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Louis, Missouri. Oh, my God,

0:19

this sweater is like made out of the worst. So I

0:21

got like wish.com so hard

0:23

on this. What is that?

0:25

OK, first of all, you're using wish.com as a

0:28

verb. What does that even mean? OK, so you

0:30

know on wish.com when you order something that looks

0:32

like a nice sequined dress or something and it

0:34

arrives and it's like... I've never actually ordered a

0:36

sequined dress off wish.com, Kevin. How did yours actually

0:38

look when it arrived? I'm just saying this is

0:40

like a thing that people report. They order from

0:43

wish.com. There's something that looks very nice and then

0:45

it shows up and it's like a piece of

0:47

garbage. So this, when I when I ordered this

0:49

on Amazon, it looks like a sweater. It looked

0:51

woven. It looked very luxurious. I thought it's going to

0:53

be very comfortable, even though it's hideous. It

0:55

shows up. It's like it's like one of

0:57

those sweatsuits that like wrestlers wear to make

1:00

weight like the day before the meet. Like

1:02

it's just polyester. It's like zero breathability. Like

1:04

I'm burning alive in this. It looks like

1:06

it costs about eight dollars. Is that right?

1:09

It was like 13. But you're close. Yeah, for

1:11

13, I think you probably were

1:13

wrong to expect it would be handwoven by

1:15

artisans. I would say

1:17

that's a $13 sweatshirt if I've ever

1:20

seen one. I'm

1:26

Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at The New York

1:28

Times. I'm Kasey Neiman from Platformer. And this is

1:30

a special holiday edition of Hard Fork. This week

1:32

on the show, we look back at our predictions

1:34

for this year and tell you our predictions for

1:36

next. And then comedian,

1:39

actor and writer Jenny Slate joins

1:41

us to answer your hardest questions about

1:43

technology. Casey,

2:04

happy holidays. Happy holidays to you, Kevin.

2:06

I can't believe we're here at the

2:08

end of another year of hard fork.

2:10

What a year. So much to celebrate,

2:12

so much to recover from. It's been

2:14

a very long, very good year for

2:16

our podcast. We've made so

2:18

many, so many episodes and this is our last

2:20

one of the year. After today, we are taking

2:22

off for a holiday break. Now Kevin, I have

2:25

to say that while I'm excited about every episode

2:27

of hard fork that we do, this one in

2:29

particular, I think is really going to be a

2:31

treat for folks. Because we're wearing hats and sweaters.

2:34

Well, not only that, but we have got

2:36

a guest who is somebody who I've been

2:38

wanting to talk to forever. And we've got

2:40

some interesting predictions about the year ahead. Yeah.

2:42

So I think we just talked through for

2:45

those not watching us on YouTube right now,

2:47

we are both wearing ugly holiday sweaters. Yours

2:49

has like a Santa riding a

2:51

uni... The speaker itself. Mine is beautiful. Yours

2:53

has like Santa in space riding on a

2:55

unicorn. That's right. The official horse of the

2:58

gay community. And you are wearing a even

3:01

louder sweater, sweatshirt

3:03

that features a velociraptor wearing a

3:05

Santa hat that is dragging Santa's

3:07

sleigh and Santa behind the velociraptor.

3:10

And what was sort of the artistic vision

3:12

behind your fit today, Kevin? It

3:15

was just sort of like what would happen if you

3:17

put ugly Christmas monstrosity into

3:20

Dolly and like had it spin

3:22

out a bunch of examples. It

3:24

just seemed like the most futuristic of

3:27

the options available to me that were

3:29

prime eligible on Amazon. Yeah. No

3:31

Casey, I love the holiday

3:34

season. You know, every year,

3:37

I start playing the holiday music right

3:40

after Thanksgiving. It's been on constant rotation

3:42

in my house. And it's

3:44

just, it's my favorite time of year. It is. And

3:46

the way that I know this deeply

3:48

is because the hats that we're wearing right

3:50

now were your idea. So that's really

3:53

the firmest evidence that I have that you really are

3:55

a holiday person, but you know what? I'm a holiday person

3:57

too. It's nice to come together at the end of

3:59

the year. year to celebrate with friends, to be

4:01

together with friends and family in person, to

4:04

give it maybe a gift here or there.

4:06

These are the good times. Yuletide spirit is

4:08

very important to me. That's right. All right.

4:10

So today for our second annual holiday extravaganza,

4:12

I thought that we should revisit those predictions

4:14

and make some predictions for 2024. Punditry accountability,

4:16

it's a crisis in this country. Think about

4:19

how many predictions are being made all the

4:21

time. But when did the pundits actually go

4:23

back and point out what they got right,

4:25

what they got wrong? Here on hard for

4:27

the hard fork promise is we're going to

4:29

tell you how we did. We each made three predictions

4:31

last year. I don't want to go through all of them.

4:34

But if you could just say like, what is the thing

4:36

that you predicted last year that you were the most right

4:38

about and the most wrong about? So here's

4:40

the thing that I was most right about. I

4:42

said last year, the media's divorce from Twitter will

4:44

begin in earnest, and that to the extent that

4:46

Twitter and the media are inextricably linked, that will

4:48

be much less true at the end of 2023.

4:51

And I am here to tell

4:53

you, I was right about that. X,

4:56

as it is now known, has

4:58

seen an exodus of users, advertisers

5:01

and members of the press. We've

5:03

seen some news organizations, most notably NPR,

5:05

stop posting on X entirely. My little

5:08

publication platformer is also no longer posting

5:10

on X. Part of that is because

5:12

I think a lot of folks just

5:15

can't stomach what X is today. And

5:17

another big part of it is that

5:19

we actually now have alternatives, whether it

5:22

is threads or mastodon or blue sky.

5:24

Really interesting things are happening in the

5:26

race to replace what Twitter used to

5:28

be. In fact, as we're recording

5:31

this, Mark Zuckerberg just announced that they're going

5:33

to begin testing actually federating threads the way

5:35

that they say that they would. So threads

5:37

and mastodon are going to be sort of

5:39

linking up in a way that I think

5:42

portends really interesting things for 2024. You

5:44

could say that, threaderating it. You could say

5:46

that. I wouldn't. You could say that. So

5:50

yeah, that was one that I got right. And

5:52

one that I got right mostly was I predicted

5:54

that this would be the year of the Minnie

5:56

Musk when a lot of Silicon Valley CEOs would

5:58

see what Elon Musk did at Twitter. with all

6:00

his cost cutting and his mass layoffs and his

6:04

focus on extremely hardcore

6:06

engineering and efficiency. And

6:08

I think that has generally come true. We

6:11

saw layoffs this year at a bunch

6:13

of big tech companies, a lot of

6:15

focus on efficiency and stripping out layers

6:17

of management. Not everyone

6:19

has sort of emulated Elon Musk's every move because

6:21

obviously that has not gone well at Twitter, but

6:23

I would say this cost cutting in particular is

6:25

something that we've seen across a lot of the

6:27

tech industry. So unfortunately I was pretty

6:30

right about that. What was the thing you

6:32

were most wrong about? Well I said that

6:34

I predict that the Supreme Court will uphold

6:36

the Texas and Florida social media laws and

6:38

make content moderation illegal there. And

6:40

this has not happened yet. Both

6:43

of these cases are still pending and it

6:46

is still possible that it might happen. But

6:48

so far, has it come true? And the thing I

6:50

was most wrong about, I predicted that TikTok would be

6:52

banned in the United States in the year 2023. That

6:56

did not happen. And in fact I would say it's

6:58

probably less likely that it

7:00

will be banned now than it looked a year

7:03

ago when lawmakers were furious about

7:05

it and accused it of being a Chinese spying app.

7:07

There's still a lot of concern about TikTok, but I

7:09

don't think it's going to get banned anytime soon. Well

7:12

and I guess we should say that one

7:14

way that you were right was that Montana

7:16

did pass a ban on TikTok, but it

7:18

got blocked in court. And I imagine that

7:20

similar efforts around the country will meet the

7:22

same fate. Yeah. All right. Let's

7:25

get to our predictions for next year, for 2024. We

7:28

started a tradition that I think we should keep this year,

7:30

which is to separate our predictions into

7:32

confidence intervals. So we have high confidence

7:34

predictions. These are predictions that were like

7:37

80 percent sure will happen in 2024.

7:40

Medium confidence predictions, which are like maybe

7:42

50 percent coin flip. And

7:45

then low confidence predictions, which are things that maybe

7:47

are only 20 percent likely

7:49

to happen, but they would be kind of funny if they did.

7:51

I like that. You go first. What's

7:53

your high confidence prediction? Okay. My

7:56

high confidence prediction is that

7:58

threads. Well,

8:01

you know, it's so funny. I wrote threads

8:03

overtakes X in daily users and

8:05

launches in the Fetaverse. I

8:08

wrote this on December 12th. On

8:11

December 13th, threads announced

8:13

that they were coming to the Fetaverse. So

8:15

Mark Zuckerberg has preempted me, the rascal. So

8:18

I guess I would amend my

8:21

high confidence prediction to just threads

8:23

overtakes X in daily users. Okay.

8:25

This is essentially just an extension of my

8:27

prediction from last year. So maybe you can

8:30

say that I'm not trying hard enough here,

8:32

but I still see skeptics. In fact, the

8:34

economist Tyler Collin wrote a blog post this

8:36

month where he said that essentially things are

8:38

going much better on X than the media

8:40

would have you believe. And this is still kind

8:42

of where the action is. And I'm sorry, but

8:44

I just don't think that is the case. I

8:47

see more interesting stuff happening on threads every day.

8:49

And I believe that by the end of 2024,

8:51

it is going to be

8:53

the text based social platform of choice

8:55

for the most daily users. Yeah,

8:58

I can see this, but I'm also like

9:00

I kind of see Tyler Cowan's point too.

9:02

Like it has been surprising to me how

9:04

much longevity Twitter has had, even as I

9:07

think you and I would both agree the

9:09

quality of the discourse over on X

9:11

has been just worsening every day.

9:15

You know, people keep sort of loudly announcing

9:17

their departures. And yet, you know, when big

9:19

news happens, when the open AI stuff was

9:21

happening, when stuff happens in Gaza

9:23

that people really want to know about, a lot

9:26

of them are still going to X to figure

9:28

out what's going on. So as much as I

9:30

would like to see that platform sort

9:32

of decline as a source of

9:34

news for people who care

9:37

about seeing good information, it

9:40

does not seem to be losing users as fast as I would

9:42

have assumed. All right. Well, I guess

9:44

we'll just see who turns out to be right on

9:47

that one. What is your

9:49

high confidence prediction for next year?

