May 20, 2024 • 51 mins
Country music legend Randy Travis approves an AI-generated song based on his voice. The guys explore the double-edged sword of hidden cameras. Bumble executives envision a world where "AI concierges" handle the hazards of online dating -- by dating each other. All this and more in this week's strange news segment.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
You to know.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Men,
my name is noelh.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis, code
named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want
you to know. It is the top of the week,
which means it's time for some strange news, and we're
going to talk about some crime. We're going to talk
(00:50):
about some surveillance. We're going to talk about, of course,
a couple of heist gone wrong. We are going to
ask what rough beast slouches towards the Bethlehem of the
Dead Internet theory before we do any of that. Fellow
conspiracy realist, we are fans of music in all form,
(01:12):
and Noel, you found a pretty amazing story.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Well yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of the
conversation around AI, especially as it pertains to corporations using AI,
sort of feels like this desperate attempt to capitalize on
the hot new technology or whatever, not even to mention
the dystopian aspects of AI the job depriving the future
(01:44):
aspects of AI or a machine learning to be a
little more accurate. So it's kind of rare even when
you see one that seems a little innocuous, Like you know,
the Beatles released a pretty nothing burger of a song
that I've already literally forgot in the name of where
they used AI to clean up the audio on a
(02:05):
John Lennon demo. Essentially that was like I think him
playing a tune on the piano, and they used AI
as you know, an interesting tool. It wasn't like to
resurrect John Lennon's from the Dead, you know, to fully
create this thing that never actually happened. It was you know,
using you know, machine learning as a forensic tool of
(02:26):
audio reconstruction.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I do like John Lennon's.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
By the way, John Lennons, there's there's there could be
more than one. If hey if if, if big corporate
America has their way, there will be many John Lennons
fed by machine learning. But you know, there was a
lot made of that story when it came out because
there were a lot of people saying, oh gross, using
AI to you know, dishonor the dead and create this song.
(02:51):
Not cool beatles, but a lot of those stories buried
the leader at the very least people chose not to
look into a little bit deeper beyond the headlines to
determine yes and fact. That was just a use of
that kind of software, that kind of technology as a tool.
And you know, Matt and I work pretty extensively with
audio and stuff and using tools like isotope RX to
(03:11):
you know, clean up noisy recordings, get rid of things
like room tone or the drone of an air conditioning.
And while I know a lot of audio plugins are
starting to use more machine learning algorithms to figure that
kind of stuff out, it's sort of still kind of,
you know, the early days for that kind of stuff,
and you're really just starting to see some of those
tools incorporating this technology. I think we could all agree
(03:32):
that's pretty cool. That's a use of that tech that's
neat and that actually is a value and is still
requiring engineers to implement the tool and to use it,
you know, to create great audio, whether it be in
podcasts or in music. You know, with so many people
recording records at home. Being able to clean up audio
that maybe wasn't recorded in the most optimal situations is
(03:53):
a really cool thing.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Well, just really quickly on that, think about all of
the amazing tools that exist for video editing and how
far that's come. Right, being able to isolate elements back
the image and like do all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Adaptive whatever it can sense, the edges it can sense,
you can replace elements to create really cool video effects,
not just deep fakes.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, it's super good at this, by the way, folks.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
But what I'm saying is even before any of this
AI integration, video effects and editing and the way you
could manipulate a visual image became was becoming extremely powerful
the things you could do right. But with audio for
a long time, I think it has to do with
the nature of the wave and the signal and what
you actually get when you record right. With microphones and things,
(04:40):
it's very hard to separate pieces, right. Let's say, if
there's a sound that occurs at the same time as
another sound. For a long time, there was almost no
way besides isolating specific frequencies to do anything.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
I used to work at a guitar shop. You probably
have an idea or can't imagine how often people came
in and said, hey, you got to miss That'll cut
the vocal out of this scene so I can make
it into a karaoke track. I kid you not. It
happened once every couple of days. So now to your point, Matt,
through machine learning, that is possible, and I couldn't exactly
(05:14):
explain to you how it's done, but there are quite
a few tools that can do just that. And the
long winded way of getting to today's story that I brought,
which is about the country singer Randy Travis who in
twenty thirteen suffered a severe stroke that left him unable
to speak, which of course means unable to sing. He
also had had issues with mobility due to that and
has you know, largely faded from the public spotlight since
(05:37):
that point. You might know Randy Travissey. I think he
had hits like as far back as like the early eighties.
My girlfriend, who's a bit of a country enthusiast, it's
not my particular genre of choice. I think I like
classic country. I like outlawk country, that kind of stuff.
More of the schmaltzy kind of radio country stuff like
that doesn't really do it for me, but you could
(05:58):
argue Randy Travis sort of straddles those genres. And I
think one of his famous songs is called like for
I Love You Forever and Ever a man as long
as Old Women talk about Old Man or something like that,
and didn't quite bail it, but it's apparently a really
really sweet song. And he was known for having a
very kind of non traditional, very laid back delivery, and
(06:20):
that was sort of his you know, stocking trade, and
so he was very beloved, not necessarily known as like
a belter per se or having like this some kind
of crazy range, much more of an everyman kind of singer.
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
On the other hand, that's worth it for like twelve people.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
On the other hand, is that a ready Travis dress.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
On the other head, of course, he is a we're
talking about this off air. He's kind of a comfortable,
hangout singer. That's exactly right, right.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
So essentially what's happened here, and again, this is an
initiative through this record company, Warner you know, Warner Brothers,
Warner Media whatever their record wing of that giant media conglomerate.
But I would argue a pretty good one of like, hey,
we're going to try it out the use of this
AI technology to give Randy Travis his voice back, with
(07:15):
full cooperation from Randy himself, from his legacy producer of
many years, and a fellow country singer named James Dupree
who kind of laid down what you might call the
guide vocal for the track. So basically, you sing the
song kind of knowing how Randy's cadences might go and
the way he might deliver the song, and then by
(07:37):
going through forensically scraping I guess, I mean, I think
that terms kind of become a little gross too, but
you get what I'm saying. His back catalog. I think
they took forty two of his isolated vocal tracks, which
you might call stems in the parlance of recording. It's
just the vocal part solo. No AI required, right, because
you have the original master tapes, which is multi track,
(07:58):
so all of those things can be then split out out.
So forty two of his vocal isolated recordings were then analyzed,
let's say, and overlaid on top of this James Dupree vocal,
and apparently the results A it's charting, it's debuted where
that came from the song, the new song from Randy Travis.
(08:21):
And in this situation where there's agency, I think you
can call it by Randy Travis. What do you guys
think about that? Let let's start with that first of all,
if there is co signed by the artist himself, not
Drake dropping an AI rap verse on a you know,
disk track from Tupac of course, who is not with us,
and also from Snoop Dogg. Weirdly, we actually didn't talk
(08:41):
about that in our Drake segment. That's one of the
weirdest parts of that whole rap u. That is no
agency that is done without the permission of the people
living or deceased, their families that have that have been
left behind, and you know, Tupac's estate had a real
problem with that and had it taken down. But in
this case there has been all of the things and
Randy himself. So can you really call this a Randy
(09:04):
Travis song? This is really kind of a new frontier
of media, Like he didn't actually sing it. This other
guy sang it, but then they took his voice and
they overlaid it and he was involved. You know, it's
very interesting question. I don't know what you guys think
about that, And then we'll get to some other stuff
with some other aspects of this story.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Well, I haven't heard it, guys. Does it sound like
it's just him recording in a booth?
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I think so. I mean, you know this kind of
very polished country. It's got a certain sheen to it.
You know a lot of theah, there's auto tune used
in big country artists, and auto tune again as a tool,
he's gotten more and more transparent where it doesn't sound
like auto tune. There's even this other auto tune is
actually these days, in my experience, used more to sound
(09:51):
like auto tune, where it is very much meant to
be an effect, like in trap music or or you know,
a Polish pop. It's almost like that robot voice that you.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Know he being could actually singul to know that. Check
out the Tiny Desk concert. The guy has a voice
of an angel.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Picasso could paint landscapes. The guy it was classically trained artists.
He just chose to paint like a like a small child.
I'm kidding. I love Picasso, but I'm saying people often
joke about like, how, oh man, anybody could do that?
Blah blah blah. No, a lot of these artists, they
made those choices. That is often the case with auto
tune these days. It's a choice, it's an aesthetic choice.
(10:26):
Melodine is another tool that is much more for correcting mistakes,
correcting little warbles, and it's real precise and I've used
it and it's it's miraculous. You've probably seen uh sort
of jokey videos online where someone will take a song
and retune it and like make it sound completely different.
That's all using melodye. So in my opinion, it does
(10:47):
sound like a real Randy Travis on me not being
a you know, Randy Travis super fan, I couldn't say
for sure, but by all accounts, he loved it. Apparently
he you know, when they played it for him. There's
a video of him kind of taking it all in
and you see him sort of go through this range
of emotions, and I believe the emotion that he lands
on is gratitude. He uses the word grace, you know,
(11:10):
in his discussion of this song, and he believes this
was a form of a divine second chance.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So like when a Frank Sinatra watched Pavati singing some
of his hits.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
That's a good point, man, That's my question to you, guys.
Though it is like that sort of but it's also
different because it is charting as a new song from
the country megastar Randy Travis. But it's also that ship
of thesis kind of question, isn't it guys? Like, is
it really him? If it's actually sung by someone else
in the overlaid with pieces of him? I don't know.
(11:43):
I think it's that's a philosophical question, right, I don't
really have the answer.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Well, it's licensing at that point.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
It is licensing, that's right, it's But at the same time,
it's a little different than Abba or Kiss selling their
likenesses to the the Hologram factory, you know, for constant
perpetual touring. You know, that's on rails. They've created this show.
