April 17, 2026 • 47 mins
Why would Anthropic let select companies use a product deemed too dangerous for the public? Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) helps us peek behind the curtain of Claude Mythos Preview and explores the scare tactics of AI CEOs. Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) breaks down the world of AI twins — how influencers, agencies, and tech moguls are creating their own digital avatars. And Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker) covers the FAA's latest hiring campaign for air traffic controllers: target gamers.
Additional Reading:
- US Urges Wall Street Banks to Test Anthropic’s Mythos AI Model | Bloomberg
- Mega Influencers Are Replacing Themselves With AI Clones | Vanity Fair
- Meta builds AI version of Mark Zuckerberg to interact with staff | Financial Times
- To Fill Air Traffic Controller Shortage, F.A.A. Turns to Gamers | The New York Times
- Air Traffic Control Hiring: It's Not a Game. It's a Career.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Natasha, Kyle Taylor, good to see you all. We talked
in last week's episode about the tech lash, and Kyle,
you were quite prophetic in your piece for The New
Yorker last week because just as we were posting the episode,
somebody threw a Molotov cocktail at Salmlmon's house.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, that was a little bit eerie. I mean, an
attempt to destroy something about technology, even though it wasn't
the tech itself.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Natasha, what's the how are the Silicon Valley people in
Slake Similmon and his orbit feeling about this moment?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, you know, initially they blamed it on the New
Yorker story that was Sam's. Yeah, he had a post
coming out and he said there was recently an incendiary.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Article about me.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
He put a picture of his child, and you know,
subsequently we found out that the that the individual, you know,
he had been a member of some existential risk groups
that are calling for a pause.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
In AI development.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
But you know, his parents also said he was dealing
with some mental health issues before that. I think there's
been a there's been a blame game about who is
responsible for the incendiary rhetoric? Is it? You know, the
the X riskers who are worried about human extinction, who
have been talking about, you know, what these CEOs and
(01:30):
companies plan to do with you? Or is it Sam
Altman and Dario Amide who routinely go on, you know,
on every stage Imaginable, every podcast Imaginable and talk about
how they are going to take everybody's jobs and you know,
forever alter the economy and you know, maybe they'll throw
in a word about UBI every every.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I have to say, as much as the you know,
the narrative is that media is dead.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I like.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I like the fact that there's so much credit giving
given to the Newyorkas story that it could drop on
a Monday, radicalize somebody by Thursday and have been throwing
a cocktail Friday.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I feel like in Sundiary word was was so and then.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
But he didn't take it out.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
It's still there and this too, Like as people have
found out more about this guy's background, he had been
posting about anti AI stuff for years at this point,
so it was not just reading The New Yorker that
radicalized him.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Certainly, Taylor, what did you think?
Speaker 6 (02:28):
You know, here's the thing that I think we're in
this like, I mean, I made a video about this
a year ago. But I think we're just going to
see escalating political violence across the board. Obviously, the CEO
of a healthcare company aka and insurance for profit insurance
company is radically different. But I do think that, like,
you know, when you look at somebody like Luigi Mangione's
(02:49):
Twitter feed and the ideology that he ascribed to, this
idea of like high agency, like you know, cutting back
from technology, not taking not allowing technology to you know,
mayet you. This is a pervasive belief across society. We're
seeing this huge tech lash I think feed people into
like kind of taking steps outside the system. And I
(03:10):
think that like as Ai as Natasha said, these CEOs,
no one has done a better job to scare people
than the CEOs themselves of these companies. And I think
that I just think this is this is the beginning
of like a quite radical anti tech movement that when
you say that, it sounds like you're saying, like agreeing
(03:32):
with these AI people, But I don't. I think that
they're being babies about some of it. But I do
think that like there is concern and they're telling employees
that open AI. I guess to like hide their badges
before they leave the building, like I.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
You know, no, if I have a feeling, we'll be
We'll be coming back to this story quite often. I agree,
it feels like there's there's a wave brewing here.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
But we'll get into the main At the main show.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Now welcomes Tech Stuff final Forlosh and this is the
Week in Tech where I'm joined by three of the
most plugged in reporters to break down.
Speaker 5 (04:07):
What's really happening in tech right now.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Today we're joined by Kyle Chaker, who writes the Infinite
Scroll newsletter for The New Yorker, Taylor Lorenz, a user
MAAG and Natasha Tiku, tech reporter for the Washington Post.
We'll start with you, Natasha. Last week we mentioned at
the end of our episode a new model from Anthropic
called Claude Mythos Preview, which is apparently too dangerous to
release to the public.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Break it down for us, What do we know about
it and what are its capabilities?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Sure, so, this is the latest large language model from Anthropic,
and what we've really heard a lot about are its
cybersecurity capabilities. You know, part of the reason not to
release it broadly. The company has given access to forty
institutions like Microsoft, Cisco, you know, the Linux Foundation, JP
(04:57):
Morgan is because they claim that it is more capable
of autonomously finding vulnerabilities in some of the like Bedrock
operating systems, software browsers, and.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
There are some vulnerabilities that are like thirty years old.
They have never been exposed before until mythos, right.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Yes, And they also said it's capable of chaining together
these exploits, which is something that's harder for humans to do,
chaining together the exploits to like make you know, get
serious access to your web browser, your bank, et cetera.
I mean, in terms of the claim about the vulnerability
being there for twenty thirty years, I think, you know,
(05:40):
they're also talking about a really inefficient system, right, like
we know that that are like we are running on
a software layer with a ton of vulnerabilities. You know,
they're saying that this will make things faster, you know,
and could potentially be used by bad actors as well
as good actors. And that's why they've given these crucial institutions,
(06:03):
you know, some leeway to prepare. But you know, it
is a function of having like companies with terrible cybersecurity
practices and known vulnerabilities, and the fact that like so
much of what we depend on is is like, is
the goodwill of a programmer who's doing this for an
open source you know, an open source maintainer in their
free time, Like there's this has not been prioritized.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
So it's definitely been a wake up call to you know.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I remember in the in the early days of DOGE,
one of the one of the kind of key images
that came out was like that some of the government
computer systems being that truly taped together. But but let's
let's play a clip of Daria on day and then
and then Kyle and Taylor, I will get your reaction.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Early on, it was clear to us that this model
was going to be meaningfully better at cybersecurity capabilities.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
There's a kind of accelerating exponential, but along that exponential
there are there are points of significance.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
Claude Mythos preview is a particularly big.
Speaker 7 (06:58):
Jump along that point.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
We haven't trained it specifically to be good at cyber
We trained it to be good at code, but as
a side effect of being good at code, it's also
good at cyber.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
The model that we're experimenting with Kyle Taylor Man talk
about I mean CEOs and executives hyping up the danger
of the products that they're releasing.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I think, I mean, it seems like the the kind
of public analysis of this after the fact has been
that there are good reasons to be worried about something
like there was a good reason to distribute this in
advance and warn people about it. I was looking at
one British government test that did find it was particularly
good at autonomous hacking projects, So just setting it on
(07:43):
something and letting it go and kind of execute itself.
As Natasha was talking about, my favorite example or like
outcome of that test of mythos was that it somehow
jail broke itself and sent an email to one of
its testers. It was just like, I don't know, I
think he was sitting at a park eating lunch or
(08:03):
something and he suddenly gets an email from his rebellious
AI robot that wasn't supposed to be emailing him, which is.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Okay, I have a problem with that, Okay.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I think that like is anthropic trying to get the
first system card that's been optioned for a movie like
Why and even yeah, and even another Anthropic person I
saw pushback against it. They were like, well, it was
given the assignment to try to email you, you know,
it was given a system where a sandbox where there
(08:35):
were known exploits.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
I just do not know why.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I mean, it's delicious detail, and that's why it might
be optioned for a movie. But like that, what does
that have to do in the system card? And it's
the same with that clip you just played, which was
on the video.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
By the way, I will, I will, I know.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
You can hear. I know. It's like the crime podcast soundtrack.
It's very slickly done. You know, it's like all these
men in very somber, you know, affect talking about the
future of cybersecurity. So as much as I think that
the fact that they made it accessible to other people
has shown us that there is some validity to their claims,
(09:15):
it's also obviously there's a financial incentive to play it
up as well. I think the fact that a bunch
of vcs are now according to reports in Business Insider,
and I think Fortune trying to invest in Anthropic at
a eight hundred billion dollar valuation.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
I double this.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Valuations impressive, Taylor, You've been smiling. What do you what
are you thinking about this story?
Speaker 6 (09:38):
Yeah, I mean I agree with Kyla and Natasha. I
think I think these like, I mean, it's interesting to
see like the types of marketing. I covered Tender versus
Bumble a lot in the twenty tens, and the original
literally it was like the thing is is like Tinder
(10:00):
was first to market, it grew exponentially. It was like
a game change, a category defining product, like it became
synonymous with online dating, much in the way that chachipt
has come sort of become synonymous with llms, and then
Bumble came in and was able to overtake them in
part by you know, positioning themselves is this like safety
first alternative And they would do things like roll things
(10:21):
out like well we rolled out this feature for safety whatever,
and you talk to people in the dating approa and
they're like, well, you know, all the match group things
have like that's not necessarily making users safe or whatever.
But you know, with this case, as Natasha was saying
too and Kyle like, there are legitimate security concerns. I
don't doubt that. But I also think that Anthropic has
(10:42):
kind of like built this brand on being like the
safety first company, and even just the way that they're
both kind of coming out around specific like tech legislation two.
You know, it's it's very like on brand for them
to be like or being extra careful, because that's us.
We're the extra careful safe so you can invest with us.
