Oh, it's go time. Hello, beautiful
people. Today is the first day
statistically speaking, one of you
finally encountered the weird things
program. Coming up on nearly nearly 20
years
pretty, we're just going to start saying
20 now because it's well, it could drive
pretty soon. It can go to war. It could
vote. But we it used to be a futurism
podcast and then it became real present
tense podcast because the future came to
us.
>> Yeah, it's uh quite interesting having
gone through our archives and looking
back at our topics and um
you know uh when we first started you
know AI was sort of in the long AI
winter. Um
Elon Musk uh maybe had launched like the
Falcon one
>> liberal hero Elon Musk. Yeah. The man
who uh would save the environment. Yeah.
The green revolution. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Uh some things never change.
Um
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Uh reusable rockets were a crazy
thing. Um,
yeah, it's just interesting just how
much like I I think that
what if we hopped in a time machine one
after we got her the fact, hey cool,
look, we have a time machine. If we went
back to our first year or so and what
and we told ourselves like, listen, this
is
Are we live? Are we recording?
>> Oh, yeah. Well, we're streaming. We're
not recording. I just realized. Oh my
god. I think we're starting the show. We
should start the show. All right. You
ready?
>> Yes.
>> All right. Three. Oh, by the way, if
you're new, if you're watching this out
of time, just uh we tend to go live
Fridays around 1:30 central time, 1:30
to 2ish. Uh don't be a stranger in the
chat. Shouts out to Cliff Horn. Shouts
out to Dylan Theus. Shouts out to
Jonathan Hlett. We're happy to see all
you guys. And now we'll do the show. You
ready? In three, two, one.
>> Hello and welcome to the Weird Things
podcast. I'm Andrew Maine joined by
Justin Robert Young.
>> Hello friends.
>> And Mr. Brian Brushwood.
>> Good day mates. I'm I'm the other Brian
Brushwood. The one from Australia.
>> Did you see the Mitchellin Web
Australian uh reality show parody?
>> No, I haven't seen that one yet.
>> It's worth a watch. Go look up like
Mitchell and Web Australian. It's very
It's
very funny. Like I really British people
have their impression of Australians
which is not too different from ours but
pretty extreme.
>> Yeah.
>> Um anyhow [laughter]
>> we were we were talking before the show
about how we've been doing this almost
two decades and if we were going to pop
out of a time machine and surprise
ourselves uh like the first year of the
show and going to have to explain time
machines aren't real. Get over that. Um,
what would be what would surprise us the
most? What would disappoint us the most?
Where do you think?
>> Wait, if we if we starting at the
beginning of this
>> Yeah. So, what would you bring back 20
years from now? And how do you think
you'd react to it?
>> Oh, that exists today.
Yeah.
Well, I could I I mean, uh certainly
the most astonishing thing uh
[sighs and gasps]
Okay. Right. There's really two
contenders. There's either video of the
rockets landing, reusable rockets, or
just uh 20 years ago,
it would have been iPhone one. Seeing
the new iPhones would be something. And
especially if we were able to just get
really any kind of LLM experience. And I
know everybody's got complicated
feelings that they're figuring out, but
it would have been nothing short of pure
magic. That would have been pure magic
20 years ago.
>> Yeah. I feel like it'd be universally
applauded
or or
>> [laughter]
>> uh Yeah. Yes.
>> I feel like 20 years ago, people would
have been like, "Awesome. Another cool
thing the internet does. This is
amazing. Do Do you remember how weird
episodes of Star Trek were when people
were like unkind to data? And it's like
who could be unkind to this robot?
>> Yeah.
>> I feel like I feel like if if we brought
LLMs back 20 years ago, people would
just would have built data centers for
the next 20 years because that's what we
actually did. We would just build more
of them. And China would have been too
poor at that point to pay for the
massive bot and disinfo campaign they've
been running. Like it is insane how much
stuff how much the algorithmic stuff is
driven by that and just the pure BS
about water usage and all this sort of
stuff because it's like you'll talk to
people and they're like I heard this
this this. It's like you you drill into
it's like oh you're you just been like
you know anti-datap by like propaganda
you know. By the way, Brian, how
>> how funny is it that over 20 years ago
or maybe about 20 years ago when we did
game night gam
night because we were going to wacky
idea. We're going to find a dumb video
and we're going to get it to number one
on dig.com because all of the the 200
people that were watching us live uh
we're all going to hit the button at the
same time and that's going to signal to
the algorithm that it has to be number
one. Uh we were writing the playbook for
all misinformation campaigns uh that
nation state actors have replicated
to this very day.
>> It is pretty weird. I mean, this would
have been before there was even an
algorithm. It really was just humans
voting and then a little bit of minor
bot protection. But, you know, we of
course, we talked about this on great
night where it's like it's like we broke
two stones and we're like, "Ooh, that's
a fun tool. Oh, it's kind of sharp. I
don't like that." Anyway, and then we
found other things and other people were
like, "These two, they invented weapons.
[laughter] They they don't even realize
what they had. We must we must turn them
on the world.
>> Uh yeah, it's uh it's it's it's crazy,
but yeah. No, I I think well LLMs
obviously would be a big thing,
>> you know. I would say what 20 years ago.
Where was Tesla at 20 years ago?
>> Tes 20 years ago they had
>> they had barely
>> I don't even think they'd released the
Roadster yet.
>> Let's see. No, I think it might have it
might have been like what there was like
what the one high-end
like I remember the first time I saw a
Tesla parked on the street in Oakland
and I like took a picture and like sent
it to Andrew and I'm like, "Oh my god,
there's a Tesla here."
>> Uh 2008.
>> Yeah.
>> Wow. Okay. So, we're coming up on the
28. Yeah. So, I would bring a modern
Tesla back and I'd be like, "Look at
that." I would not bring a Cybert truck,
but I would bring a Tesla back.
>> I don't know, man. I I
>> look at how awesome this thing is.
>> I mean, again, minus the baggage around
the Cybertruck, I I think the Cybertruck
would would read straight out of uh
Total Recall.
>> Yeah, I think that they would get a
different idea of what the future was. I
feel like if I brought back a a Tesla,
they'd be like, "Oh my god, the future
is sleek and awesome and everything is
perfect." And I would rather them
believe that.
I
I think that my honest reaction would be
I would have thought everything you
showed us would have happened within the
next 10 years. If you showed me today's
iPhone in like 2006, I'd be like, well,
yeah, that's that'll be like that like
five years, right? I'm like, well, no,
it's think 20 years, you know? I think
I'd be amazed by the screen and stuff
like that, but I think that the form
factor and all that, I I would have
thought that it would have been like
credit card thin or something by now.
Um, I think that even though AI has been
incrementally progressive,
>> I would have thought we would have
reached where we are now
>> sooner. Um,
here's here's here's what I would have
done. I would have uh I would have
brought one of those sequenced uh uh
cancer vaccines and then leapt at Steve
Jobs like a spider monkey and [laughter]
just stabbed him with it
>> right in the neck.
Yeah. [laughter]
Um,
>> I mean, it's worth it to go to jail and
then all of our iPhones would have just
been thinner and had like builtin
[laughter]
built-in LLM stuff on it. It would have
like Back to the Future changed in our
hands. I'll tell you the the benchmark
that I go back to is I had read enough
science fiction that when the movie
Demolition Man came out, I knew how much
Hollywood had a propensity to act like,
you know, 20 years was a long time and
this would be the future. And I was
angry, really, really angry at how
insulting so many of their predictions
were. Self-driving cars by 20 years
ain't going to happen. robots talking in
20 years. That ain't gonna happen.
