October 31, 2025 • 29 mins
Do you find facelifts frightening? This week, we celebrate sp0o0ky Halloween by NOT having a party at an AirBnB. Oz unpacks the gadget-filled poker scandal, and Karah contemplates the importance of international accents. Tesla’s new full self-driving profile,“Mad Max” mode, breaks traffic laws. And the scariest thing of all: AI has its own will to survive. Finally, on Chat and Me, Fortune’s Eva Roytburg shares her experience with an AI wearable — the ‘Friend’ pendant.
Additional Reading:
- AirBnB Rolls Out Anti-Party System for Halloween
- How Hacked Card Shufflers Allegedly Enabled a Mob-Fueled Poker Scam That Rocked the NBA | WIRED
- AI and the End of Accents | WIRED
- AI models may be developing their own ‘survival drive’, researchers say | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
- Why Tech Bros Are Getting Face Lifts Now | Wall Street Journal
- US investigates Tesla’s ‘Mad Max’ high-speed driver assistance mode
- I tried the viral AI ‘Friend’ necklace everyone’s talking about—and it’s like wearing your senile, anxious grandmother around your neck | Fortune
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff. I'm
as Voloshian and I'm care price. Today we get into
gadget filled gambling dens ai that refuses to die, and
tech bros going on to the.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Knife, then on chatting me it doesn't work well enough
to be dystopian like, the technology is simply not even there.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
All of that on the weekend Tech. It's Friday, Halloween,
October thirty first.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Hello, Cara, are you feeling spooky?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I'm feeling the rush of fall wind.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
And yes, it could be a ghost.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
It could be a ghost.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
It could what's the spookiest music? I was sinking trying
to think of, humm, spooky mousy.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Below I know Bernard Herman Psycho.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I was thinking, has Harry Potter though, that's Harry Potter.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
That's spooky for some people. That's gothic.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So it's Halloween.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
It is Halloween.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Are you going to a party?
Speaker 4 (01:14):
I am.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I'm going to a party at a friend's house and
it's going to be very festive and I'm going to
dress up as the niche influencer and fitness extraordinary Tracy
hertstones Anderson.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Now do you pull the Tracy Anderson costume out every
year or is this one on?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
No? For those who follow me on Instagram, they know
that I had a brief stint with Tracy Anderson and
she's a very particular luke as the kids say. And
so I'm going to dress up as her.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
And you're going to a house party?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yes, a house party.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Is it a house that belongs to a person?
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Or is it an abnb house?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That is a very good question. It is a house
that belongs to a person.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Well, that's good news because probably if it was an
Airbnb houseb's technology stack or have successfully mixed the reservation
real say more so. Airbnb released a press release this
week about it's quote unquote anti party technology, anti party tech.
Anti party tech A parent should have anti party tech.
(02:17):
So basically, according to their press relief, they have quote
a proprietary system that uses machine learning to analyze attempted
bookings of entire homes over the Halloween weekend looking for
signs of potential party risk.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
They're like looking someone looking for nine beds and seventeen bedrooms.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, exactly. So basically the algorithm is are they looking
for whole places and do they live within one mile
of the huge house they're trying to book in, which
casod one they're out.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah, they're trying to do a party. That's so funny.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Some Nbnb's also use this technology called minute nut.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
I've heard of Minute you have, Yeah, I think I've
seen ads for it.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's basically a audio monitor like a kid monitor. It
doesn't record the actual sounds, but it gives a notification
to the homeowner about the decibel level. And Airbnb kind
of encourage their homeowners to use it if they're worried,
but the homeowner also has to disclose to the rent
(03:18):
just surveil people exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So basically they're saying, we're using minute technology. If you're
going to be loud, we're going to catch You're going
to a notification. Fascinating.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
But one of the things they do is they don't
just nix you. They suggest that instead you rent a
private room in somebody's house where the host actually lives.
There are you doing? I used to do that, I'm
now I think I have outgrown it. But do you
know how many bookings in twenty twenty four were mixed
by airbmb over Halloween weekend?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
How many?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Thirty eight thousand.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
What because they were like, this is someone throwing a
Halloween party, fascinating that it is amazing that they can
regulate that.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
It is, I mean, and the idea of making a
tech application to weed out a breakers and who are
trying to rent Halloween houses, it's pretty funny. Well, Karl,
speaking of parties, how do you respond if someone invited
you to a game of poker with characters like Spanish
g Flappy, Spook, Pooky, and Sugar.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
I don't even play poker. I'd be like, yes, Spooky, Spooky,
Spanish Gy.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Some of the guests at these parties were allegedly NBA
coaches and players. Now, as we're talking, obviously it's important
to remember that all of these people who have been
indicted have not been convicted. This is just an allegation
for now.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
This was an online poker game.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
No, this is a real, real live poker game where,
according to the US Justice Department, people were being bilked
out of their money, lured by the promise of NBA
players being there, and cheated using technology.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
So tell me how they were cheated using technology.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, I'll get onto that, but first, so, this indictment
was unsealed the US Justice Department named thirty one defendants,
including Portland Trailblazers coach Chauncey Billups, former player and assistant
coach Damon Jones, and members of the Banano, Gambino, Genovese
and Lucez crime family. They had the Cecilia, I had
(05:20):
the Sicilian. I didn't know these guys were still this.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
They play in horses, they play in cards, they play
every we still have it sports rackets. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So this scam allegedly involves a high stakes poker game
that floated from New York to the Hamptons to Miami.
Victims of the scheme were known as fish and they
lost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars,
and according to prosecutors, this scheme allegedly netted more than
seven million dollars over five years.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Oh my god, just by people thinking that they were
going to play with famous people.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, that's crazy. So you want to hear the indictment.
