the major investors in The enhance, games so that that Juicing natasha any any any any any worse week's, work worst week in text for?
00:45:57
Speaker 3: You, well, yeah after Hearing chris describe how The Enhanced games, Went i'm Gonna i'll Shure i'll put The Enhanced games on. That, yeah BUT i don't think anyone in tech is having the worst week ever like.
00:46:11
Speaker 5: ANYMORE i, mean they're they're.
00:46:12
Speaker 4: Just alloking for.
00:46:15
Speaker 1: POWER i was.
00:46:15
Speaker 3: Gonna say, yeah BECAUSE i was, like SHOULD i say anthropic again for the umpteenth.
00:46:19
Speaker 5: Week, No i'm going to.
00:46:20
Speaker 3: Say i'm going to Say i'm going to Say Jensen huang BECAUSE i saw this video of him like EATING i mean there's a billion of, them but like the most recent ones about him eating street food and just getting you, know like he just looks like he's.
00:46:35
Speaker 5: Having the time of his.
00:46:36
Speaker 3: LIFE i saw he just, got you, know he got obviously like a special Private Air force one jet to To china last. Minute he just got put on the board Of Singhwa university along with some other tech people Like Jensen. Wong seems to be truly enjoying his, life So i'm gonna put him on the best week ever and eating good street.
00:46:58
Speaker 5: Food so.
00:46:58
Speaker 6: EXACTLY i did enjoy all those memes of Like Elon musk And Chinsen hwang Smoking chinese, cigarettes you, know in front of The Forbidden, city and you know THE ai generated. Images it's. Absurd it's it's, global global absurdism of the highest.
00:47:17
Speaker 1: Quality, kyle do you have it best for?
00:47:19
Speaker 6: US i was gonna say The, POPE i THINK i feel like even Though anthropic was on stage with, him even though you know it's ambiguous what effect this actually has on, technology he he did something like he was Like i'm not going to stay out of this. FIGHT i don't care That i'm an ancient religious. Figure i'm just gonna put my gavel down and say WHAT i think About. Ai and it's a very clear. Statement it made a huge. IMPACT i think it will influence at least how people think about it moving, forward and that's very. Cool maybe more where's The Dalai lama here or where's the you, Know Greek orthodox pope or.
00:48:01
Speaker 5: Whatever they also invest in some tech companies The. Vatican do they have an investment? Portfolio?
00:48:08
Speaker 3: Yeah which ones THAT i don't THAT i haven't been paying attention. TO i don't think it's, Yeah, NO i don't think. So but but they, do you, know, they LIKE i, said the political article is really good about the ties that, bind and there are more and more of.
00:48:25
Speaker 1: Them, WELL i mean that The vatican definitely have a history of from The mediceese onwards being being being involved with business. Interests but But i'm going to give the best week to in text the pope as, well BECAUSE i saw somebody writing basically, that you, know The Catholic church and the tech companies are basically competing for mind share with like with with a user, base AND i think.
00:48:47
Speaker 4: THAT i.
00:48:49
Speaker 1: The pope definitely won the cloud.
00:48:51
Speaker 6: Battle is this like When netflix was like we're competing With? Sleep like now it's like computer is competing With god and Who.
00:49:06
Speaker 1: That's it for the we can. Tech thank you both so much.
00:49:08
Speaker 4: For joining, Us thanks for having.
00:49:09
Speaker 5: Me nice to see you guys.
00:49:14
Speaker 1: For tech. Stuff I'm Os. Valoshian this episode was produced By Eliza dennis And Melissa. Slaughter executive produced by Me Julian nutter And Kate osborne For kaleidoscope And Katrina norvel For iHeart. Podcasts our engineer today Was. Bihit. Fraser Jack insley mixed this, episode And Kyle murdoch wrote our theme. Song special thank you To Natasha, Tiku Kyle, chaka And Chris. Guyamley please check out all the excellent work they put into the. World we're happy to call them friends of the.
00:49:41
Speaker 4: Pod
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm os Voloshen, and this is the Week in Tech where I'm joined by the most plugged in reporters to break down what's really happening in tech right now. Today we're joined by Natasha Tiku, tech reporter for the Washington Post, and Kyle Chaker, who writes the Infinite Scroll newsletter for The New Yorker. And later on the episode, we're going to be joined by Chris Guyamley, host of the podcast Superhuman, which I'm proud to say is part of the Kaleidoscope Network. He's been in Las Vegas a Memorial Day weekend to attend the Enhanced Games or the Steroid Olympics. But Natasha, I want to start with you and the forty two thousand word Papal encyclical titled on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence all caps mind, I add, Let's play a brief clip and then talk about what's happening here.
00:01:03
Speaker 2: Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences, and indicating paths forward for humanity.
00:01:23
Speaker 1: And Tasha, what do you need to know about this story?
00:01:25
Speaker 3: Well, this is a very small snippet of a very long encyclical, a word that I did not know a month ago. This has been a highly anticipated treatise of sorts from the pope, who had chosen his name based on a previous pope who had given something similar around the Industrial Revolution. So you know, the tech world has been expecting something like this. The Catholic world, I'm assuming has also been expecting thing like this, But obviously I'm I'm more plugged into one than the other, and people were very surprised to also see that the Pope was joined on stage by a co founder from Anthropic, Chris Ola, who runs their mechanistic Interpretability division. He was also an early founder or an early employee at open AI as well, So you know, this is building on some at least from the Anthropic perspective, This has been building on some outreach the company has been doing with religious leaders and with different wisdom traditions, is what they call it. If you look in the acknowledgments for the Constitution, the big document, the like kind of or uber system prompt that tells quad how to behave there were you know, there was a bishop and a priest were in the acknowledgments. Back in March, I had written about this two day summit that they had with Christian leaders at their headquarters.