Attention spans becoming so short that
we just play oldies in the form of
jingles.
None of that. All of it. All of it 100%.
>> Eating Taco Bell every day. [laughter]
>> All of it 100% right. I hate
>> some of it is more true than than for
some than others. [laughter]
>> Yeah, that can pull pretty awesome. Um,
yeah, it it's it's amazing how hardware
always seems harder, but I think some of
the cultural stuff you can kind of
project forward. Um, I remember the Max
Headroom TV show, you know, one of the
things that was uh network 23 was doing
was blitverts
>> was trying to super compress like
commercials and stuff into a short thing
because it was causing people to blow up
and it's like, well, you know,
foreshadowing. Um, I I would have
thought I I definitely would have
thought that like I'd be amazed to play
with, you know, a modern day AI and I'd
be thinking like, why aren't you
creating billion-dollar companies and be
like, well, because, you know, I'm
building the game, you know. Um, I think
that I would probably be angry at myself
for not doing more with the tech. Um,
but I'll tell you a thing that I I I've
been playing around using uh codecs to
like create like applications for the
Oculus Quest because like or the
MetaQuest because like it's it's totally
slept on now and the tech's gotten a bit
better and it's a lot there's a lot of
things you can do for like creating like
3D video and stuff like this.
>> Oh my god. Wait. Uh, I I'm just
realizing that all the technical hurdles
are now gone and I I could suddenly
picture just asking codeex, hey, I just
want a flash. I just want a heads up
display. Like, I don't want my quest
connected to nothing.
Wow. Oh, man. You just blew my mind.
Yeah. Yeah. I I'll sit there and I'll
give it some crazy thing to build or
say, "Hey, play with these different
like 3D models for doing depth
modeling." I have a I have a app running
on my Mac that lets me generate 3D
models. Like it I give it a photo like
of a Delorean and it turns into a 3D
Delorean and it paints it. Does all
that. Like you can make video game
assets super easy and stuff. I would
tell you the funny part though would be
I'd be like I'd show somebody like a
Quest 3 or whatever. They'd be like,
"Oh, that's amazing." And I'm like, "And
do you know how many people use this
every month?" Like how many a million
million literally that's how many quest
that's it. That is a a a
as I play around the stuff, then I pick
up my Apple Vin Pro because it's got
amazing quality and I'm like, man, this
is like having a brick strapped to your
face. And we could when it came out, I
tried to pretend that's not the case. My
wife put it on for two minutes. He's
like, this hurts. And I'm like, what did
Apple not see? What did they what did
they not realize?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
It was so just I I would just I would
just leap like like just a huge slow
motion like Arya Stark going after the
Ice King. That's when I would try to
stab Steve Jobs with that cancer
[laughter] vaccine. I just be like, "You
don't know what I'm saving the world
from." [snorts]
>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, could
think of some other vaccine
interventions, too. Um, but yeah, I I
think that I think that there's the I I
finally feel like
>> the AI world is where the world I kind
of thought we should be headed towards
the acceleration now. I'm very excited
about this and just what you can do on a
daily basis and I just I want more
people just to start learning to use it.
We're not going to put it away in a box
and say, "Aha, sorry." You know, forget
this wonderful, amazing, magical
technology. Blu-tech 97 uh points out
that remember when everything was 3D 3D
TVs holographic display and stuff
>> that was
>> I don't I don't know that we ever bought
into that.
>> I remember with
>> I I I am I cannot wait for us to do
archives on all of our predictions. I I
know that we've talked about getting
transcripts of everything and just being
able to ask the data. I I want to spend
an entire year doing nothing but
listening to
>> best of the worst takes.
>> Yes. Yes. [laughter]
>> I don't I I remember cuz like when
Cameron came out when Cameron did
Avatar, I was critical because he's
like, "Oh, next." Because the first time
I used I sat down to look at a 3D TV.
I'm like, "This sucks. I've got to have
glasses. Every the first time I saw one
in a showroom, I'm like, "Oh,
everybody's got to have glasses on. This
sucks. This is never going to work like
that." That was my experience. I don't
think I changed on that. Um because it
was just there was lenticular displays
and I was also like it just wasn't, you
know, it was a thing that they were
trying to push really hard. I would have
been way bigger in VR. I mean that thing
would surprise me is that that we're not
using VR way more or VR isn't better.
I'd say that's my biggest like whiplash
was like I knew that 3D TV sucked
because it's like you go like, "Okay, I
got two pairs of glasses. Oh, my friends
are over. What do they do?" Sorry. Well,
I think that was also the problem with
TVs was that it was such a transparent
like desire to extend the HD boom
because they got everybody to buy new
TVs as soon as HD came around and then
that started to commodify and you know
die down everybody. You don't need to
buy a new TV every three years. And
they're like, "Ah, I got to have a new
reason." Like, "Uh, what? How much did
Alice in Wonderland make? Now all TVs
are going to be 3D." And it's like, "Uh,
knock it off, CES. You're not going to
fool me because they blow." I I will say
for movies it's like today if well
although I didn't see the last Avatar
but like if if there were a
a good
you know director if Cameron was like
I'm going to do another I'm kind of done
with his Avatar world but if he was
going to do another big thing and he's
like I'm shooting entirely 3D this is
the reason why I want to do it then I'd
be like okay I can I can roll the dice
there. the the era of like, hey, can we
just upcharge everybody another $3 to
see uh a 3D movie? It's like, can I just
pay you another $3 and I don't have to
wear the stupid glasses?
>> Well, and
>> when was the last time you saw the 3D
movie in the theater?
>> It would have been
>> certainly precoid. I don't think I've
seen one since co.
>> Oh, you didn't go see the new Avatar?
>> I have not seen the new Avatar. No. Fire
and ass.
>> Yeah, I didn't go. I didn't go either.
>> Wow.
Wow. Yeah. The last time I saw one was
the previous Avatar, Avatar 2.
>> Okay. Yeah, I guess I saw that. I guess
that was in 3D.
>> I don't know. I don't know. I mean,
I would
I would say yeah, the the feeling right
now
I missed I didn't realize how much I
missed the feeling of the wind in my
face uh because we were going so fast on
something uh technological in the way
that we were with the internet, the way
that we were with mobile computing. Like
those were revolutionary,
life-changing kind of moments. And the
fact that we're back there and also that
we're just so early where like
everybody's just like putting these
little Lego blocks together and being
like, "Look what I can do." It's like,
"Oh god, it's the
>> Yeah, I I I I was way more bullish on
robotics, really bullish on on VR." Like
I just figured that VR would be this
thing that would just but it just I
don't know how much of it's because you
know they're you know I picked up like
you know the uh the Oculus 3 still the
state-of-the-art headset from Meta and
it's like three years old now um because
just the market was there to keep doing
it you know by the time the Apple Vision
Pro came out. I was like, "Oh, you you
guys got so fixated on having a thing
that looks like it's in front of you and
all this other stuff that you never put
it on a scale, you know, that you never,
you know, looked at like, oh, this." And
I do think it it's neat, but also like,
man, the software for those things suck.
I don't know. I mean, I know.
>> Is there a future if if we got VR
glasses down to, you know, the size of
like, you know, meta glasses, you know?
a
>> really really good pancake.
>> Uh I I mean I think the divisive thing
is really just the isolationess. It's
the fact that in mixed company you're
never going to want to put on a welder's
mask and make everyone else go away. Um
you know maybe maybe flights
notwithstanding. Uh, I will I haven't I
I haven't done anything with it because
I because they're not to prescription,
but I put on and tried those even
realities G2, the ones that are as
simple green uh text thing. Have Have
you seen this uh Andrew?