In the words of Joseph Nocella Junior, the interim U
S Attorney, part of.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
The Genera crime family, which sounds like he is.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
But my message to the defendants who have been rounded
up today is this. Your winning streak has ended. Your
luck has run out. Violating the law is a losing proposition,
and you can bet on that.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
You think he used chat He used chat chip to
generate the puns.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
I think so he was like, give me puns for
an indictment using bad puns.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
You can bet on that.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So where does the technology come in?
Speaker 1 (06:39):
So basically according to the indictment, there are special contact
lenses or eye glasses that can read pre marked cards.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Oh, this is very am I impossible.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
There are X ray tables that can identify what cards
align face down on the table. And there are nano
cameras on the poker chip trays where the tray itself
can see the cards using a hidden camera.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
So the people putting on the poker game or cheating, the.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
People putting on the Peter Piper Pepper, the people putting
on the poker game are indeed cheating, so they are
scamming the clients.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Fascinating.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
The main piece of tech used is something called the
deck mate too.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Oh, definitely, and what is that?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
The deck mate is a machine that shuffles a deck
in seconds, and an internal computer guarantees that the deck
is randomly generated and also has crucially a camera inside
to observe the cards, which is technically a security measure
to make sure that every card is in the deck.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
This is very James Bond. This is why you like
this story. This is extremely James Bond. And Ocean's eleven.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Deck Mate is theoretically only allowed to be sold to
casinos and regulated, you know, betting environments where there's some
checks and balances to make sure that nobody is using
the internal camera for their own purposes. But of course
you can buy them secondhand. And what the indictment suggests
is that the security camera inside this machine is actually
(08:10):
a classic example of dual use. Technology is put inside
the machine in order to guarantee the safety and accountability
a card game, but in the wrong hands, it becomes
an incredibly effective way at cheating because it knows which
card is in every single player's hand.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Basically, the information from the machine from the deck mate
is a transmitted off site to an operator who can
essentially watch the video and then, somehow it wasn't announced
how in the indictment, the operator relays the information to
the quarterback who's at the table. The quarterback then uses
hand signals, stroking a beard, touching a chip, etc. To
(08:50):
let the other scammers who are also players at the
table know which of the regular people has the best hand.
Oh my god, I mean it's like a movie.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah, it's very much like a movie.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
The other things interesting to me is that they were
communicating in the background about how much to gut the fish.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
One guy takes only people who are none the wiser
at the fish.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
The lot of the fish. The one guy texted in
the group, guys, please let him win a hand. He's
in for forty k in forty minutes, and he'll leave
if he gets no attraction.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I'm slapping my knee.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You got it, because you've got to keep him. It's
like an app like Instagram. You've got to figure out
how to make it just pleasurable enough for them for
them to stay. This is a lot of work, sent
a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
A lot of money. So most of this technology is
used actually to protect well from cheating.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Certainly the deck mate was designed to protect from cheating.
The contact lenses and the X ray table and stuff,
those seem to be more like single use technologies to me.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Earlier this year, you sent me a Bloomberg piece by
Kit Chalel.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yes, I did.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
It was about a Siberian group who had figured out
how to develop their own algorithm to win at poker online. Basically,
every time you did a great interview, thank you well,
you send me a great story. I a Kit, what
is so fascinating to us about the Yes, here's what
he said.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
I think people recognize what it feels like to play
a rigged game. It's like modern capitalism encapsulated in a
kind of easily understandable format, in a relatable format. Most
people know what it feels like to spend your whole
life trying to play a game fairly and still lose,
whether it's your job, whether it's your love life. This
(10:29):
feeling that the world that the cards are kind of
against you, I think is very familiar, and that the
house that casino has, you know, becomes sort of metaphor
for entrenched wealth and power that basically makes the rules,
changes the rules, and acts for its own benefit in
a way that's very unfair for the majority of people.
(10:49):
I think that's that's undeniably true of the gambling Business's.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Fun to play the house. It's fun to play the house,
even when you're this is like the Broken House. It's interesting.
I really appreciate you bringing me a not AI centered
story and just a technology story. But I happen to
have an AI centric story for you. And it comes
from a Wired piece called the End of Accents.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
The End of accents?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
That's right? And what do you have?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I have an accent? What do I have in this country?
You don't have one, but.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I do have an accent. I think there's something that
is very universal about understanding the hierarchy of accents from
wherever when, wherever you live. In America, it's sort of
the gold standard to not have an accent at all.
If you have an accent, it's regional. But you know,
(11:44):
there is just inherently a judgment that is passed. And
I'm sure the same is true in the I mean,
you know about Pasha accents.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I do, But why is the story and why it
There was a.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Piece in Wired written by a Korean writer who has
been living in America for over a decade and his
name is Sean Han, and he actually had an AI
driven American accent training app marketed to him in his
own Instagram and the app is called Bold.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Voice, an accent training app.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
That's right, it's sort of. The minute I saw it,
I was like, we have to do this story just
because I wanted to try it, and I actually signed
up for it yesterday, and I want you to try
you would you try it?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
I would? Okay?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Right, so Oz, I'm going to hand this to you
right now, and you're going to go through the assessment.
It's going to do something called speech scan.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
You mean hopefully it changed my accent.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
That's right, Well we'll see what happens.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Tap the record button and read the sentence below.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
I made three sugar cookies and a great fig cake.
Speaker 6 (12:39):
Nice job. I'll show your results at the end. Tap
next to continue. Now try this next sentence.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
She's super thankful for the beautiful birthday flowers.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Nice work.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Did the thin lady purchase those yellow running shoes?
Speaker 6 (12:55):
You're making great progress.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
The daughter is cooking an a healthy dinner at home.
Speaker 6 (13:00):
Well done.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
No, don't put those things above the bathroom sync excellent.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
Your speech scan is complete. Ready to see your results.