There's see this is kind of on rails too. I
(12:11):
don't know, guys, I'd love to hear from conspiracy realists
out there. Is this really Randy Travis? Is that? Even
the point? I don't know. His producer, Kyle Lemming is
the one who went through the old recordings. The lyrics
are ten years old. So this is something that I
think was meant for him in the first place. I'm
(12:32):
not one hundred percent sure, but it does have three
point three million streams in its very first week, which
is pretty neat. I just think this is sort of
like a feel good, a high story in the midst
of a lot of real scary, doom and gloom AI stories.
And I think I don't think anybody could argue that
this is a pretty interesting use of this tool, you know,
(12:53):
and other AI related I guess positive news or you
know where AI with agency news If anyone's familiar with
the singer and dancer, pretty amazing artist fka Twigs. She
actually spoke before like a house committee, I believe, on
the use of AI, and she has developed an AI
deep fake avatar of herself that she with agency from
(13:17):
her and her team want to be able to have
interact with fans. So, you know, is it a genie
out of the bottle kind of situation? If it's done correctly,
can you put the reins on it? Can it be
rained in? I guess there's a better way of putting that.
I don't know. I'd like to think so, but I
want to end. But I want to end this segment
unless you guys had any other stuff to add.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
No, I can't wait to listen to the song.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I also want to give it another listen.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I will point out again broken record style. Hope me
on this. It is fundamentally philosophically fraudulent to describe any
intelligence as artificial.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
It's fair. I think that's fair and a good reminder.
So this is really quick, and this is really just
for for laws, y'all. I think this is a really
sweet story. I recently came across a kind of a
new I guess burgeoning hilarious sort of joke scene on
the internet. We talked about dead Internet theory. A lot
of that is being perpetuated and really escalated by AI
(14:16):
content creation, right, but a lot of that stuff, I mean,
it's gonna get more advanced, like it does require prompts
from human beings. And I stumbled upon a treasure trove
of AI generated country songs. And this one here was
entirely AI generated. A human had to have prompted it.
Because you're gonna hear some some real themes here, y'all. Well,
(14:38):
let's just this is here real quick. This is a
big red cups. I got beer in my boots, dirn
on the truck, corn on the mone and a god
of my butt.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
It's a stop town, leister's dirt, bleister's beer trucks.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
And sure.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
This is not bo Burnham, by the way.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Consent butts, red cups, dirty beer, folks.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I wish you could see Matt's pace right now. I
wish you could see an old dancing to this one.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
The butts are proud, y'all, biscuit in my boot?
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Sorry, all right enough, Oh my goodness, gracious, what do
you guys think about that?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
I mean, guys, I live out in the country.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Now, yeah, you got big, you got boots and boots, trucks,
get mud, and there are any guns and butts out there?
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Of course that's all. It's all true. No, no, it's
I feel offended on behalf of everybody that lives within
with several miles Listen.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
That's why I point out that someone didn't just right
AI make a country song. Someone said make a country
song about guns and butts. Okay, that didn't come out
of whole cloth, I guarantee, because as we know, with
these tools, they require prompts, and sometimes these prompts can
be very targeted and focused, whether it be for visual
stuff or what have you. I thought that was really funny.
(16:18):
It made me laugh. I shared it with anyone who
would listen. Now I shared it with you.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
AI is o Henry's Monkey Paul, also coming from parts
of rural Appalachia. I think they would dig this song.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
I think they would do. It's a banger of a chorus, yeah,
and it certainly does when you when you when you
step away from the jokiness of it. If an AI
did compose the melody and hook of that, whether the
prompt you know that probably Again, I haven't messed with
one of these audio AI things like that, but pretty
(16:53):
impressive and a little scary in terms of what that
means for pop music and artists like James Blake. I've
really come out saying how the record industries are really
pushing this narrative of like ten second clips for a TikTok,
five second, fifteen second clips from TikTok, which is pushing
the way music is consumed much more towards a world
(17:14):
where AI generated stuff would fly.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And that's not coolish. I would dig this song.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
It's a real fist pumper, y'all, and I just think
it's gonna get weirder from there. So I use that
kind of jokey bit just to point out some of
the scary parts of this stuff too. Weren't you weren't
going to get an AI story on stuff that I
want you to know without a little bit of doom
sprinkled in there for good measure. So at least we
could wrap that doom. And you know, guns and butts.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Big red cups, dirty trucks, dirty truck dirty but.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
A biscuit in my boot, corn on my mind. You know,
you know, I'm always out there thinking about that corn. Wow.
I don't know, guys, this is fun and scary and sweet.
I'm feeling a lot of emotions. Let's take a quick
break here, a word from our sponsor, and then come
back with more strange news.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
And we've returned. Guys, We've got a bit of a
mystery that's going to take us down let's say a
forking path, and we'll explore it as it forks. The
first story comes from CBS News or k COW News.
That's a California. It was posted on May eighth, twenty
twenty four, and it is regarding one woman's experience. The
(18:31):
title is hidden Camera Found planted outside of Chino Hills
woman's home. And I'm just going to read a couple
of the details here and then let's discuss A woman
living in Chino Hills, California, was disturbed to learn that
a camera disguised as a rock had been planted outside
of her home. The camera was planted in the ground
across the street from her house. It's believed that the
(18:54):
camera was placed on April twenty ninth, where it sat
for several days before being spotted by a neighbor. It
was a camera wrapped in clay to make it look
like a rock, and it was attached via cable to
a very large power bank that was actually larger than
the entire you know, fake rock itself. So like a
long term yeah, just sitting there across the street from
(19:17):
this house. The neighbor who found it was able to
actually download some of the images from it, so it's
not as though it was attached to Wi Fi. Well
maybe it was, but if it was attached to Wi Fi,
it was also capturing images locally to the device. So
the neighbor downloaded an image from the camera that showed
the moment the hand places it there. Somebody was wearing
(19:40):
a glove like looks like a gardener or something, places
it down there. But then the neighbors, knowing the date
and time, looked at their own security cameras and found
the moment that somebody rides up on a scooter and
just kind of, you know, stops for a moment, goes down,
puts something or messes with the ground in some way, right,
(20:01):
and then just rides right off. And that's it. That's
all they know. Uh So everybody is just trying to
figure out why, and the woman obviously is going, oh, okay,
what am I dealing with here? We've got several options, guys,
what do you think is most likely that this could be.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
It's tough to guess without more information.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Okay, no, right options. I'll throw the first one out.
What if it is, and this one's way out there.
What if it is a BTK style person that is
casing a human being, watching a human being to see
their movements, their patterns and everything like that, like a serial.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Killer, a predator scoping like the bomb torture killed Dennis
Radar guy. Cinematic possible, but maybe not plausible. Those fates
are kind of rare.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Okay, Well, what would be more common then maybe uh,
burglar or someone who's casing the joint just to steal
from it.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yeah, that's I almost said a good one. That's a
more plausible one.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
It's also a commitment to the bit, right, I mean,
you know.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
The possibility of a stalker without necessarily serial killer level
predation at this point. You know, Matt, in the notes
you you said, this could also just be someone trying
to rob a house or chasing the joint for the
(21:27):
worst hoa ever.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah, it could be that. What if it's a private
investigator that was hired by some outside party that is
trying to capture something specific or activity going on?
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Oh? Well, have you guys been watching this show Sugar
on on Apple TV. It's a private investigator type show.
It's set in the modern day, but it's kind of
got these old school you know, Noir detective advised. But
dude is constantly placing hidden cameras on stuff, right all
the time.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Oh yeah, bigtim We'll get in situations.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Well, that's a common thing, right, especially if you're in
a cheating spouse situation, A PI will place camera us
in front.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
To be completely wireless, it would have to have a
big old power supply like that you couldn't how would
it would be such a giveaway if you tapped somebody's
electricity or you know, it have to have a big
old battery too, and then you probably have to go
back in and replace it with a charge one.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
And not to victim blame at all in any way,
but to understand this story, Matt, it sounds like we
need to learn more about the woman in Chino Hills
she identified, Like is there do we know anything about
her background or possible like malevolent forces that might have interacted.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
With No, we have, We have no information. This is
like a one off story that at least to my knowledge,
came out last week and it's that's all I've seen
about it. And I haven't even pursued it further because
I kind of don't want to know. That's that lady's business.
I don't want to whatever she's getting into. The reason
I'm bringing to you guys is to kind of go
down this pathway of why would someone place a hidden
camera across the street from a house. The only other
(23:03):
thing I have like thinking about it would be some
kind of law enforcement issue where they're trying to watch
either a house or a specific walkway where people are traveling.
But usually for law enforcement, you would have to have
a human being monitoring that stuff. So you've got that
chain of custody thing.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Right, Yeah, in a windowless van, right.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yeah, usually a human being on hand somewhere making sure
that at all times people know what is happening in
time stamping things.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
So and also I hope she's okay.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Oh absolutely, I was joking about what did she do?
No victim? Let me hear at all. I just want
to add, Matt. I think one thing that piques all
of our interests about this is the very clever, you know,
camouflaging of the camera. It's not something that I've really
thought about it or seen before. It's like a fake
rock looking thing. Somebody puts some thoughts or time and
some energy into.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
This, Yeah, but then they just kind of covered it
with leaves with a giant metal power thing attached to it.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
Okay, that's like a tracking compliment, You're right.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
It's just it's a weird combination of things, right, which
just makes you go, what.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Is going on? Laziness?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, I guess so it is possible to be stupidly smart.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Hey, there you go. There you go. So, guys, the
next story that I wanted to jump to from this
thinking about this story is a story here from Boston
twenty five News from a while ago. This is April
twenty sixth, But it made me think about this story.
