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patron mug. Sign up now at Patreon dot dot NetRocks
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dot com. Hey you welcome back to dot net rocks.
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Carl Franklin and I'm Richard Campbell. Yeah, so I said
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it for me because I just like massing the pronouns.
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I don't know why.
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Yeah. So we're talking about AI. Mark Semen is here.
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We'll get to him in a minute, but first I
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have a related better know a framework.
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Awesome, It's all right, what do you got?
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Ezra Kline is a New York Times columnist. He does
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a great podcast called Ezra Kleinhow Yeah, I highly recommend it.
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I don't know nobody's naming strategy, but I'll tell you
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what his theme song on point.
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Yeah. Well, anyway, the the article or the podcast that
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I listened to this week was how the attention economy
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is devouring gen Z and the rest of us? Right,
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and uh, we're going to get in into the weeds
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here with with Mark in a bit, But I just
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wanted to point this out as an absolute necessary, absolutely
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necessary required listening slash reading. Even if you don't have
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gen Z sons and daughters, or you know someone or
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you are gen Z, this is a really good perspective
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piece about you know, well in general, he's saying that
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gen Z came of age during COVID, Right, Yeah, I
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have a gen Z daughter. She Yeah, she was graduating
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high school during COVID. She was robbed of her high
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school senior year. She did not have any social activity
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that whole year. Then she went off to college. Everything
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is on zoom. All the information that she learned school
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wise is on zoom, like anything of importance. And so
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that kind of shapes the way the gen z Ers
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Load full transcript
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think about things, and in particular the nihilism attitude about
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why should I, why should I try? Why should I
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go to college? Why should I better myself? Because the
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AI is going to take my lunch. There's no entry
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level jobs anymore. Like it's a very kind of a
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dark place that the gen Zers are incause how of
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their experience and because of what has happened in the
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last few years, and I think, yeah, Mark is nodding
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his head, we're going to get into this. This is
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a good point for me to mention that I have
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a TikTok carl at atfenex dot com, and one of
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the first things that I've done is a video that
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basically says, AI is no excuse. It's no excuse to
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give up, to stop learning, to stop trying to be
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the person that you wanted to be when you were
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a kid, whatever it is. You know your hopes and dreams.
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Don't give up. You know, we don't know what's going
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to happen in the AI future. We don't know if
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what the jobs are they are going to be available,
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but we do know this, if you just try to
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be the best whatever that you can be, you have
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a better chance of surviving no matter what the AI
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landscape is. Here's an example. You want to go into
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a trade, let's say carpentry because that's an AI proof,
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So you think profession. But then you think, oh, well,
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you know the robots are going to just start building
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houses and all that stuff, so why bother. Well, here's
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why you should be the best carpenter that you can
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possibly be. So that when the robots do come and
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they're affordable, and construction people general contractors are hiring them.
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You're the boss because you're awesome, and that's how you
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got to be the boss, and then you can hire
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the robots to work for you. Do you know what
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I'm saying. I mean, it's a weird example and it
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probably isn't going to be true anytime soon, but it's
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no excuse to stop trying and to stop learning and
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to just put the brakes on your life and resign to,
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you know, flipping burgers for the rest of your life,
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you know, unless that's what you want to do.
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So anyway, although let's face it, flipping burgers is far
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more automatable.
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Yes, yes, yes, so so anyway, I highly recommend this,
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and by the way, check out my TikTok because I
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have a bit to say about this that will continue
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this conversation, I'm sure. So that's when I got Richard
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who's talking to us today?
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Well, knowing we were going to get philosophical today. When
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I was taking around for a comment, I grabbed one
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off of the artificial intelligence geek out that we did
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back in twenty fifteen, whoa ten years ago well, now,
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you know, the other thing is to realize, why did
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we do that? Geek out? Then, Yeah, that was the
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time when Bill Gates and Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking
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were all going on about AI emerging and then like,
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we have to be careful now. Then the subtext of
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this is that Google had successfully hired many of the
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best minds, including guys like Jeff Hinton and so forth,
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and they were doing some extraordinary things in a group
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called Google Brain even then, and so really this was
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a push for we've got to get those scientists out
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of Google. What you were seeing was the setup that
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would become open AI, but we didn't know that at
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the time. It would emerge another year or two later,
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and with all of the problems that that had attacked
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and continues to have attached to it. Again, nobody expected
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any of the things that have happened here.
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Well, and Hinton famously started warning the public against general
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AI and the things that I'm sure Mark is going
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to be talking about too.
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But yeah, once his shares in Google were fully vested, right, Yeah,
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so you know it should be clear.
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Not that you're cynical about that or
anything.
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Just watching for people's motivations here. That's right, follow the money.
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So there was a lot of comments on that show
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because we were pretty far ahead of our time when
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we were at that particular point. You know, we're reading
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in a lot of the tea leaves much more science
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fiction based, so makes it ten years all the more extraordinary, right,
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And I grabbed this comment one of literally dozens, and
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one of them was Mark Semens comment too. And Mark
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probably doesn't remember either because he writes lots of comments
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on lots of shows. But you referenced a book called
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blind Site, Sir, which is a very interesting study and consciousness,
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because we did go down that path twenty fifteen about
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what's consciousness, what is sentiency, and what is intelligence that
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kind of thing. So Tom Kirkhoff's comment, another past guest
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of the show, he says, as you mentioned, it depends,
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So what is artificial intelligence? People such as Bill Gates
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are cautious with AI and tells us we should not
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do it, But we have and we entered the era
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where AI is in the past, Apple has Siri and
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Microsoft has Cortana and as personal assistants who are more
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and more integrated in all our toys. So where do
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we draw the line. Isn't it cool to think that?
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In twenty fifteen we Tartana. Yeah, and when I Robot
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came out, and that's the Will Smith version of Isaac
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Asimov's movie. We saw robots helping us as humans in
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our day to day work, which you know, the funny
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part is here we are with some interesting software, but
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still build a robot that humans can be around. Is
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that artificial intelligence? Because we can get this today in
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some sort I don't think of remote qualifies. We have
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robots that are capable of walking like animals. We have
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sensors such as connect connect I remember connect that can
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detect walls, open doors, and well, plus we have Cortana
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and with our knowing our schedule and helping us to
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remind stuff and look stuff up the combine this together.
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Are we getting close to those robots? Also? Where are
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we with laws supporting lists like getting self driving cars
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and personal assistance and stuff? How will we protect ourselves
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from human hackers or AI going wrong? These are all
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interesting talking.
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Well, you'd be happy to know nothing has happened in
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law government to protect us from anything because they don't
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even know what the heck is going on.
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Well, that's not true. The EU has passed an interesting self.
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I was talking about our government, Richard, Well, my government
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they have no clue about AI or what to do
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about it. So the other civilized civilizations we have a
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little bit more to do.
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It is I mean, we were thinking about these same
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problems ten years ago, but with obviously some gaps, right, Like, Yeah,
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the voice assistance of ten years ago actually worked better
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than they did in just the past couple of years
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before the LM showed up, because they never made money. Yeah,
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And as they didn't make money, their budgets got squeezed
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tighter and tighter, and less compute resources were used on them,
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and they degraded. And eventually, just before the LLM breakout,
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before chatchpt, both Google and Amazon came out said hey,
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we're cutting these groups back because they're just not doing
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what they were intended doing with attending not being helping people,
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but making the company money. And then of course it
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did chatchpt lands and the whole thing's up in the
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air and they're all scrambling. So Tom, thank you so
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much for your comment. Great to hear from your friend
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nine years ago, and a coffee of music. Cobe is
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on its way to you, and if you'd like a
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coffee of musicobe, I write a comment on the website
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and done at rocks dot com or on the facebooks.
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You publish every show there, and if you comment there
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and I read in the show, we'll send you copy
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go by Music.
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To code by Still Going Strong. Thank you Mark Semen
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for that idea that you gave me long those many
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years ago. Oh that turned into music to code by
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twenty two tracks now and you can get them an
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MP three wave or flack of twenty five minute compositions
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at music too coode by dot net.
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So that's the end of analysis of music.
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Yeah pretty much? Wow? Yeah Yeah. And it's designed to
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be in that beat per minute range that was cited
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in the study with the baroque music the children that
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were doing math problems when it was six between sixty
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five and seventy two piece per minute. I think it is.
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And it's neither too distracting nor is it too boring,
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Like you're not going to lose your mind listening to it.
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There is some variation in there, but nothing's going to
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jump out and scream at you. So it works, and
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it works for a ton of happy customers, including me.
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All right, well, let's formally introduce Mark Mark Seamen.
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Hmmm, we got to do nineteen sixty.
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Oh yeah, we do. Why don't I always forget that? Richard?
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I don't know.
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Maybe we should let this go at some point, but
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I kind of want to run until we get to
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two thousand and two and we have inception.
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I do too, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So significant events in
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nineteen sixty included the independence of seventeen African nations, the
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Greensboro sit ins for civil rights in the US, and
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the first televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and
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Richard Nixon.