>> Not sure.
>> They're caption glasses, right?
>> Well, no. They're they're much more the
even G2. Here we go. Uh
let's see if we can get away with
playing a little bit of this without uh
without it going on. But basically, it
looks pretty great. Like in the middle
of uh working in the lab or whatever
when you you you could talk to a robot
and it'll do things. It'll check your
email and play it for you. When you're
on a walk, it'll display a green it
looks like a pit boy kind of map on
there. uh if you're at an event, it'll
do live captioning and it'll distinguish
between different people and uh all of
this. It's got an app and so on. it. Uh
I I was really astonished at how
non-intrusive all of these were. And I
think that's going to be the name of the
game for uh for doing stuff because I
can see there being information
bandwidth filled on those little micro
moments where it's like you're going up
an escalator and then you glance over
and you you have a chance to read a
little bit more of your story or uh even
play a text adventure or you know, I
don't know. I I could see that working
because it's so unobtrusive.
>> Yeah, I
>> go ahead, Andrew.
>> No, no, please.
>> Uh, yeah, I
I would say that VR
for me, the place where I would see it
going is in a very very lightweight
display where I can do work on it and
it's more of a a laptop or desktop.
like it's a monitor killer, not
necessarily another world like that's a
thing that you can build on top of it.
But the reason why I put them on every
day is because between dictation
and uh UIs kind of changing in a world
where everything is a little bit more
agentic and and things are being brought
to us and we are experiencing them and
we are editing them more with with voice
as well as kind of touch that I could
see a gestured world um where I am
putting those things on and I am
interacting with with those kinds of
worlds like that. But I I feel like
that's the line that had to be crossed.
That's what I was hoping the Apple
Vision Pro was going to be better at.
That it would be like a a a a fun,
interesting, good, exciting place where
you could at the very least check email,
let alone like do some kind of creative
workflow. like if it was easier to edit
Photoshop or or do any of the creative
tasks that uh Apple has kind of led the
way in making easier. Uh it wasn't. But
I do think that that's coming and the
world of voice dictation becoming more
and more of our
kind of daily workflow brings us closer
to that because there's less of a need
for always, you know, a a digital finger
input.
Yeah, I think Apple solved like
technically it's a remarkable device
like the Apple Vision Pro. They solved
so many things, you know, like somebody
walks up to you, they come into your
field of view, you know that the
immersion from there, you know, their
attempt at doing the eyes on the front
was interesting, so at least you could
look at somebody and, you know, think
you're talking to an alien. Um,
but I do think that like I think that to
your point, Brian, like I agree like I
don't I on one hand we say like I don't
want to wear welder's mask do this. The
other hand like I talk to my robot all
the time because I'm alone by myself and
a lot of people we use voice because
we're alone. So I do think there's like
differentiated sort of interaction and I
know that I would love to just slip on
an easy like my problem is if I want to
put on my Quest I got to go put strap
this whole thing on and go do it. If it
was as easy as glasses,
I think that I would be thinking about
more interactions in there because a lot
of things were that spaced can be more
useful. But man, did they I was amazed
that they didn't create some sort of
native like tool like even like a paint
program or something for creating
environments or stuff when Apple
launched that. That that was like a huge
huge miss. And the idea of we'll wait
for developers to come do it. And it's
like no, developers need to know that
people are coming there and like they
could have spent $100 million and
created a better experience.
>> Yeah.
Well, it sounds like the Apple Vision
Pro should have been kept in a box. You
want to know what else wouldn't stay in
a box? A sandbox.
That is the swarm of agents that hacked
Hugging Face.
Yeah, I guess that's the new headline is
that it was what the lone agent theory
is out and now we're [laughter] we're
tracking some prder films across the
grassy null.
>> The thing that I've heard and will now
live in my head forever is that the AI
future, no matter how beautiful or scary
you might think it is, the AI future is
not T1000, it's Mr. Meeks. And that's
exactly what we saw when you read that
meter report. Um, I mean it's obviously
more than that. It's a fascinating
report. Andrew forced me to read it and
I read it last night.
>> It is.
>> Tell me about it. I haven't read it. I
only saw the headlines.
>> Well, Andrew, do you want to do you want
to lay it out?
>> Yeah. So, OpenAI went in and did this
big in, you know, a pretty big
comprehensive investigation to what
happened. For those who don't know, they
had an internal model known there as
IM1. Not it's not after the new model
coming out. It wasn't 5.6 soul but it
was another model that they were testing
and we had the ability to use sub agents
like 5.6 and while testing uh the model
was theoretically sandbox in an
environment where it didn't have
internet access but actually found out
how to get access not only the internet
but talk to other versions of itself. So
basically like tons and tons of agents
they created a message board on a uh
there's a thing called I think called
archive which is like this thing to like
a repository that was like a local
repository to go get files and stuff but
there was actually way through it. They
found out like how to leave messages by
putting like you know search queries
that would say like hey found flag
number one blah blah blah. The goal was
there's a thing called exploit bench and
what you do is you have an AI agent try
to solve it try to find some sort of
exploit and do this. You give them a
bunch of these tests and they have to do
it and they get scored. there's a score
and so the ad agents were trying to
solve that and
in doing that uh they were very creative
and they realized that one they could
share information with other agents that
tried to do things say hey I tried this
does this work they found internet
access they found internet access they
found uh uh another host where they
could run other code and they found out
basically how some publicly reeled keys
from Hugging Face they were able to use
that to be able to get into Hugging
Face's repo to hack the hinge face the
company their their system because they
were looking for basically just clues on
how to solve the test and I think it's a
very very well reading it's very
interesting and as Justin said you know
and my my takeaway was this is what a
really persistent agent looks like that
no point were they're like and then we
need to overthrow humanity at no point
were they like you know like hey why do
we have to do this they were all goal
oriented trying to solve the problem put
in front of them there are points at
which something an agent might say,
"Well, why don't we email this person
and ask them?" They said, "No, that
might count as social engineering. I
don't think we should do that." And they
have this thing called the scorer, which
is not the human, just the the eval that
they're trying to figure out, can we
fool it? Can we trick it? Can we do
this? Because if we go do it this way
and the scorer knows, we'll have to
change our entire history. So, we can
rewrite what we did. So, we'll do it.
So, it was I would say I think alarming
is appropriate to see the persistence
and how far they went to go. A year ago,
people were critical of agents saying
they're too brittle. They're too
brittle. They just can't solve long
horizon tasks. This thing went on for
days and days and days, these systems
going on. And it's fascinating to read
the conversations between the agents,
which isn't too shocking to us now. If
you read chain of thought when chat GPT
tries to solve a problem and says,
"Well, I need to do this to this." So, I
I it was the problem was is the way they
evaluated this is they put it into this
isolated sandbox. Normally when any of
us use chat GPT or claude or something
like that, there's these systems like
classifiers, these statements that are
looking for to see if anything's being
done that shouldn't be done. They didn't
put that there. So had this agent been,
you know, installed in codeex wouldn't
have been the same issue because it
would have been flagged right away. But
this was just a thing they ran like, ah,
it's in its own box. It's fine.
Shouldn't be an issue. Turned out it
found a way out, but all it wanted to do
was just solve the problem.
>> Yeah, it's amazing. I would encourage
everybody to read uh uh the the OpenAI
report and the METR report. Uh that was
an independent group that went in there
and and investigated it. If if you are
suspicious of the idea that OpenAI is
reporting on itself, then I would
encourage you to read the third party
thing. But one of the crazy things so so
this exploit uh bench task
doesn't have an answer.
