July 25, 2025 • 35 mins
Which company has the best AI engineering talent? It may be shifting. This week, Oz and Karah discuss how the most powerful CEO’s in the tech industry are poaching each others’ talent using some dramatic hiring practices. Then, is the normalization of location sharing helping us or hurting us? Plus, a human programmer beats an AI model in a coding competition for the first (and last?) time, scientists use robotic bunny rabbits to crack down on an invasive species, and a new app that helps you get free stuff! But only if you’re hot. And finally, on Chat and Me, can ChatGPT make you a better parent? How one woman is using AI to navigate the challenges of motherhood.
Also, we want to hear from you: If you’ve used a chatbot in a surprising or delightful (or deranged) way, send us a 1–2 minute voice note at techstuffpodcast@gmail.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm as Voloscian and I'm Cara Price.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Today we'll get into the headlines this week, including Meta's
multi hundred million dollar hiring spree and why gen Z
always have locations sharing on Then on chatting me, he
gives me.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
A tailored meal plan, so like what I should eat,
how I should eat, when I should eat bananas some nights, yeah,
some nights no.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It's kind of crazy, all of that. On the Weekend Tech.
It's Friday, July twenty fifth.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Hello Cara, Hello Azzie. I just want to say first
rest and darkness to the other Ozzy Osbourne who died
this week, another brit and that is where I find
you today.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Indeed, I'm in London and I was a little bit
nervous to come here because Europe's been experiencing this crazy
heat wave and most of London has no AC.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
So you've been schitzing, as they say.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, actually the heat wave broke, but it has been
a very very hot summer here. And you and I
talked about Wimbledon a couple of weeks ago and Ai
line judges. But some of the other interesting scenes from
this year's Wimbledon, which I haven't seen before, were people
passing out in the stands from heat exhaustion and players
riding to their rescue.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
The players are like, you're passing out. My memory and
unfortunate experience of really not just London, but most of
Europe is that they lack AC. And as a kid
who grew up in the Northeast during the summer, AC
is the premium, I do wonder or in a warmer climate,
(02:01):
how does this continue to actually work?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, I mean I think the short answer is it
may not. The Financial Times recently had an op ed
with the title Britain and Europe need to get serious
about air conditioning, and the article points out that, you know,
in a changing climate, European cities are experiencing more intense heat,
more frequently and for longer periods of time than just
ten years ago. And also the article points out that
(02:24):
AC is not just about comfort, it's no longer a luxury.
There are some pretty interesting stats in the piece about
how being too hot indoors affect sleep, cognition and even
correlates with mortality.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
You know, I do notice a huge difference in my
ability to sleep and even think when I'm hot, like,
I don't think people should work in the summer it's
too hot.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Well, the article says that when indoor temperatures rise above
seventy five degrees fahrenheit, sleep duration and quality fall rapidly, and,
according to studies, so desirability to perform well in tests.
So it's a blessing to you and our listeners that
it's a cool week in London and I can think
relatively straight.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
You're always brilliant.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
But I.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
A little bit earlier you mentioned more tatic it's a
matter of life and death. Is that really true in
terms of AC and cooling.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I was a little bit surprised by that as well.
But according to the FT, between two thousand and twenty nineteen,
an average of eighty three thousand Western Europeans per year
lost their lives due to extreme heat, compared with just
twenty thousand North Americans, who are much more likely to
live in buildings with AC. The penetration rate of air
conditioning is ninety percent in the US and only nineteen
(03:34):
percent in Europe.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I was going to say, you know, I never understood
why Europeans don't adapt to cooling systems and buildings yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I mean there's a kind of cultural resistance because it
uses so much energy. But of course, with a changing climate,
what was once seen as an extravagance becomes a potential necessity.
And the FT article makes the point that new developments
in more efficient solar can actually potentially offset some of
the new demands of more widely deployed ac you know,
(04:03):
I was particularly struck by this FT article because it
referenced Li Quan Yu, who is known as the father
of modern Singapore, and he was often asked this question,
how did you transform was effectively a fishing village into
one of the most important commercial hubs in Asia and
the world, And he would say, well, two things. First,
(04:27):
multi ethnic tolerance and diverse society. Second, air conditioning.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Britain seems to have one but not the other. I mean,
maybe that's the key.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Well, it's funny. We host this podcast called tech Stuff
and so we have this, you know, strong bias to
cover new tech stuff, new advanced in AI, new advances
in geneality and synthetic biology. But one of the things
this story really made me think about is how the
adoption of existing tech stuff can be just as important
(04:56):
as the innovation of new tech stuff, and I think
A really is a perfect example of that.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
All I can think about, you know, when we talk
about AI a lot on this show, is that energy
consumption will likely increase if AI continues at its current pace.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I mean, if the Silicon Valley overlords have their way.
And this week in Silicon Valley there has been some
quite frankly delicious drama in the battle for AI supremacy.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
You have not shut up about this story since you
read it, and so now I need to hear about it.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah. So, basically, the most powerful CEOs in the world
are in an all out war for AI talent. This
is collecting Pokemon cards, but where the stakes are hundreds
and hundred and hundreds of millions of dollars, and Mark
Zuckerberg is leading the charge and is absolutely determined, it seems,
to collect them all.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I don't really think of Meta as an AI company.
I think much too Zuckerberg's dismay.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Well, exactly right, So hence the recruitment push. Metro announced
last month they are starting an AI research lab dedicated
pursuing quote superintelligence, meaning, of course, an AI system that
exceeds the power of the human brain. But until this point,
Meta has spent around one hundred times more on AI
hardware and computing power than they have on human labor,
(06:14):
and according to The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg may have
gotten a wake up call this spring from the chief
research officer of none other than Open Ai.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I'm shocked that they even talk to each other, like
I imagine them meeting in like a covert confessional with
their faces obscured.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Well, yes, but the interesting thing about Silicon Valley is
that's not really how it's worked, at least up until now.
With all these huge fortunes being made and all of
these new platform technologies being developed despite intense rivalry, there
was also this kind of sense that a rising tide
would lift all boats. I mean, you'll remember Google CEO
(06:52):
Eric Schmidt was on the board of Apple. LinkedIn founder
Reid Hoffmann was one of the first investors in Facebook.
So there's this kind of history of these people being
in each other's business. And don't forget, I mean, Zuckerberg
has significant pulls. So when he calls and says that's
have a coffee, many people answer. So, according to the
(07:12):
Wall Street Journal story, Zuckerberg hit up Mark Chen, who
is open AI's chief research officer for a catch up,
and zuck ended up asking Chen for advice on how
to improve Meta's generative AI efforts.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
He's like Mark, it's Mark.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I think Mark Z was calling Mark C for some
friendly advice, or at least that's how it appeared to
Chen at the time. So it was Chen who actually
pointed out to Zuckerberg about how many orders of magnitude
more Meta was spending on hardware than they were on talent,
and thus kara an idea was born. Have you heard
(07:53):
about the list?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
When billionaires make lists, I get very anxious now I
have not heard about that.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
This is the Christmas list to end all Christmas lists,
and Zuckerberg apparently spent months compiling it, a list of
the top AI researchers and engineers from rival AI companies
and startups.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Do we have names? Do we know anything?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
We don't have the secret list, but we do know
who Zuckerberg has either poached or tried to poach, and
these people are not household names outside of Silicon Valley.