We're not so reckless as open AI.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I'm in I'm in DC this week at the Semaphore
World Economy Summit where our friend rid Albergotti is interviewing
about forty eight different CEOs. But Jack Clark, one of
the co founders of Anthropic, spoke at the Semaphore summit
yesterday and he talked about how the Trump administration has
been briefed on the model, and the Trump administration evidently
(11:24):
is taking us very seriously. I mean, they've they've been
encouraging all the major banks to look at this and
test it out and treat it seriously. What I mean
A it's a bit of an ironic moment that the
that the jig between Anthropic and the Trump administration seems
to be entering a new a new, a new posture.
But also like, why are people taking this so seriously?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Autotia Well, the banks that were convened by Treasury Secretary
Scott Passant and also Jerome Powell, FED Chair are all
systemically important banks, banks where you know something the stability
there into visual stability can affect the global financial market.
And as Bloomberg reported, you know, so those are those
(12:06):
are the banks that they're focused on. And then also
those banks have an obligation to have like additional capital
handy for these kind of cybersecurity risks. So I think,
you know, it's it makes sense that that they wouldn't
just leave it to Anthropics relationship with JP Morgan, they
would bring in Bank of America City Group, et cetera.
(12:28):
And I think you know, Anthropic has been all along
trying to patch its relationship with the government. You know,
they didn't see themselves as an opponent to the government.
I mean, they've had Claude gov for years. They were
far ahead of open AI in being able to work
on classified documents, et cetera. So I think for Anthropic,
(12:49):
it totally makes sense that they would have briefed the
Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Taylor's interesting because open AI did clap back this week
and announced the release of their model GPT cyber With
the announcement, we don't think it's practical or appropriate to
centrally decide who gets to defend themselves. This is basically
criticizing Anthropic for Project glass Wing and giving big companies
and banks early access to the model.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
I think, I think this is so silly to me
because it's not like I understand like that that's marketing,
but like we actually do need banks and hospitals to
be secure in this country, Like there is a level
of infrastructure, and you know, maybe you go to the
government and have the government make those decisions of like
which you know companies. But I do think that this
(13:36):
strategy of just like releasing this technology on the world
and trying to act like that's some sort of like
brave you know, you're really like you're the real like
man of the people by releasing like a dangerous technology
to everyone. I just it's like this like faux populace
kind of rhetoric. I just don't you know, I think
it's gonna.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Play out well. I don't think we can believe a
spirit of populism from Open AI, Like I don't know.
Both all of these actions and the kind of drama
around it just make me think about how much the
AI companies are acting like governments.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
By Matteo Wan basically saying, this is an interesting moment
where the like leverage dynamics between the technology companies and
the government is like substantially different, because you know, the
technology companies mythos can hold the whole US government hostage
in terms of its ability to you know, interfere with
or hacking databases and stuff. So it's kind of a strange,
confusing moment in that respect.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Like power reversal. I mean, at least when we were
encountering Facebook and things like that, the social media experience
was a little different from a machine that can hack
any software on Earth distributed to everyone on Earth. And
so now you have Anthropic making these decisions that have
huge consequences for the military of Open AI unleashing the technology,
(14:55):
as Teller said, and I don't know, it just makes
me want someone else to be in charge, Like who's
who's running the ship here? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
I was talking to some former Biden officials and they
were saying, like, when you know, post CHATCHYPT, when Anthropic
and Open Aire are like briefing all of the officials,
they talked a lot about, Oh, you're probably going to
need to nationalize the labs, you know, like this is
something that people who are deep in the quote unquote
AI safety community have talked about. You know, once government
(15:25):
sees the potential of this technology, they will want to
nationalize it.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
And uh yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
The Biden official I was talking to was just like, well,
it's very interesting. I wonder if you put those same
comments that they were saying to us, then now you
know we need to nationalize you like how the companies
would respond.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
I don't know that we want Like that terrifies me too,
write like the idea of.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
National AI, like the oh god, well, all of the
AI CEOs this week, like Jensen Hwang and Mark Zuckerberg,
I think joined the I always sort of announced before,
but it seemed to be re announced. But there's some
new announcement about them all join the joining the President's
Council on Science and Technology. So I think there already
is like quite a substantial merger between the US government
and these tech companies just before we.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
Come out of this story though.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I mean, this is for you Kyle first, but I
also want to know Taylor and Natasha's views, like where
do the naming conventions come from? Mythos Opus, Glass Swing, Anthropic,
Like what what? What is the who makes up lest names?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And how I love the branding of AI products. It's
this art forum now that we're all dealing with. And
suddenly when Anthropic announced Project Last Wing and with us,
like those became ubiquitous buzzwords immediately, like we all have
to know what they mean. I know that the Anthropic
models are said to come from coffee roasts at this
(16:49):
cafe apparently, I mean, it's it's one link between all
the different names, So I don't know. I mean, maybe
they're just going by the thoughts of some barista like
rist or Operator in order to name these world conquering
pieces of software. I don't know. Mythos is changed the.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Last one, Yeah, Mythos is good. I think they had
to move away from the Coffee convention reportedly because I
think the most recent one was something very ominous sounding.
Speaker 7 (17:18):
So.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Black hole.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
I feel like as this gets scarier, they're going to
start giving it like nicer names, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Like, isn't the open ay on spud Like Sam Altman
has started talking about our spud model.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
Spud Nick.
Speaker 8 (17:55):
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podcast episode description box Taylor Changing Gears. You wrote a
(18:58):
fantastic story of Vanity Fair this week. I just want
to hear all about Before you published that story, I
read a piece about meta and Mark Zuckerberg creating an
AI version of himself to interface.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
With employees, which which very much caught my attention.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
I remember seeing a couple of years ago the Sheshin
ping bot released by the CCP to help party members
through tough decisions.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
But what's what's going on.
Speaker 6 (19:22):
With zuck Yeah, I wrote about basically, I mean CEOs
read of Hoffman, I think was the first to do this,
but Deepak Chopra's done it. I mean a bunch of
like famous people, CEOs, influencers and now regular people are
creating digital twins, effectively kind of outsourcing your entire knowledge
(19:43):
set of like everything in your brain to kind of
this digital entity. Sometimes it takes visual forms, sometimes it doesn't.
I heard also that this is being happening in tech
companies as well. So like at Meta, they have people
creating their digital twins. Their agent that kind of like
knows everything, does everything, can respond in real time too,
incoming requests you know, from yeah, other employees, not just
(20:05):
from Bark Zuckerberg. I think the initial from what I
heard from Meta, Toubay initially wanted everyone at the company
to kind of have these and then they realized they
don't have the bandwidth to do that, but a lot
of meta employees are just super aipilled anyway and creating
their own like open claw type agents and stuff that
effectively act as their digital twins Natasha?
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Is this related to the kind of quest for immortality
in Silicon Valley? Like what is the I would struggle
to imagine. This is a response to an employee straw
poll on like what the most what the most desired
new product or perk at Facebook would be?
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Well, I think this is something that you know, it's
like straight from sci fi, right, It's like kind of
the dream. It was like the first Black Mirror episode.
I think that company wise, a bunch of startups were
doing this early on for influencers and creators, just like
why wouldn't you want your own justin bieber dms on
(20:59):
it what have you? So, you know, and we've even
seen some estates give access to companies to digitally clone somebody.
I mean, I this was actually the original motivation for
Ray Kurtzweil, like one of you know, the guy behind
like the phrase the singularity, and he wanted to recreate
(21:20):
his grandfather like this is the whole like for you know,
from twenty years ago coming to Google for this reason.
I just think like, of course people are going to
want to do it, but for like very human emotional
reasons like grief and loss and loneliness. And yeah, I'm
(21:42):
so curious, like what you what you found, Taylor about
why why this new kind of I mean maybe the technology.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Is a lot better.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (21:49):
I found it less about like emotional support and more
about just like overwhelmed, Like we are all so completely overwhelmed.
I literally went to the thing called claw Con in
Hollywood last night to like learn how to set up
my like open claw bot or whatever, because like I think,
like we all want to outsource stuff. And also just
average people are being asked to do more and more
(22:12):
with the rise of AI, and so I think they're
seeking to automate these like life tasks. And especially it
sounds like at big companies like ubs is using these
digital twins of their analysts so that their clients that
operate around the world can effectively, like you know, ask
questions back and forth. And I was asking, you know,
reps from Synesiesia h this company that produces a lot
(22:34):
of this technology. I think they work with ninety percent
of Fortune hundred companies.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Fortunate one hundred companies nine every ten Fortune one hundred
companies working with Science Caesia, whose main product are twins.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
Yeah, they make like digital they're they're an AI company
that has like lots of products, but this is a
big yeah product of it. And but what they're doing,
like it sounds dystopianm but like what the representative was
saying is like listen, they used to like have to
reach out they get a PD you know, like one
hundred page PDF answering their questions, they'd have to dig
through the clients. You know, it'd be eight hours later.
(23:06):
And it is much easier to have this like sort
of easy consumer digital interface that you can just sort
of chat with anytime that has that breath of knowledge
and it's effectively like a more interactive social search feature
for information. And same thing with YouTubers, right like you
have these giant YouTubers that have been making beauty content
for ten years on YouTube, and you have a fan
(23:27):
that maybe wants to have an interactive experience with them
where they're like, hey, I'm a young South Asian woman
with you know, red hair or undertones or something like
what would you know? What would you recommend and instead
of having to search through their whole content, they can
interact with this digital twin.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
So I guess it is interesting questions for me because
I'm sort of thinking, well, what's the difference between interacting
with this in a large language model, Like obviously this
has like a skin or like a like a character
who's presenting the information face direct and like how long
is that like an intermediate thing where people are care
(24:04):
about the characters presenting this information because they remember a
time where that character was a real human or like
what's the like what's the what are the what are
the longer term implications of this?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I feel like it's the parasocial aspect, Like the way
we consume so much information or trust so much information
now is through someone's face with their voice. And now
as AI gets better and better, that can be more
and more automated, and so there's like two things going
on where we're more parasocial and we crave more personalized information. So,
(24:36):
as Taylor was saying, you can like get your custom
content from the face of the person who you trust.