There was a group of four men who were recently
arrested for casing and burglarizing forty three homes. These four
(24:40):
men carried out forty three successful burglaries and stole more
than four million dollars worth of that's an estimate worth
of valuables. It was across twenty five towns in Massachusetts
from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Oh that's a long time window.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
It is a really long time window. And here is
the part that astounded me in reading the story. You guys,
think about all the ring cameras out there, all of
the simply safe and blah blah blah, all the r
low cameras. These guys were only caught on camera out
of forty three burglaries one time. One time. Isn't that
(25:17):
kind of astounding. It makes you wonder how in the
heck they could do that. And I learned about something
through this article. I didn't know that you could jam
Wi Fi signals in a local area as somebody who
was not law enforcement or not, you know, and in
working for an intelligence company, you can just get a
device that will jam Wi Fi signals, essentially making all
(25:41):
of these camera systems inert because if they're not connected
to the Wi Fi generally they don't function unless there
are a specific type of camera. Of some of them
will function whether they have signal or not, and they
store locally and then upload.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
Yeah, really popular one is called the camera.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Mamma jamma, camera, mamma jamma.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
I just made that up. That's not true.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Oh I thought it is.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Now we just lack mirrored it. Also, also, it is,
to be fair, folks, it is completely legal to buy
those products or to manufacture them on your own.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Is that because it's all public air, like where you're
jamming at like like I don't know, like who owns
the air?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Okay, it's like it's illegal to shoot a person in general,
but it is not illegal to buy a gun. It
is legal to buy these sorts of things, these contraptions
and the components that compose those contraptions, but the way
you use them determines the legality or the illegality and.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
These great architectors.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Right, Yeah, it's a good comparison. I don't know why
I say comparison, Like I don't speak this language. I'm
still learning it.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
But no, it's one of those things that, like you know,
has intended for law enforcement or what have you, and
then it made its way to the public sector. I
think it's technically a legal to use them for nefarious purposes,
but it's a pretty gray area about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, that's the right color for it. It's a great area.
And these So these guys did get caught though, right Matt,
despite only being sited on camera once like some sort
of true crime cryptid. They did get popped.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
They did get caught. They're currently charged. So I guess
this stuff is they allegedly did all these things. They
haven't gone through the whole process, right, but they did
get caught. There was one other thing. This was a
sophisticated group of folks doing this because they also never
brought cell phones with them when they were, you know,
casing a joint or going into a place. They were
(27:41):
very careful with their signals intelligence. Basically they almost wouldn't
have gotten caught, probably just because they really were moving
pretty effectively in the shadows, I think, unless there were
some kind of sting or something like that. But hey,
this is a weird one. They got caught. That's good.
I don't know how you really protect yourself against that
stuff unless I don't know, you just super upgrade your
(28:01):
security systems and think about all the potential holes and
then go crazy and paranoid and maybe don't do that.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Spend your life unhappily anxious.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yeah, let's not do that. That's not a great idea.
Take it from me somebody who has dealt with that
and is always and is still dealing with that.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
All right, maybe we should get some coffee.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Hey, there we go. Uh well, so here's another potential
reason for that camera to be out there. By way
of another story that was in The Guardian on May eleventh,
titled US woman charged with concealing bleach in husband's coffee
avoids jail. Okay, so here's one to get all our
paranoias up. There was a US Navy serviceman who was
(28:47):
stationed outside of the United States. He noticed that the
coffee he was drinking in the mornings that he would
brew it home, started tasting a little off, so he
decided to weirdly enough to check it for pool chemicals
like chlorine in those kinds of things. Sure, so he
checked it and turns out, oh, there's bleach in there.
(29:08):
So he thought, how did bleach get in my coffee? Like,
checks out the coffee maker. Oh yeah, the water in
there tastes real funny, cleans it out, puts new water in,
and then all of a sudden, it tastes weird again.
So he sets up a hidden camera in his kitchen
and he watches his spouse put something into the coffee
(29:31):
maker's water holder, right in the back of the coffee maker,
and he's like, huh, I wonder what that was. That
was really weird. So then he waits until they move
back to the United States. He just by the way,
he pretends like he drinks his coffee in the morning.
From this point on, he doesn't actually drink it. He
knows there's something in it, and his wife puts something
in it. He's not sure what's going on, so he
waits till he get back to the US. Then he
(29:53):
sets up another camera in this new kitchen and he
catches her taking bleach, putting it into container and then
putting that the contents of that container into the coffee maker,
and she had to go to jail.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
But wait, didn't her husband like argue in her favor
against long term jail time And she got off with
some like probation. And then they I think they're getting
divorced or they just you know, but they're still living
together with their kid. Yeah, why do you tell the
kid mommy and daddy love each other very much, but
(30:27):
mommy tried to kill daddy or was.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
It more of a Munchausen's by proxy situation?
Speaker 4 (30:33):
It's a good question this. Well, I mean, we obviously
don't know any motive right in terms of abuse or
anything like that.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Right, But again, I guess what I'm saying is, I
guess there are a lot of reasons to want to
have cameras set up and to conceal those cameras so
the people you're trying to capture don't know they're there.
It's just a weird situation.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
Can you imagine the thought process?
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I like that there's a thematic point here too, because
in general, now one must always assume one is being
filmed or recorded in some way. It's just the safest
assumption we're not trying to ruin anybody's day or anything
like that.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
And I also don't think we're all necessarily proposing that
we put round the clock hidden cameras in every aspect
of our life to make sure no one's trying to poisonous.
What I was gonna ask, though, Matt, was can you guys,
are both of you can you imagine the thought process
that would lead to this conclusion? And like the slew thing,
and like, surely she's not Wait a minute, maybe she is.
(31:34):
Oh god, she definitely is.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
You immediately test for pool chemistry.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
That's a weird one the context, you know, who like
have you like we've.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
All had beat me here, doc, and thank you. We've
all had the drinks at some point, right, you know,
you get something from a fast food place that soda
founds off. Who on earth? Like what leads you to
this point in your life where you sip coffee it
tastes off and you say, time to test for the
pool chemicals.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
There's that bit in the pilot episode of twin Peaks
where the guy goes there was a fish in the percolat.
That's what it made me think. But guys, I mean
I don't know if anyone's accidentally tasted a little bleach
in their life. I haven't, but I know what it
smells like, and we know that there's a lot of
(32:25):
connection between taste and smell. I could imagine that he
tested for pool chemicals because the coffee tasted a little bleachy.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Well, yeah, and it was a taste that lingered for
a long time. And again, like you just want to know, Well,
is it just this batch of coffee that's tainted or
is something wrong with my coffee maker? What the heck's
going on? Maybe it was in my cup?
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yeah, Well the gaslightingness of it all too, is the
whole Like, am I insane? Like I totally cleaned out
the coffee maker and now it's back. You know, at
what point does he decide I better get to the
bottom of this. This isn't in my head he had.
You have wrestled with that for at least a minute.
You know, is he.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Testing everything for pool chemicals?
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Well, he had test strips, right, and his first thought was, oh, crap,
something is getting into our water supply because they were
stationed in Germany, and he was like, maybe there's just
something I don't know about so we tested the water
faucet and it was clean. So he's like, that's weird. Well,
so he tested the water that was sitting there in
the percolator and it was wrong.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
Hats off to this guy's deductive skills of reasoning and
then you know, process of elimination. I would say he
saved his own life. Yep.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
All, don't drink bleach, folks.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
No, good God, please don't do that.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Not even diet bleach, about the calories. Just don't drink bleach.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
But what if it tastes like midnight cherry midnight zero. Yeah,
it's my favorite too. It's right there. All right, we're gonna,
I don't know, think about this stuff, y'all. We're gonna
take a break and we'll be right back with more
strange news.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
And we have returned a quick cavalcade of updates. Good
news for a very specific demographic of people in Indiana.
An Indiana judge has ruled that tacos and burritos qualify
as sandwiches. So st yeah, yeah, yeah, the future. Who
is this a judge in Indiana? A judge by profession,
(34:29):
He's not like a judge Reinhold or whatever that actor's
name is in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He ruled as part
of a commercial development case that burritos and tacos count
as sandwiches.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
I think this is out of his league, saying, you're lane, judge.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
This is the most conservative opinion I have heard.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
You have nol to do with you.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Look, we've been in a.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
Matter of legality, it's a matter of common sense, dude.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
We've been asking for like an official ruling on this,
and this judge gave it to us.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
He wrote, the proposed famous taco restaurant falls within the
scope of general use approved in the original written commitment.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Blah blah, YadA YadA YadA da da Uh. The original
written commitment does not restrict potential restaurants to only American
cuisine style sandwiches. So that's a big win for Big Taco.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
The court. Baby, all right, the justices, deway.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
All right, we'll text them. We'll text them because your
voice should be heard. Also, if you own a yacht,
bad news. The Orcas are out to get you. Just
knocked another way out of the straight to Gibraltar, and uh,
Team Orca.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
To be quite honest, wasn't a really big nice boat too,
like a yacht.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
Or something that gets the distinction is on the big
and or nice side. But this was a bigger yacht
right above.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Sorry, I know I saw like Pacino and Devil's Advocate,
but yeah, Tea Morca. So also, we were talking about
this a little bit off air, this last one before
you get to our big piece. Shout out to our
friend doctor Damian Patrick. Williams was speaking with him a
little bit earlier. There is a flood of fake science
(36:20):
hitting academic journals. We talked about this a little bit
in our previous episode on the academic journal problems, the controversies,
corruption and conspiracy surrounding that a lot of these journals
now are closing down because there is an industry using chat,
GPT and AI to plagiarize papers. They're called paper mills
(36:44):
and they are so I told myself I wasn't going
to curse you guys, but Doc, with great thanks, beat
me again. They are so fucking dumb. They're not good.
They do this thing where they ran they ran and
synonyms through so instead of saying something like this study
(37:05):
is about breast cancer, they say this study is about
bosom peril.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
It's like the the like kind of bootleg Halloween costumes
trying to avoid being sued for intellectual property, like for
Wednesday atoms. It's spooky mid midweek QT.
Speaker 6 (37:21):
Stuff like that is true, It's very true. It's a thing,
you know, it's a spirit and spooky midweek beauty. Really
quickly though, I mean just to add, like these types
of operations have been around as long as there have
been papers, right, you know, with varying degrees of quality.