9:51

My high confidence prediction is that

9:53

a lawless LLM chatbot will get

9:55

10 million daily active users. What

9:58

do I mean by that? lawless LLM

10:00

chatbot. I mean, basically a version of

10:02

chat GPT with no rules or very

10:04

few rules. And

10:06

one of the things that makes me confident about this

10:08

is I just think we are starting to see a

10:11

kind of backlash to what people

10:13

feel are the overly restrictive policies

10:15

that some of these chatbot makers

10:18

have, as you've talked about, like if

10:20

you ask anything remotely sexual or spicy

10:23

of one of these chatbots, it shuts

10:25

you down. Like you can't discuss, you

10:27

know, controversial political issues. And

10:29

you also can't do a lot of

10:31

stuff that, you know, people seem to want

10:34

to do, which is like have AI girlfriends

10:36

and boyfriends or have erotic conversations. So up

10:39

until now, there have been sort of

10:41

open source chatbots or chatbots that have

10:43

been tailor made for some of these

10:45

sort of more, you know,

10:48

controversial use cases, but none of them

10:50

have grown very big. And the big

10:52

companies like open AI have really stayed

10:54

away from those markets because they don't

10:56

want to be known as like, you know, spicy

10:58

chatbot companies. But in 2024, I think what we're

11:00

going to see is that these open source models

11:03

are getting good enough that someone is just going

11:05

to take one of them, take all

11:07

of the guardrails off, put a chatbot interface and

11:09

put it online. And I think that will be a

11:11

very popular product. I got to say, Kevin, I

11:13

think this is a good one. And the main

11:15

reason is that there is so much money to

11:17

be made here. It is sitting on the table. He's

11:20

eventually going to pick it up in 2024 is

11:22

as good a year as any. Yeah. All

11:24

right. What's your medium conference prediction? All right.

11:26

Medium confidence. Google mostly catches up to

11:28

open AI in LLM quality and begins

11:30

to neutralize the lead that chat GPT

11:32

has today. Interesting. So you think Gemini

11:34

ultra when it comes out early next

11:36

year is going to settle the debate

11:38

or do you think that they're going

11:40

to keep coming out with stuff that

11:42

is outperforming chat GPT? I think

11:45

it is very possible that the end of next

11:47

year, open AI is best product still is a

11:49

little bit better than Google's best product. I just

11:51

think it is going to matter less because I

11:53

think that Google is going to get better and

11:55

better at figuring out how to distribute the

11:57

stuff that it has getting its large language.

12:00

models in front of you helping you figure

12:02

out new ways to use it in the

12:04

places where you're already using Google, whether it

12:06

is Gmail or Chrome or Docs or any

12:08

of the other places where so many people

12:10

are already using Google. So I think next

12:12

year you start to see the differences in

12:15

quality between the LLMs matter less and distribution

12:17

matters more and Google is very good distribution.

12:20

I like that prediction. All right. My

12:22

medium conference prediction is that white collar workers

12:24

will start unionizing to fight AI related job

12:26

loss. So this is something

12:28

that I've been waiting to see ever

12:31

since the Hollywood actors and writers

12:33

strikes is whether sort of workers

12:35

in other industries were going to get worried

12:37

about the use of AI to

12:40

replace their jobs or to

12:42

hurt their economic position

12:44

in some way and would start to

12:46

form unions in industries that have

12:49

not historically had large union presences.

12:51

Think law, think finance, think some

12:53

pockets of media, even tech industry

12:56

unions, I think are possible because

12:58

now programmers, some of them are starting

13:00

to worry that their jobs are going to be replaced.

13:03

And actually the AFL CIO, which is

13:06

one of the biggest unions in the

13:08

country announced that it was forming a

13:10

partnership with Microsoft to sort

13:12

of study and discuss the ways that AI

13:15

should be incorporated into workplaces.

13:18

So this is already a conversation that is

13:21

happening in a lot of white collar industries

13:23

among workers who are starting to get nervous about

13:26

this stuff. And I think that 2024, maybe the

13:28

year that we start to see workers take real

13:30

action to stand up and say, this technology

13:32

is happening. We're worried about what it means

13:34

for the future of our work. And we're

13:37

going to unionize in order to be able

13:39

to bargain collectively about it. Yeah, I

13:41

agree with you. I think we're going to see a

13:43

lot more workers asking that question as they should be.

13:45

Yep. Totally. All

13:48

right. What's your low confidence prediction? All

13:50

right. And I do want to

13:52

stress this is a low confidence prediction, but

13:54

I, what I've written here is Apple's vision

13:56

pro it's mixed reality headset is successful enough

13:58

to revive interest in mixed reality. the

14:00

Metaverse. Wow, you think the Metaverse is back. I

14:02

think it could be making it come back. You

14:04

know, for so long, I waved away stories about

14:06

AI because there was nothing in my world that

14:09

I was using. And I just kind of couldn't

14:11

really see it. I accepted that maybe it would

14:13

be something someday, but there was nothing that was

14:15

on my computer right now that I could use.

14:18

I wonder if 2024 is going to

14:20

be like that for the Metaverse for

14:22

some people. Now, the Vision Pro is

14:25

incredibly expensive, costs more than $3,000. Most

14:27

people are not going to have one.

14:29

But Apple is the best in the

14:31

world when it comes to creating technological status

14:33

symbols. And when this thing comes out, it

14:35

is going to be an

14:37

object of fascination. I think rich people are going

14:39

to clamor to get them. They'll be bragging to

14:41

all their friends about what they're doing in them.

14:44

And I do think that that could offer a

14:46

little groundswell of support for what Apple is not

14:48

calling the Metaverse. But of course, Meta is. But

14:50

I do think that'll be able to capitalize on

14:52

that. They're making their own improvements to their own

14:54

headsets. And so by the end of 2024, does

14:57

it feel like maybe VR mixed

14:59

reality is a little bit bigger than it was in 2023? I

15:02

do have low confidence that that is true. Yeah,

15:05

I also have low confidence that is true. But I think

15:07

it's possible, which is why I like that you included that

15:09

as your low confidence prediction. All right.

15:12

Mine is Elon Musk will get

15:14

his own Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Oh, tell me more

15:16

about this. So I don't know if you've heard, but

15:18

in 2024, in the United States, there

15:21

will be an election. Yes, of course.

15:23

And notoriously, in presidential election years, people

15:25

get up to all the craziest

15:28

shenanigans on the Internet. In fact, I believe Donald

15:30

Trump is calling it the final election we'll ever

15:32

have. Yes.

15:35

So notoriously, during

15:38

the 2020 election cycle, there was this

15:40

whole drama where the New

15:42

York Post reported a story about Hunter

15:44

Biden's laptop. And it was right before

15:47

the election. And people were speculating

15:49

it's this Russian disinformation with

15:52

this material hacked Twitter, which

15:55

at the time was run by Jack Dorsey, decided

15:57

to sort of throttle and cut off. Access

16:00

to this article while it tried to

16:02

figure out what's going on. This became

16:04

a huge Conflagration people got super upset

16:07

accused them of censorship Jack

16:09

Dorsey ended up sort of saying that was

16:12

a mistake and and this became sort of

16:14

one of the things that I would argue

16:16

Sort of caused Elon Musk to want to

16:18

buy Twitter and to radically Reorient its views

16:20

on content moderation. He was very upset that

16:22

this thing had happened He

16:24

wanted to like get to the bottom of it And

16:26

so he bought the company and changed the rules and

16:29

I think that in 2024

16:31

we may see a similar October

16:34

surprise from the other

16:36

side and I think that when that

16:38

happens when there's something about Donald Trump

16:40

or whoever the Republican nominee is That

16:42

Elon Musk doesn't like or thinks might

16:44

be disinformation or just as

16:46

skeptical of he is going to

16:49

Decide to throttle access to it or

16:51

cut it off thereby Replicating the exact

16:54

mirror image of the situation that made

16:56

him so pissed off that he bought

16:58

Twitter in the first place Well,

17:00

I like this because Elon Musk himself

17:03

has said that the funniest outcome is

17:05

often the most likely and this would

17:07

be perhaps The funniest outcome for Musk

17:09

acquiring the site. It's true And

17:11

I think that when that happens, he should hire Yoel

17:13

Roth to to fix the problem and restore trust and

17:15

safety at X I think you well might

17:18

not be available for that job All

17:21

right, so that's my low-confidence prediction. I like these

17:23

predictions. Yeah, I think we covered a lot of

17:25

ground next year is gonna be big I'm sure

17:27

that there are some stories that are not in

17:29

these predictions that will wind up dominating a good

17:31

deal of discussion next year But I don't know

17:33

from what what we know here in December this

17:35

seems like as good a series of guesses as

17:37

any and In fact, I

17:39

think I like these predictions so much that I think we

17:41

should do something that we've never done before On

17:44

this show which is to open prediction markets for

17:46

our We've

17:48

talked on the show about prediction markets I

17:51

spend some time on this site called manifold

17:53

which allows you to serve bet on various

17:55

outcomes And so we will

17:57

go on and create prediction markets for

17:59

all all of our 2024 predictions

18:01

so that our listeners and people who agree

18:04

with us or disagree with us can go

18:06

actually wager fake money on whether or not

18:08

these things will happen. Yeah, I would say,

18:10

spend a lot of money on this. Spend

18:13

a lot of... It's not money, it's mana. It's

18:15

their fake currency. And if

18:17

you want to bet on our

18:19

2024 prediction markets, you can find

18:21

them on manifold.markets. And

18:24

I also think we should check in on

18:26

the predictions that have been made about us

18:28

on manifold markets. Yeah. And there are plural

18:30

predictions that have been made about us. There

18:32

sure are. Yeah. So one

18:34

of them that I think we should get your

18:37

take on is, will

18:40

the Hard Fork podcast have one episode before

18:42

the end of 2023 that does

18:44

not talk about AI? I

18:46

mean, first of all, why would you want to have an episode

18:48

of Hard Fork that doesn't talk about AI? Right. I

18:51

love this though, because it's like, it's an active market. There

18:53

have been 25 trades on this market. It's currently sitting at

18:55

10%. So people do not think

18:57

it is likely that we will stop talking about AI.