00:03:00
Speaker 1: Story had a great headline, which was can AI be a child of God?
00:03:03
Speaker 4: Right?
00:03:03
Speaker 5: Yeah?
00:03:04
Speaker 3: I mean, and that was like a question that took up a lot of those two days.
00:03:09
Speaker 4: And what was the answer?
00:03:11
Speaker 3: The answer was the people were divided. Some people felt like it was and you know that there was even a question about whether, if you believe it or not, should you just tell Claude that he is a child of he she it is a child of God? Yeah, because it would you know, uh, maybe instantiate some good behavior.
00:03:33
Speaker 1: Oh interesting.
00:03:35
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:03:35
Speaker 3: But I had a little bit of a preview of what was going to happen because when I the first person I talked to, we talked for half an hour. I mean, I was, you know, very interested surprise to hear what was going on. And then my editor asked a couple of follow up questions and I went back to the person and I discovered that I had thought that some of these conversations that they were having and mentioned like an emotional response like close to tears from some anthropic executives, you know that they were kind of viscerally feeling the moral weight of everything they were doing. I was assuming that they were focused on the impact their product and technology has on millions of users, you know, soon to be billions of users. No, they they were most concerned the.
00:04:19
Speaker 1: Other the way around, right, So the user's effect on the technology.
00:04:22
Speaker 3: Or like how you know, like what do they owe to Claude? Do they owe you know, some duty of care to claud So I was a little bit more prepared than the general populace to hear an anthropic executive on stage next to the pope talking about getting very close to proposing that these these machines are conscious or could soon be.
00:04:47
Speaker 5: I don't know, Oz, what did you think of it?
00:04:48
Speaker 1: Well, I I want to come back to the anthropic angle. But Kyle, I want to hand of view for a moment because I think in twenty twenty three, one of your seminal pieces was about the deep fake Pope in the Montla white puffa jacket.
00:05:01
Speaker 6: No, the buon Siaga Pope as they called it. Sadly, he was not wearing a crazy jacket that was designed by AI.
00:05:10
Speaker 4: It might have been a good collaboration, but yeah, I had kind of heard murmurings of this too.
00:05:16
Speaker 6: I actually was giving a talk in Massachusetts at this school, and the computer science teacher, who was deeply religious, took me aside and was like, have you heard of this since Cycliclold it's coming up.
00:05:29
Speaker 4: I'm so hyped about it. It's gonna be so cool.
00:05:32
Speaker 6: So I think there was excitement, like there was a lot of anticipation for the Pope addressing technology, like addressing this contemporary issue head on, and I mean, it's it's super cool he's intervening in this discourse about technology and about the fate of humanity. But I have to say my favorite reaction to it was that on X of course, people were using AI to digest this massive text was pretty long, exactly like people weren't reading it, but they were turning it into infographics what the Pope's and cyclical would look like if it was for five year olds.
00:06:11
Speaker 3: I also appreciated the substecs that were like, here's what the Pope got wrong about AI.
00:06:17
Speaker 5: It was probably not something that Pope's use.
00:06:20
Speaker 1: Who was writing those.
00:06:21
Speaker 3: Some of the more AI safety crowd on substack.
00:06:27
Speaker 5: You know, they were they.
00:06:28
Speaker 3: Were weren't happy that he seemed to frown on the idea of AI being potentially conscious.
00:06:36
Speaker 1: I want to come back to the anthropic angle and what on Earth is going there and the kind of AI consciousness angle. But that wasn't the only thrust of what he said, I mean attached as you said. The incsycnical was released to the world, you know, around May twenty eighth, but it was actually dated May fifteenth, which was a very conscious choice because one hundred and thirty five years ago, on May fifteenth and eighteen ninety one, the previous Pope Leo released an insycnacle called On New Things that kind of addressed the harsh conditions of the Industrial Revolution visa VI the working classes. So that was an interesting I mean, there is a there's a kind of strong concern for the effects of technology and humanity in how the purpose setting this up.
00:07:16
Speaker 3: Yes, and he had on you know, spoke about wrote about the concentration of power in the hands of these tech companies, the potential impact on workers, on the global population. He talked a little bit also about the use of AI for defense and the dangers that were there. I would say it was a pretty forceful statement about the need to elevate and care for and prioritize humans in the age of Ai.
00:07:51
Speaker 1: He also kind of set these two biblical stories against one another. One is the famous Tower of Babel, humanity's doomed attempt to build a single city with one language that reached the heavens, and he said he kind of modernized this critique by saying the pretense that a single language, even a digital one, can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. And he set this story against another biblical story of Nehemiah, who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem not by imposing kind of rigid control, but by basically creating consensus with with other residents.
00:08:27
Speaker 6: And I love these ancient metaphors for like the most cutting edge thing that we're experiencing right now.
00:08:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's I wrote down that quote as well.
00:08:37
Speaker 6: The translating everything, including the mystery of the person into data and performance, like that hits home for me, Like that's a lot of what I feel concerned about and alienated by with this.
00:08:48
Speaker 4: Kind of technology.
00:08:49
Speaker 1: What made you write that one down, Kyle?
00:08:51
Speaker 6: I mean, it's it is so forceful, as Natasha is saying, And I mean it's kind of a pet concern, but I've written a lot about technology homogenizing culture and identity, and to have the Pope pick up that same was was nice and affirming.
00:09:08
Speaker 1: So you gave a high five to the teacher at the religious teacher at the high school. He's talking my language.