You know, we certainly have heard stories of astute scam
artists in schools, you know, doing this, going into business
(37:44):
for themselves, and oftentimes they'll sell the same paper like
three or four times.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
So this is just sort of an escalation of that, right.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yes, just as the Internet itself is an escalation of
the gregarious nature of human beings. Here you go, another
couple of examples of these synonym griffs. Fluid dynamics was
called gooey stream.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Oh that's yeah, Okay, weird.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
About that one. We're all so Artificial intelligence was also
referred to as counterfeit consciousness. And I think this is
a segue to our last story for tonight's program. Did
you guys ever do online dating?
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Not? Oh? Yeah, my current relationship that I have been
in for lo these three plus years at this point
was the product of online dating. You know, I got
divorced from someone that I did not meet in online dating,
and then after that it just kind of became the
way you do it in a bigger city where you
maybe don't know as many people. So it made sense
(38:51):
for me. And I've had good and bad experiences.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, you know, Matt and I are maybe a little
more old school. We meet people the old fast and way,
you know, getting deported at customs.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
I just get into minor car accidents with people I
find attractive.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
To meet cute.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
So obviously, no shade on online dating. It works very
well for a lot of people, and it can be
a difficult speed bump, right Like it's it's already difficult
to meet folks, to find the person that you want
to spend time or your life with. And what gets
(39:41):
me with this is I was always startled by the
idea of online dating. And I remember when some of
my friend groups started dating online using the apps of whatever,
and they eventually told me it was like a series
of auditions. They felt like they were always auditioning, and
(40:05):
they felt like they were auditioning for roles they didn't
necessarily want, but it was Saturday and they had to
do something. And this brings us to our final story,
which includes artificial intelligence again fraudulent term as well as
online dating. You guys. Recently, one of the high ups,
(40:26):
one of the grand pubas of the dating enterprise Bumble,
Whitney wolf Heard, said, we're going to take the awkwardness out.
We are going to eliminate this small talk, eliminate the
dead ends, the red herrings and so on. We are
going to create an AI concierge for each user of Bumble,
(40:51):
and that AI concierge will talk to another AI concierge
to figure out what the vibe is where the actual
people ever meet.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Oh god, amazing, right, they just want to double their
user base by creative users.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
Yeah, so wait a minute. So so the person it's
sort of like a stand in, like a fill in,
Like I don't I guess I don't quite understand the technology.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
She's saying. The AIS interact, right, that's what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Ben, Yeah, that's the idea.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
So, like, if your AI avatar interacts with another person's
AI avatar that has built a profile based on your
god knows how much data.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
So like an Ai Ben Bullen and an Ai Fran
Dresser have a series of amazing conversations, and then later
they notify the human Fran and the human Bed and
they're like, hey, you guys both like the nanny, you
should hang out.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
Yeah, But and then the Ais had been hooking up
for like a week or two, and they're like, I
guess we should tell them.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
It's doing all your for play chat for you? Is
that basically the idea here? I'm sorry, I know that
that's not necessarily the term, you know what I mean?
Though the precursor getting to know you micro flair. Isn't
that part of the fun of it? Though, I guess
maybe there's some people that this is for. I don't.
I don't know. You can usually tell within one or
two quick exchanges whether someone gets you or is worth interacting.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
With you say it on air.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
Mean, yeah, I couldn't tell you. I don't have a
specific one. It's been a long time at this point
since I've done it. But I just try to be real.
I don't remember exactly. I never have like a go
to one. I'm sure I tried different ones out but
I'm not a lying kind of guy. But when you do,
there is something to be said though, of the fun
and sort of spontaneity of engaging with someone who and
(42:49):
realizing that you, guys have a vibe and that it's cool.
Is this meant to you? Just get rid of that entirely.
I'm a little confused. Who's asking for this seems more
to benefit they than the individuals guys.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
I'm gonna go out there on a limb and say,
I think this is for a very specific audience. There's
a quote from one of the articles you shared back.
Can I do you mind if I read one of
these please? It says there is a world where your
dating concierge could go on a date for you with
other dating concierge. This is from What's what's the person's name?
(43:21):
Somebody Wolf Witney, Whitney. Yeah, okay, And she says, and
then you don't have to talk to six hundred people,
and it'll scan all of the San Francisco area for
you and say these are the three people you really
ought to meet.
Speaker 4 (43:38):
Who.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Look, I'm putting this out there. I've never used one
of these dating apps, but people I've heard about some
friends of mine that have been using them don't get
six hundred matches or whatever. Every once in a while
get a match and hope for the best.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
Oh that's me, baby, I'm not gonna lie. It is
not like raining matches. And it's also dudes in a
in a big way too. In general, they don't care
as many matches as women. But women that I've heard
it described as like just having hot dogs thrown at
your face.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Horror show. You know, it's it's terrible. I like the
point that we're bringing up here because it goes back
to the earlier idea in our episode about dead Internet theory,
the old parable of Fantasia and The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The
concept is to automate interactions, initial interactions, and like you said, Matt,
(44:29):
that that quote from Whitney Wolf heard stands out because
she's estimating that this AI concierge would talk to not four,
not eleven, not forty two or forty three or whatever,
but six hundred different AI representatives avatars. And then, as
(44:52):
you said, Matt, find the three schlubs in San Francisco
that might vibrate or.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
No, the three tech bros who are gonna you know,
make seven figures or whatever. I don't know, man, I
just don't. I don't like any of the whatever.
Speaker 4 (45:08):
I don't Again, though, I think the question of who
is this for is still is largely answered by it's
for the data brokers, you know. And then like if
somebody thinks this is a good idea, they're like, you know,
an individual, Yeah, take my data. I love this, have
it all, give me the better chance at finding the
right match. But I think unless we see some real,
(45:28):
insanely believable success stories from this, this is all smoke
and mirrors just to get more juice out of the
meat bags that are you know, Internet users, the remaining
ones the real.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Indeed tempted to agree with you in that regard, because
you can see the original conversation over on Bloomberg dot
com wherein at a tech summit, this this executive is
speaking about this and also to your point about data
retechn or data aggregation. Uh, she says, wolf Heard says,
(46:05):
this will also make you a better person. This AI
concierge will help you learn about yourself. Can give merizzler.
That's the medium plan, Yeah, skibby, And we also we
(46:26):
got to say this too, uh, There are now, of course,
multiple other digital things that are normalizing this sort of
I guess you would call it cognitive cybernetic approach right
to consciousness, and this, uh, this is perhaps most apparent
(46:47):
in things like AI girlfriend apps, which I experimented with
one because I had to find out uh back in college, right, yeah, college,
in college, right.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
Experimenting college.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
So I think this is first off, they are aggressively mediocre,
no offense. I'm sure I can imagine technology will improve
at some point, but I do wonder whether humans are
ready for this precipice upon which they stand. You know,
I'm not I'm not necessarily thinking about us listening tonight
as adults. I'm thinking about your kids, you know, your
(47:28):
kids who grow up, like, is it that bad because
a lot of people have imaginary friends growing up. Is
this not just an imaginary friend that texts you back
and ask you for your credit card number.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
I guess we'll all have to try it out.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
I don't think it's a good idea. We're not here
to yuck anybody's yum. But it does feel like it
does feel like an extension of what we're talking about previously,
with the idea of the inner accelerating past the point
of human intervention. Right. We ended that episode spoiler folks,
(48:08):
with the idea that Earth could end up being a
haunted house in some way, just a series of algorithms
repeating and interacting and iterating with each other long after
humanity had gone the way of the Dodo. However, in
this case, what if you found out, let's spin it out.
(48:28):
What if you found out years after the fact that
you had an AI representative that you were not necessarily
aware of, that had become in a close relationship, an
intimate relationship with an AI representative of a person you
have never met, and what if it's gone on for years?
(48:48):
The question would you want to meet that person? Soon?
Speaker 4 (48:52):
As topiing for me to even wrap my head around. Guys.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
It reminds me of that Netflix movie from a long
time ago called I Am Mother. Did you guys ever
see Yeah? Yeah, I don't want to. Shouldn't spoil it
for anybody if you haven't seen it. I enjoyed it
a lot. It's just the wanting to meet that person,
like that question, Ben, I think feels like that to me,
like would you want to know the truth or really
meet the person? Oh the original maybe.
Speaker 4 (49:17):
Oh, before we get out of here, one really important
final question. If burrito is a sandwich? Is a rap
also a sandwich? They're all wraps, sandwiches, NEETs.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
You would say there is no God to stop us.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
Jeez, I'm gonna lose sleep over.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
This also shout out to a past Ben who one
time left a post it note in a freezer that said,
puh plus a burrito, fa rito.
Speaker 4 (49:43):
Tell no one, I won't.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
These are gems we drop. We end tonight with a
philosophical quandary similar to how we began. Right, No, we
are asking ourselves what the role of humans will be
in the future. We want to hear your thoughts, be
you human or bought. We can't wait to interact with you.
(50:08):
If we don't have a I don't think we have
an AI powered interaction yet. You'll have to find us
as ourselves online.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Yes, but Ben, in Dallas, there's a restaurant that serves
a fa rito. We gotta go.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
We've got a farrito gap.
Speaker 4 (50:25):
Seems like you'd be really wet. We are you gonna
put you dip it in the broth? Maybe you dip
it in the brath? I thought I in.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
No, dude, it just looks awesome.
Speaker 4 (50:33):
It looks that it's a good idea.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
It's an all right.
