July 11, 2025 • 38 mins
Is betting on current events the ‘future of news’? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah ask AI if their favorite restaurants are hot or not and why Gen Z is nostalgic for a world without the internet. They also discuss Wimbledon’s new AI judges and how drones are impacting beach days. Plus, we want to hear from you! If you’ve found yourself turning to ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Gemini or any other chatbot for help with a particular task or to answer unusual questions – we want to hear about it. Send us a 1-2 minute voice note to techstuffpodcast@gmail.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm as Valocian and I'm care Price.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Today we're going to get into why gen Z is
nostalgic for an Internet free world, a world they've never known.
An update to what's happening to TikTok in the US?
Then are you using chatbots to organize your closet or
write your wedding vows? We investigate how people are really
using chatbots?
Speaker 3 (00:37):
This is the week in tech. It's Friday, July eleventh,
Hello Cara, Hi Ahs.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
It's that time between July fourth and Labor Day, two
holidays that I had no conception of before I moved.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
To the US, one of which you spell wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
How's that labo U are?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, there's a U in the script. I'm sorry about that.
But it's a time known around the world as summer.
Although looking out of the window today at that dark,
gray sky, you wouldn't really know it.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
You know, not to be ungrateful about living in the
greatest city on Earth, but New York has been disgustingly.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Hot, although I haven't been here, so I've been following
the weather and floating about. Having been out of town.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
It's swamp. Like I wanted to bring up a story
that reminded me that being hot in New York City
is sometimes the most important thing you can be.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I have the sense you're not talking about the weather here.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
No, I'm talking about a website called looks Mapping that
is like a digital heat map of which New York
City restaurants have the hottest patrons. So, I mean, I
might be dating myself here, but it's like Zagat for
people I thought. I'm not sure. Listeners, I urge you
(01:55):
to go to looks mapping dot com because for me
and I think, and for you, the interface is so
beta Geociti's early Internet that like, there's something sort of
comforting about it that I don't know, just the look
of it.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Do you think if the zay Gat or Zagat guide
was still around today, they would be it had food
value for money and Beyonce have a fourth pianto Hotness with.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
A little chili emoji. Actually, I've avoided looking at the
map because I don't care about eating around hot.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
People's wrong with you?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I'm not like, Oh, I go. I think other people
obviously are looking when they go to a restaurant to
find people to date. I'm looking to eat, which is
crazy that that is dating myself. I do, as I said,
want to look at this with you so that we
can laugh about it. So I'm going to pull up
your favorite restaurant.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Okay, well you know what. We both know what that is.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
What is your favorite restaurant?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well, you know very well because you live next door
and you often see me on my way there on
a Friday evening.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
I'm typing it in right now.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Nikoboka Bar and Grill. In fact, one of the many
moments that have solidified our friendship was when you knew
I was celebrating my birthday there and you called in
a Cosmopolitan to me, delivered to my tables when they
went in town. Yeah. So, how does the Nickoboca Bar
and Grills?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Its not It's not found.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
It's not found on looks mapping dot com. I can't
believe it.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It's not here.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Just for the listeners benefit. The Nikobocker Barren Grill is
an extremely dated sort of quasi steakhouse.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
It's what I would call Fraser course, the.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Fraser course, thick carpet. Nobody else under sixty in there
apart from me and sometimes you so oddly enough, it's
not featured on Looks.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Shocking because they were like, no, they were like, this
will not appear.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
What about my second favorite restaurant? Do you know what
that is?
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Peaking duck housea house Midtown downtown one because you've you've
taken me to the downtown one.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
True, reluctantly. I do actually like the downtown one. I
like the Midtown one, which also the downtown one doesn't
have a carpet. The Midtown one does.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
That's disgusting discussing yep, oh oh, we have wait. I
just need to explain to people who are listening the
avatar that's standing on the compass on Looks mapping is
like a yassified like lip injected, hair flipped.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Guy's the website myself.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It's so good. He's like, you know, doing duck lips.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Oh, I see what.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I'm sorry to say. This is peaking duck house downtown.
They don't have no, it's too ugly. The score for
peaking duck House Chinese Downtown five points down.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
By the way, peaking duck House Downtown is a lot
hotter than peaking duck House in Midtown negative.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
It would have been a negative.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Literally okay, five points. Said, well, so how does this,
I mean, how does this work? How does how does
the looks mapping dot Com assign a hotness score to
by the way, not to all New York restaurants, but
to all New New York restaurants. Evidently that I don't.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Think that doesn't go to well. So here's what it
says on the website. Quote, I scraped millions and this
is the from the creator of the website. I scraped
millions of Google Maps restaurant reviews, and we gave each
reviewer's profile picture to an AI model that rates how
hot they are out of ten. Very smart. I mean
(05:08):
that an AI model like that exists. This map shows
how attractive each restaurant's clientele is, and the model is
certainly biased. It's certainly flawed. But we judge places, and
I'm still quoting the creator. We judge places by the
people who go there. We always have, and are we
not also flawed? This website just puts reductive numbers on
(05:29):
the superficial calculations we make every day, a mirror held
up to our collective vanity.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Quote, So this is you're telling me this website is
essentially a Balzakian commentary on New York Dining.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I mean the website itself does look like the website
of a philosophy department in a small local arts college.
So yes, I actually read about this in the New
York Times.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
This Weekend Places.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
And the guy who created it is this. He's barely
a man, He's a boy. He's twenty two. His name's
Riley Walls. He's a pro pro grammar and this actually
isn't his first prank.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
A few years ago he created a fake restaurant with
a near perfect Google rating called Miron's Steakhouse. Cool, and
so a ton of people signed up to be on
the wait list to get into a fake restaurant. And
then actually it was so popular that they opened the
steakhouse for one night in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I absolutely love this type of story. There was another
guy who did it in London with a fake restaurant
called The Shed, and then he served people this disgusting food.
I think data poisoning to trick thirsty souls into going
to hype places is one of the true joys of
the Internet. This is bombed to my soul.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, and Waltz actually had an AI model scrape two
point eight million Google reviews from one point five million
unique accounts. The model identified five hundred and eighty seven
thousand profile images with distinguishable faces, and then Walls had
that model determined if the users were young or old,
male or female, and hot or not very binary, very binary.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
How did the model define hot well?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Walls told The Times that the attractiveness score was quote
admittedly a bit yanky.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I mean that sounds like a bit of an understatement.
I do love the idea of sitting down to set
the parameters for an AI model about hot or not.
How did mister Wolves go about it?
Speaker 3 (07:20):
So, yeah, he actually gave a few examples. If someone
was wearing a wedding dress in their profile image, it
meant they were hot because obviously someone wanted to sleep
with them. And if the photo was blurry, they were
not because obviously nobody wanted to take a good photo
of them.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So they're ugly.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
I mean, these brahminters are not the ones. This is
not the sort of Leonardo da Vinci facial symmetry mode
of assessing beauty.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
I guess no, it's like seemingly quite arbitrary. And he
actually unsurprisingly, did not build this for people who are
using it as a legitimate tool. He I think, like
I said, is making a social commentary on how diners
prioritize whether a restaurant is a scene over the food
and the atmosphere, And if you go on TikTok, a
(08:05):
lot of influencers actually talk about if there are hot
guys or rich guys, like the rich guy restaurant is
I think the most important thing.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
It turns out that New York is not the only
city where the heat map exists. It's also available for
Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
The only three places where there are hot people.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
But I'm looking at the map right now, and it
seems like there's more blue meaning less hotness up in Harlem.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Twitter users did pick up on this quickly, and most
of the denser red pockets of the map were in
largely white, affluent neighborhoods in all three cities, Los Angeles,
San Francisco, and New York.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
So, like most AI models, this one has a certain
amount of racial bias baked in.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Correct, which is unsurprising. You know, AI is trained on data,
so its answers reflect the biases of the humans who
created the data in the first place, and Walts actually
got criticized for this, but he responded that that is
part of the point. Again, he says looks mapping is
designed to make fun of AI and he also added
that one of the ugliest restaurants was actually a country club.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I like the sound that this Waltz character.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
We should ask him to twenty two year old cheeky so.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
I mentioned I was on vacation last week out of
the city. I was actually in Greece and every time
the sunset, a horde of tourists would run towards the
most instagrammable location with their cameras. I was actually fighting
for space on the courtyard in front of it of
a church to actually look at the sunset, and somebody
(09:32):
you take my photo. I said sure, I said, I'll
take your photo afterwards. And I said, oh, that's okay.