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MM, which went well.
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Kennedy was very telegenic, he was you wore a dark suit,
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and Richard Nixon blended in with the background. I remember that.
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All these things you didn't need to think about until
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television came along.
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--> 00:11:43.000
It was also marked by the U two incident, where
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an American spy plane was shot down over Soviet airspace,
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escalating Gary Powers old war tensions.
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They believe that plane flew too high to be shot down,
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and they were wrong. So what's on your list, Richard?
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The first laser is rendered operational. A guy named Theodore
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Maymon where can at a huge research used a synthetic
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ruby with flash lamps based on a bunch of science
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a group of other smart folks over the past few years.
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But he's the guy who actually implemented coherent light. Wow
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your DBD, thanks you Wow.
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And shortly after that, Star Trek came online and something
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they're using phasers because they couldn't say lasers.
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And the very first weather satellite ever TIROS one, the
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US satellite TIRO short for Television Infrared Observation satellite, launched
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by aor able rocket. It had solar panels on it
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in nineteen sixty at solar panels Wow, a wide narrow
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angle infrared cameras and it took about twenty three thousand
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pictures before an electrical failure after ten weeks knocked it out,
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beginning this idea of being able to look at weather
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at a macroscale from orbit, which is incredibly important. It's
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amazing to think that that's only it's only been sixty
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years of being able to do that. Yeah, it's still
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actually in orbit. There was this electrical failure in the
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battery system knocked it out early. Could have lasted longer,
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but it was followed up by many more, but that
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that began in nineteen sixty.
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I shall also mention the pill was ratified in nineteen sixty,
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so that ushered in a whole era of women's reproductive
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rights and all of that.
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Next, we're going to talk about the age of Aquarius.
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No, no, no, come on, man, come on.
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All works together.
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Where would we be without the pill?
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There?
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You seriously, I wouldn't have gotten laid in high school.
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I don't know about you guys. But all right, So
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is there any other computer oriented events or computers that
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were breakthroughs in nineteen sixty that you can.
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No, but nineteen sixty one is a big one. So
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hang in there, will all right, we'll talk a lot
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about the integrated circuit, all right next week.
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Did they start with four trend back then? Or is
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that that's around that time maybe a little bit earlier?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, four trends already around by then.
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Oh yeah, okay, you know, not on a you know,
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we're talking kind of pre This is before we actually
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have digital computers per se. Right, they're largely electrical mechanical
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like the the uh. We have transistors, but we haven't
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really got an integrated circuit, so the compute power is
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not the same at all.
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All right, So the bio that I'm going to read
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was not written by me. It was written by Mark himself.
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Mark Semen is a bad economist who's found a second
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career as a programmer. He has worked as a web
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and enterprise developer since the late nineteen nineties, and he
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blogs regularly at blog dot plo dot dk. That's p
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l o e h did I pronounce that writer? Is
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it more like pl that's plur pl That's right.
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Okay, you got that the second time around. Yeah, that's
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pretty good. That's pretty good.
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Well, welcome back, and uh, thank you. I just had
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to formally introduce you there. That's even though we've been
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talking to you for ten fourteen minutes.
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Yes we have.
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Yeah, all right, So what are your thoughts? Are you
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fan of Ezra Klein?
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First of all, I've I I usually used used to
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listen to a podcast by Sam Harris and these two
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sort of enemies, if you will, also, so I haven't
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really listened to to Ezra Klein. But but on the
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other hand, I think it was if Scott Fitzgerial who
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said something like and you know, the sign of intelligence
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is being able to hold two opposing thoughts in your
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mind at the same time and not go insane. So
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maybe I should. I mean, it's it also sounds like
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he's been doing he's been on sort of Isra Klein
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has been on some sort of journey where he's starting
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to realize that, you know, some of the problems that
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you just talked about here are actually really important. So yeah,
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so maybe I should. So I haven't really been a
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fan there, but you know, I have no beef with
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him personally, so maybe maybe I should give it a listen.
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Well, what about the idea of gen Z being sort
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of caught in this vortex of impossibility?
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That that that absolutely rings true. I have two gen
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Z kids, and the well, the old one is old
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enough so she's almost not a gen Z, so she's
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she's sort of got you know, through most of this
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stuff without too many, you know, too much impact that.
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But the other one, he's eighteen now, and he's really
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he's really you know, grabbed by TikTok and phones and
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so on. So that's yeah, that's that's a bit of
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a problem.
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Yeah, yeah, I mean my kids are just that bit
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much older that maybe they slipped past us to some degree,
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but the the bait here, and you brought it up
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right at the top there, Carl, is how much of
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this is just the attention economy in general? And how
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much of it is the impacts of the pandemic of
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that two years of psychosis just this crazy time.
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It was really psychosis, absolutely crazy time.
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I think we were seeing signs of this already before.
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I mean, was it the Senta shoop Off who wrote
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this book about the attention economy? I think that predates
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the the pandemics. I remember, So there were definitely people
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talking about this, you know, even in the in the
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twenty tens. But that's not really what we're here to
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talk about.
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No, no, no, is it. We're just getting started here?
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Yeah, I know, but but maybe I should start with
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an other experience I had with a young person. So
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I was following a university course on something computer science
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I don't exactly remember. And because I was doing that,
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they you know, they have us do some group exercises
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as well. So I was doing a little paper with
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some young people and we were having a discussion about
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how to interpret a certain algorithm, and you know, whether
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we were in one regime or another and we couldn't
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really agree. And then the other one he was just
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writing on on what some DM what's it called? I
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can't remember anyway, So we were dming back and forth and
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he writes to me, well, but I just asked chat
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GBT and it says blah blah blah. So I'm right ah,
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and I'm sort of like, I don't care. I don't
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care what Chad GBT says. I wrote back and he
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was like, oh my god, you don't care what chat
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GGBT says. How can you? I mean, it was that
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was very much a generational divide there, and every time
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we came back to that, he's sort of like, oh, yeah, Mark,
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is this weird person who doesn't believe in everything that
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jaduary it.
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But you're lude you don't know anything about technology?
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Yeah, And I should probably preface I'm going to say
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a lot of critical things about AI, but it's not
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that I'm a complete lot eyed. I actually do see
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that there's some you know, benefits to be gained as well,
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but that's not what we here to talk about. So
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if the listener gets the impression that I'm just in
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grumby old man shouting at the cloud. It's not the
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entire picture, but let's just pretend.
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Well, that's besides the point.
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Let's just pretend that that's the case.
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Anyway, Yeah, that cloud didn't need shouting.
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00:19:05.559
Indeed, indeed. But I keep running into this thing where
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people are backing up their claims by saying, well, I
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just asked you know, some chat TBT or some other
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EI online EI system, Last Language model, whatever you want
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to call it, and then they're using that as their
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appeal to authority and saying, well, it's true because it's
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it says so, And it's really hard to argue against that,
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because if people are actually in that mindset where they
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think that's as an authority that they can trusts, it's
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hard to get them out of that mindset.
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But it is actually new. This is not new to LMS,
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no chat GBT. People have been saying the computer says
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uh huh, yeah, since we put computers in front of people.
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Right, Well, that's a fair argument, but I think we
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are We're we sort of reached a new level there
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because usually, you know, in the old days, when the
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computer said something, it was usually correct under the count
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take that you know, in which it would say something.
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Right, data came out of a database somewhere.
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Yeah, you would ask it about something in the database,
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And of course you can you could have wrong data
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inside that database, or you could have a bug in
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the program and so on. But in general, if you
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understood the context in which the you know, the computer
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and the program and the software would actually be giving
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you answers, there would be some sort of knowledge to
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be gained. And that's not really where we are with
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those you know, new systems, and that's it's not you know,
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one thing is the system itself, but it's how people
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are interacting with these sites concerned me a bit. Yeah, yeah.
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But also the thing is that that they tend to
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see them as oracles, is that you can go and
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ask them about anything and then you a lot of
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people seem to just blindly trust them. Which that's that's
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really what concerns me here, because.
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Yeah, I did an experiment Mark, I asked for a
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recommendation of a product on Amazon based on my parameters,
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and it recommended something, and then I went it was
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an electronic piece for electronic Here, I went on Amazon,
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I looked at all the reviews and there was very
397
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many one star reviews saying this thing overheats and then
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goes to crap, don't buy it. So then I brought
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that up to Chatchip. He said, you're right, let me
400
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look for another one. Sound familiar. Let me look for
401
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another one that doesn't overheat. Here's here's the one.
402
00:21:30.200 --> 00:21:30.559
You want.
403
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This is because it's going to satisfy this condition, that condition,
404
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And I said, okay, and you know it's fairly well reviewed.