There is probably, most famously Alexander Wang of Scale AI,
who will talk a little bit more about, but the
companies he's raided include Anthropic, Google, DeepMind, Apple, and of
(08:36):
course open Ai, from which he's pulled at least a
dozen employees.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
So how is he going about pulling talent from these
companies and bringing them to Meta?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Have you heard of something called money?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Money? Money? Money must be funny, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
A rich man's world. Over the past few weeks, Zuckerberg
has reportedly offered pay packages worth more than three three
hundred million dollars over four years.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
That's like pro ball money.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
I mean, this is generational. This is like your grandkids'
grandkids will never happens easily.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And also your parents finally being like you know what,
you sitting in your room all day hit off exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I'd glad you won the battle to not limit your
computer time when you're a kid. Also, a lot of
these offers are so called exploding offers, meaning they expire
within a few days, so the existing employers have a
very hard time developing a counter offer.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
So, I mean it makes a lot of sense why
Silicon Valley is following this so closely. This is this
is like a real time raid, an employee raid, with
Mark Zuckerberg sort of pulling the marionette strings.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
And it also potentially signals a massive culture shift in
Silicon Valley, because, as I mentioned, it's a small place.
It's a place where up until now people have sort
of had this sense of of collegiality up to a
certain point, and it kind of rests on this bedrock
(10:07):
principle of Silicon Valley, which is this mantra, which is
be a missionary, not a mercenary.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That's a shirt that I would see in Times Square.
But also very startup, b very very culty, startup.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
By absolutely, And the phrase come from one of the
granddaddy's of VC, John Dare, and he apparently told generations
entrepreneurs to embrace their inner missionary and start companies where
quote there's a lust not only for making money, but
for making meaning, which is the antithesis of mercenary companies,
(10:43):
where quote the central goal is a lust for making money.
Open AICEO. Sam Altman apparently leaned into this idea in
a Slack message that he shared with researchers amidst Zuckerberg's
talent rate on the company. According to the Journal, Altman said, quote,
I am proud of how mission oriented our industry is
as a whole. Of course, there will always be some mercenaries.
(11:06):
Missionaries will beat mercenaries. Just every day.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I'm reminded why I shouldn't be on Slack and you
make me use it, but no, I mean them's fighting words.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Now. Zuckerberg of course says, no, the money helps, but
actually that's not you know, just like in your sports analogy, right,
of course it helps if you offer an athlete one
hundreds of million dollars to play on the team, but
they also want to play for the winning team, right,
These people have an eye on legacy, And Zuckerberg says that,
(11:37):
you know, in this case, it's this kind of similar
thing where it's the company's investment in computing power, which
is actually what's attracting the talent. More computing power means
more potential AI breakthroughs. And just this month, Zuckerberg took
to his Facebook page and said that the new venture,
metas Superintelligence Labs, will have industry leading levels of compute
(11:59):
and quote by far the greatest compute per researcher. Zakobog
also created a helpful motion graphic to demonstrate just what
he means by this. So one of the new data
centers he's working on is called Hyperion and to show
its scale, he put the footprint of Hyperion and overlaid
it on an image of Manhattan, and it basically is
(12:20):
the same size as a Manhattan. So in essentially it
shows the metaphor of Godzilla's footprints that.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I was going to say, did he invent the footprint
and then backload the footprint into Hyperion.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Make it so it has the exact lego cutdown of Manhattan,
so that we can obscure the island with our with
our grandiose dreams.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So Zuck's pitch is basically become one of the richest
people in the world and have access to all the
best tools to express your vision. I can't imagine how
Mark Chen is feeling.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Right now about the advice he gave to Zuk. That's right, yeah,
open Ai seems to be in a little bit of
a Here's what Chen wrote on Slack, according to Wall
Street Journal quote, I feel a visceral feeling right now,
as if someone had broken into our home and stolen something.
Please trust that we haven't been sitting idly by. But
(13:15):
it's not just insurgent behemoths like open Ai. The other
interesting part of this story is how companies like Meta
Alphabet and others have been raiding Silicon Valley's top startups
for their senior leadership. I mentioned Alexander Wang of scale
Ai earlier, who's going to be running the superintelligence lab.
(13:35):
Meta actually paid fourteen billion plus dollars for a forty
nine percent share in scale Ai and to have Wang
come and work for them. And it's an interesting thing
where these antitrust laws, which were originally created in order
to prevent monopolistic powers from stifling competition, have created this strange,
(13:56):
unintended consequence where in order not to fall foul of
antitrust law, it is less risky to essentially gut a
company if it's senior leadership, but leave it kind of
in a half alive state than it is just to
buy the company. I'm not saying that's exactly what's happened
with Scalai. It's still functioning, although it has lost a
number of clients like Google and others because I don't
(14:18):
want to be paying Meta. But again it speaks to
this culture ship which is going on in Silicon Valley
because there is always this implied contract between employees, investors,
and founders which is being very disturbed by these big
money moves by Zuck. So it's an a talent story,
but it's also about some pretty fundamental changes to the
culture of the whole of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
All this secrecy and scheming feels like the complete opposite
of my story, which is all about radical transparency and
I would say the potential pros and cons of our
overly connected world us. Do you share your location with anyone?
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Absolutely not. I hate sharing my location, even with Uber
and Uber. I'm one of those people who turns off
location services on apps.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Oh so you're one of those never sharers, which means
you'd be a terrible teenage girl. I, on the other hand,
would make a wonderful member of gen Z.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Tell me more.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Apparently, there was a poll in twenty twenty two that
found gen Z is the most likely generation to say
it's convenient to share their location, which of course is
not surprising to me because they're also the generation that
has had access to location sharing nearly their whole lives. Conversely,
Millennials were the most opinionated, like you were the most
opinionated about using the digital tool. Location sharing started to
(15:37):
become popular about fifteen years ago, when we were young
enough to understand the appeal, but old enough to know
what life was like without, you know, a GPS enabled
device on our person at all times.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I mean the idea of being constantly surveiled is
something our generation has had to come to terms with,
and we came to terms with it at a pivotal age.