I just want to look at the sunset and my wife,
I said, you are so self righteous. Why do you
need to shame that poor man. The man was like,
I have nothing exactly, but it kind of raised this
interesting question about what were the photos designed to capture
(09:52):
the trip as in the past, or was the trip
designed to create an opportunity to take photographs and share
them on social media, and it was a bit like
everyone's in their own version of The Truman Show, where
they were both the actor, the producer and the director,
and it didn't look that fun.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
I think the way we're living in the Truman Show
now is that we are all living in a world
that has really been predetermined by what we see on
social media. So I think looks Mapping was probably trying
to shine a light on this particular fact, which is
that we're going to places right now with expectations that
have been pre constructed on the Internet. And it's because,
(10:29):
to steal a line from the French philosopher Louis Altuse,
we are always already aware of what we're getting, which
is sort of sad, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, I think it's so. My stepfather, Ricardo, owns a
restaurant in London called Ricardo's. Shout Out head there and
also congratulations, happy birthday, thirtieth anniversary.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
Wow, happy anniversary, Ricardo anniversary, and Riccardo's is a great
restaurant is not built around social media moments, so I
was encouraging Ricardo to look at a brand refresh where
he really leaned into being one of the oldest continually
operated family owned Italian restaurants in London.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
He was like, no, I'm good, but it is I mean,
this whole thing you're talking about, where real life becomes
optimized for social media moments rather than social media capturing
real life is it's a little disturbing.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I think, as elder millennials, which we are, we grew
up before the I share. Therefore, I am to quote
Sherry turkle era began. We live in it, but we
had life before it, and I think the pressures of
a life lived online are much harder on gen Z.
I actually found a survey that backs this up. So
(11:48):
I'm sure you know about the BSI, the British Standards Institution.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Of course. Yeah, actually I just read my membership.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Well to consulting from was president work there after. They've
actually asked thirteen hundred young Brits ages sixteen to twenty
one whether they would prefer to be young in a
world without the Internet. Forty seven percent of them responded yes.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
That is a classic case of better the devil you
don't know in this case, right, because none of these
youths have ever lived with on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
I think there's something kind of sexy to people about
a time they didn't live, you know, like I'm very
interested in taking a horse across the country. And I
think the most interesting thing about this survey is that
fifty percent of all of those surveyed said that a
social media curfew would improve their lives.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
What do you mean by social media curfew?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
So actually the UK, which has a technology secretary, has
hinted that the government is considering I love this mandatory
cutoff times for certain apps like TikTok and Instagram for
children under a certain age.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
It is like during the Blitz when everyone just like
it's just like the well funny enough. On my trip,
which I'm sorry to keep posting about, I gave myself
a week long blackout or curse.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
It was weird.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, So I removed Gmail and Slack from my phone
so that I wouldn't be tempted to glance at work
stuff and stretch myself out. I kept text, obviously, and
you and I texted a fair amount about text stuff,
but other than that, I was offline. I can't tell
you how good it felt to be not looking at
Slack and work Gmail for a week. And how bad
(13:29):
it felt to start again on Monday.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
You know, as you and maybe our audience have recognized,
you've done it so gracefully. I have been in and
out of the show this year, and some of the
reason that I've been taking off is on account of
some personal mental health struggles, and as such, I was
actually forced into a bit of a curfew myself. It
was more a sensory deprivation tech but there were some
(13:53):
days where I actually only had my phone for one
hour a day. And the thing that it made me
realize is that the iPhone is a rapacious creditor.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
What does that mean.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
It means that the more you use it, the more
you need to use it. And yeah, it is like sugar.
It is like cigarettes, where it's like we like to
brag when we have abstained. And my family actually refers
(14:26):
to my cell phone addiction as a legitimate addiction. And
I've been intervened on.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
What was your experience then, of having twenty three hours
a day off.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
I was so jacked up. I was so high from
using my phone for that one hour that like I
would give the phone back and I felt like my
brain was on fire. And I think when you have
access to a phone all day long. It sort of
spreads itself out. You don't feel like you're at a
loss because you don't have it, but when you don't
have it, and then it's something you get, you realize
(14:56):
how jacked up this thing makes you.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
It was interesting turning my feat own back on Monday
morning and reinstalling Gmail and Slack. I literally reinstalled them
and four hours went by when I didn't look up
from my phone. But I felt so broken by the
end of that.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Yeah, coming back to the survey, the thing that really
stood out to me was actually how often young people,
especially young women, are comparing their appearance or lifestyle to others.
In the survey, eighty five percent of female respondents said
they do this at least sometimes, and nearly half of
young women are doing this often or very often.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, but this idea of comparing yourself and your appearance
and your lifestyle to others, this is what the social
commentary of looks mapping is all about.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
That's very true. I actually originally found these survey results
buried in an opinion piece from the Guardian. The author
is about Brooks is a bit older than the people
who are surveyed she's twenty six, but she admits to
being entranced by an old video that went viral recently
of Wesleyan alumni the band MGMT, performing for their peers
(16:02):
at Wesleyan University.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I remember seeing MGMT performing extremely reluctantly at a concert,
that graduating concert at Yale, and they just look so
bummed out to be there.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
They were like, we miss Wesley And yeah, and it's
not the music that she's drawn to, it's the crowd.
She observes the quote, no one is dressed that well, judgy.
The cam resumes unsteadily to capture the crowd's awkwardness, slump
shoulders and a rhythmic bopping. Beyond the footage we're watching,
(16:34):
no one seems to be filming.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
That's interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Yeah, and that part was key for her. No one
in the video is on their phone or filming the experience, except,
of course, like the person who captured the video. But
Isabelle goes on to say, quote, I was only four
when the video was filmed, So why does watching it
make me feel as if I've lost a whole world? So,
you know, she feels like she's missed out on this
(17:01):
pre social Internet where people were more authentic and unique.
And I think, you know, I was in college before
you would film something on a foot, We would take
photos on our BlackBerry maybe, or you would take camera pictures.
And now there are some concerts that I've actually been
to where the artists will say, don't take out your
phone for this, you know, just everybody puts your phone
(17:22):
down and watch. The saddest part about it for me,
and this I actually feel guilty of, is how difficult
it is for people to just.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Be well, it's not just us. You mentioned the UK
government is looking at this TikTok curfew, and I'm very
interested to know whether regulation government regulation will address the
harms of social media before the next generation become teenagers.
And I do wonder if we'll look back on this
time that we're living through now as kind of the
(17:54):
time where doctors were prescribing cigarettes to people with a cough,
and whether we'll be like, it was so crazy that
we allowed a whole generation to have their minds ruined
by trillion dollar corporations. Who knows, But the policy thing
I'm interested in here in the US, a TikTok ban
has been mooted, not because of children's health, of course,
(18:14):
but because of geopology China, China exactly so. In April
last year, President Biden signed a bill requiring that TikTok
be sold to a US buyer or be shut down.
The ban very briefly took effect the day before President
Trump was inaugurated in January. I'll never forget TikTok only
went dark for a single evening because upon taking office,
(18:34):
Trump immediately signed an executive order for a so called
enforcement delay, and has signed two more of these since then.