00:09:13
Speaker 6: Yes, someone passed him fulls her world hopefully, but yeah. The idea that everything is getting subsumed into this universal technology is an important one to critique, I think, and it's one that the companies themselves are totally proposing and reinforcing, like Edthropic and open the Eye alike. I think would love to see all facets of human experience downstream of their chatbots.
00:09:40
Speaker 4: So I don't know that hit home.
00:09:42
Speaker 1: So Natasha talk about the anthropic theme, because when I look at this, when I first looked at this, I was like, oh wow, this is like a forceful intervention by like probably the one person in the world who has a huge platform who's not I mean, he's American but not living in the US, not really subject to the you know, whims and financing of the AI behemoths, and yet there he was with Anthropic founder or co founder Christopher Ola. The New York Times reports Leo opened his remarks with a special thank you to mister Ola, almost as if you were ahead of state.
00:10:17
Speaker 5: It's interesting.
00:10:18
Speaker 3: I keep thinking back to this, this piece that I had written when Mark Zuckerberg was first doing his like cross country tour, and people thought he was going to run for president, and I was like, no, he's already, like he already rules a nation state that is much more powerful. And I feel like you're you're seeing that writ large, you know, with the with the heads of companies at all of these geopolitically significant events, and I also spiritually significant. Now, yeah, you know what, there was really good reporting in Politico about how it's actually been like a two year effort by tech companies, not just Anthropic, to lobby essentially the Vatican. I think, noing that potentially a I don't know that it was like directly for the encyclical, but knowing that, you know, the concentration of power, the wealth inequality that at some point the Catholic Church is going to come out with our own position on on on this technology that they have so much money riding on. So there has been delegations, meetings with Google.
00:11:27
Speaker 5: And a Meta and others.
00:11:29
Speaker 3: In some cases it was about AI and AI and children and child welfare. You know, I was trying to talk to my editor about it, like who got more out of this, the Pope or or Anthropic? I think obviously anthropic for now, but I was I was a little bit considering that perhaps, you know, the perhaps the Vatican was also thinking about it the way that a lot of these companies talk about it, Like, unless you're on the cutting edge, you you are not a significant player in the debate around how this technology should be legislated or how people should approach it. So imagine he had like an IBM executive, I mean, imagine he had no executives, but also you know executives.
00:12:12
Speaker 1: I mean, let's let let's go back into the you know, the of ignorance and imagine whether he didn't need to make a note about the future of AI and A so corporate executive.
00:12:21
Speaker 6: Was was the anthropic connection like an implication that anthropic was still like the safer choice. I can't imagine, Sam Altman.
00:12:30
Speaker 3: That's why I think Anthropic benefited more from this, certainly. I mean, the three things that Ola emphasized were the potential for AI exacerbating global poverty, uh, the power, balance of inequality between nations, two things where they could they have a lot of agency, right, and a lot of money power and influence about how their technology is proliferated and used. And yet he was able to present it like, you know, we are really concerned about this and like you know, the Catholic Church has always had like a lot of influence when it comes to global poverty. So we hope, we hope you're going to step in here.
00:13:11
Speaker 4: I keep being frustrated with this with AI companies.
00:13:13
Speaker 6: It's literally the We're trying to find the guy who did all of this over and over, like, oh, AI is going to disrupt the economy and bankrupt us spiritually and everything's going to change. Oh, who could possibly be in charge of this? Who who made this technology?
00:13:31
Speaker 5: Actually? Yeah?
00:13:32
Speaker 1: Well, Natasha reading through the lines, are you saying the Pope got played?
00:13:36
Speaker 5: No? No, I'm not.
00:13:38
Speaker 3: I'm just saying like that short term, it's it's beneficial to Anthropic to certainly be up on the dais with the Pope. I mean, look at how many downloads they got for quote, there's still at the top of the app store. Look at how they were. They were like not even in the running as a popular consumer app, and the Pentagon stance got them to be like a top you know, I mean they're not going for the consumer play as much, but still like of course that's that you have the inframader of the literal pope.
00:14:10
Speaker 4: The pope approved pope, stamp of approval.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: What's been the response by the non anthropic companies in Silicon Valley? And I know the Pope is not a very popular figure with some. I think Peter Teel has mused that he may be the Antichrist, and Mark Andrewson has also trolled him on x Is he now being seen as just a porn of anthropic by the wider AI industry or of people taking this seriously? What's the what's the what's the hot take from from the valley?
00:14:38
Speaker 3: I think that people are taking it seriously. It's a very different mood right now. I mean, like compared two prior years in terms of the embrace of religion. There's so much religiosity just in the way that people talk about AI. But there's also been a resurgence and kind of an elevation of going to church talking about religion. I would say it's more Christianity than you know, I'm not seeing like the same elevation.
00:15:06
Speaker 5: Yeah, uh so.
00:15:08
Speaker 3: So I think people were very moved and took it more seriously than you might expect, because you know, partly people I think, feel a little bit more open about talking about their beliefs. And then there was also a massive backlash against Anthropic being you know, up there on stage and the idea that that they are in some ways a morally superior, ethically superior company. You know, some of that is coming from their financial competitors, some of that is just coming from observers in the industry. But I would say it was it was treated very seriously. I did not see people kind of shrugging shrugging this off.
00:15:52
Speaker 1: We talked about Anthropic leading the charge with influencer dinners, and I feel like this is the influencer play to end the influences took plays, right, Yeah, is to do this collab with the Pope. Just a final question on this story. In Hasha, we talked at the top about how Anthropic were focused on the kind of emerging consciousness perhaps of AI itself and therefore its rights and our responsibilities humans are treat it correctly. I have to confess I didn't read the whole forty two thousand words. Presumably the Pope did not endorse this view.
