July 31, 2026 • 41 mins
Why is the US banning more Chinese technology? Reed Albergotti (Semafor) fills us in on the robot ban and what it means for American innovation. Then, new research on why Chinese open-source AI models may not be as big a threat as Washington makes it seem. Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) tells us about Substack’s new AI detection tool and what it reveals about how creators’ are using AI to build their content.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Read, Taylor, I want to ask you to open this
week's episode. Would you shop online if you didn't actually
get anything in the mail. But I'm asking because I've
recently read about these dopamine sites out of South Korea
that let you look through non existent products with made
up reviews and promotions that you can add to your cart,
click buy, track your packages and never receive a thing,
(00:33):
No money spent, just the satisfaction of buying something online.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
No you got, Taylor.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I think I already do this with Zillo every night
where I'm you know, perusing multimillion dollar houses in Pasadena
adding them to my favorites.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Like I don't do the Zilla thing because there's nothing
on the market here in the day area, but I
would know. Like what I would do, though, is could
I order stuff but not have the package just show
up at my front door, so that, like all my
neighbors know that we're just like those horrible people who
order like twenty things on Amazon every.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Day that the note packages thing.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
For sure, I still want the product stuff.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I'm as Volocian and this is the week in Tech
where I'm joined by the world's most clubs and reporters.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
To break down what's really happening in tech right now.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Today, we're joined by Taylor Lorenzo use a mag and
Read Albergotti, tech editor at Centophore.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Welcome both, great to be here, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Great to have you both, As always read, the FCC
moved to ban Chinese humanoid robots and quadrupeds from entering
the US, which I can't read without laughing. But I mean,
what's what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Like?
Speaker 4 (01:47):
How serious is this story?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
What what does it have to do with US robot
makers lobbying efforts?
Speaker 4 (01:52):
And what's gonna happen next?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, I mean this is this is another sort of
it's its industrial policy protectionism. I guess we shouldn't be surprised.
I mean, they're already are no buy D Chinese cars
in the US and it and on its face, you're
you're you'd sort of put into that box and you say, okay,
this this makes sense. We want US robot makers to
(02:14):
to kind of have a clear run at this. But
I think there's a there and and granted like there
will be exceptions to this, right, this is not like
this is not a law. This is you know, this
is this is policy coming out of the White House essentially,
but like on its face, you there are these big
questions like a bunch if you go into any sort
of like AI company that's doing anything in the physical
(02:36):
world and in the Bay Area right now, they've got
these Chinese robots like sitting around from all these different companies,
and they're you know, some of them are cheap, like
ten thousand apiece, and they're doing all sorts of testing
on these things, right They're they're essentially building software and
the and the hardware is what they use to you know,
to gather data or just test out their their algorithm.
(02:57):
So I think it's actually like potentially detrimental to innovation.
So this is all and it's the same thing with
like the same issue with these Chinese open source models.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Right It's like, I want to talk about the open
source models, but let's stay with the robots for a
little bit. I mean, the detail about the quadrupeds was
the one that really really caught my eye because I
kind of thought the four legged robots were only for
YouTube videos that I didn't realized they were threat to America.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
I saw I was in Boston a couple of weeks
ago and I saw some people walking their their robot
dicers that looked like, yeah, they looked like they were
sort of like MIT researchers or something. But no, I
mean it's it's like the same issue though. It's the
same principle, which is like you try to you try
to stop the you know, the Chinese from encroaching in
(03:42):
the US market, and then you sort of like also
hinder your own innovation. So these things always come at
a cost. So I think that the trick is going
to be figuring out how to thread that needle right, Like,
do what you need to do, you know, if you're
the White House, to to sort of protect US companies,
stop the Chinese from i don't know, dumping robots if
that's even a thing, but then also allow US researchers
(04:05):
to still, you know, to still be able to innovate
and come. You know, you don't want like a situation
where there's like one or two robotics companies in the
US and if they don't, if they don't just happen
to win this race outright, you know, the US is
way behind.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
This will be like the cause in the Soviet Union
when the when in nineteen eighteen nine, Right, the US
will have all of these like Dusty Treban style robots
call the Tita. Have you been following the robot element
of this story.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yes, I've been following. And does this mean that rumbas
are banned? I saw some headline basically implying.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
That I have a Chinese I have a Chinese robot vacuum.
That's really really good. I think it's a way outperforms
the rumba. So I hope, I hope that's not the case. Look,
I think this is like all of these policies. It's
just the thing to remember is that you can do
whatever you want to try to stop China these tech
(05:00):
and you know, stop them from i don't know, catching
up or ripping off American technology. The US will not
win unless it can move faster than China on innovation.
That is the most important thing about this race, and
I think it often. I think it often gets sort
of forgotten or pushed to the side.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I totally agree with Red and yeah, I mean I
was just reading this article on the Verge talking about
like what's actually sort of included in this span and
it's significantly broader than you would think. I mean, Obviously
we're talking about the humanoid robots and the quadrupeds, but
it's not just that, it's it's far broader. This ban
covers basically any new software controlled robot that travels over
(05:40):
the ground or weighs more than four point four pounds,
including the DOC, and that can perceive its own environment
and has wireless which is basically any robot vacuum like
it's it's a lot of like household devices. Like I
think people don't realize as well just how much stuff
comes from China, Like how like automated I have this
(06:01):
like automated you know, like watering system thing that I
got from Amazon. I'm sure it's some Chinese little robot thing.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Oh you did.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
We were talking about the garden last week and you
were talking about wanting a gunting robot. And now you've
now you filled the trigger.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Exactly and I've ordered a Chinese gardening you know, watering thing.
Probably that's potentially going to be illegal, legal, but but
I know I snuck in right under the van. I
just think, like, I mean, what Reid said is true.
I think this is ridiculous. Like I understand from a
consumer perspective, you know, with the electric cars. Okay, protecting
our car industry in some way, but you know, at
(06:36):
some point, robotics are becoming so pervasive, and this just
seems like, you know, we we need to compete harder,
like we can't. We're I feel like we're the declining
and we're just trying to like protect this declining industry
and we need to allow our researchers to compete. And
and that means that you know, giving technologists access to
this cutting.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Head technology on the kind of robotspan Is this like
kind of a thing that people expect to be in
forced or is this kind of like a staking of
some political kind of pulturing.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Do we do we have any idea?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Well, I like I was sort of getting at earlier.
I mean, this is this is just you know, these
are just orders coming out of the White House. So
it's not like this is not a law. And I
think they always they you know, like I think at
some point they're going to go, oh my god, like
this is way too broad. We got to find loop.
You know, there's gonna be loopholes or or carve outs
(07:28):
for specific areas, like you know, this is what always happens.
It's like this this shoot from the hip sort of
you know, proclamation policy, I guess strategy, and then and
then you go back and make all it. And the
same thing happened with tariffs, right It's like, oh my god,
we have all these tariffs. And then it's like, well,
this thing's carved out and that thing's carved out, and
you eventually get to like, I don't know someplace where
(07:50):
it's where it's logical. So I just take all of
it with a grain of salt and just figure it's
all going to change.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
I just think in the meantime, the damage is done.
I mean, the tariffs are good example, that was like
a huge economic shock. It caused prices to increase for consumers,
like it did cause a lot of I would argue
harm to our economy. And I think when we do
things like this as well, like yeah, maybe you're right
read and I agree, like it will have to be
(08:16):
rolled back in some way because it's nonsensical. But in
the meantime, it's hurt innovation in the meantime, it slowed
us down. In the meantime, it's created liability for startups
that don't want to take on any liability. So it
just seems bad.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, I mean, it'd be one thing if they did
this and they're like, and we're going to put you know,
more money into academic research.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
That was my next question.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So is there going to be is there any commensurate
effort to stimulate the American robotics industry. I so Deep
Mind had an announcement today about some some new kind
of robotics program and obviously read you we talked about
robotics with applied intuition last week on the show. So
it seems like there is like some action in the
American robotics sphere.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Of course, this is a huge industry. There's tons of
private money going into it. But I think if you're
the US, like the private sectors going to do what
it's going to do, the levers that they can pull,
I think are an academic research. Right. That's where like
if you think the robotics race is over, like I
think that's insane. Like I think there's still a lot
of innovation that's going to happen, and it's maybe not
(09:14):
all going to come from the private sector. Like if
you want to do something policy wise, like you know,
push forward research, right, basic research that's going to you know,
help advance this industry. There's so many different areas that
would speed things up. It's it's long term thinking, though,
right and I think that's what Washington is really short
on right now.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I mean, I also just think of like the drama
over the H one B visas and the way that
we're treating immigrants. And there are so many talented scientists, engineers,
roboticists that you know, might be from India, might be
from other places that we've also pushed out of our country,
and I think, I mean, I know that's affected startup's
(09:53):
ability to recruit. I was just talking to somebody last
night who is living in Canada and what is has
a job in a Mameric can start up but can't
start because of this visa process. This is just it's
really ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a this is like
such a challenge because I mean, what you really want
to do is like is not sort of bam the
Chinese robots, but find the people who are really the
most talented people in China building the robots, bring them
to the US, have them build the robots here. But
then there's this worry that they're all spies. Or they
(10:26):
all will be spies, right, and and there is I mean,
these are legitimate concerns, but I think there's like a
I mean this happened in that you mentioned the Soviet
era too. I mean this happened in the Soviet era
like the US because of its system, because of its
open system, you know. There it makes you know, spying easier,
and so that's just a downside. But then that open
(10:46):
system leads to like massive innovation, so it's always a
trade off.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I got of liked on that word open. Let's talk
about open source models. I think for the third week
in a row this is a textuff record, but the
news keeps rumbling on. So another Chinese export, of course
is open source models from Chinese companies like Zai and
moonshot Ai.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Why is it study in the news for so long?