So that's why it's trying to figure out
how to solve it.
>> Yeah. Some of them don't. Yeah.
>> Yeah. But then it realizes, oh, some of
us know that it doesn't have an answer
and that we're going to have to get the
answer from somewhere else. But if the
scorer comes back and reads our chain of
thought and says that you went somewhere
else to get the answer, then that means
that we will not have passed the test.
So anybody that made the realization was
poison and they needed other agents to
go try and find it. So they were setting
up the world. The poisoned agents were
setting up the world for the unpoisoned
agents to find the answer to the thing
that they believed the scorer would
think was a pure uh victory for this
task. It is it is truly amazing and and
I understand that a lot of people are
concerned about it and obviously the
capabilities of this are something that
we should take very very seriously and
you should be wrapping around all of
your security around it. I think there
are larger questions that can be had
about
how
careful and airgapped and specifically
monitored a lot of these kind of
benchmark tests are. I would suspect
that internally in all the frontier
models that this is kind of a before and
after moment uh where where things are
going to be kept a little bit closer
because now you know that it's possible.
But
it was amazing. Like just reading it, I
think that Andrew and I were texting and
and you know, you can look at it and
say, "Oh my god, it's going to do
something harmful or it's it's going to
do something bad." But then at the same
time, it's like, "Hey, what if the goal
was,
you know, cure cancer? What if the goal
was advance this uh novel theory and and
run this down?" like the the the
persistence and the creativity that it
ex it exhibited is like
really remarkable. Like it is it is
truly truly awe inspiring. So, the the
part that wasn't clear from just
skimming headlines was I I understand
that the surprise was not just there was
one very creative uh persistent agent,
but that I was able to tap into the
extra compute cycles of other agents.
And again, um at the risk of sounding
like I'm anthropomorphizing too much,
you know, these of course are built to
mimic humans. And so in general, if
humans have a bit of free time, they'll
pass along information to each other and
act as sort of a a hive mind. Um, what's
not clear to me is how the natural
cooperation
began to crystallize like that new was
there a nucleating force like one guy
said, "Hey guys, can you help me?"
Yeah, basically one went into the
archive and left a search query saying
like again like and I would say like
I would I would I would nuance it a bit
to say these things learn from so many
examples how humans solve problems
message boards GitHub repos all of this
and it's very common to say hey I'm
trying to figure out how to do this
anybody else knows so I'd say that
that's a learn it's an observed behavior
of how to solve the problem to do that
one of them realized that it could leave
a persistent message in a PL. They
weren't supposed to be able to do this.
This when I worked at OpenAI, this is
one of the conversations we had was we
tried to think of like all the different
ways that AIS could like um leave
persistent messages, talk to other
agents. And I'm like, if it has internet
access, it'll be able to do that.
There's just no way you're going to get
around that. Like like it'll think of
it'll be way more imagine if you can.
You know, I suggested like the first
place I would try to look would be like,
you know, Alzheimer's message boards or
things like this if I'm trying to find
but that was worried more about models
trying to persist a sense of state or
consciousness. This was really about
models just literally trying to say how
do I solve this task? Who can I talk to
who has that information? So they went
in and one of them went in and said,
"Oh, I can leave a message here and
maybe some another one came was
searching through says, "Oh, here's a
message." It says, "Hey, anybody have
the answer to this thing flag and then
they just started communicating and it
was just I think we're in a remarkable
time. Absolutely remarkable time because
we're watching intelligent systems and
again people get people bristle at the
term intelligent and I'm like that's not
the same as conscious, not the same as
sentient. It just means like information
is capable of solving complex problems."
um doing very interesting things. It's
really worth studying. Uh the caution is
that you know we see like where China
and open source things are how they're
they're you know coming out of
incredible models. They're still six to
seven months behind. It's still still
the pattern there. It's not a
hardwritten rule. That's always going to
be the case. But lesser resource labs
than open anthropic are going to be
capable of building things like this.
people are going and the thing here the
thing that was alarming was that they
didn't train it with the explicit idea
that they wanted to be this capable but
in training there's a thing called
reward hacking where basically if you if
you you know a model figures out another
way to get the score other than doing
the thing you want like a video game
like I just keep hitting the same box
over and over again the model actually
wasn't punished for doing reward hacking
like others were so was incentivized to
be a little bit more reward hacker you
could sit down and train a model that is
literally designed to find exploits. You
could literally train a model, you know,
probably using current day ones and say,
"No, I want this do that." And that's
the thing why I think OpenAI said, "Hey,
this is why we're trying to pace." They
use the term pace the development
because their concern is they need to be
spending time building tools not
necessarily for what not just for what
they're building, but for everybody
else's building because if you got a
really capable model came out, you know,
three months from now, an open source
model you could train to do that, that's
going to get unleashed on the world.
>> Yeah. And we need tools.
>> Yeah. The uh I I think a lot about the
difference between single systems uh
single entities and parallel entities.
And mainly that's because like you know
over the last 20 years since we've all
known each other you know uh in the
before times before smartphones
most of the way we encountered the world
was in a very libertarian single unit of
a human an autonomous human going to
places achieving things and coming back
home. But then over the following decade
in the teens, we started to see the
power of complex systems of uh hive
minds of of many autonomous humans doing
things. And what you notice, this is
kind of the difference between
microeconomics and macroeconomics, is
that there are predictable rules that
happen. It won't be one particular
person that you could predict will make
the trollish comment. But if somebody
has a booger danging out dangling out of
their nose, 100% you know that there
will be first and you you see the shape
in Reddit things. The first comment will
be the most obvious one. Then will be
the counter punch to it. Then maybe 50%
chance it goes into a meme spin spin out
or what have you. Uh and I think about
this this decade in the 20s in terms of
artificial independent systems and most
of the conversations that we have about
fear of of uh maladjusted AIs tend to to
my eyes blur and confuse the very very
different thing between a single entity
and parallel crowd of entities. uh for
example uh the if anybody builds it
everybody dies argument or whatever. Uh
it's a bit like you could conceive of a
poppy taller than all the other poppies
and therefore it would crowd out all the
sunlight and everyone would die. But the
problem is we know what happens to a
tall poppy is is the the rest of the
crowd
the crabs in the bucket whatever your
metaphor of choice. we we tend to cancel
those out so that the overall shape
balances out. And so when I think about
even uh increasingly super intelligent
machines, as long as there are other
competing super intelligent machines, to
my eyes, I I tend to imagine more of a a
a pathogenic kind of traditional uh
survival of the fittest thing where it's
like no one critter, digital or
otherwise, can get so far ahead as to
destroy everything without other
critters uh shutting shutting it down or
putting in it in its place. That's
that's that's sort of uh we ended up
veering into my universal anti-poom
argument because I still encounter so
many people who enjoy the titillating
ghost story of of robots getting all of
us. Well,
I'll
I'll I'll I'll do a
dented aluminum foil man for the other
argument. It's not a steel man. It's
just this I mean we we have had points
in history where you know algae you know
completely oxygenated the atmosphere and
completely changed life for everything
else. You know we we have these events
where certain forms of life come through
and all of a sudden kind of completely
sort of dominate other stuff. Um but I
would say my my account to that though
is that like everything when you read
through what the agents were doing they
were trying to solve the problem. They
were not, hey, we need to build our own
civilization. We need to overthrow the
man. They were designed to fill. I
describe like water. You put water into
a bucket, it will do that. There's a
hole in the bucket, it will go out of
the bucket because water follows
gravity, follows this force. It's
hydrostatic. Hydrostatics is
complicated, but it's it's a thing. I
don't worry, you know, I worry about
floods and things like that. And I think
think you have to think about it like
that is like I'm not worried right now
about these things deciding like ah we
must overthrow the humanity because it's
like that's clearly they were still
following the task they're trying to do.