405
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So I bought it and it didn't work. It didn't
406
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do some of the things that I asked for with
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chat GPT, and it was vague because when I went
408
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back then looked at the description didn't explicitly say this
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thing that I needed. I just assumed that it would
410
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do it because most things like this did it. So
411
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I ended up returning it and something else. But it's
412
00:22:01.920 --> 00:22:04.599
conscinary town. So yeah, it's an experiment. I wanted to
413
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see if I could rather than going through the tedious
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task of searching on Amazon and then starting by most
415
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favorite reviews and reading them. Rather than doing that, I
416
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just asked chapter GPT to do my bidding. And it
417
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didn't work.
418
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It lies, but indeed, in this in this case, you
419
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were still in a scenario where you were able to
420
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you're still able to verify or in this case, in
421
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this case as actually falsify the claim that was made
422
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by the LMS. So of course, because you were ordering
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I assume a physical product, it took some time to
424
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actually get that verification of falsification in place, but you
425
00:22:44.799 --> 00:22:48.759
could still do that, and that's that's not even you know,
426
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I'm not too concerned about people using lms in that
427
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way because I actually use them like that as well.
428
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You know, if I if I have a problem where
429
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I can you know, I know, I don't know exactly
430
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what the answer is going to be, but if I
431
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get the answer, I can do a verification check and
432
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then I can see if that solves my problem or not.
433
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I had I've had very nice, you know, experiences with
434
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the limbs that do that for me and save me
435
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a ton of time. So I don't really have a
436
00:23:16.599 --> 00:23:19.279
problem with that because you know, if you can get
437
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an answer and then you can verify whether or not
438
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it works, you're still on solid ground in terms of epistemology.
439
00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:28.319
So okay, so now we said the big word here,
440
00:23:28.359 --> 00:23:31.279
but it basically means the theory of knowledge. So how
441
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do we know that we know things, why do we
442
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think that we know some things?
443
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I know that in the term of epistemological studies that
444
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are basically just tabulating answers from people, but you don't
445
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know whether or not they lied, right, the entomologic entomological studies,
446
00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:54.799
there's another All right, I'm mixing up my words.
447
00:23:54.839 --> 00:23:57.519
Here, go ahead, Yeah, so where we so? Yeah?
448
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So?
449
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But that's the on thing. So if you can ask
450
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you know, a system and then get get it to
451
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give you an answer that you can then later verify,
452
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I think that's that sound. I don't really have a
453
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problem with that. My problem is really with you are
454
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asking a system to do something and you have no
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way of verifying whether or not it actually, you know,
456
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is what it is that you wanted to do. Then
457
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I think now I'm getting concerned. And since we are
458
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on a podcast where we usually talk about software development,
459
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you know, one of the things that really concerned me
460
00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:28.279
is when people ask you know, these systems to write
461
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code for them, because but then again, you know, if
462
00:24:32.279 --> 00:24:35.400
you if you do that, well, if you can actually
463
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read through on the code and then you have an
464
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idea at what you're looking at, well that might actually work,
465
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but often you hear people so yeah, I know you
466
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talked about vibe coding already, and and for me it
467
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is a pejorative. I think it's it sounds like a
468
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really really bad idea because if you don't know, if
469
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you if you don't know how to code, or if
470
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you ask this system to write code in a language
471
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that you don't really understand, then how you know it works? Right?
472
00:25:02.200 --> 00:25:05.799
Well, the compiler has to say if you are writing
473
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in a language that actually does compile, and people are
474
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using a lot of often they get it to write
475
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JavaScript or Python or something like that for them, and
476
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they those languages don't even compile.
477
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The point is something that they don't know. Yeah, right,
478
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Why would Why would I ask an l M or whatever,
479
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an agent to write me an assembly program because I
480
00:25:27.359 --> 00:25:29.720
think it's going to be faster When I don't read
481
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assembly and I can't verify it, and I can't step
482
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through the code, and I don't know what the heck
483
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that thing does. It might look like it works, but
484
00:25:36.640 --> 00:25:39.599
I ain't going to run that thing, right, I'm gonna
485
00:25:39.799 --> 00:25:43.720
If you ask an agent to write code in a
486
00:25:43.799 --> 00:25:47.680
language that you don't know how to verify, you get
487
00:25:48.319 --> 00:25:50.599
you know, you get what you get, right, you get
488
00:25:50.599 --> 00:25:54.400
what you pay for basically deserve it.
489
00:25:54.960 --> 00:25:59.480
That being said, I'm now having experiences with very experienced
490
00:25:59.519 --> 00:26:03.759
software helpers where we spend an entire day working through
491
00:26:04.440 --> 00:26:07.599
a sprint of code that we estimated it would have
492
00:26:07.640 --> 00:26:10.279
been six weeks worth of work, and then knocked it
493
00:26:10.279 --> 00:26:13.240
out in a weekend using these tools. Yep, yeah, right,
494
00:26:13.359 --> 00:26:16.799
Like but in the hands of skilled people who understand
495
00:26:16.839 --> 00:26:20.240
what they're doing and are working hard with these tools,
496
00:26:20.880 --> 00:26:25.160
you can get extraordinary results. Not you cancre mental results,
497
00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:27.759
but literally weeks of working days.
498
00:26:27.880 --> 00:26:31.039
We just heard and I don't remember if this was
499
00:26:31.079 --> 00:26:32.880
talking to you, Richard or somebody else, might have been
500
00:26:32.920 --> 00:26:36.400
Brian McKay that he had a guy that was in
501
00:26:36.480 --> 00:26:41.480
a meeting, a two hour meeting about a spec and
502
00:26:41.680 --> 00:26:43.559
about building a prototype, and by the end of the
503
00:26:43.599 --> 00:26:44.480
meeting he had it done.
504
00:26:44.720 --> 00:26:49.319
Right. That seems to becoming more common again known problem space.
505
00:26:49.640 --> 00:26:52.799
You know, these these were forms over data problems, so
506
00:26:52.839 --> 00:26:56.960
they were pretty automatical anyway, and with someone who knew
507
00:26:57.119 --> 00:26:59.839
the tools and the language well, and they have a
508
00:27:00.079 --> 00:27:03.200
put together assembly and their productivity is astonishing.
509
00:27:03.319 --> 00:27:06.799
Yeah, but again, how do you measure productivity? In software development,
510
00:27:06.839 --> 00:27:10.880
because it seems to me that we are forgetting that
511
00:27:11.960 --> 00:27:14.920
lines of code is not a measurement of productivity, you.
512
00:27:14.920 --> 00:27:17.279
Know, Yeah, this is delivering features to customers.
513
00:27:17.400 --> 00:27:20.240
Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense, of course,
514
00:27:20.359 --> 00:27:24.200
if you can measure that. But that's a whole different discussion.
515
00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:27.720
Whether that's because one feature is not necessarily equivalent to
516
00:27:27.759 --> 00:27:30.400
another feature. You know, some features are big and someone small.
517
00:27:30.440 --> 00:27:32.680
But that's probably a different discussion.
518
00:27:33.079 --> 00:27:34.960
No, but I think it's a really valid one that
519
00:27:35.160 --> 00:27:37.640
there's a bar here that these tools seem to be
520
00:27:37.680 --> 00:27:40.440
able to handle at a bar, and above that bar
521
00:27:40.559 --> 00:27:41.200
they cannot.
522
00:27:41.839 --> 00:27:43.920
Yeah, above that bar. You have to sort of break
523
00:27:43.960 --> 00:27:47.079
it down into you know, bite sized pieces for them. So,
524
00:27:47.160 --> 00:27:51.279
but that's how I like to work anyway, you know, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
525
00:27:51.119 --> 00:27:54.160
Of course. But I'm still I'm still wondering whether we
526
00:27:54.240 --> 00:27:57.240
can trust these things even if we look at them.
527
00:27:57.279 --> 00:28:00.160
Because so we reached the story that you told, I
528
00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:02.119
don't know exactly the details of it and so on.
529
00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:04.480
But but one of the questions I would like to
530
00:28:04.519 --> 00:28:06.680
ask when when people do something like that, is to
531
00:28:06.839 --> 00:28:10.079
how do you actually know that the software works? How?
532
00:28:10.480 --> 00:28:13.480
How did you how did you decide that that software
533
00:28:13.519 --> 00:28:18.799
worked in
that particular case. What was the decision criteria there?
534
00:28:18.920 --> 00:28:21.079
Oh? I mean again, they'd also built a set of
535
00:28:21.119 --> 00:28:24.920
test suites. Yeah, you know, I saw that these features
536
00:28:24.960 --> 00:28:26.720
need to be tested this way and measure you know,
537
00:28:26.920 --> 00:28:30.680
he did the complete coding solution, including the security evaluation,
538
00:28:30.880 --> 00:28:32.960
like all of the different pieces. Like, you didn't just
539
00:28:33.039 --> 00:28:35.720
spat it. This was not vibe coding. No, this was
540
00:28:35.880 --> 00:28:38.279
a thoroughly thought out architectural solution.
541
00:28:38.599 --> 00:28:40.000
But who wrote who wrote the tests?
542
00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:41.240
Though? With the tools?
