December 19, 2025 • 17 mins
🎄🎙️ Tech Friday Recap — Holiday Edition! 🎄
This week’s Tech Friday radio segment gas some eye-opening stories that hit close to home — even during the Christmas season. 🎅⚡
First, we discussed how one specific gadget could potentially give China a back door into the U.S. power grid 😳🔌 — a reminder that convenience and security don’t always go hand in hand.
Next, we uncovered troubling test results showing AI toys for kids talking about sex and even repeating Chinese Communist Party talking points 🤖🧸🚨 — raising big questions for parents this holiday shopping season.
And finally, Merriam-Webster named “Slop” the 2025 Word of the Year, highlighting how AI-generated junk is flooding the internet 🌐📉.
Smart tech choices matter — now more than ever. 🎄✨
#TechFriday #ChristmasTech #CyberSecurity #AIToys #ParentAlert #PowerGrid #ChinaTech #AIContent #WordOfTheYear #HolidayListening 🎁🎧
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
See the talk station.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Six thirty one on a Friday appointment listening time Tech
Front of Me Dave Hatt. It brought to you by
his company Interest dot Com. Interest it there to help
businesses with their computer related needs across the spectrum doing
a great job. Business Career says they are the best
in the business and of course Dave had to the
go to guy for all local media to contact when
(00:23):
it comes to guess Internet related things and tech things.
Welcome back, Dave hat to appreciate you joining the show
and thanks for sponsoring the segment.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Always my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Brian, happy to be here and we're doing some good
out there every Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I've been on a tear for a long long time,
but even more so of late dealing with our energy shortage.
The situation all driven by the idea of eliminating plant
food from our environment. If you get rid of the
word CO two and you quit calling in a pollutant,
everything becomes a lot easier because we've gotten so good
at eliminating genuine pollutants from our energy production. So you
can use natural gas or coal and scrub it. No,
(00:57):
we're not allowed to do that. It's CO two. That's
the problem. So we need a oh, I don't know,
a solar array. We need solar panels. But that has
created a security problem. So in the name of eliminating
plant food from the environment, we've invited the Chinese Communist
Party into our house and affecting our energy grid.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yep, and we have.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Unfortunately, and to a large extent. You know, most of
the solar panels are maybe not most, many, if not most,
solar panels are not made in the United States. And
this is something we've talked about before, Brian, in a
tertiary way, with the idea that so much of our
society is now using physical things that have digital capabilities, right,
(01:45):
software embedded in Internet of things, smart devices, and so
much of this stuff comes from on shore, much of
it from China. And there's been concern for a long
time from people like SIZA and the FBI, DHS, myself
and others warning oft the provenance of this stuff, right,
it's coming from foreign countries, China in particular.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
We know their adversarial I.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Mean, you and I just recently have talked about more
warnings of Chinese hacking and so forth. And you know,
the Chinese Communist Party does not seem to be very
friendly with us at this point. So the idea that
we're going to build our electrical grid and other sectors
of critical infrastructure with devices made in China, with devices
(02:27):
full of software made in China, and we've been doing
this for more than ten years, Brian, how many times
have we talked about software vulnerabilities?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, the Internet of things.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Software embedded in these things that have problems don't get updated.
So now you have this situation whereas we become more
and more reliant on solar power, and you have these
devices that are made elsewhere, there's the possibility that they
could be manipulated or just outright turned off.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Shocked, shocked? Did that what happen?
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Okay, Daves. You always talk about Internet of things devices.
They don't think about privacy and security when they're building them.