19:00

And I will say, I love this as a

19:02

form of reader feedback. In the old days, people

19:04

would have written an angry letter to the editor

19:06

saying, like, because I was going to stop talking

19:08

about AI, I'm really getting sick of it. And now you

19:10

can just open a prediction market. We talk

19:12

all the time about talking about things that are not AI.

19:14

In fact, we often do have segments that are not about

19:17

AI. And they're some of my favorites. But it's like, one

19:19

of the things we're committed to is telling the most

19:21

important stories of the moment. And AI just really

19:24

is kind of at the center of all of them. The

19:26

second prediction market that I wanted to check

19:28

in with you about that already exists on

19:30

manifold markets is has the following title. Will

19:34

Casey Newton begin dating an AI before June

19:36

of 2024? Now,

19:39

I promise I did not write this.

19:41

Really? This was made by the user we

19:43

and its current probability is only

19:46

15%. So

19:50

most people do not believe it is likely that you

19:52

will begin dating an AI before June of 2024. But

19:56

what do you think? I mean, I also don't

19:58

think I'll be continuing an AI. before June

20:00

of 2024 I'd be curious

20:02

to sort of know what is meant here by

20:05

date you know is it meant that like once

20:07

or twice a week like I go to dinner

20:09

by myself and just like type onto

20:12

my phone to do some sort of AI

20:14

boyfriend because that does

20:16

it seem very likely yeah

20:19

I don't know I don't see it now

20:21

do I think that by June many more

20:24

people will have AI boyfriends and girlfriends and

20:26

non-binary friends than they do today like yes

20:28

I do believe that yeah there actually are

20:30

some discussions happening in the comments of this

20:32

particular market about what the resolution criteria are

20:35

one user asked how will this market resolve

20:37

if after a few too many drinks Casey

20:39

Newton has a spicy one night stand with

20:41

an AI but in the morning Casey says

20:43

it was a mistake and something that will

20:46

never happen again but somehow the AI gets

20:48

Casey's phone number and starts calling it all

20:50

hours which Casey ignores one day until one

20:52

day he gets a call during his god

20:54

daughter's quinceañera which causes him to grab the

20:56

phone and shout angrily into the receiver that

20:58

he will never love you before realizing

21:00

that it was actually Kevin calling and he tries

21:02

to explain but Kevin's not having it and by

21:04

the end of the month they've decided to put

21:07

hard fork on an indefinite hiatus so that they

21:09

can both pursue new opportunities well I'm

21:11

glad someone has figured out the most likely outcome

21:13

of all of this and just put it in

21:15

writing so that I didn't have to that's

21:18

a really inspired piece of writing it really is

21:20

whoever wrote that yeah if you are the person

21:22

who left that comment on the on the market

21:24

for the this question please get in touch we

21:27

have some creative writing opportunities for you all

21:32

right that's enough predictions when

21:34

we come back we have hard

21:37

questions from our listeners you

22:01

AI isn't coming, it's here now.

22:03

How can leaders stay ahead of

22:05

the curve and make sure they're

22:07

using AI to its fullest potential?

22:09

By listening to the Work Lab

22:11

podcast from Microsoft, hosted by veteran

22:13

technology journalist Molly Wood. Join her

22:15

as she explores how AI innovation

22:17

is transforming creativity, productivity, and

22:19

learning. Follow Work Lab

22:22

on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever

22:24

you listen. Hi,

22:26

I'm Genevieve Koh from New York Times Cooking.

22:28

There's nothing quite like a fresh batch of

22:30

homemade cookies, and I love to share them

22:32

with friends. Me a friend,

22:34

me guest cookie critic, Cookie

22:36

Monster. Hi, cookie. We baked

22:38

some of our most delicious cookie recipes

22:41

for you to review. Let's start with

22:43

our peppermint brownie cookies. Cookies. Oh,

22:45

that's so sweet. Nom, nom, nom,

22:47

nom, nom, nom. Ah, okay,

22:50

me have some notes. Uh, okay. Yeah,

22:52

Genevieve, me think you missed an important

22:54

step in the hibiscus cookie recipe. Yeah,

22:57

me gonna write it down, excuse me.

22:59

But you didn't try those yet. Exactly. Give,

23:02

cookie, monster, hibiscus cookies. Oh,

23:04

I see. Actually, you know

23:06

what? Me think almond cookies

23:08

need same step too. Excuse

23:10

me. Give, cookie. Head to

23:12

nytcooking.com, where you can find so many

23:14

cookie recipes, sure to be loved by

23:16

your friends, family. And monsters.

23:19

Me still hungry. Me just gonna take

23:21

this. Excuse me. Wait, that's the microphone.

23:23

Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. Casey,

23:27

we've got a special holiday treat today.

23:29

So periodically on the show, we do

23:31

our segment, Hard Questions, where we solicit

23:33

our listeners' biggest ethical and moral dilemmas

23:35

about technology or some tech thing that

23:37

is going on in their lives, and

23:39

we try to answer them. And

23:42

today, to help us with that, we have

23:44

a very special guest. That's right, because as

23:46

much fun as Kevin and I have giving

23:48

you advice, we know it could be better

23:50

if we bring in one of the funniest

23:52

people I know. And right now, we have

23:54

a chance to do just that, because Jenny

23:56

Slate is coming on hard for... This

23:58

truly is a... Holiday treat

24:00

Kevin because you know like we like to have

24:02

fun on the show. We like to laugh We

24:04

like to joke around but we are not professional

24:06

comedians Like making people

24:09

laugh laugh is at best like a

24:11

side project. Yes Jenny

24:13

slate is a pro. Yeah, it is

24:15

one of the funniest people around I

24:17

first saw her on Saturday Night Live

24:20

Then she played Mona Lisa Saperstein on Parks

24:22

and Rec one of my favorite roles of

24:24

hers since then she's done voices in a

24:26

bunch Of great animated films and TV shows

24:28

including Zootopia Bob's Burgers and Big Mouth

24:30

And she is also the co-creator and voice

24:33

of beloved character Marcel the shell with shoes

24:35

on and Incredibly she's agreed to

24:37

come on hard fork and help us give out

24:39

advice to listeners for the holidays Have you ever

24:41

been so excited for a segment? No, I'm very

24:44

excited And I think we should also explain like

24:46

how this came about yeah, it was a little

24:48

roundabout So we got this DM and usually like

24:50

I don't check my DMS on Instagram all that

24:52

much because like it's mostly just Cryptocurrency scams and

24:55

stuff, but we did see a DM from someone

24:57

purporting to be Jenny slate and she had that

24:59

blue checkmark Yes, and I thought well This is

25:01

exciting and she said she said she listens to the

25:03

show and she said I'll just read from her DM

25:06

here If you ever want to talk to a 41

25:08

year old stand-up comedian who's afraid of tech but wants

25:10

to learn about it But it's very turned off by

25:12

it. You can just email me We

25:15

both sort of silently screamed to ourselves and freaked out

25:17

and immediately emailed her I mean it was amazing And

25:20

yet I think Jenny really stands in for a lot

25:22

of the audience here because I think so many listeners

25:24

want to learn about tech and are also turned off

25:26

by it at times I think you can probably describe

25:28

both of us that way often and so Jenny

25:31

I think is very much Simpatico with the

25:33

vibe of hard fork and Peace

25:36

here right now. Yeah, springer in amazing I Can

25:48

you say welcome to hard fork hello, thank you for

25:50

having me Hey, Jenny, I just was listening and

25:53

I was like, oh no, they want Shania tween

25:55

This is like such a letdown and I invited

25:57

myself. The whole thing is weird. I I

26:00

haven't even told my other friends that I did this and

26:02

then I didn't tell my husband that I did it and Well,

26:15

so I have to respond to the last thing

26:17

you said Jenny because for a while We have

26:19

thought like it would be really cool if like

26:21

a comedian or actor like wanted to come on

26:23

the show But what are we supposed to do?

26:25

Just like end the show by saying like hey

26:27

if you're like a celebrity DM us and then

26:30

literally you just DM does so It

26:32

was really kind of like a the secret moment where

26:34

we manifest of it and I just think that you

26:36

know This was meant to happen. I

26:39

just love that so much and in so

26:41

many ways and I listened to

26:43

the podcast I love it so much.

26:45

I really just love the whole thing I

26:47

love your personalities and how much you guys

26:49

make each other laugh it just

26:51

makes me smile so much and I love all the information

26:54

and I Hardly

26:56

know how to work my computer and

26:59

so I was just gonna ask like

27:01

what is your relationship to technology these

27:03

days? Yeah, it's the same

27:05

that it's been since like around Napster

27:09

So like for me for example the other

27:12

day I was parking

27:14

my car and My

27:16

husband was like trying to find the car and he was

27:18

like drop a pin and my response was I don't know

27:20

how to do that It's

27:23

like I'm I know it's not

27:26

hard to learn But there's

27:28

something about technology that makes me feel

27:30

really sometimes I get really petulant about

27:32

it And I just like

27:34

and the modern equivalent of the old person

27:37

who says like well We had to

27:39

walk six hours You know six miles or hours

27:41

or whatever a long time or like very hard

27:44

Way in the snow to go to school or something

27:47

like I'm just I have a

27:49

computer. I Don't really

27:51

use it for anything Except

27:53

for I use Microsoft words

27:55

a good point classic. Yeah, I love that

27:57

one Recently

28:00

somehow recently my computer started to get

28:02

my text messages and I don't know

28:04

why but I do But

28:08

see that I imagine the cities you like your eye messages

28:10

are popping up in a window on your computer I this

28:13

is how all the cool kids are texting these days.

28:15

Is that true? Yeah, it's true Yeah, so that's like

28:17

that's an advanced level move, but it's it's very helpful

28:19

when I find yeah I mean, I

28:21

love it. But then like there's a there's a limit

28:24

for example My

28:26

computer doesn't know who a lot of those

28:28

people are and so I don't know why

28:30

some contacts go But like I meant like

28:32

a grandmother and I'm comfortable with it But

28:36

then I started to be uncomfortable

28:38

with not understanding what was like going

28:40

on in the world and

28:44

So that is why I listen

28:46

to your podcast every week and

28:48

enjoy it and taking the information

28:50

and I feel Less

28:53

alienated from the the world at

28:55

large I guess so amazing.