Speaker 4 (50:37):
Parallel thinking is really all. Parallel thinking is real. So
why don't you let us know about any crazy inventions
that you may have come up with out there in
conspiracy real Islam. You can find it to the handle
Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook, on XFK, Twitter,
and on YouTube, where we've got video content rolling out
every single week, on Instagram and TikTok where conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
We have a phone number. You can call it one
eight three three STDWYTK. When you call in, you've got
three minutes, give yourself a cool nickname, and let us
know at some point in the message if we can
use your message and your voice on the air. If
you've got more to say, why not instead send us
a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
You to know.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Men,
my name is noelh.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis, code
named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want
you to know. It is the top of the week,
which means it's time for some strange news, and we're
going to talk about some crime. We're going to talk
(00:50):
about some surveillance. We're going to talk about, of course,
a couple of heist gone wrong. We are going to
ask what rough beast slouches towards the Bethlehem of the
Dead Internet theory before we do any of that. Fellow
conspiracy realist, we are fans of music in all form,
(01:12):
and Noel, you found a pretty amazing story.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Well yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of the
conversation around AI, especially as it pertains to corporations using AI,
sort of feels like this desperate attempt to capitalize on
the hot new technology or whatever, not even to mention
the dystopian aspects of AI the job depriving the future
(01:44):
aspects of AI or a machine learning to be a
little more accurate. So it's kind of rare even when
you see one that seems a little innocuous, Like you know,
the Beatles released a pretty nothing burger of a song
that I've already literally forgot in the name of where
they used AI to clean up the audio on a
(02:05):
John Lennon demo. Essentially that was like I think him
playing a tune on the piano, and they used AI
as you know, an interesting tool. It wasn't like to
resurrect John Lennon's from the Dead, you know, to fully
create this thing that never actually happened. It was you know,
using you know, machine learning as a forensic tool of
(02:26):
audio reconstruction.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I do like John Lennon's.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
By the way, John Lennons, there's there's there could be
more than one. If hey if if, if big corporate
America has their way, there will be many John Lennons
fed by machine learning. But you know, there was a
lot made of that story when it came out because
there were a lot of people saying, oh gross, using
AI to you know, dishonor the dead and create this song.
(02:51):
Not cool beatles, but a lot of those stories buried
the leader at the very least people chose not to
look into a little bit deeper beyond the headlines to
determine yes and fact. That was just a use of
that kind of software, that kind of technology as a tool.
And you know, Matt and I work pretty extensively with
audio and stuff and using tools like isotope RX to
(03:11):
you know, clean up noisy recordings, get rid of things
like room tone or the drone of an air conditioning.
And while I know a lot of audio plugins are
starting to use more machine learning algorithms to figure that
kind of stuff out, it's sort of still kind of,
you know, the early days for that kind of stuff,
and you're really just starting to see some of those
tools incorporating this technology. I think we could all agree
(03:32):
that's pretty cool. That's a use of that tech that's
neat and that actually is a value and is still
requiring engineers to implement the tool and to use it,
you know, to create great audio, whether it be in
podcasts or in music. You know, with so many people
recording records at home. Being able to clean up audio
that maybe wasn't recorded in the most optimal situations is
(03:53):
a really cool thing.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Well, just really quickly on that, think about all of
the amazing tools that exist for video editing and how
far that's come. Right, being able to isolate elements back
the image and like do all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Adaptive whatever it can sense, the edges it can sense,
you can replace elements to create really cool video effects,
not just deep fakes.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, it's super good at this, by the way, folks.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
But what I'm saying is even before any of this
AI integration, video effects and editing and the way you
could manipulate a visual image became was becoming extremely powerful
the things you could do right. But with audio for
a long time, I think it has to do with
the nature of the wave and the signal and what
you actually get when you record right. With microphones and things,
(04:40):
it's very hard to separate pieces, right. Let's say, if
there's a sound that occurs at the same time as
another sound. For a long time, there was almost no
way besides isolating specific frequencies to do anything.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
I used to work at a guitar shop. You probably
have an idea or can't imagine how often people came
in and said, hey, you got to miss That'll cut
the vocal out of this scene so I can make
it into a karaoke track. I kid you not. It
happened once every couple of days. So now to your point, Matt,
through machine learning, that is possible, and I couldn't exactly
(05:14):
explain to you how it's done, but there are quite
a few tools that can do just that. And the
long winded way of getting to today's story that I brought,
which is about the country singer Randy Travis who in
twenty thirteen suffered a severe stroke that left him unable
to speak, which of course means unable to sing. He
also had had issues with mobility due to that and
has you know, largely faded from the public spotlight since
(05:37):
that point. You might know Randy Travissey. I think he
had hits like as far back as like the early eighties.
My girlfriend, who's a bit of a country enthusiast, it's
not my particular genre of choice. I think I like
classic country. I like outlawk country, that kind of stuff.
More of the schmaltzy kind of radio country stuff like
that doesn't really do it for me, but you could
(05:58):
argue Randy Travis sort of straddles those genres. And I
think one of his famous songs is called like for
I Love You Forever and Ever a man as long
as Old Women talk about Old Man or something like that,
and didn't quite bail it, but it's apparently a really
really sweet song. And he was known for having a
very kind of non traditional, very laid back delivery, and
(06:20):
that was sort of his you know, stocking trade, and
so he was very beloved, not necessarily known as like
a belter per se or having like this some kind
of crazy range, much more of an everyman kind of singer.
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
On the other hand, that's worth it for like twelve people.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
On the other hand, is that a ready Travis dress.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
On the other head, of course, he is a we're
talking about this off air. He's kind of a comfortable,
hangout singer. That's exactly right, right.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
So essentially what's happened here, and again, this is an
initiative through this record company, Warner you know, Warner Brothers,
Warner Media whatever their record wing of that giant media conglomerate.
But I would argue a pretty good one of like, hey,
we're going to try it out the use of this
AI technology to give Randy Travis his voice back, with
(07:15):
full cooperation from Randy himself, from his legacy producer of
many years, and a fellow country singer named James Dupree
who kind of laid down what you might call the
guide vocal for the track. So basically, you sing the
song kind of knowing how Randy's cadences might go and
the way he might deliver the song, and then by
(07:37):
going through forensically scraping I guess, I mean, I think
that terms kind of become a little gross too, but
you get what I'm saying. His back catalog. I think
they took forty two of his isolated vocal tracks, which
you might call stems in the parlance of recording. It's
just the vocal part solo. No AI required, right, because
you have the original master tapes, which is multi track,
(07:58):
so all of those things can be then split out out.
So forty two of his vocal isolated recordings were then analyzed,
let's say, and overlaid on top of this James Dupree vocal,
and apparently the results A it's charting, it's debuted where
that came from the song, the new song from Randy Travis.
(08:21):
And in this situation where there's agency, I think you
can call it by Randy Travis. What do you guys
think about that? Let let's start with that first of all,
if there is co signed by the artist himself, not
Drake dropping an AI rap verse on a you know,
disk track from Tupac of course, who is not with us,
and also from Snoop Dogg. Weirdly, we actually didn't talk
(08:41):
about that in our Drake segment. That's one of the
weirdest parts of that whole rap u. That is no
agency that is done without the permission of the people
living or deceased, their families that have that have been
left behind, and you know, Tupac's estate had a real
problem with that and had it taken down. But in
this case there has been all of the things and
Randy himself. So can you really call this a Randy
(09:04):
Travis song? This is really kind of a new frontier
of media, Like he didn't actually sing it. This other
guy sang it, but then they took his voice and
they overlaid it and he was involved. You know, it's
very interesting question. I don't know what you guys think
about that, And then we'll get to some other stuff
with some other aspects of this story.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Well, I haven't heard it, guys. Does it sound like
it's just him recording in a booth?
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I think so. I mean, you know this kind of
very polished country. It's got a certain sheen to it.
You know a lot of theah, there's auto tune used
in big country artists, and auto tune again as a tool,
he's gotten more and more transparent where it doesn't sound
like auto tune. There's even this other auto tune is
actually these days, in my experience, used more to sound
(09:51):
like auto tune, where it is very much meant to
be an effect, like in trap music or or you know,
a Polish pop. It's almost like that robot voice that you.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Know he being could actually singul to know that. Check
out the Tiny Desk concert. The guy has a voice
of an angel.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Picasso could paint landscapes. The guy it was classically trained artists.
He just chose to paint like a like a small child.
I'm kidding. I love Picasso, but I'm saying people often
joke about like, how, oh man, anybody could do that?
Blah blah blah. No, a lot of these artists, they
made those choices. That is often the case with auto
tune these days. It's a choice, it's an aesthetic choice.
(10:26):
Melodine is another tool that is much more for correcting mistakes,
correcting little warbles, and it's real precise and I've used
it and it's it's miraculous. You've probably seen uh sort
of jokey videos online where someone will take a song
and retune it and like make it sound completely different.
That's all using melodye. So in my opinion, it does
(10:47):
sound like a real Randy Travis on me not being
a you know, Randy Travis super fan, I couldn't say
for sure, but by all accounts, he loved it. Apparently
he you know, when they played it for him. There's
a video of him kind of taking it all in
and you see him sort of go through this range
of emotions, and I believe the emotion that he lands
on is gratitude. He uses the word grace, you know,
(11:10):
in his discussion of this song, and he believes this
was a form of a divine second chance.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So like when a Frank Sinatra watched Pavati singing some
of his hits.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
That's a good point, man, That's my question to you, guys.
Though it is like that sort of but it's also
different because it is charting as a new song from
the country megastar Randy Travis. But it's also that ship
of thesis kind of question, isn't it guys? Like, is
it really him? If it's actually sung by someone else
in the overlaid with pieces of him? I don't know.
(11:43):
I think it's that's a philosophical question, right, I don't
really have the answer.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Well, it's licensing at that point.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
It is licensing, that's right, it's But at the same time,
it's a little different than Abba or Kiss selling their
likenesses to the the Hologram factory, you know, for constant
perpetual touring. You know, that's on rails. They've created this show.
There's see this is kind of on rails too. I
(12:11):
don't know, guys, I'd love to hear from conspiracy realists
out there. Is this really Randy Travis? Is that? Even
the point? I don't know. His producer, Kyle Lemming is
the one who went through the old recordings. The lyrics
are ten years old. So this is something that I
think was meant for him in the first place. I'm
(12:32):
not one hundred percent sure, but it does have three
point three million streams in its very first week, which
is pretty neat. I just think this is sort of
like a feel good, a high story in the midst
of a lot of real scary, doom and gloom AI stories.