Speaker 1 (11:11):
And also read you wrote about this concern about censorship
an Ai models Chinese models that may be unfounded.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, there was this research study I wrote about yesterday
from CTGT which does this interpretability research, like looking at
how these models actually work so they can build you know,
products for the private sector that are sort of harnessed
and don't go off the rails. They did this experiment
where they took a deep seek model and they fine
(11:40):
tuned from that model and then tested the before and
after Chinese censorship and found that the censorship was essentially
gone once they once they built this new model, the
base of it was was an open ai OSS like
open weights model, and then it was fine tuned or
taught from deep Seek. And so there have been this
(12:01):
this talk of like subliminal messages being passed on from
the teacher model to the student model. It gets it
gets pretty technical and you can get into weeds. But
like the long story short is like we need more
research on this. But what it looks like is I
think these these Chinese models are actually like not as
(12:21):
much of a propaganda risk as you think because they
will get changed and filtered through all these different techniques.
And it also goes to this research point. I mean,
this is like really interesting research that wouldn't happen unless
there were these Chinese open source models. So it's another
I guess point in favor of the pro open source people.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I just think that like it's
it's really concerning to me that like our response is
to ban things like I you know, I watched everything
that happened with TikTok. I covered the musically sale to
Bite dance, which the government was totally fine with, and
then they turned around five years later and they were like, actually,
we're gonna ban TikTok, you know, based on nothing really
(13:06):
except that they it was keep challenging meta products, you know,
like there were all these like sort of like made
up concerns about China that never came to fruition. And
similar to the Chinese open source models. I mean, we
did have a lot of research on TikTok and there
ultimately was just no evidence of anything that the government
was claiming. And I just it's like if they had
(13:30):
proof of these things and if they were doing these
research and showing wow, the Chinese open source models are
really like biased. So this could be really dangerous for
American companies because if X Y z all right, then
I think, you know, we could have a talk about it.
But in this case, it just it's it seems like
these speculative fears and as read mentioned earlier, it feels
very cold war. It feels very like punching at ghosts,
(13:52):
and I just I really worry about the damage that
we're doing to our own tech landscape.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
In the meantime you mentioned, I think Markackerberg did two
interviews this week, with one of the New York Times
and one with the Journal, his first first media appearances
since since his uh since his feed me guest lecture
a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
And.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He was basically complaining about the dominance of of open
a and ionanthropic.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Right.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Is that? Is that a fair summary of what the
media tour was about.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, I think there's two minds of this. I mean, one,
you know, Meta or Facebook has always been sort of
a pro open source company. They've developed a bunch of
open source you know, protocols, and but on the other hand,
I mean you have to sort of take this as like, yeah,
I mean they're behind in the air raight, so like
of course, I mean they're going to just be in
favor of whatever slows their competitors down. So you know,
(14:45):
there's that.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
There was a headline in the in the New York
Times Silicon Valley splits over closing the borders to Chinese AI.
So read is what you're saying that people who want
to close the borders to Chinese AI are the ones
who are currently winning and the ones who don't want
to close the borders of Chinese AI, the ones who
only losing a no note.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
To me, it's you know, that's a kind of misleading headline.
To me, it feels very like Anthropic versus everyone else
in tech. I mean, you had Google, like every single
tech company kind of signed this open letter right against
that sort of I felt like was a big subtweet
of Anthropic. Dario comes out, He's like, Oh no, we
don't like really want to be an open source models,
(15:22):
but also we kind of think they're dangerous and we
kind of I think like dark to me, like I
see Anthropic running the meta playbook exactly where they have
this dominance in the market right now and they're trying
to sort of do regulatory capture to maintain it.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
More about the letter, Taylor, just before we go too far?
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Sure so that So Jensen Wang, CEO of Nvidia, joins
Twitter big. By the way, I just have to say
Mark Zuckerberg's on Twitter promoting his Wall Street Journal op
ed like Jensen's on Twitter. I feel like Twitter has
gotten peak lately. I love to see all these tech
CEOs on there. But so Jensen joins Twitter and po
this open letter, which obviously is you know, shared to
(16:03):
the website whatever, and it is a defensive open source
open weight models. Obviously Nvidia has a strong you know,
business interest in this as well, but it becomes this letter,
this open letter becomes this sort of like rallying cry,
and you have just dozens and dozens of tech companies
sign on to it, you know, by the by the weekend,
(16:23):
like every almost every major tech company it'd signed on
to it, including all these startup you know why, y Combinator,
et cetera, a bunch of startups. So it felt like
basically the entire tech industry had united to advocate for
open weight AI models to be accept to remain accessible.
And then Anthropic came out. Dario issued this this blog
(16:43):
post saying basically like trying again doing the meta thing
where it's like, oh, we don't really want to ban TikTok.
We just think it's a national security thread and it
should be eliminated and probably we shouldn't be able to
download the United States and so like That's kind of
how his letter read to me. I don't know what
read thought, but it was like, oh no, no, no, we
don't mind open Wait we just think it's incredibly dangerous
(17:05):
and you know, I don't like to you know, that's
probably not worth the resk or whatever.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
So read on Smiley, I want to hear your tape
of first. Can one of you help us under sound
difference between open source and open weight?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah, I mean it's just a this is just a
semantics thing really because these models don't reveal their underlying
data sets. And so people in the open source community
took issue with that term because it's like, well, it's
not totally open, but you know, you can still for
all intents and purposes, they're open. I use yeah, I
use open source all the time because I think it
(17:37):
just confuses people to a lot of people to say
open weights. But but you know, there's a there's a
sort of debate there. There was a big debate about
this in the open source community. But no, I mean,
I basically agree with Taylor on this. I think the
one thing I would sort of take issue with is
like I actually think that anthropic people in Dario, like
they're like true believers and they really are scared of
(18:00):
like AI and what's going to happen if you know,
you have these open models that can have all the
guardrails and protection stripped away from them that eventually We're
not there yet, but eventually, I think pose like a
large amount of risk in cybersecurity or bioterrorism.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Doesn't it make us safer? Like, isn't the argument, like
the argument that I've seen from security people and Alex
Damos was talking about this sort of a long time
security guy at Metali. Actually it strengthens everyone to have
these open source models out there and available because it
allows I mean the Hugging Face incident is a perfect
example of this, Like when you have these guard bills
(18:37):
and you have these restrictions and we're only allowed to
use anthropic robe and ai basically like it actually made
it makes it more dangerous.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, the hugging Face example was when open Aiy's cyber
tool kind of went semi rogue in a non properly
send boxed environment and hecked hugging Face and Hugging Face
couldn't defend themselves within the US models because of the
god rails, and so they used a chiny models to
defend themselves, which we talked about last week.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, I mean that's where I would also agree with you,
like I just my only point was, like, my only
point of disagreement with you was, like, I actually think
it's not just some sort of cynical regulatory capture point.
I think they actually believe in this stuff. I don't
think their conclusion though, is always right. Like I agree
with you that, like you can't plug this dam. Like
(19:23):
these models, these open source models will you know, find
their way into the country. The Chinese will continue to
distill from American AI unless there's some new breakthrough that
you know, allows AI frontier models companies to stop that.