So the deadline keeps getting pushed back because the Trump
administration is working on a deal for a consortium of
non Chinese investors to take over TikTok's US operations. Details
about the deal remain unannounced, but the information broke some
(18:55):
news this week that makes the future of TikTok in
America appear secure. Apparently, there's a new version of the
app being built specifically for US users. The US only
TikTok app is set to launch on September fifth, and
US residents will have apparently until March twenty twenty six
to download it and get off the old app. There
is one wrinkle, which is that the Chinese government will
(19:18):
also have to approve of this structure, and apparently a
deal was actually close and then the tariff announcements earlier
this year derailed it. You know that I have this
kind of geopolitics bent. So while we're at it, there
was another story this week. It was in four or
four media that brought together diplomacy, cryptocurrency, personal appearance, and
(19:38):
the internet making collective decisions. Ala looks mapping. Tell me
have you heard of polymarket?
Speaker 3 (19:46):
I mean it does sound like a dating app for polyamory.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Poly Market is not a dating market for the polyamorous.
It is a sort of online betting marketplace where you
can basically lay down a wager on almost anything other
users can come up with. You basically bet on yes
no issues using crypto against other users rather than against
a bookmaker, and then this decentralized system facilitates the payouts.
(20:12):
It got very big during the election last year and
right now on the site, some of the bets going
run the gamut from Wimbledon results to will a hurricane
make landfall in the US before August? But a bet
that's really blown up and has over two hundred million
dollars in crypto riding on it is will Ukrainian President
Zelenski wear a suit? Before July? Zelenski said he would
(20:35):
not wear a suit until Russia's war in Ukraine ended,
and so he pretty much always wears these military style fatigues,
and he says that he does so to remind the
world that Ukraine is still in the midst of a war. So,
of course, the users of polymarket turns Zelenski's dress into
a wager. I don't know if this was a proxy
wager for whether or not the war in Ukraine would end,
(20:57):
or a wager on how committed to his principles Zelensky is.
But here's what happened. The bet went live in May,
and then towards the end of June, Selensky showed up
at a NATO summit wearing something.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
I'm going to show you now, Oh, looking hot.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
What's he wearing?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
He's wearing He's dressed in all black. He's sort of
dressed like a caterwaiter, all black. He's wearing a suit
and a black shirt.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I think it's a suit. Yeah, Well, you've waded into
a huge controversy. Polymarket right now has been roiled by
whether or not this is a suit now, to be fair,
he's sort of wearing you know, cargo style pants. He's
not wearing dress shoes, he's not wearing a shirt and tie.
(21:46):
He's wearing a kind of little mini pose and the
jacket has four pockets on it which kind of have
these over the top flaps. So you could argue that
it's more of a kind of form military fatigue for
nighttime operations than.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Pure suit black time fatigue.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
And this is this is Royling Polymarket right now. There
are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake on whether
or not this is a suit.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Literally one hundreds of one hundred million dollars has.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Been bet and so there's now this formal dispute on
Polymarket and that triggered an internal review because it wasn't
clear if this was a yes no suit or no suit,
and therefore the site's so called oracles were called in.
The oracles get to debate facts and can't with a verdict,
and after deliberating live on discord, the oracles determined that
(22:36):
this was not a suit. However, there was some accusations
of the oracles were also betters, and so poly Market
took the dispute back a second time, and on Tuesday
this week they announced their final verdict.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
And what was the final verdict?
Speaker 1 (22:54):
No suit. Yeah, you'll be out of pocket.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
I would be very out of.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
What's interesting to me about this story beyond the fact
that it's about crypto and how the Internet makes collective
decisions with this quote from Polymarket's founder Shane Coplin, and
he basically said, these bets are about more than making
a quick buck. He called polymarket quote the future of
news and said that the next information age is also
(23:21):
a quote. Won't be driven by the twentieth centuries medium monoliths.
It will be driven by markets.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
To be fair, the story of recent election cycles has
been that the betting markets are more accurate than the polls,
which is crazy. And I'm pulling up what is it,
polymarket dot com?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Polymarket dot com.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Number one is the New York City mayoral election, which
is interesting. There's three million dollars on the FED decision.
I guess what. Oh. The way that this is played
out on poly market is that the first thing is
the highest bet what has the largest wage volume? Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. And that's the New York City mayoral election,
which is really interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
There's also stuff here about whether the Trump Epstein files
will get released in twenty twenty five, which surprisingly only
thirteen percent.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Voting Trump scales that there are no files.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, there are no files. So you know, this kind
of allows you to be an active participant in consuming
the news in fact, because you're betting on the news
at all times, which is pretty interesting. We're going to
take a quick break now, but when we come back,
a key question, are you the only human in the
zoom meeting? Stay with us, Welcome back. We've got a
(24:44):
few more stories that have caught our eye to share,
and then we'll be starting something new through the summer
in place of the tech support interviews.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
It's a new segment called drum Roll. No, it's not
called drum Roll. It's called Chat and.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Me Chat and me stick around, don't miss it.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
In the meantime, I have an observation which is that
you spend most of your days in meetings in zoom calls,
and those meetings and zoom calls perhaps could be just
a Slack message or an email or even a text message.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
My therapist, my executive coach, my best friend, my wife,
or just my co.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Host no, that's what it actually a chatbot can be.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yes. I mean, of course, remember during the pandemic, it
was like, oh great, zoom calls, we can work from anywhere.
And now it's like a bit like cell phone and say,
oh great, I can always be in contexts like gosh,
now I have to do zoom calls just all the time.
And it went from this feeling liberation to feeling like
kind of a digital jail cell.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
I think many people feel that way. But now people
are starting to think, what if I can skip all
those zoom meetings and still get all the relevant information,
say more that I need. So the Washington Post actually
wrote about the increased presence of AI note takers in meetings,
like oh I can't come to this meeting, I'll send
my AI note taker. And they even talk to PEP
people who have been in meetings where robots or AI
(26:04):
note takers have outnumbered humans.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
You know, I always get a little bit annoyed when
there's an AI note taker in the room and no
one's asked my consent, like this is you know, I
think it would be a courtesy to say, do you
mind if I transcribe everything you say and keep it forever.
It's this thing about using an Internet where you're kind
of creating this constant chain of data that follows you
around forever. And I don't really want everything I've ever
(26:28):
said in a Zoom call to be permanently memorialized and
then owned by god knows who, but it's becoming the standard.
I mean, Zoom, Microsoft, Teams, Google meet they all offer
these note taking features that can record, transcribe, and use
AI to summarize meetings. That said, I haven't yet encountered
somebody who has the goal and the cheek to send
(26:48):
an AI NoteTaker to a meeting in their place to
excuse them from going to the meeting. That would really
drive me crazy.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, get ready for my new digital twin.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Sarah right, Sarah Rice always on time?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Oh my god, she's prompt. That would be a good
that for me would be important. But yeah, in addition
to the big players no, Google and Microsoft and Zoom,
there's actually smaller companies like Otter, Ai and Granola of
these names that transcribe calls like across platforms. So even
if you decide to actually log onto the meeting, you
(27:23):
can ask your bot to take notes for you and
it is a great tool for multitasking or zoning out.
Of course, the downside is that technology is recording more
and more of our daily lives and echoing what you said.
One AI exac and the Washington Post piece said, We're
moving into a world where nothing will be forgotten.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
It is Wimbledon this week, it is, and so such
a beautiful match.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
All of this grousing aside, Having an AI avatar in
my Zoom calls so that I could watch tennis all
day would be my dream come true.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
The thing about you, you would never trust an AI.