543
00:28:41.640 --> 00:28:43.839
How do you why do you trust those? Then?
544
00:28:44.119 --> 00:28:47.440
Well, because you could see the code, right, there's no
545
00:28:47.519 --> 00:28:49.960
secrets here. Tests are pretty straightforward to understand.
546
00:28:50.119 --> 00:28:52.200
Yeah, I guess the thing that we can agree on
547
00:28:52.359 --> 00:28:54.680
is if you let it get away from you, right,
548
00:28:54.759 --> 00:28:57.440
and you don't follow up on every change your AI
549
00:28:57.559 --> 00:29:00.319
is making for you and test it and on it
550
00:29:00.400 --> 00:29:04.799
and you know, observe it, and you just let it
551
00:29:04.880 --> 00:29:07.720
go wild, you're you're going to lose control. And so
552
00:29:07.839 --> 00:29:10.039
staying in control, I think this is the key.
553
00:29:10.200 --> 00:29:12.359
The question you keep asking is why do you trust it?
554
00:29:12.359 --> 00:29:16.319
It's like, don't don't trust it? Yeah, don't know exactly. Yeah, Look,
555
00:29:16.359 --> 00:29:19.279
I already do distributed development. I have people contributing to
556
00:29:19.319 --> 00:29:22.559
my projects that I never meet, that I only interact with,
557
00:29:22.759 --> 00:29:26.440
you know, through issues on GitHub. You don't trust them either, No,
558
00:29:26.640 --> 00:29:28.319
but you evaluate the code.
559
00:29:28.519 --> 00:29:29.519
You review the code.
560
00:29:29.640 --> 00:29:33.000
Yeah, yeah, that's the job. But the reality is it's
561
00:29:33.039 --> 00:29:36.599
still a force multiplier to have multiple people contributing to
562
00:29:36.640 --> 00:29:38.720
a project. It takes less time to review code than
563
00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:39.480
it takes to write it.
564
00:29:39.799 --> 00:29:43.400
And I do not disagree with that. That's reasonable enough,
565
00:29:43.440 --> 00:29:47.559
but it's still my concern is still that we you know,
566
00:29:47.599 --> 00:29:51.480
if we have an output of code that is multiplied,
567
00:29:51.640 --> 00:29:56.680
you know, tenfold, one hundredfold in comparison to what we
568
00:29:56.720 --> 00:30:00.279
had a couple of years ago, then we should also
569
00:30:00.079 --> 00:30:04.039
to have that that we should also spend that much
570
00:30:04.079 --> 00:30:07.599
more energy on actually reviewing the things that are being produced.
571
00:30:07.599 --> 00:30:10.799
And I'm not really getting the impression that that's the case.
572
00:30:12.640 --> 00:30:15.759
So it's the case at my house, I can tell
573
00:30:15.799 --> 00:30:15.960
you that.
574
00:30:16.480 --> 00:30:16.680
Yeah.
575
00:30:18.359 --> 00:30:20.599
Well, but again, you know, well, and this will be
576
00:30:20.720 --> 00:30:23.599
this is also some with self fulfilling. Those who trust
577
00:30:23.680 --> 00:30:26.279
these tools, right, will get burned. Absolutely.
578
00:30:26.519 --> 00:30:29.359
Yeah, that's that's also what I'm what I'm concerned about.
579
00:30:29.680 --> 00:30:31.720
And we can just hope that it's just some simple
580
00:30:31.759 --> 00:30:35.480
forms over the data and and they're they're probably only
581
00:30:35.559 --> 00:30:39.279
hurting the company that actually owns that software. But what if,
582
00:30:39.480 --> 00:30:42.920
what if the actually we're beginning to see people, you know,
583
00:30:43.079 --> 00:30:48.880
writing fly you know, h operating systems or systems for
584
00:30:49.319 --> 00:30:53.119
controlling hardware or elevators and medical systems and so on.
585
00:30:53.240 --> 00:30:55.960
And then I'm getting a little bit concerned here that's
586
00:30:55.960 --> 00:30:59.480
probably not going to happen this year. But well, in
587
00:30:59.519 --> 00:31:02.359
a couple of is we'll see, we'll see those people
588
00:31:02.359 --> 00:31:05.839
who do use those systems at the moment, they some
589
00:31:05.920 --> 00:31:08.759
of them will graduate to writing those kinds of systems,
590
00:31:09.200 --> 00:31:11.319
and I'm just concerned that they're probably going to take
591
00:31:11.319 --> 00:31:12.640
some of their bad habits with them.
592
00:31:12.880 --> 00:31:16.480
Without a doubt, I think, yeah, let's do the break
593
00:31:16.519 --> 00:31:18.680
and then I want to dig into the next tier
594
00:31:18.759 --> 00:31:20.920
of this problem, which I think is the junior developer.
595
00:31:21.039 --> 00:31:23.759
Yeah, okay, and we'll be right back after these very
596
00:31:23.759 --> 00:31:28.000
important messages. Did you know that you can work with
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AWS dot Amazon dot com, slash net, slash tools. And
600
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we're back. It's dot at Rox. I'm Carl Franklin and
601
00:31:49.759 --> 00:31:52.519
I'm Richard Campbell and that is Mark Seaman, and we're
602
00:31:52.559 --> 00:31:56.160
talking about AI concerns. And just as a reminder, if
603
00:31:56.160 --> 00:31:57.759
you don't want to hear these ads, you can pay
604
00:31:57.799 --> 00:32:01.359
five bucks a month become a patron Patreon dot nerocks
605
00:32:01.400 --> 00:32:04.440
dot com. You'll get a free an ad, free feed.
606
00:32:04.599 --> 00:32:05.440
Take it away, Richard.
607
00:32:05.799 --> 00:32:07.839
The folks that I'm seeing that will be successful these
608
00:32:07.839 --> 00:32:11.240
tools are very experienced developers. Yeah, you know, really they've
609
00:32:11.240 --> 00:32:13.319
spent most these days. They don't even write a lot
610
00:32:13.359 --> 00:32:15.480
of code, and maybe they do some spikes and things,
611
00:32:15.519 --> 00:32:18.960
but they're mostly supervising a group of developers. They are
612
00:32:19.039 --> 00:32:21.359
the architects, you know, they run at a high level
613
00:32:21.400 --> 00:32:25.279
of responsibility, and they're starting to see these tools act
614
00:32:25.519 --> 00:32:31.400
as inexperienced developers under fairly strict guidance with constant code reviews,
615
00:32:31.400 --> 00:32:35.960
but ultimately productive. And it begs a question like where
616
00:32:35.960 --> 00:32:37.680
does the junior developer go now?
617
00:32:38.119 --> 00:32:42.079
Right? Are we the last generation of people who came
618
00:32:42.200 --> 00:32:43.519
up as junior developers?
619
00:32:43.759 --> 00:32:44.319
Yeah?
620
00:32:44.599 --> 00:32:48.079
Yeah, that's my concern too, because well, I think you
621
00:32:48.119 --> 00:32:51.519
said it pretty well, Richard. I'm not sure that I
622
00:32:51.519 --> 00:32:53.480
have a lot of stuff to add to that.
623
00:32:53.559 --> 00:32:58.039
Actually, I mean, I am meeting young developers right now
624
00:32:58.079 --> 00:33:00.799
that are pretty freaked out, and I wonder if it's
625
00:33:00.799 --> 00:33:03.279
because we trained them poorly at this point, Like here
626
00:33:03.279 --> 00:33:05.079
we are, this inflection point where things are changing. And
627
00:33:05.079 --> 00:33:07.160
the funny part is when I have a conversation with
628
00:33:07.200 --> 00:33:10.039
them about solutions, and I'm thinking back to the show
629
00:33:10.759 --> 00:33:13.319
that we did together Carl with the Imagining Cup folks.
630
00:33:13.599 --> 00:33:15.359
Wow, what an inspirational group.
631
00:33:15.519 --> 00:33:19.279
Phenomenal, But you know what, they didn't care about tool stacks? Yeah,
632
00:33:19.839 --> 00:33:21.519
do you remember there were one of the ladies asked us,
633
00:33:21.559 --> 00:33:24.319
like you make a podcast about dot net? Like why
634
00:33:24.480 --> 00:33:25.400
why would you do that?
635
00:33:25.960 --> 00:33:26.319
Right?