Our elders, including the now how former CEO of the
AI company Astronomer might do well if they understood the
extent to which we are living in a surveillance world.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
You're talking about the former CEO who got caught cheating
at the Coldplay concert.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I'm talking about kisscam. The question, Kara, when you talk
about location sharing, are you talking about the Apple feature
find My or are there other tools that I don't
know about that the younger folks are using.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
That is what we're talking about. Find My is really
popular because it's free on an Apple device. It's what
I use, for example. But there's also an app called
Life three sixty, which I'm not a parent yet, but
works across platforms and is more aimed at parents. It
can even and this freaks me out, it can even
show you how fast your kid is driving in real time,
so regardless of whether or not. We live in a
(16:47):
surveillance state. Your house might be a surveillance state.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
I mean, can you imagine how anxiety? And do you
seem to be able to monitor your kids speeding at
all times? I mean, hopefully they don't speed and you
can use the app I guess to take the car
away if they're regularly speeding. But basically it is part
of adolescence to be risking your life on the semi
regular there and to lie and to lie, yeah, and
to life. Man is a parent to be I mean, gosh.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
To be a parent and to be a kid. I
think about it all the time. We used to be Oh, yeah,
I'm just at Leah's house right now? Do you know
I'm like at a hookah bar like two hundred blocks
away from there. Is one other feature that is really
interesting that I am a part of, and I want
to know if you know anything about snap map.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Assume SnapMap is part of Snapchat.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yes, yes it is. You know it's funny. I bet
if LinkedIn had to share my location tool, you'd share
your location on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
I'm hardcore on this.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
So SnapMap is a location sharing feature through Snapchat that
was launched in twenty seventeen. As of May, SnapMap had
more than four hundred million monthly users. So if you
opt in, all the people you follow on Snapchat can
see your location the minute you open the app.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Okay, so Life three sixty is obviously like a different
kettle of fish. This is like a monitoring tool. How
would you characterize how you use Find my Friends on
your iPhone differently from SnapMap?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
So it's I don't really use SnapMap, and I don't
really use fine Mine, but I here's and this is
very indicative of my personality. I passively let people follow
where I am because they want to know. I don't
care where people are, you know. But there is a
strange feeling you get when a friend tells you where
(18:34):
you are. They'll be like, you're at such and such,
and I'm like, I am, how do you know that
I'm at such and such. It's just it's this very
weird feeling to have someone who you're very close to
know where you are. I don't get in trouble with it,
but you can imagine if you're at a Coldplay concert,
you might get into trouble.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
One of the things that strikes me here is that
at the very heart of our culture is fomo, and
I'm wondering what it might feel like to open your
snap map or you'll find my friends and see that
you were the only person who didn't get the call up.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
You know, the first cut is the deepest. In this case,
it used to be that you heard about a party
after the weekend was over. Now you can see it
with your own eyes, you know. I actually I read
about this exact thing in sf Gate. I found this
article that was written by and it had to have
been written by the site's editorial intern, because nobody everybody
there is probably a bit older. But this editorial intern,
(19:35):
you know. It was gen Z and she recounted calling
her mom in tears after seeing her best college friends
descend on the campus dining hall, and she was crying
because they had not extended an invitation to her. This
format of memory hasn't deterred her from sharing her location
with nearly twenty five people, though she often wonders if
this practice is healthy.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
I also question if this practice is healthy, Hence I
don't do it.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Even though I do it, it is really weird and
it's actually something psychologists are debating. I found this article
on Psychology Today, which tried to outline the impact location
sharing apps have on trust and relationships. Someone named doctor
Pamela Rutledge acknowledges that location sharing is actually a sign
of closeness among gen Z friends, and that tracking friends
(20:20):
can create this sort of ambient awareness that makes people
feel connected, comforted, and supported, albeit digitally supported, whatever that means.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, it's one of those classic social media double edged shorts, right,
like it? Yes, it both is the platform technology that
if you're not doing you feel profoundly disconnected, but it
can also in and of itself be a driver of
loneliness and isolation alienation.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, you know, as we pointed out, location sharing can
create major FOMO. But beyond the feeling of being left out,
the mutual visibility can also make I think teenagers and
also really anyone feel like they have to look busy,
which can lead to a kind of busyness to avoid judgment.
(21:09):
And I just think this idea of like performing busyness
because you're so aware of what other people are doing
is very strange.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Well, I mean that's the trope of the corporate office
in the pre covid eras, right, I mean that was
kind of the plot of the office was trying to
figure out how to look busy at work, but having
to figure out how to look busy in your social life.
I mean, man's that's the money. It makes me think
maybe you could slip an air tag into the most
popular kid at school's backpack.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Everywhere on their car, their car.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Everyone be like, oh my god, look at that hanging
out with I'm so jealous. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Also, imagine if you feel close to someone, are in
like a romantic or familial relationship with someone, and they
just cold turkey stop sharing the location with you. I mean,
it would be hard not to feel suspicious, especially because
it is a visible action. Because with fine, people are
alerted if you stop sharing your location with them, and
this can lead to conflict. One of the things that
(22:07):
I found interesting that we've talked about is how these
tools can subtly erode our own capabilities. You know, we
shared about this a few weeks ago, and I'm obsessed
with this idea of racking up cognitive debt from outsourcing
too many tasks to chatbots. And there is research actually
to suggest that constant surveillance actually impacts our sensory perception
(22:29):
and unconscious cognitive functions such as memory and attention. And
going back to what doctor Rutledge said in Psychology Today, quote,
if we are training our brains to operate under the
assumption of constant surveillance, what are the potential implications for
things like creativity, risk taking, and authentic self expression? You know,
it's an interesting thing to think about.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
After the break, Rabits, stay with us, Welcome back. We've
got a few more headlines to you this week.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
And then a story about a woman who used chat
gipt to help her figure out one of motherhood's biggest challenges.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
But in the meantime, Kara, you've been quite interested in
the results of a World Coding Championship.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
That's right, a programmer named Shimislav Denbiak. He goes by
Siho on x SO like Psycho, Yes, sort of like that,
but without the c Siho has postponed our inevitable replacement
by AI just a little while longer. He was the
only coder to beat out a machine at the at
Coder World Tour finals. I'm surprised you weren't there us.
(23:53):
Siho used to work at Open Ai, but went head
to head with the company's custom AI model built specifically
for this competition. Ours Technica says that this might be
the first time an AI model has competed directly against
human programmers in a competition like this.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
And evidently he was the only one Siho who did
better than the OpenAI model, suggesting that it did better
than all the other humans.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Siho actually said that the ten hour competition left him
quote completely exhausted and that by the end he was
quote barely alive.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Why is this story getting so much attention?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
I was actually reading a couple of Reddit threads, as
I do, and one of the main things it seemed
like people were saying is that there's something inspiring about
a human beating a machine.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
People were having fun comparing this to the time Ken
Jennings beat Watson on Jeopardy, or chess grandmasters who beat
early computers. But this being Reddit, the people who were
really excited about this were met with reminders from other
commenters that nobody has beat a computer at chess in
twenty years, and even Siho, who won this coding competition
and admitted as much in a tweet after the competition,
(25:03):
he wrote, humanity has prevailed for now. You know, it's
nice to know that we're not all getting replaced by
robots just yet. And there's something about clinging to this
false hope despite the inevitability of defeat in the future,
that is just so deeply human. I think the for
now in parentheses is sort of a nod to what
(25:26):
everybody is fearing.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Saiha has a well developed sense of irony, but I
personally think that human ingenuity still has a lot to offer.