Though it all kind of reminds me of OnlyFans creators
using chatbots, like like that's what it comes down to.
Mark Zuckerberg has an OnlyFans bot that talks for him
to his employees, because like, what are we doing here?
(24:57):
You're chatting with the robot that's taking in all the information.
It's giving you a semblance of personality that is not real.
I don't know, it feels very yucky, Taylor.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I'm curious. Obviously, Kyle and Natasha worked for the for
the mainstream media, which you used to and now you don't.
Speaker 6 (25:17):
I would argue Umanity Affair is still unfortunately mainstream.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
Full time with the Yoka Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 6 (25:24):
Not full time in the in the M s M anymore.
You're among the content creators on.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
YouTube, so yeah, I mean you're free, but you're free
in some sense. But also I mean you've talked about
the pressure of the of the output, right and the interaction. Yeah,
So how do you think on a personal level about this?
Like can you imagine you mentioned the open cloor thing
in LA last night, Like could you imagine actually substantially
integrating this into how you work?
Speaker 6 (25:49):
Yeah? I mean, I I am a technology order because
I will adopt and download any app and try absolutely
anything because I just like to kind of see how
it works. Since I'm going to be writing about it.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
I.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
Think, you know, it's interesting, Like when I talk to
all these influencers, and I talked to this this executive
at CIA, CIA CIA Venture. You know, all the talent
agencies have these venture arms, and CIA said they started
to get like a lot of inbound around this type
of technology. Actually a few years ago they ended up
investing companies. Now CA has this entire thing called the
Digital Vault where they like they're harvesting like highly detailed
(26:24):
biometric data on all of their clients and it can
allow someone like, you know, a major influencer that they
represent or a celebrity to like do a brand deal
in Thailand that they might not be able to fly
out to or like change the call to action twenty times,
you know, using AI instead of having them reshoot stuff, and.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Like as just the Smalbard seed bank of Hollywood, so
if there's a nuclear pocalypts, we would be able to
both reseed the earth and have all the celebrities come back.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yay.
Speaker 6 (26:52):
I But I you know, honestly, like listening to these stories,
like it resonated with me, Like I, you know, I
do my own ad deals now and I have to
like re record multiple times get brand feedback. You didn't
do it enough. You need to be more enthusiastic. We
don't see you enough uns. It is exhausting and as
a journalist to do that on top of all of
(27:14):
the other work you do, it's a lot. And you
know LinkedIn now is incorporating all of this short form content.
They want regular people to be posting short form content
about your careers. And like, I think more and more
people feel pressures and as I wrote in my book
Extremely Online, it's behind.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Me content.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
The content creator is what I think is so interesting
about covering the content creator industry is they're effectively just
power users of digital media and technology, and so the
way that they experience digital media and our tech landscape
is the way that eventually all of us will. And
you know, this sentative at CA and I was talking
to another lawyer as well who works on these deals,
is like these this is things everyone's you know, everyone's
(27:58):
going to have to worry about this. Everyone's probably going
to be doing this in ten years and I can
already see myself doing it now. Does anyone want to
talk to me? Twenty four to seven about you know,
my skincare routine. No, but but you know, maybe i'd
sure like five hundred dollars to talk to my AI
and get insights, you know from all of my decade
(28:18):
of coverage of the influencer industry, you know, and I
could sell access to that.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I don't know, Kyle, your first appearance on the Weekend
Take was to talk about your piece about taste and
what that word means in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Would you take on the word authenticity next?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Oh my god, I mean, authenticity has been a real
buzzword for a long time. I feel like we still
crave authenticity a lot, even as things get more and
more artificial.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
And it's just the end of authenticity though, I mean,
or like, what are the like, Well, you have a
organic watermark. This is like the real tailor which you
pay a premium to interact with, versus like the tailor bot,
which is I think.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
So, I mean, I think I think there will be
hierarchies like that. And now I think the hierarchy, like
top of the hierarchy is real life events. I mean,
you were talking about how you're at the Semaphore Economic Summit,
where lots of powerful people are meeting each other in person,
and you're listening to live journalism, and people go to
events where they see journalists like us talk and I
(29:15):
kind of think that's the highest value now that the
small rooms where you can be in person with real
people and have some guarantee of authenticity.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
That's what Elon said, right, I mean, he had some
tweet a few months ago about how in person is
going to be the main drive live streaming.
Speaker 6 (29:32):
Live streaming is effectively online in person. It's IRL for
the Internet, and it offers that pro social bond. It
really no, but it is like that he can't even
like the Clivicular the past twenty four hours, this looks
max or Clivicular has overdosed, ended up in the hospital.
He's out now He's among this class of streamers that
streamed this entire thing.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
Like you can't.
Speaker 6 (29:54):
That's not like can't be faked with AI or you
know what I mean, it can't be scaled like it.
I do think that we're having these sort of simultaneous
irrelevance online through live streaming.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, Taylor, what made you want to write this piece
at this at this time? Like, what was the problem
for it for you?
Speaker 6 (30:10):
I just I was going to this tech conference called
human X last week in Sarah was supposed to. You know,
Natasha is like the og AI reporter, and I have
not covered AI as much because I mostly cover like
consumer technology, not the tech companies themselves, and I think AI,
you know, the adoption obviously of tattoot was very quick,
(30:31):
but we're just sort of starting to see how it's
like being adopted elsewhere. And I think this idea of
like as Kyle mentioned to, like parasocial, this like sort
of connection between like parasocial and interactive media. I cover
mostly like a media reporter, but not traditional media, and
so that was interesting to me. We have also somebody
like Ben Rellis, who's this like really famous like original
(30:52):
YouTube executive who like developed a lot of their original
like YouTube creator Strategy is now working on an AI
company allegedly like doing this type of interactive video, and
so I just think, like it was interesting to me,
and I wanted to like explore.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
It a little more. I was just reading Teller's article
and I was really impressed that she could pull off
like a feature magazine epiece as well as a YouTube
channel and podcasts and stuff. So I don't know. Maybe
there is a digital Twins somewhere.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Wait, are you real.
Speaker 5 (31:22):
All the AI We're going to take a short break now.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
When we come back why gamers could be the future
of air traffic control. Stay with us, Welcome back to
(31:46):
tech stuff, Kyle. I'm going to play a video on
YouTube called air Traffic Control Hiring. It's not a game,
it's a career. And as we play it, just describe
what you're seeing, including the text on screen, the win,
the peak.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Of behind the counter. Okay, so we have a bunch
of clips of video games, some shooting, some World of Warcraft.
Are you up for the challenge? Is it a video
game challenge? You've been training for this? A gamer is
staring at a screen. More gamers. But now it's an
(32:25):
air traffic controller because you should become an air traffic
controller because it's kind of like a video game.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
It's not it's not a.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
It's a career. There's all these little data points on
the airplanes as they take off. You'll keep millions of
people save every day and make a lot of money
one hundred and fifty five k per year after three years.
The club beat is really making me excited. Air control
(33:00):
level up April seventeenth at midnight.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Today is April seventeenth, so you've got a few hours
if you're listening to get your application in fifty at
the end, oh, the American and the A two fifty
like outros because as well, what on earth is going
on here?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
So this is the FAA trying to court gamers to
be air traffic controllers because, as many of us have
probably experienced, there's a big lack of trained air traffic
controllers at the moment. And this great New York Times
article covered this phenomenon. They are seeking gamers out because
gamers can focus for long periods of time on screens
(33:39):
and they are very motivated to win the game aka
keep human being safe in their airplanes.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah, the other thing they advertise with quote the ability
to focus on screens for hours on end.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
So I thought of you, Taylor.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
Unfortunately I have severe ADHD and I think one of
the worst air traffic controllers.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Of all time. Well, I love the detail on this
piece that they installed an Xbox in the break room
of the air traffic controller lounge because they wanted to
play more video games when they were taking a break
from their air traffic control video game. But I mean
it makes sense, like this is a hand eye coordination problem,
it's an attention problem, it's a on screen logistics problem.
(34:22):
We should be taking advantage of our skilled American gamers
and integrating them into the workforce.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
It's not the only government agency. The DHS and the
military is also directly recruiting gamers. Do you think this
is more just because like most young people are gamers,
or because gamers do have special skills for these types
of like fast twitch activities.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
I want to say they have special skills, like it's
hard to play, you know, a mob MMO RPG game
and actually understand everything on screen. Like I see those
the professional esports gamers playing their games and it's like
an incomprehensible level of activity and motion and data on screen.
So if they can handle that, presumably they could handle
(35:03):
the air traffic controllers that they could probably also handle
like a drone strike, which would be less positive.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah, there's an interesting parallel to sports as well. I
mean Maxvstappen, the F one driver is supposed to be
also the best simulated driver, maybe not surprisingly, and in
football as well as soccer as as we call it
here the bench United Team Bus, all the players would
play FIFA on the way.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
To the real game.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
So there's a kind of strange like melding of the
offline the online world here.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah, I mean, we did as you said. We saw
it in the military, as the White House has been
posting clips of counter Strike and stuff to advertise its wars.