So yeah, I mean, I think the only answer is, like,
if these open source models are a threat to cybersecurity,
(19:45):
we better be plugging as many cybersecurity holes as we can, right, Like,
we have to protect against this reality rather than try to,
you know, I don't know, like plug the dam or
just bury our heads in the sand and hope that
somehow we can ban this and stop you know, technology
from marching forward.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
I just want to say, though, like on the true
believer point, like I totally agree with you. I think
Dario and a lot of people they're effective ault as
true believers, but it is also very convenient for their
business interest And I do think that, like, you know,
in a lot of ways like Meta, where there were
true believers in the sense that they thought that it
(20:24):
was like a dangerous open internet and connecting the world
would be dangerous, and that's how it was like before Meta,
it was all sort of like chaotic and the chaos
of like forums and blogs, there's disinformation. So Meta's whole
thing was like, we're going to clean it up. We're
going to provide this standardized experience, like we're going to
be the one to connect the world and it's going
to be amazing. And I think part of it is,
like I mean, and maybe I'm more cynical about all
(20:47):
of it, but I do think there's this like paternalistic
power fantasy as well, where it's very much like I'm
the one that can bring artificial intelligence. I'm the responsible
one that can oversee it. And I just reject that,
especially from people like Dario.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
There's a lot of Yeah, there's a lot of paternalistic
fantasies and tech for sure, I mean, and it is, yeah,
I mean, it's like trying to boil the ocean. Really,
it's just like no one person, no one company is
going to be in charge of safeguarding all of this right,
And I don't even think I mean, I think even
government is just like almost moving too fast. And I
(21:24):
think this partially is because like we don't legislate anymore,
we just write executive orders. But it's like the people
are talking about, you know, distillation being and being ip theft, right, Well,
that essentially means that like when these Chinese models do
make it to the US and people start using these
open source models, they won't be allowed to distill them,
(21:46):
which back to this research study, is how you get
rid of all this censorship which is real in these models,
like they are very biased toward you know, the CCP
point of view. So I mean you're like in all
these every move that you make, you're like cutting off
one of your options to deal with this problem, which
I think is a you know, is a problem.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Which could be solved by competing. Like I just I'm like,
why don't we actually try to compete. Why don't we
invest in research? Why don't we invest Like China has
this long term vision and has really facilitated innovation and
prioritize their you know, education system to build you know,
the skills necessary to build the next generation technology, and
(22:29):
I just feel like America, it's like, what are we doing?
We're making gambling apps? And what is Andreas and Horwitz funding?
Are they funding next generation technology? I don't know, you
know what I mean. I just like America feels like
just it's like rickety old cart that's like falling apart,
and I'm just like, is anyone going to fix it?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Well? I think that I think the rickety old cart
is is like actually fine, Like there's there's a America's
never been perfect, right, and it happens in that like
innovation happens in a very sort of like haphazard and
just rebated way. And my point is just get out
of the way.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
There was a great book called Breakneck, which I'm not
sure if either you read. A big guy called Dan Wong,
and he basically counterposed the Chinese Communist Party with the
history of American presidents and basically as a huge preponderance
of engineers in the who became you know, supreme leaders
versus lawyers who became presidents. And you know, his point was,
if you live in China and you look out the
(23:25):
window and a year has gone by, you might see
a new city out of the window and if you
live in the US, like the best you can hope
for is a new coffee shop. And I don't know,
I think there is something. There's something to there's a
conversation which is bigger than the technology conversation, really about
like how do you, like, how do you create a
national culture that promotes innovation without but also without the
(23:46):
all of the bad things.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
That happen in China.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Just before we go to the break there, I wanted
to ask you both. You know, we live in an
attention economy and we're all you know, all three of
us work in it. But it's very rare that a
story rumbles on for three weeks, Like why why is
everyone still talking about these Chinese open source models and distillations?
Is just because it's the behind the story is questions
about like the next open Ai ipo and the anthropic
(24:10):
ipo or is it about the China US Great Palace struggle?
Story is always fascinating, like why people still own this?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Well my one theory and okay, I'm kind I'm kind
of just going off the cuff here, but like I
think it's a great question. This AI conversation has sucked
all of our attention into it, right, It's become everything.
And so you know, when you have a controversy like
this and there isn't some major breakthrough that's drawing our
(24:37):
attention away, like we're going to focus on this stuff
for longer. But I think as soon as, like, you know,
we see some new corner turned and there's a shiny
new thing to go after, we will like that. That
will that will be the thing everybody talks about. Maybe
it'll happen later this year, maybe in January. It seems
like January is it just has some major breakthrough every year, right,
(25:01):
I wasn't thinking of c yes, but just like every
like January it was like it was like the reasoning
models happened, and then like last January it was like
all of a sudden, the harnesses were just working and
you could build, you know, build all this technology. I
think something like that's going to happen, and you know,
we'll forget about this for a while.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I hope so. But I feel I'm scared that we're
going to get distracted by that shiny new object and
fundamentally not fix all the issues. That sort of reads
mentioning this idea of not investing in research, Like I
do think the US has as a major problem with
long term vision and maybe that's how our political system
set up, I don't know, but or sort of our
economic system, but certainly it's it's a problem.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
When we come back.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Substock has pushed back against a new AI detection feature.
Stay with us, Welcome back, Taylor. Subset recently launched a
(26:06):
feature on that app which acts like a kind of
AI detective fit us in.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, So, Substack partnered with this company called Pangram, which
is a startup that is basically they build themselves as
like the slop detector of the web, and so they
have probably the most sophisticated AI detection tools and they've
just actually they're working on visual AI detection tools in
terms of images, but they're really good at detecting AI
(26:36):
use in writing and so basically substack is trying to
make it easier to click and determine how much of
an article is written by AI or it's really good
at determining if one hundred percent of the article is
AI generated, which I think is valuable because I did
a partnership with Pangram myself actually where they gave me
(26:58):
access early access to their API last year or well
it wasn't even last year, it's like four months ago.
And tech moves fast, and you know, up to forty
percent of articles in the tech category, which is what
my newsletter is in.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
We're fully AI generated, fully AI generated.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Fully AI generated, So it's really taking over.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Is this in response to consumer demand?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Is like this of a substac leadership concern that if
they let AI proliferate for too long on substack, ultimately
people will migrate away from substack Like where was it
was a demand signal kind of driving this?
Speaker 3 (27:30):
You know, I don't know the total thinking behind it.
I did interview Chris Best, and.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
What he said is like the CEO of subsc right.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
The CEO of Substack, who said, you know, we want
consumers to basically have more information and know and like
this is our way of kind of not doing like
trust and safety, but kind of like making our platform
more transparent. I think there's a lot of scams and
spam kind of info. I mean, as I wrote in
my piece, like one of the most popular subsacts in
(27:59):
the past year was this like fake conversation between Elon
Musk and Keanu Reeves. It literally never happened, but it
was AI generated slop that went megaviral that people still
share to this day as if it was real. The
politics category is overrun with AI generated content, so I
(28:19):
think it's about giving consumers more transparency. I don't know
that it's totally led to that. I feel like it's
caused a bit of chaos, but that's certainly the goal.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
So this is not just the detective, It's not X.
It's that this is more sophisticated.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Do you think I'm curious for both of your take
as people who write newsletters, like is all AI writing
AI slop?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I get a few AI generated newsletters that I really love.
There's like a social listening tool that I get the
newsletter up, and it basically gives me like a roundup
of trending posts and automatically sort of pulls yeah, like
trending content in I like Vibe coded my own one
that like it's mostly it's I trust AI for like
(29:03):
analysis and scraping, and it's honestly better than like a
lot of the ones that I subscribe to. I mean,
I subscribe to a lot of human newsletters as well,
but I think that like AI can pick up these
small detections, you know, in sort of trends. I At
the same time, I think it's all about transparency, right,
and what does the consumer think they're getting. Do they
(29:23):
think that they're getting one hundred percent human No, AI
used it all, but they're actually getting slop. Okay, that's
going to cause a negative experience. But I think increasingly
it's somewhere in the middle. And that's kind of where
things get tricky.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, I don't think it's all slop, but I do.
I don't know about you guys. I mean I can
tell when something's like AI generated.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
I can to Most people can't.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah, most people can't, but you get it. There's a
rhythm to it that sort of like becomes familiar, especially claude,
like if there's a specially exactly style and you read
X and sometimes I'm like, well, this is actually an
interesting point that this person's making. It's also just this
is just AI generated, and like, I don't know what
to think about it.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
So one thing that I thought was interesting is this
person on ax has been doing and I want to
write about this myself and I haven't. But the big
thing on YouTube right now is AI generated scripts. So
Almost every big YouTuber is using AI to auto generate
their scripts. They're not even tweaking them. They're literally just
generating the script and reading it. But they're a human
reading it. So audiences, this person was tweeting out the
(30:30):
response to your audiences and what I've noticed as well
one hundred percent positive. They seem to prefer it. Actually
they are saying incredible analysis, phenomenal. Wow, I can't believe it.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
And how do you know those aren't bots?
Speaker 3 (30:45):
No, no, no, I trust me. I have gone deep
and I have used AI on one of my own
multiple of my own scripts, and people praise those AI
scripts far more than my human scripts. So and I
didn't use AI like one hundred percent, But like people
seem there's something about the AI cadence that, like normally
people online seem to really like. And if you look
(31:06):
at these like viral articles as well read I generated,
So there is something And I don't think most most
of those people do not realize that they're consuming AI.
