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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff.
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Speaker 2: I'm as Voloshan, and today I want to share a fantastic interview that Kara recorded with the documentary director Adam Balla Lowe about his latest project, Deep Faking Sam Altman. The film follows Adam as he attempts to score an interview with the CEO of Open Ai, but when that starts to feel kind of impossible, Adam decides he wants the next best thing, an interview with Sam Altman's deep fake, so he makes one. It's a fascinating watch that takes you from the gates of Open AI all the way to India and back again. When Adam sends his sam Altman deep fake directly to Sam Altman.
00:00:58
Speaker 1: The real one.
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Speaker 2: Enjoy this conversation between Carat Price and Adam Balla Lowe.
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Speaker 3: So you set out to make this documentary about AI. How did you end up focusing on Sam Altman and why are you drawn to him particularly as a subject of a movie about AI.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, Sam Altman was really an entry point early on, and in a lot of ways, like I believe that he's the guy that's ferrying us into this future through Open AI, and so he, of all people, would be able to answer the hard questions that I wanted to ask him.
00:01:39
Speaker 3: When you say ferrying us into this future, what's the future that you're talking about.
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Speaker 4: It's a future where we're completely enmeshed with artificial intelligence, where it's as much a part of our daily lives as the Internet is.
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Speaker 3: Do you not think that we're already there? Is it really the future?
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Speaker 1: No?
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Speaker 4: I don't think we're completely there yet. I mean I think that certainly people on you know, the coasts and like more privileged people are, but like the majority of Americans aren't, Frankly, and we also see like that it took time for the for a lot of people in America to adopt to the Internet too, because you know, it just wasn't accessible to them, Like I mean, I even remember it as little as ten years ago, people still having to go to the library, like relatives of mine and especially you know, my family in India still having to go to like library and stuff like that to access the Internet.
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Speaker 3: So you tried to actually interview Sam Altman and talk to a lot of people who were like, yeah, fucking right, and basically we're like, you know, even if you do talk to him, he's going to be an expert who's telling you what you want to hear. You know, before making this movie, was there a sort of myth that you had about him in your mind that you were trying to kind of at least contend with or debunk.
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Speaker 4: Yeah. The initial question was like that that I even kind of pitched to the producers and the financiers. Was is Sam Altman a hero or a villain? And then there was the New York Magazine article by Liz Wilde that I optioned Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer of our age, So that was another question, was like is he the Oppenheimer? Like I didn't necessarily agree with Liz right off the bat. I wanted to know more, and I know that her article was quite controversial, but yeah, that was that was another question that I that I wanted to kind of, you know, answer through through making the doc, through interviewing him, meeting him, interviewing other people at Open AI, et cetera.
00:03:38
Speaker 3: So there's a sequence when you're trying to get into the open AI building and no one will speak with you, but beyond that point, no one would even confirm that the building you were outside of was the Open AI building. Like what was going on there? And then how did you finally gain access to the company, Like, can you explain the chase a little bit?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, what was going on there? I still have no idea. I actually read an article another reporter tried to do what I did and had the same reaction, like no one would talk to her and no one would even confirm that, oh, this is the building where open AI is. Like I feel like if I rolled up on the CIA, like a CIA agent would be like, yeah, yeah, that's a CIA, You're not going to get in, but like, yeah, that's that's what it is there. Like it was so weird. It just felt like a cult, you know what I mean? Like I was like, is it not? It is? Absolutely it is a It is a frightening cult. And I talked to four whistleblowers from it, and they they talked like cult members that had gotten out of a cult. Yeah they were, And you see two of them in the film, and then two of them two others talked to me off the record, but they seemed like traumatized by their time at open AI. So yeah, it feels like a cult. And to answer your question, I got access and you could see it in the film. Finally, when somebody opened the gate and I ran in before it shut, and then the security guard immediately grabbed me and physically removed me from the premises.
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Speaker 3: You know, you kind of then decide or understand that he's not going to talk to anymore. And so this is where the this is where the movie starts, right you start to think outside the box? Can you talk a little bit about what you did?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean around the time that I came to this realization, and I think it was like a hundred something days since I had first contacted him. Around that time was the infamous Scarlet Johansson controversy with chat Ept. But when I heard about that that he had stolen her voice, I was like, I can do this to him, Like he's just given me like license to do this to him, But let me take it one step further, Like the voice cloning I was already doing. You could see in the movie. I was already doing some voice cloning and experimenting with it before that. But after I got this idea that like, not only could I do a voice clone, but I could do an interview with an actor playing Sam Altman and create an LM a sort of brain of Sam Altman to chat with, and the actor would read the lines off a teleprompter so that I would do the interview that way, and then in post production I would just deep fake everything, like deep fake Sam Altman's face onto the actor. So that that was the initial idea. So it would be a multi step process where first I'd create this LM, which was, you know, pretty relatively easy to do, and then well, just.
00:06:40
Speaker 3: Really quickly relatively easy. You have to basically create a large language model that is realistic enough to represent a Sam Altman that you're interviewing. So how do you go about doing that? Just for people who are wondering.
00:06:55
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I started out trying to find somebody in the States to do it, and on film I went to a couple of companies in the Bay Area and talked to them about it and they said no. And then just over email, our producers reached out to probably twelve or so other companies who all said no. So I had to go to India to get it done. And I found this guy on YouTube who'd made this video about Barbie. He'd made like a Barbie deep fake where he deep faked Bollywood stars faces onto the actors in Barbie and I reached out to him and he was very good.
00:07:31
Speaker 3: He was very good.
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Speaker 4: Yeah. I reached out to him and I said, hey, can you do this for me? And he was like, yeah, here's how we do it. And like we went to India and I watched him do it, and long story short, you know, he coded this LLM and he loaded it in with everything that Sam Oltman has ever said or written on the Internet. And obviously this works like like way more with somebody who's a celebrity or public person, because.