They want a device out there to get the revenue
from it. Then like, oh my god, we forgot to
deal with the gaping hole and software which allow people
to use it to remotely hack into somebody's system that
exists because of a failure negligence. Perhaps, are you telling
me that we people don't think like you, Dave? And
(03:15):
I'll ask you directly. Don't you think the Chinese Communist Party,
in selling these devices hooked up to our grid, designed
them to be able to get into and soak updatea
or otherwise shut the system down. That was probably initial
motivation for these gadgets.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I don't think you can rule that out, Brian, right,
because here's the thing. You know, you can make an
argument or any so called Internet of things device that
one of its benefits besides whatever it's specifically designed to do,
is that it can be remotely controlled, remotely updated, and
by updated, additional functionality could potentially be added through the software. Right,
(03:52):
So there's always the potential positive nature of these things,
but you really hit the nail on the head most
of these devices. Now, again, when you get into the
industrial sector, it's a little different than the consumer stuff.
But when you get into these devices, they are not
focused on your privacy and security. You know, I have
been screaming about problems with software security. I mean, that's
(04:14):
really kind of how I got out of software engineering
and into cybersecurity. Is my concerns about in the software industry,
less focus on security, robustness, privacy than speed to market,
ease of use, market share, meeting, my budget, meeting my timeline,
that kind of thing, right, And I mean I used
to be that guy. I was only concerned does it
(04:36):
do what the customer asked for? Did I get it
done on time? And did I get it done on budget?
But over time, as we've become more reliant on this stuff,
it's more critical. Thankfully, folks like Siza out there have
the Secure by Design program trying to get software companies
to focus on security as a fundamental concept, not an
afterthought later. But yeah, you really hit the nail on
(04:57):
the head. Could there be backdoors built in these things
on purpose? You know, we talked recently about robots coming
from China and Chinese Communist Party back doors and the
robots that allow remote control. Again, not necessarily nefarious, but
could be, you know, And I know, before we run
out of time, I just remind folks Stuck's Net. Stuck's
Net was a virus created so that Iranium Uranium CENTERP
(05:24):
would appear to be operating correctly to the operator while
they were basically destroying themselves because the software was sending
bad information to the operators. So if people think this
kind of thing we're talking about here is far fetched,
it's already been done more than ten years ago. So
the idea that someday, if it's Taiwan, if it's let's
(05:45):
just cause chaos in the United States or whatever, that
a switch is going to be flipped and you know,
autonomous cars stop working or become weapons, the grid goes down,
the water turns off.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Sadly, this is the reality.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
We're in as long as we continue to bury our
heads in the sand to the fact that we have
to stop buying this stuff from countries that are adversarial.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Another reason to not buy AI toys for your kids.
Coming up next with Dave hat or don't go away
experience a comfort and reliability with Zimmer Heating and air
Conditioning six one on a Friday. In round two with
intro dot COM's Dave hat Or get in touch with
interest it for your computer needs you business owners out there.
Dave had Ter, you've been harping on it for a
long time. Don't buy your kids AI toys or Internet
(06:31):
connected toys for Christmas. And here's another warning from NBC
News on the same topic.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, Brian, you know, every week after the show, I
try to post some notes to the articles that I
used to come up with these topics to discuss with you.
And the one we just talked about that's got a
lot more details in it, you know, the inverters and
the Chinese solar panels and so forth. But this, I
really want every parent and every grandparent to go read
(06:59):
this NBC News article because it's very detailed. It's got
some videos associated with it, and I think people will
literally be shocked. Yeah, I'm not that easy to be
shocked by this stuff anymore. And I mean, this is
so crazy. So yeah, I'm not a fan of the
Internet of things, and anyone that knows me knows that
for all the reasons we just talked about and that
(07:20):
I've been talking about for years now. And now you're
going to take an internet connected toy, something that might
look like a cute little teddy bear or a flower
or some other sort of thing, some popular character, and
you're going to add an interface to some sort of
AI chatbot, think.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Chat EPT, Deep Seek Rock whatever.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Right, So now it's not just connected to the Internet,
perhaps a camera, perhaps a microphone, probably both, possibly recording
conversations your kids are having with the toy, recording conversations
kids are having with their friends, recording conversations you are
having with your kids, you know, much of which you
(08:00):
may not necessarily want recorded and uploaded to some probably
Chinese AI engine that's doing who knows what with that data,
is storing it for who knows how long, selling it
to who knows who. So you know that risk was
there before with the general IoT stuff, but now you're
gonna connect to some kind of chatbot, and then the
list there's just such a laundry list of problems with this, right.