For evidence, I would like to offer up some breaking
news from the world of robotics and the research team
at the University of Florida who've built robotic bunny rabbits,
forty of them. I mean.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Other than that, I'm obsessed with is why would anybody
do this?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Have you ever watched my one of my favorite late
night cable television programs, Python Hunters.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
No, but I do follow the Lady Python Hunters of
the Everglades. I don't follow them on any social media.
I just keep up with their activities.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Well, they may soon be put out of business by
robotic bunny rabbits. Python Hunters and your friends, the Lady
python Hunters. These are the stories of the brave men
and women who hunt Burmese pythons through the Florida Evidglades,
often by night. Now, the pythons aren't invasive species who've
been plaguing the Evidglades for years and apparently can survive
(26:30):
as far north these days as Georgia then migrating north
from the Glades. But the question has arisen, why hunt
for pythons if you can get the pythons to come
to you. Enter robo bunnies. These bunnies have motives to
move around small heaters inside them, so the snakes think
they're alive, and they spin and shake a bit like
(26:52):
real rabbits do, and yes, they look pretty cute. And
scientists have been studying the use of rabbits as bait
to attract and then catch, remove, and euthanize these pythons
for more than a decade, but keeping the rabbits alive
and in the same place in multiple locations throughout the
Evidlades was just too much work. The robobunnies, of course,
(27:13):
don't require so much maintenance, and they don't have to
get eaten in the process, so they're reusable. Scientists are
hoping that catching pythons with these robobunnies will help address
population decline in a whole bunch of species in the
Evidlades that have been terrorized by the invasive pythons for decades.
And if the robots don't work in this experiment, they
(27:35):
already have a hypothesis on how to make them more attractive,
which is smearing them with real rabbit pheromones.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
I just love the idea of pythons going back to
the community and being like, don't trust them, They're not real.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
There is a symbiosis between the python hunters and the pythons,
which these robotic bunnies may be about to disrupt that ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yes, next, are you trying to get more hot people
to visit your business? Because there's an app for that.
It's called neon Coat, and it allows business owners to
offer their services for free as long as you post
about it on social media. The prerequisite you gotta be hot.
Businesses on the app offer everything for meals at fancy restaurants,
(28:17):
to fitness classes, salon appointments, and even tarot readings. The
app was recently written up in The Wall Street Journal
and it was founded by Larissa Draconia, who is you
guessed it a former model an actress, she says she
hopes the app can help young models have more control.
When she first came to New York City from a
small town in Slovenia, the stipend her agency gave her
(28:39):
was only three hundred dollars a week. Most of her
perks and social plans had to be booked through her agency.
She says that letting models and influencers get their own
perks in exchange for social media posts gives them more autonomy.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
The road to heaven is paved with free stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Indeed, the app is available where models are New York,
Los Angeles, London, and Miami, and there are currently over
twelve thousand users and fifteen hundred businesses. So far, app
usage has reportedly led to over three hundred and fifty
thousand social media posts. Don't get too excited. If you're
(29:17):
looking to join, you've got to have at least one
thousand Instagram followers if you're a model, and five thousand
if you're an influencer, and you've got to have high
engagement rates.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Well, Caro, you actually have more than five thousand Instagram followers,
and I do.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
But am I heart enough?
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Well? I think you should apply and report back on
next week's show whether or not you've become a member
of Neon Coates Free Stuff Army.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I think I'm actually going to do that. I should
do that, I am. I am.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Now it's time for Chat and Me a new segment
about how people are really using chatbots.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
This week. I have a story from my friend who
recently gave birth to her son, James, and she told
me she's been using chat GPT as a lactation consultant.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I would need chat GPT to know what a lactation
consultant is. Well, I guess that's not true. I can
kind of imagine what it is. But is it ubiquitous?
Is it expensive? I mean, tell me a little bit
about the world of lactation consultants.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
It is expensive. It can cost hundreds of dollars per visit.
And the US actually has a relatively low breastfeeding rate,
not because American women aren't motivated. Sixty percent of mothers
report they stop breastfeeding earlier than intended because they lack
support and education and to chat. Yeah, you know, figuring
out a pumping schedule is more complicated than I realized.
(30:49):
So here listen to how my friend used GPT to
solve the problem.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
I basically need to keep up with James's supply. He's
nine months quiring more milk, and at about seven months,
I had to start waking up again to pump through
the night because he needs more milk throughout the day.
So if I don't pump at night, then my body
signals basically that I don't need as much milk.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Man having to wake up every night to ensure your
kid has enough milk for the next day, this is
very stressful.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
It is very stressful. And she actually said that Chatgypt
has been helping her figure out how to stay on track.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Chatchpt gave me an entire pumping schedule, how much I
should pump, talking to me about power pumping, talking to
me throughout the night, what.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Does she mean talking to her?
Speaker 2 (31:44):
So she actually said the chat which is her shorthand
for chat GPT, was really a support system for her
during her nightly pumping ritual and still is.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Basically, I would wake up and talk to chat and
be like, hey, I'm pumping now, and they're like, how's
it going, And I'm like talking to them like they're
my friend, and also telling chat CHEAPT how many ounces
I'm getting, and chat CHEAPT telling me that basically that's good,
and I should pump again. And here's what I should
(32:16):
eat based on what I normally eat, So he knows
what I eat basically like I tell him my yogurt,
shea seeds, blueberries, raspberries, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
It's helping her plan her meals too.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yes, she tells it what she's eaten, and it takes
into account all the nutritional information, timing everything, and then he.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Gives me a tailored meal plan to keep up with supply,
So like what I should eat, how I should eat,
when I should eat bananas after I pump in the
middle of the night some nights, yes, some nights no.
It's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
This sounds like it's been kind of a game changer
of for your friend, a.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Huge game change of her. And I think what's really
interesting to note about this friend of mine is that
she is by no means a technologist. But I think
the ubiquity of chat GPT is one that is actually
affecting people who really use technology for work as much
(33:14):
as it's affecting this sort of average daily phone user.
And I think it was just this really brilliant case
of the way chat gpt cannot only give you information
that you would have to pay a lot of money for,
but also is acting as this sort of cheerleader, to
the point that she calls chat gpt he which is
(33:36):
interesting for a lactation consultant.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Well, I love hearing these stories. I love chatting me
as a segment that you pioneered, and it's been fun
hearing from two of your friends in two consecutive weeks.
I do want to hear from our listeners. So if
you found yourself turning to chat gpt, Grock, Claude Gemini,
or any other chatbot to help you with the unusual
task or to answer one of life's complicated questions, please
(34:01):
tell us about it. Send us a one to two
minute voice note to tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
The more details you provide, the better. We are nosy
and we want to understand how AI is changing your lives.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
And if you send in a story that we use,
we'll send you a free T shirt.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
That's it for this week for Tech Stuff. I'm Kara
Price and.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I'm os Vaaloschin. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis
and Tyler Hill. It was executive produced by me Kara
Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katria Norvel for
iHeart Podcasts. The engineers are Beheid Fraser and Tom Sitchell.