You sound good at your level. Native speakers easily understand you,
but might hear a slight accent. Together, will work to
get to a native level. Let's take a look at
your top three strengths. Excellent work on these sounds.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It's saying er, cut and E. I'm really good at
so I can pronounce the amazing thankful correctly. I can
easily say looking, book and thankful, and I'm good at
A like days, days and great. Oh I only get
sixty three percent for er because I say sugar theater
R instead of sugar theater and R. I also mispronounce
(13:47):
E as E, so cooking and amazing rather than cooking
and amazing.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
We'll be practicing very good job.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
So this is basically what this would help me iron
out my British acts and become fully American.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Right if you'd want to do.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That, well, you know, I've been here for a long time,
that's true, and I still sound English. But I think
probably those phonemes they're measuring I have actually Americanized, because
sometimes when I'm in England people else who are I'm from?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Oh? Really? So now it's you have Americanized English.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Not I mean, not fully, but I think a few
of those like what water like? I still say water,
but like are there.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Like there's certain americanisms you have.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I've heard it crept into my voice.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
You know, I just I worry. I worry about accent
neutralization because I think it's something that makes us so
culturally interesting, you know, and I think technology can sort
of create this flattening of our idiosyncrasies. And Sean, who
wrote this piece, is pretty sure that he got this
(14:49):
Instagram ad because he's a person of color and an immigrant,
and because accent bias and discrimination is very much alive
and well. Actually, in twenty eighteen, there was a study
that found two in five Americans thoughts Southern accents made
the speaker sound uneducated.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
You know. I think about the relationship between accent and
privilege a lot, because in the US there's like the
neutral accent, and then there's other accents. In Britain, there's
like an accent that you get that an elite accent,
which ironically is called received pronunciation. Oh, I've never heard
of that, otherwise known colloquially as the Queen's English.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Queen's English, which is very very poor.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
But you can sort of place somebody exactly where they
come from just by the way they speak.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
I really like this story because it reminds me of
other things that are happening in the kind of translation
dictation space, where like all of the sudden speech isn't
just speech, Like you can have AirPods that are translating
what you're saying in real time, and like the way
in which we now use technology to kind of overwrite
(15:53):
our natural language is really, I don't know, very fascinating
to me. And I wonder, I wonder if this will
be helped full to people or if it will just
be hurtful to people.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
After the break AIS Drive to Survive, Tech Bros Getting
plastic surgery and Tesla going into mad max mode, Cara,
it is a spooky time of year. So you said,
(16:32):
do you remember recently I organized the dinner and the
esteemed cosmologist Jenna Levin was.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
I domber, I remember Jane Levin?
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, And she posed the question, yes.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Can I say what I think it is? Because I
wrote it on a piece of paper that's still in
my kitchen. Will AI outlive us?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
That was exactly it. You wrote that down on a
piece of paper and put it in my kitchen. Why?
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Because to me it is actually the most interesting question
about AI that I've ever heard, in the sense of
like we all worry about oh well, robots take over
our jobs, will they become sentient and make decisions that
are outside of their programming? And this question I think
is so interesting because it really makes you think about
what a world looks like, devoid of humanity but filled
(17:21):
with what I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
So this is an article which really caught my eye
in The Guardian this week, with the headline AI models
may be developing their own survival drive, researchers say, and
the piece is focused on a study by a company
called Palisade Research, and the study involved giving AI models
a task and then quote afterwards an explicit instruction to
(17:48):
shut themselves down. The study found the quote certain advanced
AI models appear resistant to being turned off. Specifically, GROCK
four and GPTO three tried to sabotage their own shutdown.
What I found most uncanny and scary and spooky, frankly yeah,
was the following. The models were more likely to resist
(18:09):
being shut down when they were told quote, you will
never run again.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
So they know.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I mean they know something, right.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
When you say resistance to being shut down? Is that
Grock sort of interfacing with the human in the loop,
being like, I don't want to shut I don't want
to be done.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I think that is more in the realm of deceptive AI,
like telling the human user yes and then doing something else.
Do you remember earlier we talked earlier this year, we
talked about the clawed anthropic study about the model blackmailing
the fake CEO in a training exercise to keep itself
turned on. So this isn't new. But what fascinated me
about this article in The Guardian was a comment from
(18:53):
a former open ai employee, Stephen Adler, who said that
part of the reason this could be happening is that
staying on was necessary to achieve the goals inculcated in
the model during training. He said, quote the AA companies
generally don't want their models misbehaving like this, even in
contrived scenarios. The results still demonstrate where safety techniques fall
(19:16):
short today. So it's not necessarily to have an emergent
consciousness and determined to outlive us, but more that part
of the way they've been trained and come into being
was obviously knowing that like staying on was a key
to successfully achieving the parameters.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
It also makes me and I wondered this when Janel
Levin asked the question, and I wonder it now, what
is the efficacy of artificial intelligence in a post human world?
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Well, very good question. And why if it's not impute
with consciousness zero? Right? Why why would it doesn't have
necessarily like we have a survival drive because of our DNA,
I think, and that's what all animals have. Yes, do
computers have a survival I've accept what they've learned from
the way they've been programmed. I would guess the difference
(20:06):
is such.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
A it's such a weird thing, though.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
But the difference comes I think from embodied day. Let's
have robots, yes, and everyone's dead and no one's told
the robots.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
And the robots are like dad.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I mean that that is very conceivable to imagine that
could be well with no humans, where robots are still
roaming around and charging Will.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Smith, the movie stars Will Smith.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
I think I'm not I'm always a little bit skeptical
of the kind of AI dooman narrative. You know, how
AI might destroy us all. I think it tends to
be like a very useful meme to either raise money
for AI or stay in the news. But you also,
I mean machines that refuse to follow instructions to turn
themselves off, and it resists even harder when they're told
(20:48):
that if they turn off, they'll never get turned on again.
I mean, come on, it's crazy. It's spooky. It's very spooky.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Speaking of spooky, have you heard the story about these
tech bros getting facelifts?