And I think that was the issue with substack as well,
like and I think, but that's the thing they I
don't know that they want to know that it's they
get kind of they won't believe it, you know, when
(31:27):
you say, hey, this is one hundred percent AI generated,
like they kind of don't want to accept that.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Did you follow the moment with the Canadian politician this week, Yes,
here's a more natural, flowing version of that section that
reads like legislative speech rather than.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
A series of short points. Madam speaker. One of my
concerns who.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Went viral reading the instructions from Clode a Loud in
his political speech.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I mean, but it's funny.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
I think it's one of those things where it's like,
oh my god, he was caught with his pants down.
But on the other hand, like probably ninety nine point
nine percent of politicians used AI to enhance their speeches
or even write them, So it's a funny, like funny
that people were so like panicked or like captivated. I
guess it's very embarrassing for him, but it was also like.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Well, it's also like, is AI writing our policy? Like
this is my stance on all of it. It's like
I think that by doing like, I think that there's
not enough transparency. I think there's not enough discussion. I mean,
I did a Q and A with Substack about this yesterday,
Like I think we Joe Wisenthal had a good tweet
a while ago. A while ago he was basically like,
(32:30):
this is all happening, and we're not going to put
the genie back in the bottle. We need to accept
that AI is being used in all these ways and
we should have discussions about sort of what that means.
And I think that's much better than the sort of
witch hunting, which I also see happening and I think
has sort of happened with Pan Graham now, where it's
like people just go around like, oh my god, oh
my god, this AI was used to I was used
and I was like, okay, but what does it matter
(32:51):
if AI was used for this like niche thing, you
know what I mean, Like, let's have a real discussion
about it.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
How it creators On substeck reacting to.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Pangram, it runs the gamute. Some people are like so
mad because again they use AI and they weren't disclosing it.
I think a lot of consumers, it really depends on
your audience. You know, ironically, no one really cares about
the tech, like the tech the tech newsletterspace like tramas
posted like that full AI generated like you know, article
(33:20):
basically on X everyone knew it was AI generated and
Elon Musk was a great article. Like people were like,
as kind of as read said, people were like, Okay,
Tamath is colo siding this analysis, and so I find
it valuable. So but people in the politics category, and
it's more like the lifestyle things like food and sort
of lifestyle influencers that have been relying on AI, like
their audiences are not taking kindly to it. And I
(33:42):
have a very left leaning audience that rulently hates AI,
so I've been tried to be very transparent with them.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Is that a point of tension between you and your audience.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, I've lost like a significant amount of subscribers just
by saying, hey, I'm a tech reporter, so I'm going
to use these tools for research, and I will alway
always write my articles like human but I will always
be transparent. But just so you know, I report on
technology that means using technology, and this has gotten me
canceled on Blue Sky multiple times.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
I think in the in the end, though, this is
in some sense positive because there's always been sort of
an inauthentic nature to you know, social media to politics,
and I think this is actually driving people more towards
like a yearning for authenticity, and that's like part of
what the anti a AI hate is, right, And we
(34:31):
saw this with the latest you know, Christopher Nolan movie, right,
who's sort of rejected CGI and filmed this movie in
seventy millimeter IMAX like that, and people, I still can't
get tickets to the seventy millimeter right for months, And
it's like, you know, I think that's I sort of
think that's a positive, Like this is this is moving
us in the right direction for humanity. It's it's and
(34:55):
it's and it's like I even sort of like the
fact that even if something's AIG generated, like people can say, well,
the ideas behind this and the messenger here, I know,
and I'm gonna take it at face value. I'm not
going to worry about like what tools were used to
generate this. I'm gonna actually think about it as long
as there are people who are thinking critically, like in
(35:15):
policy and positions of power. That's good read.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Do you think your sem how would your semaphoe audience
feel if if you said, Okay, starting next week, I'm
going to use AI to as like as like a
full partner to write this newsletter.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
I don't know. I don't think people would really care
as long as it's ultimately like I'm signing off on
every part of it, right, the writing of the writing
part of journalism is like a tiny part of journalism.
Like I actually would love if AI could just take
all of my interviews and my notes and my ideas
(35:50):
or you know, maybe my brains my verbal brainstorming to
my AI agent and just make like an amazing article
that's you know, perfectly edited. Like that would be great.
They'd be huge time saver, right, And I think, you know,
but you have to think critically about it, like you
you can't just you know, put stuff out there without
without like actually going through. It's not good enough yet, right,
(36:13):
Like I'm sure Taylor agrees. Like I've tried, you know,
I'm constantly trying. And it's good at some stuff, like
we use it for copy editing, et cetera. Like it's
it could be a time saver, but like it's not
there yet. It can't it can't generate you know, full articles.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
I think AI is also very good at sort of
optimizing for AI, And I think, like when I talk
to YouTubers, about why so many YouTubers use it for scripts.
They're like, well, because the algorithm I'm playing for the
YouTube algorithm, the algorithm is ingesting my script and making
a determination about it. And if I say optimize it,
include these keywords include this cay to like, do include
(36:51):
these things that perform well for this algorithm, Like I
I think that's where it, you know, shines.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
I guess it's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
I mean it shows up when you look at when
you look at like the top performing stuff on YouTube,
by the way the headlines are done, and the and
the thumbnails and the titling and like the kind of
like scrunged express like curious expression and stuff like. It's
it does feel like as I'm not a I have
to confess to I'm not like a super user review too,
but like when I look at those thumbnails, I'm like, wow,
(37:20):
this is like this has been so optimized.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
For something that I am not. It's kind of an
interesting experience.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Well, if you think about the way that these models
were built with reinforcement learning, they had you know, thousands
of people sitting there just clicking. I like this version
more than that version. You know, they put a lot
of money into essentially like finding the common denominator of
reader listeners. So it sort of makes sense that they
prefer the AI generated content, which I think it's back
(37:48):
to this like thing that a lot of journalists and
and maybe even creators forget, which is like you're you're
writing this for the reader, not for yourself, right, And
I think another thing people get really upset about that's
not AI is when like you just take forever to
get to the point, and you know, there's certain publications
that are really bad about this, and like I just
(38:10):
end up skipping the first three paragraphs of every article
they write because it's all just you know, basically written
for the satisfaction of the writer, not for the reader.
And so we could probably all learn something from me.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
With that in mind, I think we better wrap up
this episode, but I want to get I want to
get the last word to Taylor, because I saw you
you nodding about read saying that writing's only a small
fraction of journalism, like what's your what's your final word
on that?
Speaker 3 (38:34):
So I you know, I'm a bad writer, I'm dyslexic.
I'm a much better writer now than I was. But
a huge reason, I mean, it was like it was
really hard for me to even consider being a reporter
because I thought you had to be a good writer.
And this really well known editor told me at one point,
you know, basically there are journalists like the job of
(38:56):
a journalist is to expose new information, and no one
will care if you're a bad writer if you can
get scoops. Like, if you can expose new information, editors
will hire you no matter what because they'll rewrite your
stuff and it's fine. And I started to do that
and that's what got me hired in media, and my
writing got better over the years, and I think it's
like good now. But I'm never going to write for
(39:17):
the like the New Yorker long Form or some you know,
Like I'm not really that kind of journalist. And there
are journalists that are amazing writers, right, But I think,
like what Reid said, I feel the same way. I'm like,
I wish I could just feed all this stuff in
have the AI kind of put it together. The goal
to me is to like get that new information out
there and kind of let that inform inform the world.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
I feel that's always the deepest cut against the Stannyokagen
that still hear like rumors that they always hand in
the shoddiest copy and like the most successful ones to
do the least good job of handing in good drafts.
But maybe that's maybe that's what you're getting.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
I am just maybe you can still give Taylor the
last word, and you can edit this out if you
want to. But I I wish more journalists would take
their article before sending it to their editor and run
it through whatever their favorite chat butt is and say
what am I missing here? What are my blind spots?
Where are my biases? And like, actually take that because
that is I find super helpful.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Totally. I think, like I mean, I just think like
we should embrace these tools if they can help us
improve our jobs. And also we need to understand these
tools to report on them, especially as technology reporters. And
I said this in my interview with Substack, but there's
a lot of people that I see, especially online, that
are very performative about AI. I will say, and I
(40:39):
know that they're using it in their personal lives. I
know that they're using it and they're getting online all
day and saying all this slop. And I just I
to me, that bothers me because I'm like let's just
be on and say that you use it sometimes it's
not the n to the world, Like let's have a
discussion about it, but don't just get online all day
and stoke the sort of fires of the AI hate
and then like sort of quietly try already lose it
(41:00):
on the side, like that's silly.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
That's all we have time for this week, Taylor read, thank.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
You great to be here as always, thanks for having us.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
For tech stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
I'm mos Voloshian. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis.
It was executive produced by me and Julian Nutter The
Kaleidoscope and Katrina norvelve iHeart Podcasts. Jack intlument to this
episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. A special
thank you to Taylor Lorenz and Read Albergotti. Please check
out all the work be put out into the world.
