Oh, hello. We are now hypothetically
live for the 1,000 second episode of
Weird Things.
We've been covering the future so long
it became the present. How many shows
get to see that? What a world. And
remain, what a [music] world. When we
started this, I did not expect that we
would that if we just covered it long
enough, we'd be living in it. and and
including today's topic like like one of
our last dragons to slay.
>> Yeah. Uh
uh I I
I'll save it. We'll save it.
>> Yeah, we'll save it. We'll save it.
We've got a We've got a Justin Robert
Young incoming. Shouts out to G. James B
in the chat. Oh, here. Let me double
check that this stuff is still working.
That's great. I was hoping to get a
little bit of time. Hello, Jinx in the
chat. Good to see you. Uh to
>> by the way,
>> oh
>> dot on your home screen on your iPhone.
>> Wait, for reals?
>> They just added a widget for that so you
can go straight to it.
>> Ah, well, hello Justin Robert Young.
Hello.
Amazing. Okie dokie. Well, here here we
go. We got Justin Robert Young. We got
Dylan Theus. And we got a functioning
stream, which means I think we could go
ahead and just jump right in and start
the show.
Are you ready, Mr. Maine?
>> I am ready.
>> All right, then you can take us in. In
three, two.
Hello and welcome to the Weird Things
podcast. I'm Adrian joined by Justin
Robert Young.
>> What up, pals?
>> And Brian Brushwood.
>> Howdy, you weirdos. It's been a minute.
Boy, it feels weird. Feels weird having,
you know, the weird things Patreon feed
all the way caught up. Uh, I described
the sensation to you guys, but it's only
it's only been five days of it. I got to
let it sink in.
>> What made this miracle possible?
>> Uh, I just got really Hey, look, there
there there are some press secretaries
who say that's a fine time. That's a
fine length of time. Five days. One
week. One week. [laughter]
Five days. Fine. Look, that's a good
length. That's a That's a That's a
yman's. It's yman's work. It is. It is.
Uh, you know, I think I just discovered
more minutes in the day, Andrew. That's
the real thing.
>> And I' I I' I've learned that I'm able
to better myself.
>> Good. It's good. That's good. Yeah. I I
I
>> I think that's the that's the key,
everybody.
>> Even better. I've been able to make a
habit of continuous improvement. I just
keep seem to be getting better and
better at everything.
>> Well, you did hire somebody new, right?
>> Actually, yes, I did. I I'm gonna
attribute everything to my intern.
>> Uh shouts out to Shamon one in the chat.
Hello from Scotland. Hello right back to
you. Good to see you. Welcome to the
Weird Things podcast. Uh today I asked
an uh Andrew if we're good for the Weird
Things Podcast and he said maybe when
cars fly.
>> So yeah, let's let's get to that. Uh
>> well guys, did it technically fly? like
>> I just had to put on my glasses.
>> I think I think it was I think it was a
shocking shocking display last night
that Elon Musk and the Tesla people put
together. Uh the car looks good.
>> Unlike the Cybert truck, you know, there
looks really good.
>> It looks like a thing a car afficionado
would like. [snorts]
>> Yeah.
>> I I I
think Elon is insane.
>> Mhm. with everything you do. I think
he's become progressively crazier.
>> Yes.
>> He's still the greatest entrepreneur,
one of the greatest businessmen of the
21st century, greatest engineer,
greatest engineer, running an
engineering team. And I mean like that's
that's even though I will be critical of
things like uh like space-based data
centers versus inference, something else
to get into all some of these other
stuff. Uh you know, hey, we're you know,
the pivot from Mars to the moon because
it seemed expedient stuff, whatever. Um,
it's awesome. He they they build cool
stuff. You know, I use Starlink. I do
this. And I think that people get, you
know, I just want to address like
there's this thing where sometimes
people get into they have to categorize
everybody as a binary.
>> This person's good. This person's bad.
This person's good. This person's bad. I
think people are complex. And I think
you can say, I like this. I don't like
this. I like this. I don't like that.
Uh, I don't you know that the rocket
thing, the thrusters is not act. It's by
invitation only. meaning like unless
your, you know, name is like shake so
and so, you're not getting it. IT'S
STILL AWESOME. WAS STILL AWESOME.
>> It's amazing. It It looked fake, right?
If they didn't do it in front of people
and have multiple angles and show it
live, like you would have thought that
this was not real. I don't know. I don't
know how realistic it is, but you know,
in an everyday scenario, and like you
mentioned, I don't know how many people
will have it, but it's it's an insane
feat. It is an insane engineering feat.
For those you didn't see, you know, they
they they what they did is they used
these cold thrusters, you know,
basically just compressed gas and they
made the Tesla, and again, for the two
people who somehow didn't see this, um
did a couple demos. First one was they
had the car drive and nobody's in the
car, by the way. They have the car and
God, we don't know how much space is
taken up by the thrusters or whatever. I
don't know. It look cool. the car drive
towards where they had the they had the
tractor trailer truck, the whole lineup
of Tesla cars and the car just jets of
compressed air just fire and the car
just shoots up vertically, does a barrel
roll over the vehicles and it lands back
again. And it was like amazing. They did
that demo. Then they had this huge ramp
that does this huge curb, multi-story
ramp that literally curves back over
itself like vertically like completely
upside down. The car has a suction
system so it can pull itself towards the
road. Drives up the ramp up upside down,
flies off the end of the ramp, upside
down, thrusters fire, writes itself up,
and it lands.
>> It was actually kind of agonizing to
watch this video cuz I spent the vast
majority of the demo like uh unable to
engage with it because I didn't know
what to believe. I didn't know is this a
mockup? Why is it halfway up and just
sitting there? Why is it upside down? Is
it on a track? Is it mag lev? And so I
spent so much time doing that. And of
course, this is probably by design is
that then I had to go back and watch it
again a whole bunch because then they
explained, oh, there's suction and it
might be useful for cornering and high
speeds and all that stuff. Uh, and yes,
I'm I'm with you, Andrew. Like the way
this thing flips around, I mean,
obviously there's no human in there. And
for all we know, underneath the shell of
this thing, it's nothing but compressed
gas just just being flung all around.
But it doesn't matter that that is one
thing that Elon Musk always has had a
knack for is did it did I did the dream
happen? Did you just see it? Well, then
there like who cares beyond the rest. I
don't know if there is anybody else on
the planet currently that can put
together the kind of physical
engineering teams that Elon can and
does. Like if if you look at the stuff
that they've been able to do and the and
the fields they've been able to pioneer
that were that were thought to be
uh impossible or uh uh you know that you
weren't going to be able to get things
down to a certain price. like they've
they've really broken barriers and
>> uh Tesla began as a high-end car
company.
>> And I think that now they're looking at
another high-end car. There's got to be
people that are really going to want to
buy it.
>> I the cope was insane, though, cuz I
heard people like, well, you know,
Porsche could have done this, too. I'm
like, yeah, cuz they would just go to
their, you know, their whole company
that they own that makes rockets that
fly people to space and say, send over
your cool people. But but again, I'm
willing to see that from an engineering
perspective, they absolutely could have.
But did they have the the the the
yolo attitude of like
>> I don't think they could have. I don't
think that they're building they have
the in-house systems for building the
whole reaction like yeah 10 years from
now maybe like Europe could build the
could build a Falcon rocket. They never
did. And I just don't I like I just
don't I think that they're they're that
like oh yeah it's it's any car company
could have done it. We could have done
it too. The weird things.
>> But this kind of gets to the like if you
could have invented Facebook you would
have invented Facebook, right? Like like
there is there is a mile there are miles
and miles and miles to go between having
the ability and doing it. There's miles
to go between having the ability and
having all the ingredients and doing it.
ask this thing ever when when it comes
to AI. Like there's, you know, you can
have everything you need and you can be
unable to get all those pieces together
to do it. Now, it's Elon, it's Tesla.
Who knows when this is going to launch?
Who knows for what amount of money? Who
knows with what features? I I don't
think to Andrew's point, the jets will
be available for parallel parking on the
streets of San Francisco. Um, you know,
that being said, I don't know who else
could put that together. I don't know
who else could package it the way that
they did. And Tesla today is again the
most talked about car company on the
planet. And that is that's that's crazy.
>> I I RS Technica headline Tesla turns to
50-year-old stunt technology tries to
roadster again. [laughter] And that uh
am I well you probably know more about
this than I do Andrew but but that's
what I thought is you know the jetpack
you know there's always at a Super Bowl
or Rose Bowl or whatever
>> I you could yeah I you could go like
like you know oh that that we sent
astronauts around the moon using old
Chinese technology for rockets you know
I'm [laughter] like I'm like yes I'm
like like that's doing a lot of work
there you know when it's like you look
at you're watching the play of this and
you look at the precision and the speed,
the stability of this sort of stuff. I I
it is it is you even Sam Alman's like
that was impressive and you know Sam's
you know being sued by Elon right now.
Elon has just been very bitter about
that and towards you know Sam and Sam's
like
>> yeah no that's cool and I say like this
is it's like a uh it's the cartoon of
like the hot dog on the skateboard and
people go look at that stupid thing and
some it's like literally the coolest
thing ever. I mean, like, I want to do
that with a cover with a skateboard
flying like the car cuz like I'm like,
"Yeah, I'm sorry." Literally the coolest
[laughter] thing ever.
>> Yeah.
>> I I
>> Yeah. I just say I did not earlier today
like I end up watching on the subway as
I drove in the city and if you had told
me what I expected to see what I
expected to see up until I saw the tower
until they saw the tower I'm like yeah
it'll it'll they'll maybe have some
thrusters go off and it's going to hop
up a couple feet you know and and we'll
be like oh that's kind of cool that it
can do that or use some thrusters to get
some acceleration like the Batmobile
flying and it just goes straight up and
not out. Remember that? You know, the
Batmobile plane would turn on, it would
just be like like a marshmallow on fire,
not a jet. The old one
>> I wasn't. And then once I saw the tower,
I'm like,
>> "Wait, wait a second. What what I heard
they canceled it because of wind
conditions." I'm like, "Yeah, right.
What a great publicity stuff. We were
going to fly, but the wind conditions,
you know,
>> did they did they leak beforehand?"
Because to me, part of the uh wonderful
nature of waking up to this was not
having heard anything about it. It's
it's like waking up and it's just like
uh reality is backwards like
>> well it's what happened is though they
said they said they were like they were
scheduling for several days ago and they
said hey because of wind conditions and
it was publicly known he said that yeah
we're schedule it and people are like
how do they keep it a secret he hasn't
he's told everybody we're going to use
cold jazz thrusters it's going to fly
people like yeah
>> on the the Roken clip went viral again
today I don't blame anybody losing the
signal in the noise cuz he was also
talking about how cyber trucks would be
watertight. You'd be able to paddle
board to, you know, uh, South Padre
Island.
>> Yeah. He he just says a lot of stuff and
some and and it's some of it comes true
and and
this was a case where he's like, I'm put
the thing make it fly. It'll really fly.
Like, yeah, Elon, okay, same hyperloop.
Wait for that, too. [laughter]
>> It really is. It's like every so often,
uh, my inner skeptic shakes his head and
be like, "God damn it." you know, like,
okay, it's like a hur hurricane Elon
comes in and it's like, h, all right,
>> but but whenever whenever timelines come
out of his mouth, I swear my ears are
just attuned to Charlie Brown adult
sounds like and it's going to be
available.
Yeah, I I I
I think this is a good test of kind of
people's critical thinking skills is
like how you'd cope with it if you have
you don't like him or whatever, you
know? And I'm seeing this. Would it
really fly? I'm like I literally watched
it leap over five cars without a ramp. I
don't know what else you call that, you
know. Do you hold out a stopwatch and
say Superman, I'm sorry, that was 45
minutes. Technically, that's just
suborbital. You know, I'm like, it flew.
It can't fly very long. It's got like
four seconds or three seconds of flying,
but it flew. It was Night Rider for
real.
>> So, th this uh when they displayed it,
was that a live demo that they did or
was it pre-recorded?
>> That was live.
>> Oh, my god, that's so bonkers.
>> They did they tested it during the day
apparently, too. And the thing is, like,
how did they test it? Other people know.
I'm like, they tested it at a rocket
factory with engines firing,
>> you know? So, I mean, I can only imagine
how many times they tried that to the
point that they wanted to do it live for
the live stream. Like,
that's I mean, all all credit to them,
all credit to uh Tesla and Elon. I think
the car looks phenomenal. All the specs,
the gear heads are are freaking out
about, you know, exactly how fast. I'm
sure it's going to handle like a dream.