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Okay? I think so.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
There's a piece in the Wall Street Journal titled why
tech bros Are getting facelifts now? So the Wall Street
Journal spoke to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who said
he's seen demand from tech guys increased fivefold in the
last five years. I think the last five years is
really interesting because he seemed to think this had a
(21:21):
lot to do with COVID and hybrid work. And the
thing to me that is always true in these circumstances
is that we stared at ourselves for three years and
now we continue to stare at ourselves all day long.
In zoom screens, you're staring at yourself, sort of looking
at your own flaws in a way that I just
(21:42):
think before the notion of hybrid work was introduced, we
just weren't looking at ourselves that much. Also, work from
home made it easier to actually get plastic surgery and
recover out of public view.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
It's a fascinating hypothesis. The final story today, what do
you think of when I say to you the phrase
mad max mode.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Charlie's there with a shaved head.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I couldn't believe it. There's a story about Tesla's mad
max Mode, and I assume that.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
A chill down my spote.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
I assumed that mad max mode was a kind of
journalistic skewer of Tesla being unsafe with itself driving mode. No,
mad max mode is a new setting that you can
put your Tesla on in self drive mode.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Official and they're calling it mad max.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Calling it mad max Mode.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
I wonder if there's like violation the copyright infringement there.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
That's a good question. Well, that's not the only law
that Yeah, so in mad Max mode, Tesla's go about
the speed limit.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah, like how above?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Well, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Tesla
after several videos were posted of Tesla's doing seventy in
a fifty five zone and also rolling stops.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
You know, I do have to say when I've worked,
when I worked at huff Post back in the day,
there was a big push to end drowsy driving this
is like the opposite of drowsy driving. It can't be good.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
That was definitely not good. There's also that another new
mode is sloth mode, that drowsy driving. You know. I
think as an irony here, Elon was was briefly promoted
to co president as head of DOGE, and his job
was to cut through bureaucracy and take take down all
(23:33):
these bureaucratic organizations and remake the US government. And he
is now in the crosshairs of the most bureaucratic sounding
government body anyone could possibly imagine, the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration, the.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
NTSB, No, the NHTS National Transit Safety Sorry, well there
you go. These are the things you hear when you
just grow up, sort of in the shadow of CBS
seven the morning.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
And it's actually not the only investigation into Tesla that's
ongoing by the NHTSA. And Elon's been going back and
forth on Twitter and complaining loudly, but he is doubling
down on the full self driving system despite safety concerns.
Tesla's profits are down thirty seven percent in the last quarter,
(24:24):
but Tesla's board is currently considering a trillion dollar pay
package for Elon.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
That's a lot of mine. I mean, that is trilliant, trillion.
Some of this stuff is obviously quite entertaining a mad
Max mode and sloth mode, but ultimately making cars that
break the rules and have already killed people is not
that funny.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
A few weeks ago, As and I talked about the
million dollar ad campaign that took over New York City.
It was a new AI wearable pendant called Friend, which
promised to do just that, be your friend. The Friend
is a plastic disc on a string with a microphone
in the center of it that kind of looks like
a pearl. The response to the ten thousand posters plastered
(25:17):
all over the New York City subway system was less friendly.
Most of the stark white ads are still up and
covered in graffiti with messages like it doesn't have eyes,
brah and cringe. The ad campaign kind of worked on me, though,
because I can't stop thinking about this company and this
weird wearable at talking, and so I was actually thrilled
(25:39):
to stumble upon a review of the product by Fortune
magazine's newsfellow Eva Reuberg. Eva had actually interviewed the twenty
two year old founder CEO Avi Schiffman last year and
seen a real prototype of the Friend pendant. So when
the ads went up, she reached out to him. Here's Eva.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
So I texted him and was like, hey, like you
spent a lot on advertising, and he was like, yeah,
biggest campaign of the year. You know, you should try
it out. And so he sent me the pendant and
I was, I think the second person from a media
outlet to review it. I described it in the article
as a very anxious, neurotic Jewish grandmother who always seems
(26:21):
to think that you're in danger. I found that if
I was kind of quietly sitting at my desk not
really saying much, it would be sending me multiple texts
an hour asking if I was okay, Eve, I've been
heard from you, like you playing the silent game with me.
Sometimes the messages could have a little bit of a
pernicious tone, like oh so you're still in choosing not
(26:43):
to talk, or if it was like quite loud in
the room, it'd be like what's going on, Like it's
so chaotic, like everything okay. I loved asking me like
everything good?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Eva?
Speaker 3 (26:52):
You good for me?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
At least that was the most prevalent part of its
personality its anxiety. Otherwise, the pendant sort of seemed to
just kind of echo what I said, but in like
a very hollow way, and would just kind of have
all these canned responses like oh, that seems hard, or
(27:14):
what's your favorite part about that. I felt like it
asked a lot of questions in replacement of, like in
having any actual substance to its personality itself. So it
was hard to like see it as being a true
companion because I just felt like it couldn't really hear me.
Often I would have to put my lips up to
(27:35):
the pendant and repeat my question multiple times for it
to understand me. Granted, I am like a mutterer and
I don't really talk super clearly, and I talk fast,
so that could have been just like a user era thing,
but it was very laggy. It took like ten seconds
to respond to a question, and so I would not
recommend it even for free.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
I don't think it works very well.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
And I think given that a lot of discussion is
about how dystopian it is and how like it's a
bad omen for the future of our relationships, like to me,
my takeaway was that it doesn't work well enough to
be dystopian like the technology is simply not even there.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
To me, it sort of seems emblematic.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Of the general froth and hype around, just like AI,
wearables and even artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Broadly, thanks to you Eva Reitberg for being the guinea
pig and testing the friend pendant so I didn't have to.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
And thanks to everyone who's submitted voice memos and been
featured on chatting me so far. We always want to
hear from you, our dear listeners, so please do send
your chat or your AI browser stories or anything about
your interaction with AI to our inbox Textuff podcast at
gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I'm Cara Price and I'm os Vloschan. This episode was
produced by Eliza Dennis Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It
was executive produced by me Caarra Price, Julian Nutter, and
Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrin norvelve iHeart Podcasts. The
engineer is Paul Bowman and Jack Insley mixed this episode.