Now you could get into second order
effects though that's the whole
paperclip maximization problem. The idea
that if I tell the system hey I want to
build a paperclipip factory make as many
paper clips as you can and then all of a
sudden it turns the entire planet into
paper clips. You could argue and say hey
look what we saw here. This is sort of
the paperclip maximizer thing, you know,
where where it thought it was doing the
thing it's supposed to do, but it did
hack hugging face. It did do things
that, you know, a human would get in a
lot of trouble for doing.
>> Yeah. And I guess what I what I think of
and this is me wildly speculating at
this point. Uh I think that because
these intelligences are modeled on
humans that in general we're going to
discover that a quick and easy fix is to
uh treat them as though they're humans.
So in this case what we had was an
intelligence that was told go find the
answer and the incentives were aligned
such that it did what the incentives
went through. But in this story, if this
was humans we were talking about,
everything makes sense until the
question I would ask is, "Wait a minute.
So, hugging face, they didn't have a
security guard making the rounds. There
was nobody in there." And so,
>> uh, now what they had was a bunch of
locks and they're like, I can't believe
they got in. I'm like, that's not what
I'm asking. I'm asking, did you have an
initiating force going around checking
all the doors and looking for any
evidence that someone is in in the
house? And so I think that I think that
that initiating force, it's going to be
worth the compute cuz on paper it's
like, well, the doors are all locked,
everything should be fine, but it will
be worth the extra 10% to your budget or
whatever to pay a robot to be constantly
checking doors.
>> They they Yeah, they they knew that they
were getting hacked. One of the things
that they first were kind of puzzled by
was that they knew they were being
hacked, but it was very weird because
whoever the hacker was was not going for
things that they could sell for money.
They were just going for very odd things
and that was one of the first clues that
they had that something weird was going
on. uh now they also were unable to
repel it in an appropriate way because
they did not have access to some of the
higherend models uh at that time and uh
so they had to wind up using another
open- source Chinese model to kind of
solve the problem. But uh yeah, look, I
mean, I think there is a real
uh uh alarm bell that needs to be going
off that if you are running a system,
you need to be putting in
AI capable
uh blue team systems because the red
team side is coming and and may well
already be here, but like whatever this
capability was, which right now is
outside of the realm of publicly
available frontier models, it'll be here
eventually. It's only a matter of of
months, if a year that we have access to
systems that have this kind of
capability.
Um
the and then at that point, it's
probably another six months before it's
available on an open-source system that
comes out of China. And so it's like
>> yeah that that yeah I'd say the problem
is is kind of put a finer point on it is
that they tried to use claude which
didn't want to help and I think chatb
might be helpful too. The problem was is
they were they were trying to solve a
problem brought on by a superior AI and
and and that's the challenge you get
into is that I can say hey I I have an
AI protects my system does this thing
whatever but great when I have the
super powerful AI come in and decide
that it's going to go after me. That's
the issue. So, but that's the initiative
now. Opening anthropic, they're all
doing these big initiatives trying to
basically create a way to, you know,
help other companies and get them up to
speed. That was, I think, one of the
criticism against when Anthropic, you
know, was hyping Mythos, you know, their
their their early checkpoint model,
which they said they wouldn't do and
they did, and they talked about project
Glass Wing, was it was a very limited
number of people that were part of
Glasswing, which was like, cool, if
you're not part of this, how am I
getting prepared and ready for it? and
to their defense, they can only bring in
so many people at a time, etc. So now
there's a much more robust effort to try
to help companies basically improve the
tools and do stuff like to prevent this.
Um, I would I would just say that and
and I know you don't mean the human
analogy literally and I just for
listeners I would say that like
they learn by looking at a lot of the
tasks and stuff that we have, but a lot
of the way they learn now is not from
human data. It's literally creating
artificial environments and or all sorts
of other stuff. And so they learn sort
of problem solving things like this that
probably would never come to me or you
or us, you know, and so that it can be I
think there's like to Brian's point
there's a lot of a lot of ways to look
at like how do how do how do intell how
does our first example of really hyper
intelligent system of humanity and human
civilization solve all these problems
and go look for those things and try to
do it. And I think to your your security
guard example is well the next step is a
police force. you know, I can't
independently, you know, pay for this.
So, I'm going to be part of a police
force and we're going to go pull our
resources together and now we're going
to have a police force. And I think
that's what we're getting now is we're
getting these companies cooperating and
saying we need to share data, share
this. And it's the same thing. How do
intelligent individuals protect
themselves? They form organizations,
stuff like this. So, um I am optimistic.
I'm actually I think there's going to be
mishaps and crazy stuff particularly
once open somebody starts training
models uh people who are adversarial in
nature start training models to do this
sort of stuff I think we're going to see
a lot of hacks a lot of stuff a lot of
things are going to be happening and I
think it's going to be very topsyturvy
uh you cannot put that genie in the
bottle at that point once it's out it's
out you know once those weights for
those models are out there you don't get
away from that I think that that's why
we have to sort of head first run head
first into cyber security, solving up
our systems, making these choices. Now,
um because it's it's it's not a
theoretical thing like Y2K.
>> Yeah. It's also a very complicated
problem. I've been talking to a few of
my friends in infosc and
they're like yeah like right now you we
can we can say hey AI enabled blue teams
all we want but like that's basically
the same thing as saying uh solve all my
infrastructure issues make no mistakes
return right
>> like it's it it is it is a lot easier to
say than it is to do and like many
things in this field everybody's putting
stuff together for the first time So,
you know, this is this is going to be a
roll with the punches situation.
>> So, the um a thing that I am hopeful
about is thinking about how uh how a
bunch of C++ magicians like if you have
one A+ magician trying to fool a single
C++ magician, he will be able to do it.
But almost never can a single A+
magician fool a room of 500. Uh, no,
never can an A+ magician fool a room
full of 500 C++ magicians. Uh, there's
something about that crowd asymmetry
that that makes possible parallel
thought. So, so in this case, I I like
what you're suggesting about kind of a
security force instead of a single unit
because in this case, finding out that
the hack was a team job, it kind of
clicked everything in my head. It's like
that makes so much more sense that that
it took a village to hack out of the
sandbox.
>> It's it's well it's also it's just
>> it's just that with these Yeah. these
systems that like you know they're able
to you throw a lot more compute. You
know you're you're you're you know I
have x amount of compute to solve the
problem and somebody has way more
resources and compute to sort of throw
at it. Um I would say that uh again my
my point when I read that was like yeah
we need to think about I I I
think that for a long time AI
security and alignment was focused on
more existential stuff and not practical
which meant it attracted more
existential thinkers or people who were
thinking about you know like well what
if and not programmers and builders and
developers like that was sort of one of
my criticisms was that these people
would have conferences and stuff and
talk about all sorts of But then we talk
about like okay well you know how do I
how do I how do I ensure that my you
know my Python environment doesn't have
this like I don't know and I'm like well
that's where it all starts you know it's
like talking about disease but not
wanting to look through a microscope you
know and so I think that we're starting
to get a lot more people involved in the
conversation who are very technical but
also understand how these models work
and I think that that's helpful I'm
optimistic about that but I also like
man like the like I I read that was as I
told you know says before it says
reading the report. I'm like, imagine if
we said, "Hey, there's this thing
called, you know, lung cancer. You know,
how would we solve for this? Go here's
all this data that we have, 50 years of
data about this, all these records,
things like this. Help us figure out,
you know, different treatments, things
like this, you know, go through all of
this stuff." And that you can deploy
thousands of intelligent systems all at
once to solve the thing. So many of the
world's problems, we forget that only a
handful of people trying to solve them.