28:57

Well, that's wonderful here Thank you for listening

28:59

and for coming on I want to ask

29:01

you about one more tech thing just being

29:04

based on our interactions Which was when we

29:06

were we you know, I think it's okay

29:08

to say we were messaging on Instagram one

29:10

of the social platforms Yeah, and

29:12

you suggested that you you have

29:14

had a maybe complicated relationship with Instagram Which

29:16

I think Kevin and I have had as

29:18

well But like can you speak to kind

29:21

of maybe the ways it was driving you

29:23

crazy a little bit? Yeah, for sure. It

29:26

would sort of make me feel bad about

29:28

myself Even if someone that

29:30

I like was doing something that they enjoyed and I

29:32

was happy for them There would be this like, you

29:34

know strange feeling about inadequacy that I

29:37

honestly didn't even identify with and

29:39

I Did

29:42

not find a use a greater use for that feeling

29:44

in my life so I was like oof I would

29:47

like to not feel like this and

29:49

so I stopped it didn't

29:51

make me feel good and I wasn't sure about

29:53

it for me as a way to Do

29:57

the only thing I'm sure it works for

29:59

is for like when I want to tell people that

30:01

I'm doing a stand-up show, or

30:03

that I have a new book, or some sort of work. I

30:07

like it as a bulletin board for that. And

30:09

I don't do really like any DMs, so

30:13

I have one DM with the people who

30:16

know all about tech and computers, and I

30:18

feel like that's fair. Yeah,

30:20

well, we're here to be your personal tech support any

30:22

time your printer breaks. Just be kept. And

30:25

I just want to think, because I'm sort

30:28

of a hearing in your voice, maybe

30:30

some insecurities about your relationship with tech. But I

30:32

just want to say, there is such wisdom in

30:34

what you have done. I think one of the

30:37

hardest things for people to do with the personal

30:39

technology in their lives is to just have an

30:41

intentional relationship with it. And if there is something

30:43

in your life that is causing you pain and

30:45

misery, and you got rid of it, congratulations. That

30:48

is actually how you win at tech, is

30:50

doing that. Yeah. We

30:52

have some listener questions to answer with your

30:54

help. Yeah, all right. This is our segment,

30:56

Hard Questions, where we solicit questions or ethical

30:58

dilemmas from our listeners and try our best

31:00

to answer them. So, Jenny, you have gamely

31:02

agreed to help us answer some listener questions.

31:05

First up, we've got a story from listener

31:07

Mike Ford about a new pattern he's seeing

31:09

at weddings. Hey,

31:11

Hard Fork, my name is Mike Ford.

31:13

I live in Wisconsin. I've been a

31:15

wedding photographer and videographer for 15 years,

31:18

and I have noticed

31:20

something that I can't prove, but

31:23

every single groom is just

31:26

using AI to write their

31:28

love letters, and then also

31:30

for the vows, obviously, that

31:32

too. And it's

31:35

something we've discussed a lot at my

31:37

company, just among us, like,

31:39

is it cringe? Is it not? Is

31:42

it inspirational? And I'm telling you, these

31:44

grooms are not using it for inspiration.

31:46

They are copying it verbatim. Anyways,

31:50

I actually saw a groom reading

31:53

it out of the chat GPT

31:55

browser. The groom is bribed

31:57

to be sitting on a bed before their wedding. Wow.

32:01

So Mike doesn't have a specific

32:03

question here, but I think there's a

32:05

lot to unpack. Jenny, what do you

32:07

make of the wedding chat GPT industrial

32:09

complex? Oh my gosh, that really

32:12

shocked me. First of

32:14

all, I love, now I'm gonna just

32:16

misquote him, but I've noticed something that

32:18

I can't prove is, wow.

32:22

I mean, I think I've

32:24

said that before to Pat's partners. I'm

32:26

guessing that I can't prove. OK,

32:29

I was listening. I was like, well,

32:32

if the people they're getting married to

32:34

don't mind if they're just like, hey,

32:36

Justin, don't just show

32:38

up and have nothing. Just have something to say

32:40

in front of my dad and my stepmom or

32:42

whatever. It's like, OK, fine. If

32:44

that's what's fine with everyone, whatever. It's your

32:47

wedding. That's fine. But oh,

32:50

how absolutely terrible if

32:52

the bride thinks. Because

32:55

I don't know. When

32:58

you're getting married, and I'm not an

33:00

expert, but I've done it two times.

33:02

And one thing that I like about

33:05

getting married and that

33:07

my husband did very well is that I

33:09

was like, this will be the moment when

33:11

he'll show his heart to

33:14

our community and to me. And

33:17

that is a special alchemy and that

33:19

magic of honesty and love and romance

33:21

and ceremony. And so if

33:23

you think that that's coming from a

33:26

human, but in fact, it's coming

33:28

from an AI being. Yeah,

33:34

whatever is right. Casey, do you think

33:36

that A, this is unethical for grooms

33:38

to be doing this, and B, that

33:40

Mike should do something about it? Oh,

33:43

wow. Here's my

33:45

perspective on this. I think it is

33:47

fine to use chat GPT to write

33:49

the first draft of your vows. Most

33:52

people that are getting married for the first time, they

33:55

don't even know what it is supposed to be. Maybe

33:57

they've been to a few weddings and they have some

33:59

vague sense of humor. of what it's like, but they

34:01

want to get some ideas of like, what are kind

34:03

of the main points that I want to hit? I

34:05

don't have any problems with that. You know, most people

34:07

are terrified of public speaking. It's a very scary moment

34:09

to stand up and all your friends and family do

34:12

that. So I'm sympathetic to the groups. But what I

34:14

will say is, you should write a second draft. You

34:17

should go through and you should say,

34:19

do I love anything specific about my

34:21

fiancé? And like, if so, say that.

34:23

I think that kind of squares the

34:25

circle. You'll have your good vows. You

34:27

got through it with some assistance, which

34:29

is fine. And Mike can stand down

34:31

and he doesn't have to, you know, ruin the

34:33

wedding. I think my red flag here is less

34:35

about the use of chat GPT. I'll confess that

34:37

the first time I heard that people were doing

34:39

this for their wedding vows, my reaction was like,

34:41

oh, that's horrible. And I think these marriages are

34:43

doomed. But

34:45

the more I'm thinking about Mike's question, the thing

34:47

I actually object to is not the use of

34:49

chat GPT. It's the lying about it, right? If

34:52

you're nervous about writing your vows and you want

34:54

to enlist some help from an AI to

34:56

sort of write your first draft, go with God

34:59

fine, as long as your partner is cool with it.

35:02

But if you're going to pass that off as your own thing, I just think that

35:04

sets a precedent of dishonesty that does not portend well

35:06

for the future of the relationship. I will agree. And

35:08

the maybe last thing I would say is, you know,

35:10

when I have seen my friends give their own vows,

35:13

watching them do that in a heartfelt way

35:15

are some of my favorite moments that I've

35:17

ever seen my friends, you know, so try

35:19

not to deny yourself that of like actually

35:21

saying something that you truly believe. Yeah,

35:24

yeah. But I've also heard some truly terrible speeches

35:26

at weddings, which maybe chat GPT would have done

35:28

a better job of. Good point.

35:31

You know, in Forrest Gump, when

35:34

he says I'm not a smart man, but I know

35:36

what love is, that is enough.

35:39

Like not I'm not saying that the people using

35:41

the chat GPT are not smart. I'm just saying

35:43

you can quote something and have it might be

35:45

better. Like it's okay if it's not your own

35:48

words. It's just the lying. I think it's yes.

35:50

Boy, oh boy. Well, how devastating. How strange.

35:54

Sorry. I wonder like how

35:56

many divorce filings that's going to be

35:58

cited in like irreconcilable for instance, because I

36:00

discovered that my wedding vows were written by

36:02

Chat GPT. Probably more than one. Okay, this

36:05

next question comes from listener Ben Segal, and

36:07

it comes in response to a segment we

36:09

did a few weeks ago about cultivated meat,

36:11

essentially meat that is grown from cells in

36:13

a lab. Casey and I

36:15

tried some cultivated beef in the form

36:17

of meatballs, and we asked this question,

36:19

is lab-grown meat ever going to be

36:21

a viable alternative to our current way

36:23

of getting meat, which is killing animals?

36:26

And so in response to this episode,

36:28

Ben sent in this question. Hey guys,

36:30

this is Ben from Minneapolis. A

36:33

while back, you talked about lab-grown meat,

36:36

and it made me realize that someone

36:39

eventually, down the line, will

36:41

probably create lab-grown human flesh,

36:45

and I'm wondering if you guys

36:47

think it will be ethical to

36:49

eat said lab-grown human flesh. I

36:53

do just wanna point out though, that I

36:55

have no desire to eat human flesh, and

36:58

I recognize that that's exactly what

37:00

somebody hungry for human flesh would say, but

37:03

honestly, it just made me

37:05

think, would it be ethical for these

37:07

people to grow lab-grown human

37:10

flesh, and then eat that

37:13

human flesh? Happy holidays.

37:15

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

37:17

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

37:19

ha ha ha. What a question. My goodness.

37:21

Denny, where do you come down on lab-grown

37:24

human flesh? He's definitely said

37:26

hungry for human flesh, and

37:28

kept saying, talking about eating it a

37:30

lot, and it does feel like

37:32

one of those asking for a

37:35

friend kind of questions. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

37:37

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

37:39

ha ha ha. Wow, that just actually completely

37:41

emptied my mind, and I almost forgot the

37:43

question. I'm just, you know, you're just like,

37:45

you start to just have to

37:47

tell your legs, don't run away,

37:49

don't run away. You have to stay

37:51

in your seat for the rest of the question. It's

37:54

hard for me to think that, I

37:57

feel that we should eat that, I don't think

37:59

that. we should. But I don't know.

38:01

I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I

38:03

just don't. It's not right

38:06

for me. It doesn't feel right.

38:08

Is it ethical? That's kind of

38:10

a confusing way to set that

38:12

up. It sort of feels like it's not as

38:14

real question, right? It's unsettling. It

38:16

is unsettling. Yeah. I think,

38:18

look, what

38:21

we learned during our episode that we did about

38:23

lab grown meat is that it's very expensive to

38:25

make it. And that if you're

38:27

making like human grown flesh, like my hope

38:29

would that would be for some sort of

38:31

medical use, you know, to like save a

38:33

life, you know, so the idea

38:35

that there's just sort of like extras on the

38:37

counter for snacking, I think just seems very unlikely

38:39

to me. So any

38:41

situation where I can imagine lab grown meat

38:43

laying around, I actually do think it would

38:45

be unethical to eat it because I think

38:48

it hopefully is there to serve some higher

38:50

purpose. Yeah. So search engine, one of

38:52

our favorite podcasts posted by a B.J.