Uh, and everyone's going to talk about
that. You know, I don't know where
you're going to be able to do it.
Probably three places in Saudi Arabia
and, you know, Elon's fun little test
track in the Rio Grand Valley. But other
than that, like, are there going to be a
lot of people who will pay to flip
around in a car? Hell yeah, there will
be. It'll be the most talked It is today
the most talked about car on Earth.
>> Yeah. And fortunately for Porsche that
had their unveil yesterday.
>> Oh, did they? Yeah. Good. Good luck,
man. [laughter]
>> Yeah.
>> So, the uh this is it. What what's wild
is the side effect after, you know,
because we're spending all our time
arguing about whether or not this counts
as a flying car. The one thing none of
us are questioning at all is whether or
not Nightrider turbo boost is now
definitely built into this. Like, like,
of course. I mean, if it's flying now,
we can argue about how practical that
is. None of us are arguing about the 0.7
seconds 0 to 60 time or whatever.
>> Yeah, I I uh I'm getting on my my uh ex
like but it wasn't a roadster. It was a
shell made to look like a roadster and
I'm like yeah, you're probably right. I
don't All I know is I watched a thing do
a really cool thing and so I think it's
very cool. uh you know I think that uh I
think that it it it's a really cool like
listen American dynamism you know uh
very very cool to see like what can be
done. I think it's awesome to see like
technically this thing like I just again
I if you asked me 24 hours ago, you know
what was the what did I think I would
see?
>> Not this.
>> Yeah,
>> not this.
>> Well, and also it does make it so much
more electric knowing that there was a
nonzero chance of like a a cybert truck
window moment, you know, of this thing
just exploding or something.
That's another thing is like you kind of
he's got the cred built up where it's
like yeah maybe we'll all gather around
to watch him throw a steel baseball and
crack a window and then just say well
lol. And that's the other thing is how
sloppy it drives me baddy how sloppy the
presentation is. How something so
amazing could happen and then there's
just flat dead air and they're all like
yeah so cars cars can fly now. And I'm
just [laughter] like
>> bunch of autistic engineers.
Yes.
>> But that is the thing though. It's the
most flat presentation. [laughter]
Well, let's do this thing. You're like,
"All right, nerds. Let's hear this go."
AND YOU'RE LIKE, "OH MY GOD, WHAT DID
YOU [laughter] DO?" I mean, that's the
that's the ultimate thing. It's just
you're you're just not you're not
expecting it. And then, you [laughter]
know, then the car freaking flips over
four other cars.
>> Uh
>> that was my my my favorite tweet about
it was that uh finally a car has solved
parallel parking.
Yeah.
>> Yeah. I'm
uh I'm going to classify. Oh, there are
people already circulating that they
think it's faked. We saw this with the
reusable rocket. The landing.
>> Yeah.
>> There was this, oh, it's CG. It's too
perfect. Look, CG can't be real. I'm
like, all right, folks. Like uh I mean
you have to be like
>> I mean I think it's a testament I think
it's a testament to our mental model of
when we've when we're seeing something
that we have literally never seen before
and have never conceived of seeing then
it used to be 10 years ago we we would
have said CGI uh but now we are trained
to say AI.
>> Well that's what they said with the
booster is they said it looked too
perfect. It looked like Blender, you
know what it was doing with the And I'm
like like I get it, but you're you're
saying that at that point this big this
defense contractor is going out of their
way to fake this to tell you it's real.
Like sounds like the stakes are really
high.
>> Let's talk about that suction technology
and what's going on there. Is is that
just like some kind of What does that
look like under under the carriage?
Um, I mean it's they they show you when
you can see it because when the car does
a barrel roll, you can see the underside
of the car. Um, there are car there's
another car another demo they show of
another car that does that too where it
just sticks upside down. I don't I don't
It's not technically super hard. You
just have to be close enough to get
pretty good vacuum to be able to do
that. Um, but I mean like you know some
people do it. Um, but
I know that's so crazy.
>> That was the first that was the first
Yeah,
>> that was the first demo was them on the
inverted ramp. And initially the magic
trick of the demo is that you think that
the the suction is the point and it's
like, oh, look, the car is going to go
all the way up this ramp. And you're
like, oh wow, that's really cool. That's
really impressive. Then it flips off
[laughter] and you're like, "What the
hell is going on?"
>> Just
>> I mean, it does it does look it looks so
precise, but that's again it looks more
like a SpaceX rocket like than something
else, you know, like that's that's what
it actually looks like.
Yeah, it was fun just instantly having
my brain recognize, you know, those
familiar uh what are they called? Cold
cold jets on the side. Cold thrust.
>> Cold thrust.
>> Yeah.
>> Blasting in there.
>> Yeah. And apparently, I mean, again, you
know, it's an Elon statement, which the
physics will test out whether or not
it'll make it through manufacturing,
deliver anything else like this. Thing
that surprised me, too, was that it's
not nitrogen. It's literally they've got
a compressor inside the car that is
compressing the air. It takes like 30
minutes to refuel it.
>> Oh, wait. So, it just takes energy and
it and it gets its own It just sucks in
the mass and compresses it.
Yeah.
>> Wow.
Wow. Oh man, it really does. It when it
flips over, it looks like a freaking
Matchbox car is that bottom because it's
got to be so flat on there.
>> Yeah. Our friend Randy Pitchford was
there. Uh he was there live to see it.
>> Oh, I Randy was great because Randy owns
the Magic Castle and Ry's like, "I'm the
owner of the Magic Castle." I thought,
"This is the most amazing thing you've
ever seen." And I put the David
Copperfield levitating the Ferrari under
in his tweet and Randy just retweeted
that like I know I've seen this before.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. So,
>> oh man.
>> Well, also it's, you know, rumors that
uh there's going to be a Tesla Space XAI
merger in the offing.
>> Yeah. I don't I keep hearing that and I
don't I don't know.
You'd have to have
it basically have to be SpaceX doing a
buyout.
>> Yeah, that's what that's what the rumor
is.
>> Yeah.
>> So, anything else happened this week,
gentlemen?
>> But I say to say it's hard because like
Tesla stock is like 1.4 4 trillion and
so
uh SpaceX stock is 1.9
trillion.
So I don't know.
>> Yeah, it is not not much more of a
bigger fish to to eat it. I mean I guess
the question would really be it's like
>> all right, does it
>> benefit everybody to bring it all under
one roof? Although I don't know how much
more of a roof it's going to be brought
under if it's technically owned by it's
all owned by Elon. So I don't know. I I
I I'd be curious to see if there would
be static or a shareholder revolt.
>> Yeah. You you get you get the key man
risk too of like I don't know Elon
decides to to test it. Uh I knew uh I
knew Elon's car as insurance guy
>> and I met him at actually Magic Castle
and and he he said yeah says uh like
Elon had bought it was like a McLaren or
whatever brand new one whatever and
realized the insurance was so expensive
and there's a story that Elon takes a
friend for a ride and just went spins it
out whatever and crashes it and he turns
to his buddy goes the funny thing is
it's not insured. [laughter]
So,
>> is it
>> and I knew the guy like, "Yeah, Elon
called me, gave him a quote on he's
like, "All right, Elon decided not to
insure it."
>> That's funny.
>> Was it Was it the Nate Silver book where
he talks about the moment that he's
driving with Peter Teal and he took a
corner too fast and it uh caught air and
it flipped over and it was basically
literally a coin flip. We live in the
timeline where whatever the crazy car
was landed, you know, bellyside down,
but it could have just, you know, landed
on the roof and crushed them. And uh uh
it's this book about um uh the type of
risktakers.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah. I I do think there is that that
how you look at something you you know a
mortal like me sees this and gets scared
and other people see this and get
exhilarated by risk and
the venture and venture.
>> Yeah.
>> So what what else what what until this
morning was the most interesting thing?
What was our headline going to be?
Uh, I mean, uh, I I got up, uh,
5:00 am to go order the iPhone Duo.
>> Oo.
>> Uh, yesterday
cuz I got the day wrong. [laughter] I
get up, I'm half asleep. I go sit in
front of my computer. I'm logged on and
I'm ready. And I'm like, wait, does that
say the 16th? I'm like, oh, oh, back to
bed for you.
>> That's funny. So, was that today? And
yeah, that's today. So yeah, I went and
ordered it though.
>> Yeah, unfortunately I was juggling. I
did not do my due diligence. I did not I
kept thinking in my head, ah, I got to
figure out whether or not I want to use
an AT&T upgrade and blah blah blah blah
blah. And then I I dillydallyed too
long. And then I had my hands full with
uh the kiddo this morning because my
wife had to go to the doctor. And so my
stinking phone isn't going to show up
until November. But uh or December
actually. I think it's early December.
It's supposed to get here. Whereas
Andrew uh Andrew is going to get his
tomorrow.
>> Oh wow.
>> The 20 23rd. The 23rd. It's a 23rd when
>> tomorrow in geological eras.
>> Yeah, exactly. in dog years. It's
tomorrow.
>> Yeah. The uh uh Yeah. And we were
originally going to be in Austin on
Friday next week, but good news, we'll
be back in time for get my new iPhone.
Um it's been Yeah, it's been a very
interesting week with a lot of
different, you know, hey, AI models keep
getting better, doing cooler stuff. Um
that's been, you know, kind of like a
big shift there. Um
trying to think of like gosh like I mean
I've been using my dots more and more
like dot has been just been like you
know super useful.
I've it's like revolutionized
social media posting for me like the I I
do a lot of content in video now and I
have not made a lot of short form video
because it's time consuming and
uh frustrating and I'm not good at it.
Uh dot's a lot better at it and I can
just tell it the kind of clip I want and
it just cuts it out. And uh you know
like for example I've I've even expanded
into kind of breaking news stuff. So the
you know Katie Zachariah the press
secretary was fired. I sat here right on
this set and I talked to the camera for
two minutes. I hit stop and then I told
Dot I just recorded it. I want you to
pull the following B-roll, cut it, post
it. It's up right now. And in in the in
between time, I did the dishes and got
my sick daughter up and uh you know and
and did did everything but either
editing or posting the thing. And uh
it's it's been phenomenal. It's been
great at just like filling the gaps on
stuff.
This is
>> Yeah, we've had Oh, sorry.
>> Mhm.
>> Yeah. Here, I'm taking a look at it
right now. Oh, wait. Where is the There
we go.
Yeah, look at that.
>> That honor now goes to Katie Zachariah,
who has been fired after one, two,
three, four, five days on the job. And
uh she does not make it out.
>> Oh, it did a little crossfade there
instead of a harsh chop.
>> This took one press briefing uh one
scandal where there was a question as to
exactly how and where. You know what's
interesting is, you know, the default
thing is like that's a job that could
have gone to a human, but it's like, who
are you cutting out? Opus clips, maybe.
I mean, even then, Opus clips, I
couldn't get exactly what I wanted. I
couldn't just demand it get B-roll. I
couldn't demand to put it together and
have the exact style that I want. Like,
everything had to be touched a lot more.
And you know
>> that is one thing I really like about
dots is that it it will hand you a
cookie cutter solution to things. But
because it's watching what you do and it
knows what you eventually are going to
want it to look like and be then it
encourages everyone to kind of grow
their own unique style out of it. And
it's more reflective instead of paying
money to get to borrow the tastes of
some other company's designers. It
really does. It works with your tastes
and kind of grows and polishes based on
that. Well, I found, at least for my
stuff, there's kind of three levels.
There's
how do I do a good job of what I would
do? That's level one. Like, what have I
thought I would do if I had the time?