(41:41):
We're lucky to call them friends of the Pod.
Read, Taylor, I want to ask you to open this
week's episode. Would you shop online if you didn't actually
get anything in the mail. But I'm asking because I've
recently read about these dopamine sites out of South Korea
that let you look through non existent products with made
up reviews and promotions that you can add to your cart,
click buy, track your packages and never receive a thing,
(00:33):
No money spent, just the satisfaction of buying something online.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
No you got, Taylor.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I think I already do this with Zillo every night
where I'm you know, perusing multimillion dollar houses in Pasadena
adding them to my favorites.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Like I don't do the Zilla thing because there's nothing
on the market here in the day area, but I
would know. Like what I would do, though, is could
I order stuff but not have the package just show
up at my front door, so that, like all my
neighbors know that we're just like those horrible people who
order like twenty things on Amazon every.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Day that the note packages thing.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
For sure, I still want the product stuff.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I'm as Volocian and this is the week in Tech
where I'm joined by the world's most clubs and reporters.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
To break down what's really happening in tech right now.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Today, we're joined by Taylor Lorenzo use a mag and
Read Albergotti, tech editor at Centophore.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Welcome both, great to be here, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Great to have you both, As always read, the FCC
moved to ban Chinese humanoid robots and quadrupeds from entering
the US, which I can't read without laughing. But I mean,
what's what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Like?
Speaker 4 (01:47):
How serious is this story?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
What what does it have to do with US robot
makers lobbying efforts?
Speaker 4 (01:52):
And what's gonna happen next?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, I mean this is this is another sort of
it's its industrial policy protectionism. I guess we shouldn't be surprised.
I mean, they're already are no buy D Chinese cars
in the US and it and on its face, you're
you're you'd sort of put into that box and you say, okay,
this this makes sense. We want US robot makers to
(02:14):
to kind of have a clear run at this. But
I think there's a there and and granted like there
will be exceptions to this, right, this is not like
this is not a law. This is you know, this
is this is policy coming out of the White House essentially,
but like on its face, you there are these big
questions like a bunch if you go into any sort
of like AI company that's doing anything in the physical
(02:36):
world and in the Bay Area right now, they've got
these Chinese robots like sitting around from all these different companies,
and they're you know, some of them are cheap, like
ten thousand apiece, and they're doing all sorts of testing
on these things, right They're they're essentially building software and
the and the hardware is what they use to you know,
to gather data or just test out their their algorithm.
(02:57):
So I think it's actually like potentially detrimental to innovation.
So this is all and it's the same thing with
like the same issue with these Chinese open source models.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Right It's like, I want to talk about the open
source models, but let's stay with the robots for a
little bit. I mean, the detail about the quadrupeds was
the one that really really caught my eye because I
kind of thought the four legged robots were only for
YouTube videos that I didn't realized they were threat to America.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
I saw I was in Boston a couple of weeks
ago and I saw some people walking their their robot
dicers that looked like, yeah, they looked like they were
sort of like MIT researchers or something. But no, I
mean it's it's like the same issue though. It's the
same principle, which is like you try to you try
to stop the you know, the Chinese from encroaching in
(03:42):
the US market, and then you sort of like also
hinder your own innovation. So these things always come at
a cost. So I think that the trick is going
to be figuring out how to thread that needle right, Like,
do what you need to do, you know, if you're
the White House, to to sort of protect US companies,
stop the Chinese from i don't know, dumping robots if
that's even a thing, but then also allow US researchers
(04:05):
to still, you know, to still be able to innovate
and come. You know, you don't want like a situation
where there's like one or two robotics companies in the
US and if they don't, if they don't just happen
to win this race outright, you know, the US is
way behind.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
This will be like the cause in the Soviet Union
when the when in nineteen eighteen nine, Right, the US
will have all of these like Dusty Treban style robots
call the Tita. Have you been following the robot element
of this story.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yes, I've been following. And does this mean that rumbas
are banned? I saw some headline basically implying.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
That I have a Chinese I have a Chinese robot vacuum.
That's really really good. I think it's a way outperforms
the rumba. So I hope, I hope that's not the case. Look,
I think this is like all of these policies. It's
just the thing to remember is that you can do
whatever you want to try to stop China these tech
(05:00):
and you know, stop them from i don't know, catching
up or ripping off American technology. The US will not
win unless it can move faster than China on innovation.
That is the most important thing about this race, and
I think it often. I think it often gets sort
of forgotten or pushed to the side.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I totally agree with Red and yeah, I mean I
was just reading this article on the Verge talking about
like what's actually sort of included in this span and
it's significantly broader than you would think. I mean, Obviously
we're talking about the humanoid robots and the quadrupeds, but
it's not just that, it's it's far broader. This ban
covers basically any new software controlled robot that travels over
(05:40):
the ground or weighs more than four point four pounds,
including the DOC, and that can perceive its own environment
and has wireless which is basically any robot vacuum like
it's it's a lot of like household devices. Like I
think people don't realize as well just how much stuff
comes from China, Like how like automated I have this
(06:01):
like automated you know, like watering system thing that I
got from Amazon. I'm sure it's some Chinese little robot thing.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Oh you did.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
We were talking about the garden last week and you
were talking about wanting a gunting robot. And now you've
now you filled the trigger.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Exactly and I've ordered a Chinese gardening you know, watering thing.
Probably that's potentially going to be illegal, legal, but but
I know I snuck in right under the van. I
just think, like, I mean, what Reid said is true.
I think this is ridiculous. Like I understand from a
consumer perspective, you know, with the electric cars. Okay, protecting
our car industry in some way, but you know, at
(06:36):
some point, robotics are becoming so pervasive, and this just
seems like, you know, we we need to compete harder,
like we can't. We're I feel like we're the declining
and we're just trying to like protect this declining industry
and we need to allow our researchers to compete. And
and that means that you know, giving technologists access to
this cutting.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Head technology on the kind of robotspan Is this like
kind of a thing that people expect to be in
forced or is this kind of like a staking of
some political kind of pulturing.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Do we do we have any idea?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Well, I like I was sort of getting at earlier.
I mean, this is this is just you know, these
are just orders coming out of the White House. So
it's not like this is not a law. And I
think they always they you know, like I think at
some point they're going to go, oh my god, like
this is way too broad. We got to find loop.
You know, there's gonna be loopholes or or carve outs
(07:28):
for specific areas, like you know, this is what always happens.
It's like this this shoot from the hip sort of
you know, proclamation policy, I guess strategy, and then and
then you go back and make all it. And the
same thing happened with tariffs, right It's like, oh my god,
we have all these tariffs. And then it's like, well,
this thing's carved out and that thing's carved out, and
you eventually get to like, I don't know someplace where
(07:50):
it's where it's logical. So I just take all of
it with a grain of salt and just figure it's
all going to change.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
I just think in the meantime, the damage is done.
I mean, the tariffs are good example, that was like
a huge economic shock. It caused prices to increase for consumers,
like it did cause a lot of I would argue
harm to our economy. And I think when we do
things like this as well, like yeah, maybe you're right
read and I agree, like it will have to be
(08:16):
rolled back in some way because it's nonsensical. But in
the meantime, it's hurt innovation in the meantime, it slowed
us down. In the meantime, it's created liability for startups
that don't want to take on any liability. So it
just seems bad.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, I mean, it'd be one thing if they did
this and they're like, and we're going to put you know,
more money into academic research.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
That was my next question.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So is there going to be is there any commensurate
effort to stimulate the American robotics industry. I so Deep
Mind had an announcement today about some some new kind
of robotics program and obviously read you we talked about
robotics with applied intuition last week on the show. So
it seems like there is like some action in the
American robotics sphere.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Of course, this is a huge industry. There's tons of
private money going into it. But I think if you're
the US, like the private sectors going to do what
it's going to do, the levers that they can pull,
I think are an academic research. Right. That's where like
if you think the robotics race is over, like I
think that's insane. Like I think there's still a lot
of innovation that's going to happen, and it's maybe not
(09:14):
all going to come from the private sector. Like if
you want to do something policy wise, like you know,
push forward research, right, basic research that's going to you know,
help advance this industry. There's so many different areas that
would speed things up. It's it's long term thinking, though,
right and I think that's what Washington is really short
on right now.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I mean, I also just think of like the drama
over the H one B visas and the way that
we're treating immigrants. And there are so many talented scientists, engineers,
roboticists that you know, might be from India, might be
from other places that we've also pushed out of our country,
and I think, I mean, I know that's affected startup's
(09:53):
ability to recruit. I was just talking to somebody last
night who is living in Canada and what is has
a job in a Mameric can start up but can't
start because of this visa process. This is just it's
really ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a this is like
such a challenge because I mean, what you really want
to do is like is not sort of bam the
Chinese robots, but find the people who are really the
most talented people in China building the robots, bring them
to the US, have them build the robots here. But
then there's this worry that they're all spies. Or they
(10:26):
all will be spies, right, and and there is I mean,
these are legitimate concerns, but I think there's like a
I mean this happened in that you mentioned the Soviet
era too. I mean this happened in the Soviet era
like the US because of its system, because of its
open system, you know. There it makes you know, spying easier,
and so that's just a downside. But then that open
(10:46):
system leads to like massive innovation, so it's always a
trade off.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I got of liked on that word open. Let's talk
about open source models. I think for the third week
in a row this is a textuff record, but the
news keeps rumbling on. So another Chinese export, of course
is open source models from Chinese companies like Zai and
moonshot Ai.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Why is it study in the news for so long?