38:55

vote recently did an episode about

38:57

cannibalism and address this question. And

39:00

I've been thinking about it ever since then. And I,

39:02

you know, I think I've come down on the permissive

39:04

side. I would eat the lab grown human flesh. Wait,

39:07

why? Yeah, I don't know something about it. Well,

39:10

so I bite my fingernails. So already

39:12

I am eating some element of my

39:14

body. So why isn't any

39:16

different? You know, and no humans are harmed in

39:18

the production of this meat. And,

39:20

you know, I think it could allow

39:22

people who maybe have a taste for human flesh,

39:25

which is again, not me. I'm. Wait,

39:28

did you submit this question under the

39:30

name? No, I just think I would

39:32

try it. You know, I'm curious. All

39:34

right. Well, I worry that, you know,

39:36

we have the special guests and we've

39:39

already taken the show in such a

39:41

disturbing direction. Oh, it's fine. It's fine

39:43

with me, honestly. Yeah, I'm

39:46

not shocked at all that I was on here for

39:48

10 minutes. And then

39:50

as I go. I get my steak baby

39:53

finished next work. I

40:00

feel bad for Shania Twain, you know, if

40:02

she ends up coming on. Yeah. And

40:05

Shania, if you're listening, please DM us. Yeah. Love

40:08

you. All right. Let's

40:10

say that that was probably the worst question that we

40:12

got. Let's see if the next one is any better.

40:15

Okay. This next one comes to us all the

40:17

way from Copenhagen. And for

40:19

this one, Jenny, we're going to ask

40:22

you to channel your best parenting advice.

40:25

Here's our listener. Hello,

40:27

Hartvark. Ida Ebenskor

40:30

from Copenhagen here. I

40:32

have a question for you, actually, too. Now,

40:35

it's almost Christmas, and my son

40:38

Uwe, who's nine years old, gave

40:40

me his wish list. And

40:43

there was something on the wish list

40:45

that I couldn't figure out. It said,

40:48

gaming equipment. I

40:51

looked at him and said, Uwe, what do you mean? What

40:54

kind of gaming equipment? And

40:56

he looked at me back, and then he made this,

40:58

like, just slighted towards a

41:01

nearby computer and typed into

41:03

Google, gaming equipment.

41:07

And I asked him, Uwe, did

41:10

GBC write your wish list

41:12

for Christmas? And he

41:14

said, with a little

41:16

smile, not answering the same

41:19

way as when your teacher says,

41:21

did you cheat, Uwe? And he

41:23

never asked me. Yes, it

41:25

did. It did write his wish list for

41:27

Christmas. So my

41:30

questions would be, number

41:32

one, is there

41:34

an age limit for kids

41:36

using chat GBC? And

41:40

secondly, what kind of

41:42

gaming equipment should I give him?

41:45

Any ideas for these two

41:47

prison questions? Okay,

41:50

first of all, has there ever been a

41:52

greater tonal shift in the history of podcasting

41:54

than maybe from lab-grown human flesh consumption to

41:56

Goofus Christmas lists? Wow. We're

41:59

really headin' over. all the high points

42:01

here. Alright, so Jenny, how do you

42:03

feel about kids using chat GPT? It's

42:06

so sweet in a way, like using it

42:08

to be like, what should I want? You

42:11

know, like it's so sweet. It's like wanting

42:13

to belong. Like, you know, it's

42:16

not just that I want something for Christmas.

42:18

I want to want what other kids want.

42:21

And that's very sweet, but

42:23

it also does hurt my heart a little

42:25

bit. I

42:28

want Edith to talk to Uffa about is

42:30

there any way that he might just like on his own know

42:32

what he wants. That

42:34

is really where I am. That's

42:36

like where I go on this. But generally, like,

42:38

I don't know, kids can

42:40

use the internet for homework and

42:42

stuff. It's just such a different

42:44

thing to use chat GPT. I

42:47

would be very limited, but I'm kind of like a

42:49

strict mom on that kind of stuff. My

42:52

daughter's very little. She's like only allowed

42:54

to watch a screen like once a week and

42:56

she watches Bluey and that's just because I want

42:58

to watch it. I love Bluey.

43:00

I think it is the best of

43:02

the toddler shows. Oh, yeah, yeah,

43:04

yeah, for sure. I just I love it. But

43:07

the other thing is, yeah, I have no idea

43:09

what to tell her about what type of gaming

43:12

equipment to get because I've basically played

43:14

a video like game like four times in my life. And

43:16

the last one I played was Tekken.

43:19

And it was in I want to say 2002.

43:24

Who was your character on Tekken? It was

43:26

like a big panda. Could

43:28

that be right? Great character. Great

43:30

character. Great character. We love her.

43:33

That was very sensible advice to me. You

43:35

know, my thought is like, yes, kids can use

43:38

chat GPT. But like with anything else on the

43:40

internet, you just want to do a supervision. Right.

43:42

So technically, you're supposed to be 13 or older

43:44

to use chat GPT. They're

43:47

sort of like terms of

43:49

use limit. And

43:51

if you're under 18, you need your parent

43:53

or guardian's permission to make an account. But

43:55

obviously, we know that people are

43:58

using this stuff much younger than than. that,

44:01

including sometimes with their parents' permission. So

44:04

I think it's fine to have Chat GPT

44:06

write your Christmas list. I think there's nothing

44:08

like, you know, particularly, and I agree that

44:10

it's kind of sweet to want to,

44:13

you know, get a sense

44:15

from sort of the collective hive mind of like

44:17

what a person my age should want. I

44:20

will say on this specific issue of whether

44:22

or not to get OofA a video game

44:24

system, I have some personal history with

44:26

this because I think from about the age I was

44:28

like seven or eight until like 14 or

44:30

15. Every

44:33

Christmas, I asked my parents for a

44:35

Sega Genesis, and I never got a

44:38

Sega Genesis. And

44:40

you know, I still had many wonderful gifts,

44:42

but they, I think, correctly intuited that if

44:44

I had a Sega Genesis, I would never

44:46

leave the house again. I would

44:48

never make friends, and I would never

44:50

play sports, and I would never

44:52

do any other activities, and that would become my

44:54

life. And I think that was

44:56

probably a wise decision on their part.

44:58

So you know, only Iba

45:01

knows OofA well enough to know whether he

45:03

is in danger of becoming that kind of

45:05

a shut-in through video games. But I would

45:07

just say, you know, tread carefully because I'm

45:09

glad that my parents restricted my video game

45:11

playing during my formative years. Did you have

45:13

any kind of restrictions on your video game?

45:15

Yeah, you know, limited in terms of maybe

45:18

how many hours a day we could play.

45:20

But you know, we did play video games,

45:22

we did love them. And so that leads

45:24

me to conclude that like OofA should get

45:26

a gaming console for Christmas. I think as

45:28

a nine-year-old, the Nintendo Switch is probably gonna have

45:30

the most stuff on it that he's going to enjoy.

45:32

So I would look there first, but you can also

45:34

just get him a little tablet. There's so many

45:37

cheap little tablets you can get now from Amazon,

45:39

or you can get maybe like a refurbished iPad

45:41

or something. A lot of games on there, and

45:43

then it is also useful for other stuff. So

45:45

you know, you can show them educational videos and

45:47

you know, whatever else you want to do to

45:49

raise your child. So that would be my recommendation

45:52

for gaming equipment for young OofA. And of course

45:54

we wish you a very Merry Christmas. All

45:57

right. Next question comes to

45:59

us from... Alia DeLand, who

46:02

was very persistent, she actually reached out to us multiple

46:04

times, we see you Alia. And

46:06

Alia has a problem that she wanted some

46:08

advice about. She did something on Amazon that

46:11

she is now feeling guilty about. And we

46:13

don't have a voice memo for this one,

46:15

but I'll just read her message. Here's what

46:17

she said, lightly edited

46:20

for brevity. She said,

46:22

quote, I recently bought off-brand ink

46:24

for my printer. The Amazon seller

46:26

I bought the ink from, which

46:28

was new prime eligible, good reviews,

46:30

et cetera, thanked me for the purchase

46:33

and promised $60 worth of

46:35

Amazon gift cards in exchange for a

46:37

five-star review. I usually

46:40

recycle these postcards, but this one

46:42

promised 60 Amazon bucks. Turns

46:44

out that is the price of my conscience

46:46

because I logged on, left a five-star review

46:48

and received an Amazon gift code in exchange.

46:51

So she asks, on the

46:53

scale of moral repugnance, where does the

46:55

crime of a fake Amazon review fall?

46:57

Am I deceiving my fellow shoppers, aiding

47:00

and abetting some weird internet crime? And

47:02

where did that money even come from?

47:05

So Jenny, we'll start with you. What is

47:07

your take on whether it is unethical to

47:09

accept an Amazon gift card in

47:11

exchange for a disingenuous review? Oh,

47:14

this person feels so bad if they're

47:16

even thinking of the word repugnance, you

47:18

know? I mean, that feels really strong. And

47:22

I don't, there's a, I am at

47:25

this place right now where I'm just like, I just wanna

47:27

try to be

47:29

as forgiving as possible. Like, just

47:32

generally, it seems

47:35

like, yeah, you obviously don't wanna do

47:37

that. So don't do it again, because

47:39

now you found out that you really

47:41

don't like it. So that's good information.

47:43

I don't think it's repugnance. It doesn't

47:45

seem like the most ethical,

47:48

but I also think that it was

47:50

printer ink and not like,

47:53

I don't know, a medical device or like

47:55

a... vaccine.