You would micromanage the AI. Yeah, I feel like I quit.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
There's a bit of discrepancy. A minute fourteen.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
I was watching. That's not what happened. But I know
you love your tennis, so do you? I do.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
I love tennis, And you won't be surprised to know
that this was not a casual reference to my favorite sport.
There is a tech angle here. Do you know what
it is?
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Yeah? What fully? Replacing line judges with AI and cares right.
And the reason I hate this is because it just
isn't fun to watch players verbally abuse AI.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
It is quite fun to watch players shrugging their shoulders
and running around looking for someone to yell at.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
Though.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
It's like we tennis, but there are no line judges
anymore for the first time in the one hundred and
forty eight year history of Wimbledon. Instead of a number
of humans carefully bending over to watch each line during
every point to see if a ball falls inside or
outside the line, it's all being done by AI or
another acronym ELC, electronic line calling. Humans, of course, do
(29:01):
make mistakes more frequently than robots, but many sports fans
will agree that watching a match isn't just about accuracy,
it's about drama.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
So just explain to me, does it mean that there
are no disputed calls or reviews of replace?
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah? So obviously Phase one was line judges. Phase two
was line judges plus cameras, so that if player could
dispute the line dram call and you get a hawkeye
and then you get the computer to basically correct or
endorse the line.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Y you have it here in America for the US opening.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, well exactly. But were now in phase three, which
is just the robots. I mean, this is the classic story,
isn't It's like humans, humans augmented by technology just technology.
Around two hundred line judges are out of a job,
but eighty have been retained in case there are issues
with the electronics system. Always nice to be back up
to a robot. One of the judges didn't pull her punches.
(29:56):
She said that line judges are now their quote for
no other reason and to escort players on and off
the court. They were always dressed like butler's and that's
basically what they are now.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Oh shot fired?
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Is it working not perfectly? An umpire had to stop
a match recently when the system failed to spot a
ball that clearly had landed out of bounds on no
less than set point, and then the players had to
replay the point. A Wimbledon spokesman blamed the mistake on
operator error human error, but the match was between a
(30:30):
Russian tennis player and a brit and the Russian blamed
hometown bias for the replay of the clutch point rather
than simply awarding it to her given the ball was
clearly out. Here's what Pavyo Chenkova had to say.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
I expect a different decision. I just thought also chairm
Bio could take an initiative, and that's why he's therefore
sitting on the chair, and he also saw it out.
He told me after the match, I think we're losing
a little bit of this charm of actually having human
being ball boys, and you know, it just becomes a
little bit weird and like Robert sort of.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Orientated, just becomes a little bit weird and robo orientated.
That's the story of her.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
But it is interesting. She was like, maybe the umpire
was scared to trust his own eyes and overall the
computer even most clearly out that is automation bias. One
and one.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I was going to say automation bias. I mean, how
many times I get in fights with my mother about
directions because she knows the right way and I was
raised on Google Maps. So you probably don't know this
because you're English. But this is the fiftieth anniversary summer
of the release of Jaws, which I actually watched again
(31:46):
last weekend and haunts my nightmare.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
My mother told me I wasn't allowed to watch it.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
She's a good mind.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
I would never swim again.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
She's a good mard.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
She wanted me to swim.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
She wanted to related to this, and I really hate
that there's any real news story that's related to Jaws.
But there was a story this week about city and
state officials in New York using drones to locate and
track sharks on beaches and Queens and on Long Island.
I go to Long Island, I swim on Long Island,
(32:16):
and around the July fourth weekend this past weekend, there
were eight sightings of sharks in less than a week.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Despite not having watched Jaws, I'm still very scared of shoks.
This is not good to hear.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
So every time a shark was spotted, swimmers were ordered
to evacuate the area for an hour. And this happened
a lot over the weekend. As you can imagine, it
really frustrated beach goers.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah. I was out of town, as I've mentioned multiple times,
but I got sent some Reddit comments about this story,
and my favorite was quote in true New York City fashion,
it's obviously a loan shark. I don't pay up, or
we'll nibble your toes.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
I really, I mean, I do love the way that
Reddit makes lemonade out of lemons. There's actually speculation about
whether there are actually more sharks in the area, or
if there were always this many. We just didn't spot
them as easily without drones.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
That was exactly going to be my question, because it's like,
there was a story recently in The New Yorker about
cancer diagnostic and it's like, is there a possibility haing
too much information? Yes, Like maybe the sharks are always there,
just the drones in you.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
It's why they say don't get a full body scam,
because sometimes there's stuff you don't want to know. You
don't want to know what sharks are in the water.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Sometimes sometimes you don't.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
But I do think the state is responding to reports
that a twenty year old woman was probably bitten by
a shark a few weeks back.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
What on earth do you mean? Probably bitten by a shark?
Speaker 3 (33:37):
So this woman was bitten by something in the water,
and when biologists gave the bite marks a once over,
they concluded that the bite quote most likely involved a
juvenile sand tiger shark. How she doing, She's okay, she's alive.
She walked away with minor cuts to her left foot
and leg. But why aren't we more upset about this
(33:58):
about what, well, probably being bitten by a shark?
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, I was probably bitten by a shark? Would actually
be a great slogan T shirt. That's the last headline today.
But I believe Kara, you have a pitch for our listeners.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
So since January when we took over the tex Stuff feed,
I come to pitch meetings and I'm always excited to
talk to you guys about just these out of pocket
ways that my friends are using Chatgypte and not just
chatgypt you know, Claude Gemini. I like seeing the ways
in which chatbots are like infiltrating daily life, right.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
And you shared a very interesting one this week.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Yeah, you know, it wasn't even interesting as much as
it was banal, but also really functional, which is that
my sister and her girlfriend were supposed to be staying
at this home for the week on vacation sort of
Airbnb rental property, and it was I will say, not
(34:57):
up to snuff. And my sister and her girlfrien are
both very good communicators, but it was late and they
were tired, and they wanted to vacate this premises.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
And get their money back and get their money back.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
And so they relied on Chat GBT to help them communicate.
And this was the important part. And I think this
is why people use chat. They wanted to communicate in
a certain way, being kind and calm but also firm.
And I think what Chat helped them do was form
a message that was not accusatory or disrespectful about the space.
(35:32):
And I think it's just so interesting that, like we
would rely on a large language model to make ourselves
seem more human or humane.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
That's very well put, you know. And it's been fun
of hearing these stories from you every week in our
pitch meetings, and so we thought it'd be fun to
bring more of them into the show, but not just
from you, also from our listeners.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Yeah, and you know, hear from our listeners about how
you're using AI.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
So if and when you found yourself turning to Jack
Gpt or girl called claud or Gemini or whichever one
you use for help with a particular task or to
navigate your real life, we want to hear about it. Ideally,
send us a one to two minute voice note to
Text Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com, or if you
(36:18):
want to write it down instead and just send it
as a normal email, that's fine too.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah, tell us about how you're using it, what works,
what doesn't, why you like using AI for this task specifically,
we want to hear it all, and if you are
using a chatbot to write your wedding vows, we will
report this story until it is blue in the face.
I know what's happening and I want.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
To hear about it, so please send in your stories
to text Stuff Podcasts at gmail dot com. You may
get to hear your voice on the show, and if
you do, we'll send you a T shirt with the
phrase I've probably got bitten by a shark, or maybe
something more appropriate to tech stuff, but we want to
hear from you, so please do write in. We'll be
doing this every week. Is called Chat and Me.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I'm Karra Price and I'm Oz Valschin.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Topia.
It was executive produced by Me, Kara Price and Kate
Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina norvelfa iHeart Podcasts. The engineer
is Bihid Fraser and Jack Insley mixed this episode. Kyle
Murdoch wrote out theme song.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Join us next Wednesday for Textuff the story when we
will share an in depth conversation with David Webster, the
head of User Experience at Google Labs about what it
means to design human centered tech.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
And please do rate and review the show on Apple podcasts,
on Spotify wherever you listen to your podcasts, and write
into us at tech stuff podcast at gmail dot com
with your feedback and of course your story is about chatting.