Speaker 1 (11:11):
And also read you wrote about this concern about censorship
an Ai models Chinese models that may be unfounded.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, there was this research study I wrote about yesterday
from CTGT which does this interpretability research, like looking at
how these models actually work so they can build you know,
products for the private sector that are sort of harnessed
and don't go off the rails. They did this experiment
where they took a deep seek model and they fine
(11:40):
tuned from that model and then tested the before and
after Chinese censorship and found that the censorship was essentially
gone once they once they built this new model, the
base of it was was an open ai OSS like
open weights model, and then it was fine tuned or
taught from deep Seek. And so there have been this
(12:01):
this talk of like subliminal messages being passed on from
the teacher model to the student model. It gets it
gets pretty technical and you can get into weeds. But
like the long story short is like we need more
research on this. But what it looks like is I
think these these Chinese models are actually like not as
(12:21):
much of a propaganda risk as you think because they
will get changed and filtered through all these different techniques.
And it also goes to this research point. I mean,
this is like really interesting research that wouldn't happen unless
there were these Chinese open source models. So it's another
I guess point in favor of the pro open source people.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I just think that like it's
it's really concerning to me that like our response is
to ban things like I you know, I watched everything
that happened with TikTok. I covered the musically sale to
Bite dance, which the government was totally fine with, and
then they turned around five years later and they were like, actually,
we're gonna ban TikTok, you know, based on nothing really
(13:06):
except that they it was keep challenging meta products, you know,
like there were all these like sort of like made
up concerns about China that never came to fruition. And
similar to the Chinese open source models. I mean, we
did have a lot of research on TikTok and there
ultimately was just no evidence of anything that the government
was claiming. And I just it's like if they had
(13:30):
proof of these things and if they were doing these
research and showing wow, the Chinese open source models are
really like biased. So this could be really dangerous for
American companies because if X Y z all right, then
I think, you know, we could have a talk about it.
But in this case, it just it's it seems like
these speculative fears and as read mentioned earlier, it feels
very cold war. It feels very like punching at ghosts,
(13:52):
and I just I really worry about the damage that
we're doing to our own tech landscape.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
In the meantime you mentioned, I think Markackerberg did two
interviews this week, with one of the New York Times
and one with the Journal, his first first media appearances
since since his uh since his feed me guest lecture
a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
And.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He was basically complaining about the dominance of of open
a and ionanthropic.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Right.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Is that? Is that a fair summary of what the
media tour was about.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, I think there's two minds of this. I mean, one,
you know, Meta or Facebook has always been sort of
a pro open source company. They've developed a bunch of
open source you know, protocols, and but on the other hand,
I mean you have to sort of take this as like, yeah,
I mean they're behind in the air raight, so like
of course, I mean they're going to just be in
favor of whatever slows their competitors down. So you know,
(14:45):
there's that.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
There was a headline in the in the New York
Times Silicon Valley splits over closing the borders to Chinese AI.
So read is what you're saying that people who want
to close the borders to Chinese AI are the ones
who are currently winning and the ones who don't want
to close the borders of Chinese AI, the ones who
only losing a no note.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
To me, it's you know, that's a kind of misleading headline.
To me, it feels very like Anthropic versus everyone else
in tech. I mean, you had Google, like every single
tech company kind of signed this open letter right against
that sort of I felt like was a big subtweet
of Anthropic. Dario comes out, He's like, Oh no, we
don't like really want to be an open source models,
(15:22):
but also we kind of think they're dangerous and we
kind of I think like dark to me, like I
see Anthropic running the meta playbook exactly where they have
this dominance in the market right now and they're trying
to sort of do regulatory capture to maintain it.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
More about the letter, Taylor, just before we go too far?
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Sure so that So Jensen Wang, CEO of Nvidia, joins
Twitter big. By the way, I just have to say
Mark Zuckerberg's on Twitter promoting his Wall Street Journal op
ed like Jensen's on Twitter. I feel like Twitter has
gotten peak lately. I love to see all these tech
CEOs on there. But so Jensen joins Twitter and po
this open letter, which obviously is you know, shared to
(16:03):
the website whatever, and it is a defensive open source
open weight models. Obviously Nvidia has a strong you know,
business interest in this as well, but it becomes this letter,
this open letter becomes this sort of like rallying cry,
and you have just dozens and dozens of tech companies
sign on to it, you know, by the by the weekend,
(16:23):
like every almost every major tech company it'd signed on
to it, including all these startup you know why, y Combinator,
et cetera, a bunch of startups. So it felt like
basically the entire tech industry had united to advocate for
open weight AI models to be accept to remain accessible.
And then Anthropic came out. Dario issued this this blog
(16:43):
post saying basically like trying again doing the meta thing
where it's like, oh, we don't really want to ban TikTok.
We just think it's a national security thread and it
should be eliminated and probably we shouldn't be able to
download the United States and so like That's kind of
how his letter read to me. I don't know what
read thought, but it was like, oh no, no, no, we
don't mind open Wait we just think it's incredibly dangerous
(17:05):
and you know, I don't like to you know, that's
probably not worth the resk or whatever.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
So read on Smiley, I want to hear your tape
of first. Can one of you help us under sound
difference between open source and open weight?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah, I mean it's just a this is just a
semantics thing really because these models don't reveal their underlying
data sets. And so people in the open source community
took issue with that term because it's like, well, it's
not totally open, but you know, you can still for
all intents and purposes, they're open. I use yeah, I
use open source all the time because I think it
(17:37):
just confuses people to a lot of people to say
open weights. But but you know, there's a there's a
sort of debate there. There was a big debate about
this in the open source community. But no, I mean,
I basically agree with Taylor on this. I think the
one thing I would sort of take issue with is
like I actually think that anthropic people in Dario, like
they're like true believers and they really are scared of
(18:00):
like AI and what's going to happen if you know,
you have these open models that can have all the
guardrails and protection stripped away from them that eventually We're
not there yet, but eventually, I think pose like a
large amount of risk in cybersecurity or bioterrorism.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Doesn't it make us safer? Like, isn't the argument, like
the argument that I've seen from security people and Alex
Damos was talking about this sort of a long time
security guy at Metali. Actually it strengthens everyone to have
these open source models out there and available because it
allows I mean the Hugging Face incident is a perfect
example of this, Like when you have these guard bills
(18:37):
and you have these restrictions and we're only allowed to
use anthropic robe and ai basically like it actually made
it makes it more dangerous.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, the hugging Face example was when open Aiy's cyber
tool kind of went semi rogue in a non properly
send boxed environment and hecked hugging Face and Hugging Face
couldn't defend themselves within the US models because of the
god rails, and so they used a chiny models to
defend themselves, which we talked about last week.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, I mean that's where I would also agree with you,
like I just my only point was, like, my only
point of disagreement with you was, like, I actually think
it's not just some sort of cynical regulatory capture point.
I think they actually believe in this stuff. I don't
think their conclusion though, is always right. Like I agree
with you that, like you can't plug this dam. Like
(19:23):
these models, these open source models will you know, find
their way into the country. The Chinese will continue to
distill from American AI unless there's some new breakthrough that
you know, allows AI frontier models companies to stop that.