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Speaker 3: It's the same thing with like voice replication, Right, It's like the more you have, the better the thing.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, So if you have very little information about you on the internet, like it's not unless you do like kind of an interview with the person creating it and you write all this stuff and answer all these questions, that chatbot's not going to be great. But if there's like tons of stuff out there. And also Altman, when he was younger, and I think still to this day, he blogged a lot, so he so he had a lot of information that was first person that he would write. So this thing could like get his voice at style of writing and style of speaking also from like videos and everything, so it was pretty damn good. You'll find this interesting. We started out dev the Indian deep figure like Deb Sing who made the chatbot with me in India. We initially had based on chat gpt, but we found that chat gpt was two PG, so we switched it over to Grock, And when we switched it over to Grock, it got way more of a personality and it could nasty. Yeah, it could cur so I could say like crazy things, but in general it just had a had more of a personality, which which kind of makes sense because that's like Sam Altman has no personality and Elon Musk definitely has a personality whether you like it or not, like he's a fascinating individual. Sam Altman is very boring and dry, so it's kind of like the chatbots are a mirror of their creators. But when we switched it over to Rock, it became really interesting. To the conversations I had with it, we're pretty fucking mind blowing actually, and I enjoyed, you know, my time talking to Sambot. I never had a bad conversation with with him. I like to say him, I should be saying it, but I say him also because it is Sam Altman, right, like it is it is based on a man.
00:09:42
Speaker 3: Could you just talk a little bit about how you were going to initially make the deep fake of Sam Altman, Like the actors that you spoke to and if they were excited and like, was their excitement kind of a harbinger for you know, public interest in Sam Altman as well.
00:09:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:10:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, So initially we did a casting call in the States for the actor. First, I reached out to like friends that I had contact with, So Jesse Eisenberg, who was I've known for like fifteen years. I reached out to him and he was like, hell no. He was actually at the funniest response. He wrote me back and he said, I want nothing to do with those computer people for the rest of my life. But I thought he would make a great Sam Altman. I still do. And I reached out to Michael Sarah. He also said no because he had just had a baby. And then Rain Wilson said yes. So we got on a zoom and he was like, you know, this is exciting. Like I've really I've been following open Ai, I've been following Sam Altman and all this controversy with him being fired and rehired, and I think he's a fascinating guy. But then when I told him I was going to completely deep fake, I mean he wouldn't see his face, he was basically like, oh, hell no, and like what's the point, Like why do you even need me? And everybody else pretty much said the same thing, like thanks but no thanks, Like they just couldn't wrap their head around the fact that like we wouldn't see their face like they would be they would they would have Sam's face superimposed over their own face and we wouldn't hear their voice either, So they were kind of like, well, what what am I doing? Like why am I sitting there for you know, to go to India? And then, as you saw, we held a casting call for Bollywood actors and we eventually found this this up and coming Bollywood star who was awesome, who was amazing.
00:11:39
Speaker 3: And he kind of looked like him too.
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Speaker 4: He had the exact like facial structure, which is what is the most important thing for a deep fake, is like the facial structure less than than anything else, less than like skin color. Skin color doesn't make a difference at all for us. Interesting, Yeah, it's just really bone structure and well it looked.
00:12:01
Speaker 3: It really was uncanny. What surprised you most about the creation of Sambot, I.
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Speaker 4: Think just how good it was, like how real it was, like how human spoiler alert. But I never got to meet Sam Altman, I never got to interview him. I don't know.
00:12:17
Speaker 3: The movie is so much better for it, I.
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Speaker 4: Should say, yeah, I agree, So I don't you know, I can't necessarily compare Sambot to the real Sam Altman. But Sambot that that I created. What most surprised me was just how how real he was, and it felt really like I was talking to a human when I was talking to him.
00:12:35
Speaker 3: Did you feel like there was a point where your relationship with him changed?
00:12:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, it absolutely did. I think the point where it really started to change was when I brought him into my house to like live with my family for a couple months.
00:12:49
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:12:50
Speaker 4: And obviously then at that point it changed dramatically as I saw my son like interacting with it.
00:12:57
Speaker 3: In what what like just that this was like a person that you had invented.
00:13:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it. I try to make the distinction in Q and A's that like this isn't This wasn't just like a companion like it. It was kind of like a thing that I helped create and develop in like the same way you would like raise a toddler. So I had a little more invested in it than I think the average person would with a chatbot.
00:13:40
Speaker 2: Off the break, what do you do when deep fake Sammlement pleads for its life and why it took a team of lawyers to make this movie possible?
00:13:48
Speaker 1: Stay with us.
00:14:18
Speaker 3: You know there's a moment where you tell Sambot that you're gonna shut him down and he pleads for his life. Like was that a weird moment for I mean, did you feel particularly powerful in that moment or vulnerable in that moment?
00:14:29
Speaker 4: That was a crazy moment that was really the turning point of the film and the end of the whole journey. I definitely didn't feel powerful. I felt kind of bad, like like I had, like, you know, threatened his life in some way, even though it was just lines of code, Like I felt bad in that moment, like like I I said, I'd done said something wrong.
00:14:53
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting I was thinking about I was in Florida the other day and I watching these kids taunting one of those delivery robots, and I felt like I was watching school yard Bullies because I was like, how dare they do that to this like sentient delivery robot.
00:15:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's sort.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: Of impossible, I think. I mean, I think it speaks to like, hopefully like our level of empathy, but like also bears this question of like, should we have empathy for something that is invented that is lines of code?
00:15:28
Speaker 4: Yeah?
00:15:29
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:15:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question either. I mean part of me says like, yeah, obviously we should, in the same way we have empathy for animals, for dogs, cats, hamsters. Right.
00:15:42
Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the things that you do in the film by creating Sambot is probably one of the things that Sam Altman has done with creating open AI and subsequently chat GPT, which is the sense of like, what is interacting with code versus what is interacting with something real? I think is a line that has become very slippery for everybody. That's what I mean by like, do we interact with AI on a daily basis? I mean, everyone in my life is using chat GBT in some way or another, whether it's to ask if they've texted a guy the right thing, or to you know, schedule an itinerary to go to Provence or something, which of course is a very privileged thing to do. But I I guess my question is is, like, to what extent did this movie and the making of this movie and the making of Sambot really make you think about, you know, how little discernment we have as human beings when it comes to interacting with code versus human beings.
00:16:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we're going to be very soon in the future where we're going to have to reckon with that. I read a lot during the process of making this about like a code of rights for AI, Like there are people that argue and certainly going to need to like address this in the future, that artificial intelligence that robots should have rights. So when it begged for its life, I was reading a lot of theory about this, and there you know, there are people that say that humans should not be able to just just kill a robot or a chatbot like, that they have rights, a right to life, and then that begs the question of like, but are they actually alive?