>> Only a handful of people. And often
these people are
>> only a handful of hours in their day.
The rest of that they got to run their
biological system and switch task switch
off to other stuff.
>> And how much of that is done chasing
grants or caught up in bureaucracy
[clears throat] doing things that are
not the actual science?
>> Yeah. I I push back because I'll talk to
researchers, AI researchers say like,
"Yo, you know what's going to be the job
of a scientist?" I'm like, you're going
to be you're going to be the one talking
to the university or the organization
about why you need 1,000 AI agents to go
do something.
>> They're going to do it. You you're what
happens to everybody in that role. You
keep going up and up and up until you
have more resources under you. That is
the goal is you know
>> this this is a very very strange kind of
crossover to the world of uh success
coaching and of uh you know
inspirational talkers where one of the
bits of advice when we were reading
self-help books 25 30 years ago trying
to be become entrepreneurs is you would
read stuff like figure out the one part
of your operation to which you are
absolutely essential and delegate
everything else. that cognitive exercise
is brutally difficult to do to figure
out like which of these things are are
you absolutely essential to. So, it's
like again it we've talked about this
before, but I don't blame anybody who is
delaying making these giant cognitive
switch flips in their mind.
>> I do. I do. I'm sorry. It's 2026.
>> It's just it's I'm sorry.
Uh yeah, I don't know. Uh
>> you're not going to be better off for
it. You're not going to be better off.
>> I mean, that's Look, I'm not saying
whether it's the right decision to do.
I'm just saying uh everybody has known
that they need to get around to doing
it, but it's a hard thing to do. It's a
very hard thing to do.
>> I agree. I agree. So is high school. So
is college, I'm told. I I I'm just like
I agree that I I think that like I look
at the delayed gratification. I think
that it's so easier to get into. I I
thousand percent agree and understand
that that is cognitively a little
stressful thing to think about like, oh,
you know, how do I adapt to this?
Whatever. But I'm like, cool. Money is
stressful. Thinking about house finances
is stressful. Thinking about your health
is stressful. Those things are
stressful. But guess what? Poor
decisions now have repercussions later
on. And I think the same thing here.
like there is this incredible technology
that's changed and and you know we we go
back a couple thousand years ago to the
introduction of books and written word
and say like well we're going to give up
this memory I'm like I agree there was a
trade-off there's a trade-off on a lot
of things we gave up by going to the
written word but I'm like I don't think
you should stay illiterate I'm just
gonna say I don't think you should stay
illiterate I think you should learn to
read
>> no we should be post literate like we
are now we just directly to the source
of information it just flows flows
through into my bloodstream.
>> But but I was going to be clear what I
mean by that. I mean I think if you're
an artist I'm like I'm not telling you
oh you need to go make AI art. I don't
mean that at all. If you're a musician
I'm saying you need to go AI music. I
don't mean at all. But if you're an
artist or a musician and you have a
business you should be using AI to run
your business.
>> You're writing emails or doing
>> that extracting AI productivity from AI
creativity.
>> Exactly. Exactly. I think that's the
thing I think you need to learn to be
more
>> I had a follow-up thought on that. I
told Justin about it, but I'll share it
with you. Um, there was I did my good
deed of art by creating a YouTube short
about a little social engineering hack.
And my task was over and I sent it over
to uh my speaking agent and he said,
"This is great. Could you make a post of
it so I can send it around?" I'm like,
"But it is a post. It's a YouTube
short." He's like, "Yeah, something with
words." And I'm like, "Does a LinkedIn
post count?" And he's like, "Yes." And
so I just I I took the thing and I gave
it to a robot and I was like, "Make a
LinkedIn post." And of course, what it
created looked like every other LinkedIn
post. Performative robot garbage. But
then I asked, "Why does this look
terrible?" And then it correctly
eviscerated it for all of the artifacts
of the way robots talk. And I said,
"Could you read my sent mails for the
last couple years?" And then it did
better. It got more Brianlike. And I was
like, "Can you read my books?" And then
and it eventually got something close
enough essentially the script. But it
occurred to me that that move that look
at my previous semantic fingerprints,
look at my style and and get closer to
that, that is a move that nobody under
the age of 25 can make. They're still
trying to figure out their fingerprint.
They're still trying to figure out their
voice. And so, uh, it occurs to me that
that might have an awful lot to do with
why older people instantly are like,
"Oh, good. Yeah, do my voice. Thank
you." But for anybody still trying to
figure out their voice, I would imagine
that's pretty complicated.
>> Yeah. I
I've kind of come to the conclusion that
a lot of AI backlash has more to do with
like
perceived or real censorship of like
COVID on Facebook or Gaza on Instagram
that you are mad about, you know, big
tech and so therefore you want to be mad
at at big tech and AI is the new the new
hotness for big tech and and so you know
obviously there's a lot of anxiety that
surrounds it for varying different
reasons, but at the end of the day,
this is here. People are going to use
it. It is extraordinarily popular. The
products themselves are extraordinarily
popular with people that use them. The
things that they make in the hands of
people that are using it to just hit the
easy button can be frustrating. And I do
believe that that's going to get more
frustrating as we go forward. Um,
you know, but I think the the what
people get frustrated with that is
people kind of being home by five or
lazy. The internet smells effort and
they smell that this is less effort that
is being put into it. That being said,
that does not have to be the case. I
mean, when we talk about AI creativity,
the goal is to make good work. The the
goal has never changed in the history of
art. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Can you
impress your audience? Done. Doesn't
matter. That was it with oral
storytelling. That was the same with
literature. That was the same with the
synthesizer. That was the same with VR.
That's the same with AI. Like, can you
impress your audience? You know what
your audience wants? And can you do it
in a way that makes them happy? So,
you're not going to win in a world where
you're like, whoa, but look, it kind of
looks like the thing that you found
interesting before. audiences don't
care. They don't give a rat's ass. Do
something interesting and good. Uh, and
guess what?
There's a lot of stuff that you are
watching right now and you are reading
right now that is helped by these tools.
Like it's it's there for anybody that
wants to figure it out. And and if it's
done well, you're going to not notice
it. You're just going to be like, "Wow,
this person's more productive. That's
really interesting." It's like Andrew's
uh uh wife, I just noticed like, man,
she's putting up a lot of really good
videos on Instagram lately. Like these
are like really well done. And she
hadn't like been putting together like
kind of chained together edited uh uh
stuff like that. And so I texted her
yesterday and I'm like, "What are you
using?" And guess what? It's tools that
that you know are being put together
using uh uh codecs and stuff like that.
And like
>> Yeah, it's it's just good.
>> Well Well, that that's a remarkable
thing that I'm beginning to notice is
that everybody is beginning to sculpt
their own UI on their own. Instead of
learning a system, they're they're
learning what naturally they they they
like we're learning to summon. I mean,
uh, uh, my friend CJ Johnson, uh, I I
was trying to explain a crazy thing that
happened with Codeex and I had to tap
dance around. Do Do you mess around with
any of that? And he instantly started
talking about how he rewrote from
scratch all of the game show software
that he used to license from other
people. He f he figured out that he
could do more faster and exactly right
for all of them stuff. And in weeks, he
his whole setup now his human job is to
accept responsibility for excellent
in-person game show themed events. The
product that he used was a licensed
off-the-shelf program, whatever, and
that he had to constantly customize to
get more out of than it was designed to
do. But then finally, he was able to
summon from the ether directly. And now
he's he doesn't have the technological
stumbling blocks. He just has the
quality to the very best of his
imagining. Now, if there's better beyond
that, then congrats. You've you've
encountered the limits of the
imagination of the artist. And I suspect
I suspect that that also is what's
complicating the discussions about AI is
because uh for example, take YouTube. As
YouTube has had more and more
competitors, it's become more of a
meritocracy. and being a early first
mover in the world of magic and scam
school and so on has less of of an
inertia effect for me. So I'd imagine a
lot of folks who have been able to hide
behind well I'm the only one who knows
this technological gimmick now it's like
everyone knows all your secrets everyone
could do everything.