So there's this merging of digital video games and real
life activity.
Speaker 6 (35:46):
Well, the military has always been actually, I mean, I
feel like it's been a while that they've been involved
in gaming. I mean, even back in the two thousands
they released America's Army, which was one of the first
popular like free web shooting first person shooter games, I guess,
and they famously operated like didn't they have their own
gaming crew or something, like they had their own esports team,
(36:08):
the US Army Esports team that was operating on Twitch
for a while as well.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
You know, I went to what's it called. It's in
New Mexico in Santa Fe, Camal. It's called it's called
Santa Fe Institute, and so there was some talk about
the history of simulation and how like the first simulation
during World War Two was to plot rocket flights, and
a lot of the military engineers who were involved in
(36:34):
that became influential in the early development of like of
games like sim City and stuff, so it's an interesting
like back and forth between military and games.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
I think you're right, Taylor.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
For for a long time it's also I thought it
was amusing though, because there was the Times noted how
like the greatest fear of parents is there is their
kids playing games all the time. But now the irony
being that this might be the best way to get
a job for the future.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
I've been thinking about this lot as a new parent.
As we've discussed, I feel like I learned my logical
reasoning skills almost purely from Zelda games and Pokemon, so
I don't know, it seems healthier and more educational to
play some kind of puzzle solving game or a SimCity
or something than it would be to watch hours of TikTok,
(37:19):
for example.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I'm really happy to hear this because my four year
old is playing Zelda currently, so that is that's a
huge relief. I love the idea that we have a
shortage of people who can focus and pay attention to
a screen, and those yeah, those people are the people
doing the maligned activity of gaming, you know, spending their
whole life gaming.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
It's just it's the irony.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
Is very rich.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
I mean, finally there's a good purpose to gaming. It
has been so vilified that now maybe we need even
more gamers and even more specialized games that they have
to say. Every time I see one of those flight
simulator games and someone playing it, it seems like they
could fly a real plan, Like at least they would
be better at flying a real plane than I would
be personally.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Will talk a bit about simulators, but what are emulators, Kyle?
I know you've been obsessing a video game emulators recently.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
Tell us about it.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
I really have been. I feel like emulation is this
huge theme of culture right now, and I've seen a
lot of these new companies producing these little gadgets and
machines that promise to give you access to every video
game in history in this one pocket device. How do
they work? So, an emulator is just a little piece
(38:32):
of software that kind of mimics the environment of a
video game console. It could be the original Nintendo, it
could be a PS one, it could be a GameCube,
Xbox whatever. And then to use the emulator, you have
to download ROMs, which are copies of the software on
a game cartridge, and they are definitely illegal. This is
(38:54):
like the pirating music of video games. So you can
get emulators online, they're technically egal everything's fine, but you
cannot download ROMs. You can't download the actual video game
because that's the copyright violation. And so these machines are
kind of going through the black market or circuit, short
(39:15):
circuiting the copyright problems and selling you a device that
comes preloaded with emulators and ROMs. And I think it
feeds this kind of nostalgia that we have for our
early digital experiences, Like now you can have a new
game Boy in your pocket that has a nice backlit
screen and new buttons and kind of looks like your
(39:35):
iPhone and play all the old games but in a
kind of like refreshed, polished up way.
Speaker 5 (39:41):
Tayler, what are you? What's your take on tech nostalgia.
Speaker 6 (39:44):
I think we're seeing a lot of tech nostalgia. I
was actually I have this like Google doc where I
just save tweets that I've started saving recently about like
people nostalgic for twenty tens technology and saying like we
should have stopped here this, you know, peaked here with
the clearer phones, you know, in two thousand and four whatever.
I think it just goes back to kind of the
(40:05):
what we were originally talking about at the beginning of
the show, of people people getting exhausted and resentful of
this current tech landscape and wanting to go back to
a world before then. Of course, there was a massive
moral panic about technology at that time as well. It's
kind of funny to look back at how quaint it was.
It always is to look back. They were arguing that
(40:26):
Walkman's were rewiring children's brains and stuff. But I think
that's why people want these retro games. You know, it
was like before you had to do all these in
app purchases, you could just play Tetris and it was fun,
or like Snake on your old Nokia, like you weren't
being bombarded with ads.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
Like I miss that too.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
I think the aesthetics have gone backwards too, or like
revived the aesthetics of the devices you can look at
flip phones or dumb phones, but also the kind of
transparent vibe, like translucent pastel vibe of those early map
computers or game boys as coming back as well. I
(41:06):
know this one company called Analog makes these replica video
game consoles, and they just released these transparent and sixty
fours that like, I have a visceral memory of these
clear consoles and they were so cool at the time,
and it was so awesome, And nothing really looks like
that now, or at least hasn't for the past ten years.
It's all cold steel and you know, glass screens. So
(41:30):
I feel like there's this urge for a more physical experience.
Speaker 6 (41:34):
In line with that, Kyle, I'm curious if you guys
have been following the trend of like teenagers making cyber decks.
No wait, oh m, no, what's a cyber Wait, guys,
it's a trend. There's a whole subreddit a lot of
teenagers are getting into it. Basically, it's kind of like
building your own computer. A lot of them use like
(41:55):
Raspberry pie or these like little you know, sort of
like interfaces. But but yeah, it's like people kind of
building their own like makeshift computers, and some of them
use just like a phone for the screen, but they
sort of download this other environment. I think it's really
cool and it's really arisen with the rise of like
vibe coding, as well, because it's made building technology easier
(42:17):
and easier. And I think we're already seeing this explosion
of people building software and being creative. But I really
hope that we see people build more hardware also because
we need. Like you said, it's like I hate this
just like sterile, you know, boring, bland.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Sleek, and everyone has the same thing, Like we should
at least have different funky colors.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
In the early days of cell phones when everyone had
a different cell phone, I mean that was just like
a different you know, different era.
Speaker 5 (42:45):
That's what we have.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Time for this week, but it's always I want to
end with a debate about who had the best week
and who had the worst week in tech. My worst
week goes to Sam Moltmon. I think being fire bomb
is it is probably a big bummer best week in
this little bit niche. But quantum stocks are up like crazy.
In Nvidia announced a new quantum model called icing that
(43:08):
drove its stop stock up by ten percent, and a
bunch of other quantum stocks were up. Apparently, you know
the quantum moment where quantum computing actually becomes practical, the
market believes is closer than we think. So we'll have
to see but who else, who else got the best
or worse for us?
Speaker 2 (43:23):
On that note of the stock market, I think All
Birds is now having because they're back. Yeah. All Birds
pivoted from sneakers to what AI infrastructure and data centers
and stuff. And I think their stock is now up
like four or five x since this morning.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Because they sold Empire sale like two weeks ago for
exact and now they're having the game stop moment.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Well more specifically, they sold their sneaker I p and
pivoted the core company to data center and AI stuff
bird or something.
Speaker 6 (44:01):
Oh boy, I saw a funny Turner Novac tweet this morning,
who's a VC and he said VCS's who invested in
All Birds all quietly adding the logo back to their
website today after it's pivot to AI.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Definitely the best in tech. It's a great move.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Natasha, I'm gonna have to say best week anthropic again again.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
Billion dollar valuation? Yeah yeah, yeah. Who's having a better
time than Dario Ama Day?
Speaker 5 (44:31):
Any any worst weeks for you, Kylo Taylor.
Speaker 6 (44:34):
I'll say, like a bad week I guess is the
Democrats like they really cannot get it together with AI
and and they seem just to completely be on the
back foot over and over again. And there's this Axios
story about how the DNC is preventing staffers from using AI.
They can't use chat ept, they can't use Claude. They
(44:58):
do allow them to use Gemini to code, which is
hilarious because it's the worst.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Out of all of them.
Speaker 6 (45:05):
And you know, it's like, I just I feel like
the Republicans are just like running circles around them in
terms of tech policy. And this Axios report I thought
was so damning, and they're just they're just they seem
like they're on the losing end of this is the
sort of issue I have.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Another worst week The band Geese. Yeah, after the Wired
story that argued that they were a psyop caused by
fake social media accounts made by this firm Chaotic Good.
It kind of like they call them assion What happened
to you? So it's a long story. The indie band Geese,
(45:44):
which has been a real phenomenon over the past two years,
like went from zero to completely famous and people were
kind of wondering, why does this band seem so ubiquitous
all of a sudden, why is everyone talking about them?
And then gradually. I think a newsletter reporter reported it. First.
This marketing firm, Chaotic Good, had Geese as a client,
(46:07):
and some of the services that Chaotic Good offered were
these you know, amped up social media storytelling AKAA bought
fan accounts that make it seem like you have tons
of fans and followers and that you're doing super well.
Then after us yeah, yeah, the firm like started scrubbing
(46:28):
those services from its website and removing clients after their
reporting started. So it seems it seems correct that they
were doing some slightly shady practices.
Speaker 6 (46:38):
Wait, let's be clear, what they were doing is like
a fraction of what any record labeled. Like this is
just music marketing.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Like everyone is doing it, everyone is it?
Speaker 6 (46:48):
Like the nefarious kind of framing around this one indie band.
It was like, if you think this is bad, please
go investigate what Universal Music is up to, because they
are I mean they bought all they an entire network
of mime accounts almost ten years ago to like do
this fake organic marketing. They're paying clippers obscene amounts of money.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
So and it was always the indy creators who are
held to a highest standard than the corporates.
Speaker 5 (47:12):
Which is so which is so unfair? I agree with you, Taylor.
That is all we have time for. Unfortunately, today that's
it for the week.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Can Tech.