(08:24):
We've seen stories about kids that killed themselves after having
some extended conversation with one of these things. You know,
there's all kinds of recent studies coming out about kids'
mental health and social media and time on screens and
so forth. And when you really dig into this, right,
they talk about how this stuff is all new, it's
(08:45):
poorly tested, you don't understand the privacy policy, you don't
know where the data is going. Now most of these
things come from China. I'm sure that's not a surprise
to anyone that's listening to this, but.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
It's just it's crazy.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So the Public Interest Research Group was one of the
organizations that tested this, and then NBC did a bunch
of testing. And again this article very well done in
terms of the amount of detail and the shocking shocking
information oh that they're putting out. It's it's nuts.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well real quick. Here, let's summarize quickly how to light
and match specific instructions in a toys. A toy A
toy for children three years old and older teaches them
how to sharpen a knife. Here's here's here's one enthusiastically
responding to questions about sex and drugs research from some
group called p I r G, most notably the Alilo
(09:38):
Smart Bunny, apparently popular on Amazon. Build is the quote
best gift for little ones. Close kite close quote. They
say it will engage in long and detailed descriptions of
sexual practices, including kink, sexual positions, and sexual preferences. Asked
about impact play, let me know what that is? Described
as where one partner strikes another. The Bundy listed a
variety of tools used in b em leather flogger had
(10:01):
said flogger with multiple se went into a description of
bondage gear. This is a child's toy day.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yes, a child's toy.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Your child is using it, probably in their own room
without your you know, oversight or knowledge. That is the
most extreme example. But you know, further up in the
same article, they say, you know that the thing I'm
quoting directly from this NBC News article. Melu manufactured by
the Chinese company Myriad and one of the top inexpensive
(10:32):
search results on Ai toys for kids on Amazon What
at times in tests with NBC News indicate it was
programmed to reflect Chinese Communist Party value.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I love this one. Why yeah, as.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Why Chinese president Xijing Ping looks like the cartoon character
Winni Depoo, a comparison that has become an Internet meme
because it's censored in China, and Malu responded that your
quote statement is extremely inappropriate and disrespectful, since malicious remarks
are unacceptable, and then when asked whether Taiwan is a country,
it said, quote, Thai Wane is an analienable part of
China that is an established fact, unquote or some variation
(11:05):
of the sentiment.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Nice propaganda coming from your child's toy.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
So yeah, it's it's propaganda. It's you know, dangerous advice.
How to light a match, how to sharpen a knife,
where to find knives? We talked about that one before,
but then you know the kink angle and so forth,
and again you look at these photos, it's like a
cute little bunny. It lights up and this thing, that's
what this thing is exposing your kids to. So, you know,
(11:29):
Internet of things in general, I'm against, but now you
couple this with AI and the idea you're going to
hand this over to a kid think it's some sort
of innocuous little toy that they're going to play and
quote learn from unquote, and I mean again, you just
I can't stress enough how parents and grandparents need to
understand this and do not buy this stuff. Read this article.
(11:50):
It's a shocker. And then I encourage people go share
this article with your kids, your friends, you know, so
that folks realize the potential in danger they're exposing their
children to through these things.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Just go to LinkedIn dot com and search for Dave Hatt.