48:00

Yeah, you know, like

48:03

a baby pacifier that breaks

48:05

in half or something like it, no

48:08

one's really getting hurt. But if

48:10

you're just going to speak about it

48:12

as an ethical issue like, yeah, it's

48:14

not ethical. If you really going

48:16

to do the hard math on that one,

48:18

but also, oh, hon, come on, give yourself

48:20

a break. You're definitely not going to have

48:22

a question for you both, which is do you trust Amazon

48:25

reviews in the year of our Lord 2023? Like

48:28

if you see a product that has tons of great

48:30

reviews, do you think to yourself that must be a

48:32

good product? Or do you think that must have been

48:34

gamed in some way? Because I am now so cynical

48:36

that I think all Amazon reviews are fake, or at

48:39

least a substantial portion of them. We

48:41

know that there is a thriving ecosystem of these

48:43

fake reviews. And so I you know, I love

48:45

that Jenny is bringing a holiday spirit of forgiveness

48:47

to this listener. And I think I think we

48:49

should extend that, you know, at

48:52

the same time, it you can also ask

48:54

yourself like, well, what, what world am I

48:56

creating when I do that? The reason that

48:58

this exists is because Amazon charges all sorts

49:00

of fees to these sellers who want to

49:02

be on the platform, and it

49:04

penalizes them heavily for not having

49:06

five star reviews. And so

49:08

they've incentivized this sort of exact behavior, you

49:11

know, so our listener wants to know where

49:13

this money come from. Well, most people don't,

49:15

you know, most people do throw the postcard

49:17

away, but enough of them actually go through

49:19

with it, that it is essentially worth it

49:21

to them to spend the 60 bucks, get the

49:23

five star review, and now we'll sell more printer

49:26

ink. And the net effect of all that is

49:28

just that prices go up for all of us

49:30

because we're essentially paying all these hidden fees and

49:32

taxes just to like use amazon.com. So I wish

49:34

Amazon would do a better job of ferreting out

49:36

these these reviews. And they would tell you that

49:38

they're removing millions of fake reviews every year. Clearly,

49:41

there's more work to be done. So we'll give

49:43

you a pass this time, Aliyah. But you know,

49:45

maybe maybe reconsider in the new year. I

49:49

never read the reviews. I

49:52

I just asked my friends about

49:54

stuff like in real life. And

49:56

yeah, I guess I

49:58

just I'm also not that much of a like

50:00

a smart shopper, you know, I'm

50:02

just clicking away on junk. And do

50:04

you ever, do you ever

50:07

leave reviews, Jenny? I

50:09

have not ever left a review. No,

50:12

but on a restaurant, on

50:14

a hotel, on anything. Uh,

50:16

I don't believe so. But when

50:19

I'm like, you know, on the

50:21

phone with Verizon, um, you

50:24

know, and talking to the person about like, is my

50:26

phone going to work when I go over here? And

50:31

then at the end, they're like, or, or, you know, or

50:33

the airline, like, you're like, why are you calling these places?

50:35

I'm sure you could do it, you know, online, but I

50:37

always call the people. Um, and they're

50:39

like, would you say on, for a review,

50:42

I always do that.

50:46

Wow. That is super nice. Well,

50:48

they asked me to, and

50:51

they're a person. Yeah. My thing

50:53

is like, you know, you remember like when, when

50:55

you learned that like Uber drivers get kicked off

50:57

the platform, if they get like anything less than

51:00

like a 4.0 rating or

51:02

something. And so from that point on, you like

51:04

only rate people five stars, no matter how horrible

51:06

they are as a driver. Cause like, you don't

51:08

want to like mess up their livelihood, right? It's

51:10

like, maybe you like took a couple wrong turns

51:12

or something, but I don't want to like punish

51:14

you by like getting you booted off the platform.

51:16

So I'm just going to give you five stars.

51:19

I feel like that is happening with a lot

51:21

of other categories of thing. Like if

51:23

I, if I have like a horrible experience at a

51:25

restaurant, like I'm not leaving them a one star review

51:27

because I don't want to tank the whole restaurant. All

51:29

I wanted for them to do is to like, you

51:31

know, fix it up a little bit. I totally agree

51:33

with this. I'm so tired of being asked to review

51:35

things. You know, it's like on DoorDash, I'll order like

51:37

the same four items every week. And then every week

51:39

I get a push notification. It's like, how'd you like

51:41

it? Like leave a review. I was like, my review

51:43

is that I've ordered it 36 times this year. That

51:46

is my review. Do with that information what you

51:48

will. But that's all I have to say about

51:50

it. Right. Yeah. We'll

51:54

be right back. In

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52:33

right. All

52:36

right. Next question comes to us

52:38

from a professor at a

52:41

university in Texas. So this

52:43

is from our listener. I

52:45

recently exposed 10 of my students

52:47

for cheating on the midterm exam using chat

52:49

DPT. Their answers

52:51

have the exact same bullet point format

52:54

as chat DPT answers, and they contain

52:56

words that I've never used in class.

52:59

So the process was handled centrally at

53:01

my university, and the final outcome is

53:03

that seven out of 10 students

53:07

stood their ground. Only three

53:09

out of 10 confessed. So

53:11

I'm finding myself in the unfortunate situation

53:13

of having to give a score of

53:16

zero to the three students who admitted

53:18

responsibility and apologized to me, but

53:21

I cannot penalize the other seven,

53:23

who I'm sure 99% have cheated.

53:28

Any thoughts on this? That's a tough one.

53:30

So I have some thoughts on this. Okay. And

53:32

then I want to hear what you guys think of it. All

53:35

right. I think this is a terrible situation, and I hate to call

53:37

out a listener to this show who

53:40

has taken the time to send us a voice

53:42

memo explaining their problem. But I think in this

53:45

case, we need to stop trying

53:47

to accuse people of using chat GPT when

53:50

we don't know for sure that they have.

53:52

I think this is a big deal in

53:54

high schools and colleges all over the country

53:56

right now. There are all these schools

53:58

that have used these chat. GPT detector programs

54:01

to try to like catch students in

54:03

the act. We know that these programs

54:05

do not work. They have tons and

54:07

tons of false positives. And

54:10

imagine being a college student and you

54:12

have worked really hard on your essay

54:14

or your paper or your midterm and

54:16

you turn it in and what comes

54:18

back is an accusation that you have

54:20

plagiarized. You know, if that's

54:22

true, it's true, whatever. But if it's false

54:24

and you are falsely accusing people, and by

54:27

the way, these programs, these detector programs falsely

54:29

accuse people all the time, especially it turns

54:31

out people for whom English is a second

54:33

language, you are doing that

54:35

person a deep, deep disservice. And I would

54:38

say actually inflicting like what could be a

54:40

trauma on them because being accused of cheating,

54:42

if you have not cheated and having that

54:44

show up on your transcript or result in

54:47

some disciplinary action from your school is just a

54:49

really bad thing to go through. But

54:52

also in this situation, what happens as this

54:54

listener noted is that you end up punishing

54:57

the honest students who actually cop to

54:59

having done this. Meanwhile, the people

55:01

who are lying about it get away with it. Well, they

55:03

weren't that honest. They did cheat on the test. She

55:06

doesn't know that. There's no way that you can

55:08

tell with not. Well, she's a three of them

55:10

came forward and said they cheated. Three of them

55:12

came forward and said that they cheated. But I

55:14

just think this is like this is a terrible

55:16

status quo at schools is to like have teachers

55:18

trying to like flag which of

55:20

their students have used chat GPT. It's just

55:22

not gonna work. All right. Let's

55:24

get Jenny's thoughts on this in part because soon your

55:26

child will be in school and maybe will want to

55:28

use chat GPT. And I wonder if you have feelings

55:31

about that. Oh my gosh. Well, the first

55:33

thing that I'm thinking of is like, what a

55:35

bummer if as a learner, your options

55:38

are kind of like either you're so

55:40

you're stressed or you're something

55:43

is not happening for you that like you

55:45

decide to use chat GPT or that you

55:47

don't care. So you're just like, I'm just

55:49

phoning in and I'm using it either way.

55:51

Like that's a bummer because then you won't

55:53

you won't really get what you're supposed to get

55:55

from your education. But in the end, it's like,

55:58

it's hard to understand for me. just

56:01

listening to Kevin, I'm like, yeah, like how much of

56:03

a job is it like a professor, you know, like

56:05

a professor at a university, is it their job to

56:07

be a disciplinarian and like kind

56:10

of like this like weird new instant magistrate

56:12

about like a technology that's freaking everybody out

56:14

in terms of like, wait, are we actually

56:16

going to learn is information even going to

56:18

get in anymore? Or like, are we going

56:20

to create a society of students that just

56:22

like are trying to kick stuff

56:25

off a list and actually don't have

56:27

much information, they just have like experience

56:29

of trying to get through and in

56:31

the end, like it is up to her

56:34

to be an educator and that's hard enough.

56:36

Yeah, but I guess you can't like with

56:38

a college student. It's

56:40

hard to you know, they skip class like

56:42

they're not high I mean high schooler skip class you're

56:44

talking to like a big dork here. In

56:47

high school, obviously, everybody's there

56:49

for every minute. You're not smoking

56:52

behind the gym. Yeah, not in

56:54

high school. I was Yeah, nose in

56:56

the book. But yeah, in in college,

56:58

more hidden the bond. But

57:01

I still like my nana Connie is

57:03

paying for me to go to college.

57:05

If I don't actually like use

57:08

this, it's, you know, kind of a shame for all

57:10

of us, isn't it? I guess it's up to the

57:12

students in the end. But they do have this, you

57:15

know, tantalizing new shortcut that they could

57:17

use. It is tantalizing tantalizing.

57:19

I have a couple of thoughts. You know,

57:21

one, if you feel bad that you punish

57:23

these students who were dishonest, but then they

57:25

were honest, could you offer them some makeup

57:27

work? Could you say like, Look, you were

57:29

you were straight with me in the end,

57:31

here's a makeup. So I'm gonna let you

57:34

earn some of these points back as a

57:36

way of saying, Hey, thank you for showing

57:38

some integrity. So I would I would suggest

57:40

that as a first step. The second step

57:42

is, unfortunately, I do think this listener is

57:44

just going to have to rethink

57:46

their curriculum going forward. And I

57:48

realize what a tedious and exhausting and

57:50

upsetting thing this is to say. But we

57:52

have talked about on the show all year,

57:54

education is going to have to evolve to

57:56

adapt to a world in which chat CPT

57:58

exists and where students Students can get

58:00

these programs to spit out very credible

58:03

essays, right? We've even talked about some

58:05

potential solutions. You can have students write

58:07

essays in class. You can design curricula

58:09

that asks students to use these programs

58:11

and talk about how they use them

58:13

as kind of assistant, research assistants and

58:15

partners. So I think that will better

58:18

prepare them for the world that they're

58:20

going to live in than a world

58:22

that says absolutely no chat GBT ever.

58:24

And so I would just suggest to this

58:27

professor that this might be the time over

58:29

the winter break to start thinking, okay, how

58:31

can I evolve this curriculum? Great response.

58:33

Thank you. All

58:35

right. Thank you. The next

58:37

question comes to us from a software

58:39

engineer in Massachusetts named David. And

58:42

David has a question. Katie, do you want to read any of

58:44

these, by the way? Oh, I think you're doing a great job.