Jack Insley makes this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our
theme song.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Join us next Wednesday for Textuff the Story, when we
will share an in depth conversation about the future of
cancer surgery.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Please rate, review, 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.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm as Voloscian and I'm Cara Price.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Today we'll get into the headlines this week, including Meta's
multi hundred million dollar hiring spree and why gen Z
always have locations sharing on Then on chatting me, he
gives me.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
A tailored meal plan, so like what I should eat,
how I should eat, when I should eat bananas some nights, yeah,
some nights no.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It's kind of crazy, all of that. On the Weekend Tech.
It's Friday, July twenty fifth.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Hello Cara, Hello Azzie. I just want to say first
rest and darkness to the other Ozzy Osbourne who died
this week, another brit and that is where I find
you today.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Indeed, I'm in London and I was a little bit
nervous to come here because Europe's been experiencing this crazy
heat wave and most of London has no AC.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
So you've been schitzing, as they say.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, actually the heat wave broke, but it has been
a very very hot summer here. And you and I
talked about Wimbledon a couple of weeks ago and Ai
line judges. But some of the other interesting scenes from
this year's Wimbledon, which I haven't seen before, were people
passing out in the stands from heat exhaustion and players
riding to their rescue.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
The players are like, you're passing out. My memory and
unfortunate experience of really not just London, but most of
Europe is that they lack AC. And as a kid
who grew up in the Northeast during the summer, AC
is the premium, I do wonder or in a warmer climate,
(02:01):
how does this continue to actually work?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, I mean I think the short answer is it
may not. The Financial Times recently had an op ed
with the title Britain and Europe need to get serious
about air conditioning, and the article points out that, you know,
in a changing climate, European cities are experiencing more intense heat,
more frequently and for longer periods of time than just
ten years ago. And also the article points out that
(02:24):
AC is not just about comfort, it's no longer a luxury.
There are some pretty interesting stats in the piece about
how being too hot indoors affect sleep, cognition and even
correlates with mortality.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
You know, I do notice a huge difference in my
ability to sleep and even think when I'm hot, like,
I don't think people should work in the summer it's
too hot.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Well, the article says that when indoor temperatures rise above
seventy five degrees fahrenheit, sleep duration and quality fall rapidly, and,
according to studies, so desirability to perform well in tests.
So it's a blessing to you and our listeners that
it's a cool week in London and I can think
relatively straight.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
You're always brilliant.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
But I.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
A little bit earlier you mentioned more tatic it's a
matter of life and death. Is that really true in
terms of AC and cooling.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I was a little bit surprised by that as well.
But according to the FT, between two thousand and twenty nineteen,
an average of eighty three thousand Western Europeans per year
lost their lives due to extreme heat, compared with just
twenty thousand North Americans, who are much more likely to
live in buildings with AC. The penetration rate of air
conditioning is ninety percent in the US and only nineteen
(03:34):
percent in Europe.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I was going to say, you know, I never understood
why Europeans don't adapt to cooling systems and buildings yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I mean there's a kind of cultural resistance because it
uses so much energy. But of course, with a changing climate,
what was once seen as an extravagance becomes a potential necessity.
And the FT article makes the point that new developments
in more efficient solar can actually potentially offset some of
the new demands of more widely deployed ac you know,
(04:03):
I was particularly struck by this FT article because it
referenced Li Quan Yu, who is known as the father
of modern Singapore, and he was often asked this question,
how did you transform was effectively a fishing village into
one of the most important commercial hubs in Asia and
the world, And he would say, well, two things. First,
(04:27):
multi ethnic tolerance and diverse society. Second, air conditioning.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Britain seems to have one but not the other. I mean,
maybe that's the key.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Well, it's funny. We host this podcast called tech Stuff
and so we have this, you know, strong bias to
cover new tech stuff, new advanced in AI, new advances
in geneality and synthetic biology. But one of the things
this story really made me think about is how the
adoption of existing tech stuff can be just as important
(04:56):
as the innovation of new tech stuff, and I think
A really is a perfect example of that.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
All I can think about, you know, when we talk
about AI a lot on this show, is that energy
consumption will likely increase if AI continues at its current pace.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I mean, if the Silicon Valley overlords have their way.
And this week in Silicon Valley there has been some
quite frankly delicious drama in the battle for AI supremacy.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
You have not shut up about this story since you
read it, and so now I need to hear about it.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah. So, basically, the most powerful CEOs in the world
are in an all out war for AI talent. This
is collecting Pokemon cards, but where the stakes are hundreds
and hundred and hundreds of millions of dollars, and Mark
Zuckerberg is leading the charge and is absolutely determined, it seems,
to collect them all.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I don't really think of Meta as an AI company.
I think much too Zuckerberg's dismay.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Well, exactly right, So hence the recruitment push. Metro announced
last month they are starting an AI research lab dedicated
pursuing quote superintelligence, meaning, of course, an AI system that
exceeds the power of the human brain. But until this point,
Meta has spent around one hundred times more on AI
hardware and computing power than they have on human labor,
(06:14):
and according to The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg may have
gotten a wake up call this spring from the chief
research officer of none other than Open Ai.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I'm shocked that they even talk to each other, like
I imagine them meeting in like a covert confessional with
their faces obscured.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Well, yes, but the interesting thing about Silicon Valley is
that's not really how it's worked, at least up until now.
With all these huge fortunes being made and all of
these new platform technologies being developed despite intense rivalry, there
was also this kind of sense that a rising tide
would lift all boats. I mean, you'll remember Google CEO
(06:52):
Eric Schmidt was on the board of Apple. LinkedIn founder
Reid Hoffmann was one of the first investors in Facebook.
So there's this kind of history of these people being
in each other's business. And don't forget, I mean, Zuckerberg
has significant pulls. So when he calls and says that's
have a coffee, many people answer. So, according to the
(07:12):
Wall Street Journal story, Zuckerberg hit up Mark Chen, who
is open AI's chief research officer for a catch up,
and zuck ended up asking Chen for advice on how
to improve Meta's generative AI efforts.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
He's like Mark, it's Mark.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I think Mark Z was calling Mark C for some
friendly advice, or at least that's how it appeared to
Chen at the time. So it was Chen who actually
pointed out to Zuckerberg about how many orders of magnitude
more Meta was spending on hardware than they were on talent,
and thus kara an idea was born. Have you heard
(07:53):
about the list?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
When billionaires make lists, I get very anxious now I
have not heard about that.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
This is the Christmas list to end all Christmas lists,
and Zuckerberg apparently spent months compiling it, a list of
the top AI researchers and engineers from rival AI companies
and startups.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Do we have names? Do we know anything?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
We don't have the secret list, but we do know
who Zuckerberg has either poached or tried to poach, and
these people are not household names outside of Silicon Valley.