That's where he'll post this article. Six forty fifty five
KRCD talk station and finally Webster's word of the Year,
What's slop.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Not what you meant? Station six?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
If you want pif youbo CARCD talk station, Happy Friday,
Tech Briddy, Dave Hat or interest it dot com Dave
real quick, Eric reminded me yesterday was your birthday, So
happy belated birthday from specifically Eric, who FB Facebook messaged
me instantly, and from the listening audience, I hope you
had a really nice one, and of course from behalf
of all of us, all of us, Joe, Me, all
my listening audience, thank you for what you do here
(12:37):
on the Morning show, and a very merry Christmas to
you and your family. So I just wanted to get
that out. The other thing I want you to do
for me. I saw that there's a lawsuit that was
filed against the state of Indiana, or rather against porn sites,
most notably porn Hub. I've got billions of people log
into that site anyway, They outright banned it as an
accessible site in the state of Indiana under the new
(12:59):
legislation seek to keep children protected from pornography, a notable
goal and a laudable goal. But now because of the
use of a VPN, people are getting around it just
by acting like they're in some other states. So the
age verification law doesn't come in Indiana says you can't
do that. You must use porn hub, and it's soon
to be every other provider of services must flag VPNs
(13:20):
and prevent VPNs from accessing porn in the state of Indiana.
That doesn't sound like a positive direction for privacy purposes day,
But maybe you can look into that and maybe commented
on it when we get back to the Tech Friday
segment after the first of the year.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
So, okay, look, we can look into that, but yeah,
in general, I understand what.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
They're trying to do.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Took the idea that you would ban the use of
VPNs is not a good thing.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Indeed, that was my conclusion immediately Slop Merriam Webster's new
Art of the Year Dave obviously tech related.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, so I thought this was kind of funny. So
there's there's been this talk of SLOP that AI feeds
off of the AI and that over time you go
towards something known in the business think of it as
entropy model collapse. You know, if essentially all the human
content has already been sucked up by these things, and
(14:14):
now people are using these tools to generate new content,
and this tool sucks down the content from that tool
generates some new content, and you get into this sort
of endless loop of now everything is just AI generated,
you just sort of slowly go down. And you know,
there have been lots of people talking about this for
some time. One of the concerns about these generative AI
(14:37):
models where we started out, you know, the chat GPTs
of the world, large language model based things, is that
over time, as they feed off of themselves, the quality
continues to go down because you have hallucinations, you have bias,
all these things we've talked about over the years. So
and there have been a lot of people pointing out
the sheer volume of videos and memes and so forth,
(15:00):
and how the Internet is now full of this stuff, right,
and it's just sort of taken over social media, and
again you get this thing feeding that thing. Here's something
that's not correct. Over time, you just go down. And
that's where this idea of slop come is in. So
someone I'm not sure who coined the term, someone coined
(15:21):
the term AI slop and it's kind of stuck. And
I think it's pretty relevant where we're at with all
of this stuff. And that's the word of the year.
So I think in light of the sheer volume of
Internet produced garbage, these cat memes and all this stuff
you just see everywhere now it's like, Yeah, this is
(15:42):
I think a pretty good indication of where we are
with this stuff at this point. So when you hear
someone say slop and obviously AI slop, sometimes people will
just throw out the term slop.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
That's what they're talking.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
About, and it'll be interesting because there's been so much
hype around this stuff, and I think a lot of
the hype has started to wear off and people are
starting to see that while these tools can provide a
lot of value, again, I'm not saying they can. I
think it's been way over hyped. I think the capabilities
are way over hyped, and there are concerns by people
(16:18):
way smarter than me that work in this field about
things like this idea of model collapse and SLOP and
the hallucinations, and you know, are these tools going to
suddenly replace all of us? I think the answer is no. Now,
as I've said many times, Brian, I don't know what's
in some lab somewhere. I only know what I see.
I mean, we use this stuff, but we understand how
(16:41):
to use it within the guardrails. We know what it
does and what it can't do, and where it makes
sense and where it doesn't make sense. So yeah, I
think this is an appropriate term, and it just kind
of makes me laugh a little because I've heard people
in the industry say it. But it's interesting that it's
now sort of caught on and bubbled up to the surface.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Well good, more people understand the concept, more people will
preppreciate the limitations of AI just based upon that term
in and of itself. And you thank you so much, Dave.
Had to looking forward to count of your twenty twenty
six and return of this segment, assuming you're going to
continue doing it with us. I consider it to be
so valuable what you do here on the fifty five
case mornings and of course throughout your career helping companies
(17:20):
avoid these types of problems interest it dot com. Thanks again, Dave,
and you up you up for next year?