Tell it to do that. Then there's what if
my stuff were the best among the best in
the field. So you look at what you
consider to be the best in the field and
you tell it hey study this understand
what makes this good, what makes this
bad. Um let's always stay away from the
bad things. Let's always stick to the
good things. Blah blah blah. Uh
and then you tell it to do that. That's
where I'm at right now. I'm at like,
okay, my clips are somewhere between
Bill Simmons podcast social media and
the New York Times, which is kind of
where the brand of my show is in
general. So, it's like that's a good
place that my social media stuff should
look like. Uh, the next step beyond that
is
what do what's the mespecific thing?
what's the what what unlocks the
creative element that makes my show
different and interesting uh in a social
media format and then the step beyond
that is okay well why aren't I including
that more in my show myself like what
how how do I continue to infuse all of
this the one big thing that I just want
to underline for everybody is that among
the things that we have to uncondition
our brains in this new world is a taking
things off the table as possible
possible because they you've rightly
determined that it takes more effort
than you have time for. Like there's a
whole element of our brain that we've
just shut off because it's like that'd
be cool if I had the time. Now you have
the time quote unquote because there is
this kind of different work ethic. Uh
but then number two,
what would you do beyond that? And
that's like the kind of unseen layer
that will I think really define the next
decade, two decades, three decades,
however long this is the thing is like
okay, if you're really unrestrained,
where do you run? What do you do? And
then where does the market find place
for it? Like I've been I've been
thinking a lot about that. like you know
what are the form and function that
define our modern era
and what would it look like you know
like right now dots means
I PX3 has more social media footprint
>> that's which basically means I I sort of
think think of it as almost like a
fractal where it's just like uh there's
all these individually like the coast of
England micro micro micro you could
always cut that up into a smaller piece
and a smaller piece and a smaller piece
and if you're an individual person now
now corporations big media players
they've always had the resources to fill
in every single gap right so it's like
you know Bill O'Reilly goes on for
whatever back in the day and then that
would get carved up into chunks and
segments and those would get carved up
and those would be get carved up and so
as a result whatever your creative
entity is is able to fill all of the
cracks down to to to the smallest level
uh to the atomic unit of storytelling a
tweet, but if you're an individual, that
was just not available to you. You did
the thing and you did it as good as you
could. Maybe if you were popular enough,
fans would do it or you could grow into
hiring enough people to do it. But now
uh there are resources to dedicate to
reaching more people because there are
people who never in a million years will
give a try to your hourlong thing, but
they don't mind bumping into 30 second
clips of it from time to time or even
smaller pieces.
That's al just reminding people that
it's there. Reminding people that might
have heard it that or also just like
there is just another currency of being
in the attention economy. That's another
thing where it's like, okay, I've never
wanted to hire somebody for it because
it doesn't actually make me money, but
would I play if it were free? Yeah, I
will. or or you know essentially free
because it's a tool that I'm using for
other stuff and it's actually made me
money because it's able to also delete
other things like yeah
>> there's a Jinx Jinx asks uh chopping up
content wasn't available to small
content creators this is the fallacy
that that I think people are are not
realizing is that of of course the tools
have been available but the time is not
and time is different now you now have
the ability to have uh unless you are
the CEO of a corporation, the idea of
going to sleep and then waking up
wealthier is something that most
individuals have never had the
opportunity to do. And now it's
democratized. Now you can build a
project such that you could be this far
along in it, go to sleep, and then wake
up and it's farther along.
>> So just to give Yeah, sorry. I just want
to give context. So, before
I would record a thing, maybe it would
go to a place that automatically cuts
stuff up. Uh, and then I would have to
find the B-roll. I would have to place
the B-roll. I'd have to work within that
system to do it or I'd have to hire
somebody to do it. And they would have
to be available for at my beck and call
to go and and do this. Here's what
happened. I recorded that and I wrote
the following. Okay, there's breaking
news that I just recorded a short on
Riverside's PX3 room. I need you to take
a look at that, find the last take,
package that together, get B-roll on
Katie Zachariah, Anthony Scaramucci, and
a clip from Katie Zachariah on Hannity.
You can probably find them on social
media, but we need to turn this around
as fast as possible. It then writes back
to me. It gives me a cut. I approve it
and uh then I had it make a cover for
the YouTube shorts and it was up and it
misspelled her last name. I told it to
change her last name. That's that's what
I did. I wrote I recorded it and then I
wrote those things and there's never
been a product that has been close to
that level of competent. There's this
fallacy like this economic fallacy that
I think half the population kind of
falls for and doesn't understand and and
you'll see this like you know see
politicians talk about this like oh you
know we we did this incentive and you
know billion dollars were spent and you
find out they're tracking the same
dollar being you know I pay Brian a
dollar Brian pays Justin a dollar Justin
pays somebody else a dollar and they
count the dollar five times and go look
you know look at all that economic thing
that's not how you measure you don't
count how many times a dollar moved
around you count goods and
You know, I can give Brian a light bulb
and Brian can sell the light bulb to
Justin and Justin give the light bulb to
somebody else. We don't have five light
bulbs. We have one light bulb that's
only able to do the work of one light
bulb. And and it's, you know, there's
the Soviet apocryphal story about, you
know, the Soviet Union where they had
like a car manufacturer and they had a
car repair facility and they would ship
cars and then smash the the headlights
so the car repair facility had enough
business to keep it going. And it's like
it's like, you know, you say, "Oh,
broken windows. If I break windows,
what's job for the glass maker? True,
there's less glass. I want to go build a
greenhouse. I can't cuz there's not
enough glass to go do that because we're
busy breaking glass. So, when you think
about Justin here is saying like, "Yeah,
I I did this thing in 10 minutes.
Otherwise, I would have spent an hour
doing that, but now I get to spend that
hour watching the news or doing an
interview." And what do we get? We get a
better product. We get a better show
rather than him spending his time having
to do that. Like, you know, I could I
could somebody could never invent a
pencil sharpener and I could buy pencils
unsharpened and take a knife and have to
sharpen all my pencils and say, "Okay,
that's cool. At least I made it myself."
Well, great. That half hour, literally
nobody benefits from that. Zero. And so,
I think that we're seeing this. We're
going to see more and more of this.
Like, there is no end to the things that
I want. There's no end to the things
that other people want. And some of them
are goods and some of them are services.
And I'm all for for hiring more people
and doing more stuff. Like great, but if
I don't need a person, I won't.
>> I I was thinking about so many uh things
that humans will probably want that that
quite simply were not possible until,
you know, the last five years, the last
five minutes. But like lately, I just
can't wait. Remember when uh monster
truck spectaculars were the rage and you
have Truckosaurus or whatever? I I can't
wait for Real Steel boxing with
somebody's in a a VR gear and whatever
his body does is 30 feet tall and
there's a David versus Goliath and and
robots are doing back flips. Man,
that'll be the best.
However many hundred dollars I spend to
take my family out to that kind of
thing, that'd be crazy.
>> And and we'll still have, you know,
mixed martial arts.
You know, we're the the I guarantee you
in the Olympics 50 years from now, we're
not going to be watching robots running
the marathon. There will be some other
robot
>> competition to go watch that, which will
probably get boring very quick. We're
going to go watch humans. And I think
that, you know, it that's a hard part
for people to kind like, "Okay, well,
maybe there." I'm like, "Yeah, like, you
know, if I you're going to go to do if I
if there are two restaurants, the best
sushi restaurant in your city, one's got
a guy that went to Japan and spent a lot
of time learning how to prepare sushi,
one's got a robot that makes sushi. I
don't know. If I just want sushi and
order in, probably use the robot. If I
want to take a nice cold night out, I'm
going to go there. There's We live in a
world where we have PF Chengings and
Benihana, you know, Chinese and
Japanese." But
>> uh Matt Matt Holly. So So we had some
questions in the chat about what dots
are. Uh dots are agents instead of just
chat GPT being able to say things. Uh
dots are ongoing agents that can do
things and be in charge of of projects
and so on. Uh Matt Holly points out that
$100 a month is the plan minimum for for
DOTS. Yes, that is true. But we've
talked about on on this program before,
but the hack that made us justify going
three digits on our expenses is it ties
in with finance and you link it to your
subscriptions and stuff and you're like,
"Hey, look at my budget and see how can
I justify this $100 a month expenses."
Uh, I talked on this program how in my
brain exploded when in four hours I
canceled $5,000 of annualized uh,
subscriptions in just four hours. So, it
could find it could it is helpful if you
want to be budget conscious on that
stuff. Um, and look, we're a futurism
podcast. It probably doesn't surprise
any of you that we we want to be ahead
of the curve. If fire is being invented,
we want to know what are all the the
things that you can do with it.
>> Yeah, we're early adopters on this
stuff. But I, you know, and again, like,
you know, the the cost of it was
uh, you know, a month ago,
>> you couldn't buy it, you know. Yeah.
>> And eventually these costs could keep
falling on these things. and and and how
I mean I got into this so I I I I run
like an alumni chat with a bunch of
former open eye and some current open
eye people and some people are enthropic
and other places too and it's it's
amazing who you can you know have
discussions with or get into arguments
with and you know the whole idea you
know should should AI stuff there should
there be ad supported should be
supporting ads and my argument was like
it took me a while to come around to ads
but I realized that one we live in a
world where a lot of people are way more
comfortable with ads than other people
are maybe they should maybe they
shouldn't be but a lot of people would
say you what I'd rather trade my time
than my money, you know, or my attention
than my money for a service. And if you
have an ad service, the key is to make
it balanced to the idea that you're
you're you know, Apple's pretty
balanced, although there's arguments to
be said that they're g you know, the app
store is really kind of maybe predatory
in some regards, but anyhow, if you have
an adupported product, you are
incentivized to make a great product for
free. you're incentivized to bring in
anybody and everybody on the platform
and not just people who pay $100 and
that's then kind of the difference
between Anthropic and Open. Anthropic
has free claude and I've had somebody
you know for anthropics like well we
have free claude too. I'm like how much
money did you spend telling people in
India last month that there's a free
claude?
>> Yeah,
>> you spent zero. You zero because you
don't you do not want those customers.
You don't want them. You want people to
try it for free and pay and that's
that's fine. There's nothing wrong with
that. But as long as you're trying to
charge, your goal is to always charge
$100 a month for this whatever. There's
an entire category
>> and then your next goal is to figure out
how to spend less and less to to
inshinify your project product.
>> Yeah. I mean, and I and I I'll assume
that a lot of people here like I think I
think that I think that certain
companies and certain people and I think
Anthropic and Open Eye and Apple like
Apple engineers would love to figure out
how to use the best material they can.
they want to figure out how to use the
best and they could use a cheaper
product but if they could get away they
probably still wouldn't because they're
there because they're like no we like to
use the best material so I think there's
but some places that happens you're
right to your point Brian know over time
when those people leave that's exactly
what happens is that people just say
well how do we make the cheaper dumber
version of this but I would say that
like yeah like I'd say that if you're
charging for it and but also if you're
if you have an ad model then you're like
okay now I'm incentivized I think that's
my whole point like dots is like I think
open ice goal is to get you they got 1.2
two billion people using chatb every
week. I think their goal is to get
figure out a way to how to have
everybody have a dot. Everybody have a
dot.
>> So for somebody who's price sensitive, I
believe from what I've heard, I have not
messed around with Muse, the Facebook
one, and I personally have trust issues
when it comes to anything meta related.
Uh but if you from what I understand,
the experience is very similar if if if
you want to give that a try.
>> Yeah. the the difference is is the model
powering it is that uh Muse Muse is
nowhere near the model behind it's
nowhere near as capable of Astra. So
you'll see examples of people talking
about like Muse just not getting stuff
and getting very confused by certain
kinds of things, not being able to like
prioritize certain kinds of email. Not
just that Astra is perfect, but Astra is
like a complete super frontier model and
uh
>> can I don't think me I don't I mean to
take a wild guess. I have not used
Crockpot. I have not used Muse for the
things that I'm using Astro for. My
understanding about their capabilities
when it comes to computer use is that
they [clears throat] are not an Astro
>> and by which you you mean using your
computer like whatever
>> or its own computer like you know
because Dot has a cloud computer. So,
for example,
and you know, Dod will be my pick this
week, but like Brian and I have been
going back and forth on
becoming Blender fans [laughter]
because we now don't actually have to
learn Blender. We just have Blender
things for us. And and to to be clear
for longtime viewers know that that I I
became proficient at 3D Studio Max when
I was in college, but and Blender is
same animal, same idea, same kind of
engines, but all the menus are going to
have different places. The layers are
going to be in different orders. So all
of these skills have been locked up. My
ability to understand inverse kinematics
and volutric lighting and specular
highlights, none of that. It's just been
flash frozen in amber for 25 years. And
then and now I have an intermediary who
who will do the modeling and set up the
thing. So then I can start playing
around with it.
Uh
>> yeah.
>> Yeah. But I mean it's like like for
example
I you know been doing these social media
clips and then I see a social media clip
from the New York Times and I'm like oh
that's interesting.