So yeah, I mean, I think the only answer is, like,
if these open source models are a threat to cybersecurity,
(19:45):
we better be plugging as many cybersecurity holes as we can, right, Like,
we have to protect against this reality rather than try to,
you know, I don't know, like plug the dam or
just bury our heads in the sand and hope that
somehow we can ban this and stop you know, technology
from marching forward.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
I just want to say, though, like on the true
believer point, like I totally agree with you. I think
Dario and a lot of people they're effective ault as
true believers, but it is also very convenient for their
business interest And I do think that, like, you know,
in a lot of ways like Meta, where there were
true believers in the sense that they thought that it
(20:24):
was like a dangerous open internet and connecting the world
would be dangerous, and that's how it was like before Meta,
it was all sort of like chaotic and the chaos
of like forums and blogs, there's disinformation. So Meta's whole
thing was like, we're going to clean it up. We're
going to provide this standardized experience, like we're going to
be the one to connect the world and it's going
to be amazing. And I think part of it is,
like I mean, and maybe I'm more cynical about all
(20:47):
of it, but I do think there's this like paternalistic
power fantasy as well, where it's very much like I'm
the one that can bring artificial intelligence. I'm the responsible
one that can oversee it. And I just reject that,
especially from people like Dario.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
There's a lot of Yeah, there's a lot of paternalistic
fantasies and tech for sure, I mean, and it is, yeah,
I mean, it's like trying to boil the ocean. Really,
it's just like no one person, no one company is
going to be in charge of safeguarding all of this right,
And I don't even think I mean, I think even
government is just like almost moving too fast. And I
(21:24):
think this partially is because like we don't legislate anymore,
we just write executive orders. But it's like the people
are talking about, you know, distillation being and being ip theft, right, Well,
that essentially means that like when these Chinese models do
make it to the US and people start using these
open source models, they won't be allowed to distill them,
(21:46):
which back to this research study, is how you get
rid of all this censorship which is real in these models,
like they are very biased toward you know, the CCP
point of view. So I mean you're like in all
these every move that you make, you're like cutting off
one of your options to deal with this problem, which
I think is a you know, is a problem.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Which could be solved by competing. Like I just I'm like,
why don't we actually try to compete. Why don't we
invest in research? Why don't we invest Like China has
this long term vision and has really facilitated innovation and
prioritize their you know, education system to build you know,
the skills necessary to build the next generation technology, and
(22:29):
I just feel like America, it's like, what are we doing?
We're making gambling apps? And what is Andreas and Horwitz funding?
Are they funding next generation technology? I don't know, you
know what I mean. I just like America feels like
just it's like rickety old cart that's like falling apart,
and I'm just like, is anyone going to fix it?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Well? I think that I think the rickety old cart
is is like actually fine, Like there's there's a America's
never been perfect, right, and it happens in that like
innovation happens in a very sort of like haphazard and
just rebated way. And my point is just get out
of the way.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
There was a great book called Breakneck, which I'm not
sure if either you read. A big guy called Dan Wong,
and he basically counterposed the Chinese Communist Party with the
history of American presidents and basically as a huge preponderance
of engineers in the who became you know, supreme leaders
versus lawyers who became presidents. And you know, his point was,
if you live in China and you look out the
(23:25):
window and a year has gone by, you might see
a new city out of the window and if you
live in the US, like the best you can hope
for is a new coffee shop. And I don't know,
I think there is something. There's something to there's a
conversation which is bigger than the technology conversation, really about
like how do you, like, how do you create a
national culture that promotes innovation without but also without the
(23:46):
all of the bad things.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
That happen in China.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Just before we go to the break there, I wanted
to ask you both. You know, we live in an
attention economy and we're all you know, all three of
us work in it. But it's very rare that a
story rumbles on for three weeks, Like why why is
everyone still talking about these Chinese open source models and distillations?
Is just because it's the behind the story is questions
about like the next open Ai ipo and the anthropic
(24:10):
ipo or is it about the China US Great Palace struggle?
Story is always fascinating, like why people still own this?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Well my one theory and okay, I'm kind I'm kind
of just going off the cuff here, but like I
think it's a great question. This AI conversation has sucked
all of our attention into it, right, It's become everything.
And so you know, when you have a controversy like
this and there isn't some major breakthrough that's drawing our
(24:37):
attention away, like we're going to focus on this stuff
for longer. But I think as soon as, like, you know,
we see some new corner turned and there's a shiny
new thing to go after, we will like that. That
will that will be the thing everybody talks about. Maybe
it'll happen later this year, maybe in January. It seems
like January is it just has some major breakthrough every year, right,
(25:01):
I wasn't thinking of c yes, but just like every
like January it was like it was like the reasoning
models happened, and then like last January it was like
all of a sudden, the harnesses were just working and
you could build, you know, build all this technology. I
think something like that's going to happen, and you know,
we'll forget about this for a while.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I hope so. But I feel I'm scared that we're
going to get distracted by that shiny new object and
fundamentally not fix all the issues. That sort of reads
mentioning this idea of not investing in research, Like I
do think the US has as a major problem with
long term vision and maybe that's how our political system
set up, I don't know, but or sort of our
economic system, but certainly it's it's a problem.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
When we come back.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Substock has pushed back against a new AI detection feature.
Stay with us, Welcome back, Taylor. Subset recently launched a
(26:06):
feature on that app which acts like a kind of
AI detective fit us in.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, So, Substack partnered with this company called Pangram, which
is a startup that is basically they build themselves as
like the slop detector of the web, and so they
have probably the most sophisticated AI detection tools and they've
just actually they're working on visual AI detection tools in
terms of images, but they're really good at detecting AI
(26:36):
use in writing and so basically substack is trying to
make it easier to click and determine how much of
an article is written by AI or it's really good
at determining if one hundred percent of the article is
AI generated, which I think is valuable because I did
a partnership with Pangram myself actually where they gave me
(26:58):
access early access to their API last year or well
it wasn't even last year, it's like four months ago.
And tech moves fast, and you know, up to forty
percent of articles in the tech category, which is what
my newsletter is in.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
We're fully AI generated, fully AI generated.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Fully AI generated, So it's really taking over.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Is this in response to consumer demand?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Is like this of a substac leadership concern that if
they let AI proliferate for too long on substack, ultimately
people will migrate away from substack Like where was it
was a demand signal kind of driving this?
Speaker 3 (27:30):
You know, I don't know the total thinking behind it.
I did interview Chris Best, and.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
What he said is like the CEO of subsc right.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
The CEO of Substack, who said, you know, we want
consumers to basically have more information and know and like
this is our way of kind of not doing like
trust and safety, but kind of like making our platform
more transparent. I think there's a lot of scams and
spam kind of info. I mean, as I wrote in
my piece, like one of the most popular subsacts in
(27:59):
the past year was this like fake conversation between Elon
Musk and Keanu Reeves. It literally never happened, but it
was AI generated slop that went megaviral that people still
share to this day as if it was real. The
politics category is overrun with AI generated content, so I
(28:19):
think it's about giving consumers more transparency. I don't know
that it's totally led to that. I feel like it's
caused a bit of chaos, but that's certainly the goal.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
So this is not just the detective, It's not X.
It's that this is more sophisticated.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Do you think I'm curious for both of your take
as people who write newsletters, like is all AI writing
AI slop?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I get a few AI generated newsletters that I really love.
There's like a social listening tool that I get the
newsletter up, and it basically gives me like a roundup
of trending posts and automatically sort of pulls yeah, like
trending content in I like Vibe coded my own one
that like it's mostly it's I trust AI for like
(29:03):
analysis and scraping, and it's honestly better than like a
lot of the ones that I subscribe to. I mean,
I subscribe to a lot of human newsletters as well,
but I think that like AI can pick up these
small detections, you know, in sort of trends. I At
the same time, I think it's all about transparency, right,
and what does the consumer think they're getting. Do they
(29:23):
think that they're getting one hundred percent human No, AI
used it all, but they're actually getting slop. Okay, that's
going to cause a negative experience. But I think increasingly
it's somewhere in the middle. And that's kind of where
things get tricky.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, I don't think it's all slop, but I do.
I don't know about you guys. I mean I can
tell when something's like AI generated.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
I can to Most people can't.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah, most people can't, but you get it. There's a
rhythm to it that sort of like becomes familiar, especially claude,
like if there's a specially exactly style and you read
X and sometimes I'm like, well, this is actually an
interesting point that this person's making. It's also just this
is just AI generated, and like, I don't know what
to think about it.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
So one thing that I thought was interesting is this
person on ax has been doing and I want to
write about this myself and I haven't. But the big
thing on YouTube right now is AI generated scripts. So
Almost every big YouTuber is using AI to auto generate
their scripts. They're not even tweaking them. They're literally just
generating the script and reading it. But they're a human
reading it. So audiences, this person was tweeting out the
(30:30):
response to your audiences and what I've noticed as well
one hundred percent positive. They seem to prefer it. Actually
they are saying incredible analysis, phenomenal. Wow, I can't believe it.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
And how do you know those aren't bots?
Speaker 3 (30:45):
No, no, no, I trust me. I have gone deep
and I have used AI on one of my own
multiple of my own scripts, and people praise those AI
scripts far more than my human scripts. So and I
didn't use AI like one hundred percent, But like people
seem there's something about the AI cadence that, like normally
people online seem to really like. And if you look
(31:06):
at these like viral articles as well read I generated,
So there is something And I don't think most most
of those people do not realize that they're consuming AI.