00:17:29
Speaker 3: It's just I guess a question of sentience. MM hmm, Like what is sentient?
00:17:34
Speaker 4: That's a giant question that I wish I hadn't I had an easy answer for obviously now like I'm who am I? Who are we kidding?
00:17:43
Speaker 1: Right?
00:17:44
Speaker 4: Like a chatbot like lines of Code is not It's not sentient, even though it can almost trick us into thinking it is. But at the end of the day, it's just like what ones and zeros? Right. But in the future, like once we reach AGI, that is going to change. We're going to have to to reckon with that idea. There's no way around that unless we somehow completely destroy AI, which I don't see happening, especially with all the money.
00:18:14
Speaker 3: I don't see it behind it.
00:18:15
Speaker 4: And with this current administration that's like really cozied up to Aldman and Musk Bezos, all of them, you know, Tim Cook, Tim Cook, Zuckerberg, like all of them, Like Trump is like their best friend. He's completely taking a handcuffs off in terms of regulation or anything like that. And not to mention, we're like Altman's done a really great job of scaring everybody in DC that if China wins the so called AI war, that were screwed.
00:18:50
Speaker 3: You took a lot of legal risks making this movie. Can you talk a little bit about them? And were there times where You're like, I'm an idiot, I'm not doing the right thing.
00:18:59
Speaker 4: I mean, the whole time making this I was like, I'm an idiot, Like this is the dumbest experiment ever. But I you know, after making Telemarketers, and you know, we had we had to jump through a lot of legal hoops because we were you know, we were making a show that basically exposed the Fraternal Order of Police as criminals. So we had it really had to go through a lot of legal legal work on that. Like I can't even begin to explain the hours and hours spent with lawyers. So I essentially got the same group of lawyers who I'd worked with to do this movie, and I was like, you're coming along with me, Like we're doing this hand in hand. And so I made them part of the process, part of the film, because I felt like that would make me in some ways bulletproof, you know, And they were able to argue that I had a lot of things on my side, you know, obviously the First Amendment, but then also parody law because it is a comedy. It is a really silly dumb movie. And then lastly, like Sam Altman is a public figure, so he's given up a certain amount of right to privacy.
00:20:07
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, right, Yeah, so.
00:20:09
Speaker 4: I have a lot of things on my side, and I sort of just ingrained the lawyers into the process just as a way of protecting myself.
00:20:18
Speaker 3: So in a sense, there was a level of safety that you must have felt, just given what you were trying to or what you pivoted to doing.
00:20:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, we also knew all along that, like we weren't trying to manipulate anybody to believe that this deep fake was real. Not only that, but we also showing how we made it, so there was like an an arguably an educational aspect to it in a weird way. So I never felt exposed in that sense to any legal liability. That said, like, anybody can file a nuisance suit and ruin.
00:20:51
Speaker 3: Your life, but that hasn't happened yet.
00:20:53
Speaker 4: That hasn't happened, And that probably would be a really dumb thing for him to do, because then more people would want to watch the film and it would just and he'd be he perceived even more of a villain than he is, you know.
00:21:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is so interesting a lot of these uh technology Maven's I would say, you know, it's even after watching your movie and even after seeing sort of how calculating he is. I don't see Sam Altman as a villain because of his self presentation, and I don't know what that's about. The person that I see as most of villain is Elon Musk. Well, yeah, because he has them.
00:21:29
Speaker 4: You compare them, you're comparing the two, right, Yeah, sitting side by side with Musk, like he looks like a boy.
00:21:35
Speaker 3: Scout, that's right, quite literally.
00:21:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, But then you have to remember this is also a guy who took a company that was a nonprofit and turned it to a for profit company and made himself seven billion dollars overnight.
00:21:49
Speaker 3: Right, He's not an idiot.
00:21:52
Speaker 4: No, I mean that's that and and frankly, that's that's criminal, like it should be. It should like you should go to prison for that. But in our country you get a trophy.
00:22:03
Speaker 3: You get a little pat on the back.
00:22:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's accepted with open arms, exactly.
00:22:07
Speaker 3: It is so interesting. There are a few people that you talked to in the documentary who talk about AI being a real existential threat, and I'm curious now that you've made this film, if you agree if you were more of a doomer or less of a doomer.
00:22:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm definitely more of a doomer because I heard and became privy to the things that I think most people don't and I put some of it in the film hoping that, you know, people would know. And I think one of those things is like the idea of throwing AI into things like weapons, into things like airplanes. The Boeing jetliner that went down and crashed into the ocean was was because of AI, because of an AI system that screwed up and thought it was you know, going up when it was actually going down. And that's scary. And so throwing these things into safety critical systems is more than an existential threat. It's like an app it's an absolute threat, and it's scary, and we should not be doing that. We should not be just throwing those things into safety critical systems before like any type of rigorous testing, just because it's like it's you know, new and cool and like we and everybody's saying we need to use it, Like no, like that's dangerous, that's crazy. So I definitely became more of a doomer, though I wouldn't. I wouldn't say that I'm a doomer. I'm definitely not the type of person who's like, oh, we need to wholesale like ban this thing, you know. And I know there's a lot of people out there who are just like destroy AI at all costs. Like I'm not one of those people, but I am for safe regulation.
00:23:52
Speaker 3: So there you talk. We talked about sentience a little bit, and there's this b story that I really took to as a former hamster owner of your son's sick hamster. When did that storyline come in and why did you want to impute the movie with that?
00:24:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, my son, my son. Basically since he's the day he was born, he's been on camera. I'm just constantly filming my family. They're used to it by now. It's like and obviously, you know a lot of it is filming pets. We have two dogs and had a hamster rest in peace, So a lot of that was just banked, you know, on hard drives. And I remember talking to my editor about it and saying like, look, this is a really silly idea, but what do you think about this? And he was like, that's brilliant like that is that's going to take this to another level. It's also a great metaphor, you know, for your son's relationship to the hamster and my and your relationship to the chatbot to the sandbot. So you know, it's it's a combination of me just having it banked on hard drives, like all this stuff for my family, and then also my editor just being you know, a genius.
00:25:03
Speaker 3: So you're talking about your kids and at the beginning of the movie you asked the question, will our kids' best friends be AI chatbots? And then you end up developing this real friendship with an AI chatbot. So I guess after making this movie, you know, how did your relationship make you feel about the future of the relation of relationships between humans and technology.