All of their graphics kind of just
appear. They have like an animation to
them which gives an interesting kind of
like, oh, that's a visual thing. I'm
like, oh, I should just have that for
all of my stuff. So, I just told it,
hey, in your Blender cloud computer, uh,
just create these animation styles. Give
me five different animation styles that
I can pick from. It gave me five
different ones. I was like, yeah, I
picked the one I liked. And I said, this
is the new standard. Anytime that we
make a clip, you're going to use that
animation style. Boom. just done
forever, you know, it's Yeah. s
>> similarly uh there are there are stuff
like for example cord killers is my
current project where I keep trying to
make it um uh uh television quality and
uh we get closer every single week. Let
me show you the latest thing that we
did. So uh the previous animation was
this this oh I don't know just ve very
very entrylevel whatever but then I in
blender I said hey remake it in blender
look at that and then now you get uh a
layer over it you can see Tom Merritt's
there uh in the transparency layer comes
in over him here we go and there's
actual geometry right here we
So, I had never messed with stingers
before. I knew what they were, but then
all of that is rendered modeled geometry
in Blender
>> that I was able to change the textures
on. I was like, "No, no, no. I want I
don't want gold shiny. I want a brassy
brushed metal." And then now, now the
trick is you still have to know the
secret keywords to describe what you
want. I mean, you could just wave your
hands and say, "Make it look awesome."
But of course ultimately you have to
develop an eye for what it is you're
asking for.
I think that's the key is that we've
talked about this analogy before how
you know we watch uh you know you watch
a really good movie and you see VFX and
you realize oh this director really gets
it and a lot of times like I don't I
don't know that Denny Villanu
is going into you know Meer whatever
suite that they're doing to do the
graphics and stuff for the Dune movies
and is actually moving around you know
the the different you know functions all
>> yeah you are telling them like no do
this use this tool he might and I think
director
>> there there is one case and I love I
love this but uh we know for a fact that
it was definitely JJ Abrams who made the
loss in lost intro in lightweave and uh
there are artifacts of a poor rendering
in it that they just never fixed there's
like three frames where one edge
pixelates on the side and there it
drives me totally baddy but the but But
yes, I mean the
>> No, there are but I used I use Villanov
so physically because there are guys
that do know it, you know, like like you
know Kane Parsons who did back rooms,
he's very much into Blender. There's
some people who are just so very very
very much wired into the technology like
James Cameron, but I use Villanu because
like I don't think he knows. I think he
has the best looking effects of anybody
and he may be of some of the more
technical ones. Um I actually know the
guy who made the lens flare effect for
Abrams. Like Abrams talks about like,
"Oh, we do it in camera, whatever."
Like,
>> it's a good story, JJ. You love stories,
but I know the guy that built your lens
flare effect that you went in to go add
all that, which you could have pulled
out, but you said, "No, it's in camera."
Um, but anyhow, that's the thing is that
it's it's that when Leonardo da Vinci,
when you go look at a studio, you often
think that like, oh, it's just, you
know, just a guy. Well, sometimes they
would have like for the big murals and
stuff, there'd be people who are just
specialized in hands. They had
specialized paint mixers, people who
just did all these different things. And
it's good as an artist to understand
enough. You know, an airplane an
airplane pilot should understand how the
engines work. They don't have to be able
to strip it down and rebuild it. But I
do like an airplane pilot that
understands aerodynamics. But yeah, I
think we're in this age where Yeah, you
don't have to know every little detail.
You just have to know how to get what
you want.
>> Yeah. I recently spent the last couple
years, you know, doing an audit of my
whole operation because there were in
giant chunks of it that were black boxes
to me. But it it was wild to go back and
relearn how to cut videos first with a
simple editor and Cap Cut, then get back
with Adobe Premiere, and then eventually
I found myself getting far enough in the
weeds that I had to on purpose back away
because I knew I'm approaching a cliff.
And on the other side of this cliff, I
will chase perfection. and none of my
time will go to writing things or
appearing on other shows or getting up
and coming up with new products for the
store, all that stuff. And so, uh, I
think but that level of intimacy, you
know, you you write, produce, edit, cut,
and post 1,000 shorts in a couple of
years. Uh, I'm very thankful for that
experience. And I'm also very thankful
to be offloading it to, uh, to a robot
that will follow my exacting
descriptions.
Yeah, I think that it it's kind of back
to the point before of that these things
that you know we're going to get layers
of abstraction away from what we do and
sometimes people are going to be
specialized and go deep down into
understand it. There is just a a paper
that came out that got a lot of
attention um from a researcher who was
talking about interpability in like the
big models because the big the fear is
we build these big models and we don't
really understand what goes on and can
be plotting or whatever and he's made
some claims a lot of think he's on a
good path but it's like no I think that
we can we can actually understand and
interpret this and you know there's
going to be people working on figuring
this stuff out but then you know I don't
I drive a car I don't you know I I I
can't build a battery.
>> You know, I I think this is one of those
I strongly suspect that we use uh
interchangeable language where we should
not when we talk about a single person
versus a group of people when it comes
to intelligence. Uh even when we have
super intelligent AI, unambiguously
super intelligent AI, it will definitely
be smarter than any one person. I am not
convinced it can ever be smarter than
the sum of all humans unless unless uh
humans consciously make the decision to
not uh try to be smarter in it than
anything. And and this is I know this is
something where we are on different
tracks Andrew but but but my point being
uh a a a group of people are there is a
super intelligence in a 100 million
humans that is superior to to uh
anything.
Well, I I but I mean I don't but is
there if I have you know a billion
systems though like I mean I I
understand but I'm saying like and
understand my my my theory is that
calorie for calorie there's nothing more
efficient in turning the sun's energy
into things human wants than the
biological wetwware that's in us. And so
I I'm thinking just in terms of the
lossiness of of synthetic systems out
there, uh, however many there would have
to be,
you know, computers would have to
outnumber humans by a significant margin
to approach parody.
>> Well, I don't I guess we have to say
what we're trying to Like right now,
mathematics is wrestling with the fact
that GPT Pro was able to one GPT Pro
session was able to output more
mathematical proofs than the entirety of
all of the mathematics, you know, teams
have been doing in the last couple
years. Like literally decades long stuff
just came out from one little, hey,
let's yolo and run that. So, it gets to
be hard. I don't I don't But to your
point, I think like I've had the like I
don't think we ever build a AI system
that could predict our wants. Like that
doesn't happen because that is you know
like like that's that's so it's even the
physics of you know people like oh we'll
build neural lace like even to figure
out what's going inside our brains do we
want it is way harder than what we have
but um I don't know I mean I think if
you say per task like yeah like I think
that right now AI mathematicians are
fastly getting better than
mathematicians and I can throw more of
them I can throw tons of them at it and
that's going to go to other fields but
you when as humans collecting, you know,
we talk about, you know, hey, like used
to see 20 ads a day, now you see 10,000
ads per day. I'm like, yeah, like we we
we take in 10,000 experiences per day,
and that's why AI slop can still feel
like AI slop because it's trying to make
a prediction based upon what it was
trained in or whatever, and it doesn't
quite fully understand what we have. Um,
>> well, and that's
>> and also just that,
>> uh, that's another thing, you know, I
think around a year ago, there was
fairly decentsized panic about, oh,
anything can be fake. humans will be
fooled left and right. Seems like we all
got really good really fast at just
shrugging. But even even the top story
of today, Flying Car, a lot of people
are still as we speak like maybe I don't
know, maybe any of that happened. Yeah,
I mean I think the the the fidelity part
>> the the question is how we react to it
because what you have seen is that a
fake image
can kind of rule the day for a period of
time and if that truth is useful then
people will run with it one way or
another and it'll just kind of linger in
the air. [clears throat] The question
isn't whether or not we're going to be
fooled by it. question is whether or not
we build systems around it to lessen our
dependency on it. And I would suspect
that we will in the same way that we've
always kind of inherently built systems
around uh things that are useful to us
and being deceived necessarily is not
useful to us. We we do like narratives
that benefit us, but I don't think we
like just out and out being
hoodwinkedked. Like being made to feel
the sucker does not feel good.
>> Uh
>> you know, there was a a stat that came
out, you know, the pig butchering the
whole thing where you get a text
message, you're like, "I guess I should
respond to this." Blah, blah, blah. And
oh, crypto. This girl in Miami, she's
cute. Don't tell my wife. Uh, bigger now
than cocaine. More money is involved in
that scam than than that. And if you
want to make an argument why we all need
dots, why we all need these things is
that these things are why do we not fall
for this? We don't fall for it because
we know what they are and our friends
have told us what the signs of it are
and do that. Not because we're any
smarter than people who fall for it. We
just have that information.
I
>> mean, I would make the argument, this is
going to be
the argument for
digital companions for which I have a
very complicated I do not think are
great, right? I do not think that these
are good things. But if you were to make
an argument for it, it's
uh the downside is people who get caught
up in pig butchering scams. Because part
of the reason why we don't get caught up
in it, besides the fact that we are
aware of this phenomenon, we know what
the term pig butchering is, is that by
and large, we live fairly fulfilled
lives that are connected to other
people. Other people rely on us. They
depend on us. We have a good
relationship with them. When you hear
about the people that get caught up in
these massive pig butchering scams,
the money is secondary to them at the
end of it. The thing that they miss the
most is the companionship. The thing
that they miss the most is that they
were talking to somebody who seemed to
care about them every day. That's what
the hack is. The hack, the exploit on a
pig butchering scam is not a clever way
to get your phone number, you know, like
that's that's where, you know, oh, go
buy, you know, Amazon gift cards. That's
that's a panic hack. Pig butchering is
loneliness, isolation, filling
somebody's cup with that and then when
the money leaves, the money leaves. Uh
uh is there a world where you can fill
that cup a little bit just to have
something come back to you immediately
on your schedule because you want to
outgass something? Maybe. I I I again I
I have a very complicated thoughts about
AI companions, but like when the
downside is a slave for the Chinese
mafia that's going to uh extract
hundreds of thousands of dollars from
your bank account because you're lonely.
Like I don't know. Maybe it would be
better if you talked to the robot.
>> There's an Audible original series
called Only Fantasy that's about the
Only Fans phenomenon. And a thing that
happens uh uh is that when somebody is
uh at a certain level of success, they
hire chatters underneath them in order.
It's it's exactly what we were talking
about about taking your broad picture
content and chopping it up to smaller
and smaller. you know, you you you think
this this Only Fans companion of yours
is always available at 2:30 in the
morning and always happens to be up just
like you or whatever. At a certain
level, it's sort of a a mutually
understood shared fantasy that there is
a
>> Guys, did I just walk into an
intervention?
>> Uh yeah, [laughter]
but but but uh uh listen to this series.
It's fascinating, but it opens the door
where knowing that people are falling
for pig but pig butchering scams and
that they're catastrophic financially.
it it and knowing that there's another
version of this same organism in the
Only Fans universe, I can see as
somebody ages a legally binding six,
seven, you know, 20% of your net worth
upon you dying uh is is bequeathed to a
team that runs the fulfilling feeling of
your girlfriend or boyfriend who's
always and who actually manages your
interests at heart.
>> I I can picture that.
>> I think that's terrifying. Um,
[laughter]
as we talk about incentives, uh, and and
I I I I don't know. I I I hear saying I
think it I and I do think that that can
form a companionship. I think it's
dangerous. It's super super dangerous.
Um, but it's not always companionship. I
had a friend who I would say of all my
friends who was capable who was probably
pulled some scams. He was kind of a scam
artist kind of guy and he once asked me
to go with him to this meeting with a
guy at IHOP that was cuz he wanted to
get involved. This is usually like 20
years ago, right? Says, "Oh, this 25
years ago like this guy's like, you
know, IPO frenzy like in.com bubble,
whatever kind of stuff right before
that. It's like, oh, we got to meet this
guy." Because he says he's got
connections to getting in on IPOs. And
we go meet this guy who's wearing like
flipflops, shorts, and shirt at IHOP.
And he's like, "Yeah, my my son works
for, you know, like Goldman Sachs,
whatever." and he gets all the hot IPOs
and like I need I looking for people to
invest, you know, like he can only I
can't, you know, I need I can't put my
money in or I can I can put my money in
but I need other people to invest my
money for me. You like I need you to
invest my money for me. Like it sounds
great, you know, and I got these hot
tips on stuff and then uh and then I'm
like I'm listening to this I'm like I
know this is BS because I know this is
not how it works, you know? I know that
you get allocation or whatever how this
works. I'm like well this is part of the
story. It's not true. my friend list and
list like uh I think that's now the
guy's like no to trust you you know I
need you to put some of your money in
too
>> you know and I'm like this is the deal I
we give you 5k each and then you say
wait for it guys I'll tell you when and
then I'll do this and then we'll keep
going and going and going it's like it's
just like and and and and I'm sitting
there and you know he's like what do you
think I'm like I'm like I'm sitting from
a scammer like this is a scammer like
this is amazing I'm watching a scammer
I'm seeing this it's like it's like 60
minutes but I'm right here and my friend
and and I'm like Uh, dude, because I
work against work with Randy at the
time. I said, "I can't tell the
difference between what you just said
and a scam. It sounds to me like this."