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm as Valocian and I'm care Price.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Today we're going to get into why gen Z is
nostalgic for an Internet free world, a world they've never known.
An update to what's happening to TikTok in the US?
Then are you using chatbots to organize your closet or
write your wedding vows? We investigate how people are really
using chatbots?
Speaker 3 (00:37):
This is the week in tech. It's Friday, July eleventh,
Hello Cara, Hi Ahs.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
It's that time between July fourth and Labor Day, two
holidays that I had no conception of before I moved.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
To the US, one of which you spell wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
How's that labo U are?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, there's a U in the script. I'm sorry about that.
But it's a time known around the world as summer.
Although looking out of the window today at that dark,
gray sky, you wouldn't really know it.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
You know, not to be ungrateful about living in the
greatest city on Earth, but New York has been disgustingly.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Hot, although I haven't been here, so I've been following
the weather and floating about. Having been out of town.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
It's swamp. Like I wanted to bring up a story
that reminded me that being hot in New York City
is sometimes the most important thing you can be.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I have the sense you're not talking about the weather here.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
No, I'm talking about a website called looks Mapping that
is like a digital heat map of which New York
City restaurants have the hottest patrons. So, I mean, I
might be dating myself here, but it's like Zagat for
people I thought. I'm not sure. Listeners, I urge you
(01:55):
to go to looks mapping dot com because for me
and I think, and for you, the interface is so
beta Geociti's early Internet that like, there's something sort of
comforting about it that I don't know, just the look
of it.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Do you think if the zay Gat or Zagat guide
was still around today, they would be it had food
value for money and Beyonce have a fourth pianto Hotness with.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
A little chili emoji. Actually, I've avoided looking at the
map because I don't care about eating around hot.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
People's wrong with you?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I'm not like, Oh, I go. I think other people
obviously are looking when they go to a restaurant to
find people to date. I'm looking to eat, which is
crazy that that is dating myself. I do, as I said,
want to look at this with you so that we
can laugh about it. So I'm going to pull up
your favorite restaurant.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Okay, well you know what. We both know what that is.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
What is your favorite restaurant?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well, you know very well because you live next door
and you often see me on my way there on
a Friday evening.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
I'm typing it in right now.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Nikoboka Bar and Grill. In fact, one of the many
moments that have solidified our friendship was when you knew
I was celebrating my birthday there and you called in
a Cosmopolitan to me, delivered to my tables when they
went in town. Yeah. So, how does the Nickoboca Bar
and Grills?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Its not It's not found.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
It's not found on looks mapping dot com. I can't
believe it.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It's not here.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Just for the listeners benefit. The Nikobocker Barren Grill is
an extremely dated sort of quasi steakhouse.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
It's what I would call Fraser course, the.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Fraser course, thick carpet. Nobody else under sixty in there
apart from me and sometimes you so oddly enough, it's
not featured on Looks.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Shocking because they were like, no, they were like, this
will not appear.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
What about my second favorite restaurant? Do you know what
that is?
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Peaking duck housea house Midtown downtown one because you've you've
taken me to the downtown one.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
True, reluctantly. I do actually like the downtown one. I
like the Midtown one, which also the downtown one doesn't
have a carpet. The Midtown one does.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
That's disgusting discussing yep, oh oh, we have wait. I
just need to explain to people who are listening the
avatar that's standing on the compass on Looks mapping is
like a yassified like lip injected, hair flipped.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Guy's the website myself.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It's so good. He's like, you know, doing duck lips.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Oh, I see what.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I'm sorry to say. This is peaking duck house downtown.
They don't have no, it's too ugly. The score for
peaking duck House Chinese Downtown five points down.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
By the way, peaking duck House Downtown is a lot
hotter than peaking duck House in Midtown negative.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
It would have been a negative.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Literally okay, five points. Said, well, so how does this,
I mean, how does this work? How does how does
the looks mapping dot Com assign a hotness score to
by the way, not to all New York restaurants, but
to all New New York restaurants. Evidently that I don't.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Think that doesn't go to well. So here's what it
says on the website. Quote, I scraped millions and this
is the from the creator of the website. I scraped
millions of Google Maps restaurant reviews, and we gave each
reviewer's profile picture to an AI model that rates how
hot they are out of ten. Very smart. I mean
(05:08):
that an AI model like that exists. This map shows
how attractive each restaurant's clientele is, and the model is
certainly biased. It's certainly flawed. But we judge places, and
I'm still quoting the creator. We judge places by the
people who go there. We always have, and are we
not also flawed? This website just puts reductive numbers on
(05:29):
the superficial calculations we make every day, a mirror held
up to our collective vanity.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Quote, So this is you're telling me this website is
essentially a Balzakian commentary on New York Dining.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I mean the website itself does look like the website
of a philosophy department in a small local arts college.
So yes, I actually read about this in the New
York Times.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
This Weekend Places.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
And the guy who created it is this. He's barely
a man, He's a boy. He's twenty two. His name's
Riley Walls. He's a pro pro grammar and this actually
isn't his first prank.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
A few years ago he created a fake restaurant with
a near perfect Google rating called Miron's Steakhouse. Cool, and
so a ton of people signed up to be on
the wait list to get into a fake restaurant. And
then actually it was so popular that they opened the
steakhouse for one night in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I absolutely love this type of story. There was another
guy who did it in London with a fake restaurant
called The Shed, and then he served people this disgusting food.
I think data poisoning to trick thirsty souls into going
to hype places is one of the true joys of
the Internet. This is bombed to my soul.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, and Waltz actually had an AI model scrape two
point eight million Google reviews from one point five million
unique accounts. The model identified five hundred and eighty seven
thousand profile images with distinguishable faces, and then Walls had
that model determined if the users were young or old,
male or female, and hot or not very binary, very binary.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
How did the model define hot well?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Walls told The Times that the attractiveness score was quote
admittedly a bit yanky.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I mean that sounds like a bit of an understatement.
I do love the idea of sitting down to set
the parameters for an AI model about hot or not.
How did mister Wolves go about it?
Speaker 3 (07:20):
So, yeah, he actually gave a few examples. If someone
was wearing a wedding dress in their profile image, it
meant they were hot because obviously someone wanted to sleep
with them. And if the photo was blurry, they were
not because obviously nobody wanted to take a good photo
of them.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So they're ugly.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
I mean, these brahminters are not the ones. This is
not the sort of Leonardo da Vinci facial symmetry mode
of assessing beauty.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
I guess no, it's like seemingly quite arbitrary. And he
actually unsurprisingly, did not build this for people who are
using it as a legitimate tool. He I think, like
I said, is making a social commentary on how diners
prioritize whether a restaurant is a scene over the food
and the atmosphere, And if you go on TikTok, a
(08:05):
lot of influencers actually talk about if there are hot
guys or rich guys, like the rich guy restaurant is
I think the most important thing.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
It turns out that New York is not the only
city where the heat map exists. It's also available for
Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
The only three places where there are hot people.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
But I'm looking at the map right now, and it
seems like there's more blue meaning less hotness up in Harlem.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Twitter users did pick up on this quickly, and most
of the denser red pockets of the map were in
largely white, affluent neighborhoods in all three cities, Los Angeles,
San Francisco, and New York.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
So, like most AI models, this one has a certain
amount of racial bias baked in.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Correct, which is unsurprising. You know, AI is trained on data,
so its answers reflect the biases of the humans who
created the data in the first place, and Walts actually
got criticized for this, but he responded that that is
part of the point. Again, he says looks mapping is
designed to make fun of AI and he also added
that one of the ugliest restaurants was actually a country club.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I like the sound that this Waltz character.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
We should ask him to twenty two year old cheeky so.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
I mentioned I was on vacation last week out of
the city. I was actually in Greece and every time
the sunset, a horde of tourists would run towards the
most instagrammable location with their cameras. I was actually fighting
for space on the courtyard in front of it of
a church to actually look at the sunset, and somebody
(09:32):
you take my photo. I said sure, I said, I'll
take your photo afterwards. And I said, oh, that's okay.