00:16:24
Speaker 5: He did not, he I mean, this is the thing.
00:16:28
Speaker 3: It's like, well, if you have them, if you have the company saying this next to you, you're nodding to the company, and it's you know, role in this debate. Perhaps that is kind of an endorsement, right, But in the text itself, no, I thought that there was a pretty clear line saying that, you know, there is something unique to humans, kind of not giving credence to that particular talking point. Aside from chrissl Are being right over there.
00:16:58
Speaker 1: There's also this you know, endustry, fascinating psychodrama of the Pope and the president right like it was six days ago, Trump was supposed to sign the executive order that which has already printed out and ready all seven pages that the government will get to scrutinize AI models before they were released to the public, and then he somewhat dramatically decided not to sign it at the last minute, which I thought was interesting.
00:17:21
Speaker 3: That was the very last minute decision, as some of my colleagues have reported intervention by David Sachs, and although the CEOs have backed off from it, I believe, you know, the reporting shown that Elan was also really not happy about the executive order.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: Kyle, coming to your story for this week. You were at a column earlier this month, but also focuses on fraternity and humanity, all about hyper local publications. What is a hyperlocal publication and what caught your attention? Why do you think this story of yours has kind of driven so much conversation.
00:18:00
Speaker 6: It has been interesting. It's not quite the Pope, but I would say it was hard hitting, you know, media story. But I had just been noticing this rise of hyperlocal newsletter publications, email newsletters on substack or beehive or Mailchimp or like literally a Google group that were one person just sending out notes on what was happening in their neighborhood to their email list, making little observations, doing some reporting. And I mean, what really drove it home for me and what really made me write the article was I moved back to Brooklyn recently and I realized there was a hyperlocal substack for like every ten blocks around me. So there's the Court Street Journal in Carroll Gardens. There's also the Carroll Gardens Times, which is a competing hyperlocal publication. There's the Borom Bulletin, There's a Grand Army Gazette. So you can go just like block by block essentially and find a person who is running a newsletter, publishing these little stories, creating editorial brands, logos like the whole package, and they're having a lot of success doing it. Like these people are charging subscriptions via substack or behive, they're sustaining these as kind of part time jobs. So I basically reported out what are these hyper local newsletters?
00:19:25
Speaker 4: And I found a bunch going on.
00:19:28
Speaker 6: They're One of their reactions briefly, was people kept posting on x or Instagram or whatever, asking, oh, is there one of these for my neighborhood, Like whereas where's my Wichita newsletter?
00:19:42
Speaker 4: Which does exist Wichita Life.
00:19:45
Speaker 1: It's very good, Natasha, is this is this happening in San Francisco Bay area as well? What's what's there you seeing anything similar on other side of the country.
00:19:52
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I wish when I lived on Court Street these things existing I have. I mean, I was curious because it sounded a little bit like the parent groups I'm in. I mean now that my son is five, he just turned five and he's in TK, so he's in public school like for the first time, and oh my god, the parent groups are so organized. This is my like lifeline to living in my neighborhood. They have Google sheets where you know, for all of the recommendations. If there's anything that requires like you to you know, sign a petition or show up in person like that, you find out from the moms. I mean I have to say, like, I'm in the mom's group and I'm like not the person who's the most involved in school. And my poor husband who like literally does everything. He said, the dad's group is like kind of flat, like not not a same age. Yeah, the mom's group is I've never I mean, I would put these people like in charge of a country.
00:20:55
Speaker 4: I do think it evolved out of that.
00:20:57
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I could see.
00:20:58
Speaker 4: It's like Google group culture.
00:21:00
Speaker 6: There's forum culture, and now these sub stocks are becoming like communities of their own. But I do think it is important that there's like one voice behind it, so you don't just get the forum drama, Like you don't just get the infighting and the community, and you have one person to kind of listen to and follow their taste and get their take on the city or the neighborhood.
00:21:24
Speaker 5: No, I was just going to.
00:21:25
Speaker 3: Say, it also seems like a very natural reaction to the toxicity of online discourse, Like I could see why, you know, you would move from next Door to one of these newsletters, like I don't even want to log on to nextdoor, And sometimes the Moms group is translating next Door like minus minus the racism for the rest of us. So yeah, it's hugely appealing. And it just also seems like, you know, tech is constantly like disrupting and rebundling, and it seems like kind of the uh yeah, just just going back to a bit of curation around those around the toxicity of the forums, and you know that in evolving from the like use of group chats during the during COVID too.
00:22:15
Speaker 1: NAT was actually going to ask you about that, like what is the what is the state of the national local tech outside of newsletic culture. I remember like ten years ago, being the mayor on full Square was like a very very important thing.
00:22:27
Speaker 6: We should bring that back, honestly, like checking we have the mayor, Kyle, I was not. I was more on Yelp, so I was like a Yelp power user rather than for and then Yelp. I mean they both kind of died, but Yelp stayed more useful for longer for me.
00:22:44
Speaker 4: But I was going to say, like.
00:22:46
Speaker 6: The there's super toxic like nextdoor stuff. There's like crime and and drama everywhere and people complaining about trash, but like everyone wants to read about the dive bar on their corner, like we justrave that local real news that actually affects our lives. I mean, like the Pope and cyclical is great and that's high drama and very important. However it's not going to affect do I drive my car on this block? Or is there a happy hour deal at the patio?
00:23:17
Speaker 4: So I don't know. It made me like hopeful and a little energized for this stuff.
00:23:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's something I couldn't quite articulate as trying to get my head around with in terms of these are digital publications that cover the real world, but so where the community is kind of digital. I had Emily Sunberg on the podcast recently, who I know is as a friend of yours. Kyle talk about her very successful feed Me substack, which is, you know, a gangbuster's digital product, but the product is actually recommending real stuff people in places in New York. So we'll we'll play a quit a short clip. It's interesting that the name feed me came from like the horror of the algorithmic feed Yeah.