And I think I don't think anybody could argue that
this is a pretty interesting use of this tool, you know,
(12:53):
and other AI related I guess positive news or you
know where AI with agency news If anyone's familiar with
the singer and dancer, pretty amazing artist fka Twigs. She
actually spoke before like a house committee, I believe, on
the use of AI, and she has developed an AI
deep fake avatar of herself that she with agency from
(13:17):
her and her team want to be able to have
interact with fans. So, you know, is it a genie
out of the bottle kind of situation? If it's done correctly,
can you put the reins on it? Can it be
rained in? I guess there's a better way of putting that.
I don't know. I'd like to think so, but I
want to end. But I want to end this segment
unless you guys had any other stuff to add.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
No, I can't wait to listen to the song.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I also want to give it another listen.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I will point out again broken record style. Hope me
on this. It is fundamentally philosophically fraudulent to describe any
intelligence as artificial.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
It's fair. I think that's fair and a good reminder.
So this is really quick, and this is really just
for for laws, y'all. I think this is a really
sweet story. I recently came across a kind of a
new I guess burgeoning hilarious sort of joke scene on
the internet. We talked about dead Internet theory. A lot
of that is being perpetuated and really escalated by AI
(14:16):
content creation, right, but a lot of that stuff, I mean,
it's gonna get more advanced, like it does require prompts
from human beings. And I stumbled upon a treasure trove
of AI generated country songs. And this one here was
entirely AI generated. A human had to have prompted it.
Because you're gonna hear some some real themes here, y'all. Well,
(14:38):
let's just this is here real quick. This is a
big red cups. I got beer in my boots, dirn
on the truck, corn on the mone and a god
of my butt.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
It's a stop town, leister's dirt, bleister's beer trucks.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
And sure.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
This is not bo Burnham, by the way.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Consent butts, red cups, dirty beer, folks.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I wish you could see Matt's pace right now. I
wish you could see an old dancing to this one.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
The butts are proud, y'all, biscuit in my boot?
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Sorry, all right enough, Oh my goodness, gracious, what do
you guys think about that?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
I mean, guys, I live out in the country.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Now, yeah, you got big, you got boots and boots, trucks,
get mud, and there are any guns and butts out there?
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Of course that's all. It's all true. No, no, it's
I feel offended on behalf of everybody that lives within
with several miles Listen.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
That's why I point out that someone didn't just right
AI make a country song. Someone said make a country
song about guns and butts. Okay, that didn't come out
of whole cloth, I guarantee, because as we know, with
these tools, they require prompts, and sometimes these prompts can
be very targeted and focused, whether it be for visual
stuff or what have you. I thought that was really funny.
(16:18):
It made me laugh. I shared it with anyone who
would listen. Now I shared it with you.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
AI is o Henry's Monkey Paul, also coming from parts
of rural Appalachia. I think they would dig this song.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
I think they would do. It's a banger of a chorus, yeah,
and it certainly does when you when you when you
step away from the jokiness of it. If an AI
did compose the melody and hook of that, whether the
prompt you know that probably Again, I haven't messed with
one of these audio AI things like that, but pretty
(16:53):
impressive and a little scary in terms of what that
means for pop music and artists like James Blake. I've
really come out saying how the record industries are really
pushing this narrative of like ten second clips for a TikTok,
five second, fifteen second clips from TikTok, which is pushing
the way music is consumed much more towards a world
(17:14):
where AI generated stuff would fly.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And that's not coolish. I would dig this song.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
It's a real fist pumper, y'all, and I just think
it's gonna get weirder from there. So I use that
kind of jokey bit just to point out some of
the scary parts of this stuff too. Weren't you weren't
going to get an AI story on stuff that I
want you to know without a little bit of doom
sprinkled in there for good measure. So at least we
could wrap that doom. And you know, guns and butts.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Big red cups, dirty trucks, dirty truck dirty but.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
A biscuit in my boot, corn on my mind. You know,
you know, I'm always out there thinking about that corn. Wow.
I don't know, guys, this is fun and scary and sweet.
I'm feeling a lot of emotions. Let's take a quick
break here, a word from our sponsor, and then come
back with more strange news.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
And we've returned. Guys, We've got a bit of a
mystery that's going to take us down let's say a
forking path, and we'll explore it as it forks. The
first story comes from CBS News or k COW News.
That's a California. It was posted on May eighth, twenty
twenty four, and it is regarding one woman's experience. The
(18:31):
title is hidden Camera Found planted outside of Chino Hills
woman's home. And I'm just going to read a couple
of the details here and then let's discuss A woman
living in Chino Hills, California, was disturbed to learn that
a camera disguised as a rock had been planted outside
of her home. The camera was planted in the ground
across the street from her house. It's believed that the
(18:54):
camera was placed on April twenty ninth, where it sat
for several days before being spotted by a neighbor. It
was a camera wrapped in clay to make it look
like a rock, and it was attached via cable to
a very large power bank that was actually larger than
the entire you know, fake rock itself. So like a
long term yeah, just sitting there across the street from
(19:17):
this house. The neighbor who found it was able to
actually download some of the images from it, so it's
not as though it was attached to Wi Fi. Well
maybe it was, but if it was attached to Wi Fi,
it was also capturing images locally to the device. So
the neighbor downloaded an image from the camera that showed
the moment the hand places it there. Somebody was wearing
(19:40):
a glove like looks like a gardener or something, places
it down there. But then the neighbors, knowing the date
and time, looked at their own security cameras and found
the moment that somebody rides up on a scooter and
just kind of, you know, stops for a moment, goes down,
puts something or messes with the ground in some way, right,
(20:01):
and then just rides right off. And that's it. That's
all they know. Uh So everybody is just trying to
figure out why, and the woman obviously is going, oh, okay,
what am I dealing with here? We've got several options, guys,
what do you think is most likely that this could be.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
It's tough to guess without more information.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Okay, no, right options. I'll throw the first one out.
What if it is, and this one's way out there.
What if it is a BTK style person that is
casing a human being, watching a human being to see
their movements, their patterns and everything like that, like a serial.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Killer, a predator scoping like the bomb torture killed Dennis
Radar guy. Cinematic possible, but maybe not plausible. Those fates
are kind of rare.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Okay, Well, what would be more common then maybe uh,
burglar or someone who's casing the joint just to steal
from it.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yeah, that's I almost said a good one. That's a
more plausible one.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
It's also a commitment to the bit, right, I mean,
you know.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
The possibility of a stalker without necessarily serial killer level
predation at this point. You know, Matt, in the notes
you you said, this could also just be someone trying
to rob a house or chasing the joint for the
(21:27):
worst hoa ever.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah, it could be that. What if it's a private
investigator that was hired by some outside party that is
trying to capture something specific or activity going on?
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Oh? Well, have you guys been watching this show Sugar
on on Apple TV. It's a private investigator type show.
It's set in the modern day, but it's kind of
got these old school you know, Noir detective advised. But
dude is constantly placing hidden cameras on stuff, right all
the time.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Oh yeah, bigtim We'll get in situations.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Well, that's a common thing, right, especially if you're in
a cheating spouse situation, A PI will place camera us
in front.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
To be completely wireless, it would have to have a
big old power supply like that you couldn't how would
it would be such a giveaway if you tapped somebody's
electricity or you know, it have to have a big
old battery too, and then you probably have to go
back in and replace it with a charge one.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
And not to victim blame at all in any way,
but to understand this story, Matt, it sounds like we
need to learn more about the woman in Chino Hills
she identified, Like is there do we know anything about
her background or possible like malevolent forces that might have interacted.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
With No, we have, We have no information. This is
like a one off story that at least to my knowledge,
came out last week and it's that's all I've seen
about it. And I haven't even pursued it further because
I kind of don't want to know. That's that lady's business.
I don't want to whatever she's getting into. The reason
I'm bringing to you guys is to kind of go
down this pathway of why would someone place a hidden
camera across the street from a house. The only other
(23:03):
thing I have like thinking about it would be some
kind of law enforcement issue where they're trying to watch
either a house or a specific walkway where people are traveling.
But usually for law enforcement, you would have to have
a human being monitoring that stuff. So you've got that
chain of custody thing.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Right, Yeah, in a windowless van, right.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yeah, usually a human being on hand somewhere making sure
that at all times people know what is happening in
time stamping things.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
So and also I hope she's okay.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Oh absolutely, I was joking about what did she do?
No victim? Let me hear at all. I just want
to add, Matt. I think one thing that piques all
of our interests about this is the very clever, you know,
camouflaging of the camera. It's not something that I've really
thought about it or seen before. It's like a fake
rock looking thing. Somebody puts some thoughts or time and
some energy into.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
This, Yeah, but then they just kind of covered it
with leaves with a giant metal power thing attached to it.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
Okay, that's like a tracking compliment, You're right.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
It's just it's a weird combination of things, right, which
just makes you go, what.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Is going on? Laziness?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, I guess so it is possible to be stupidly smart.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Hey, there you go. There you go. So, guys, the
next story that I wanted to jump to from this
thinking about this story is a story here from Boston
twenty five News from a while ago. This is April
twenty sixth, But it made me think about this story.