I just want to look at the sunset and my wife,
I said, you are so self righteous. Why do you
need to shame that poor man. The man was like,
I have nothing exactly, but it kind of raised this
interesting question about what were the photos designed to capture
(09:52):
the trip as in the past, or was the trip
designed to create an opportunity to take photographs and share
them on social media, and it was a bit like
everyone's in their own version of The Truman Show, where
they were both the actor, the producer and the director,
and it didn't look that fun.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
I think the way we're living in the Truman Show
now is that we are all living in a world
that has really been predetermined by what we see on
social media. So I think looks Mapping was probably trying
to shine a light on this particular fact, which is
that we're going to places right now with expectations that
have been pre constructed on the Internet. And it's because,
(10:29):
to steal a line from the French philosopher Louis Altuse,
we are always already aware of what we're getting, which
is sort of sad, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, I think it's so. My stepfather, Ricardo, owns a
restaurant in London called Ricardo's. Shout Out head there and
also congratulations, happy birthday, thirtieth anniversary.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
Wow, happy anniversary, Ricardo anniversary, and Riccardo's is a great
restaurant is not built around social media moments, so I
was encouraging Ricardo to look at a brand refresh where
he really leaned into being one of the oldest continually
operated family owned Italian restaurants in London.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
He was like, no, I'm good, but it is I mean,
this whole thing you're talking about, where real life becomes
optimized for social media moments rather than social media capturing
real life is it's a little disturbing.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I think, as elder millennials, which we are, we grew
up before the I share. Therefore, I am to quote
Sherry turkle era began. We live in it, but we
had life before it, and I think the pressures of
a life lived online are much harder on gen Z.
I actually found a survey that backs this up. So
(11:48):
I'm sure you know about the BSI, the British Standards Institution.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Of course. Yeah, actually I just read my membership.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Well to consulting from was president work there after. They've
actually asked thirteen hundred young Brits ages sixteen to twenty
one whether they would prefer to be young in a
world without the Internet. Forty seven percent of them responded yes.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
That is a classic case of better the devil you
don't know in this case, right, because none of these
youths have ever lived with on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
I think there's something kind of sexy to people about
a time they didn't live, you know, like I'm very
interested in taking a horse across the country. And I
think the most interesting thing about this survey is that
fifty percent of all of those surveyed said that a
social media curfew would improve their lives.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
What do you mean by social media curfew?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
So actually the UK, which has a technology secretary, has
hinted that the government is considering I love this mandatory
cutoff times for certain apps like TikTok and Instagram for
children under a certain age.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
It is like during the Blitz when everyone just like
it's just like the well funny enough. On my trip,
which I'm sorry to keep posting about, I gave myself
a week long blackout or curse.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
It was weird.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, So I removed Gmail and Slack from my phone
so that I wouldn't be tempted to glance at work
stuff and stretch myself out. I kept text, obviously, and
you and I texted a fair amount about text stuff,
but other than that, I was offline. I can't tell
you how good it felt to be not looking at
Slack and work Gmail for a week. And how bad
(13:29):
it felt to start again on Monday.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
You know, as you and maybe our audience have recognized,
you've done it so gracefully. I have been in and
out of the show this year, and some of the
reason that I've been taking off is on account of
some personal mental health struggles, and as such, I was
actually forced into a bit of a curfew myself. It
was more a sensory deprivation tech but there were some
(13:53):
days where I actually only had my phone for one
hour a day. And the thing that it made me
realize is that the iPhone is a rapacious creditor.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
What does that mean.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
It means that the more you use it, the more
you need to use it. And yeah, it is like sugar.
It is like cigarettes, where it's like we like to
brag when we have abstained. And my family actually refers
(14:26):
to my cell phone addiction as a legitimate addiction. And
I've been intervened on.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
What was your experience then, of having twenty three hours
a day off.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
I was so jacked up. I was so high from
using my phone for that one hour that like I
would give the phone back and I felt like my
brain was on fire. And I think when you have
access to a phone all day long. It sort of
spreads itself out. You don't feel like you're at a
loss because you don't have it, but when you don't
have it, and then it's something you get, you realize
(14:56):
how jacked up this thing makes you.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
It was interesting turning my feat own back on Monday
morning and reinstalling Gmail and Slack. I literally reinstalled them
and four hours went by when I didn't look up
from my phone. But I felt so broken by the
end of that.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Yeah, coming back to the survey, the thing that really
stood out to me was actually how often young people,
especially young women, are comparing their appearance or lifestyle to others.
In the survey, eighty five percent of female respondents said
they do this at least sometimes, and nearly half of
young women are doing this often or very often.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, but this idea of comparing yourself and your appearance
and your lifestyle to others, this is what the social
commentary of looks mapping is all about.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
That's very true. I actually originally found these survey results
buried in an opinion piece from the Guardian. The author
is about Brooks is a bit older than the people
who are surveyed she's twenty six, but she admits to
being entranced by an old video that went viral recently
of Wesleyan alumni the band MGMT, performing for their peers
(16:02):
at Wesleyan University.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I remember seeing MGMT performing extremely reluctantly at a concert,
that graduating concert at Yale, and they just look so
bummed out to be there.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
They were like, we miss Wesley And yeah, and it's
not the music that she's drawn to, it's the crowd.
She observes the quote, no one is dressed that well, judgy.
The cam resumes unsteadily to capture the crowd's awkwardness, slump
shoulders and a rhythmic bopping. Beyond the footage we're watching,
(16:34):
no one seems to be filming.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
That's interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Yeah, and that part was key for her. No one
in the video is on their phone or filming the experience, except,
of course, like the person who captured the video. But
Isabelle goes on to say, quote, I was only four
when the video was filmed, So why does watching it
make me feel as if I've lost a whole world? So,
you know, she feels like she's missed out on this
(17:01):
pre social Internet where people were more authentic and unique.
And I think, you know, I was in college before
you would film something on a foot, We would take
photos on our BlackBerry maybe, or you would take camera pictures.
And now there are some concerts that I've actually been
to where the artists will say, don't take out your
phone for this, you know, just everybody puts your phone
(17:22):
down and watch. The saddest part about it for me,
and this I actually feel guilty of, is how difficult
it is for people to just.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Be well, it's not just us. You mentioned the UK
government is looking at this TikTok curfew, and I'm very
interested to know whether regulation government regulation will address the
harms of social media before the next generation become teenagers.
And I do wonder if we'll look back on this
time that we're living through now as kind of the
(17:54):
time where doctors were prescribing cigarettes to people with a cough,
and whether we'll be like, it was so crazy that
we allowed a whole generation to have their minds ruined
by trillion dollar corporations. Who knows, But the policy thing
I'm interested in here in the US, a TikTok ban
has been mooted, not because of children's health, of course,
(18:14):
but because of geopology China, China exactly so. In April
last year, President Biden signed a bill requiring that TikTok
be sold to a US buyer or be shut down.
The ban very briefly took effect the day before President
Trump was inaugurated in January. I'll never forget TikTok only
went dark for a single evening because upon taking office,
(18:34):
Trump immediately signed an executive order for a so called
enforcement delay, and has signed two more of these since then.