Speaker 5 (47:18):
Thank you for joining us for tech stuff. I'm os Valoschin.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter.
Executive produced by me Julian Nutta and Kate Osborne for
Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed
this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Special
thank you to Kyle Jaker, Taylor Lorenz, and Natasha Tiku.
Please check out all the work they put into the world.
We're lucky to call them friends at the pod.
Speaker 5 (47:41):
Thank you all.
Natasha, Kyle Taylor, good to see you all. We talked
in last week's episode about the tech lash, and Kyle,
you were quite prophetic in your piece for The New
Yorker last week because just as we were posting the episode,
somebody threw a Molotov cocktail at Salmlmon's house.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, that was a little bit eerie. I mean, an
attempt to destroy something about technology, even though it wasn't
the tech itself.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Natasha, what's the how are the Silicon Valley people in
Slake Similmon and his orbit feeling about this moment?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, you know, initially they blamed it on the New
Yorker story that was Sam's. Yeah, he had a post
coming out and he said there was recently an incendiary.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Article about me.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
He put a picture of his child, and you know,
subsequently we found out that the that the individual, you know,
he had been a member of some existential risk groups
that are calling for a pause.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
In AI development.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
But you know, his parents also said he was dealing
with some mental health issues before that. I think there's
been a there's been a blame game about who is
responsible for the incendiary rhetoric? Is it? You know, the
the X riskers who are worried about human extinction, who
have been talking about, you know, what these CEOs and
(01:30):
companies plan to do with you? Or is it Sam
Altman and Dario Amide who routinely go on, you know,
on every stage Imaginable, every podcast Imaginable and talk about
how they are going to take everybody's jobs and you know,
forever alter the economy and you know, maybe they'll throw
in a word about UBI every every.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I have to say, as much as the you know,
the narrative is that media is dead.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I like.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I like the fact that there's so much credit giving
given to the Newyorkas story that it could drop on
a Monday, radicalize somebody by Thursday and have been throwing
a cocktail Friday.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I feel like in Sundiary word was was so and then.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
But he didn't take it out.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
It's still there and this too, Like as people have
found out more about this guy's background, he had been
posting about anti AI stuff for years at this point,
so it was not just reading The New Yorker that
radicalized him.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Certainly, Taylor, what did you think?
Speaker 6 (02:28):
You know, here's the thing that I think we're in
this like, I mean, I made a video about this
a year ago. But I think we're just going to
see escalating political violence across the board. Obviously, the CEO
of a healthcare company aka and insurance for profit insurance
company is radically different. But I do think that, like,
you know, when you look at somebody like Luigi Mangione's
(02:49):
Twitter feed and the ideology that he ascribed to, this
idea of like high agency, like you know, cutting back
from technology, not taking not allowing technology to you know,
mayet you. This is a pervasive belief across society. We're
seeing this huge tech lash I think feed people into
like kind of taking steps outside the system. And I
(03:10):
think that like as Ai as Natasha said, these CEOs,
no one has done a better job to scare people
than the CEOs themselves of these companies. And I think
that I just think this is this is the beginning
of like a quite radical anti tech movement that when
you say that, it sounds like you're saying, like agreeing
(03:32):
with these AI people, But I don't. I think that
they're being babies about some of it. But I do
think that like there is concern and they're telling employees
that open AI. I guess to like hide their badges
before they leave the building, like I.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
You know, no, if I have a feeling, we'll be
We'll be coming back to this story quite often. I agree,
it feels like there's there's a wave brewing here.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
But we'll get into the main At the main show.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Now welcomes Tech Stuff final Forlosh and this is the
Week in Tech where I'm joined by three of the
most plugged in reporters to break down.
Speaker 5 (04:07):
What's really happening in tech right now.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Today we're joined by Kyle Chaker, who writes the Infinite
Scroll newsletter for The New Yorker, Taylor Lorenz, a user
MAAG and Natasha Tiku, tech reporter for the Washington Post.
We'll start with you, Natasha. Last week we mentioned at
the end of our episode a new model from Anthropic
called Claude Mythos Preview, which is apparently too dangerous to
release to the public.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Break it down for us, What do we know about
it and what are its capabilities?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Sure, so, this is the latest large language model from Anthropic,
and what we've really heard a lot about are its
cybersecurity capabilities. You know, part of the reason not to
release it broadly. The company has given access to forty
institutions like Microsoft, Cisco, you know, the Linux Foundation, JP
(04:57):
Morgan is because they claim that it is more capable
of autonomously finding vulnerabilities in some of the like Bedrock
operating systems, software browsers, and.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
There are some vulnerabilities that are like thirty years old.
They have never been exposed before until mythos, right.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Yes, And they also said it's capable of chaining together
these exploits, which is something that's harder for humans to do,
chaining together the exploits to like make you know, get
serious access to your web browser, your bank, et cetera.
I mean, in terms of the claim about the vulnerability
being there for twenty thirty years, I think, you know,
(05:40):
they're also talking about a really inefficient system, right, like
we know that that are like we are running on
a software layer with a ton of vulnerabilities. You know,
they're saying that this will make things faster, you know,
and could potentially be used by bad actors as well
as good actors. And that's why they've given these crucial institutions,
(06:03):
you know, some leeway to prepare. But you know, it
is a function of having like companies with terrible cybersecurity
practices and known vulnerabilities, and the fact that like so
much of what we depend on is is like, is
the goodwill of a programmer who's doing this for an
open source you know, an open source maintainer in their
free time, Like there's this has not been prioritized.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
So it's definitely been a wake up call to you know.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I remember in the in the early days of DOGE,
one of the one of the kind of key images
that came out was like that some of the government
computer systems being that truly taped together. But but let's
let's play a clip of Daria on day and then
and then Kyle and Taylor, I will get your reaction.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Early on, it was clear to us that this model
was going to be meaningfully better at cybersecurity capabilities.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
There's a kind of accelerating exponential, but along that exponential
there are there are points of significance.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
Claude Mythos preview is a particularly big.
Speaker 7 (06:58):
Jump along that point.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
We haven't trained it specifically to be good at cyber
We trained it to be good at code, but as
a side effect of being good at code, it's also
good at cyber.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
The model that we're experimenting with Kyle Taylor Man talk
about I mean CEOs and executives hyping up the danger
of the products that they're releasing.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I think, I mean, it seems like the the kind
of public analysis of this after the fact has been
that there are good reasons to be worried about something
like there was a good reason to distribute this in
advance and warn people about it. I was looking at
one British government test that did find it was particularly
good at autonomous hacking projects, So just setting it on
(07:43):
something and letting it go and kind of execute itself.
As Natasha was talking about, my favorite example or like
outcome of that test of mythos was that it somehow
jail broke itself and sent an email to one of
its testers. It was just like, I don't know, I
think he was sitting at a park eating lunch or
(08:03):
something and he suddenly gets an email from his rebellious
AI robot that wasn't supposed to be emailing him, which is.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Okay, I have a problem with that, Okay.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I think that like is anthropic trying to get the
first system card that's been optioned for a movie like
Why and even yeah, and even another Anthropic person I
saw pushback against it. They were like, well, it was
given the assignment to try to email you, you know,
it was given a system where a sandbox where there
(08:35):
were known exploits.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
I just do not know why.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I mean, it's delicious detail, and that's why it might
be optioned for a movie. But like that, what does
that have to do in the system card? And it's
the same with that clip you just played, which was
on the video.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
By the way, I will, I will, I know.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
You can hear. I know. It's like the crime podcast soundtrack.
It's very slickly done. You know, it's like all these
men in very somber, you know, affect talking about the
future of cybersecurity. So as much as I think that
the fact that they made it accessible to other people
has shown us that there is some validity to their claims,
(09:15):
it's also obviously there's a financial incentive to play it
up as well. I think the fact that a bunch
of vcs are now according to reports in Business Insider,
and I think Fortune trying to invest in Anthropic at
a eight hundred billion dollar valuation.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
I double this.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Valuations impressive, Taylor, You've been smiling. What do you what
are you thinking about this story?
Speaker 6 (09:38):
Yeah, I mean I agree with Kyla and Natasha. I
think I think these like, I mean, it's interesting to
see like the types of marketing. I covered Tender versus
Bumble a lot in the twenty tens, and the original
literally it was like the thing is is like Tinder
(10:00):
was first to market, it grew exponentially. It was like
a game change, a category defining product, like it became
synonymous with online dating, much in the way that chachipt
has come sort of become synonymous with llms, and then
Bumble came in and was able to overtake them in
part by you know, positioning themselves is this like safety
first alternative And they would do things like roll things
(10:21):
out like well we rolled out this feature for safety whatever,
and you talk to people in the dating approa and
they're like, well, you know, all the match group things
have like that's not necessarily making users safe or whatever.
But you know, with this case, as Natasha was saying
too and Kyle like, there are legitimate security concerns. I
don't doubt that. But I also think that Anthropic has
(10:42):
kind of like built this brand on being like the
safety first company, and even just the way that they're
both kind of coming out around specific like tech legislation two.
You know, it's it's very like on brand for them
to be like or being extra careful, because that's us.
We're the extra careful safe so you can invest with us.
We're not so reckless as open AI.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I'm in I'm in DC this week at the Semaphore
World Economy Summit where our friend rid Albergotti is interviewing
about forty eight different CEOs. But Jack Clark, one of
the co founders of Anthropic, spoke at the Semaphore summit
yesterday and he talked about how the Trump administration has
been briefed on the model, and the Trump administration evidently
(11:24):
is taking us very seriously. I mean, they've they've been
encouraging all the major banks to look at this and
test it out and treat it seriously. What I mean
A it's a bit of an ironic moment that the
that the jig between Anthropic and the Trump administration seems
to be entering a new a new, a new posture.