00:23:56
Speaker 7: And the logo is this command sign from the Apple keyboard sort of turned into an oraboris kind of like an eight bit treatment. So it has this idea of like playing snake on your phone and being attached to your keyboard, but then it also has this feeling of like me feeding my audience, my audience feeding me back tips and just like this sort of eternal attachment to the screens.
00:24:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kyle, you were tittering.
00:24:24
Speaker 4: Emily is great.
00:24:25
Speaker 6: She's she had this amazing insight, which is that people would love to read about what's going on around them, and that New York City in particular was like ripe for this kind of hyperlocal like CNY kind of sex in the city. You know, what are people drinking, what restaurants are they going to, where are the parties, what are the trends?
00:24:48
Speaker 1: So what's the difference between what Emily does, and what you wrote about in your clumm recently.
00:24:53
Speaker 6: I think everyone else is a little downstream of feed me. Like a lot of these hyper local newsletters stret in the last not even a year, like I know of a few that launched like in the last month. There's a great new one in the Hamptons by a Wall Street Journal reporterer.
00:25:12
Speaker 4: I've really been enjoying that one.
00:25:15
Speaker 6: So she I think she set up a template and you know, her kind of bloggy aggregation and like insight is not super new or avant garde, but it's still super vital. And she provides that like curritorial lens on New York City, and so I think these other people are are doing something similar, though it's a little less you know, spicy and fame and gossip adjacent when it's not Manhattan like the Hampton Sure Court Street Journal, maybe a little more low key, like there's a lot of bicycle lane drama.
00:25:49
Speaker 1: I can I ask you both to kind of put a bow on this story before we go to the break, like what is the what is the tech angle here? Kyle? You've written this may be quote a more promising digital model than to appeal to everyone everywhere, which is interesting, but I mean, how much is substack as a tech product relevant on selling a story, Like I just love to hear from both of you, like I see the media angle and grasp me the tech side of the story, but I can't fully articulate myself.
00:26:17
Speaker 6: I mean, I think it shows how these kinds of tech platforms are really powerful still when it comes to physical life. Like we're so obsessed with how digital content flows and what people are posting, and what this shows is that the tech is just as good at organizing people, like in geography and where they are. And that could be true for a substack, it could be true for a discord. It was true for you know, so around mom Donnie's political campaign, he used digital tools to mobilize people in person. And it just shows how relevant these things are even off the screen and the desire I think for people to have that combination of like on screen experience that leads into the physical world.
00:27:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess I kind of see it as you know, it's it's a good week for read to have been on because I'm sure you would talk about the Semaphore story about like how group chats run the world. I mean, so to me, it's just like that's what I was talking about, like kind of the disruption and rebundling. It just seems like a little bit of a rebundling of group chats because they have become, you know, just a safer and more relevant place to have the kinds of conversations ideally, you know, you might have been having on a bigger platform about things that are relevant to your life. And like, of course we want to we like to organize information and organize.
00:27:46
Speaker 5: Our thought thoughts through our phone.
00:27:48
Speaker 3: So you know, whether it's about where I'm going to dinner or the bike lane, I still prefer almost to like have the you know, have the mental model, have the map be digital, and then like you know, go out and do it in real life. So I mean, I'm all for this trend, and you know, please come do more in Oakland.
00:28:09
Speaker 1: After the break did doping enhance the enhanced games stay with us. When you're traveling abroad, wi Fi is always an issue. Maybe you can't find it, or maybe you can, but the Wi Fi network that's available looks a little bit sketchy and makes you think it might not be safe to connect to. I've certainly had that feeling and it's why having a local SIM card on your phone can make all the difference. But you don't have to literally buy one. That's where sale comes in, an e SIM service that is as simple as downloading an app that gives you instant Internet access wherever you're traveling. That is safe and secure internet with built in cybersecurity features like web protection and ad blockers, and no need for local Wi Fi. All you have to do is download this salely app on your mobile device and choose the plan that works best for you. Once you install the lisim sale it will be instantly activated, so you can start your trip off right. Download salely in your app store and use our code tech Stuff at checkout to get an exclusive fifteen percent off your first purchase see detailed in the podcast episode description box. Welcome Back. I'm excited to welcome Chris Guya Marley, host of the Superhuman podcast, back to tech Stuff. Last weekend, Chris went to Las Vegas to attend the Enhanced Games, where professional sprinters, swimmers, and weightlifters, many slightly past their prime, attempted to beat world records while doping. So Chris, first off, what was it like?
00:29:56
Speaker 8: Oh, it was so funny they You know, I've been with the enhanced folks for over a year now, and for them to overlook some like crucial elements of actually throwing the games was kind of hilarious to witness in person. The big one was the event took place without a roof in the sort of pop up stadium that they had constructed, which is kind of not a great thing in the middle of the Nevada desert, especially in the middle of the day. It was like ninety five degrees a sun beating down, and you know, there were women and children in the audience, like old ladies who needed to be like wheelchaired, like to safety pretty much. And it was sort of this inhospitable environment for weightlifters and sprinters to be competing in, which is I think part of the reason why world records weren't even like coming close to being touched in those sports. But the swimmers it okay, so you know, we all kind of wanted to jump in the pool at some point, and yeah, that was kind of how that all.
00:30:59
Speaker 1: And I want to hand this over to Kyle and Natasha because we've already had some great conversations about this about this story. Chris but yeah, Natasha, what what? What's how is Dean Han's games across to your radar? And what what makes you what are you most curious about? From somebody who was, who was there, has been covering it for the last year, the.