There is probably, most famously Alexander Wang of Scale AI,
who will talk a little bit more about, but the
companies he's raided include Anthropic, Google, DeepMind, Apple, and of
(08:36):
course open Ai, from which he's pulled at least a
dozen employees.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
So how is he going about pulling talent from these
companies and bringing them to Meta?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Have you heard of something called money?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Money? Money? Money must be funny, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
A rich man's world. Over the past few weeks, Zuckerberg
has reportedly offered pay packages worth more than three three
hundred million dollars over four years.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
That's like pro ball money.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
I mean, this is generational. This is like your grandkids'
grandkids will never happens easily.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And also your parents finally being like you know what,
you sitting in your room all day hit off exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I'd glad you won the battle to not limit your
computer time when you're a kid. Also, a lot of
these offers are so called exploding offers, meaning they expire
within a few days, so the existing employers have a
very hard time developing a counter offer.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
So, I mean it makes a lot of sense why
Silicon Valley is following this so closely. This is this
is like a real time raid, an employee raid, with
Mark Zuckerberg sort of pulling the marionette strings.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
And it also potentially signals a massive culture shift in
Silicon Valley, because, as I mentioned, it's a small place.
It's a place where up until now people have sort
of had this sense of of collegiality up to a
certain point, and it kind of rests on this bedrock
(10:07):
principle of Silicon Valley, which is this mantra, which is
be a missionary, not a mercenary.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That's a shirt that I would see in Times Square.
But also very startup, b very very culty, startup.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
By absolutely, And the phrase come from one of the
granddaddy's of VC, John Dare, and he apparently told generations
entrepreneurs to embrace their inner missionary and start companies where
quote there's a lust not only for making money, but
for making meaning, which is the antithesis of mercenary companies,
(10:43):
where quote the central goal is a lust for making money.
Open AICEO. Sam Altman apparently leaned into this idea in
a Slack message that he shared with researchers amidst Zuckerberg's
talent rate on the company. According to the Journal, Altman said, quote,
I am proud of how mission oriented our industry is
as a whole. Of course, there will always be some mercenaries.
(11:06):
Missionaries will beat mercenaries. Just every day.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I'm reminded why I shouldn't be on Slack and you
make me use it, but no, I mean them's fighting words.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Now. Zuckerberg of course says, no, the money helps, but
actually that's not you know, just like in your sports analogy, right,
of course it helps if you offer an athlete one
hundreds of million dollars to play on the team, but
they also want to play for the winning team, right,
These people have an eye on legacy, And Zuckerberg says that,
(11:37):
you know, in this case, it's this kind of similar
thing where it's the company's investment in computing power, which
is actually what's attracting the talent. More computing power means
more potential AI breakthroughs. And just this month, Zuckerberg took
to his Facebook page and said that the new venture,
metas Superintelligence Labs, will have industry leading levels of compute
(11:59):
and quote by far the greatest compute per researcher. Zakobog
also created a helpful motion graphic to demonstrate just what
he means by this. So one of the new data
centers he's working on is called Hyperion and to show
its scale, he put the footprint of Hyperion and overlaid
it on an image of Manhattan, and it basically is
(12:20):
the same size as a Manhattan. So in essentially it
shows the metaphor of Godzilla's footprints that.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I was going to say, did he invent the footprint
and then backload the footprint into Hyperion.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Make it so it has the exact lego cutdown of Manhattan,
so that we can obscure the island with our with
our grandiose dreams.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So Zuck's pitch is basically become one of the richest
people in the world and have access to all the
best tools to express your vision. I can't imagine how
Mark Chen is feeling.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Right now about the advice he gave to Zuk. That's right, yeah,
open Ai seems to be in a little bit of
a Here's what Chen wrote on Slack, according to Wall
Street Journal quote, I feel a visceral feeling right now,
as if someone had broken into our home and stolen something.
Please trust that we haven't been sitting idly by. But
(13:15):
it's not just insurgent behemoths like open Ai. The other
interesting part of this story is how companies like Meta
Alphabet and others have been raiding Silicon Valley's top startups
for their senior leadership. I mentioned Alexander Wang of scale
Ai earlier, who's going to be running the superintelligence lab.
(13:35):
Meta actually paid fourteen billion plus dollars for a forty
nine percent share in scale Ai and to have Wang
come and work for them. And it's an interesting thing
where these antitrust laws, which were originally created in order
to prevent monopolistic powers from stifling competition, have created this strange,
(13:56):
unintended consequence where in order not to fall foul of
antitrust law, it is less risky to essentially gut a
company if it's senior leadership, but leave it kind of
in a half alive state than it is just to
buy the company. I'm not saying that's exactly what's happened
with Scalai. It's still functioning, although it has lost a
number of clients like Google and others because I don't
(14:18):
want to be paying Meta. But again it speaks to
this culture ship which is going on in Silicon Valley
because there is always this implied contract between employees, investors,
and founders which is being very disturbed by these big
money moves by Zuck. So it's an a talent story,
but it's also about some pretty fundamental changes to the
culture of the whole of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
All this secrecy and scheming feels like the complete opposite
of my story, which is all about radical transparency and
I would say the potential pros and cons of our
overly connected world us. Do you share your location with anyone?
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Absolutely not. I hate sharing my location, even with Uber
and Uber. I'm one of those people who turns off
location services on apps.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Oh so you're one of those never sharers, which means
you'd be a terrible teenage girl. I, on the other hand,
would make a wonderful member of gen Z.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Tell me more.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Apparently, there was a poll in twenty twenty two that
found gen Z is the most likely generation to say
it's convenient to share their location, which of course is
not surprising to me because they're also the generation that
has had access to location sharing nearly their whole lives. Conversely,
Millennials were the most opinionated, like you were the most
opinionated about using the digital tool. Location sharing started to
(15:37):
become popular about fifteen years ago, when we were young
enough to understand the appeal, but old enough to know
what life was like without, you know, a GPS enabled
device on our person at all times.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I mean the idea of being constantly surveiled is
something our generation has had to come to terms with,
and we came to terms with it at a pivotal age.