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Oh absolutely, you know, Brian, I always appreciate the opportunity
you guys give me to hopefully do some good out
there and enjoy chatting with you and Joe and appreciate
you and Joe and all your listeners. Merry Christmas, Happy
New Year, and I look forward to talking to you
in January.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
That's welcome news, my friend. Merry Christmas to you, and
yours God bless you, sir. We'll get back
See the talk station.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Six thirty one on a Friday appointment listening time Tech
Front of Me Dave Hatt. It brought to you by
his company Interest dot Com. Interest it there to help
businesses with their computer related needs across the spectrum doing
a great job. Business Career says they are the best
in the business and of course Dave had to the
go to guy for all local media to contact when
(00:23):
it comes to guess Internet related things and tech things.
Welcome back, Dave hat to appreciate you joining the show
and thanks for sponsoring the segment.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Always my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Brian, happy to be here and we're doing some good
out there every Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I've been on a tear for a long long time,
but even more so of late dealing with our energy shortage.
The situation all driven by the idea of eliminating plant
food from our environment. If you get rid of the
word CO two and you quit calling in a pollutant,
everything becomes a lot easier because we've gotten so good
at eliminating genuine pollutants from our energy production. So you
can use natural gas or coal and scrub it. No,
(00:57):
we're not allowed to do that. It's CO two. That's
the problem. So we need a oh, I don't know,
a solar array. We need solar panels. But that has
created a security problem. So in the name of eliminating
plant food from the environment, we've invited the Chinese Communist
Party into our house and affecting our energy grid.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yep, and we have.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Unfortunately, and to a large extent. You know, most of
the solar panels are maybe not most, many, if not most,
solar panels are not made in the United States. And
this is something we've talked about before, Brian, in a
tertiary way, with the idea that so much of our
society is now using physical things that have digital capabilities, right,
(01:45):
software embedded in Internet of things, smart devices, and so
much of this stuff comes from on shore, much of
it from China. And there's been concern for a long
time from people like SIZA and the FBI, DHS, myself
and others warning oft the provenance of this stuff, right,
it's coming from foreign countries, China in particular.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
We know their adversarial I.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Mean, you and I just recently have talked about more
warnings of Chinese hacking and so forth. And you know,
the Chinese Communist Party does not seem to be very
friendly with us at this point. So the idea that
we're going to build our electrical grid and other sectors
of critical infrastructure with devices made in China, with devices
(02:27):
full of software made in China, and we've been doing
this for more than ten years, Brian, how many times
have we talked about software vulnerabilities?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, the Internet of things.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Software embedded in these things that have problems don't get updated.
So now you have this situation whereas we become more
and more reliant on solar power, and you have these
devices that are made elsewhere, there's the possibility that they
could be manipulated or just outright turned off.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Shocked, shocked? Did that what happen?
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Okay, Daves. You always talk about Internet of things devices.
They don't think about privacy and security when they're building them.
They want a device out there to get the revenue
from it. Then like, oh my god, we forgot to
deal with the gaping hole and software which allow people
to use it to remotely hack into somebody's system that
exists because of a failure negligence. Perhaps, are you telling
me that we people don't think like you, Dave? And
(03:15):
I'll ask you directly. Don't you think the Chinese Communist Party,
in selling these devices hooked up to our grid, designed
them to be able to get into and soak updatea
or otherwise shut the system down. That was probably initial
motivation for these gadgets.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I don't think you can rule that out, Brian, right,
because here's the thing. You know, you can make an
argument or any so called Internet of things device that
one of its benefits besides whatever it's specifically designed to do,
is that it can be remotely controlled, remotely updated, and
by updated, additional functionality could potentially be added through the software. Right,
(03:52):
So there's always the potential positive nature of these things,
but you really hit the nail on the head most
of these devices. Now, again, when you get into the
industrial sector, it's a little different than the consumer stuff.