There was a group of four men who were recently
arrested for casing and burglarizing forty three homes. These four
(24:40):
men carried out forty three successful burglaries and stole more
than four million dollars worth of that's an estimate worth
of valuables. It was across twenty five towns in Massachusetts
from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Oh that's a long time window.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
It is a really long time window. And here is
the part that astounded me in reading the story. You guys,
think about all the ring cameras out there, all of
the simply safe and blah blah blah, all the r
low cameras. These guys were only caught on camera out
of forty three burglaries one time. One time. Isn't that
(25:17):
kind of astounding. It makes you wonder how in the
heck they could do that. And I learned about something
through this article. I didn't know that you could jam
Wi Fi signals in a local area as somebody who
was not law enforcement or not, you know, and in
working for an intelligence company, you can just get a
device that will jam Wi Fi signals, essentially making all
(25:41):
of these camera systems inert because if they're not connected
to the Wi Fi generally they don't function unless there
are a specific type of camera. Of some of them
will function whether they have signal or not, and they
store locally and then upload.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
Yeah, really popular one is called the camera.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Mamma jamma, camera, mamma jamma.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
I just made that up. That's not true.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Oh I thought it is.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Now we just lack mirrored it. Also, also, it is,
to be fair, folks, it is completely legal to buy
those products or to manufacture them on your own.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Is that because it's all public air, like where you're
jamming at like like I don't know, like who owns
the air?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Okay, it's like it's illegal to shoot a person in general,
but it is not illegal to buy a gun. It
is legal to buy these sorts of things, these contraptions
and the components that compose those contraptions, but the way
you use them determines the legality or the illegality and.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
These great architectors.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Right, Yeah, it's a good comparison. I don't know why
I say comparison, Like I don't speak this language. I'm
still learning it.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
But no, it's one of those things that, like you know,
has intended for law enforcement or what have you, and
then it made its way to the public sector. I
think it's technically a legal to use them for nefarious purposes,
but it's a pretty gray area about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, that's the right color for it. It's a great area.
And these So these guys did get caught though, right Matt,
despite only being sited on camera once like some sort
of true crime cryptid. They did get popped.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
They did get caught. They're currently charged. So I guess
this stuff is they allegedly did all these things. They
haven't gone through the whole process, right, but they did
get caught. There was one other thing. This was a
sophisticated group of folks doing this because they also never
brought cell phones with them when they were, you know,
casing a joint or going into a place. They were
(27:41):
very careful with their signals intelligence. Basically they almost wouldn't
have gotten caught, probably just because they really were moving
pretty effectively in the shadows, I think, unless there were
some kind of sting or something like that. But hey,
this is a weird one. They got caught. That's good.
I don't know how you really protect yourself against that
stuff unless I don't know, you just super upgrade your
(28:01):
security systems and think about all the potential holes and
then go crazy and paranoid and maybe don't do that.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Spend your life unhappily anxious.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yeah, let's not do that. That's not a great idea.
Take it from me somebody who has dealt with that
and is always and is still dealing with that.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
All right, maybe we should get some coffee.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Hey, there we go. Uh well, so here's another potential
reason for that camera to be out there. By way
of another story that was in The Guardian on May eleventh,
titled US woman charged with concealing bleach in husband's coffee
avoids jail. Okay, so here's one to get all our
paranoias up. There was a US Navy serviceman who was
(28:47):
stationed outside of the United States. He noticed that the
coffee he was drinking in the mornings that he would
brew it home, started tasting a little off, so he
decided to weirdly enough to check it for pool chemicals
like chlorine in those kinds of things. Sure, so he
checked it and turns out, oh, there's bleach in there.
(29:08):
So he thought, how did bleach get in my coffee? Like,
checks out the coffee maker. Oh yeah, the water in
there tastes real funny, cleans it out, puts new water in,
and then all of a sudden, it tastes weird again.
So he sets up a hidden camera in his kitchen
and he watches his spouse put something into the coffee
(29:31):
maker's water holder, right in the back of the coffee maker,
and he's like, huh, I wonder what that was. That
was really weird. So then he waits until they move
back to the United States. He just by the way,
he pretends like he drinks his coffee in the morning.
From this point on, he doesn't actually drink it. He
knows there's something in it, and his wife puts something
in it. He's not sure what's going on, so he
waits till he get back to the US. Then he
(29:53):
sets up another camera in this new kitchen and he
catches her taking bleach, putting it into container and then
putting that the contents of that container into the coffee maker,
and she had to go to jail.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
But wait, didn't her husband like argue in her favor
against long term jail time And she got off with
some like probation. And then they I think they're getting
divorced or they just you know, but they're still living
together with their kid. Yeah, why do you tell the
kid mommy and daddy love each other very much, but
(30:27):
mommy tried to kill daddy or was.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
It more of a Munchausen's by proxy situation?
Speaker 4 (30:33):
It's a good question this. Well, I mean, we obviously
don't know any motive right in terms of abuse or
anything like that.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Right, But again, I guess what I'm saying is, I
guess there are a lot of reasons to want to
have cameras set up and to conceal those cameras so
the people you're trying to capture don't know they're there.
It's just a weird situation.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
Can you imagine the thought process?
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I like that there's a thematic point here too, because
in general, now one must always assume one is being
filmed or recorded in some way. It's just the safest
assumption we're not trying to ruin anybody's day or anything
like that.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
And I also don't think we're all necessarily proposing that
we put round the clock hidden cameras in every aspect
of our life to make sure no one's trying to poisonous.
What I was gonna ask, though, Matt, was can you guys,
are both of you can you imagine the thought process
that would lead to this conclusion? And like the slew thing,
and like, surely she's not Wait a minute, maybe she is.
(31:34):
Oh god, she definitely is.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
You immediately test for pool chemistry.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
That's a weird one the context, you know, who like
have you like we've.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
All had beat me here, doc, and thank you. We've
all had the drinks at some point, right, you know,
you get something from a fast food place that soda
founds off. Who on earth? Like what leads you to
this point in your life where you sip coffee it
tastes off and you say, time to test for the
pool chemicals.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
There's that bit in the pilot episode of twin Peaks
where the guy goes there was a fish in the percolat.
That's what it made me think. But guys, I mean
I don't know if anyone's accidentally tasted a little bleach
in their life. I haven't, but I know what it
smells like, and we know that there's a lot of
(32:25):
connection between taste and smell. I could imagine that he
tested for pool chemicals because the coffee tasted a little bleachy.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Well, yeah, and it was a taste that lingered for
a long time. And again, like you just want to know, Well,
is it just this batch of coffee that's tainted or
is something wrong with my coffee maker? What the heck's
going on? Maybe it was in my cup?
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yeah, Well the gaslightingness of it all too, is the
whole Like, am I insane? Like I totally cleaned out
the coffee maker and now it's back. You know, at
what point does he decide I better get to the
bottom of this. This isn't in my head he had.
You have wrestled with that for at least a minute.
You know, is he.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Testing everything for pool chemicals?
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Well, he had test strips, right, and his first thought was, oh, crap,
something is getting into our water supply because they were
stationed in Germany, and he was like, maybe there's just
something I don't know about so we tested the water
faucet and it was clean. So he's like, that's weird. Well,
so he tested the water that was sitting there in
the percolator and it was wrong.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
Hats off to this guy's deductive skills of reasoning and
then you know, process of elimination. I would say he
saved his own life. Yep.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
All, don't drink bleach, folks.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
No, good God, please don't do that.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Not even diet bleach, about the calories. Just don't drink bleach.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
But what if it tastes like midnight cherry midnight zero. Yeah,
it's my favorite too. It's right there. All right, we're gonna,
I don't know, think about this stuff, y'all. We're gonna
take a break and we'll be right back with more
strange news.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
And we have returned a quick cavalcade of updates. Good
news for a very specific demographic of people in Indiana.
An Indiana judge has ruled that tacos and burritos qualify
as sandwiches. So st yeah, yeah, yeah, the future. Who
is this a judge in Indiana? A judge by profession,
(34:29):
He's not like a judge Reinhold or whatever that actor's
name is in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He ruled as part
of a commercial development case that burritos and tacos count
as sandwiches.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
I think this is out of his league, saying, you're lane, judge.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
This is the most conservative opinion I have heard.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
You have nol to do with you.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Look, we've been in a.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
Matter of legality, it's a matter of common sense, dude.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
We've been asking for like an official ruling on this,
and this judge gave it to us.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
He wrote, the proposed famous taco restaurant falls within the
scope of general use approved in the original written commitment.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Blah blah, YadA YadA YadA da da Uh. The original
written commitment does not restrict potential restaurants to only American
cuisine style sandwiches. So that's a big win for Big Taco.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
The court. Baby, all right, the justices, deway.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
All right, we'll text them. We'll text them because your
voice should be heard. Also, if you own a yacht,
bad news. The Orcas are out to get you. Just
knocked another way out of the straight to Gibraltar, and uh,
Team Orca.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
To be quite honest, wasn't a really big nice boat too,
like a yacht.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
Or something that gets the distinction is on the big
and or nice side. But this was a bigger yacht
right above.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Sorry, I know I saw like Pacino and Devil's Advocate,
but yeah, Tea Morca. So also, we were talking about
this a little bit off air, this last one before
you get to our big piece. Shout out to our
friend doctor Damian Patrick. Williams was speaking with him a
little bit earlier. There is a flood of fake science
(36:20):
hitting academic journals. We talked about this a little bit
in our previous episode on the academic journal problems, the controversies,
corruption and conspiracy surrounding that a lot of these journals
now are closing down because there is an industry using chat,
GPT and AI to plagiarize papers. They're called paper mills
(36:44):
and they are so I told myself I wasn't going
to curse you guys, but Doc, with great thanks, beat
me again. They are so fucking dumb. They're not good.
They do this thing where they ran they ran and
synonyms through so instead of saying something like this study
(37:05):
is about breast cancer, they say this study is about
bosom peril.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
It's like the the like kind of bootleg Halloween costumes
trying to avoid being sued for intellectual property, like for
Wednesday atoms. It's spooky mid midweek QT.
Speaker 6 (37:21):
Stuff like that is true, It's very true. It's a thing,
you know, it's a spirit and spooky midweek beauty. Really
quickly though, I mean just to add, like these types
of operations have been around as long as there have
been papers, right, you know, with varying degrees of quality.