He did a brilliant thing. You know what
he said?
He ignored me and he turned back towards
my friend. He's like, "So, tell me what
you think, whatever." He's like, "Ah,
it's interesting." Whatever. Like this.
I go out in the parking lot and my
friend's like, "What do you think?" I
go, "It's a scam."
>> He goes, "Yeah, I know." He goes, "But
what if?" I go, "No, it's a scam." He's
like, "Yeah, but what if it's not a
scam?" And I'm like I'm like, "You're
you're going to convince yourself." And
this is like Robert Chaldini talks about
this and whatever and how sometimes
people the desire to believe the desire
to believe that it is not a scam can be
so powerful that you know you do that. I
would say your scenario, Brian, I mean,
the problem is that opens it up to like,
you know, the Chinese mafia is like,
"Oh, you know, you've got this one
service is great, but like listen, we'll
we'll send a human traffked person to
your doorstep to do."
>> Understand, I'm not pitching my scenario
as a thing. I am I am noting that
>> it's too bad because I already funded
it. The money [laughter] is in your
account.
What I am noting is that the the black
market version of it already exists and
it's pigmenting and it's the biggest
industry on the planet, right? And so
it's like often times when we have the
negative externality of it is that it
completely crushes hopes and dreams. And
so like we see with or or uh organic
systems especially parasitic or uh or
organic systems then oftentimes the best
type of parasites are the ones that are
able to slow down the organism but not
enough to kill it.
>> But the the thing is is that the risk
they would rather get everything they
can out of you now before your family
talks you out of it or because before
you come to the senses. And so that's
that's the thing of like like versus a
meta, you know, company like Meta or
whatever. And their idea is like they'll
take the approach you're saying is like
okay, and I I've argued that the best
system, the thing I'm excited about AI
is that I made more money using AI than
I did last year. You know, I saved more
money. I did more stuff. I can look at
what I did. And that's an insane
proposition. And I'm only now starting
to look at my finances. I just used it
to do my taxes. save me money on my
taxes. Uh, you know, says Andrew, while
he's still not in jail. And I think that
I'm now looking at like one of the
things, too, it's like I keep way more
money in my checking account than I want
to because trying to move stuff back and
forth is a pain in the ass, but I always
need to have money ready for the
mortgage, etc. And the smarter thing is
to actually use like treasury bills and
do that. But I'm like, okay, like great,
I got got to do that. But now I'm like,
"Oh, I could have my dot help me manage
that and maybe pick, you know, 15
minutes a week to go manage this stuff
and probably save myself, you know, tens
of thousands of dollars a year."
>> Yeah.
>> That's what I'm excited about. Yeah.
>> Well, and and it used to be that that
would be like, you know, too much of a
cognitive tax on you or you would pay
the fee of missing deadlines or having
stuff not be money not available to you
at a moment's notice, what have you.
Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm I am I am a pretty
I've been a very solid good investor.
I've been a very good investor. I've
been very good at that or lucky one or
the others. I'm a I'm I'm terrible at
bookkeeping and keeping up with stuff.
So I'm often paying penalties and things
like that. You know, my justification
though is I don't really stress about
things. You know, I just I I look at
companies, I follow stuff, and they say,
"Okay, I'll invest in this now." And
then I'll find out like you know then
like I don't I pay like I don't pay
early you like I I just put my money in
the market and then the next year I go
like how much do I have to pay in
penalties which you know accountants get
apocalyptic when they hear me say that
but I'm like I'll show you my returns
you know like but
>> you know if I could be better at both.
Uh, so you don't do when you when you're
buying and selling, you don't do it
inside of a tax advantaged
all the stuff that accountants love you
to
>> Well, I can't I mean, I have a SE IRA,
but I'm maxed out, right? So, you know,
like like like for my other stuff, like
anytime you you know, you sell stuff,
you know,
>> um I don't I don't like I don't like I
get, you know, you get those coupons for
when you file your taxes to say like
here's your quarterly installments. I'm
like throw those away.
>> [laughter]
>> I'm like
>> because I'm like
>> yeah I'm like I'll I'll I'll take the
penalty because you know it's also kind
of like
>> I don't know like you know my in you
know I I let it sit inside of Nvidia and
you know that's up like you know 100%
you know or 50% whatever you know. So do
not take advice from me folks. Do not do
not take advice from me. Andrew does
very well in a Andrew shaped universe.
>> Yeah.
>> Yes.
>> Um but yeah,
>> we got any pics?
>> Uh oh, wait. I did have one question
before we go to pick. Um no, I'll save
that for another time. Um
finished
season one of Lanterns.
I liked it. Thought it stuck the
landing. I enjoyed the space. I think
that
>> that's a tone that's a tone of somebody
really excited about a television show.
>> Oh, no, no, no. I It's It's a tone of
somebody whose only regrets in saying
Lantern is that he's going to have to
hear from Justin Robert Young that he
doesn't like Dam.
That's how big your hat. You don't even
have to watch it in order to derail in
your head way more about Damon Lindelof
than the real Justin. the what the real
Justin is the one I'm waiting to talk to
to finish talking. I liked Lanterns. I
think it's good and I'm really glad I
liked it and I'm sad that Justin will
never give it a chance. I Jesus Christ I
I've not given anything a chance. I've
not watched television in two years.
I I watched
up until like uh episode five or like
kind of you because you get this point
that sort of resolves the story to an
extent but then there's this bigger sort
of mystery to it and then I'm like all
right I'll get to it but just showed you
like my interest sort of kind of like
got to like there I'm not saying I won't
but then I saw a clip
of somebody doing something or how
something happened and it was so
comically bad that I'm like okay I got
to get into this because This is just,
you know, there's this there's this
thing of like I heard somebody describe
it like Barbie is like it's so woke it
became based, you know, and like you you
you there's a thing about, you know,
[laughter] I don't know, female law
enforcement that I don't agree with, but
I'm like, man, somebody made a case for
that in this clip I saw and I'm like,
that's not good. Don't do that. It was
funny. So, um, uh, I'm all for people,
all for very clear. Uh, I'm like, don't
give the people who are against the
ammunition. Um, well, anyhow, but yeah,
I gotta I gotta get around. You I think
you know what I'm talking about.
>> I think so. I'll have to I'll have to
compare notes when we're off the air.
But
>> well, you know, the show opens with a
situation like how did this happen? And
we find out how it happened, you know.
>> Well, I'll tell you what I liked. The
puzzle that we were beginning with is uh
you know, the show is called Lanterns
Plural and then we start with a real
lantern and an appress apprentice
lantern. And I'm like, "Okay, I guess
I'll buy that." And then there's other
lanterns. And and uh I I thought the
season ended up resolving with a nice
kind of uh Mexican standoff balance of
like, well, there's this, that, and the
other. And uh I it made me hungry to see
a second season to see how power would
be reallocated in that case.
>> Yeah. I I again I thought like I I I
strangely enjoyed the Watchmen TV show
and I've talked about this before where
>> there was a lot of and again that was
sometimes they was so woken some end up
being based without them realizing kind
of stuff. I'm like, "Oh, all right." You
know, like let's follow this through
what you just sort of said here, you
know, like the so the you know, the the
the smartest man in the world, the
smartest woman in the world. Why is she
the smartest woman in the world? Because
her father is genetically I'm like, you
just made a claim for intelligence and
genetics. Like that's like uh okay. But
anyhow, um yeah, I'll give it a shot.
Like I think that there's some
competency there. Um so I I I I will I
will I will watch it. Um, did I did I
pick Dundar?
>> You did. You did. Yes.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
So, one and two. Uh, you know what I've
been watching now?
>> What's that?
>> I realized it's been so long I can go
back and watch it. Star Trek the Next
Generation.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> I was watching a lot of behind thes
scenes videos. I made it through all the
kind of the good Star Trek films. I'm
like, let me just go watch Next
Generation, you know? And it's the first
season still in first season. It's
interesting because you're find they're
finding their footings and you can see
like
Lavar Burton's great like he just he
just feels like he's a guy he's been
playing that character you know that
Jordy Leforge for like three seasons but
it just because Lavar Burton's just a
really good actor with a lot of back you
know been acting for over a decade
before I think he did that and so you
can kind of feel that I think Patrick
Stewart is great but it's just sort of
like how how you know like because
remember like oh it doesn't look like
Captain Kirk and like that was the idea
and I think you I mean, I mean, you
know, it's silly and cheesy and goofy
and all that, but it's like, you know,
it's like, and I was like 1987, like,
look at this guy in a skirt. Are you
ready for the future? Here's a guy in a
skirt. Okay. All right. [laughter] I
forgot they did that.
>> Yeah. Does it bother you? You know, and
then and then it's funny cuz [laughter]
then you watch Star Trek now and they're
trying to be so edgel like, dude, like
I'm a teenager watching dudes in skirts
and stuff and and Riker get into
relationships with like, you know, we
don't know quite the gender is or
whatever. like thing like been there,
seen that. You are so behind the times,
you know. You know,
anyhow,
>> Star Trek the Next Generation.
>> Yeah,
>> look at that.
>> What about you, Justin? What's your
pick?
>> My pick was dots. I I really that if you
want to know the thing that I have been
playing around with the most, it's
>> it's dots every morning, during the day,
the afternoon. Here's a fun thing I did
with Dots last night. Hey, what what do
I have hanging?
Just threw a bunch of things. I ripped
through a bunch of stuff that otherwise
just wouldn't have gotten done.
>> Oh, would have gotten done later.
>> Oh, uh yeah. Yeah, to answer the
question of of of why dots I was going
to share I went to uh did a keynote at a
security conference in Omaha and my
least favorite part of gig life came up
which is hey uh we'd like to reimburse
your travel and expenses and all that
stuff. Normally I just do a buyout on
all that because I can't be bothered to
chase any of that stuff down. Not
anymore. I said yo dot send them the
thing and they're all like well we need
receipts for whatever. I'm like, "Yo,
dot." And suddenly it's logging into
Uber, getting legit real receipts, not
just credit card
guesses. Uh, yes. Bureaucracy buster.
Sweet, sweet bureaucracy buster.
>> Whoa.
It's been weird.
Got it.
Uh, all right. My sick child is
screaming and I have to go.
>> But get into the fray. I will talk to
you boys later.
>> All right, we'll see you.
>> You know what? Let me see. Speaking of
dots,
let's see what happens if I
There we go.
I'll say the show is going live right
now. Can you make a window?
Uh, can you make a few
uh setups
of just me and Andrew?
Maybe a two shot
of us and
one
of the two of us plus media.
There we go. We'll see what happens.
Maybe maybe it edits it live on the fly.
Well, thank you very much, Matt Holly.
Yeah. Uh
if if you if you're paying for a plan
where dots is just sitting there as a
thing waiting to be used, it's going to
feel a lot like what I assume
Twitter was like for me, which was I
thought I heard about it. I understood
the idea of it. I thought it was the
dumbest thing ever. And then I started
and I had a couple of friends doing a
thing and then suddenly Twitter was
really really interesting. Andrew, do we
lose you?
Could it be that I'm alone in this room?
Oh.
Oh.
Oh, wait. Andrew,
it says is muted. So, I guess he went to
the restroom. That had to be what it is.
But in the meantime,
it's good to be here with you [music]
guys.
We [sighs and gasps]
uh RIP to the mall.
We went to go book a thing and uh Oh,
well, thank you very much, Underlining
Shadow. I appreciate it.
We went to the mall to shoot at a video
arcade location and [music] uh we didn't
uh we showed up just in time to see
plastic sheets over everything. Another
one bit the dust.
I have a theory on that.
>> What's that?
>> Uh um I
if you look at the economics of a lot of
things and where they why they work and
why they don't work. Malls are real
estate overhead energy
people and other stuff like that
>> and vibes
>> weirdly.