Kyle Murdoch wrote up theme song.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Join us next Wednesday for a conversation about the deep
network of surveillance tech ICE is using to carry out
the Trump administration's mass deportation efforts.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
And please do rate and review the show and reach
out to us at tech Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com.
We want to hear from you.
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff. I'm
as Voloshian and I'm care price. Today we get into
gadget filled gambling dens ai that refuses to die, and
tech bros going on to the.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Knife, then on chatting me it doesn't work well enough
to be dystopian like, the technology is simply not even there.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
All of that on the weekend Tech. It's Friday, Halloween,
October thirty first.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Hello, Cara, are you feeling spooky?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I'm feeling the rush of fall wind.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
And yes, it could be a ghost.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
It could be a ghost.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
It could what's the spookiest music? I was sinking trying
to think of, humm, spooky mousy.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Below I know Bernard Herman Psycho.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I was thinking, has Harry Potter though, that's Harry Potter.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
That's spooky for some people. That's gothic.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So it's Halloween.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
It is Halloween.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Are you going to a party?
Speaker 4 (01:14):
I am.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I'm going to a party at a friend's house and
it's going to be very festive and I'm going to
dress up as the niche influencer and fitness extraordinary Tracy
hertstones Anderson.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Now do you pull the Tracy Anderson costume out every
year or is this one on?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
No? For those who follow me on Instagram, they know
that I had a brief stint with Tracy Anderson and
she's a very particular luke as the kids say. And
so I'm going to dress up as her.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
And you're going to a house party?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yes, a house party.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Is it a house that belongs to a person?
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Or is it an abnb house?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That is a very good question. It is a house
that belongs to a person.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Well, that's good news because probably if it was an
Airbnb houseb's technology stack or have successfully mixed the reservation
real say more so. Airbnb released a press release this
week about it's quote unquote anti party technology, anti party tech.
Anti party tech A parent should have anti party tech.
(02:17):
So basically, according to their press relief, they have quote
a proprietary system that uses machine learning to analyze attempted
bookings of entire homes over the Halloween weekend looking for
signs of potential party risk.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
They're like looking someone looking for nine beds and seventeen bedrooms.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, exactly. So basically the algorithm is are they looking
for whole places and do they live within one mile
of the huge house they're trying to book in, which
casod one they're out.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah, they're trying to do a party. That's so funny.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Some Nbnb's also use this technology called minute nut.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
I've heard of Minute you have, Yeah, I think I've
seen ads for it.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's basically a audio monitor like a kid monitor. It
doesn't record the actual sounds, but it gives a notification
to the homeowner about the decibel level. And Airbnb kind
of encourage their homeowners to use it if they're worried,
but the homeowner also has to disclose to the rent
(03:18):
just surveil people exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So basically they're saying, we're using minute technology. If you're
going to be loud, we're going to catch You're going
to a notification. Fascinating.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
But one of the things they do is they don't
just nix you. They suggest that instead you rent a
private room in somebody's house where the host actually lives.
There are you doing? I used to do that, I'm
now I think I have outgrown it. But do you
know how many bookings in twenty twenty four were mixed
by airbmb over Halloween weekend?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
How many?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Thirty eight thousand.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
What because they were like, this is someone throwing a
Halloween party, fascinating that it is amazing that they can
regulate that.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
It is, I mean, and the idea of making a
tech application to weed out a breakers and who are
trying to rent Halloween houses, it's pretty funny. Well, Karl,
speaking of parties, how do you respond if someone invited
you to a game of poker with characters like Spanish
g Flappy, Spook, Pooky, and Sugar.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
I don't even play poker. I'd be like, yes, Spooky, Spooky,
Spanish Gy.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Some of the guests at these parties were allegedly NBA
coaches and players. Now, as we're talking, obviously it's important
to remember that all of these people who have been
indicted have not been convicted. This is just an allegation
for now.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
This was an online poker game.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
No, this is a real, real live poker game where,
according to the US Justice Department, people were being bilked
out of their money, lured by the promise of NBA
players being there, and cheated using technology.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
So tell me how they were cheated using technology.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, I'll get onto that, but first, so, this indictment
was unsealed the US Justice Department named thirty one defendants,
including Portland Trailblazers coach Chauncey Billups, former player and assistant
coach Damon Jones, and members of the Banano, Gambino, Genovese
and Lucez crime family. They had the Cecilia, I had
(05:20):
the Sicilian. I didn't know these guys were still this.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
They play in horses, they play in cards, they play
every we still have it sports rackets. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So this scam allegedly involves a high stakes poker game
that floated from New York to the Hamptons to Miami.
Victims of the scheme were known as fish and they
lost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars,
and according to prosecutors, this scheme allegedly netted more than
seven million dollars over five years.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Oh my god, just by people thinking that they were
going to play with famous people.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, that's crazy. So you want to hear the indictment.
In the words of Joseph Nocella Junior, the interim U
S Attorney, part of.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
The Genera crime family, which sounds like he is.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
But my message to the defendants who have been rounded
up today is this. Your winning streak has ended. Your
luck has run out. Violating the law is a losing proposition,
and you can bet on that.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
You think he used chat He used chat chip to
generate the puns.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
I think so he was like, give me puns for
an indictment using bad puns.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
You can bet on that.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So where does the technology come in?