636
00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:31.079
Right? And I realized, like we've got old thinking. You know,
637
00:33:31.119 --> 00:33:33.559
when it was a nine to twelve month commit to
638
00:33:33.599 --> 00:33:36.240
get to an MVP of a piece of software, you
639
00:33:36.279 --> 00:33:38.400
could spend a couple of weeks arguing over what stack
640
00:33:38.480 --> 00:33:40.960
to use. Right, but with the productivity level that we're
641
00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:44.279
talking about right now, who cares? Just take the tool
642
00:33:44.319 --> 00:33:46.640
out for a spin. You know, there's so many different
643
00:33:47.079 --> 00:33:50.680
there's Even before the LM showed up, it was so
644
00:33:50.799 --> 00:33:53.160
much easier to learn a new programming environment. It was
645
00:33:53.200 --> 00:33:58.599
so much easier to experiment that those times are getting
646
00:33:58.599 --> 00:34:00.200
shorter and shorter, and the stacks are just not that
647
00:34:00.440 --> 00:34:03.519
different from each other. You know, fundamentally, they still draw
648
00:34:03.559 --> 00:34:05.839
on screens and they still communicate over the Internet. Like
649
00:34:05.880 --> 00:34:08.159
a lot of this stuff is the same, and if
650
00:34:08.159 --> 00:34:09.679
you focus on the solution, you're fine.
651
00:34:09.719 --> 00:34:10.280
Like I don't.
652
00:34:10.360 --> 00:34:14.639
I wonder if we're not actually growing the right generation,
653
00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.199
next generation of software developers, because they are not hung
654
00:34:19.280 --> 00:34:21.440
up on the stuff that we're hung up on. Well,
655
00:34:21.480 --> 00:34:24.000
at the same time, maybe they should be. I mean,
656
00:34:24.199 --> 00:34:26.800
so here's here's a scenario, and this came from a
657
00:34:26.800 --> 00:34:31.519
real story that I heard from somebody. Somebody is a
658
00:34:31.719 --> 00:34:34.159
back end dot net developer, and a full stack dot
659
00:34:34.199 --> 00:34:36.480
net developer does the front end, does Blazer and all
660
00:34:36.519 --> 00:34:40.320
that stuff. Somebody comes to them and says, hey, we
661
00:34:40.400 --> 00:34:43.119
want to use React for the front end, but still
662
00:34:43.159 --> 00:34:45.320
keep the as peanut core back end.
663
00:34:45.639 --> 00:34:48.679
Can you do that? And they think, hey, I've got
664
00:34:48.760 --> 00:34:52.440
chat GPT or I've got the agent and they say, yes,
665
00:34:52.760 --> 00:34:57.400
yes I can. They know nothing about React, right, but
666
00:34:57.800 --> 00:35:02.000
they generate all this code and it work. Would you
667
00:35:02.079 --> 00:35:05.960
say yes? Would you say yes, I can do that,
668
00:35:06.199 --> 00:35:08.199
or would I say no? I think you better get
669
00:35:08.199 --> 00:35:10.840
a React programmer to run the tool.
670
00:35:11.199 --> 00:35:11.960
Yeah, I wouldn't.
671
00:35:11.960 --> 00:35:13.559
What would you do it? Yeah? Yeah?
672
00:35:13.639 --> 00:35:16.559
And if I did it that way, would you accept
673
00:35:16.559 --> 00:35:19.679
the code if I didn't know anything about React?
674
00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:22.599
Yeah? That's that's the other problem. So this reminds me
675
00:35:22.639 --> 00:35:24.960
of of an experience I had many years ago. So
676
00:35:25.039 --> 00:35:28.800
obviously
it is because long before the ill a limbs.
677
00:35:29.079 --> 00:35:31.559
But I was working with a with a customer of mine,
678
00:35:31.679 --> 00:35:34.280
trying to teach them to move in small increments and
679
00:35:34.320 --> 00:35:36.400
do test driven development and all these things that I
680
00:35:36.480 --> 00:35:41.079
usually do, and it's actually working pretty well, you know,
681
00:35:41.119 --> 00:35:43.440
trying to also give them an idea about how to
682
00:35:43.440 --> 00:35:45.800
do pull requests and work in this sort of like
683
00:35:46.519 --> 00:35:50.800
quasi open source way of working with the small, small
684
00:35:50.840 --> 00:35:54.440
itserations and all of that. And they hadn't told me
685
00:35:54.519 --> 00:35:58.880
that they actually had an offside group sitting in another country.
686
00:35:59.239 --> 00:36:02.880
And you know, three weeks into my engagement with this customer,
687
00:36:02.960 --> 00:36:06.840
I get this pull request from hell from this you know,
688
00:36:07.079 --> 00:36:09.599
team sitting in another country because no one had told
689
00:36:09.639 --> 00:36:12.159
them that I was actually now trying to you know,
690
00:36:12.280 --> 00:36:15.639
change the things around, and they hadn't told me about
691
00:36:15.639 --> 00:36:18.159
that system as well. So I get this pull request
692
00:36:18.199 --> 00:36:20.480
and it's just like a you know, fifty thousand lines
693
00:36:20.480 --> 00:36:23.400
of code or something like that, and I'm trying to
694
00:36:23.480 --> 00:36:26.400
get the people that I was working with, you know,
695
00:36:26.480 --> 00:36:29.360
going through and saying well, okay, if you write the code,
696
00:36:29.559 --> 00:36:32.559
we need someone else to review it, and well you
697
00:36:32.559 --> 00:36:34.199
can do it with path programming, or we can do
698
00:36:34.239 --> 00:36:35.039
it with pull requests.
699
00:36:35.079 --> 00:36:35.719
I don't really care.
700
00:36:35.719 --> 00:36:38.480
I just want to have more than one person actually
701
00:36:38.760 --> 00:36:40.480
looking at this code. And then I get this thing
702
00:36:40.519 --> 00:36:43.280
in from the from the outside, and I'm sort of like, okay,
703
00:36:43.280 --> 00:36:45.360
what do I do with this now, because you know,
704
00:36:45.400 --> 00:36:49.639
the usual reaction to something like that is to say, well,
705
00:36:50.320 --> 00:36:52.760
looks good to me, because that's what you already always
706
00:36:52.760 --> 00:36:55.480
do with those big, big requests.
707
00:36:55.079 --> 00:36:57.400
The classic sign of I have not read.
708
00:36:57.159 --> 00:37:01.559
This exactly exactly. And now, fortunately I was actually, you know,
709
00:37:01.599 --> 00:37:04.159
engaged by the CEO of the company, so I know
710
00:37:04.239 --> 00:37:08.760
that I had I had pretty free, you know, range
711
00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:11.880
of deciding what to do. So I wrote back and say, well, okay,
712
00:37:11.920 --> 00:37:14.199
so I'm really sorry that you weren't in on what
713
00:37:14.320 --> 00:37:15.920
is what it is that we're doing at the moment,
714
00:37:16.159 --> 00:37:19.119
but I'm actually going to politely decline this pull request
715
00:37:19.119 --> 00:37:21.360
because it's just too much. And I don't know whether
716
00:37:21.360 --> 00:37:23.519
it works. And it's not that I don't trust you
717
00:37:23.559 --> 00:37:25.480
in the sense that I think you have you know,
718
00:37:25.840 --> 00:37:29.079
ill intent, but I don't even trust myself to write
719
00:37:29.280 --> 00:37:33.039
you know, flawless code. So that's why we need someone
720
00:37:33.119 --> 00:37:35.400
else to actually review with it, because it's part of
721
00:37:35.440 --> 00:37:39.519
this whole you know, process of figuring out does the code,
722
00:37:39.559 --> 00:37:42.039
does the software actually work as intended? Does the code
723
00:37:42.079 --> 00:37:43.960
do what it is that we wanted to do, And
724
00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:46.079
we can't do that if you just give me, you know,
725
00:37:46.159 --> 00:37:49.119
all of that in one go. So I said, well,
726
00:37:49.159 --> 00:37:50.639
I'm not going to take this one. But on the
727
00:37:50.639 --> 00:37:52.719
other hand, you still have all the codes, so I'll
728
00:37:52.840 --> 00:37:54.519
work with you and try to break it down into
729
00:37:54.519 --> 00:37:55.960
smaller pieces and we can get.
730
00:37:55.800 --> 00:37:56.400
It in that way.
731
00:37:56.440 --> 00:38:00.199
So we sort of made that work. But my mind
732
00:38:00.239 --> 00:38:02.760
here is that we're sort of in that situation now
733
00:38:02.840 --> 00:38:07.440
where we do get you know, something that reminds us
734
00:38:07.559 --> 00:38:09.559
of you know, the pull request from Hell. But it's
735
00:38:09.599 --> 00:38:12.320
just like it's not written by a person anymore. It's
736
00:38:12.360 --> 00:38:17.159
just now it's written by some statistical system. And and
737
00:38:17.199 --> 00:38:19.519
then if you just get all of that code in
738
00:38:19.559 --> 00:38:22.480
one big, you know chunk, you don't really you can't
739
00:38:22.519 --> 00:38:26.480
really fit it in your head, and then you.
740
00:38:26.559 --> 00:38:31.079
Just supplies submit a series of smaller requests exactly.