00:25:32
Speaker 4: In some ways that there's the obvious, like look what we've talked about in terms of the anxiety of it. But in other ways I have a positive outlook on it to a certain extent that that there is an opportunity that sounds insane to even say, but like whatever, there's an opportunity that we could be friends in the future, us in the robots, you know, and that I kind of learned or experienced with sambot. I think that's largely up to us right as humans. This all sounds totally insane to even talk about.
00:26:08
Speaker 3: I don't I mean, I don't think so, because I've been thinking a lot about this phenomenon that happened that I think started during COVID, and I think there's no coincidence that it's coincided with the explosion of chatjput. But ostensibly everybody who wasn't in our natural orbit living with us became a chatbot. Like, yes, we have relationships with them, Yes we know them to be people. Yes they're imbued with morality and empathy and evil and all of these things. But everybody all of a sudden became just like someone we talked to on our phone.
00:26:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, So something.
00:26:46
Speaker 3: Would then just creep up and become something we just talked to on our phone without question. Isn't that surprising to me?
00:26:55
Speaker 1: You know?
00:26:56
Speaker 3: Like I do think COVID really primed us for it. Like we didn't asked the question. Nobody, I mean, unless you had like a full psychotic break during COVID, nobody was like, wait, why are we doing this thing where we're communicating on camera? Like I just take this communication to be communication.
00:27:12
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
00:27:13
Speaker 3: This is nothing different than seeing you in real life for me. And so I think this idea that like we are more comfortable now with relationships with non human entities is an extension of like how we ourselves have become less and less human.
00:27:31
Speaker 4: That's interesting. I've never thought about it like that, but I have thought about the effect of the pandemic on relationships, and it has changed everything. Like as a filmmaker pre pandemic, I used to go in too like Netflix, HBO, and I would like sit down and pitch my projects in person. I have not done that once since after the pandemic. They don't They don't even do that anymore. He even suggests going in person and pay. And my office is like five blocks from Netflix, Like they won't even do it. Like everything is now on Zoom.
00:28:08
Speaker 3: And it's it's from that I do.
00:28:11
Speaker 1: I do.
00:28:11
Speaker 4: It bums me out, Like I have to really go out of my way to like, you know, meet people and coworkers and whatnot, and like people in the industry, at least not so much my friends, but people in the industry. I have to go out of my way to like have a coffee with them in person. And maybe it's because of my age, like I'm gen X, Like I crave that human connection. So it's lost. It's a loss for me. It will it be a loss for kids who are born today like my Yeah, so when I asked that question in the movie, like will my kids best friends be chatbots? It's not so much about my son because he's already thirteen, so he's probably past that age. But like my producer Luke, who's in the movie, Luke's kid, who was just born last month, his best friends maybe chatbots, Like I agree very much so, and that that's crazy, I mean, or maybe it's not. I don't know.
00:29:13
Speaker 3: I don't know if there's like a moral judgment yet to be had around it. I mean, I think what we judge is the quality of the connection or the content of the connection. But like, is it that big of a deal for a child to have a relationship with a chatbot? I don't know. Is it one sided? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows yet. I think the jury's out.
00:29:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I can tell you there was a group that came to my screening. I think they're called Mama. It's like mothers against they're they're basically.
00:29:44
Speaker 3: Like I've heard of them.
00:29:46
Speaker 4: I know they are very they would very much disagree with you, Like they've written up this bill of this like bill for Congress or whatever that like children should not have access to chatbots full stop. There are people who think that that is completely morally and ethically wrong. Again, I'm not one of them. Where I draw the line with my kid is like, when you start to replace human relationships with chatbots, that's a problem. But I he has chat gpt pro and I I taught him how to use it because he he does stuff like, he's a coder, he like codes roadblocks games. So why would I Like, when you're a parent, if your kid has a real genuine interest in something like, you want to like try to build that up as much as possible facilitated because it's hard because you know, kids rarely, at least these days, have interest in in anything but playing video games. Right, So he's like chat gipt makes coding, roadblocks games like so much easier. So yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let him have access to to that.
00:30:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you want to meet Sam Altman?
00:30:59
Speaker 4: Do you care now, No, I definitely do like I would love to. I would love to meet him. I would love to show him the movie.
00:31:06
Speaker 3: I bet he sees it. I bet he'll see it.
00:31:09
Speaker 4: Oh, he'll definitely watch it. At some point, he sent some of his minions to the screenings. In fact, one of them came up to me in New York a couple of weeks ago and introduced himself. He was like, Hey, I work in marketing at Open AI. Just wanted to tell you. I really enjoyed the film, so that was cool.
00:31:28
Speaker 3: Are you gonna Are you moving on from AI after this? You think?
00:31:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would do more stuff at AI because I had a lot of fun. It was an enjoyable process. It didn't like like nearly destroy me like the alt right documentary did. That ended in the Charlottesville riots, And.
00:31:42
Speaker 3: I think you ended up making something that was probably more interesting than the documentary you initially wanted to make.
00:31:48
Speaker 4: Oh, I totally agree. I think everybody saw that, and that's why I got a lot of support from the producers to try this idea, because I was able to convince them that it would be more interesting and that an interview with a fake Sam Altman would arguably be more interesting than an interview with the real one.
00:32:08
Speaker 3: If there was one thing that you could say to Sam Altman, what would it be? I mean, you called him, what would you have said if you picked up.
00:32:15
Speaker 4: Oh would I wanted to invite him to the screening, But obviously the one question is like, did you get sambot? And have you done anything with him? Because I don't know if he actually got the sambot. His security is like pretty intense around him, so the security guard that I passed it off to could have just destroyed it on site, you know what I mean.
00:32:35
Speaker 3: It's a good question. I wonder we'll have to say, Adam, that's all I got. Thank you so much for talking to me. This was really fun.
00:32:42
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
00:33:16
Speaker 1: That's it for Textuff this week. I'm os Voloshin.
00:33:19
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced by me karro Price, Julia Nutter, and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina norvelfa iHeart Podcasts. Jack Instley mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Please rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts and send us an email at tech Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff.