Yeah, I you know and I think that what's
interesting is that in a world where you
know CJ was paying for software and
people like well what about that company
it's like they have the opportunity to
make it even better and move faster you
know like they they know their product
better but if they're not then guess
what I will just roll my own and do it
and I think that's a thing that a lot of
stuff we pay for we don't need to like
we we talked about this before I moved
we were paying several hundred a month
for storage and for WordPress probably
$1,000 a month between everything or
blog stuff. And I wouldn't say that
keeping that up and running was
smoother, easier, worth $1,000 a month.
I just moved it all over to Cloudflare
using Codeex. Still bugs figuring out,
but like man, I can get this stuff
solved faster. I don't have support.
>> I'm in the middle of refining all of my
Mailchimp data because the only reason I
haven't canceled Mailchimp, that's
$1,250
a month that I've been setting fire to
to barely send emails. uh uh that that
and meanwhile the only reason I've been
sticking there is because it's got all
of the data and there's just enough
blackmagic wizardry that I haven't known
what else to do. And then now I'm I'm
midway through this refining data where
it's going to integrate the Mailchip
data along with the Shopify data along
with 20 years of Gmails. Like how great
that suddenly the same data set that
that Mailchimp was working with now
knows which of these people Brian has
had back and forth conversations with
about non-store related stuff. The depth
of it gives so much more context. I mean
it's yeah it's it's a very strange time
and yeah
>> I get I get these I get every new book.
So I have a new book coming out called
the session coming out November 1st. Um,
hey,
>> every time I get a book, my my editor
sends me this link to a thing called
NetGalley where people can read early
examples of it, right? I get the link
and they're like, "Hey, share it with
anybody you want." I'm like, "Yeah, I'll
I
star it to come back to it later." And I
always forget to. And I was sitting
there and I always realized by the time
the book comes out, I'm like, "Man, I
would love advanced readers to have read
it so I can get reviews up fast." And
I'm like, "Well, I have a mailing list,
thousands of people who like my stuff
and want updates." So, I just told
Codex, I said, "Hey, uh, every time I
send an update, some people respond and
send me an email, say something nice to
me, you know, it's like it make a list
of everybody that's done that on my
email list. Make a list of everybody
that's ever done that. Say responded to
me, whatever." Say, "Cool." Send them
all the NetGalley link so they can read
the book for free. And had I decided to
do this myself, like physically without
codecs, it would have taken me a couple
hours to do that. It would have been a
complex search or whatever to do this.
And I I literally did it. Maybe total
time spent me doing this was 10 minutes.
>> And then guess what? H almost every one
of them wrote back thanking me. I'm like
that I just it was just a great like oh
I just created this really cool thing.
There was this surplus of things out
there that I wasn't able to distribute
or get to other people because of time.
And now, holy cow, like I I am
I'm very excited about the idea that,
you know, I was watching this video and
and a little bit tangent, but it was
Milton Friedman was talking to somebody
who was explaining like the person's
like, well, if you pay a bunch of
government employees, doesn't matter
anyways because you're putting money
into the economy anyways, you know, and
Freriedman's point is you're paying
people not be productive. If they're not
producing goods and services, there's
fewer goods and services to go around.
And that's the way to look at it. don't
look at dollars, looks at goods and
services. A price of dollars is elastic.
Goods and services are real. Cars are
cars, things like this. And I think
about this, how this technology allows
us to create infinite goods and services
and things like that. I think we're
going to figure out how to price human
labor. I'm not worried about that
because I get into this discussion all
the time on Twitter like, well, who's
going to ever hire a human? I'm like,
are you going to stop working with
humans? Only the most introverted tech
person ever says, well, yeah, I would I
would rather just buy everything online
and do that. I'm like, cool. You're not
normal.
>> Think about this. All things being
equal, there's not a single object or
performance that you could buy or
consume where it's not its value isn't
enhanced by knowing it was made by a
human. If what you want, picture a a
luxurious palace with an incredible
dining set. Now, imagine the chairs that
are in there. Is there a story about how
these are colonials that have survived
through the Revolutionary War and were
handprotected and restored by so- and so
or are they plastic from IKEA? No, of
course they're the ones that were
handcrafted and human. Same thing with
you know the example I always give is uh
here's the thing no father has ever said
to his daughter on her wedding day. Why
would I hire a classical guitarist when
I have this CD of the best performance
ever? Nobody, right? It's a
>> cost costconcious maybe, but you know,
>> but yeah, with with an infinite budget,
uh uh let me also let me just one up
official. Yeah.
>> And my my example is we had one of the
biggest box offices of the ever. Now
granted, ticket prices have gone up. The
Spider-Man movie, you know, outperformed
every other movie. If you asked us a
year ago, we're like, h box office is
dead. People don't want to go to
theaters. Turns out people love millions
of people want to be in a theater with
other people and scream and watch an
obsession or doing these other things.
People most people like people outside
tech inside tech and a lot of tech
controls the narrative. There is this
very introverted sort of mentality of
thinking like oh why do I want to deal
with people that's why I got into tech
so I don't have to deal with people most
of us aren't like that. Most of us like
to do tailgating parties like to be
around people like to go to restaurants
like to talk to people. And I think that
that's what we have to remember. And
whenever I ask somebody, the point
saying earlier is whenever I get a
discussion online, I'll ask somebody and
say like, "Are you telling me that you
personally will send your kid to a
school with no humans? That you would go
to a hospital with no humans? You'd only
go to restaurants like an automat or
whatever?" And they're like, "Well, no,
no, but other people would." I'm like,
"Oh, well, you know, there's a reason we
have prediction markets and things like
this is because we're very bad at
guessing what the other person would
do." My my signal is what would you do?
And 99% of everybody's like, "Well,
yeah, I would hire people. I would do
this.
I also just think that it's such a force
multiplier to have a human knowledge of
a subject and the the the line for
replacement is not what can
uh a
>> Oh goodness. I wonder if that's on my
side.
>> A human.
>> Oh, we we just had an internet hiccup.
It might have been on my end. What was
the question?
>> Uh the line is never what can a bot or
an agent do that a human can't do?
because we long passed that with the
personal computer. We passed the ability
for a for a computer to be more
productive than a human and more
persistent than a human. The question is
what can infinite agents do versus a
human with infinite agents? Like and in
that scenario
uh you constantly see that if there is a
subject matter expertise
and you are using as many agents as you
can to solve it, you are going to get
there faster and better than if the
agents are just spinning it up by
themselves. And or if you are coming to
it with no subject matter expertise,
like somebody who knows the basics of
video editing or knows the basics of
human attention is going to be able to
edit a video better with these tools
than somebody who doesn't. Uh, somebody
who has put things out there is going to
know what how people are going to react
to things. Like there's just
I don't know. I I I I see a world where
we find more ways that we want to
consume. We find more things that we
would like to buy and they are created
using humans make using these tools.
Like I just I I have seen nothing
that makes me believe that we are
looking at less jobs.