But yeah, when you start like like you
look at what happens when malls start to
struggle and they need space. They'll
bring in the people who are passionate
about doing stuff. The guy who's has the
the comic book and novelty shop or the
boutique or these other stuff which are
businesses that don't make a lot of
money but they're run by people that
want to run a business but running a
business is expensive. And what we're
seeing with things like dots and what
we're going to see with things like
automation and stuff like this is the
cost of doing a business is going to get
much smaller. like it's funny like
faster faster to spin up less less
overhead to to run.
>> I I'm I am making the case often for
people to spend $100 a month on an AI
subscription to people I get for a lot
of people that's not it's $100 $100. But
there are people I know who spend way
more on stupid stuff and I'm like
literally I will show you in the first
two hours using this how it's going to
pay for itself. And I've had friends
I've had to twist their arms and now
they're like, "Oh my god, I don't I
never believed this." Whatever. And I'm
like, "Yeah, like that's that's going to
happen for everybody."
>> And and uh Oh, hang on. I saw a
suggestion to make malls retirement
communities for Gen Xers. Keep the
arcades in the food courts. I'll tell
you what, like the two of us will be
first to sign up
>> there. There's like I think that you
know that was a thing where you know
malls used to be lower cheaper to run.
You also had minimum wage. Like that's
thing too is we don't realize like how
much like every time like we should have
a living wage like great teenagers you
used to be able to get jobs. You looked
at the labor force working in a mall.
Like teenagers worked in malls. You
could go do that. You go in there
five of them all all at once just
because like you did not want a serious
adult who had to raise kids.
>> Yeah. And and we've we've made that
prohibitively expensive. And and also
what we've done is like we talk we talk
about weird things is you're taking that
labor if you make it if you price labor.
There's a lot of people that like a kid
a teenager living in a household does
not have to pay the rent. There's no
such thing as a living wage. There's
just money to be able to go buy stuff
and do other things. When you take them
out of the labor pool, we get less
things. We get less things. It's not
like adults fill those jobs or they're
displacing adults from those jobs. We
just don't get that, you know. Um, and
we get less things. You get less stores
are more expensive to run, you know, or,
you know, things like that. And so I'm
bullish that we get energy. Like I think
that very good reason to think like I
talked to the under secretary of of
energy, you know, about this. And I
think by the end of the next decade,
energy costs are going to fall
tremendously because of fusion.
Primarily because of fusion, but also
because like cheap and abundant solar,
etc.
>> How far off do you think fusion is?
Um,
I think we're going to see within a few
I think before the end of this decade, I
think we're going to see a sustainable
fusion
>> Whoa. reaction
>> like in the next four years in the next
presidential administration. Y
>> wow.
>> Or Yeah. Yeah. I think that we'll see
that. Um I think that that there's a
long road from that to actually making
it commercially viable. But everybody I
know seems to think like Yeah. They just
it's it's it's just a very very very
complicated tricky engineering problem.
Guess what we have now? We have AI
systems and solving mathematical proofs
that are now working into you know
physical sciences and you know I was at
a I did a meetup last night and I'm
talking to people that are working at
some of the labs that are trying to find
these new materials. Like we have people
looking into finding material like the
amount of knowledge we now have going
into solving this problem is now
increasing exponentially and like you
why do we want AI? Yeah, it's not just
cancer. It's like literally it's that's
awesome. It's it's better conductors.
It's better magnetics. It's better
tools. It brings the cost of fif energy
down. You bring the cost of energy down.
You bring down the cost of a lot of
stuff. The price you pay for things is
also what it's tied up in. You say it's
transportation cost. Well,
transportation's energy and that the
amount of time it spends traveling. So
anyhow, point is is I am very very very
bullish that we might bring back the
mall. Uh, I think so too. And I think
it's going to be
I I I the
I can see like popup stop. So it when
the mall was originally there, it was a
big deal to open a store at a mall and
it was a big deal to lose a store at a
mall. I could picture stores coming in
like every two weeks like complete
reskin, redesign, re- everything because
everyone could just have a d like
overnight. Walls painted, new fixtures,
everything. Everything everything
because that could be massively
coordinated
thanks to magic. If you're going to be
mad about it. Oh, hey, by the way, take
a look at this.
>> Oh, look at that. That's a fine twoot.
That's a fine twoot with the chat.
That's a fine twoot with media.
That's amazing.
That's That's what a a dot can do.
>> Pretty amazing what it's just and it's
we're getting they're going to be faster
and faster and faster.
>> Yeah.
>> You know,
>> well, and and this is something this was
a dispute that Justin and I had on the
bones. Uh to me
I I'm curious like when you would set
the timer. So like in that moment I had
to have the idea of setting up a twoot.
The next level of that would be an
always on agent is watching us in the
moment and anticipating what that I'm
about to ask and has it ready to go. And
then the ultimate would be you know it
would just go ahead and you know pop up
and say hey I went ahead and added a
twoot for this. So, this would be a
weird things topic. We talk about this
here. You've been following the whole
stuff with like Jev and the decision
routers and all this.
>> Uh, yeah. Well, here let's let's start
after after things. Uh, let me
>> Oh, yeah. Yeah. I thought we had
>> No, no, no. Uh, we were just killing
time until you came back. Let me grab a
soda. I'll be right back.
>> While Brian is gone, um, let me tell you
folks, um, sitting here trying to think
of things to say while your hosts are
gone, not an easy task. It's why you
should support Brian and all of his
different podcasting and YouTube efforts
because uh it ain't easy, folks. I'm not
one of those people. I've done like live
streams and stuff where I talk about
writing non-stop, but just this, no, not
made for it.
>> I'll tell you what, man. It's a lot of
the folks in the chat have been watching
Brian redevelop those skills over the
last two, three years. It and there's no
substitute for just doing the reps. It
is hard
>> to walk and chew, to talk and chew
bubble gum.
It's hard to say that phrase.
>> Yes.
>> Uh I did Cliff Cliff Cliff caught a the
fact that I had RC Cola in the corner
and so loves mocking me. Uh I I I think
it's hilarious to on purpose drink the
Bobo off-brand third choice cola. Uh, I
do so as a testament to myself that I
don't I try I I that I make brands. I
don't fall for them. But he says as he
remains loyal to a bunch of different
things.
I wear a lot of Amazon basics, folks.
Um, you could say my wardrobe is kind of
basic. Um, and I'm okay with that. Um,
and I kind of like like my wife has
style and she dresses nice, but she
doesn't like chase after stuff like I
watch other people do. I just feel like
you know, like um I don't know. It's
like there's there's if you know who you
are, you know. Um
>> All right. Here, I'll bring
>> By the way, let me check the delivery
date on my road my roadster. [laughter]
>> I say this, by the way, in the middle of
this conversation, I did order the Apple
homepod or whatever that is. The uh
>> Yeah. Okay. Ready? In three, two.
>> Hello and welcome to After Things. I'm
Adrian joined by Justin Robert Young.
Wait, what?
>> What?
>> No, no, no.
>> Yeah, man.
>> No, I'm check I'm checking the two shot
and no, there's only two hosts. There's
only ever been two hosts. We've always
been at war with East Asia.
>> Where did that name come from? Yeah. And
Brian Brushwood, everybody.
>> Hello.
Um we we talk about productivity and and
stuff and I was going to talk mentioned
something that like uh probably cool
weird things but something cool here is
there's there's been a lot of excitement
in tech world over what we call like uh
decisions models or routing models and
what these are are these are like models
that are uh kind of much more stripped
down but they can kind of understand
things enough to make a decision. You
could say, you know, like look, you
could give an image and say, "This is an
image of Brian. This is an image of
Andrew, who's in a shot right now?" Um,
you could have it look at text and say,
"Is this person angry?" So, think of
like how a model can kind of understand
certain things, but then you don't need
to output a bunch of text. You just need
to say yes or no or whatever. So, uh,
former OpenAI um, researcher uh, Dogo
and his, uh, team over at Typesafe came
out with a model called Jev, which is
incredible. They just did a
multi-billion dollar funding round for
that. and Jev can do audio, excuse me,
do v images, can probably do other stuff
too soon. Soon we'll see. Um, OpenAI
came out with the decisions API.
Microsoft came out with a model. Heging
Face has a model. So, basically, think
about like, you know, you could say like
all the comments coming into here right
now, people asking us questions. You
could have a decision model say, oh, uh,
we tell it like, does this one fit what
we're looking for? Engaging and talk
about what we're talking about right
now. And it would just go yes, no, yes,
no, and make decisions or it could rank
things or score things. Brian's talking
about like right now like live streaming
or you know like hey find a two shot
find this you could just send it a
question does this have this and it can
do it. The cool thing about these models
is they're dirt dirt cheap and super
fast. There's a lot of tasks where you
don't want to send it to Astra or or
Claude or whatever else. You want it to
be a smaller model that can do a good
enough job. And these things can
actually do things like play games like
play snake you know like do I go here?
Do I do here? They can control vehicles
and they can do stuff. And that's the
thing I think it's gonna be cool is
you're going to start thinking like,
"Oh, I'll just plug this decision model,
follow the whole podcast in real time,
and cost you fractions of a cent per
episode to do that." And so I assume
part of the reason they're so dirt cheap
is because they're literally not engaged
with any simulations of cognition.
They're uh it mentions that the Jeb
model is a system one model. If if it's
been a minute since you've read thinking
fast and slow, thinking fast and system
one is your gut level where it's pure
associations like you smell smoke. You
your adrenaline rush because you know
fire. At no point did you evaluate and
think through why would I smell smoke?
Could be this, could be that. Oh, maybe
it's fire. You just instantly quote
unquote knew it. So in this case, if
you're not having to spend the compute
to figure out anything, you just know
things. For example, at a glance, if the
question is, is this a chair or a table?
If you picture, you know, imagine
there's a table there, you don't have to
evaluate it. You're like, that's a
table. That's a chair. But we could
picture, this is the realm of fuzzy
logic, which was popular when I first
went to college in the 90s. uh where at
what point does a chair become more
tablelike than chairlike and at some
point there's a middle ground. And so if
there's a model that has that ability
where there is no thinking about it, it
just knows then it can make instinctual
quote unquote decisions and that is
extremely efficient. It's why our brains
use it.
Yeah, it's it's it's a great analogy for
that and that you because you could have
a thing where you have a bunch of layers
and the model just has to recognize a
thing and say it's this then you could
have it where it has to determine an
output but if it just uses that your
your cost is super cheap it's super fast
you get a lot of these other
efficiencies out of there and I think
that and it's an exciting area to see
what's going to happen there but like
there's stuff like I tal I tweeted about
uh a speech recognition model that's
only 18 megabytes. You can run it like
in the browser and it's a very good
qual. It's pretty good quality. 18
megabytes. I looked it up. That's the
same size as Hey Jude as an MP3.
>> So an MP3 for the size of an MP3 you can
have a thing do that. And that's where I
I've I've always held this belief and
now people kind of coming around to it
is and not that I'm think the only one
but it's not like you're going to have
one monolithic AI like in the movies
where there's just one super intelligent
system. We're going to have AI
everywhere. everywhere. Despite Apple
doing silly things with Siri, the model,
the ondevice AI model, the three billion
parameter model you can run in your
phones. A pretty good model. You can do
cool stuff. Five years from now, it'll
be an amazing model. It will do
everything. And people I get this
discussion people like, well, like then
eventually we're just going to use cheap
freak models. I'm like,
>> no. Like we're
>> understand real quick how fundamentally
flawed that assumption is. For that to
be true, we'll just use really cheap
models. It's like for that to be true,
you must imagine that humans will settle
for good enough, that humans will not
recalibrate and expect more. And that
that of course tends not to happen.
>> Yeah. And it's like I get coding as an
example because you could say, well, you
just need enough to kind of predict the
code you're writing. I'm like, well, no,
now Justin's building iPhone apps and
telling it to go to the iOS store and
launch it and go do that. And it's not
like, well, that's the upper limit for
what you would want to do. Like, no, you
know, tomorrow it's going to be I need
you to build, you know, a network to be
able to look at user performance and to
be able to do this. It's the whole world
of progress. We're going to keep want to
do more complicated stuff. And I think
that's hard for people to understand as
they kind of get locked into chatbot
mode where I just needed to chat and
answer my email. It's like, no, now I
want it to look at my finances. Now I
want it to run predictions about
different scenarios. Now I needed to go
look into all kinds of tax law.