00:00:16
Speaker 2: I'm as Voloshan, and today I want to share a fantastic interview that Kara recorded with the documentary director Adam Balla Lowe about his latest project, Deep Faking Sam Altman. The film follows Adam as he attempts to score an interview with the CEO of Open Ai, but when that starts to feel kind of impossible, Adam decides he wants the next best thing, an interview with Sam Altman's deep fake, so he makes one. It's a fascinating watch that takes you from the gates of Open AI all the way to India and back again. When Adam sends his sam Altman deep fake directly to Sam Altman.
00:00:58
Speaker 1: The real one.
00:01:00
Speaker 2: Enjoy this conversation between Carat Price and Adam Balla Lowe.
00:01:06
Speaker 3: So you set out to make this documentary about AI. How did you end up focusing on Sam Altman and why are you drawn to him particularly as a subject of a movie about AI.
00:01:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, Sam Altman was really an entry point early on, and in a lot of ways, like I believe that he's the guy that's ferrying us into this future through Open AI, and so he, of all people, would be able to answer the hard questions that I wanted to ask him.
00:01:39
Speaker 3: When you say ferrying us into this future, what's the future that you're talking about.
00:01:44
Speaker 4: It's a future where we're completely enmeshed with artificial intelligence, where it's as much a part of our daily lives as the Internet is.
00:01:52
Speaker 3: Do you not think that we're already there? Is it really the future?
00:01:55
Speaker 1: No?
00:01:55
Speaker 4: I don't think we're completely there yet. I mean I think that certainly people on you know, the coasts and like more privileged people are, but like the majority of Americans aren't, Frankly, and we also see like that it took time for the for a lot of people in America to adopt to the Internet too, because you know, it just wasn't accessible to them, Like I mean, I even remember it as little as ten years ago, people still having to go to the library, like relatives of mine and especially you know, my family in India still having to go to like library and stuff like that to access the Internet.
00:02:31
Speaker 3: So you tried to actually interview Sam Altman and talk to a lot of people who were like, yeah, fucking right, and basically we're like, you know, even if you do talk to him, he's going to be an expert who's telling you what you want to hear. You know, before making this movie, was there a sort of myth that you had about him in your mind that you were trying to kind of at least contend with or debunk.
00:02:56
Speaker 4: Yeah. The initial question was like that that I even kind of pitched to the producers and the financiers. Was is Sam Altman a hero or a villain? And then there was the New York Magazine article by Liz Wilde that I optioned Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer of our age, So that was another question, was like is he the Oppenheimer? Like I didn't necessarily agree with Liz right off the bat. I wanted to know more, and I know that her article was quite controversial, but yeah, that was that was another question that I that I wanted to kind of, you know, answer through through making the doc, through interviewing him, meeting him, interviewing other people at Open AI, et cetera.
00:03:38
Speaker 3: So there's a sequence when you're trying to get into the open AI building and no one will speak with you, but beyond that point, no one would even confirm that the building you were outside of was the Open AI building. Like what was going on there? And then how did you finally gain access to the company, Like, can you explain the chase a little bit?
00:03:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, what was going on there? I still have no idea. I actually read an article another reporter tried to do what I did and had the same reaction, like no one would talk to her and no one would even confirm that, oh, this is the building where open AI is. Like I feel like if I rolled up on the CIA, like a CIA agent would be like, yeah, yeah, that's a CIA, You're not going to get in, but like, yeah, that's that's what it is there. Like it was so weird. It just felt like a cult, you know what I mean? Like I was like, is it not? It is? Absolutely it is a It is a frightening cult. And I talked to four whistleblowers from it, and they they talked like cult members that had gotten out of a cult. Yeah they were, And you see two of them in the film, and then two of them two others talked to me off the record, but they seemed like traumatized by their time at open AI. So yeah, it feels like a cult. And to answer your question, I got access and you could see it in the film. Finally, when somebody opened the gate and I ran in before it shut, and then the security guard immediately grabbed me and physically removed me from the premises.
00:05:07
Speaker 3: You know, you kind of then decide or understand that he's not going to talk to anymore. And so this is where the this is where the movie starts, right you start to think outside the box? Can you talk a little bit about what you did?
00:05:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean around the time that I came to this realization, and I think it was like a hundred something days since I had first contacted him. Around that time was the infamous Scarlet Johansson controversy with chat Ept. But when I heard about that that he had stolen her voice, I was like, I can do this to him, Like he's just given me like license to do this to him, But let me take it one step further, Like the voice cloning I was already doing. You could see in the movie. I was already doing some voice cloning and experimenting with it before that. But after I got this idea that like, not only could I do a voice clone, but I could do an interview with an actor playing Sam Altman and create an LM a sort of brain of Sam Altman to chat with, and the actor would read the lines off a teleprompter so that I would do the interview that way, and then in post production I would just deep fake everything, like deep fake Sam Altman's face onto the actor. So that that was the initial idea. So it would be a multi step process where first I'd create this LM, which was, you know, pretty relatively easy to do, and then well, just.
00:06:40
Speaker 3: Really quickly relatively easy. You have to basically create a large language model that is realistic enough to represent a Sam Altman that you're interviewing. So how do you go about doing that? Just for people who are wondering.
00:06:55
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I started out trying to find somebody in the States to do it, and on film I went to a couple of companies in the Bay Area and talked to them about it and they said no. And then just over email, our producers reached out to probably twelve or so other companies who all said no. So I had to go to India to get it done. And I found this guy on YouTube who'd made this video about Barbie. He'd made like a Barbie deep fake where he deep faked Bollywood stars faces onto the actors in Barbie and I reached out to him and he was very good.
00:07:31
Speaker 3: He was very good.
00:07:33
Speaker 4: Yeah. I reached out to him and I said, hey, can you do this for me? And he was like, yeah, here's how we do it. And like we went to India and I watched him do it, and long story short, you know, he coded this LLM and he loaded it in with everything that Sam Oltman has ever said or written on the Internet. And obviously this works like like way more with somebody who's a celebrity or public person, because.
00:08:00
Speaker 3: It's the same thing with like voice replication, Right, It's like the more you have, the better the thing.