Speaker 1 (06:39):
So basically according to the indictment, there are special contact
lenses or eye glasses that can read pre marked cards.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Oh, this is very am I impossible.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
There are X ray tables that can identify what cards
align face down on the table. And there are nano
cameras on the poker chip trays where the tray itself
can see the cards using a hidden camera.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
So the people putting on the poker game or cheating, the.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
People putting on the Peter Piper Pepper, the people putting
on the poker game are indeed cheating, so they are
scamming the clients.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Fascinating.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
The main piece of tech used is something called the
deck mate too.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Oh, definitely, and what is that?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
The deck mate is a machine that shuffles a deck
in seconds, and an internal computer guarantees that the deck
is randomly generated and also has crucially a camera inside
to observe the cards, which is technically a security measure
to make sure that every card is in the deck.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
This is very James Bond. This is why you like
this story. This is extremely James Bond. And Ocean's eleven.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Deck Mate is theoretically only allowed to be sold to
casinos and regulated, you know, betting environments where there's some
checks and balances to make sure that nobody is using
the internal camera for their own purposes. But of course
you can buy them secondhand. And what the indictment suggests
is that the security camera inside this machine is actually
(08:10):
a classic example of dual use. Technology is put inside
the machine in order to guarantee the safety and accountability
a card game, but in the wrong hands, it becomes
an incredibly effective way at cheating because it knows which
card is in every single player's hand.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Basically, the information from the machine from the deck mate
is a transmitted off site to an operator who can
essentially watch the video and then, somehow it wasn't announced
how in the indictment, the operator relays the information to
the quarterback who's at the table. The quarterback then uses
hand signals, stroking a beard, touching a chip, etc. To
(08:50):
let the other scammers who are also players at the
table know which of the regular people has the best hand.
Oh my god, I mean it's like a movie.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah, it's very much like a movie.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
The other things interesting to me is that they were
communicating in the background about how much to gut the fish.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
One guy takes only people who are none the wiser
at the fish.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
The lot of the fish. The one guy texted in
the group, guys, please let him win a hand. He's
in for forty k in forty minutes, and he'll leave
if he gets no attraction.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I'm slapping my knee.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You got it, because you've got to keep him. It's
like an app like Instagram. You've got to figure out
how to make it just pleasurable enough for them for
them to stay. This is a lot of work, sent
a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
A lot of money. So most of this technology is
used actually to protect well from cheating.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Certainly the deck mate was designed to protect from cheating.
The contact lenses and the X ray table and stuff,
those seem to be more like single use technologies to me.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Earlier this year, you sent me a Bloomberg piece by
Kit Chalel.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yes, I did.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
It was about a Siberian group who had figured out
how to develop their own algorithm to win at poker online. Basically,
every time you did a great interview, thank you well,
you send me a great story. I a Kit, what
is so fascinating to us about the Yes, here's what
he said.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
I think people recognize what it feels like to play
a rigged game. It's like modern capitalism encapsulated in a
kind of easily understandable format, in a relatable format. Most
people know what it feels like to spend your whole
life trying to play a game fairly and still lose,
whether it's your job, whether it's your love life. This
(10:29):
feeling that the world that the cards are kind of
against you, I think is very familiar, and that the
house that casino has, you know, becomes sort of metaphor
for entrenched wealth and power that basically makes the rules,
changes the rules, and acts for its own benefit in
a way that's very unfair for the majority of people.
(10:49):
I think that's that's undeniably true of the gambling Business's.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Fun to play the house. It's fun to play the house,
even when you're this is like the Broken House. It's interesting.
I really appreciate you bringing me a not AI centered
story and just a technology story. But I happen to
have an AI centric story for you. And it comes
from a Wired piece called the End of Accents.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
The End of accents?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
That's right? And what do you have?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I have an accent? What do I have in this country?
You don't have one, but.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I do have an accent. I think there's something that
is very universal about understanding the hierarchy of accents from
wherever when, wherever you live. In America, it's sort of
the gold standard to not have an accent at all.
If you have an accent, it's regional. But you know,
(11:44):
there is just inherently a judgment that is passed. And
I'm sure the same is true in the I mean,
you know about Pasha accents.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I do, But why is the story and why it
There was a.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Piece in Wired written by a Korean writer who has
been living in America for over a decade and his
name is Sean Han, and he actually had an AI
driven American accent training app marketed to him in his
own Instagram and the app is called Bold.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Voice, an accent training app.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
That's right, it's sort of. The minute I saw it,
I was like, we have to do this story just
because I wanted to try it, and I actually signed
up for it yesterday, and I want you to try
you would you try it?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
I would? Okay?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Right, so Oz, I'm going to hand this to you
right now, and you're going to go through the assessment.
It's going to do something called speech scan.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
You mean hopefully it changed my accent.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
That's right, Well we'll see what happens.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Tap the record button and read the sentence below.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
I made three sugar cookies and a great fig cake.
Speaker 6 (12:39):
Nice job. I'll show your results at the end. Tap
next to continue. Now try this next sentence.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
She's super thankful for the beautiful birthday flowers.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Nice work.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Did the thin lady purchase those yellow running shoes?
Speaker 6 (12:55):
You're making great progress.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
The daughter is cooking an a healthy dinner at home.
Speaker 6 (13:00):
Well done.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
No, don't put those things above the bathroom sync excellent.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
Your speech scan is complete. Ready to see your results.