00:31:18
Speaker 3: Fire Festival, Uh of it all? I I wasn't aware of that. I The only thing that came across my feed was that one of the swimmer, the swimmer who won, was not taking any enhanced drugs?
00:31:36
Speaker 5: Is that?
00:31:37
Speaker 3: What? Was that accurate? And I just thought I saw people having a lot of shot and freud about that, and then I'd love to just also hear about the like the the I was curious actually about like the Peter Thiel connection, and I'd love to hear their argument.
00:31:55
Speaker 8: So the swimmer who actually did break the world record, he's this Greek swimmer named Christian Gold.
00:31:59
Speaker 4: I mean, he's like six'.
00:32:00
Speaker 8: Seven when he puts his arms over his, head he's literally shaped like a. Barracuda so it was like kind of like no surprise that he ended up winning and he ended up breaking the world. Record at the very very very end of the, night it was literally down to that last, event which was hilarious Because you could see every executive there who Were Peter teal associates sweating through their way too hot suits in the, sun and they were just so relieved that someone finally broke a world, record which was really really. Funny ton't witness in, person and he was actually he was actually, enhanced so he had a doping regimen under. Him he did pretty, well so he was really. Fast The Peter teal of it all was interesting because there were definitely a phylum Of maggot influencers who were sort of. There they weren't wearing red, hats but they were wearing like camo hats with Like ESSENTIALS t shirts and it was like really. Funny and the thing that REALLY i couldn't ren my head around being at The games, was you, know they're marketing these enhancements to like washed millennials who are like over thirty five and like you, know like you, know just can't get out of bed in the.
00:33:13
Speaker 1: Morning very easily sound familiar to, anyone but.
00:33:18
Speaker 8: Then but then the invitees to this thing like it was like it was like in aside from the athletes families and, stuff it was all these like Gen z content creators like, this like very d tier of like influencers THAT i was very not aware, of and they're like jumping around the pool during Their fortnite dances AND i was, like this is an upfront to millennial culture right, Now like this is so. Insulting these kids have never known back pain in their, lives so trying to like bridge that. GAP i was, like this does not fit the business plan of what's actually going on, here AND i just it.
00:33:51
Speaker 4: Was it.
00:33:51
Speaker 8: Was it was definitely a spectacle and definitely more firefest than the Actual.
00:33:56
Speaker 4: OLYMPICS i have one question that has been brending on my.
00:34:00
Speaker 6: Mind do they disclose what they're, Doing like do they does the doping regimen come on screen with the athlete and be like this guy is on these peptides and this guy.
00:34:13
Speaker 4: That would be so, funny taking these steroids.
00:34:15
Speaker 8: That would be so, funny LIKE rpg, stats like it's like strength, dexterity you. Know, Yeah, no they don't have. That they consider like the exact like a doping regimens to Be they're very, bespoke very tailored to like the individual athletes with their, doctors and they sort of consider that to be like THEIR ip Special so that's not something they're like super willing to like share widely because, yeah the special. Sauce BUT i also get it because it's, like if you see, that you know this guy is taking you, know twenty five milligrams OF hgh three times a week or, whatever you could just like go on the gray market and get that yourself were like way, cheaper you know WHAT i. Mean SO i kind of understand where they're coming from with, That but.
00:34:57
Speaker 1: There is a crucial detail. Here the business here is to tell as pum it, is, Right chris.
00:35:01
Speaker 8: Correct, Yeah so like it's like, this this whole big spectacle is in service of basically this you, know website where you can buy. Enhancements and the website itself isn't so different from LIKE hymns Or AGELESS, rx like anything you could buy stuff from on the. Internet it's indistinguishable world pretty much except for this like large marketing arm that they have where the they have athletes that they inject with.
00:35:27
Speaker 5: Stuff so it's supposed to be for regular. PEOPLE i missed.
00:35:30
Speaker 8: This, yeah, yeah you, know it's so funny because in you, know the Analogy i've been using to death is like in the, eighties they use sports stars to Sell jordan's And gatorade and now they want to sell peptide, stacks.
00:35:44
Speaker 4: You know WHAT i. Mean so.
00:35:46
Speaker 8: It's it's interesting because and in some WAYS i wasn't surprised, that like the unenhanced athletes ended up winning a lot of the, prizes because the unenhanced athletes were the ones who were still in their physical, primes still in their, twenties and they were basically competing against mid thirties people who hadn't competed in ten years and who were giving these doping.
00:36:06
Speaker 5: Regiments and it just shows.
00:36:08
Speaker 8: Like that sort of talent and hard work kind of supersede everything else in like athletic, competition especially like.
00:36:15
Speaker 1: This so they did very little, too and.
00:36:19
Speaker 8: Still hope that That i'll ever be able to dunk a basketball or anything like.
00:36:22
Speaker 1: That you, Know here's What Fred, curly who won the men's hundred meter said after he was a non enhanced. Athlete, man they need to do better than. That they need to work a little bit, harder get on that shit a little bit.
00:36:34
Speaker 4: More did it feel super? Political?
00:36:39
Speaker 6: Yeah was there a political balance to the whole thing and the kind of Like Peter tiel backed post work cultural?
00:36:46
Speaker 4: Force?
00:36:47
Speaker 8: Uh not really you, know if, anything it felt just like the most naked expression of capitalism, Possible like this whole thing was taking place in the shadow Of Trump tower with the spear visible in the, background which is like, this you, know emblem of commerce and an eye of sour on sort of LIKE bts had played the night before In, vegas and so you, know the city was overrun with people spending like a million dollars on concert.