You know, we certainly have heard stories of astute scam
artists in schools, you know, doing this, going into business
(37:44):
for themselves, and oftentimes they'll sell the same paper like
three or four times.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
So this is just sort of an escalation of that, right.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yes, just as the Internet itself is an escalation of
the gregarious nature of human beings. Here you go, another
couple of examples of these synonym griffs. Fluid dynamics was
called gooey stream.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Oh that's yeah, Okay, weird.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
About that one. We're all so Artificial intelligence was also
referred to as counterfeit consciousness. And I think this is
a segue to our last story for tonight's program. Did
you guys ever do online dating?
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Not? Oh? Yeah, my current relationship that I have been
in for lo these three plus years at this point
was the product of online dating. You know, I got
divorced from someone that I did not meet in online dating,
and then after that it just kind of became the
way you do it in a bigger city where you
maybe don't know as many people. So it made sense
(38:51):
for me. And I've had good and bad experiences.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, you know, Matt and I are maybe a little
more old school. We meet people the old fast and way,
you know, getting deported at customs.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
I just get into minor car accidents with people I
find attractive.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
To meet cute.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
So obviously, no shade on online dating. It works very
well for a lot of people, and it can be
a difficult speed bump, right Like it's it's already difficult
to meet folks, to find the person that you want
to spend time or your life with. And what gets
(39:41):
me with this is I was always startled by the
idea of online dating. And I remember when some of
my friend groups started dating online using the apps of whatever,
and they eventually told me it was like a series
of auditions. They felt like they were always auditioning, and
(40:05):
they felt like they were auditioning for roles they didn't
necessarily want, but it was Saturday and they had to
do something. And this brings us to our final story,
which includes artificial intelligence again fraudulent term as well as
online dating. You guys. Recently, one of the high ups,
(40:26):
one of the grand pubas of the dating enterprise Bumble,
Whitney wolf Heard, said, we're going to take the awkwardness out.
We are going to eliminate this small talk, eliminate the
dead ends, the red herrings and so on. We are
going to create an AI concierge for each user of Bumble,
(40:51):
and that AI concierge will talk to another AI concierge
to figure out what the vibe is where the actual
people ever meet.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Oh god, amazing, right, they just want to double their
user base by creative users.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
Yeah, so wait a minute. So so the person it's
sort of like a stand in, like a fill in,
Like I don't I guess I don't quite understand the technology.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
She's saying. The AIS interact, right, that's what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Ben, Yeah, that's the idea.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
So, like, if your AI avatar interacts with another person's
AI avatar that has built a profile based on your
god knows how much data.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
So like an Ai Ben Bullen and an Ai Fran
Dresser have a series of amazing conversations, and then later
they notify the human Fran and the human Bed and
they're like, hey, you guys both like the nanny, you
should hang out.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
Yeah, But and then the Ais had been hooking up
for like a week or two, and they're like, I
guess we should tell them.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
It's doing all your for play chat for you? Is
that basically the idea here? I'm sorry, I know that
that's not necessarily the term, you know what I mean?
Though the precursor getting to know you micro flair. Isn't
that part of the fun of it? Though, I guess
maybe there's some people that this is for. I don't.
I don't know. You can usually tell within one or
two quick exchanges whether someone gets you or is worth interacting.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
With you say it on air.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
Mean, yeah, I couldn't tell you. I don't have a
specific one. It's been a long time at this point
since I've done it. But I just try to be real.
I don't remember exactly. I never have like a go
to one. I'm sure I tried different ones out but
I'm not a lying kind of guy. But when you do,
there is something to be said though, of the fun
and sort of spontaneity of engaging with someone who and
(42:49):
realizing that you, guys have a vibe and that it's cool.
Is this meant to you? Just get rid of that entirely.
I'm a little confused. Who's asking for this seems more
to benefit they than the individuals guys.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
I'm gonna go out there on a limb and say,
I think this is for a very specific audience. There's
a quote from one of the articles you shared back.
Can I do you mind if I read one of
these please? It says there is a world where your
dating concierge could go on a date for you with
other dating concierge. This is from What's what's the person's name?
(43:21):
Somebody Wolf Witney, Whitney. Yeah, okay, And she says, and
then you don't have to talk to six hundred people,
and it'll scan all of the San Francisco area for
you and say these are the three people you really
ought to meet.
Speaker 4 (43:38):
Who.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Look, I'm putting this out there. I've never used one
of these dating apps, but people I've heard about some
friends of mine that have been using them don't get
six hundred matches or whatever. Every once in a while
get a match and hope for the best.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
Oh that's me, baby, I'm not gonna lie. It is
not like raining matches. And it's also dudes in a
in a big way too. In general, they don't care
as many matches as women. But women that I've heard
it described as like just having hot dogs thrown at
your face.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Horror show. You know, it's it's terrible. I like the
point that we're bringing up here because it goes back
to the earlier idea in our episode about dead Internet theory,
the old parable of Fantasia and The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The
concept is to automate interactions, initial interactions, and like you said, Matt,
(44:29):
that that quote from Whitney Wolf heard stands out because
she's estimating that this AI concierge would talk to not four,
not eleven, not forty two or forty three or whatever,
but six hundred different AI representatives avatars. And then, as
(44:52):
you said, Matt, find the three schlubs in San Francisco
that might vibrate or.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
No, the three tech bros who are gonna you know,
make seven figures or whatever. I don't know, man, I
just don't. I don't like any of the whatever.
Speaker 4 (45:08):
I don't Again, though, I think the question of who
is this for is still is largely answered by it's
for the data brokers, you know. And then like if
somebody thinks this is a good idea, they're like, you know,
an individual, Yeah, take my data. I love this, have
it all, give me the better chance at finding the
right match. But I think unless we see some real,
(45:28):
insanely believable success stories from this, this is all smoke
and mirrors just to get more juice out of the
meat bags that are you know, Internet users, the remaining
ones the real.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Indeed tempted to agree with you in that regard, because
you can see the original conversation over on Bloomberg dot
com wherein at a tech summit, this this executive is
speaking about this and also to your point about data
retechn or data aggregation. Uh, she says, wolf Heard says,
(46:05):
this will also make you a better person. This AI
concierge will help you learn about yourself. Can give merizzler.
That's the medium plan, Yeah, skibby, And we also we
(46:26):
got to say this too, uh, There are now, of course,
multiple other digital things that are normalizing this sort of
I guess you would call it cognitive cybernetic approach right
to consciousness, and this, uh, this is perhaps most apparent
(46:47):
in things like AI girlfriend apps, which I experimented with
one because I had to find out uh back in college, right, yeah, college,
in college, right.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
Experimenting college.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
So I think this is first off, they are aggressively mediocre,
no offense. I'm sure I can imagine technology will improve
at some point, but I do wonder whether humans are
ready for this precipice upon which they stand. You know,
I'm not I'm not necessarily thinking about us listening tonight
as adults. I'm thinking about your kids, you know, your
(47:28):
kids who grow up, like, is it that bad because
a lot of people have imaginary friends growing up. Is
this not just an imaginary friend that texts you back
and ask you for your credit card number.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
I guess we'll all have to try it out.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
I don't think it's a good idea. We're not here
to yuck anybody's yum. But it does feel like it
does feel like an extension of what we're talking about previously,
with the idea of the inner accelerating past the point
of human intervention. Right. We ended that episode spoiler folks,
(48:08):
with the idea that Earth could end up being a
haunted house in some way, just a series of algorithms
repeating and interacting and iterating with each other long after
humanity had gone the way of the Dodo. However, in
this case, what if you found out, let's spin it out.
(48:28):
What if you found out years after the fact that
you had an AI representative that you were not necessarily
aware of, that had become in a close relationship, an
intimate relationship with an AI representative of a person you
have never met, and what if it's gone on for years?
(48:48):
The question would you want to meet that person? Soon?
Speaker 4 (48:52):
As topiing for me to even wrap my head around. Guys.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
It reminds me of that Netflix movie from a long
time ago called I Am Mother. Did you guys ever
see Yeah? Yeah, I don't want to. Shouldn't spoil it
for anybody if you haven't seen it. I enjoyed it
a lot. It's just the wanting to meet that person,
like that question, Ben, I think feels like that to me,
like would you want to know the truth or really
meet the person? Oh the original maybe.
Speaker 4 (49:17):
Oh, before we get out of here, one really important
final question. If burrito is a sandwich? Is a rap
also a sandwich? They're all wraps, sandwiches, NEETs.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
You would say there is no God to stop us.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
Jeez, I'm gonna lose sleep over.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
This also shout out to a past Ben who one
time left a post it note in a freezer that said,
puh plus a burrito, fa rito.
Speaker 4 (49:43):
Tell no one, I won't.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
These are gems we drop. We end tonight with a
philosophical quandary similar to how we began. Right, No, we
are asking ourselves what the role of humans will be
in the future. We want to hear your thoughts, be
you human or bought. We can't wait to interact with you.
(50:08):
If we don't have a I don't think we have
an AI powered interaction yet. You'll have to find us
as ourselves online.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Yes, but Ben, in Dallas, there's a restaurant that serves
a fa rito. We gotta go.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
We've got a farrito gap.
Speaker 4 (50:25):
Seems like you'd be really wet. We are you gonna
put you dip it in the broth? Maybe you dip
it in the brath? I thought I in.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
No, dude, it just looks awesome.
Speaker 4 (50:33):
It looks that it's a good idea.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
It's an all right.
Speaker 4 (50:37):
Parallel thinking is really all. Parallel thinking is real. So
why don't you let us know about any crazy inventions
that you may have come up with out there in
conspiracy real Islam. You can find it to the handle
Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook, on XFK, Twitter,
and on YouTube, where we've got video content rolling out
every single week, on Instagram and TikTok where conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
We have a phone number. You can call it one
eight three three STDWYTK. When you call in, you've got
three minutes, give yourself a cool nickname, and let us
know at some point in the message if we can
use your message and your voice on the air. If
you've got more to say, why not instead send us
a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.