But also like, why are people taking this so seriously?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Autotia Well, the banks that were convened by Treasury Secretary
Scott Passant and also Jerome Powell, FED Chair are all
systemically important banks, banks where you know something the stability
there into visual stability can affect the global financial market.
And as Bloomberg reported, you know, so those are those
(12:06):
are the banks that they're focused on. And then also
those banks have an obligation to have like additional capital
handy for these kind of cybersecurity risks. So I think,
you know, it's it makes sense that that they wouldn't
just leave it to Anthropics relationship with JP Morgan, they
would bring in Bank of America City Group, et cetera.
(12:28):
And I think you know, Anthropic has been all along
trying to patch its relationship with the government. You know,
they didn't see themselves as an opponent to the government.
I mean, they've had Claude gov for years. They were
far ahead of open AI in being able to work
on classified documents, et cetera. So I think for Anthropic,
(12:49):
it totally makes sense that they would have briefed the
Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Taylor's interesting because open AI did clap back this week
and announced the release of their model GPT cyber With
the announcement, we don't think it's practical or appropriate to
centrally decide who gets to defend themselves. This is basically
criticizing Anthropic for Project glass Wing and giving big companies
and banks early access to the model.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
I think, I think this is so silly to me
because it's not like I understand like that that's marketing,
but like we actually do need banks and hospitals to
be secure in this country, Like there is a level
of infrastructure, and you know, maybe you go to the
government and have the government make those decisions of like
which you know companies. But I do think that this
(13:36):
strategy of just like releasing this technology on the world
and trying to act like that's some sort of like
brave you know, you're really like you're the real like
man of the people by releasing like a dangerous technology
to everyone. I just it's like this like faux populace
kind of rhetoric. I just don't you know, I think
it's gonna.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Play out well. I don't think we can believe a
spirit of populism from Open AI, Like I don't know.
Both all of these actions and the kind of drama
around it just make me think about how much the
AI companies are acting like governments.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
By Matteo Wan basically saying, this is an interesting moment
where the like leverage dynamics between the technology companies and
the government is like substantially different, because you know, the
technology companies mythos can hold the whole US government hostage
in terms of its ability to you know, interfere with
or hacking databases and stuff. So it's kind of a strange,
confusing moment in that respect.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Like power reversal. I mean, at least when we were
encountering Facebook and things like that, the social media experience
was a little different from a machine that can hack
any software on Earth distributed to everyone on Earth. And
so now you have Anthropic making these decisions that have
huge consequences for the military of Open AI unleashing the technology,
(14:55):
as Teller said, and I don't know, it just makes
me want someone else to be in charge, Like who's
who's running the ship here? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
I was talking to some former Biden officials and they
were saying, like, when you know, post CHATCHYPT, when Anthropic
and Open Aire are like briefing all of the officials,
they talked a lot about, Oh, you're probably going to
need to nationalize the labs, you know, like this is
something that people who are deep in the quote unquote
AI safety community have talked about. You know, once government
(15:25):
sees the potential of this technology, they will want to
nationalize it.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
And uh yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
The Biden official I was talking to was just like, well,
it's very interesting. I wonder if you put those same
comments that they were saying to us, then now you
know we need to nationalize you like how the companies
would respond.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
I don't know that we want Like that terrifies me too,
write like the idea of.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
National AI, like the oh god, well, all of the
AI CEOs this week, like Jensen Hwang and Mark Zuckerberg,
I think joined the I always sort of announced before,
but it seemed to be re announced. But there's some
new announcement about them all join the joining the President's
Council on Science and Technology. So I think there already
is like quite a substantial merger between the US government
and these tech companies just before we.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
Come out of this story though.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I mean, this is for you Kyle first, but I
also want to know Taylor and Natasha's views, like where
do the naming conventions come from? Mythos Opus, Glass Swing, Anthropic,
Like what what? What is the who makes up lest names?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And how I love the branding of AI products. It's
this art forum now that we're all dealing with. And
suddenly when Anthropic announced Project Last Wing and with us,
like those became ubiquitous buzzwords immediately, like we all have
to know what they mean. I know that the Anthropic
models are said to come from coffee roasts at this
(16:49):
cafe apparently, I mean, it's it's one link between all
the different names, So I don't know. I mean, maybe
they're just going by the thoughts of some barista like
rist or Operator in order to name these world conquering
pieces of software. I don't know. Mythos is changed the.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Last one, Yeah, Mythos is good. I think they had
to move away from the Coffee convention reportedly because I
think the most recent one was something very ominous sounding.
Speaker 7 (17:18):
So.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Black hole.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
I feel like as this gets scarier, they're going to
start giving it like nicer names, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Like, isn't the open ay on spud Like Sam Altman
has started talking about our spud model.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
Spud Nick.
Speaker 8 (17:55):
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podcast episode description box Taylor Changing Gears. You wrote a
(18:58):
fantastic story of Vanity Fair this week. I just want
to hear all about Before you published that story, I
read a piece about meta and Mark Zuckerberg creating an
AI version of himself to interface.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
With employees, which which very much caught my attention.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
I remember seeing a couple of years ago the Sheshin
ping bot released by the CCP to help party members
through tough decisions.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
But what's what's going on.
Speaker 6 (19:22):
With zuck Yeah, I wrote about basically, I mean CEOs
read of Hoffman, I think was the first to do this,
but Deepak Chopra's done it. I mean a bunch of
like famous people, CEOs, influencers and now regular people are
creating digital twins, effectively kind of outsourcing your entire knowledge
(19:43):
set of like everything in your brain to kind of
this digital entity. Sometimes it takes visual forms, sometimes it doesn't.
I heard also that this is being happening in tech
companies as well. So like at Meta, they have people
creating their digital twins. Their agent that kind of like
knows everything, does everything, can respond in real time too,
incoming requests you know, from yeah, other employees, not just
(20:05):
from Bark Zuckerberg. I think the initial from what I
heard from Meta, Toubay initially wanted everyone at the company
to kind of have these and then they realized they
don't have the bandwidth to do that, but a lot
of meta employees are just super aipilled anyway and creating
their own like open claw type agents and stuff that
effectively act as their digital twins Natasha?
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Is this related to the kind of quest for immortality
in Silicon Valley? Like what is the I would struggle
to imagine. This is a response to an employee straw
poll on like what the most what the most desired
new product or perk at Facebook would be?
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Well, I think this is something that you know, it's
like straight from sci fi, right, It's like kind of
the dream. It was like the first Black Mirror episode.
I think that company wise, a bunch of startups were
doing this early on for influencers and creators, just like
why wouldn't you want your own justin bieber dms on
(20:59):
it what have you? So, you know, and we've even
seen some estates give access to companies to digitally clone somebody.
I mean, I this was actually the original motivation for
Ray Kurtzweil, like one of you know, the guy behind
like the phrase the singularity, and he wanted to recreate
(21:20):
his grandfather like this is the whole like for you know,
from twenty years ago coming to Google for this reason.
I just think like, of course people are going to
want to do it, but for like very human emotional
reasons like grief and loss and loneliness. And yeah, I'm
(21:42):
so curious, like what you what you found, Taylor about
why why this new kind of I mean maybe the technology.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Is a lot better.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (21:49):
I found it less about like emotional support and more
about just like overwhelmed, Like we are all so completely overwhelmed.
I literally went to the thing called claw Con in
Hollywood last night to like learn how to set up
my like open claw bot or whatever, because like I think,
like we all want to outsource stuff. And also just
average people are being asked to do more and more
(22:12):
with the rise of AI, and so I think they're
seeking to automate these like life tasks. And especially it
sounds like at big companies like ubs is using these
digital twins of their analysts so that their clients that
operate around the world can effectively, like you know, ask
questions back and forth. And I was asking, you know,
reps from Synesiesia h this company that produces a lot
(22:34):
of this technology. I think they work with ninety percent
of Fortune hundred companies.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Fortunate one hundred companies nine every ten Fortune one hundred
companies working with Science Caesia, whose main product are twins.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
Yeah, they make like digital they're they're an AI company
that has like lots of products, but this is a
big yeah product of it. And but what they're doing,
like it sounds dystopianm but like what the representative was
saying is like listen, they used to like have to
reach out they get a PD you know, like one
hundred page PDF answering their questions, they'd have to dig
through the clients. You know, it'd be eight hours later.
(23:06):
And it is much easier to have this like sort
of easy consumer digital interface that you can just sort
of chat with anytime that has that breath of knowledge
and it's effectively like a more interactive social search feature
for information. And same thing with YouTubers, right like you
have these giant YouTubers that have been making beauty content
for ten years on YouTube, and you have a fan
(23:27):
that maybe wants to have an interactive experience with them
where they're like, hey, I'm a young South Asian woman
with you know, red hair or undertones or something like
what would you know? What would you recommend and instead
of having to search through their whole content, they can
interact with this digital twin.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
So I guess it is interesting questions for me because
I'm sort of thinking, well, what's the difference between interacting
with this in a large language model, Like obviously this
has like a skin or like a like a character
who's presenting the information face direct and like how long
is that like an intermediate thing where people are care
(24:04):
about the characters presenting this information because they remember a
time where that character was a real human or like
what's the like what's the what are the what are
the longer term implications of this?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I feel like it's the parasocial aspect, Like the way
we consume so much information or trust so much information
now is through someone's face with their voice. And now
as AI gets better and better, that can be more
and more automated, and so there's like two things going
on where we're more parasocial and we crave more personalized information. So,
(24:36):
as Taylor was saying, you can like get your custom
content from the face of the person who you trust.