>> Yeah, that's the difference between, as
we've talked about on this program, a
duad and a layer. We are watching in
real time the novel thing that happens
when something goes from a a gizmo to
becoming a depended upon layer of
civilized society. And it's way too
early for like like quite literally we
can't conceive of it because none of us
cuz if anybody of us were smart enough
we'd probably well none of us are. There
we go. Period. We're not smarter than
everybody.
>> No, that's true. Um and I mean that's a
hard thing I think to realize. It's not
like there's and we we there is no
collection of people that we can put
into a room that is going to figure out
the needs and wants of the entire
population.
>> Right. and and what we're going to want
to go and I I've had this discussion
with people on AI like well what if AI
gets specifically good at predicting
what you want like well one the moment
you tell me the AI decided I want this I
probably don't want it
>> right
>> you know because [laughter]
yeah the moment that is is you know you
know like we we and we've watched this
too happen where uh
um you see the Narnia trailer
>> I did
[laughter]
>> reaction Uh, couple of different
thoughts. I I'm not in the Narnia verse.
Um, I know that I know that they're
making a play to stray from the original
things that people loved about Narnia,
which is uh uh always uh an interesting
move. Uh the question is, are you
widening the circle or are you taking
away that which people loved about it to
begin with? And uh Greta Gerwig has
a a track record where sometimes she
gets stuff right and sometimes less
right. And so I'll be interested to see
how this goes.
>> Yeah, I she's she's an incredibly
talented director, hands down. And
Barbie was a very entertaining movie.
She's done other stuff. She's really
incredibly talented director writer. And
so it's not not not not a knock on her
because this is a product of her and the
studio and everything else like that.
And I but it's like I I'm not even to
get into the whole Okay. So we took this
deeply Christian Right.
See, and and and I could be talked into
this being a master stroke where it's
like, look, you are Christians already
love this story. What if you tell it out
of order and you and you kind of bury
the lead of the obvious Christ figure of
Aelin and allow people to
>> change it so it's no longer the Christ
figure though? That's the thing.
>> I mean, I can imagine starting off that
way and then getting to it. But also
that's why that's why I was trying not
to talk about it. But but I I
>> I don't but again I I would say that the
the moment like and we cast this woman
to do the role that's like I don't think
that's CS Lew. I I don't and again
there's things like Essential Things and
Change. It's like Peter Peter Jackson
adapting the Hobbit. She's adopting Lord
of the Rings. He's like I got to
compress time. I've got to do these
things. But those characters are true to
who they are. They're true. If you love
Bilbo, you would love Bilbo in the
movies because it's it's if you love
Sam, you love Frodo. And I felt that was
true. like you felt like and I get like
oh I'm getting a person telling the
story and I get like the the
you know the the Tolken sense of evil
and what there is and that's why rings
of power suck like what's make the orcs
actually you know like nope you don't
know what an orc is you know orc is
entropy and then that's like here I'm
like I don't think you know I'm not a
Christian but I read a lot of CS Lewis
and I I KNOW WHAT THE GUY wanted and I
don't think that's what he wanted but
that's again I'm not what I what I talk
about is like I watched part of what it
is is like I look at the trailer I'm
like it looked like AI sloped to me and
I know it wasn't AI generated, but it
looked like AI slop. It just looked like
all over AI slop. And you have
incredibly smart people at Netflix. You
have extremely they were that they were
the super data driven people that were
like, "Hey, Kevin Spacy, we should cast
him. Why is anybody casting this guy
more? What could possibly go wrong?" Put
him into House of Cards. Did some very
smart stuff. Like could it keep giving
people like, "Oh my god, now Adam
Sandler movie." I'm like, "You know
what's going to happen? Millions of
people going to watch that movie. It
it's it's about watching stuff." But
then somewhere along the way
they look at their formula and they do
things like Electric State, which
probably one of the most expensive
movies ever that nobody has ever seen,
you know, and the the the Russo brothers
did that. The Russo brothers also did
Citadel, most expensive TV series ever
made. Nobody has ever made
>> Citadel about.
>> Exactly. Ryan, Citadel was this global
spanning intelligence, you know, story.
They had a American ver American
European version of it. There was an
Indian version of it. Um and so they
have like again that was an an Amazon
series that like nobody watched. Um and
that gets hard because both Amazon and
Netflix super super data driven. They go
like oh well we know the Russo brothers
they they have the great track record
but it's also like yeah but there's
sometimes information that's hidden you
know there's sometimes hidden and
sometimes things you watch a movie you
go this is great now the next movie
sucked. And I'm like, "Yeah, cuz the
producer he worked with on the last one
wasn't on that movie and that was the
producer that was able to get the writer
to show up on set and do their scene
rewrites on time for them. The next time
they brought another person and they got
bullied by the writer and so and they're
like you don't know that that's not in
the IMDb. That's not other stuff." And
that's the hard thing and like that's a
thing where in the age of AI that kind
of knowledge becomes super valuable.
Well, and it becomes it's really
interesting because kind of uh I'm I'm
told that Elizabeth Holmes from prison
has tweeted some version of everything
everything's going to come out. Every
image, every party you ever went to,
everything that ever anything uh it'll
be too clear. Uh and so I think that is
terrifying to some people and refreshing
to others. It's a strange time where
like for example in the world of uh
video games, video games never had to
think like magicians before. And a
magician if his job is to fool a bunch
of people, he needs to keep his stuff
secret, not from the people, but from
other magicians who will immediately rip
him off and and reveal it. And now
there's uh really clever ideas for
games. somebody can release a trailer
and then it's vibecoded in Roblox the
next day. So now incentives are
realigned to where video game creators
who have really clever ideas maybe are
going to have to think more like
wizards.
Well, but you know, there's an
interesting thing, too, though, is that
um
I was thinking about this yesterday, how
uh William Shatner
put out a tweet about something and it
got like 9,000, you know, some thousands
of good a good, you know, some healthy
sort of response. I had a tweet that was
just some AI thing got almost a 100,000
views, right? And and then I thought
like, yeah, but then when William
Shatner, they did the viral stunt of him
eating a bowl of cereal in traffic.
Remember that? Like, hey, look at the
William Shatner went ballistic
everywhere all over the internet. And
that was a complete stunt. Completely
stent. And I'm like, and that's that's
the thing though is that like I could
sit there and try to engineer or figure
out like a really super cool viral stunt
of how to promote a serial,
but without William Shatner, it's kind
of hard. And I I know I know people who
are like really really good at memeing,
really really good at memeing, really
good at coming up with stuff. And
unless they get somebody like or
somebody connected to it, it's hard. The
Kelly Clarkson thing. Okay. Okay.
>> Oh, we didn't Oh, man. [laughter] I
should have gone to that.
>> Oh, we we'll talk about this. [laughter]
We'll also talk about it. We'll talk
about We're laughing cuz the laugh of
insiders. Uh [laughter] well, we we'll
we have to talk about that next week on
weird things. We should have done with
Justin. So So
that that the Art of Play shop, Brian
and I know Art of Play because Art of
Play is a company started by our friends
Dan and Dave Buck and they brought in a
partner. It became bigger and it became
the the the Pirate Wires, whatever calls
it, the the uh adult toy shop. I gave
him heat and Twitter link. That's I said
Google Google Adult toy shop and tell me
this is an adult toy shop, guys. Come
on. Yeah. So Dan, Dan and Dave, really
interesting guys have done a lot for
magic. Love magic. They they're they're
big big promoters of concept of cardry.
Their card
created a new branch of magic in our
lifetime.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And they would they would do
>> they would do conventions with you would
get 15-year-old kids and kids made it a
very young p. They took an art that was
dying and brought in a much much much
younger demographic to it and bring
people into it. Like there's a guy
Matty. I don't know if you've ever seen
him. He's a guy born with no arms, no
legs,
>> and he's a great magician.
>> Yeah. Yeah. He uh I believe he fooled
Penn and Teller.
>> Yeah. And I I've you know, I watched him
show up and kids just they're excited.
Teners excited to see this guy and this
guy treated love in this environment of
like literally kids who are a lot of the
people in in in that world were nerds
and outliers, but they found like, you
know, the connection through decks of
cards and this love of stuff that Dan
and Dave did. So, like, you know, and uh
anyhow, um
uh when we watched the Kelly Clarkson,
well, I'm like, I wasn't there. I don't
know. I don't want to I'm not going to I
don't know what happened. I don't know
that who said what to them or whatever.
It was it was all super super super
silly, but it was if I said if Brian and
I put our heads together and said,
"Let's come up with a story. How can we
blow up if at Dan said, "Brian, Andy, we
need you guys to help us get as much
publicity as we can." We never would
have figured out a way that would have
worked this well.
>> Correct.
>> And it was not intentional. It wasn't a
stunt. It was just it just the two magic
autism was celebrity crash out. Boom.
>> Well, and so so this is also so what's
great about these moments. What I love
because I I I think in an alternate life
I was meant to be a macroeconomist
because uh I love kind of cracking these
flashoint moments and understanding the
uh glacier-like geologic pressures or or
or atmospheric pressures that this is
the lancing moment between them because
uh depending on how you want to squint
this is uh uh who's the agrieved party?
Is it the woman who felt talked down to
by the patriarchal magic? Is it the
muggle who felt disenfranchised by the
wizard? Or is it the small business
being crushed by the by the mega
powerful elite? Is it uh so all of these
everybody can project their own existing
narrative and whenever ju Justin and I
came to the conclusion that um uh when
there's two parties who both feel butt
hurt all they do is hurt more butts and
so we came with the slogan uh hurt butts
hurt butts
and so uh you have this moment where the
the response from from the shop is
supernaturally perfect to
express uh upsetness about it and yet
never manage to say I'm sorry because
it's not clear what they don't see what
they're to be sorry for and and and it's
it's fascinating but it's one of those
after the fact you can kind of
reconstruct what are the pieces and
threads that went into it but you're
100% right Andrew the ability to
make that in advance to orchestrate that
is
>> and it took a human it took a human And
and and at first cuz I first read it I'm
like ah I can't I mean I didn't know I
didn't know to see the name of the shop.
I said oh she went the shop. They treat
her like I read the tweet like oh man
what what is this some handbag store?
What is this? And then like it's art of
play. I'm like oh for f's sake come on
that you that hap at the magic and toy
shop. The magic and toy shop is where
you had this. And I'm like, "Oh, you
know," and it's like kind of like, and I
don't get I don't know. I don't know
that the guy that did it. And I mean,
everybody's kind of playing a part now,
but like, but again, my point is like it
was because a human had that experience
and because she had spent a lot of time
building up credibility, whatever. And
AI doesn't replace that. You know,
there's this this this stupid AI avatar
actress thing that they're putting out
there, Tilly Norwood, whatever, like
this. It's like, you're never going to
have a meltdown from Tilly Norwood.
>> Except you did. You saw that, right?
>> Well, you had you had a glitch. She had
a technical glitch which was hilarious.
>> It was hilarious.
>> Yeah. That So don't know what happened
is uh they had that character doing an
interview and she's like running on like
a Chinese model [laughter]
and she started glitching out and
speaking Chinese.
>> Yeah.
>> Like hey folks, uh be careful out there.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. But to your point like Yeah.
That's what's interesting is when it
literally technically breaks, but you
know, you're not going to be like, "Oh,
I wonder who she's dating." It's like,
no. Like that's that's that's I mean no
more than a story line can be, but it's
a story line. And there's a reason we we
kind of lost a little bit interest in
drama and now we we care more about
like, you know, silly things that really
aren't real, like the Kardashians and
stuff.
>> Yeah. The uh Oh man, where do we want to
bring it back to?
>> We We sort of lost the thread here,
didn't we?
>> I know. Well, that's the other podcast
we do, Unspooled.
>> Um, we were talking about just just the
idea that as these things progress
because, you know, we talk about the
mall and everything else like that and
just the idea of just how things can as
you start to use these tools more and
more, but like the human element still
is going to matter. Taste is going to
matter and and people connections are
going to matter.
>> Always, always, always. Did Did you ever
I I've brought it up a few times, but
did did you read The Diamond Age?
>> Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
>> Yeah. Okay. I I think a lot about how in
that book, like the quote unquote real
young lady's primer, has an actual voice
actor, a persistent human character for
us to narratively care about and, you
know, as she elevates this this young
poor girl to a place of status. Uh but
then they mention and I guess a lesser
version of it could be essentially an
LLM uh replicable local model on all the
rest. And uh in the background of that
story is sort of the elevation of a
bottom billion humans which is just
amazing to me that we're watching that
happen in real life.