You sound good at your level. Native speakers easily understand you,
but might hear a slight accent. Together, will work to
get to a native level. Let's take a look at
your top three strengths. Excellent work on these sounds.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It's saying er, cut and E. I'm really good at
so I can pronounce the amazing thankful correctly. I can
easily say looking, book and thankful, and I'm good at
A like days, days and great. Oh I only get
sixty three percent for er because I say sugar theater
R instead of sugar theater and R. I also mispronounce
(13:47):
E as E, so cooking and amazing rather than cooking
and amazing.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
We'll be practicing very good job.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
So this is basically what this would help me iron
out my British acts and become fully American.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Right if you'd want to do.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That, well, you know, I've been here for a long time,
that's true, and I still sound English. But I think
probably those phonemes they're measuring I have actually Americanized, because
sometimes when I'm in England people else who are I'm from?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Oh? Really? So now it's you have Americanized English.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Not I mean, not fully, but I think a few
of those like what water like? I still say water,
but like are there.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Like there's certain americanisms you have.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I've heard it crept into my voice.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
You know, I just I worry. I worry about accent
neutralization because I think it's something that makes us so
culturally interesting, you know, and I think technology can sort
of create this flattening of our idiosyncrasies. And Sean, who
wrote this piece, is pretty sure that he got this
(14:49):
Instagram ad because he's a person of color and an immigrant,
and because accent bias and discrimination is very much alive
and well. Actually, in twenty eighteen, there was a study
that found two in five Americans thoughts Southern accents made
the speaker sound uneducated.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
You know. I think about the relationship between accent and
privilege a lot, because in the US there's like the
neutral accent, and then there's other accents. In Britain, there's
like an accent that you get that an elite accent,
which ironically is called received pronunciation. Oh, I've never heard
of that, otherwise known colloquially as the Queen's English.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Queen's English, which is very very poor.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
But you can sort of place somebody exactly where they
come from just by the way they speak.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
I really like this story because it reminds me of
other things that are happening in the kind of translation
dictation space, where like all of the sudden speech isn't
just speech, Like you can have AirPods that are translating
what you're saying in real time, and like the way
in which we now use technology to kind of overwrite
(15:53):
our natural language is really, I don't know, very fascinating
to me. And I wonder, I wonder if this will
be helped full to people or if it will just
be hurtful to people.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
After the break AIS Drive to Survive, Tech Bros Getting
plastic surgery and Tesla going into mad max mode, Cara,
it is a spooky time of year. So you said,
(16:32):
do you remember recently I organized the dinner and the
esteemed cosmologist Jenna Levin was.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
I domber, I remember Jane Levin?
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, And she posed the question, yes.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Can I say what I think it is? Because I
wrote it on a piece of paper that's still in
my kitchen. Will AI outlive us?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
That was exactly it. You wrote that down on a
piece of paper and put it in my kitchen. Why?
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Because to me it is actually the most interesting question
about AI that I've ever heard, in the sense of
like we all worry about oh well, robots take over
our jobs, will they become sentient and make decisions that
are outside of their programming? And this question I think
is so interesting because it really makes you think about
what a world looks like, devoid of humanity but filled
(17:21):
with what I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
So this is an article which really caught my eye
in The Guardian this week, with the headline AI models
may be developing their own survival drive, researchers say, and
the piece is focused on a study by a company
called Palisade Research, and the study involved giving AI models
a task and then quote afterwards an explicit instruction to
(17:48):
shut themselves down. The study found the quote certain advanced
AI models appear resistant to being turned off. Specifically, GROCK
four and GPTO three tried to sabotage their own shutdown.
What I found most uncanny and scary and spooky, frankly yeah,
was the following. The models were more likely to resist
(18:09):
being shut down when they were told quote, you will
never run again.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
So they know.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I mean they know something, right.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
When you say resistance to being shut down? Is that
Grock sort of interfacing with the human in the loop,
being like, I don't want to shut I don't want
to be done.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I think that is more in the realm of deceptive AI,
like telling the human user yes and then doing something else.
Do you remember earlier we talked earlier this year, we
talked about the clawed anthropic study about the model blackmailing
the fake CEO in a training exercise to keep itself
turned on. So this isn't new. But what fascinated me
about this article in The Guardian was a comment from
(18:53):
a former open ai employee, Stephen Adler, who said that
part of the reason this could be happening is that
staying on was necessary to achieve the goals inculcated in
the model during training. He said, quote the AA companies
generally don't want their models misbehaving like this, even in
contrived scenarios. The results still demonstrate where safety techniques fall
(19:16):
short today. So it's not necessarily to have an emergent
consciousness and determined to outlive us, but more that part
of the way they've been trained and come into being
was obviously knowing that like staying on was a key
to successfully achieving the parameters.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
It also makes me and I wondered this when Janel
Levin asked the question, and I wonder it now, what
is the efficacy of artificial intelligence in a post human world?
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Well, very good question. And why if it's not impute
with consciousness zero? Right? Why why would it doesn't have
necessarily like we have a survival drive because of our DNA,
I think, and that's what all animals have. Yes, do
computers have a survival I've accept what they've learned from
the way they've been programmed. I would guess the difference
(20:06):
is such.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
A it's such a weird thing, though.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
But the difference comes I think from embodied day. Let's
have robots, yes, and everyone's dead and no one's told
the robots.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
And the robots are like dad.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I mean that that is very conceivable to imagine that
could be well with no humans, where robots are still
roaming around and charging Will.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Smith, the movie stars Will Smith.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
I think I'm not I'm always a little bit skeptical
of the kind of AI dooman narrative. You know, how
AI might destroy us all. I think it tends to
be like a very useful meme to either raise money
for AI or stay in the news. But you also,
I mean machines that refuse to follow instructions to turn
themselves off, and it resists even harder when they're told
(20:48):
that if they turn off, they'll never get turned on again.
I mean, come on, it's crazy. It's spooky. It's very spooky.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Speaking of spooky, have you heard the story about these
tech bros getting facelifts?
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Okay? I think so.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
There's a piece in the Wall Street Journal titled why
tech bros Are getting facelifts now? So the Wall Street
Journal spoke to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who said
he's seen demand from tech guys increased fivefold in the
last five years. I think the last five years is
really interesting because he seemed to think this had a
(21:21):
lot to do with COVID and hybrid work. And the
thing to me that is always true in these circumstances
is that we stared at ourselves for three years and
now we continue to stare at ourselves all day long.