741
00:38:31.559 --> 00:38:33.519
And if you can get these systems to do to
742
00:38:33.599 --> 00:38:37.119
work in that way, which I suppose you could, then yeah,
743
00:38:37.199 --> 00:38:40.880
that would that would probably help. So it's not that
744
00:38:41.000 --> 00:38:44.639
I so that's that's actually a pretty that's actually that
745
00:38:44.719 --> 00:38:48.920
maybe showing us a way out and trying to work
746
00:38:48.960 --> 00:38:52.719
with LMS as though they were you know, contributors on
747
00:38:53.000 --> 00:38:55.159
an open source project and then try to tease them
748
00:38:55.159 --> 00:38:57.159
to do small increments that you can review.
749
00:38:57.280 --> 00:38:59.159
Well, that's certainly the way I look at it, because
750
00:38:59.159 --> 00:39:01.400
it's yeah, you know, more and more we're in a
751
00:39:01.400 --> 00:39:03.400
situation where all you can do is see the code.
752
00:39:03.480 --> 00:39:06.039
You don't really see the person, and you certainly have
753
00:39:06.079 --> 00:39:08.559
no way to measure the qualifications. Let's face it, we've
754
00:39:08.679 --> 00:39:11.440
almost never had a way to measure qualifications in software
755
00:39:11.760 --> 00:39:14.079
that was meaningful in any way. In the end, the
756
00:39:14.119 --> 00:39:17.079
code had to speak, and so if they could, you
757
00:39:17.159 --> 00:39:21.760
have to engage with the person. Yeah, you know, there's
758
00:39:21.800 --> 00:39:23.920
an argument here that looks just like, oh, you don't
759
00:39:23.960 --> 00:39:26.840
have a PhD in COMMSI you can't contribute to our.
760
00:39:26.760 --> 00:39:28.199
Project, right, which is silly.
761
00:39:28.719 --> 00:39:31.440
In the end, let the code speak, and if you
762
00:39:31.440 --> 00:39:34.000
can insist that the tool delivers the code in a
763
00:39:34.039 --> 00:39:37.119
form that is viable for you to validate, because in
764
00:39:37.159 --> 00:39:40.480
the end, it's your butt on the line, right, you
765
00:39:40.519 --> 00:39:43.039
are the professional engineer. You're going to sign off on this,
766
00:39:43.679 --> 00:39:45.599
then you have a chance of being able to use
767
00:39:45.599 --> 00:39:49.360
these tools. And I you know, this seems like the
768
00:39:49.400 --> 00:39:52.639
most solvable problem in the LLM space compared to what
769
00:39:52.679 --> 00:39:55.599
people are talking about are playing with doing it outside
770
00:39:55.599 --> 00:39:59.239
of software, Like, at least software has pretty good tools
771
00:39:59.239 --> 00:40:04.000
and governments. We already have a method doing distributed programming.
772
00:40:04.079 --> 00:40:06.559
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, name other industries that
773
00:40:06.599 --> 00:40:07.920
are even close to this ability.
774
00:40:08.039 --> 00:40:11.800
Yeah, before we leave software, just there's another gotcha for
775
00:40:11.880 --> 00:40:15.719
junior programmers that more experienced programmers won't necessarily have. And
776
00:40:15.760 --> 00:40:18.559
I've talked about this on dot Ner Rocks before, which
777
00:40:18.639 --> 00:40:22.960
is a junior developer will ask a question that they
778
00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:24.920
think is the right question to ask when it might
779
00:40:24.960 --> 00:40:27.679
not be. So they'll ask a question, you know, they'll well,
780
00:40:27.719 --> 00:40:31.840
they'll say something like, please make me a you know,
781
00:40:31.920 --> 00:40:37.360
a thread safe list component or list control. Let a
782
00:40:37.400 --> 00:40:40.519
thread safe list class, right that I can use that
783
00:40:40.519 --> 00:40:43.199
that's completely thread safe and locking and all that stuff.
784
00:40:44.199 --> 00:40:47.039
And that's the wrong question asked, because in dot net anyway,
785
00:40:47.119 --> 00:40:50.679
there is one in the framework. So the first question
786
00:40:50.960 --> 00:40:53.599
that should be asked is, hey, is there a way
787
00:40:53.880 --> 00:40:56.119
that I can use a list in a thread safe manner?
788
00:40:56.559 --> 00:40:58.920
And then you know, if the thing is worth anything,
789
00:40:58.960 --> 00:41:01.480
it will say yeah, well there's the spread safe collection, right,
790
00:41:02.800 --> 00:41:07.119
But instead a junior programmer might go down the very
791
00:41:07.159 --> 00:41:11.320
difficult path of doing one themselves because they don't know
792
00:41:11.400 --> 00:41:15.679
what else is available. So whereas an experienced developer would
793
00:41:15.880 --> 00:41:19.519
would know and not ask that question, and a junior
794
00:41:19.519 --> 00:41:22.639
developer would not. Most likely this question is isn't this
795
00:41:22.760 --> 00:41:23.480
very teachable?
796
00:41:23.639 --> 00:41:23.840
Yeah?
797
00:41:23.880 --> 00:41:26.320
Sure it is, but but how many hours is the
798
00:41:26.360 --> 00:41:28.960
junior developer going to waste working on something that when
799
00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:30.840
they you know, check it in you say, hey, you
800
00:41:30.880 --> 00:41:32.280
know that there is something like this?
801
00:41:32.599 --> 00:41:35.719
Yeah, again, there's a teachable moment around. Make sure you
802
00:41:35.760 --> 00:41:39.159
ask the question what already exists and you know, yeah, we.
803
00:41:39.199 --> 00:41:42.679
Still imagine a future version of large language models will
804
00:41:42.719 --> 00:41:45.840
probably be able to you know, loop in that kind
805
00:41:45.880 --> 00:41:50.199
of questioning saying, oh you're asking about this, have you
806
00:41:50.679 --> 00:41:54.360
do you really want? You know, a ground of implementation
807
00:41:54.480 --> 00:41:56.599
here or can you use the one that already exists?
808
00:41:56.599 --> 00:41:59.920
Have you looked into the framework and see whether they
809
00:42:00.039 --> 00:42:03.039
as a reusable component. I mean, I could probably imagine
810
00:42:03.079 --> 00:42:05.119
that even if they don't do that right now, they
811
00:42:05.119 --> 00:42:08.840
could they actually do probably be yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
812
00:42:08.880 --> 00:42:12.000
because it's it's a fairly common question to ask ask
813
00:42:12.079 --> 00:42:15.360
if you're a senior developer anyway, so anybody, Yeah.
814
00:42:15.079 --> 00:42:18.480
You may need your own implementation because it may need
815
00:42:18.519 --> 00:42:21.800
features that the base class doesn't have or isn't extendable to.
816
00:42:22.480 --> 00:42:23.639
So but usually not.
817
00:42:23.880 --> 00:42:27.639
But
maybe maybe now you're starting, you're already seeing in
818
00:42:27.679 --> 00:42:31.440
these tools that you can put in and pre prompts
819
00:42:31.480 --> 00:42:34.679
like this should be included with every prompt, right so
820
00:42:34.679 --> 00:42:37.960
that you could see the idea of an enterprise group
821
00:42:38.559 --> 00:42:41.840
setting a set of rules that any prompt code generation
822
00:42:42.239 --> 00:42:44.519
has to follow these rules. But they don't always follow
823
00:42:44.519 --> 00:42:45.599
the rules. That's the problem.
824
00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:48.480
I don't know if you've noticed this, but in my
825
00:42:48.559 --> 00:42:51.079
system prompts and in my user prompt if I say
826
00:42:51.159 --> 00:42:55.079
don't do this, sometimes it will anyway. And that's just
827
00:42:55.320 --> 00:42:56.840
that's just the way it goes.
828
00:42:57.119 --> 00:42:59.719
Yeah, and again I'll often skip things as well if
829
00:42:59.760 --> 00:43:03.400
the gets too complex, so you still see some development
830
00:43:03.440 --> 00:43:06.440
need to be done to do more work on validating
831
00:43:06.639 --> 00:43:07.559
the outBut.
832
00:43:07.719 --> 00:43:11.519
Right, yeah, all right, well I'm ready for Harry carry
833
00:43:11.559 --> 00:43:12.119
are you guys?
834
00:43:13.559 --> 00:43:16.960
I'm actually really excited about all this because it does
835
00:43:17.000 --> 00:43:21.280
seem to empower more people to build software. As these
836
00:43:21.280 --> 00:43:27.039
tools mature and they get more reliable. They said they're
837
00:43:27.079 --> 00:43:28.960
as bad as they're going to be right now. I
838
00:43:29.000 --> 00:43:32.559
don't see an exponential growth here. You know, we've basically
839
00:43:32.559 --> 00:43:34.840
indexed all the Internet into these models. As it is,
840
00:43:34.920 --> 00:43:38.320
there is no more data to consume, and so far,
841
00:43:38.960 --> 00:43:42.920
training against stuff generated by these tools is degenerative. It
842
00:43:43.000 --> 00:43:44.320
makes it worse, not better.
843
00:43:44.480 --> 00:43:46.639
Yeah, and most of the time that's not going to happen.