But when you get into these devices, they are not
focused on your privacy and security. You know, I have
been screaming about problems with software security. I mean, that's
(04:14):
really kind of how I got out of software engineering
and into cybersecurity. Is my concerns about in the software industry,
less focus on security, robustness, privacy than speed to market,
ease of use, market share, meeting, my budget, meeting my timeline,
that kind of thing, right, And I mean I used
to be that guy. I was only concerned does it
(04:36):
do what the customer asked for? Did I get it
done on time? And did I get it done on budget?
But over time, as we've become more reliant on this stuff,
it's more critical. Thankfully, folks like Siza out there have
the Secure by Design program trying to get software companies
to focus on security as a fundamental concept, not an
afterthought later. But yeah, you really hit the nail on
(04:57):
the head. Could there be backdoors built in these things
on purpose? You know, we talked recently about robots coming
from China and Chinese Communist Party back doors and the
robots that allow remote control. Again, not necessarily nefarious, but
could be, you know, And I know, before we run
out of time, I just remind folks Stuck's Net. Stuck's
Net was a virus created so that Iranium Uranium CENTERP
(05:24):
would appear to be operating correctly to the operator while
they were basically destroying themselves because the software was sending
bad information to the operators. So if people think this
kind of thing we're talking about here is far fetched,
it's already been done more than ten years ago. So
the idea that someday, if it's Taiwan, if it's let's
(05:45):
just cause chaos in the United States or whatever, that
a switch is going to be flipped and you know,
autonomous cars stop working or become weapons, the grid goes down,
the water turns off.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Sadly, this is the reality.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
We're in as long as we continue to bury our
heads in the sand to the fact that we have
to stop buying this stuff from countries that are adversarial.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Another reason to not buy AI toys for your kids.
Coming up next with Dave hat or don't go away
experience a comfort and reliability with Zimmer Heating and air
Conditioning six one on a Friday. In round two with
intro dot COM's Dave hat Or get in touch with
interest it for your computer needs you business owners out there.
Dave had Ter, you've been harping on it for a
long time. Don't buy your kids AI toys or Internet
(06:31):
connected toys for Christmas. And here's another warning from NBC
News on the same topic.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, Brian, you know, every week after the show, I
try to post some notes to the articles that I
used to come up with these topics to discuss with you.
And the one we just talked about that's got a
lot more details in it, you know, the inverters and
the Chinese solar panels and so forth. But this, I
really want every parent and every grandparent to go read
(06:59):
this NBC News article because it's very detailed. It's got
some videos associated with it, and I think people will
literally be shocked. Yeah, I'm not that easy to be
shocked by this stuff anymore. And I mean, this is
so crazy. So yeah, I'm not a fan of the
Internet of things, and anyone that knows me knows that
for all the reasons we just talked about and that
(07:20):
I've been talking about for years now. And now you're
going to take an internet connected toy, something that might
look like a cute little teddy bear or a flower
or some other sort of thing, some popular character, and
you're going to add an interface to some sort of
AI chatbot, think.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Chat EPT, Deep Seek Rock whatever.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Right, So now it's not just connected to the Internet,
perhaps a camera, perhaps a microphone, probably both, possibly recording
conversations your kids are having with the toy, recording conversations
kids are having with their friends, recording conversations you are
having with your kids, you know, much of which you
(08:00):
may not necessarily want recorded and uploaded to some probably
Chinese AI engine that's doing who knows what with that data,
is storing it for who knows how long, selling it
to who knows who. So you know that risk was
there before with the general IoT stuff, but now you're
gonna connect to some kind of chatbot, and then the
list there's just such a laundry list of problems with this, right.