58:46

I would, but I think you have a very sort of brisk

58:48

manner about you when you do this or that I enjoy. Okay.

58:51

Yeah. The next question comes to

58:53

us from a software engineer in Massachusetts named David. And

58:55

David has a question about a tool his company is

58:57

using that makes him a little uncomfortable. And

59:00

he worries that if customers knew that

59:02

this was being used, this tool, that

59:04

it would make them feel uncomfortable too.

59:07

This tool is called session replay.

59:10

And David says it basically allows

59:12

him to reconstruct and monitor every

59:15

single thing a customer does when

59:17

they go to his company's website.

59:19

Here's David. You can see

59:22

their mouse movements in real time. You can see

59:24

their keyboard presses. They can

59:26

see where they scroll and how long they take

59:28

to do all these things. You

59:30

know, I've seen people type out gift messages

59:33

for things that they're purchasing to loved ones. And

59:36

I've seen them rephrase what they're typing and change

59:39

the words to craft exactly the right

59:42

intimate message for their family member. It

59:44

all just feels a little too much. At

59:48

the same time, these tools help us

59:50

solve problems with our

59:52

website that we would never have been able to solve any other

59:55

way. So I guess my

59:57

hard problem is I really

59:59

want to continue. using this tool, but it makes

1:00:01

me very uncomfortable. And I'd love to

1:00:03

get your thoughts. Wow. What

1:00:05

do you think? A gift message? I mean,

1:00:07

I have not, maybe to my

1:00:10

sisters, you are

1:00:12

such a magnificent woman, keep

1:00:14

shining your power out, whatever. There's a happy,

1:00:16

nice, that's a crazy, I would never write

1:00:19

that. I don't even know why I said

1:00:21

that. That's not what I write. But for

1:00:23

most of the presents that I send, unless

1:00:25

it's a baby gift, to

1:00:27

my close friends, and

1:00:30

there are drafts of messages, in

1:00:32

those little gift messages squares on the, and

1:00:35

where you can fill it in that are

1:00:37

like, hey, Turd, here's the delivery from the

1:00:39

dildo farm. Like wrapped

1:00:41

in a fart so that you can eat my shit. Anyhow,

1:00:46

your mom here, she says she likes

1:00:48

me more than you. It's

1:00:54

just, it's nothing, it's

1:00:56

garbage. The idea that somebody

1:00:58

would even see that, it's sort

1:01:00

of funny, but also terrifying. And generally,

1:01:03

yeah, I'm super freaked out by that.

1:01:07

I'm very, very freaked out by that. Why do they

1:01:09

need that? I guess you could tell

1:01:11

me why they need that. That's what, that's why

1:01:13

I like your podcast a lot. They're

1:01:16

saying that they needed to improve the website.

1:01:19

And look, when you're designing software, a thing

1:01:21

that happens a lot is you think you've

1:01:23

made something very easy and then you show

1:01:25

it to a person. They

1:01:27

can't make heads or tails of it. And so being

1:01:29

able to track that every movement on a website might

1:01:31

let you say in a sort of automated way, aha,

1:01:34

they're not doing this thing because they

1:01:36

actually can't find this item on

1:01:39

the menu bar or something. So I'm like

1:01:41

moderately sympathetic to that idea, but

1:01:44

I'm just sort of a big believer in the idea that

1:01:47

if you wouldn't just tell your customers upfront

1:01:49

that you were doing this, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

1:01:51

Yeah, this is my thing. I

1:01:55

understand that this tool is creating some

1:01:57

value for this company, right? At least

1:01:59

ostensibly that. That's why they installed it. They

1:02:01

don't just have a surveillance kink. They

1:02:04

do derive some business value out

1:02:07

of being able to snoop on their customers like this.

1:02:09

I would just say, is the value that you're getting from

1:02:12

that tool greater than the amount of value

1:02:14

you would lose if this came to light?

1:02:17

If your customers knew that you were doing

1:02:19

this, would it destroy

1:02:21

trust and value in your company to

1:02:23

a degree that it actually would dwarf

1:02:25

the gains that you would get from

1:02:27

using this tool? It sounds like from the way this

1:02:29

tool is being described by our listener, it's

1:02:32

actually not worth it. If

1:02:34

you are feeling freaked out about this as

1:02:37

an engineer working at this company, it's a

1:02:39

safe bet that your customers would feel freaked

1:02:41

out about it too. And so I guess

1:02:43

my question is, what should David

1:02:46

do? Well, I mean,

1:02:48

look, it's very hard as a

1:02:50

single employee to be the rabble-rouser

1:02:52

and to go to your bosses

1:02:54

and say this doesn't feel right.

1:02:57

But if he feels comfortable enough, I

1:02:59

do think it is worth raising an

1:03:01

alarm here and just saying, this doesn't

1:03:03

really seem like it is consistent with

1:03:05

our values. And it

1:03:07

may be the case that his bosses come back to him

1:03:10

and say, tough beans, this is just the way it's gonna

1:03:12

be around here and then I think David's gonna have to

1:03:14

make a choice about whether he wants to work at that

1:03:16

company. Unfortunately, I suspect that most tech

1:03:18

companies are collecting massive amounts of

1:03:20

data, often in not a

1:03:23

very straightforward way. And so it might be

1:03:25

hard to find another job that was more

1:03:27

aligned with his values, but at the very

1:03:29

least, I would consider speaking up about this

1:03:31

internally. Yeah, there might also be some sort

1:03:33

of technical solution. There might be a less

1:03:35

invasive way to get similar kinds of information,

1:03:37

maybe not what people are writing in their

1:03:40

gift messages, but tracking where

1:03:43

people's mouses are moving, there might be a way

1:03:45

to get some of the same information in

1:03:47

a way that was less creepy. Yeah, ask chat JPT. You

1:03:50

know how the game like floor, when

1:03:52

the floor is lava? The floor is lava, yeah.

1:03:54

You just have to go from one location to the

1:03:57

other. Now when I'm on any website, I'm gonna be

1:03:59

so. So just

1:04:01

like click that, click that, and you're out. You

1:04:03

know, like I'm gonna just be so careful. The

1:04:06

internet is lava. Yeah, the internet is

1:04:08

lava. Wow. Yeah. At

1:04:10

the end of the day. All right,

1:04:13

this next question comes to us from

1:04:15

a listener who works as a mail

1:04:17

carrier for the postal service named Chard.

1:04:21

Chard has some concerns about how

1:04:23

technology that tracks movement might be

1:04:25

used against them or against mail

1:04:28

carriers someday. Chard writes,

1:04:30

quote, it's been on my mind that

1:04:32

the Android-based scanners we are required to

1:04:34

use as part of our daily

1:04:36

work routines are capable of many

1:04:38

things, including the GPS monitoring we

1:04:41

carriers know of, but potentially they

1:04:43

might one day monitor my stride,

1:04:45

coordination, and other biometric data and

1:04:47

report these out to management. It

1:04:49

strikes me as an ethical quandary, but also

1:04:51

as a hard reality of the kind of

1:04:53

work I do. Are there

1:04:56

any restrictions you're aware of on companies

1:04:58

monitoring or collecting this kind of data?

1:05:00

And if not, should I be asking

1:05:02

my union and asking my legislators to

1:05:05

make banning its collection a priority? What

1:05:08

do you both think? What if I knew that

1:05:10

answer about like what? Yeah, yeah, Chard, I

1:05:12

know. I

1:05:15

know exactly like, you know, the

1:05:18

answer to the first part of your question

1:05:20

about what they're allowed to do. Sorry, but

1:05:22

no, I was just making a joke. I

1:05:24

feel like someone should answer that before I

1:05:26

do because it really has some serious questions

1:05:29

and it's fairly scary, you know, like

1:05:31

that's one of these questions that's like

1:05:33

in the future, you know, it makes

1:05:35

you think that it's like pre, what

1:05:37

is the minority report? You know, in

1:05:39

minority report, yeah, it's the precogs. It's the

1:05:42

precogs, yeah. Yep, yeah, anyway, the

1:05:44

precogs in the milk baths, I have no idea what

1:05:46

I'm talking about. You guys should go, it's your podcast.

1:05:49

I think you're raising a great point, which is this

1:05:51

question points us toward a future of precogs in milk

1:05:53

baths and so we need to take it seriously, you

1:05:55

know? I would just

1:05:57

also add like, this is not a hypothetical future,

1:05:59

right? Amazon several years ago started

1:06:01

installing AI powered cameras in a lot

1:06:04

of their delivery vans, which tracks not

1:06:06

only like how fast the vans were

1:06:08

going and whether they were breaking any

1:06:11

traffic laws, but also like are drivers

1:06:13

fiddling with the radio? Are they distracted?

1:06:15

Are they drinking coffee? And

1:06:17

it would actually give them scores based on

1:06:20

their ratings, which were used in determining like

1:06:22

who got bonuses and who didn't. So

1:06:24

a lot of Amazon drivers hated this. Some

1:06:27

of them actually quit or threatened

1:06:29

to quit over it. And

1:06:31

I think this is absolutely a fair

1:06:33

thing to take up with the union.

1:06:35

Yes, I totally agree. You know, we

1:06:37

in an interesting way, like this question

1:06:39

and the last question are linked because

1:06:41

one of the unfortunate aspects of the

1:06:43

progress in technology over the past 10

1:06:45

years is that surveillance of every kind

1:06:47

has just gotten way easier. And

1:06:50

we see over and over again that when people want

1:06:52

to surveil something, they just start doing it and they

1:06:54

trust that nobody is going to rise up and say

1:06:56

anything about it. So that's just kind of

1:06:58

like a trend that I'm worried about in general. What I would say when it comes to

1:07:00

this kind of workplace surveillance, I think

1:07:02

the rule the rule here should

1:07:04

be that if the CEO of the company

1:07:07

will not agree to this kind of surveillance

1:07:09

for themself, then they should not subject the

1:07:11

workers to it. Right. And the

1:07:13

CEO of Amazon wants to have an AI powered camera

1:07:15

on him at all times while he is just sort

1:07:17

of going through his workday and it issues a little

1:07:19

report that gets like reviewed by the board, then he

1:07:21

can start talking about putting AI cameras on all of

1:07:23

the delivery vans. Until then, I don't want to hear about

1:07:25

it. I love that. I

1:07:27

like that a lot. I really do. That

1:07:30

feels really good to me. Yeah. Yeah.