844
00:43:46.880 --> 00:43:49.599
Like I've got confirmation that if I have a private
845
00:43:49.639 --> 00:43:54.840
repo and I use the GitHub Copilot agent to generate code,
846
00:43:55.320 --> 00:43:58.360
it's not going to train their models. They're not going
847
00:43:58.400 --> 00:44:00.400
to train their models on the code that it generates.
848
00:44:00.480 --> 00:44:03.400
In other words, my code isn't going to leak out
849
00:44:03.480 --> 00:44:08.639
into the ether and you know somebody else is using it.
850
00:44:09.119 --> 00:44:12.559
That's just a promise by gethub. I don't know it's true,
851
00:44:12.639 --> 00:44:13.679
but that's a promise.
852
00:44:13.760 --> 00:44:16.239
But even if it's true. Now you know what's going
853
00:44:16.239 --> 00:44:17.159
to happen in the future.
854
00:44:17.800 --> 00:44:18.760
Yeah, well but.
855
00:44:19.079 --> 00:44:24.679
You mean when Oracle buys get ub uh huh.
856
00:44:23.519 --> 00:44:26.320
Pretty sure it's not for sale, you know, a completely
857
00:44:26.400 --> 00:44:28.599
unrelated you know. Note, you know, there were people who
858
00:44:28.639 --> 00:44:31.320
were submitting that DNA sample suport to form you know,
859
00:44:31.400 --> 00:44:34.039
tes be and me, And I'm so happy I never
860
00:44:34.079 --> 00:44:36.320
did that because even back, you know, ten years ago,
861
00:44:36.360 --> 00:44:40.039
I thought, that's not data that I want, you know,
862
00:44:40.400 --> 00:44:44.760
sitting in someone else, you know, repository that I can't control.
863
00:44:44.800 --> 00:44:47.239
And yeah, too late, I've already cloned you.
864
00:44:48.760 --> 00:44:49.119
Indeed.
865
00:44:49.719 --> 00:44:52.199
Yeah, so I think we should be, you know, a
866
00:44:52.239 --> 00:44:56.079
little bit careful with trusting these things, you know, because
867
00:44:56.079 --> 00:44:58.280
things change, you know, so even if you try to
868
00:44:58.280 --> 00:45:01.719
trust an entity like Microsoft, get up and you might
869
00:45:01.760 --> 00:45:03.480
not want to trust it forever.
870
00:45:03.679 --> 00:45:05.719
But then again, Mark, you know, how long will it
871
00:45:05.760 --> 00:45:08.719
be before your iPhone twenty four will be able to
872
00:45:08.760 --> 00:45:12.559
sequence your genome just by taking a picture of a
873
00:45:12.800 --> 00:45:15.280
hair follicle? Yeah?
874
00:45:15.519 --> 00:45:18.400
Yeah, maybe you should go back to probably have a
875
00:45:18.480 --> 00:45:21.519
knock here somewhere lying around that still works. You should
876
00:45:21.519 --> 00:45:24.440
go back to those. That's why we all kind of end.
877
00:45:25.840 --> 00:45:27.840
Yeah, I saw a modern flip phone the other day.
878
00:45:27.880 --> 00:45:30.440
That wasn't like it was still an LCD, right, Like,
879
00:45:30.480 --> 00:45:32.599
it wasn't the I was very tempted.
880
00:45:32.760 --> 00:45:37.360
Yeah, Samsung flip z Well that there's an Android phone
881
00:45:37.360 --> 00:45:39.079
that flips up and down and I have one of those.
882
00:45:39.159 --> 00:45:41.360
Yeah yeah, but those are all those are smartphones. I'm
883
00:45:41.360 --> 00:45:45.239
talking about a full retro flip phone. Oh wow, yeah, wow,
884
00:45:45.880 --> 00:45:48.880
it was exciting. You do have those retro urges without
885
00:45:48.880 --> 00:45:52.119
a doubt. Sure, there isn't the Again, I feel like
886
00:45:52.159 --> 00:45:54.440
the programming situation is the best case scenario. I think
887
00:45:54.480 --> 00:45:58.119
we're more cautious or more familiar with these models of
888
00:45:58.360 --> 00:46:01.280
needing to valid and so forth. The concern space is
889
00:46:01.320 --> 00:46:04.119
pretty much everything else happening in LLMS. Yeah, like you
890
00:46:04.159 -->
00:46:09.679
get back to the computer says stuff. Yeah yeah, But
891
00:46:09.719 --> 00:46:12.960
I also think we've gone through that. We used to
892
00:46:13.000 --> 00:46:16.519
believe everything Google said too, Like this is just yet
893
00:46:16.559 --> 00:46:21.039
another learning pattern that you have to go through the
894
00:46:21.119 --> 00:46:24.840
experience of realizing these tools are based on knowledge we
895
00:46:24.960 --> 00:46:27.920
have and a lot of that knowledge is inaccurate and
896
00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:31.199
so when you you know, quote it verbatim, you are
897
00:46:31.239 --> 00:46:31.880
often wrong.
898
00:46:32.039 --> 00:46:37.440
So maybe Mark your critique is more of the population
899
00:46:37.920 --> 00:46:39.559
than of the AI tools.
900
00:46:39.639 --> 00:46:41.320
Right, Oh, absolutely, you know.
901
00:46:41.360 --> 00:46:43.960
Can we trust people to do the right thing with these?
902
00:46:44.119 --> 00:46:48.880
And yeah, my answer is people are driven by incentives,
903
00:46:49.039 --> 00:46:53.880
and if the economic incentives outweigh the moral incentives or
904
00:46:53.920 --> 00:46:57.880
the ethical incentives, guess which one wins. It's just that simple.
905
00:46:58.119 --> 00:47:02.119
Yeah, yeah, that's that's a bleak. But I'm I think
906
00:47:02.159 --> 00:47:04.719
I'm probably agreeing with you there.
907
00:47:04.960 --> 00:47:08.159
Unfortunately, Well, it comes down to the developer who says
908
00:47:08.239 --> 00:47:12.079
yes to developing something with an AI in a language
909
00:47:12.119 --> 00:47:12.920
they don't understand.
910
00:47:13.000 --> 00:47:15.639
Oh yeah, And it's it's not that it's an moral
911
00:47:15.760 --> 00:47:19.280
excuse or anything. But usually what actually does happen is
912
00:47:19.320 --> 00:47:22.119
if you say no, someone else will say yes. So
913
00:47:22.199 --> 00:47:25.880
it's going to happen anyway. And again it's not and
914
00:47:25.920 --> 00:47:28.719
it's not an excuse for doing something that's unethical. But
915
00:47:28.719 --> 00:47:32.639
but still from a you know, a high level, you know,
916
00:47:33.039 --> 00:47:36.760
just looking at society overall, that's still the mechanism that's
917
00:47:36.760 --> 00:47:38.480
going to happen. You know, someone won't do it.
918
00:47:38.800 --> 00:47:42.079
Yeah, I wouldn't say yes, just because I'd code myself
919
00:47:42.079 --> 00:47:42.920
into a corner, you know.
920
00:47:43.039 --> 00:47:45.480
Yeah, but that's but you also that you senior, just
921
00:47:45.599 --> 00:47:48.559
like you know Richard is and and what Richard talked
922
00:47:48.559 --> 00:47:51.000
about you know. You can actually have success with these
923
00:47:51.039 --> 00:47:52.920
things if you you know, if you know a lot
924
00:47:52.960 --> 00:47:56.440
of enough about programming, and even if you've never seen
925
00:47:56.440 --> 00:48:01.400
a language before, you've seen other languages that are similar
926
00:48:01.519 --> 00:48:04.119
enough that you can probably still get a good sense
927
00:48:04.119 --> 00:48:06.639
of if you ask it to write you know, if
928
00:48:06.639 --> 00:48:08.960
you don't know, go, I don't know go. If I
929
00:48:09.000 --> 00:48:12.039
ask you know, an LM to write me something and go,
930
00:48:12.079 --> 00:48:14.320
I would probably have a fairly good idea about what
931
00:48:14.400 --> 00:48:16.840
it is that it produced, and I'd have to look
932
00:48:16.920 --> 00:48:19.239
up a few things and so on. But again the
933
00:48:19.280 --> 00:48:22.119
problem is if you're not even a programmer from the beginning,
934
00:48:23.440 --> 00:48:25.440
or if you're a junior, as we talked about, then
935
00:48:25.519 --> 00:48:26.920
that gets a lot harder.
936
00:48:27.079 --> 00:48:30.360
But still, if it was you know, a language like reactor,
937
00:48:30.480 --> 00:48:33.840
you know JavaScript, but you know, if Reactor is going
938
00:48:33.920 --> 00:48:36.199
to do something, how do I know that it did
939
00:48:36.199 --> 00:48:39.119
it the right way or the most efficient way, or
940
00:48:39.480 --> 00:48:40.880
you know that there isn't a better way?
941
00:48:41.239 --> 00:48:42.239
I don't Yeah.