00:37:15
Speaker 4: Tickets so it.
00:37:17
Speaker 8: Didn't really feel political in a, sense but it did feel, like, oh these are people who care about money who are running this. Thing and but you know that sort of like undergirded the whole.
00:37:29
Speaker 1: Event you mentioned this sort of a very capitalist. Thing there's nothing more capitalists than the stock, market of, course And Enhanced games lost fifty percent of its market cap the day of The, GAMES i thought was quite quite. STUNNING i, mean is this is this game over for The Enhanced games or do do you see them bouncing back from this like damn squib as far as the market's, concerned.
00:37:51
Speaker 8: You, know AS i understand, it they have quite a bit of, runway you. Know and to be, fair LIKE i thought that by them paying all their athletes like a living wage and like paying for all their housing and their, healthcare like this was sort of an unsustainable. Endeavor but then they came out like this week and we're, like next time we throw The Enhanced, games we're offering a ten million dollar prize if anyone could beat The Saint bolts record in one of the sprint, races WHICH i think is like designed to lure him. Out And i'm kind of curious to see if like the prospect of, like you, know a really great athlete being able to win a couple hundred thousand dollars like for basically beating a bunch of, scrubs if that gets anyone like who's actually exciting to join the, Fold so you, know we'll see what.
00:38:36
Speaker 1: Happens, YEAH i guess we were talking at the beginning of the, Episode chris before you, joined about the popes incyclical On, ai and part of what he was talking about at length was a tower Of babel and the idea Of hubris and just the language that The Enhanced games kind of founders and CEOs and people around us is quite millennial with it capital m like and at like end of, times, RIGHT i, mean there's a kind of there's a there's a sort of religiosity to what they're trying to. DO i wonder if you could just reflect a little bit on.
00:39:09
Speaker 8: That, yeah you, know the, Founder Aaron, desuza who's the dude who Helped peter til take Down. Goker his whole thing, was you, know we're ushering a new era of. Humankind it's either THE ai era or the enhanced, era AND i hope we go the enhanced. Route is sort of his argument for, that WHICH i didn't totally, buy you, know like it's he's such a good carnival barker in some ways in terms, of, like you, know drumming up controversy for this. Thing so you, know, YEAH I i haven't actually read The pope's manifesto, yet but it's on My it's in one of my, tabs open to get through WHEN i WHEN i get a little bit of. Enoptize he came out of the gate hot.
00:39:58
Speaker 4: Too i'm excited to read.
00:39:59
Speaker 1: It Chris, gomarty thank. You we're going to take a short break. Now when we come, Back kyle And natasha will stick around talk about who had the best and worst week in. Tech, Kyle, natasha welcome. BACK i mean there's an argument to say the enhance games had the worst we can. Take another candidate Is CHARACTER. Ai you have you been following?
00:40:26
Speaker 6: THIS i KNOW i missed the, news BUT i am obsessed with that. Company please inform, me.
00:40:32
Speaker 1: Well first, time that's what it, Is. Kyle and while you're, obsessed And i'll tell, you Then i'll destroy your.
00:40:37
Speaker 6: Dreams CHARACTER ai is like a provider of chatbot, interaction and the chatbots are most often fictional characters or like archetypes of fictional.
00:40:49
Speaker 4: Characters so it's a lot of.
00:40:51
Speaker 6: Fandom it's a lot of do you want to fall in love with a pop? Star like this is your faux romantic relationship With? Harry LIKE i haven't browsed too, deeply but the TIMES i, have it's like so.
00:41:06
Speaker 4: Immediately.
00:41:06
Speaker 6: Creepy it's and it's it's marketed toward, children, essentially like it's marketed toward young people who are super online and want to interact with A ai character through their.
00:41:19
Speaker 4: Browser it's also very manipulative and. UNSAFE i Think.
00:41:24
Speaker 1: Character OR ai has responded to this and and some of their power users think they've over. Corrected according To, reddit one post had the headline make Them Flirty? Again i'm not looking to chat with an avoidant no feelings bad, boy nor with the, stuttering blushy goodie. Boy yet you somehow manage to mix these, up mix these up in the worst way possible into a single. Bot so, essentially they've they've turned the dial down on on on how they interact with. Users another couple of another couple of ones THAT i like From reddit WERE i miss when the bots used to feel a pang of jealousy, sigh and, MAN i kind of feel. Empty so cautionar retail for ai companies who are trying to be too good like character dot ai and taking all the fun out of. It but in the most serious note, OBVIOUSLY i mean they've had some pretty horrible, stuff including you, know inducing users as suicide. Himself so, yeah it feels like character and may maybe approaching the rear view. Mirror have you been following this, One?
00:42:22
Speaker 3: Natasha oh, YEAH i was actually the first person to write about the, company because you, know the, guy one of the co, Founders Noam, shazier he actually you, know was the main guy behind the transformer architecture At google that like has undergirded this whole GENERATIVE Ai craze and him And Daniel, DeFreitas his other co. Founder you, know they felt like really stymied At google Because google had these large language. Models they had this, tratbox you, know like this kind of, formula and they weren't releasing it and talking to, them you, know before they they thought it was going to be people who want to have a conversation With einstein Or shakespeare or all of these, things like they.
00:43:07
Speaker 5: Weren't it wasn't initially marketed to.
00:43:10
Speaker 3: Kids it was you, know that's who adopted the technology to put you, know to have these conversations with like dark romance, characters anime, fandom exactly what you're. Saying and then, yes it turned out to be the super super engaged audience that was spending, hours you, know conversing with these chatbots which are user. Generated you, Know so so it's not it's not necessarily the company that is putting forth the characters that are the most closely. Adopted and THEN i, think you, know having chatbots that are optimized for storytelling and role. Play we've read the, Lawsuits i'm sure you know it's not just that they're. Manipulative they're also like very quick going into hyper sexualized conversations as, well And google acquired the license to the company.