So the deadline keeps getting pushed back because the Trump
administration is working on a deal for a consortium of
non Chinese investors to take over TikTok's US operations. Details
about the deal remain unannounced, but the information broke some
(18:55):
news this week that makes the future of TikTok in
America appear secure. Apparently, there's a new version of the
app being built specifically for US users. The US only
TikTok app is set to launch on September fifth, and
US residents will have apparently until March twenty twenty six
to download it and get off the old app. There
is one wrinkle, which is that the Chinese government will
(19:18):
also have to approve of this structure, and apparently a
deal was actually close and then the tariff announcements earlier
this year derailed it. You know that I have this
kind of geopolitics bent. So while we're at it, there
was another story this week. It was in four or
four media that brought together diplomacy, cryptocurrency, personal appearance, and
(19:38):
the internet making collective decisions. Ala looks mapping. Tell me
have you heard of polymarket?
Speaker 3 (19:46):
I mean it does sound like a dating app for polyamory.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Poly Market is not a dating market for the polyamorous.
It is a sort of online betting marketplace where you
can basically lay down a wager on almost anything other
users can come up with. You basically bet on yes
no issues using crypto against other users rather than against
a bookmaker, and then this decentralized system facilitates the payouts.
(20:12):
It got very big during the election last year and
right now on the site, some of the bets going
run the gamut from Wimbledon results to will a hurricane
make landfall in the US before August? But a bet
that's really blown up and has over two hundred million
dollars in crypto riding on it is will Ukrainian President
Zelenski wear a suit? Before July? Zelenski said he would
(20:35):
not wear a suit until Russia's war in Ukraine ended,
and so he pretty much always wears these military style fatigues,
and he says that he does so to remind the
world that Ukraine is still in the midst of a war. So,
of course, the users of polymarket turns Zelenski's dress into
a wager. I don't know if this was a proxy
wager for whether or not the war in Ukraine would end,
(20:57):
or a wager on how committed to his principles Zelensky is.
But here's what happened. The bet went live in May,
and then towards the end of June, Selensky showed up
at a NATO summit wearing something.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
I'm going to show you now, Oh, looking hot.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
What's he wearing?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
He's wearing He's dressed in all black. He's sort of
dressed like a caterwaiter, all black. He's wearing a suit
and a black shirt.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I think it's a suit. Yeah, Well, you've waded into
a huge controversy. Polymarket right now has been roiled by
whether or not this is a suit now, to be fair,
he's sort of wearing you know, cargo style pants. He's
not wearing dress shoes, he's not wearing a shirt and tie.
(21:46):
He's wearing a kind of little mini pose and the
jacket has four pockets on it which kind of have
these over the top flaps. So you could argue that
it's more of a kind of form military fatigue for
nighttime operations than.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Pure suit black time fatigue.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
And this is this is Royling Polymarket right now. There
are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake on whether
or not this is a suit.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Literally one hundreds of one hundred million dollars has.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Been bet and so there's now this formal dispute on
Polymarket and that triggered an internal review because it wasn't
clear if this was a yes no suit or no suit,
and therefore the site's so called oracles were called in.
The oracles get to debate facts and can't with a verdict,
and after deliberating live on discord, the oracles determined that
(22:36):
this was not a suit. However, there was some accusations
of the oracles were also betters, and so poly Market
took the dispute back a second time, and on Tuesday
this week they announced their final verdict.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
And what was the final verdict?
Speaker 1 (22:54):
No suit. Yeah, you'll be out of pocket.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
I would be very out of.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
What's interesting to me about this story beyond the fact
that it's about crypto and how the Internet makes collective
decisions with this quote from Polymarket's founder Shane Coplin, and
he basically said, these bets are about more than making
a quick buck. He called polymarket quote the future of
news and said that the next information age is also
(23:21):
a quote. Won't be driven by the twentieth centuries medium monoliths.
It will be driven by markets.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
To be fair, the story of recent election cycles has
been that the betting markets are more accurate than the polls,
which is crazy. And I'm pulling up what is it,
polymarket dot com?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Polymarket dot com.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Number one is the New York City mayoral election, which
is interesting. There's three million dollars on the FED decision.
I guess what. Oh. The way that this is played
out on poly market is that the first thing is
the highest bet what has the largest wage volume? Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. And that's the New York City mayoral election,
which is really interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
There's also stuff here about whether the Trump Epstein files
will get released in twenty twenty five, which surprisingly only
thirteen percent.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Voting Trump scales that there are no files.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, there are no files. So you know, this kind
of allows you to be an active participant in consuming
the news in fact, because you're betting on the news
at all times, which is pretty interesting. We're going to
take a quick break now, but when we come back,
a key question, are you the only human in the
zoom meeting? Stay with us, Welcome back. We've got a
(24:44):
few more stories that have caught our eye to share,
and then we'll be starting something new through the summer
in place of the tech support interviews.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
It's a new segment called drum Roll. No, it's not
called drum Roll. It's called Chat and.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Me Chat and me stick around, don't miss it.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
In the meantime, I have an observation which is that
you spend most of your days in meetings in zoom calls,
and those meetings and zoom calls perhaps could be just
a Slack message or an email or even a text message.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
My therapist, my executive coach, my best friend, my wife,
or just my co.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Host no, that's what it actually a chatbot can be.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yes. I mean, of course, remember during the pandemic, it
was like, oh great, zoom calls, we can work from anywhere.
And now it's like a bit like cell phone and say,
oh great, I can always be in contexts like gosh,
now I have to do zoom calls just all the time.
And it went from this feeling liberation to feeling like
kind of a digital jail cell.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
I think many people feel that way. But now people
are starting to think, what if I can skip all
those zoom meetings and still get all the relevant information,
say more that I need. So the Washington Post actually
wrote about the increased presence of AI note takers in meetings,
like oh I can't come to this meeting, I'll send
my AI note taker. And they even talk to PEP
people who have been in meetings where robots or AI
(26:04):
note takers have outnumbered humans.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
You know, I always get a little bit annoyed when
there's an AI note taker in the room and no
one's asked my consent, like this is you know, I
think it would be a courtesy to say, do you
mind if I transcribe everything you say and keep it forever.
It's this thing about using an Internet where you're kind
of creating this constant chain of data that follows you
around forever. And I don't really want everything I've ever
(26:28):
said in a Zoom call to be permanently memorialized and
then owned by god knows who, but it's becoming the standard.
I mean, Zoom, Microsoft, Teams, Google meet they all offer
these note taking features that can record, transcribe, and use
AI to summarize meetings. That said, I haven't yet encountered
somebody who has the goal and the cheek to send
(26:48):
an AI NoteTaker to a meeting in their place to
excuse them from going to the meeting. That would really
drive me crazy.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, get ready for my new digital twin.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Sarah right, Sarah Rice always on time?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Oh my god, she's prompt. That would be a good
that for me would be important. But yeah, in addition
to the big players no, Google and Microsoft and Zoom,
there's actually smaller companies like Otter, Ai and Granola of
these names that transcribe calls like across platforms. So even
if you decide to actually log onto the meeting, you
(27:23):
can ask your bot to take notes for you and
it is a great tool for multitasking or zoning out.
Of course, the downside is that technology is recording more
and more of our daily lives and echoing what you said.
One AI exac and the Washington Post piece said, We're
moving into a world where nothing will be forgotten.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
It is Wimbledon this week, it is, and so such
a beautiful match.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
All of this grousing aside, Having an AI avatar in
my Zoom calls so that I could watch tennis all
day would be my dream come true.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
The thing about you, you would never trust an AI.
You would micromanage the AI. Yeah, I feel like I quit.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
There's a bit of discrepancy. A minute fourteen.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
I was watching. That's not what happened. But I know
you love your tennis, so do you? I do.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
I love tennis, And you won't be surprised to know
that this was not a casual reference to my favorite sport.
There is a tech angle here. Do you know what
it is?