And I think that was the issue with substack as well,
like and I think, but that's the thing they I
don't know that they want to know that it's they
get kind of they won't believe it, you know, when
(31:27):
you say, hey, this is one hundred percent AI generated,
like they kind of don't want to accept that.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Did you follow the moment with the Canadian politician this week, Yes,
here's a more natural, flowing version of that section that
reads like legislative speech rather than.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
A series of short points. Madam speaker. One of my
concerns who.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Went viral reading the instructions from Clode a Loud in
his political speech.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I mean, but it's funny.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
I think it's one of those things where it's like,
oh my god, he was caught with his pants down.
But on the other hand, like probably ninety nine point
nine percent of politicians used AI to enhance their speeches
or even write them, So it's a funny, like funny
that people were so like panicked or like captivated. I
guess it's very embarrassing for him, but it was also like.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Well, it's also like, is AI writing our policy? Like
this is my stance on all of it. It's like
I think that by doing like, I think that there's
not enough transparency. I think there's not enough discussion. I mean,
I did a Q and A with Substack about this yesterday,
Like I think we Joe Wisenthal had a good tweet
a while ago. A while ago he was basically like,
(32:30):
this is all happening, and we're not going to put
the genie back in the bottle. We need to accept
that AI is being used in all these ways and
we should have discussions about sort of what that means.
And I think that's much better than the sort of
witch hunting, which I also see happening and I think
has sort of happened with Pan Graham now, where it's
like people just go around like, oh my god, oh
my god, this AI was used to I was used
and I was like, okay, but what does it matter
(32:51):
if AI was used for this like niche thing, you
know what I mean, Like, let's have a real discussion
about it.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
How it creators On substeck reacting to.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Pangram, it runs the gamute. Some people are like so
mad because again they use AI and they weren't disclosing it.
I think a lot of consumers, it really depends on
your audience. You know, ironically, no one really cares about
the tech, like the tech the tech newsletterspace like tramas
posted like that full AI generated like you know, article
(33:20):
basically on X everyone knew it was AI generated and
Elon Musk was a great article. Like people were like,
as kind of as read said, people were like, Okay,
Tamath is colo siding this analysis, and so I find
it valuable. So but people in the politics category, and
it's more like the lifestyle things like food and sort
of lifestyle influencers that have been relying on AI, like
their audiences are not taking kindly to it. And I
(33:42):
have a very left leaning audience that rulently hates AI,
so I've been tried to be very transparent with them.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Is that a point of tension between you and your audience.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, I've lost like a significant amount of subscribers just
by saying, hey, I'm a tech reporter, so I'm going
to use these tools for research, and I will alway
always write my articles like human but I will always
be transparent. But just so you know, I report on
technology that means using technology, and this has gotten me
canceled on Blue Sky multiple times.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
I think in the in the end, though, this is
in some sense positive because there's always been sort of
an inauthentic nature to you know, social media to politics,
and I think this is actually driving people more towards
like a yearning for authenticity, and that's like part of
what the anti a AI hate is, right, And we
(34:31):
saw this with the latest you know, Christopher Nolan movie, right,
who's sort of rejected CGI and filmed this movie in
seventy millimeter IMAX like that, and people, I still can't
get tickets to the seventy millimeter right for months, And
it's like, you know, I think that's I sort of
think that's a positive, Like this is this is moving
us in the right direction for humanity. It's it's and
(34:55):
it's and it's like I even sort of like the
fact that even if something's AIG generated, like people can say, well,
the ideas behind this and the messenger here, I know,
and I'm gonna take it at face value. I'm not
going to worry about like what tools were used to
generate this. I'm gonna actually think about it as long
as there are people who are thinking critically, like in
(35:15):
policy and positions of power. That's good read.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Do you think your sem how would your semaphoe audience
feel if if you said, Okay, starting next week, I'm
going to use AI to as like as like a
full partner to write this newsletter.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
I don't know. I don't think people would really care
as long as it's ultimately like I'm signing off on
every part of it, right, the writing of the writing
part of journalism is like a tiny part of journalism.
Like I actually would love if AI could just take
all of my interviews and my notes and my ideas
(35:50):
or you know, maybe my brains my verbal brainstorming to
my AI agent and just make like an amazing article
that's you know, perfectly edited. Like that would be great.
They'd be huge time saver, right, And I think, you know,
but you have to think critically about it, like you
you can't just you know, put stuff out there without
without like actually going through. It's not good enough yet, right,
(36:13):
Like I'm sure Taylor agrees. Like I've tried, you know,
I'm constantly trying. And it's good at some stuff, like
we use it for copy editing, et cetera. Like it's
it could be a time saver, but like it's not
there yet. It can't it can't generate you know, full articles.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
I think AI is also very good at sort of
optimizing for AI, And I think, like when I talk
to YouTubers, about why so many YouTubers use it for scripts.
They're like, well, because the algorithm I'm playing for the
YouTube algorithm, the algorithm is ingesting my script and making
a determination about it. And if I say optimize it,
include these keywords include this cay to like, do include
(36:51):
these things that perform well for this algorithm, Like I
I think that's where it, you know, shines.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
I guess it's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
I mean it shows up when you look at when
you look at like the top performing stuff on YouTube,
by the way the headlines are done, and the and
the thumbnails and the titling and like the kind of
like scrunged express like curious expression and stuff like. It's
it does feel like as I'm not a I have
to confess to I'm not like a super user review too,
but like when I look at those thumbnails, I'm like, wow,
(37:20):
this is like this has been so optimized.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
For something that I am not. It's kind of an
interesting experience.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Well, if you think about the way that these models
were built with reinforcement learning, they had you know, thousands
of people sitting there just clicking. I like this version
more than that version. You know, they put a lot
of money into essentially like finding the common denominator of
reader listeners. So it sort of makes sense that they
prefer the AI generated content, which I think it's back
(37:48):
to this like thing that a lot of journalists and
and maybe even creators forget, which is like you're you're
writing this for the reader, not for yourself, right, And
I think another thing people get really upset about that's
not AI is when like you just take forever to
get to the point, and you know, there's certain publications
that are really bad about this, and like I just
(38:10):
end up skipping the first three paragraphs of every article
they write because it's all just you know, basically written
for the satisfaction of the writer, not for the reader.
And so we could probably all learn something from me.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
With that in mind, I think we better wrap up
this episode, but I want to get I want to
get the last word to Taylor, because I saw you
you nodding about read saying that writing's only a small
fraction of journalism, like what's your what's your final word
on that?
Speaker 3 (38:34):
So I you know, I'm a bad writer, I'm dyslexic.
I'm a much better writer now than I was. But
a huge reason, I mean, it was like it was
really hard for me to even consider being a reporter
because I thought you had to be a good writer.
And this really well known editor told me at one point,
you know, basically there are journalists like the job of
(38:56):
a journalist is to expose new information, and no one
will care if you're a bad writer if you can
get scoops. Like, if you can expose new information, editors
will hire you no matter what because they'll rewrite your
stuff and it's fine. And I started to do that
and that's what got me hired in media, and my
writing got better over the years, and I think it's
like good now. But I'm never going to write for
(39:17):
the like the New Yorker long Form or some you know,
Like I'm not really that kind of journalist. And there
are journalists that are amazing writers, right, But I think,
like what Reid said, I feel the same way. I'm like,
I wish I could just feed all this stuff in
have the AI kind of put it together. The goal
to me is to like get that new information out
there and kind of let that inform inform the world.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
I feel that's always the deepest cut against the Stannyokagen
that still hear like rumors that they always hand in
the shoddiest copy and like the most successful ones to
do the least good job of handing in good drafts.
But maybe that's maybe that's what you're getting.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
I am just maybe you can still give Taylor the
last word, and you can edit this out if you
want to. But I I wish more journalists would take
their article before sending it to their editor and run
it through whatever their favorite chat butt is and say
what am I missing here? What are my blind spots?
Where are my biases? And like, actually take that because
that is I find super helpful.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Totally. I think, like I mean, I just think like
we should embrace these tools if they can help us
improve our jobs. And also we need to understand these
tools to report on them, especially as technology reporters. And
I said this in my interview with Substack, but there's
a lot of people that I see, especially online, that
are very performative about AI. I will say, and I
(40:39):
know that they're using it in their personal lives. I
know that they're using it and they're getting online all
day and saying all this slop. And I just I
to me, that bothers me because I'm like let's just
be on and say that you use it sometimes it's
not the n to the world, Like let's have a
discussion about it, but don't just get online all day
and stoke the sort of fires of the AI hate
and then like sort of quietly try already lose it
(41:00):
on the side, like that's silly.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
That's all we have time for this week, Taylor read, thank.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
You great to be here as always, thanks for having us.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
For tech stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
I'm mos Voloshian. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis.
It was executive produced by me and Julian Nutter The
Kaleidoscope and Katrina norvelve iHeart Podcasts. Jack intlument to this
episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. A special
thank you to Taylor Lorenz and Read Albergotti. Please check
out all the work be put out into the world.
(41:41):
We're lucky to call them friends of the Pod.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
Popular Podcasts
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.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.