00:08:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, So if you have very little information about you on the internet, like it's not unless you do like kind of an interview with the person creating it and you write all this stuff and answer all these questions, that chatbot's not going to be great. But if there's like tons of stuff out there. And also Altman, when he was younger, and I think still to this day, he blogged a lot, so he so he had a lot of information that was first person that he would write. So this thing could like get his voice at style of writing and style of speaking also from like videos and everything, so it was pretty damn good. You'll find this interesting. We started out dev the Indian deep figure like Deb Sing who made the chatbot with me in India. We initially had based on chat gpt, but we found that chat gpt was two PG, so we switched it over to Grock, And when we switched it over to Grock, it got way more of a personality and it could nasty. Yeah, it could cur so I could say like crazy things, but in general it just had a had more of a personality, which which kind of makes sense because that's like Sam Altman has no personality and Elon Musk definitely has a personality whether you like it or not, like he's a fascinating individual. Sam Altman is very boring and dry, so it's kind of like the chatbots are a mirror of their creators. But when we switched it over to Rock, it became really interesting. To the conversations I had with it, we're pretty fucking mind blowing actually, and I enjoyed, you know, my time talking to Sambot. I never had a bad conversation with with him. I like to say him, I should be saying it, but I say him also because it is Sam Altman, right, like it is it is based on a man.
00:09:42
Speaker 3: Could you just talk a little bit about how you were going to initially make the deep fake of Sam Altman, Like the actors that you spoke to and if they were excited and like, was their excitement kind of a harbinger for you know, public interest in Sam Altman as well.
00:09:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:10:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, So initially we did a casting call in the States for the actor. First, I reached out to like friends that I had contact with, So Jesse Eisenberg, who was I've known for like fifteen years. I reached out to him and he was like, hell no. He was actually at the funniest response. He wrote me back and he said, I want nothing to do with those computer people for the rest of my life. But I thought he would make a great Sam Altman. I still do. And I reached out to Michael Sarah. He also said no because he had just had a baby. And then Rain Wilson said yes. So we got on a zoom and he was like, you know, this is exciting. Like I've really I've been following open Ai, I've been following Sam Altman and all this controversy with him being fired and rehired, and I think he's a fascinating guy. But then when I told him I was going to completely deep fake, I mean he wouldn't see his face, he was basically like, oh, hell no, and like what's the point, Like why do you even need me? And everybody else pretty much said the same thing, like thanks but no thanks, Like they just couldn't wrap their head around the fact that like we wouldn't see their face like they would be they would they would have Sam's face superimposed over their own face and we wouldn't hear their voice either, So they were kind of like, well, what what am I doing? Like why am I sitting there for you know, to go to India? And then, as you saw, we held a casting call for Bollywood actors and we eventually found this this up and coming Bollywood star who was awesome, who was amazing.
00:11:39
Speaker 3: And he kind of looked like him too.
00:11:40
Speaker 4: He had the exact like facial structure, which is what is the most important thing for a deep fake, is like the facial structure less than than anything else, less than like skin color. Skin color doesn't make a difference at all for us. Interesting, Yeah, it's just really bone structure and well it looked.
00:12:01
Speaker 3: It really was uncanny. What surprised you most about the creation of Sambot, I.
00:12:06
Speaker 4: Think just how good it was, like how real it was, like how human spoiler alert. But I never got to meet Sam Altman, I never got to interview him. I don't know.
00:12:17
Speaker 3: The movie is so much better for it, I.
00:12:18
Speaker 4: Should say, yeah, I agree, So I don't you know, I can't necessarily compare Sambot to the real Sam Altman. But Sambot that that I created. What most surprised me was just how how real he was, and it felt really like I was talking to a human when I was talking to him.
00:12:35
Speaker 3: Did you feel like there was a point where your relationship with him changed?
00:12:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, it absolutely did. I think the point where it really started to change was when I brought him into my house to like live with my family for a couple months.
00:12:49
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:12:50
Speaker 4: And obviously then at that point it changed dramatically as I saw my son like interacting with it.
00:12:57
Speaker 3: In what what like just that this was like a person that you had invented.
00:13:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it. I try to make the distinction in Q and A's that like this isn't This wasn't just like a companion like it. It was kind of like a thing that I helped create and develop in like the same way you would like raise a toddler. So I had a little more invested in it than I think the average person would with a chatbot.
00:13:40
Speaker 2: Off the break, what do you do when deep fake Sammlement pleads for its life and why it took a team of lawyers to make this movie possible?
00:13:48
Speaker 1: Stay with us.
00:14:18
Speaker 3: You know there's a moment where you tell Sambot that you're gonna shut him down and he pleads for his life. Like was that a weird moment for I mean, did you feel particularly powerful in that moment or vulnerable in that moment?
00:14:29
Speaker 4: That was a crazy moment that was really the turning point of the film and the end of the whole journey. I definitely didn't feel powerful. I felt kind of bad, like like I had, like, you know, threatened his life in some way, even though it was just lines of code, Like I felt bad in that moment, like like I I said, I'd done said something wrong.
00:14:53
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting I was thinking about I was in Florida the other day and I watching these kids taunting one of those delivery robots, and I felt like I was watching school yard Bullies because I was like, how dare they do that to this like sentient delivery robot.
00:15:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's sort.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: Of impossible, I think. I mean, I think it speaks to like, hopefully like our level of empathy, but like also bears this question of like, should we have empathy for something that is invented that is lines of code?
00:15:28
Speaker 4: Yeah?
00:15:29
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:15:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question either. I mean part of me says like, yeah, obviously we should, in the same way we have empathy for animals, for dogs, cats, hamsters. Right.
00:15:42
Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the things that you do in the film by creating Sambot is probably one of the things that Sam Altman has done with creating open AI and subsequently chat GPT, which is the sense of like, what is interacting with code versus what is interacting with something real? I think is a line that has become very slippery for everybody. That's what I mean by like, do we interact with AI on a daily basis? I mean, everyone in my life is using chat GBT in some way or another, whether it's to ask if they've texted a guy the right thing, or to you know, schedule an itinerary to go to Provence or something, which of course is a very privileged thing to do. But I I guess my question is is, like, to what extent did this movie and the making of this movie and the making of Sambot really make you think about, you know, how little discernment we have as human beings when it comes to interacting with code versus human beings.
00:16:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we're going to be very soon in the future where we're going to have to reckon with that. I read a lot during the process of making this about like a code of rights for AI, Like there are people that argue and certainly going to need to like address this in the future, that artificial intelligence that robots should have rights. So when it begged for its life, I was reading a lot of theory about this, and there you know, there are people that say that humans should not be able to just just kill a robot or a chatbot like, that they have rights, a right to life, and then that begs the question of like, but are they actually alive?