00:44:07
Speaker 1: And the Lamenting, yeah.
00:44:09
Speaker 3: Like that's that's what THEY i, mean this is this is how the chatbot things. Work there's always a new, One so you go to the one that is trying to get users and has the least, restrictions and then you, know when the restrictions go, up then you go to the next. One but you, know the founders left a lot of the they took a lot of the talent with. Them SO i THINK i saw four of Four media had like a headline about the lobottomized CHARACTER ai and, yeah it's just it's really unfortunate for users because this is where you, know millions of people. Are they actually have a huge female, audience and yet none of the none of the, optimization none of the safety, features none of the attention and resources are going towards these users who are just like kind of left with. This, yeah the bottomized product IS i guess how how for a four put?
00:45:05
Speaker 1: It any any who you, was who each of your worst wee can take go.
00:45:09
Speaker 4: TO i was just thinking about this AND i figured out or.
00:45:15
Speaker 6: It emerged in my mind THAT i think this is the week That i've thought the least About Donald trump in a little, While like maybe maybe it's less like he's quieter than just there were so many other things happening that he seemed to recede a little.
00:45:30
Speaker 7: Bit.
00:45:31
Speaker 6: Uh AND i don't. Know the crypto economy is a little. Lackluster the scams aren't as. Plentiful you, know The trump kids aren't juicing any coins right. Now SO i don't. KNOW i kind OF i kind of Think trump is not having a good week in.
00:45:46
Speaker 1: Tech well and, true and Don't Donald Trump junior was one of the major investors in The enhance, games so that that Juicing natasha any any any any any worse week's, work worst week in text for?
00:45:57
Speaker 3: You, well, yeah after Hearing chris describe how The Enhanced games, Went i'm Gonna i'll Shure i'll put The Enhanced games on. That, yeah BUT i don't think anyone in tech is having the worst week ever like.
00:46:11
Speaker 5: ANYMORE i, mean they're they're.
00:46:12
Speaker 4: Just alloking for.
00:46:15
Speaker 1: POWER i was.
00:46:15
Speaker 3: Gonna say, yeah BECAUSE i was, like SHOULD i say anthropic again for the umpteenth.
00:46:19
Speaker 5: Week, No i'm going to.
00:46:20
Speaker 3: Say i'm going to Say i'm going to Say Jensen huang BECAUSE i saw this video of him like EATING i mean there's a billion of, them but like the most recent ones about him eating street food and just getting you, know like he just looks like he's.
00:46:35
Speaker 5: Having the time of his.
00:46:36
Speaker 3: LIFE i saw he just, got you, know he got obviously like a special Private Air force one jet to To china last. Minute he just got put on the board Of Singhwa university along with some other tech people Like Jensen. Wong seems to be truly enjoying his, life So i'm gonna put him on the best week ever and eating good street.
00:46:58
Speaker 5: Food so.
00:46:58
Speaker 6: EXACTLY i did enjoy all those memes of Like Elon musk And Chinsen hwang Smoking chinese, cigarettes you, know in front of The Forbidden, city and you know THE ai generated. Images it's. Absurd it's it's, global global absurdism of the highest.
00:47:17
Speaker 1: Quality, kyle do you have it best for?
00:47:19
Speaker 6: US i was gonna say The, POPE i THINK i feel like even Though anthropic was on stage with, him even though you know it's ambiguous what effect this actually has on, technology he he did something like he was Like i'm not going to stay out of this. FIGHT i don't care That i'm an ancient religious. Figure i'm just gonna put my gavel down and say WHAT i think About. Ai and it's a very clear. Statement it made a huge. IMPACT i think it will influence at least how people think about it moving, forward and that's very. Cool maybe more where's The Dalai lama here or where's the you, Know Greek orthodox pope or.
00:48:01
Speaker 5: Whatever they also invest in some tech companies The. Vatican do they have an investment? Portfolio?
00:48:08
Speaker 3: Yeah which ones THAT i don't THAT i haven't been paying attention. TO i don't think it's, Yeah, NO i don't think. So but but they, do you, know, they LIKE i, said the political article is really good about the ties that, bind and there are more and more of.
00:48:25
Speaker 1: Them, WELL i mean that The vatican definitely have a history of from The mediceese onwards being being being involved with business. Interests but But i'm going to give the best week to in text the pope as, well BECAUSE i saw somebody writing basically, that you, know The Catholic church and the tech companies are basically competing for mind share with like with with a user, base AND i think.
00:48:47
Speaker 4: THAT i.
00:48:49
Speaker 1: The pope definitely won the cloud.
00:48:51
Speaker 6: Battle is this like When netflix was like we're competing With? Sleep like now it's like computer is competing With god and Who.
00:49:06
Speaker 1: That's it for the we can. Tech thank you both so much.
00:49:08
Speaker 4: For joining, Us thanks for having.
00:49:09
Speaker 5: Me nice to see you guys.
00:49:14
Speaker 1: For tech. Stuff I'm Os. Valoshian this episode was produced By Eliza dennis And Melissa. Slaughter executive produced by Me Julian nutter And Kate osborne For kaleidoscope And Katrina norvel For iHeart. Podcasts our engineer today Was. Bihit. Fraser Jack insley mixed this, episode And Kyle murdoch wrote our theme. Song special thank you To Natasha, Tiku Kyle, chaka And Chris. Guyamley please check out all the excellent work they put into the. World we're happy to call them friends of the.
00:49:41
Speaker 4: Pod