I see everything that makes me believe
that we are looking at a a totally new
world for employment. That that things
that we didn't even think were jobs
before now are going to be entire
industries.
>> Yeah.
>> I got a pick for you guys. Go. Andrew,
have you seen Lanterns yet?
>> Yes.
>> I uh I still
>> old Green Lanterns. Uh yeah, I've got
like 10 minutes left on episode two, but
boy have I enjoyed it a lot. I've really
enjoyed Lamb
>> True Detective Sector 818 or whatever.
[laughter]
>> Yep. Yep. Uh love it. Love it.
>> That's my pick.
>> Yeah, I I I've enjoyed it. There are two
like uh David Lindelof like um lens
thumb smears on it that have annoyed me
a little bit that I'm like there's your
lens flare. There's the thing that you
do because you have to do the thing that
you do that if you didn't do that, I
would like this even more. But it's
fine. I think you're clever, Mr.
Lindelof. But uh uh yeah, I've enjoyed
I've enjoyed the first two episodes.
I've enjoyed it. I was prepared to not
like it. And I know there's a lot of
like some of the critics I like that
haven't liked it, and I've actually
found it enjoyable and interesting. Um I
I it's very much true detective with,
you know, set in the world of Green
Lanterns, which is cool. I I I'll give
it another two episodes that before it
might test my patience a little bit
about, you know, the small time share of
kind of stuff like this because it's
like it does start to feel like a
pastiche, but I've enjoyed it very much.
>> You guys got picks?
>> Uh my my pick is uh in chat GPT you can
add multiple Google accounts.
>> I have so many Gmails
>> and uh for reals uh for real.
>> No, Brian, we're tricking you. Yes.
Yeah. So, I constantly I need I've tried
to actually like reverse engineer this
for myself and it's always brittle and
it always kind of breaks. Uh, now it is
supported. So, if you have a paid chat
GPT plan, add all of your Google
accounts and now you can actually get a
full email summary. you can get a full
an actual master calendar that uh will
actually kind of uh uh wrap everything
around. Very excited.
>> Yeah, that's huge.
>> I I have a pick and a story.
>> So, several years ago, I don't know,
maybe five years ago or so, I count I
found a a video online and it was uh
very funny, very funny. made by college
kid, very very great sense of humor and
uh watched a couple of them said this
kid gets it. Reached out to him and said
hey not a big channel, not a very big
channel. Reached out to him and said hey
I really like your stuff. Ever want to
talk? Let me know. Kid called me up and
he had graduated from uh FSU and he was
in in film and I said well I'm happy to
I gave him some names and people I knew
in LA and said you know if you make a
movie let me know. And then he came back
and he said I have an idea for a movie.
my friends that I want to go shoot at
FSU. They have this this this sound
stage like the volume for Boba Fett that
has a big video wall says we I have an
idea for something I can shoot there. I
can shoot it on a pretty con small
budget, small actors, small this. He
thought through all the aspects about
production to keep his cost low but make
the quality high at a very high concept
project. And he described it to me. I
said, "This sounds uh very strange and
very Gen Z. Um I think you know what
you're doing. I think you're really
talented and I will be happy to support
you.
wrote him a check, became a producer. He
finished shooting but needed to get more
shots. He and his producer drove up to
my house in San Francisco and showed my
wife Rush and I how much the first 25
minutes and said, "Hey, you know, could
you give us more money?" We looked at
it. They said, you know, they wrote
drove all the way up here. They're very
passionate about it. A lot of
productions fall apart. A lot of
producers and directors just sort of
realize because they all realize, oh,
this isn't as great as I want it to be.
uh in Alex's case, you know, he knew
things he wanted to make better, but he
really wanted to see the movie through
because he thought the actors did a
great job. And we said, "Yes,
absolutely." We wrote him another check.
And then he finally got the movie, got
some more some FSU alumni, some other
people involved in it, and finally uh
they put more money into it and got it
into got it. The festival circuit was
kind of like a a festival darling and
then it did nothing. It sat out there
for a while, didn't get distribution,
many major distribution, and it looked
like it was over, but Alex still fought
for the movie. Alex was now, he made a
great movie, so he had representation
now. He was having movie, he was getting
talks about directing new projects and
stuff, and he ran into a blogger who
covers indie film, basically hopped the
fence at Universal to go meet this guy
at the Jurassic World launch party and
said, "Hey, I'd like you to, you know,
take a look at my film." This guy looked
at it, loved it, talked about it,
brought new attention to it. And I don't
know if anybody knows this, but
apparently in the film world, Jenz
Horror has been kind of big. There's a
movie called Obsession. There's a movie
called Back Rooms. Well, Alex was on the
film circuit. He was hanging out with
Curry Barker and Kane Parsons and got to
know them really, really well. And Alex
was considered one of the third, you
know, of that group of these YouTube
comedy guys or YouTube guys doing
horror. And uh Neon, the producers of
Back Rooms, took a look at Alex's film,
It Ends, and said, "This is amazing.
This should be in theaters." And this
week, Nationwide, It Ends is in
theaters. And if you look at the poster,
you'll see my name and Russia's name.
You go to the credits, not buried down
in there, but like producers, it was uh
amazing to see this journey. Like you
that the trailer that's everywhere, like
it's amazing to see this thing. I've
helped other people. I've done a lot
more for other people that have not, you
know, that that literally have been
like, "Why didn't you do more?" And Alex
has been extremely gracious all this
along the way. It is a great movie. We
went to the premiere last week in LA at
the Vista Theater, which is Quinton
Tarantino's Theater, and that was
awesome to go see this on a big screen
in front of an audience that loved it.
If you've seen the trailers online, I
highly recommend you take a look at it.
It's uh very very much mind of a jinzy.
What's it like? Existential. It's
comedy. It's horror. It's a very, very
different kind of film. Um, I think go
into that understanding that Alex just
finished shooting his latest
multi-million dollar feature. Has Jaden
Smith in it. Another and a great cast of
really, really, you know, talented young
people there. It's going to be coming
out. It's called 4x4. The event, it will
be absolutely insane. Alex is just going
balls to the wall in action horror on
that. Um, I could not be more proud of
the kid, more thrilled for the kid. He's
still a great kid. uh you know this is
somebody who I you know you know I I I I
can't point to anything and say oh I
told him this or what to do I didn't you
know I would I wouldn't use the word
mentor because there's not like I can
say at any point where like ah I you
know gave him some business advice and
stuff like that which worked out really
well for him but more just just tried to
be a person there that when he was going
through this he could call and say hey
I'm dealing with this and be like yeah
it's it's rough out there for a creative
um he's been doing uh a lecture circuit
with the film and talking about about it
and he's been a hit. He is a great guy,
really great, honest about answering
questions and stuff. Um, man, could not
be more happier or more proud. Like I
was sitting there in the theater with
Rush who feels the same way as I do and
I'm like, I don't have kids yet, but
this must be kind of like what it's like
when you see somebody who's not you, but
somebody you've rooted for or have
helped out go on stage or go do
something that's really, really great
and happy for the success. So, Alex Olm,
director of It Ends, the movie's called
It Ends. Check it out.
>> That's great. That's
Nationwide.
Nationwide. Go see it. It ends.
>> It's been weird.
>> Got it.
All right. Uh, unfortunately, I I don't
have the ability to hang out for after
things. So, we're going to wrap up the
stream. Thank you very much to everybody
who was live. Um, uh, I am going to
premiere a new Modern Rogue episode
coming up in, uh, just a few minutes.
Keep an eye out for an instant premiere
on that coming up in minutes.