Our elders, including the now how former CEO of the
AI company Astronomer might do well if they understood the
extent to which we are living in a surveillance world.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
You're talking about the former CEO who got caught cheating
at the Coldplay concert.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I'm talking about kisscam. The question, Kara, when you talk
about location sharing, are you talking about the Apple feature
find My or are there other tools that I don't
know about that the younger folks are using.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
That is what we're talking about. Find My is really
popular because it's free on an Apple device. It's what
I use, for example. But there's also an app called
Life three sixty, which I'm not a parent yet, but
works across platforms and is more aimed at parents. It
can even and this freaks me out, it can even
show you how fast your kid is driving in real time,
so regardless of whether or not. We live in a
(16:47):
surveillance state. Your house might be a surveillance state.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
I mean, can you imagine how anxiety? And do you
seem to be able to monitor your kids speeding at
all times? I mean, hopefully they don't speed and you
can use the app I guess to take the car
away if they're regularly speeding. But basically it is part
of adolescence to be risking your life on the semi
regular there and to lie and to lie, yeah, and
to life. Man is a parent to be I mean, gosh.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
To be a parent and to be a kid. I
think about it all the time. We used to be Oh, yeah,
I'm just at Leah's house right now? Do you know
I'm like at a hookah bar like two hundred blocks
away from there. Is one other feature that is really
interesting that I am a part of, and I want
to know if you know anything about snap map.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Assume SnapMap is part of Snapchat.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yes, yes it is. You know it's funny. I bet
if LinkedIn had to share my location tool, you'd share
your location on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
I'm hardcore on this.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
So SnapMap is a location sharing feature through Snapchat that
was launched in twenty seventeen. As of May, SnapMap had
more than four hundred million monthly users. So if you
opt in, all the people you follow on Snapchat can
see your location the minute you open the app.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Okay, so Life three sixty is obviously like a different
kettle of fish. This is like a monitoring tool. How
would you characterize how you use Find my Friends on
your iPhone differently from SnapMap?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
So it's I don't really use SnapMap, and I don't
really use fine Mine, but I here's and this is
very indicative of my personality. I passively let people follow
where I am because they want to know. I don't
care where people are, you know. But there is a
strange feeling you get when a friend tells you where
(18:34):
you are. They'll be like, you're at such and such,
and I'm like, I am, how do you know that
I'm at such and such. It's just it's this very
weird feeling to have someone who you're very close to
know where you are. I don't get in trouble with it,
but you can imagine if you're at a Coldplay concert,
you might get into trouble.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
One of the things that strikes me here is that
at the very heart of our culture is fomo, and
I'm wondering what it might feel like to open your
snap map or you'll find my friends and see that
you were the only person who didn't get the call up.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
You know, the first cut is the deepest. In this case,
it used to be that you heard about a party
after the weekend was over. Now you can see it
with your own eyes, you know. I actually I read
about this exact thing in sf Gate. I found this
article that was written by and it had to have
been written by the site's editorial intern, because nobody everybody
there is probably a bit older. But this editorial intern,
(19:35):
you know. It was gen Z and she recounted calling
her mom in tears after seeing her best college friends
descend on the campus dining hall, and she was crying
because they had not extended an invitation to her. This
format of memory hasn't deterred her from sharing her location
with nearly twenty five people, though she often wonders if
this practice is healthy.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
I also question if this practice is healthy, Hence I
don't do it.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Even though I do it, it is really weird and
it's actually something psychologists are debating. I found this article
on Psychology Today, which tried to outline the impact location
sharing apps have on trust and relationships. Someone named doctor
Pamela Rutledge acknowledges that location sharing is actually a sign
of closeness among gen Z friends, and that tracking friends
(20:20):
can create this sort of ambient awareness that makes people
feel connected, comforted, and supported, albeit digitally supported, whatever that means.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, it's one of those classic social media double edged shorts, right,
like it? Yes, it both is the platform technology that
if you're not doing you feel profoundly disconnected, but it
can also in and of itself be a driver of
loneliness and isolation alienation.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, you know, as we pointed out, location sharing can
create major FOMO. But beyond the feeling of being left out,
the mutual visibility can also make I think teenagers and
also really anyone feel like they have to look busy,
which can lead to a kind of busyness to avoid judgment.
(21:09):
And I just think this idea of like performing busyness
because you're so aware of what other people are doing
is very strange.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Well, I mean that's the trope of the corporate office
in the pre covid eras, right, I mean that was
kind of the plot of the office was trying to
figure out how to look busy at work, but having
to figure out how to look busy in your social life.
I mean, man's that's the money. It makes me think
maybe you could slip an air tag into the most
popular kid at school's backpack.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Everywhere on their car, their car.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Everyone be like, oh my god, look at that hanging
out with I'm so jealous. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Also, imagine if you feel close to someone, are in
like a romantic or familial relationship with someone, and they
just cold turkey stop sharing the location with you. I mean,
it would be hard not to feel suspicious, especially because
it is a visible action. Because with fine, people are
alerted if you stop sharing your location with them, and
this can lead to conflict. One of the things that
(22:07):
I found interesting that we've talked about is how these
tools can subtly erode our own capabilities. You know, we
shared about this a few weeks ago, and I'm obsessed
with this idea of racking up cognitive debt from outsourcing
too many tasks to chatbots. And there is research actually
to suggest that constant surveillance actually impacts our sensory perception
(22:29):
and unconscious cognitive functions such as memory and attention. And
going back to what doctor Rutledge said in Psychology Today, quote,
if we are training our brains to operate under the
assumption of constant surveillance, what are the potential implications for
things like creativity, risk taking, and authentic self expression? You know,
it's an interesting thing to think about.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
After the break, Rabits, stay with us, Welcome back. We've
got a few more headlines to you this week.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
And then a story about a woman who used chat
gipt to help her figure out one of motherhood's biggest challenges.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
But in the meantime, Kara, you've been quite interested in
the results of a World Coding Championship.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
That's right, a programmer named Shimislav Denbiak. He goes by
Siho on x SO like Psycho, Yes, sort of like that,
but without the c Siho has postponed our inevitable replacement
by AI just a little while longer. He was the
only coder to beat out a machine at the at
Coder World Tour finals. I'm surprised you weren't there us.
(23:53):
Siho used to work at Open Ai, but went head
to head with the company's custom AI model built specifically
for this competition. Ours Technica says that this might be
the first time an AI model has competed directly against
human programmers in a competition like this.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
And evidently he was the only one Siho who did
better than the OpenAI model, suggesting that it did better
than all the other humans.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Siho actually said that the ten hour competition left him
quote completely exhausted and that by the end he was
quote barely alive.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Why is this story getting so much attention?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
I was actually reading a couple of Reddit threads, as
I do, and one of the main things it seemed
like people were saying is that there's something inspiring about
a human beating a machine.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
People were having fun comparing this to the time Ken
Jennings beat Watson on Jeopardy, or chess grandmasters who beat
early computers. But this being Reddit, the people who were
really excited about this were met with reminders from other
commenters that nobody has beat a computer at chess in
twenty years, and even Siho, who won this coding competition
and admitted as much in a tweet after the competition,
(25:03):
he wrote, humanity has prevailed for now. You know, it's
nice to know that we're not all getting replaced by
robots just yet. And there's something about clinging to this
false hope despite the inevitability of defeat in the future,
that is just so deeply human. I think the for
now in parentheses is sort of a nod to what
(25:26):
everybody is fearing.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Saiha has a well developed sense of irony, but I
personally think that human ingenuity still has a lot to offer.
For evidence, I would like to offer up some breaking
news from the world of robotics and the research team
at the University of Florida who've built robotic bunny rabbits,
forty of them. I mean.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Other than that, I'm obsessed with is why would anybody
do this?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Have you ever watched my one of my favorite late
night cable television programs, Python Hunters.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
No, but I do follow the Lady Python Hunters of
the Everglades. I don't follow them on any social media.