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Yeah? What fully? Replacing line judges with AI and cares right.
And the reason I hate this is because it just
isn't fun to watch players verbally abuse AI.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
It is quite fun to watch players shrugging their shoulders
and running around looking for someone to yell at.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
Though.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
It's like we tennis, but there are no line judges
anymore for the first time in the one hundred and
forty eight year history of Wimbledon. Instead of a number
of humans carefully bending over to watch each line during
every point to see if a ball falls inside or
outside the line, it's all being done by AI or
another acronym ELC, electronic line calling. Humans, of course, do
(29:01):
make mistakes more frequently than robots, but many sports fans
will agree that watching a match isn't just about accuracy,
it's about drama.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
So just explain to me, does it mean that there
are no disputed calls or reviews of replace?
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah? So obviously Phase one was line judges. Phase two
was line judges plus cameras, so that if player could
dispute the line dram call and you get a hawkeye
and then you get the computer to basically correct or
endorse the line.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Y you have it here in America for the US opening.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, well exactly. But were now in phase three, which
is just the robots. I mean, this is the classic story,
isn't It's like humans, humans augmented by technology just technology.
Around two hundred line judges are out of a job,
but eighty have been retained in case there are issues
with the electronics system. Always nice to be back up
to a robot. One of the judges didn't pull her punches.
(29:56):
She said that line judges are now their quote for
no other reason and to escort players on and off
the court. They were always dressed like butler's and that's
basically what they are now.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Oh shot fired?
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Is it working not perfectly? An umpire had to stop
a match recently when the system failed to spot a
ball that clearly had landed out of bounds on no
less than set point, and then the players had to
replay the point. A Wimbledon spokesman blamed the mistake on
operator error human error, but the match was between a
(30:30):
Russian tennis player and a brit and the Russian blamed
hometown bias for the replay of the clutch point rather
than simply awarding it to her given the ball was
clearly out. Here's what Pavyo Chenkova had to say.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
I expect a different decision. I just thought also chairm
Bio could take an initiative, and that's why he's therefore
sitting on the chair, and he also saw it out.
He told me after the match, I think we're losing
a little bit of this charm of actually having human
being ball boys, and you know, it just becomes a
little bit weird and like Robert sort of.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Orientated, just becomes a little bit weird and robo orientated.
That's the story of her.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
But it is interesting. She was like, maybe the umpire
was scared to trust his own eyes and overall the
computer even most clearly out that is automation bias. One
and one.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I was going to say automation bias. I mean, how
many times I get in fights with my mother about
directions because she knows the right way and I was
raised on Google Maps. So you probably don't know this
because you're English. But this is the fiftieth anniversary summer
of the release of Jaws, which I actually watched again
(31:46):
last weekend and haunts my nightmare.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
My mother told me I wasn't allowed to watch it.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
She's a good mind.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
I would never swim again.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
She's a good mard.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
She wanted me to swim.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
She wanted to related to this, and I really hate
that there's any real news story that's related to Jaws.
But there was a story this week about city and
state officials in New York using drones to locate and
track sharks on beaches and Queens and on Long Island.
I go to Long Island, I swim on Long Island,
(32:16):
and around the July fourth weekend this past weekend, there
were eight sightings of sharks in less than a week.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Despite not having watched Jaws, I'm still very scared of shoks.
This is not good to hear.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
So every time a shark was spotted, swimmers were ordered
to evacuate the area for an hour. And this happened
a lot over the weekend. As you can imagine, it
really frustrated beach goers.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah. I was out of town, as I've mentioned multiple times,
but I got sent some Reddit comments about this story,
and my favorite was quote in true New York City fashion,
it's obviously a loan shark. I don't pay up, or
we'll nibble your toes.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
I really, I mean, I do love the way that
Reddit makes lemonade out of lemons. There's actually speculation about
whether there are actually more sharks in the area, or
if there were always this many. We just didn't spot
them as easily without drones.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
That was exactly going to be my question, because it's like,
there was a story recently in The New Yorker about
cancer diagnostic and it's like, is there a possibility haing
too much information? Yes, Like maybe the sharks are always there,
just the drones in you.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
It's why they say don't get a full body scam,
because sometimes there's stuff you don't want to know. You
don't want to know what sharks are in the water.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Sometimes sometimes you don't.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
But I do think the state is responding to reports
that a twenty year old woman was probably bitten by
a shark a few weeks back.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
What on earth do you mean? Probably bitten by a shark?
Speaker 3 (33:37):
So this woman was bitten by something in the water,
and when biologists gave the bite marks a once over,
they concluded that the bite quote most likely involved a
juvenile sand tiger shark. How she doing, She's okay, she's alive.
She walked away with minor cuts to her left foot
and leg. But why aren't we more upset about this
(33:58):
about what, well, probably being bitten by a shark?
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, I was probably bitten by a shark? Would actually
be a great slogan T shirt. That's the last headline today.
But I believe Kara, you have a pitch for our listeners.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
So since January when we took over the tex Stuff feed,
I come to pitch meetings and I'm always excited to
talk to you guys about just these out of pocket
ways that my friends are using Chatgypte and not just
chatgypt you know, Claude Gemini. I like seeing the ways
in which chatbots are like infiltrating daily life, right.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
And you shared a very interesting one this week.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Yeah, you know, it wasn't even interesting as much as
it was banal, but also really functional, which is that
my sister and her girlfriend were supposed to be staying
at this home for the week on vacation sort of
Airbnb rental property, and it was I will say, not
(34:57):
up to snuff. And my sister and her girlfrien are
both very good communicators, but it was late and they
were tired, and they wanted to vacate this premises.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
And get their money back and get their money back.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
And so they relied on Chat GBT to help them communicate.
And this was the important part. And I think this
is why people use chat. They wanted to communicate in
a certain way, being kind and calm but also firm.
And I think what Chat helped them do was form
a message that was not accusatory or disrespectful about the space.
(35:32):
And I think it's just so interesting that, like we
would rely on a large language model to make ourselves
seem more human or humane.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
That's very well put, you know. And it's been fun
of hearing these stories from you every week in our
pitch meetings, and so we thought it'd be fun to
bring more of them into the show, but not just
from you, also from our listeners.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Yeah, and you know, hear from our listeners about how
you're using AI.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
So if and when you found yourself turning to Jack
Gpt or girl called claud or Gemini or whichever one
you use for help with a particular task or to
navigate your real life, we want to hear about it. Ideally,
send us a one to two minute voice note to
Text Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com, or if you
(36:18):
want to write it down instead and just send it
as a normal email, that's fine too.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah, tell us about how you're using it, what works,
what doesn't, why you like using AI for this task specifically,
we want to hear it all, and if you are
using a chatbot to write your wedding vows, we will
report this story until it is blue in the face.
I know what's happening and I want.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
To hear about it, so please send in your stories
to text Stuff Podcasts at gmail dot com. You may
get to hear your voice on the show, and if
you do, we'll send you a T shirt with the
phrase I've probably got bitten by a shark, or maybe
something more appropriate to tech stuff, but we want to
hear from you, so please do write in. We'll be
doing this every week. Is called Chat and Me.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I'm Karra Price and I'm Oz Valschin.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Topia.
It was executive produced by Me, Kara Price and Kate
Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina norvelfa iHeart Podcasts. The engineer
is Bihid Fraser and Jack Insley mixed this episode. Kyle
Murdoch wrote out theme song.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Join us next Wednesday for Textuff the story when we
will share an in depth conversation with David Webster, the
head of User Experience at Google Labs about what it
means to design human centered tech.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
And please do rate and review the show on Apple podcasts,
on Spotify wherever you listen to your podcasts, and write
into us at tech stuff podcast at gmail dot com
with your feedback and of course your story is about chatting.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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