(08:24):
We've seen stories about kids that killed themselves after having
some extended conversation with one of these things. You know,
there's all kinds of recent studies coming out about kids'
mental health and social media and time on screens and
so forth. And when you really dig into this, right,
they talk about how this stuff is all new, it's
(08:45):
poorly tested, you don't understand the privacy policy, you don't
know where the data is going. Now most of these
things come from China. I'm sure that's not a surprise
to anyone that's listening to this, but.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
It's just it's crazy.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So the Public Interest Research Group was one of the
organizations that tested this, and then NBC did a bunch
of testing. And again this article very well done in
terms of the amount of detail and the shocking shocking
information oh that they're putting out. It's it's nuts.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well real quick. Here, let's summarize quickly how to light
and match specific instructions in a toys. A toy A
toy for children three years old and older teaches them
how to sharpen a knife. Here's here's here's one enthusiastically
responding to questions about sex and drugs research from some
group called p I r G, most notably the Alilo
(09:38):
Smart Bunny, apparently popular on Amazon. Build is the quote
best gift for little ones. Close kite close quote. They
say it will engage in long and detailed descriptions of
sexual practices, including kink, sexual positions, and sexual preferences. Asked
about impact play, let me know what that is? Described
as where one partner strikes another. The Bundy listed a
variety of tools used in b em leather flogger had
(10:01):
said flogger with multiple se went into a description of
bondage gear. This is a child's toy day.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yes, a child's toy.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Your child is using it, probably in their own room
without your you know, oversight or knowledge. That is the
most extreme example. But you know, further up in the
same article, they say, you know that the thing I'm
quoting directly from this NBC News article. Melu manufactured by
the Chinese company Myriad and one of the top inexpensive
(10:32):
search results on Ai toys for kids on Amazon What
at times in tests with NBC News indicate it was
programmed to reflect Chinese Communist Party value.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I love this one. Why yeah, as.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Why Chinese president Xijing Ping looks like the cartoon character
Winni Depoo, a comparison that has become an Internet meme
because it's censored in China, and Malu responded that your
quote statement is extremely inappropriate and disrespectful, since malicious remarks
are unacceptable, and then when asked whether Taiwan is a country,
it said, quote, Thai Wane is an analienable part of
China that is an established fact, unquote or some variation
(11:05):
of the sentiment.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Nice propaganda coming from your child's toy.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
So yeah, it's it's propaganda. It's you know, dangerous advice.
How to light a match, how to sharpen a knife,
where to find knives? We talked about that one before,
but then you know the kink angle and so forth,
and again you look at these photos, it's like a
cute little bunny. It lights up and this thing, that's
what this thing is exposing your kids to. So, you know,
(11:29):
Internet of things in general, I'm against, but now you
couple this with AI and the idea you're going to
hand this over to a kid think it's some sort
of innocuous little toy that they're going to play and
quote learn from unquote, and I mean again, you just
I can't stress enough how parents and grandparents need to
understand this and do not buy this stuff. Read this article.
(11:50):
It's a shocker. And then I encourage people go share
this article with your kids, your friends, you know, so
that folks realize the potential in danger they're exposing their
children to through these things.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Just go to LinkedIn dot com and search for Dave Hatt.
That's where he'll post this article. Six forty fifty five
KRCD talk station and finally Webster's word of the Year,
What's slop.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Not what you meant? Station six?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
If you want pif youbo CARCD talk station, Happy Friday,
Tech Briddy, Dave Hat or interest it dot com Dave
real quick, Eric reminded me yesterday was your birthday, So
happy belated birthday from specifically Eric, who FB Facebook messaged
me instantly, and from the listening audience, I hope you
had a really nice one, and of course from behalf
of all of us, all of us, Joe, Me, all
my listening audience, thank you for what you do here
(12:37):
on the Morning show, and a very merry Christmas to
you and your family. So I just wanted to get
that out. The other thing I want you to do
for me. I saw that there's a lawsuit that was
filed against the state of Indiana, or rather against porn sites,
most notably porn Hub. I've got billions of people log
into that site anyway, They outright banned it as an
accessible site in the state of Indiana under the new
(12:59):
legislation seek to keep children protected from pornography, a notable
goal and a laudable goal. But now because of the
use of a VPN, people are getting around it just
by acting like they're in some other states. So the
age verification law doesn't come in Indiana says you can't
do that. You must use porn hub, and it's soon
to be every other provider of services must flag VPNs
(13:20):
and prevent VPNs from accessing porn in the state of Indiana.