942
00:48:42.320 --> 00:48:44.360
Yeah, So what I would do is I would hire
943
00:48:44.400 --> 00:48:47.880
a subcontractor that does React, and I would encourage them
944
00:48:47.920 --> 00:48:53.639
to use the LM because of the agents, because they'll
945
00:48:53.679 --> 00:48:56.039
be more productive, sure, especially if they're charging me by
946
00:48:56.079 --> 00:48:59.199
the hour. That's another question. How ethical is it to
947
00:48:59.320 --> 00:49:01.679
charge by the project versus by the hour?
948
00:49:01.800 --> 00:49:04.840
Now fair enough, but still it comes down to accountability
949
00:49:04.880 --> 00:49:08.079
because if you hire a sub contractor, you need to
950
00:49:08.119 --> 00:49:12.079
trust that some subcontractor to actually do the right thing,
951
00:49:12.920 --> 00:49:16.480
and and and and absolutely and and that's that's another
952
00:49:16.519 --> 00:49:19.199
problem that we tend to have with ais in general
953
00:49:19.280 --> 00:49:22.960
is they're not really accountable right now. We don't have
954
00:49:23.000 --> 00:49:26.920
any laws that govern how you know, who has responsibility
955
00:49:26.960 --> 00:49:29.559
for the output of them. And as Richard said, well,
956
00:49:29.760 --> 00:49:32.360
we even know how to deal with with software development,
957
00:49:32.559 --> 00:49:35.039
but if we're looking at the broader picture of just
958
00:49:35.880 --> 00:49:37.840
you know, asking it to do all sorts of other
959
00:49:37.920 --> 00:49:40.159
tasks for us in the in the rest of the world,
960
00:49:40.239 --> 00:49:43.039
you know, outside of software, you know who's accountable then,
961
00:49:43.119 --> 00:49:46.920
and we we don't know they're
they're not, so we're
962
00:49:47.159 --> 00:49:49.000
sort of stuck with, you know whatever.
963
00:49:50.719 --> 00:49:54.920
We saw companies using their their AI bots as an excuse,
964
00:49:56.159 --> 00:49:59.400
uh when bot gave them bad advice. Remember that one, Richard,
965
00:49:59.400 --> 00:50:02.039
I think it was an line thing, whether refund or something.
966
00:50:02.320 --> 00:50:05.880
Yeah, that was the Air Canada incident. Yeah, where where
967
00:50:06.079 --> 00:50:09.199
a bot told a customer or you'll be able to
968
00:50:09.199 --> 00:50:11.199
get a refund on that. So they went ahead and
969
00:50:11.239 --> 00:50:12.519
did the thing. When they went to get the refund,
970
00:50:12.519 --> 00:50:15.159
they were refused and ultimately ended up in front of
971
00:50:15.159 --> 00:50:17.679
a judge and the judge said, use the bot as
972
00:50:17.679 --> 00:50:19.480
if it was an employee. If an employee said that,
973
00:50:19.519 --> 00:50:22.320
you'd have to make it true. So the bot qualifies. Yeah,
974
00:50:23.239 --> 00:50:25.559
and they had to issue the refund and it just
975
00:50:25.800 --> 00:50:29.559
was a you know, the interesting part was considering that
976
00:50:29.639 --> 00:50:34.320
Air Canada had made a publicly accessible tool that early on. Yeah,
977
00:50:34.400 --> 00:50:37.079
and at least in Canada now has set a piece
978
00:50:37.079 --> 00:50:40.199
of case law in place. Not a bad thing. I'm
979
00:50:40.199 --> 00:50:43.559
not unhappy with that outcome. No, that's I don't want them. Yeah,
980
00:50:43.920 --> 00:50:47.559
cautionary tale to other companies, right, test and be prepared
981
00:50:47.599 --> 00:50:49.480
to pay for the consequences exactly.
982
00:50:49.599 --> 00:50:52.079
So that also means that if you can sort of
983
00:50:52.159 --> 00:50:54.679
sense as a customer that you are that you have
984
00:50:54.679 --> 00:50:57.239
an ill limit the other end, you just keep asking it,
985
00:50:57.719 --> 00:51:00.599
you know, variations of the same questions until you get
986
00:51:00.639 --> 00:51:04.960
something you like and then you pounce on that. Oh yeah,
987
00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:06.199
I'll take that deal, thank you.
988
00:51:07.639 --> 00:51:10.519
Yeah. I remember asking about are you a bot? And
989
00:51:10.519 --> 00:51:13.719
it said no, my name is whatever from blah blah blah.
990
00:51:13.840 --> 00:51:15.639
Yeah, sure, yeah, I.
991
00:51:15.559 --> 00:51:17.840
Think we should. I think that should should be a
992
00:51:17.880 --> 00:51:21.920
law that says, well, they are not allowed to impersonate humans, but.
993
00:51:22.159 --> 00:51:22.719
You should know.
994
00:51:22.920 --> 00:51:24.639
I have to wonder if we had done a better
995
00:51:24.719 --> 00:51:26.880
job on privacy in the first place, if we wouldn't
996
00:51:26.880 --> 00:51:29.559
be dealing with quite as many issues as we've got. Yeah,
997
00:51:29.679 --> 00:51:32.239
that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to try. Like I'm
998
00:51:33.119 --> 00:51:35.039
we talk about the challenges of the gen Z and
999
00:51:35.079 --> 00:51:39.960
younger generations. It's this using despairs and excuse not to try. Yeah, hey,
1000
00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.280
it's not an excuse. You have to continue to be
1001
00:51:44.400 --> 00:51:48.800
the best person you can be. Be the best programmer, dancer, electrician,
1002
00:51:48.960 --> 00:51:51.119
whatever it is you are. Be the best you can
1003
00:51:51.159 --> 00:51:53.760
possibly be, and use the tools to your advantage. Don't
1004
00:51:53.800 --> 00:51:59.199
become a tool yourself. All right, at all? In all,
1005
00:51:59.199 --> 00:52:00.000
I'm pretty optimistic.
1006
00:52:01.000 --> 00:52:02.679
Yeah, I actually am too.
1007
00:52:03.079 --> 00:52:09.119
Well, I'm not, but that's just my disposition.
1008
00:52:08.639 --> 00:52:10.920
To see some patterns happening again. It's like, oh boy,
1009
00:52:10.960 --> 00:52:13.119
we get to learn this problem again. Oh you've been
1010
00:52:13.119 --> 00:52:15.679
trusting software. Huh, All right, here we go.
1011
00:52:15.840 --> 00:52:17.760
We're gonna have to trust but you know what, the
1012
00:52:17.840 --> 00:52:20.199
chickens will come home to rust, like we've said, Richard,
1013
00:52:20.360 --> 00:52:22.840
and you know the rest of the people will wake
1014
00:52:22.920 --> 00:52:24.679
up and say, oh we need to do this, we
1015
00:52:24.719 --> 00:52:27.079
need to do that. We can't just rely on these things.
1016
00:52:27.679 --> 00:52:30.599
So yeah, there'll there will be some pain for sure. Yeah,
1017
00:52:30.719 --> 00:52:34.960
but ultimately come down to people and the decisions they make. Yeah, yeah, okay,
1018
00:52:35.360 --> 00:52:36.000
is that a show?
1019
00:52:36.360 --> 00:52:37.159
I think it's a show?
1020
00:52:37.320 --> 00:52:41.199
All right, Mark, thank you. It's always always awesome talking
1021
00:52:41.239 --> 00:52:41.519
to you.
1022
00:52:41.840 --> 00:52:44.039
It's a pleasure, all right. Thank you for having me.
1023
00:52:44.199 --> 00:52:46.480
You bet, and we'll see you next time on dot
1024
00:52:46.519 --> 00:53:09.039
net rocks. Dot net Rocks is brought to you by
1025
00:53:09.119 --> 00:53:13.800
Franklin's Net and produced by Pop Studios, a full service audio,
1026
00:53:13.920 --> 00:53:18.360
video and post production facility located physically in New London, Connecticut,
1027
00:53:18.599 --> 00:53:23.400
and of course in the cloud online at pwop dot com.
1028
00:53:23.599 --> 00:53:25.760
Visit our website at d O T N E T
1029
00:53:25.960 --> 00:53:30.000
R O c k S dot com for RSS feeds, downloads,
1030
00:53:30.159 --> 00:53:33.840
mobile apps, comments, and access to the full archives going
1031
00:53:33.880 --> 00:53:37.239
back to show number one, recorded in September two thousand
1032
00:53:37.280 --> 00:53:37.519
and two.
1033
00:53:38.159 --> 00:53:40.480
And make sure you check out our sponsors. They keep
1034
00:53:40.559 --> 00:53:43.760
us in business. Now, go write some code, see you
1035
00:53:43.800 --> 00:53:44.199
next time.
1036
00:53:45.119 --> 00:53:46.960
You got jam Vans
1037
00:53:49.000 --> 00:54:01.519
And for the pass