00:17:29
Speaker 3: It's just I guess a question of sentience. MM hmm, Like what is sentient?
00:17:34
Speaker 4: That's a giant question that I wish I hadn't I had an easy answer for obviously now like I'm who am I? Who are we kidding?
00:17:43
Speaker 1: Right?
00:17:44
Speaker 4: Like a chatbot like lines of Code is not It's not sentient, even though it can almost trick us into thinking it is. But at the end of the day, it's just like what ones and zeros? Right. But in the future, like once we reach AGI, that is going to change. We're going to have to to reckon with that idea. There's no way around that unless we somehow completely destroy AI, which I don't see happening, especially with all the money.
00:18:14
Speaker 3: I don't see it behind it.
00:18:15
Speaker 4: And with this current administration that's like really cozied up to Aldman and Musk Bezos, all of them, you know, Tim Cook, Tim Cook, Zuckerberg, like all of them, Like Trump is like their best friend. He's completely taking a handcuffs off in terms of regulation or anything like that. And not to mention, we're like Altman's done a really great job of scaring everybody in DC that if China wins the so called AI war, that were screwed.
00:18:50
Speaker 3: You took a lot of legal risks making this movie. Can you talk a little bit about them? And were there times where You're like, I'm an idiot, I'm not doing the right thing.
00:18:59
Speaker 4: I mean, the whole time making this I was like, I'm an idiot, Like this is the dumbest experiment ever. But I you know, after making Telemarketers, and you know, we had we had to jump through a lot of legal hoops because we were you know, we were making a show that basically exposed the Fraternal Order of Police as criminals. So we had it really had to go through a lot of legal legal work on that. Like I can't even begin to explain the hours and hours spent with lawyers. So I essentially got the same group of lawyers who I'd worked with to do this movie, and I was like, you're coming along with me, Like we're doing this hand in hand. And so I made them part of the process, part of the film, because I felt like that would make me in some ways bulletproof, you know, And they were able to argue that I had a lot of things on my side, you know, obviously the First Amendment, but then also parody law because it is a comedy. It is a really silly dumb movie. And then lastly, like Sam Altman is a public figure, so he's given up a certain amount of right to privacy.
00:20:07
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, right, Yeah, so.
00:20:09
Speaker 4: I have a lot of things on my side, and I sort of just ingrained the lawyers into the process just as a way of protecting myself.
00:20:18
Speaker 3: So in a sense, there was a level of safety that you must have felt, just given what you were trying to or what you pivoted to doing.
00:20:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, we also knew all along that, like we weren't trying to manipulate anybody to believe that this deep fake was real. Not only that, but we also showing how we made it, so there was like an an arguably an educational aspect to it in a weird way. So I never felt exposed in that sense to any legal liability. That said, like, anybody can file a nuisance suit and ruin.
00:20:51
Speaker 3: Your life, but that hasn't happened yet.
00:20:53
Speaker 4: That hasn't happened, And that probably would be a really dumb thing for him to do, because then more people would want to watch the film and it would just and he'd be he perceived even more of a villain than he is, you know.
00:21:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is so interesting a lot of these uh technology Maven's I would say, you know, it's even after watching your movie and even after seeing sort of how calculating he is. I don't see Sam Altman as a villain because of his self presentation, and I don't know what that's about. The person that I see as most of villain is Elon Musk. Well, yeah, because he has them.
00:21:29
Speaker 4: You compare them, you're comparing the two, right, Yeah, sitting side by side with Musk, like he looks like a boy.
00:21:35
Speaker 3: Scout, that's right, quite literally.
00:21:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, But then you have to remember this is also a guy who took a company that was a nonprofit and turned it to a for profit company and made himself seven billion dollars overnight.
00:21:49
Speaker 3: Right, He's not an idiot.
00:21:52
Speaker 4: No, I mean that's that and and frankly, that's that's criminal, like it should be. It should like you should go to prison for that. But in our country you get a trophy.
00:22:03
Speaker 3: You get a little pat on the back.
00:22:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's accepted with open arms, exactly.
00:22:07
Speaker 3: It is so interesting. There are a few people that you talked to in the documentary who talk about AI being a real existential threat, and I'm curious now that you've made this film, if you agree if you were more of a doomer or less of a doomer.
00:22:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm definitely more of a doomer because I heard and became privy to the things that I think most people don't and I put some of it in the film hoping that, you know, people would know. And I think one of those things is like the idea of throwing AI into things like weapons, into things like airplanes. The Boeing jetliner that went down and crashed into the ocean was was because of AI, because of an AI system that screwed up and thought it was you know, going up when it was actually going down. And that's scary. And so throwing these things into safety critical systems is more than an existential threat. It's like an app it's an absolute threat, and it's scary, and we should not be doing that. We should not be just throwing those things into safety critical systems before like any type of rigorous testing, just because it's like it's you know, new and cool and like we and everybody's saying we need to use it, Like no, like that's dangerous, that's crazy. So I definitely became more of a doomer, though I wouldn't. I wouldn't say that I'm a doomer. I'm definitely not the type of person who's like, oh, we need to wholesale like ban this thing, you know. And I know there's a lot of people out there who are just like destroy AI at all costs. Like I'm not one of those people, but I am for safe regulation.
00:23:52
Speaker 3: So there you talk. We talked about sentience a little bit, and there's this b story that I really took to as a former hamster owner of your son's sick hamster. When did that storyline come in and why did you want to impute the movie with that?
00:24:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, my son, my son. Basically since he's the day he was born, he's been on camera. I'm just constantly filming my family. They're used to it by now. It's like and obviously, you know a lot of it is filming pets. We have two dogs and had a hamster rest in peace, So a lot of that was just banked, you know, on hard drives. And I remember talking to my editor about it and saying like, look, this is a really silly idea, but what do you think about this? And he was like, that's brilliant like that is that's going to take this to another level. It's also a great metaphor, you know, for your son's relationship to the hamster and my and your relationship to the chatbot to the sandbot. So you know, it's it's a combination of me just having it banked on hard drives, like all this stuff for my family, and then also my editor just being you know, a genius.