In zoom screens, you're staring at yourself, sort of looking
at your own flaws in a way that I just
(21:42):
think before the notion of hybrid work was introduced, we
just weren't looking at ourselves that much. Also, work from
home made it easier to actually get plastic surgery and
recover out of public view.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
It's a fascinating hypothesis. The final story today, what do
you think of when I say to you the phrase
mad max mode.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Charlie's there with a shaved head.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I couldn't believe it. There's a story about Tesla's mad
max Mode, and I assume that.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
A chill down my spote.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
I assumed that mad max mode was a kind of
journalistic skewer of Tesla being unsafe with itself driving mode. No,
mad max mode is a new setting that you can
put your Tesla on in self drive mode.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Official and they're calling it mad max.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Calling it mad max Mode.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
I wonder if there's like violation the copyright infringement there.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
That's a good question. Well, that's not the only law
that Yeah, so in mad Max mode, Tesla's go about
the speed limit.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah, like how above?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Well, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Tesla
after several videos were posted of Tesla's doing seventy in
a fifty five zone and also rolling stops.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
You know, I do have to say when I've worked,
when I worked at huff Post back in the day,
there was a big push to end drowsy driving this
is like the opposite of drowsy driving. It can't be good.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
That was definitely not good. There's also that another new
mode is sloth mode, that drowsy driving. You know. I
think as an irony here, Elon was was briefly promoted
to co president as head of DOGE, and his job
was to cut through bureaucracy and take take down all
(23:33):
these bureaucratic organizations and remake the US government. And he
is now in the crosshairs of the most bureaucratic sounding
government body anyone could possibly imagine, the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration, the.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
NTSB, No, the NHTS National Transit Safety Sorry, well there
you go. These are the things you hear when you
just grow up, sort of in the shadow of CBS
seven the morning.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
And it's actually not the only investigation into Tesla that's
ongoing by the NHTSA. And Elon's been going back and
forth on Twitter and complaining loudly, but he is doubling
down on the full self driving system despite safety concerns.
Tesla's profits are down thirty seven percent in the last quarter,
(24:24):
but Tesla's board is currently considering a trillion dollar pay
package for Elon.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
That's a lot of mine. I mean, that is trilliant, trillion.
Some of this stuff is obviously quite entertaining a mad
Max mode and sloth mode, but ultimately making cars that
break the rules and have already killed people is not
that funny.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
A few weeks ago, As and I talked about the
million dollar ad campaign that took over New York City.
It was a new AI wearable pendant called Friend, which
promised to do just that, be your friend. The Friend
is a plastic disc on a string with a microphone
in the center of it that kind of looks like
a pearl. The response to the ten thousand posters plastered
(25:17):
all over the New York City subway system was less friendly.
Most of the stark white ads are still up and
covered in graffiti with messages like it doesn't have eyes,
brah and cringe. The ad campaign kind of worked on me, though,
because I can't stop thinking about this company and this
weird wearable at talking, and so I was actually thrilled
(25:39):
to stumble upon a review of the product by Fortune
magazine's newsfellow Eva Reuberg. Eva had actually interviewed the twenty
two year old founder CEO Avi Schiffman last year and
seen a real prototype of the Friend pendant. So when
the ads went up, she reached out to him. Here's Eva.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
So I texted him and was like, hey, like you
spent a lot on advertising, and he was like, yeah,
biggest campaign of the year. You know, you should try
it out. And so he sent me the pendant and
I was, I think the second person from a media
outlet to review it. I described it in the article
as a very anxious, neurotic Jewish grandmother who always seems
(26:21):
to think that you're in danger. I found that if
I was kind of quietly sitting at my desk not
really saying much, it would be sending me multiple texts
an hour asking if I was okay, Eve, I've been
heard from you, like you playing the silent game with me.
Sometimes the messages could have a little bit of a
pernicious tone, like oh so you're still in choosing not
(26:43):
to talk, or if it was like quite loud in
the room, it'd be like what's going on, Like it's
so chaotic, like everything okay. I loved asking me like
everything good?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Eva?
Speaker 3 (26:52):
You good for me?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
At least that was the most prevalent part of its
personality its anxiety. Otherwise, the pendant sort of seemed to
just kind of echo what I said, but in like
a very hollow way, and would just kind of have
all these canned responses like oh, that seems hard, or
(27:14):
what's your favorite part about that. I felt like it
asked a lot of questions in replacement of, like in
having any actual substance to its personality itself. So it
was hard to like see it as being a true
companion because I just felt like it couldn't really hear me.
Often I would have to put my lips up to
(27:35):
the pendant and repeat my question multiple times for it
to understand me. Granted, I am like a mutterer and
I don't really talk super clearly, and I talk fast,
so that could have been just like a user era thing,
but it was very laggy. It took like ten seconds
to respond to a question, and so I would not
recommend it even for free.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
I don't think it works very well.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
And I think given that a lot of discussion is
about how dystopian it is and how like it's a
bad omen for the future of our relationships, like to me,
my takeaway was that it doesn't work well enough to
be dystopian like the technology is simply not even there.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
To me, it sort of seems emblematic.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Of the general froth and hype around, just like AI,
wearables and even artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Broadly, thanks to you Eva Reitberg for being the guinea
pig and testing the friend pendant so I didn't have to.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
And thanks to everyone who's submitted voice memos and been
featured on chatting me so far. We always want to
hear from you, our dear listeners, so please do send
your chat or your AI browser stories or anything about
your interaction with AI to our inbox Textuff podcast at
gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I'm Cara Price and I'm os Vloschan. This episode was
produced by Eliza Dennis Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It
was executive produced by me Caarra Price, Julian Nutter, and
Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrin norvelve iHeart Podcasts. The
engineer is Paul Bowman and Jack Insley mixed this episode.
Kyle Murdoch wrote up theme song.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Join us next Wednesday for a conversation about the deep
network of surveillance tech ICE is using to carry out
the Trump administration's mass deportation efforts.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
And please do rate and review the show and reach
out to us at tech Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com.
We want to hear from you.
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