I just keep up with their activities.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Well, they may soon be put out of business by
robotic bunny rabbits. Python Hunters and your friends, the Lady
python Hunters. These are the stories of the brave men
and women who hunt Burmese pythons through the Florida Evidglades,
often by night. Now, the pythons aren't invasive species who've
been plaguing the Evidglades for years and apparently can survive
(26:30):
as far north these days as Georgia then migrating north
from the Glades. But the question has arisen, why hunt
for pythons if you can get the pythons to come
to you. Enter robo bunnies. These bunnies have motives to
move around small heaters inside them, so the snakes think
they're alive, and they spin and shake a bit like
(26:52):
real rabbits do, and yes, they look pretty cute. And
scientists have been studying the use of rabbits as bait
to attract and then catch, remove, and euthanize these pythons
for more than a decade, but keeping the rabbits alive
and in the same place in multiple locations throughout the
Evidlades was just too much work. The robobunnies, of course,
(27:13):
don't require so much maintenance, and they don't have to
get eaten in the process, so they're reusable. Scientists are
hoping that catching pythons with these robobunnies will help address
population decline in a whole bunch of species in the
Evidlades that have been terrorized by the invasive pythons for decades.
And if the robots don't work in this experiment, they
(27:35):
already have a hypothesis on how to make them more attractive,
which is smearing them with real rabbit pheromones.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
I just love the idea of pythons going back to
the community and being like, don't trust them, They're not real.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
There is a symbiosis between the python hunters and the pythons,
which these robotic bunnies may be about to disrupt that ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yes, next, are you trying to get more hot people
to visit your business? Because there's an app for that.
It's called neon Coat, and it allows business owners to
offer their services for free as long as you post
about it on social media. The prerequisite you gotta be hot.
Businesses on the app offer everything for meals at fancy restaurants,
(28:17):
to fitness classes, salon appointments, and even tarot readings. The
app was recently written up in The Wall Street Journal
and it was founded by Larissa Draconia, who is you
guessed it a former model an actress, she says she
hopes the app can help young models have more control.
When she first came to New York City from a
small town in Slovenia, the stipend her agency gave her
(28:39):
was only three hundred dollars a week. Most of her
perks and social plans had to be booked through her agency.
She says that letting models and influencers get their own
perks in exchange for social media posts gives them more autonomy.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
The road to heaven is paved with free stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Indeed, the app is available where models are New York,
Los Angeles, London, and Miami, and there are currently over
twelve thousand users and fifteen hundred businesses. So far, app
usage has reportedly led to over three hundred and fifty
thousand social media posts. Don't get too excited. If you're
(29:17):
looking to join, you've got to have at least one
thousand Instagram followers if you're a model, and five thousand
if you're an influencer, and you've got to have high
engagement rates.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Well, Caro, you actually have more than five thousand Instagram followers,
and I do.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
But am I heart enough?
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Well? I think you should apply and report back on
next week's show whether or not you've become a member
of Neon Coates Free Stuff Army.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I think I'm actually going to do that. I should
do that, I am. I am.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Now it's time for Chat and Me a new segment
about how people are really using chatbots.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
This week. I have a story from my friend who
recently gave birth to her son, James, and she told
me she's been using chat GPT as a lactation consultant.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I would need chat GPT to know what a lactation
consultant is. Well, I guess that's not true. I can
kind of imagine what it is. But is it ubiquitous?
Is it expensive? I mean, tell me a little bit
about the world of lactation consultants.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
It is expensive. It can cost hundreds of dollars per visit.
And the US actually has a relatively low breastfeeding rate,
not because American women aren't motivated. Sixty percent of mothers
report they stop breastfeeding earlier than intended because they lack
support and education and to chat. Yeah, you know, figuring
out a pumping schedule is more complicated than I realized.
(30:49):
So here listen to how my friend used GPT to
solve the problem.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
I basically need to keep up with James's supply. He's
nine months quiring more milk, and at about seven months,
I had to start waking up again to pump through
the night because he needs more milk throughout the day.
So if I don't pump at night, then my body
signals basically that I don't need as much milk.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Man having to wake up every night to ensure your
kid has enough milk for the next day, this is
very stressful.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
It is very stressful. And she actually said that Chatgypt
has been helping her figure out how to stay on track.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Chatchpt gave me an entire pumping schedule, how much I
should pump, talking to me about power pumping, talking to
me throughout the night, what.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Does she mean talking to her?
Speaker 2 (31:44):
So she actually said the chat which is her shorthand
for chat GPT, was really a support system for her
during her nightly pumping ritual and still is.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Basically, I would wake up and talk to chat and
be like, hey, I'm pumping now, and they're like, how's
it going, And I'm like talking to them like they're
my friend, and also telling chat CHEAPT how many ounces
I'm getting, and chat CHEAPT telling me that basically that's good,
and I should pump again. And here's what I should
(32:16):
eat based on what I normally eat, So he knows
what I eat basically like I tell him my yogurt,
shea seeds, blueberries, raspberries, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
It's helping her plan her meals too.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yes, she tells it what she's eaten, and it takes
into account all the nutritional information, timing everything, and then he.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Gives me a tailored meal plan to keep up with supply,
So like what I should eat, how I should eat,
when I should eat bananas after I pump in the
middle of the night some nights, yes, some nights no.
It's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
This sounds like it's been kind of a game changer
of for your friend, a.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Huge game change of her. And I think what's really
interesting to note about this friend of mine is that
she is by no means a technologist. But I think
the ubiquity of chat GPT is one that is actually
affecting people who really use technology for work as much
(33:14):
as it's affecting this sort of average daily phone user.
And I think it was just this really brilliant case
of the way chat gpt cannot only give you information
that you would have to pay a lot of money for,
but also is acting as this sort of cheerleader, to
the point that she calls chat gpt he which is
(33:36):
interesting for a lactation consultant.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Well, I love hearing these stories. I love chatting me
as a segment that you pioneered, and it's been fun
hearing from two of your friends in two consecutive weeks.
I do want to hear from our listeners. So if
you found yourself turning to chat gpt, Grock, Claude Gemini,
or any other chatbot to help you with the unusual
task or to answer one of life's complicated questions, please
(34:01):
tell us about it. Send us a one to two
minute voice note to tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
The more details you provide, the better. We are nosy
and we want to understand how AI is changing your lives.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
And if you send in a story that we use,
we'll send you a free T shirt.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
That's it for this week for Tech Stuff. I'm Kara
Price and.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I'm os Vaaloschin. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis
and Tyler Hill. It was executive produced by me Kara
Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katria Norvel for
iHeart Podcasts. The engineers are Beheid Fraser and Tom Sitchell.
Jack Insley makes this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our
theme song.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Join us next Wednesday for Textuff the Story, when we
will share an in depth conversation about the future of
cancer surgery.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We want to hear
from you.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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