That doesn't sound like a positive direction for privacy purposes day,
But maybe you can look into that and maybe commented
on it when we get back to the Tech Friday
segment after the first of the year.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
So, okay, look, we can look into that, but yeah,
in general, I understand what.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
They're trying to do.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Took the idea that you would ban the use of
VPNs is not a good thing.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Indeed, that was my conclusion immediately Slop Merriam Webster's new
Art of the Year Dave obviously tech related.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, so I thought this was kind of funny. So
there's there's been this talk of SLOP that AI feeds
off of the AI and that over time you go
towards something known in the business think of it as
entropy model collapse. You know, if essentially all the human
content has already been sucked up by these things, and
(14:14):
now people are using these tools to generate new content,
and this tool sucks down the content from that tool
generates some new content, and you get into this sort
of endless loop of now everything is just AI generated,
you just sort of slowly go down. And you know,
there have been lots of people talking about this for
some time. One of the concerns about these generative AI
(14:37):
models where we started out, you know, the chat GPTs
of the world, large language model based things, is that
over time, as they feed off of themselves, the quality
continues to go down because you have hallucinations, you have bias,
all these things we've talked about over the years. So
and there have been a lot of people pointing out
the sheer volume of videos and memes and so forth,
(15:00):
and how the Internet is now full of this stuff, right,
and it's just sort of taken over social media, and
again you get this thing feeding that thing. Here's something
that's not correct. Over time, you just go down. And
that's where this idea of slop come is in. So
someone I'm not sure who coined the term, someone coined
(15:21):
the term AI slop and it's kind of stuck. And
I think it's pretty relevant where we're at with all
of this stuff. And that's the word of the year.
So I think in light of the sheer volume of
Internet produced garbage, these cat memes and all this stuff
you just see everywhere now it's like, Yeah, this is
(15:42):
I think a pretty good indication of where we are
with this stuff at this point. So when you hear
someone say slop and obviously AI slop, sometimes people will
just throw out the term slop.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
That's what they're talking.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
About, and it'll be interesting because there's been so much
hype around this stuff, and I think a lot of
the hype has started to wear off and people are
starting to see that while these tools can provide a
lot of value, again, I'm not saying they can. I
think it's been way over hyped. I think the capabilities
are way over hyped, and there are concerns by people
(16:18):
way smarter than me that work in this field about
things like this idea of model collapse and SLOP and
the hallucinations, and you know, are these tools going to
suddenly replace all of us? I think the answer is no. Now,
as I've said many times, Brian, I don't know what's
in some lab somewhere. I only know what I see.
I mean, we use this stuff, but we understand how
(16:41):
to use it within the guardrails. We know what it
does and what it can't do, and where it makes
sense and where it doesn't make sense. So yeah, I
think this is an appropriate term, and it just kind
of makes me laugh a little because I've heard people
in the industry say it. But it's interesting that it's
now sort of caught on and bubbled up to the surface.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Well good, more people understand the concept, more people will
preppreciate the limitations of AI just based upon that term
in and of itself. And you thank you so much, Dave.
Had to looking forward to count of your twenty twenty
six and return of this segment, assuming you're going to
continue doing it with us. I consider it to be
so valuable what you do here on the fifty five
case mornings and of course throughout your career helping companies
(17:20):
avoid these types of problems interest it dot com. Thanks again, Dave,
and you up you up for next year?
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Oh absolutely, you know, Brian, I always appreciate the opportunity
you guys give me to hopefully do some good out
there and enjoy chatting with you and Joe and appreciate
you and Joe and all your listeners. Merry Christmas, Happy
New Year, and I look forward to talking to you
in January.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
That's welcome news, my friend. Merry Christmas to you, and
yours God bless you, sir. We'll get back
Brian Thomas News
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