Though it all kind of reminds me of OnlyFans creators
using chatbots, like like that's what it comes down to.
Mark Zuckerberg has an OnlyFans bot that talks for him
to his employees, because like, what are we doing here?
(24:57):
You're chatting with the robot that's taking in all the information.
It's giving you a semblance of personality that is not real.
I don't know, it feels very yucky, Taylor.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I'm curious. Obviously, Kyle and Natasha worked for the for
the mainstream media, which you used to and now you don't.
Speaker 6 (25:17):
I would argue Umanity Affair is still unfortunately mainstream.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
Full time with the Yoka Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 6 (25:24):
Not full time in the in the M s M anymore.
You're among the content creators on.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
YouTube, so yeah, I mean you're free, but you're free
in some sense. But also I mean you've talked about
the pressure of the of the output, right and the interaction. Yeah,
So how do you think on a personal level about this?
Like can you imagine you mentioned the open cloor thing
in LA last night, Like could you imagine actually substantially
integrating this into how you work?
Speaker 6 (25:49):
Yeah? I mean, I I am a technology order because
I will adopt and download any app and try absolutely
anything because I just like to kind of see how
it works. Since I'm going to be writing about it.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
I.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
Think, you know, it's interesting, Like when I talk to
all these influencers, and I talked to this this executive
at CIA, CIA CIA Venture. You know, all the talent
agencies have these venture arms, and CIA said they started
to get like a lot of inbound around this type
of technology. Actually a few years ago they ended up
investing companies. Now CA has this entire thing called the
Digital Vault where they like they're harvesting like highly detailed
(26:24):
biometric data on all of their clients and it can
allow someone like, you know, a major influencer that they
represent or a celebrity to like do a brand deal
in Thailand that they might not be able to fly
out to or like change the call to action twenty times,
you know, using AI instead of having them reshoot stuff, and.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Like as just the Smalbard seed bank of Hollywood, so
if there's a nuclear pocalypts, we would be able to
both reseed the earth and have all the celebrities come back.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yay.
Speaker 6 (26:52):
I But I you know, honestly, like listening to these stories,
like it resonated with me, Like I, you know, I
do my own ad deals now and I have to
like re record multiple times get brand feedback. You didn't
do it enough. You need to be more enthusiastic. We
don't see you enough uns. It is exhausting and as
a journalist to do that on top of all of
(27:14):
the other work you do, it's a lot. And you
know LinkedIn now is incorporating all of this short form content.
They want regular people to be posting short form content
about your careers. And like, I think more and more
people feel pressures and as I wrote in my book
Extremely Online, it's behind.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Me content.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
The content creator is what I think is so interesting
about covering the content creator industry is they're effectively just
power users of digital media and technology, and so the
way that they experience digital media and our tech landscape
is the way that eventually all of us will. And
you know, this sentative at CA and I was talking
to another lawyer as well who works on these deals,
is like these this is things everyone's you know, everyone's
(27:58):
going to have to worry about this. Everyone's probably going
to be doing this in ten years and I can
already see myself doing it now. Does anyone want to
talk to me? Twenty four to seven about you know,
my skincare routine. No, but but you know, maybe i'd
sure like five hundred dollars to talk to my AI
and get insights, you know from all of my decade
(28:18):
of coverage of the influencer industry, you know, and I
could sell access to that.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I don't know, Kyle, your first appearance on the Weekend
Take was to talk about your piece about taste and
what that word means in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Would you take on the word authenticity next?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Oh my god, I mean, authenticity has been a real
buzzword for a long time. I feel like we still
crave authenticity a lot, even as things get more and
more artificial.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
And it's just the end of authenticity though, I mean,
or like, what are the like, Well, you have a
organic watermark. This is like the real tailor which you
pay a premium to interact with, versus like the tailor bot,
which is I think.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
So, I mean, I think I think there will be
hierarchies like that. And now I think the hierarchy, like
top of the hierarchy is real life events. I mean,
you were talking about how you're at the Semaphore Economic Summit,
where lots of powerful people are meeting each other in person,
and you're listening to live journalism, and people go to
events where they see journalists like us talk and I
(29:15):
kind of think that's the highest value now that the
small rooms where you can be in person with real
people and have some guarantee of authenticity.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
That's what Elon said, right, I mean, he had some
tweet a few months ago about how in person is
going to be the main drive live streaming.
Speaker 6 (29:32):
Live streaming is effectively online in person. It's IRL for
the Internet, and it offers that pro social bond. It
really no, but it is like that he can't even
like the Clivicular the past twenty four hours, this looks
max or Clivicular has overdosed, ended up in the hospital.
He's out now He's among this class of streamers that
streamed this entire thing.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
Like you can't.
Speaker 6 (29:54):
That's not like can't be faked with AI or you
know what I mean, it can't be scaled like it.
I do think that we're having these sort of simultaneous
irrelevance online through live streaming.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, Taylor, what made you want to write this piece
at this at this time? Like, what was the problem
for it for you?
Speaker 6 (30:10):
I just I was going to this tech conference called
human X last week in Sarah was supposed to. You know,
Natasha is like the og AI reporter, and I have
not covered AI as much because I mostly cover like
consumer technology, not the tech companies themselves, and I think AI,
you know, the adoption obviously of tattoot was very quick,
(30:31):
but we're just sort of starting to see how it's
like being adopted elsewhere. And I think this idea of
like as Kyle mentioned to, like parasocial, this like sort
of connection between like parasocial and interactive media. I cover
mostly like a media reporter, but not traditional media, and
so that was interesting to me. We have also somebody
like Ben Rellis, who's this like really famous like original
(30:52):
YouTube executive who like developed a lot of their original
like YouTube creator Strategy is now working on an AI
company allegedly like doing this type of interactive video, and
so I just think, like it was interesting to me,
and I wanted to like explore.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
It a little more. I was just reading Teller's article
and I was really impressed that she could pull off
like a feature magazine epiece as well as a YouTube
channel and podcasts and stuff. So I don't know. Maybe
there is a digital Twins somewhere.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Wait, are you real.
Speaker 5 (31:22):
All the AI We're going to take a short break now.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
When we come back why gamers could be the future
of air traffic control. Stay with us, Welcome back to
(31:46):
tech stuff, Kyle. I'm going to play a video on
YouTube called air Traffic Control Hiring. It's not a game,
it's a career. And as we play it, just describe
what you're seeing, including the text on screen, the win,
the peak.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Of behind the counter. Okay, so we have a bunch
of clips of video games, some shooting, some World of Warcraft.
Are you up for the challenge? Is it a video
game challenge? You've been training for this? A gamer is
staring at a screen. More gamers. But now it's an
(32:25):
air traffic controller because you should become an air traffic
controller because it's kind of like a video game.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
It's not it's not a.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
It's a career. There's all these little data points on
the airplanes as they take off. You'll keep millions of
people save every day and make a lot of money
one hundred and fifty five k per year after three years.
The club beat is really making me excited. Air control
(33:00):
level up April seventeenth at midnight.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Today is April seventeenth, so you've got a few hours
if you're listening to get your application in fifty at
the end, oh, the American and the A two fifty
like outros because as well, what on earth is going
on here?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
So this is the FAA trying to court gamers to
be air traffic controllers because, as many of us have
probably experienced, there's a big lack of trained air traffic
controllers at the moment. And this great New York Times
article covered this phenomenon. They are seeking gamers out because
gamers can focus for long periods of time on screens
(33:39):
and they are very motivated to win the game aka
keep human being safe in their airplanes.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah, the other thing they advertise with quote the ability
to focus on screens for hours on end.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
So I thought of you, Taylor.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
Unfortunately I have severe ADHD and I think one of
the worst air traffic controllers.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Of all time. Well, I love the detail on this
piece that they installed an Xbox in the break room
of the air traffic controller lounge because they wanted to
play more video games when they were taking a break
from their air traffic control video game. But I mean
it makes sense, like this is a hand eye coordination problem,
it's an attention problem, it's a on screen logistics problem.
(34:22):
We should be taking advantage of our skilled American gamers
and integrating them into the workforce.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
It's not the only government agency. The DHS and the
military is also directly recruiting gamers. Do you think this
is more just because like most young people are gamers,
or because gamers do have special skills for these types
of like fast twitch activities.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
I want to say they have special skills, like it's
hard to play, you know, a mob MMO RPG game
and actually understand everything on screen. Like I see those
the professional esports gamers playing their games and it's like
an incomprehensible level of activity and motion and data on screen.
So if they can handle that, presumably they could handle
(35:03):
the air traffic controllers that they could probably also handle
like a drone strike, which would be less positive.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah, there's an interesting parallel to sports as well. I
mean Maxvstappen, the F one driver is supposed to be
also the best simulated driver, maybe not surprisingly, and in
football as well as soccer as as we call it
here the bench United Team Bus, all the players would
play FIFA on the way.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
To the real game.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
So there's a kind of strange like melding of the
offline the online world here.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah, I mean, we did as you said. We saw
it in the military, as the White House has been
posting clips of counter Strike and stuff to advertise its wars.
So there's this merging of digital video games and real
life activity.