>> Yeah. I'm I am,
you know, I'm one of the reasons I'm
like so bullish about AI is that I've
spent um, you know, this year traveling
Ecuador, Colombia, I'm doing a whole
thing for Brazil and trying to do a lot
of Latin America development because I
think this is an exciting area and
there's a lot of young people energetic
about it and
when
there is for I mean I think anthropic
eventually will need to come around to
figure out like a good free product is
like ad supported or whatever so they
can kind of get the rest of the planet
on board and and because like I think
that you get people on board with the
free product and you help their
productivity and that's the thing I like
about this better than social media is
that Facebook can kind of try to help
you find a job or do stuff like that but
it's just really attend it's basically
incentivized around maximizing your
intention at a certain point you you
you're better off you're better off
advertising to you know a billion middle
class or upper middle class people than
a billion poor people, you know, because
there's just the the ad revenue is worth
more. And your goal then is how do I
make the bottom billion and Facebook
spent some time thinking about this
actually with internet access like this.
How do I make that bottom billion more
productive and wealthy? Because then
their attentions matter. You get to a
point where I can only maximize 24 hours
a day worth of attention. Then what do I
got to do? I got to make that attention
more worthwhile. Whose attention is
worthwhile? Wealthy people. And I think
that's a thing that we kind of get to.
And I think with AI that's going to
happen maybe hopefully kind of quickly
because if I can make a really good free
product for you know people who are
lower income maybe I can create a really
good product for businesses and I can
create a really good way to sort of get
it to the point where everybody starts
to get uplifted and you know
>> Yeah. So, I guess uh since we're into
after things where we talk about being
an independent creator, a a thing that I
am dipping a toe into as we head into
the holiday season uh is uh how do you
feel about ads on chat GPT? not that
their existence but but as a way to
reach people that isn't meta because I I
am I am out of the participating in the
grift of meta Facebook ads or any of
that stuff. Uh their algorithmic pricing
is too good. It turns out that it can
accurately predict all the margin and
says don't mind if I do.
>> Yeah, I think it's still early. I think
that it's gonna take a while to get
things dialed in and to figure out and
and the challenge with it too is that is
that um I don't know like I I'm gonna
say I was saying like oh most people I'd
want to reach are probably using the
paid version like no I don't know that
like like only like 3% of the
population's using the paid version.
>> Oh that that's an interesting gap that I
saw a tweet about reminding people that
six billion humans have never touched AI
in any form. two billion only know it as
a better version of Google and less than
a billion people are actually using it
for anything outside of just searches.
>> Yeah, I mean we have 1.2 billion people
using chatbt every week but uh that
number's changed a bit but uh but yeah,
I think that that's a thing. So I think
it's early early days to see where
that's going to go. I think that um I'm
curious like we've we've tried some
stuff for like interdimensional but I'm
like I'm kind of like people looking to
hire like a company like ours. I don't
know that they're going to be there but
I would be very curious to see what's
working because I do think that like a
lot of it if you think about like a lot
of kind of the choices people are using
for chat GPT a lot of it's just
lifestyle stuff shoes and clothes and
things like this. So, so to be
transparent, we're heading into the
holiday season and you know, my uh this
year's project, I'm one month into re
redirecting the bri of Sauron on the uh
on the Scam Stuff store, which means
we're getting ready for Oh, can I give
you a little sneak preview of uh I can't
show you the whole thing because we're
still hard at work on it, but I can show
you
Oh, No, I can't. That's probably for the
best. Oh, except for I guess I could if
I did this. But um but uh when I was
thinking about reaching folks, I I read
something about ways that you could
target
uh audiences. And over the years, there
have been 180,000
customers of Scam Stuff over the 15 plus
years that I've done it. That's uh
180,000 emails that that legally uh you
know whichever
sort all of that to figure out which one
you're allowed to market to. That's a
statistically significant number of
people all of whom are about to enter
their first Christmas season where
they're going to ask for help on what to
buy and and and somewhere way in the
back of their brain is the real estate
of they bought something once from scam
stuff. And those are the people that
just a little nudge where it's like,
hey, who likes gear for the modern
rogue? Lots of good stuff. And normally
I'm not a fan of advertising uh to
establish an identity, but to nudge to
remind people of the real estate that
that already exists seems like it might
be good. I don't know. Yeah, I think
there's there's a world where
yeah, it gets it always gets hard to be
quantifiable to see that, but I think
that like yeah, if you have like a
really good brand and a really good
thing you can track to see did that
recognition come from there, you know,
and a lot of ad campaigns too are like
multi-stages, you know, first we do
this, then we do that, and then finally
sort of build that up. Um, yeah, I'd be
curious like like I I don't you know
like Google part of the advantage of
Google was how many times will this
query come up? Because I'd be like, "Oh,
I want to like people I want people
looking for mystery thrillers to read
and it's like cool. There were four
people yesterday who actually did that."
You're like, "Oh,
all right." Like, well, people looking
for things to read. Like, yeah, but 99%
of them don't want the thing that I
have. And that's one of the things
that's hard to re to kind of hard to
scope with is that um you're better off
some products are easier to sell. Like
Audible is easier to sell than it is for
me to sell a book because Audible if I
want to read Audible's great because if
I'm competing with Audible I'm screwed
because Audible anybody wanting to read
or get an audio book is a customer. I
need a certain subset of that. And so if
I'm trying to compete with Audible for
that ad space,
>> it's not going to be good,
>> you know, and I can try to get, you
know, because like and also like I could
pay more for a hyperfocused version of
what I want, but I also like there's
only so many people on the planet
looking for that thing. I think that's
the thing is we it feels infinite, but
you really stopped to be like, oh no,
like you know, only 100 people actually
looked for the query yesterday.
>> Uh so real quick in terms of uh uh so
I'm I'm excited for you to get the duo.
I'm excited to hear what you think about
it. I think I might not be able to get
it because I don't think I can give up
the high quality telephoto lens on the
iPhone. I think I'm going to have to get
the new regular shaped one because it's
very good. Like we're shooting this ad
entirely on iPhone. Uh here I'll back
this up here. I'm not going to It's a
very short ad so far, so I don't want to
uh reveal too much, but this shot was
all done on the iPhone here.
where we're going for a guy Richie
snatch kind of look and it ends up
>> uh so not only do we get this kind of
whit pan
>> looks great
>> stuff but check this out
>> we were able to get because it's just on
an iPhone I did this coin flip that just
was perfect that ended up hitting
the lens on there isn't that great
>> that's amazing that looks fantastic
>> yeah that's the that's the thing is like
my wife got the didn't get the Duo cuz
she loves the camera. And I said,
"That's the thing." Like the problem is
like if you love the camera, you'll
never get the Duo.
>> Yeah.
>> Because the best camera will never be on
that model because the best camera has
to be on, you know, the the Pro,
whatever. Like, and that's the thing. I
think it's the world, you know, the
world live in. I I have an Air, which uh
um
yeah, not going to miss it. [laughter]
Maybe you'll like two airs stapled
together.
>> No, it's got a better No, this has This
is not two air. This has got I went into
the city yesterday and my battery was
dying at like six o'clock.
>> Like the air battery life is terrible.
It is terrible.
>> And that's the thing that like the that
it doesn't get kind of much attention to
it. And it's also noticed they didn't
they've yet to announce a new updated
Air. Um, and
you know, man, you know, I I think that
they they I loved the idea of a thinner
phone, but oh boy, you know, it was it
was a bit of a flop. So, yeah, I think
for you, like, yeah, the cameras a
camera is a critical part for you and
the idea that, you know, do you give up
that camera?
Yeah, there's just been enough times
that just the fast turnaround and
especially as as I'm trying to be on the
road a lot more. Uh I can I can just
picture uh needing to shoot more stuff
out in the field.
>> Well, remember the the do has the wide
angle does have the wide angle, but it's
not the the telephoto. The
>> aro is good.
>> Yeah. I mean, I take like photos of
like, does this look bad? Should I eat
this? You know, so [laughter]
>> it's funny. It's funny. It's like when I
look through my photos, it's like one
gorgeous shot, receipts, some food, a a
screenshot, you know, uh receipts,
receipts, a sunset.
>> Yeah.
Um
cool. Uh any picks?
>> Uh
dots dots ju dots just
Get get dots in your head.
>> Yeah, I don't want to make this another
dots like endorsement. Um, chat
chippityd slides. [laughter]
>> What what is what is slides?
>> It's it's it's you can you know you can
have you can tell it to make there's a
thing if you go look inside there if you
look in spaces you can create you know
you can create sites you can do slides.
It's a feature now chatbt and so I just
threw in a research paper that
everybody's talking about and I'm like
oh make some slides for me.
>> Oh you know what actually let let me do
this. So a thing that I got over the
last couple of weeks was I was falling
into the trap of like hey uh uh let me
know or handle this or make decisions
about this. And like I made a report and
I'm like great I'll get around to
reading that report and then I never
would. And my new jam is to uh I think
of it as like kind of Aaron Sorcin where
it's like walk and talk like I'm not
actually going to read your report. Tell
me what's in the report and then it
starts telling like no broadstrokes draw
pictures go. And it's on the one hand it
feels so unnatural and selfish but on
the other hand
what is there some feelings that are
being hurt? No.
>> Yeah. I I feel like uh I've had to kind
of explain to people too. I've dealt
with like don't just because Chad GPD
can write you a 10-page report, I'm not
going to look at a 10-page thing and
feel like you did a lot of work.
>> I'm going to feel like you you spent no
time to take question.
>> That was a hot like three months that
everybody thought like, look, that's
lots of work. And then instantly humans
elevated their opinion and we're like,
nope.
>> Yeah. I still, you know, I'm like, you
know, and I I would get stuff from
people like, uh, you know, like, "Did
you even read it?" You know, that was my
thing. I said a while ago. I'd see this
people like, "I got GPT3 to write an
entire book." I'm like, "Did you read
it?" Nobody ever said yes. Yeah. Did you
read it? Did you read it? Did you read
it? Like, I can have a right. Did you
read it? Like, no. You it it literally
>> AI still isn't good at that. Could be,
but it's not. And it just gets to be a
bit annoying.
>> Yeah. those artifacts of what can only
be accomplished by uh by evidencing real
thought on another human's behalf. Like
if I were to send you instead of a
resume, it's questionable. Maybe I did
it, maybe somebody else did it, maybe
robot did it, maybe. But if I if I if I
you got an email that just says it's a
threeinute puzzle game starring you and
you click it and then very clearly by
the time you get to the outside like
even if like yes very clearly it wasn't
coded by me and it wasn't this that or
the other but all of the decisions on
the design work betray the things that I
wanted you to understand about me and my
role uh then that becomes the new way to
engage
Yeah, I you know it's interesting like I
get like man the the kinds of AI slop I
get and like uh I get this thing where
they'll do a because there's somebody
right there making a YouTuber telling
people this is how you get engagement
you know just a search you look up this
person I get these things you're known
for blah blah blah blah this
>> yeah and I get my books your book the
session riveted and I was like you never
read you're literally it's it's fake and
so like I immediately to spam. And I
guess startups too that like if the
first line of your startup pitch is
we're building the layer or the stack um
I don't necessarily think you don't have
anything but that's so low effort and I
get a lot of a lot of technical people
are just lazy and when it comes to that
and we'll send stuff like that but it is
a little bit like guys just just write
me an email like a one or two sentences
of like hey I did this whatever is kind
of more compelling.
>> Yeah.
So, uh, your pick, my pick is dots, your
picks is slides.
>> That's right. Everybody have fun.
>> It's been after
>> it's after. Sorry, I forgot our
[laughter]
>> uh So, uh, fall just finally happened
here in Austin, Texas. Today, today is
actual fall.
>> Nice.
>> Yeah.
>> How cold is it? Uh 68 degrees.
[laughter]
>> We get in Sunday night.
>> I Oh man, it's going to be gorgeous
then.
>> Yeah,
>> it's going to be great.
>> And Rajn's going to be like, "Oh, the
weather's so beautiful here." [laughter]
>> It's like, sure. And it's always like
this.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
So, uh, I need to
I'm trying to think of what other
enhancements on the V-Mix to get now
that we have
stingers uh, and other stuff. Like, I
want to I want to start having a
producer bot have video packages to toss
to or to, uh, run B-roll on,
but all that takes time. Oh, hey. Uh,
actually here I'm gonna take this
question off the air. Goodbye live
viewers. You guys are the best. Goodbye.
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.