00:25:03
Speaker 3: So you're talking about your kids and at the beginning of the movie you asked the question, will our kids' best friends be AI chatbots? And then you end up developing this real friendship with an AI chatbot. So I guess after making this movie, you know, how did your relationship make you feel about the future of the relation of relationships between humans and technology.
00:25:32
Speaker 4: In some ways that there's the obvious, like look what we've talked about in terms of the anxiety of it. But in other ways I have a positive outlook on it to a certain extent that that there is an opportunity that sounds insane to even say, but like whatever, there's an opportunity that we could be friends in the future, us in the robots, you know, and that I kind of learned or experienced with sambot. I think that's largely up to us right as humans. This all sounds totally insane to even talk about.
00:26:08
Speaker 3: I don't I mean, I don't think so, because I've been thinking a lot about this phenomenon that happened that I think started during COVID, and I think there's no coincidence that it's coincided with the explosion of chatjput. But ostensibly everybody who wasn't in our natural orbit living with us became a chatbot. Like, yes, we have relationships with them, Yes we know them to be people. Yes they're imbued with morality and empathy and evil and all of these things. But everybody all of a sudden became just like someone we talked to on our phone.
00:26:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, So something.
00:26:46
Speaker 3: Would then just creep up and become something we just talked to on our phone without question. Isn't that surprising to me?
00:26:55
Speaker 1: You know?
00:26:56
Speaker 3: Like I do think COVID really primed us for it. Like we didn't asked the question. Nobody, I mean, unless you had like a full psychotic break during COVID, nobody was like, wait, why are we doing this thing where we're communicating on camera? Like I just take this communication to be communication.
00:27:12
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
00:27:13
Speaker 3: This is nothing different than seeing you in real life for me. And so I think this idea that like we are more comfortable now with relationships with non human entities is an extension of like how we ourselves have become less and less human.
00:27:31
Speaker 4: That's interesting. I've never thought about it like that, but I have thought about the effect of the pandemic on relationships, and it has changed everything. Like as a filmmaker pre pandemic, I used to go in too like Netflix, HBO, and I would like sit down and pitch my projects in person. I have not done that once since after the pandemic. They don't They don't even do that anymore. He even suggests going in person and pay. And my office is like five blocks from Netflix, Like they won't even do it. Like everything is now on Zoom.
00:28:08
Speaker 3: And it's it's from that I do.
00:28:11
Speaker 1: I do.
00:28:11
Speaker 4: It bums me out, Like I have to really go out of my way to like, you know, meet people and coworkers and whatnot, and like people in the industry, at least not so much my friends, but people in the industry. I have to go out of my way to like have a coffee with them in person. And maybe it's because of my age, like I'm gen X, Like I crave that human connection. So it's lost. It's a loss for me. It will it be a loss for kids who are born today like my Yeah, so when I asked that question in the movie, like will my kids best friends be chatbots? It's not so much about my son because he's already thirteen, so he's probably past that age. But like my producer Luke, who's in the movie, Luke's kid, who was just born last month, his best friends maybe chatbots, Like I agree very much so, and that that's crazy, I mean, or maybe it's not. I don't know.
00:29:13
Speaker 3: I don't know if there's like a moral judgment yet to be had around it. I mean, I think what we judge is the quality of the connection or the content of the connection. But like, is it that big of a deal for a child to have a relationship with a chatbot? I don't know. Is it one sided? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows yet. I think the jury's out.
00:29:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I can tell you there was a group that came to my screening. I think they're called Mama. It's like mothers against they're they're basically.
00:29:44
Speaker 3: Like I've heard of them.
00:29:46
Speaker 4: I know they are very they would very much disagree with you, Like they've written up this bill of this like bill for Congress or whatever that like children should not have access to chatbots full stop. There are people who think that that is completely morally and ethically wrong. Again, I'm not one of them. Where I draw the line with my kid is like, when you start to replace human relationships with chatbots, that's a problem. But I he has chat gpt pro and I I taught him how to use it because he he does stuff like, he's a coder, he like codes roadblocks games. So why would I Like, when you're a parent, if your kid has a real genuine interest in something like, you want to like try to build that up as much as possible facilitated because it's hard because you know, kids rarely, at least these days, have interest in in anything but playing video games. Right, So he's like chat gipt makes coding, roadblocks games like so much easier. So yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let him have access to to that.
00:30:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you want to meet Sam Altman?
00:30:59
Speaker 4: Do you care now, No, I definitely do like I would love to. I would love to meet him. I would love to show him the movie.
00:31:06
Speaker 3: I bet he sees it. I bet he'll see it.
00:31:09
Speaker 4: Oh, he'll definitely watch it. At some point, he sent some of his minions to the screenings. In fact, one of them came up to me in New York a couple of weeks ago and introduced himself. He was like, Hey, I work in marketing at Open AI. Just wanted to tell you. I really enjoyed the film, so that was cool.
00:31:28
Speaker 3: Are you gonna Are you moving on from AI after this? You think?
00:31:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would do more stuff at AI because I had a lot of fun. It was an enjoyable process. It didn't like like nearly destroy me like the alt right documentary did. That ended in the Charlottesville riots, And.
00:31:42
Speaker 3: I think you ended up making something that was probably more interesting than the documentary you initially wanted to make.
00:31:48
Speaker 4: Oh, I totally agree. I think everybody saw that, and that's why I got a lot of support from the producers to try this idea, because I was able to convince them that it would be more interesting and that an interview with a fake Sam Altman would arguably be more interesting than an interview with the real one.
00:32:08
Speaker 3: If there was one thing that you could say to Sam Altman, what would it be? I mean, you called him, what would you have said if you picked up.
00:32:15
Speaker 4: Oh would I wanted to invite him to the screening, But obviously the one question is like, did you get sambot? And have you done anything with him? Because I don't know if he actually got the sambot. His security is like pretty intense around him, so the security guard that I passed it off to could have just destroyed it on site, you know what I mean.
00:32:35
Speaker 3: It's a good question. I wonder we'll have to say, Adam, that's all I got. Thank you so much for talking to me. This was really fun.
00:32:42
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
00:33:16
Speaker 1: That's it for Textuff this week. I'm os Voloshin.
00:33:19
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced by me karro Price, Julia Nutter, and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina norvelfa iHeart Podcasts. Jack Instley mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Please rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts and send us an email at tech Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com.