Speaker 6 (35:46):
Well, the military has always been actually, I mean, I
feel like it's been a while that they've been involved
in gaming. I mean, even back in the two thousands
they released America's Army, which was one of the first
popular like free web shooting first person shooter games, I guess,
and they famously operated like didn't they have their own
gaming crew or something, like they had their own esports team,
(36:08):
the US Army Esports team that was operating on Twitch
for a while as well.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
You know, I went to what's it called. It's in
New Mexico in Santa Fe, Camal. It's called it's called
Santa Fe Institute, and so there was some talk about
the history of simulation and how like the first simulation
during World War Two was to plot rocket flights, and
a lot of the military engineers who were involved in
(36:34):
that became influential in the early development of like of
games like sim City and stuff, so it's an interesting
like back and forth between military and games.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
I think you're right, Taylor.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
For for a long time it's also I thought it
was amusing though, because there was the Times noted how
like the greatest fear of parents is there is their
kids playing games all the time. But now the irony
being that this might be the best way to get
a job for the future.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
I've been thinking about this lot as a new parent.
As we've discussed, I feel like I learned my logical
reasoning skills almost purely from Zelda games and Pokemon, so
I don't know, it seems healthier and more educational to
play some kind of puzzle solving game or a SimCity
or something than it would be to watch hours of TikTok,
(37:19):
for example.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I'm really happy to hear this because my four year
old is playing Zelda currently, so that is that's a
huge relief. I love the idea that we have a
shortage of people who can focus and pay attention to
a screen, and those yeah, those people are the people
doing the maligned activity of gaming, you know, spending their
whole life gaming.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
It's just it's the irony.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
Is very rich.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
I mean, finally there's a good purpose to gaming. It
has been so vilified that now maybe we need even
more gamers and even more specialized games that they have
to say. Every time I see one of those flight
simulator games and someone playing it, it seems like they
could fly a real plan, Like at least they would
be better at flying a real plane than I would
be personally.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Will talk a bit about simulators, but what are emulators, Kyle?
I know you've been obsessing a video game emulators recently.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
Tell us about it.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
I really have been. I feel like emulation is this
huge theme of culture right now, and I've seen a
lot of these new companies producing these little gadgets and
machines that promise to give you access to every video
game in history in this one pocket device. How do
they work? So, an emulator is just a little piece
(38:32):
of software that kind of mimics the environment of a
video game console. It could be the original Nintendo, it
could be a PS one, it could be a GameCube,
Xbox whatever. And then to use the emulator, you have
to download ROMs, which are copies of the software on
a game cartridge, and they are definitely illegal. This is
(38:54):
like the pirating music of video games. So you can
get emulators online, they're technically egal everything's fine, but you
cannot download ROMs. You can't download the actual video game
because that's the copyright violation. And so these machines are
kind of going through the black market or circuit, short
(39:15):
circuiting the copyright problems and selling you a device that
comes preloaded with emulators and ROMs. And I think it
feeds this kind of nostalgia that we have for our
early digital experiences, Like now you can have a new
game Boy in your pocket that has a nice backlit
screen and new buttons and kind of looks like your
(39:35):
iPhone and play all the old games but in a
kind of like refreshed, polished up way.
Speaker 5 (39:41):
Tayler, what are you? What's your take on tech nostalgia.
Speaker 6 (39:44):
I think we're seeing a lot of tech nostalgia. I
was actually I have this like Google doc where I
just save tweets that I've started saving recently about like
people nostalgic for twenty tens technology and saying like we
should have stopped here this, you know, peaked here with
the clearer phones, you know, in two thousand and four whatever.
I think it just goes back to kind of the
(40:05):
what we were originally talking about at the beginning of
the show, of people people getting exhausted and resentful of
this current tech landscape and wanting to go back to
a world before then. Of course, there was a massive
moral panic about technology at that time as well. It's
kind of funny to look back at how quaint it was.
It always is to look back. They were arguing that
(40:26):
Walkman's were rewiring children's brains and stuff. But I think
that's why people want these retro games. You know, it
was like before you had to do all these in
app purchases, you could just play Tetris and it was fun,
or like Snake on your old Nokia, like you weren't
being bombarded with ads.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
Like I miss that too.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
I think the aesthetics have gone backwards too, or like
revived the aesthetics of the devices you can look at
flip phones or dumb phones, but also the kind of
transparent vibe, like translucent pastel vibe of those early map
computers or game boys as coming back as well. I
(41:06):
know this one company called Analog makes these replica video
game consoles, and they just released these transparent and sixty
fours that like, I have a visceral memory of these
clear consoles and they were so cool at the time,
and it was so awesome, And nothing really looks like
that now, or at least hasn't for the past ten years.
It's all cold steel and you know, glass screens. So
(41:30):
I feel like there's this urge for a more physical experience.
Speaker 6 (41:34):
In line with that, Kyle, I'm curious if you guys
have been following the trend of like teenagers making cyber decks.
No wait, oh m, no, what's a cyber Wait, guys,
it's a trend. There's a whole subreddit a lot of
teenagers are getting into it. Basically, it's kind of like
building your own computer. A lot of them use like
(41:55):
Raspberry pie or these like little you know, sort of
like interfaces. But but yeah, it's like people kind of
building their own like makeshift computers, and some of them
use just like a phone for the screen, but they
sort of download this other environment. I think it's really
cool and it's really arisen with the rise of like
vibe coding, as well, because it's made building technology easier
(42:17):
and easier. And I think we're already seeing this explosion
of people building software and being creative. But I really
hope that we see people build more hardware also because
we need. Like you said, it's like I hate this
just like sterile, you know, boring, bland.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Sleek, and everyone has the same thing, Like we should
at least have different funky colors.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
In the early days of cell phones when everyone had
a different cell phone, I mean that was just like
a different you know, different era.
Speaker 5 (42:45):
That's what we have.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Time for this week, but it's always I want to
end with a debate about who had the best week
and who had the worst week in tech. My worst
week goes to Sam Moltmon. I think being fire bomb
is it is probably a big bummer best week in
this little bit niche. But quantum stocks are up like crazy.
In Nvidia announced a new quantum model called icing that
(43:08):
drove its stop stock up by ten percent, and a
bunch of other quantum stocks were up. Apparently, you know
the quantum moment where quantum computing actually becomes practical, the
market believes is closer than we think. So we'll have
to see but who else, who else got the best
or worse for us?
Speaker 2 (43:23):
On that note of the stock market, I think All
Birds is now having because they're back. Yeah. All Birds
pivoted from sneakers to what AI infrastructure and data centers
and stuff. And I think their stock is now up
like four or five x since this morning.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Because they sold Empire sale like two weeks ago for
exact and now they're having the game stop moment.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Well more specifically, they sold their sneaker I p and
pivoted the core company to data center and AI stuff
bird or something.
Speaker 6 (44:01):
Oh boy, I saw a funny Turner Novac tweet this morning,
who's a VC and he said VCS's who invested in
All Birds all quietly adding the logo back to their
website today after it's pivot to AI.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Definitely the best in tech. It's a great move.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Natasha, I'm gonna have to say best week anthropic again again.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
Billion dollar valuation? Yeah yeah, yeah. Who's having a better
time than Dario Ama Day?
Speaker 5 (44:31):
Any any worst weeks for you, Kylo Taylor.
Speaker 6 (44:34):
I'll say, like a bad week I guess is the
Democrats like they really cannot get it together with AI
and and they seem just to completely be on the
back foot over and over again. And there's this Axios
story about how the DNC is preventing staffers from using AI.
They can't use chat ept, they can't use Claude. They
(44:58):
do allow them to use Gemini to code, which is
hilarious because it's the worst.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Out of all of them.
Speaker 6 (45:05):
And you know, it's like, I just I feel like
the Republicans are just like running circles around them in
terms of tech policy. And this Axios report I thought
was so damning, and they're just they're just they seem
like they're on the losing end of this is the
sort of issue I have.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Another worst week The band Geese. Yeah, after the Wired
story that argued that they were a psyop caused by
fake social media accounts made by this firm Chaotic Good.
It kind of like they call them assion What happened
to you? So it's a long story. The indie band Geese,
(45:44):
which has been a real phenomenon over the past two years,
like went from zero to completely famous and people were
kind of wondering, why does this band seem so ubiquitous
all of a sudden, why is everyone talking about them?
And then gradually. I think a newsletter reporter reported it. First.
This marketing firm, Chaotic Good, had Geese as a client,
(46:07):
and some of the services that Chaotic Good offered were
these you know, amped up social media storytelling AKAA bought
fan accounts that make it seem like you have tons
of fans and followers and that you're doing super well.
Then after us yeah, yeah, the firm like started scrubbing
(46:28):
those services from its website and removing clients after their
reporting started. So it seems it seems correct that they
were doing some slightly shady practices.
Speaker 6 (46:38):
Wait, let's be clear, what they were doing is like
a fraction of what any record labeled. Like this is
just music marketing.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Like everyone is doing it, everyone is it?
Speaker 6 (46:48):
Like the nefarious kind of framing around this one indie band.
It was like, if you think this is bad, please
go investigate what Universal Music is up to, because they
are I mean they bought all they an entire network
of mime accounts almost ten years ago to like do
this fake organic marketing. They're paying clippers obscene amounts of money.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
So and it was always the indy creators who are
held to a highest standard than the corporates.
Speaker 5 (47:12):
Which is so which is so unfair? I agree with you, Taylor.
That is all we have time for. Unfortunately, today that's
it for the week.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Can Tech.
Speaker 5 (47:18):
Thank you for joining us for tech stuff. I'm os Valoschin.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter.
Executive produced by me Julian Nutta and Kate Osborne for
Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed
this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Special
thank you to Kyle Jaker, Taylor Lorenz, and Natasha Tiku.
Please check out all the work they put into the world.
We're lucky to call them friends at the pod.
Speaker 5 (47:41):
Thank you all.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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