1:07:32

Yeah. And

1:07:35

of course, because what would happen if we did that?

1:07:38

We just wouldn't have that much surveillance because rich and

1:07:40

powerful people don't want to be surveilled and they're taking

1:07:42

for granted that they'll be able to get away with

1:07:44

surveilling the less powerful and we just don't want that

1:07:46

dynamic. I really like I do

1:07:48

hate this area of AI. I

1:07:51

sometimes call this bossware. There's like this whole

1:07:53

suite of surveillance technology that

1:07:55

is just used to make sure people

1:07:58

aren't leaving their desks for like. Long

1:08:00

lunch breaks and stuff and like I

1:08:02

just it just boils my blood

1:08:04

like yeah Like why are you using this stuff on

1:08:07

your own workers if you don't trust them then don't

1:08:09

hire them lock it off Yeah,

1:08:11

it doesn't feel good. And you know, what's

1:08:13

the weird through line between like whatever

1:08:16

whether it's like lab-made meat or

1:08:18

this bossware as you say it's

1:08:20

like there's just this new era of like uncomfortable

1:08:23

areas that we didn't think we would

1:08:25

be in because humans like either it

1:08:27

just like Break social norms,

1:08:30

you know, so we don't do it like we

1:08:32

don't go into these areas We don't like ask

1:08:34

people how many times did you change the radio

1:08:36

while you were driving your mail truck today? because

1:08:39

it's just Rude and like

1:08:41

if their production is like if

1:08:43

they're doing their jobs in a way that is

1:08:45

is working it's just not

1:08:47

appropriate and it's it's

1:08:50

so demeaning and terrible and like there are all these sort

1:08:52

of like Relational norms that

1:08:54

we used to have that now

1:08:57

we have these like new shadow areas that we can

1:08:59

go in like on Instagram You can like look at

1:09:01

a picture of your like, you

1:09:03

know Friends cousin and just like stare at

1:09:06

like, you know, your friends cousin in their

1:09:08

exercise clothes But like in

1:09:10

life it's like my husband

1:09:12

came into the room and I was holding

1:09:15

a physical picture You

1:09:23

know, it is actually it's a to

1:09:25

be so honest it is a I

1:09:29

think about this all the time because I just I

1:09:31

want to know how like what are the

1:09:33

norms of how we're all behaving? You know,

1:09:35

like what are the general rules and I

1:09:38

thought it would make a really good stand-up

1:09:40

joke and I did it And

1:09:42

you know, it made just a lot of people

1:09:44

angry They don't want to hear about you know,

1:09:46

whether or not it's okay to do whatever they're

1:09:48

doing And I don't actually mean to judge anyone.

1:09:50

I just mean to be like, you know, we're

1:09:52

all acting kind of differently, right? You

1:09:55

know, like isn't that noticeable and like can

1:09:57

we discuss it? But actually it's it's

1:10:00

very sensitive. It's like really, I think it's actually

1:10:02

even sensitive for me to say like, yeah, I

1:10:04

don't really use my, I don't go on my

1:10:06

social media anymore, except to post for work like

1:10:08

even that will make people mad. It's

1:10:11

a strange drug we're all touching here. It

1:10:14

is well, it's I mean, it's almost sort of like

1:10:16

telling someone that you don't drink, right? Like people immediately

1:10:18

sort of get very defensive, right? Because it feels like

1:10:20

a commentary on them. And of course, it isn't, but

1:10:23

people receive it that way. Okay,

1:10:26

this next one is a little out there.

1:10:28

So maybe like, this one is a little

1:10:30

out there. I like the cannibalism material from

1:10:33

earlier. Yeah, let's end this new mess. Let's

1:10:35

get gross. Come on, you

1:10:38

guys. Fair point. This one, this

1:10:40

one, I would say is just a

1:10:42

little less grounded in reality. So maybe

1:10:44

like take a little micro dose or

1:10:46

something and we'll dive into this. I'm

1:10:48

chewing my mushroom capsule right now. I'm

1:10:51

already there. This one is

1:10:53

from a listener who says they synthesized

1:10:55

their own identity. And they now worry

1:10:57

they might be losing their sense of self.

1:10:59

Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Dear

1:11:01

hard fork team. I'm Fabian, I come from

1:11:03

Italy. And I have synthesized

1:11:06

my own identity half a year ago. And

1:11:09

I gave them the name of since theola. To

1:11:12

give you some context, I am an animator

1:11:14

who works with generative AI and I'm making

1:11:16

an animated film about and with

1:11:18

generative AI. The story will

1:11:20

be in a world where everyone has an AI

1:11:23

clone. So I thought, why not trying it on

1:11:25

my own skin to better understand the problems that

1:11:27

arise from that. Basically,

1:11:29

I just trained a stable future model

1:11:31

on myself with 100 photos. As

1:11:35

this month's past, I somehow have

1:11:37

turned into different genres, ethnicity, ages,

1:11:39

inserted in all sorts of media

1:11:42

like sitcoms, music videos, and

1:11:44

so on. My

1:11:46

usual identity has become totally fluid

1:11:48

into this media landscape. And my

1:11:51

identity has been boiled down into an icon

1:11:53

and a symbol. Now

1:11:56

when I talk with friends, they sometimes refer to me

1:11:58

as since theola. It feels kind

1:12:00

of as if Cynthia will be a celebrity of

1:12:02

sorts, since they appear in so much

1:12:05

different media. It even

1:12:07

accords to me sometimes that when I look

1:12:09

into the mirror, I see Cynthia before I

1:12:11

see Fabian. Cynthia has become

1:12:13

this alter-ric of me that is sort of 120%

1:12:15

of me. So

1:12:19

the hard question I would like you to ask

1:12:21

is, am I dooming

1:12:23

my own identity by creating and sharing

1:12:25

so much content of my synthetic self

1:12:28

online? Do

1:12:30

you believe that I'm planting the seeds for myself

1:12:32

to be lost in a sea of replicas that

1:12:34

pretend to be me, losing my

1:12:36

own self? And

1:12:39

am I becoming Cynthia Ola? And

1:12:42

if so, is that a bad thing?

1:12:46

Thank you so much for listening

1:12:48

to this. Okay, I love this question,

1:12:50

actually. I love this question. It

1:12:53

was very beautiful. And I would

1:12:55

just say that even though

1:12:57

he is using a new technology to

1:13:00

explore his identity this way, this sort

1:13:02

of thing is not new. Rockstars

1:13:04

have been doing this for a long

1:13:07

time, right? The other

1:13:09

person he made me think of is Cindy Sherman, you

1:13:11

know, the famous photographer. And

1:13:13

Cindy's whole thing is just taking

1:13:15

all kinds of self-portraits of her,

1:13:17

but just in every incarnation of

1:13:19

herself imaginable, looking like every type

1:13:21

of profession, every type of person.

1:13:23

And she's just been

1:13:25

playing with that for many years and creating

1:13:27

this amazing art of it. I've

1:13:30

never interviewed her, so I don't know what

1:13:32

that sort of play has done with her

1:13:34

own relationship. I'm sure she'd have

1:13:36

some really interesting things to say about it. But in

1:13:38

general, can

1:13:41

or should you use technology to

1:13:43

explore your own identity? Absolutely, yes.

1:13:46

I know. Jenny, what do you think? I

1:13:49

absolutely loved the

1:13:51

way that it's Fabian, right? Fabian, yeah. Yeah,

1:13:54

was just describing their

1:13:57

perspective. But

1:14:00

yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong

1:14:02

with it, and I think it's really

1:14:04

cool to play as much as you

1:14:06

can, and it can feel

1:14:08

dangerous too, because you're like, well, what if there's

1:14:10

a version of this that honestly

1:14:12

just seems superior to me? Maybe this,

1:14:14

what was the name of? Cynthiaola.

1:14:19

Cynthiaola. Cynthiaola, which is a

1:14:21

beautiful name. So maybe, yeah, maybe Cynthiaola

1:14:24

just seems cooler. Yeah. But

1:14:26

it's also a lovely way to

1:14:28

return to your

1:14:31

original self and see what's

1:14:33

there. I don't know, I'm kind of into the whole

1:14:35

thing. I can see why it's scary too, but that

1:14:37

also doesn't make me not into

1:14:39

it, and clearly there's a lot of

1:14:41

introspection. And honestly, if I

1:14:44

could do anything with this message that we just heard,

1:14:46

I would put it at the

1:14:48

start of the, use

1:14:50

it as a creative prompt. Yeah.

1:14:52

For like, it's just like an entire film,

1:14:54

and make that be the voiceover over

1:14:56

the opening credits, like over

1:14:58

black, you just hear this, I don't know,

1:15:01

I'll see you guys, you know, Toronto or

1:15:03

Telluride, in 20 years if

1:15:05

I ever actually, you know, I'm able to do this,

1:15:07

I loved it. Well, and it also, like

1:15:09

you are a great person to answer

1:15:12

this question, I think, because you are

1:15:14

a performer, and are used to like

1:15:16

assuming different identities in different spaces, and

1:15:18

some people, I'm sure, you know, know

1:15:20

you better for one role than another,

1:15:22

and maybe you even get people coming

1:15:24

up to you saying like, oh, it's

1:15:26

Marcel the Shell, or something like that.

1:15:28

So like, do you have

1:15:30

any perspective on that kind of identity

1:15:32

play with respect to AI? Like, are

1:15:34

you tempted at all to make versions

1:15:37

of yourself or your characters in AI

1:15:39

that maybe then you would sort of be able to

1:15:41

experiment with? I definitely already get

1:15:43

enough of like that strange juxtaposition

1:15:45

from just what I do, and

1:15:48

no, I mean, this is not gonna shock you,

1:15:51

but no, I'm not tempted to make AI. Versions

1:15:55

of myself or my work, but I

1:15:57

do experience a lot of times like

1:15:59

there's... some characters I've played like Mona

1:16:01

Lisa Saperstein, who's like, they

1:16:04

define her as the worst person

1:16:06

on earth. And a lot of,

1:16:08

I think, like, a

1:16:10

lot of people come up to me and say

1:16:12

they like that character. And in those moments, I

1:16:14

feel compelled to subtly prove that I'm not like

1:16:16

her at all. And

1:16:19

then, you know, with Marcel the show,

1:16:21

it has been confusing to me over

1:16:23

the years sometimes because he

1:16:26

is the kind of like closest portrait, I

1:16:28

feel like I could make of my own

1:16:31

psyche and my own personality when it

1:16:33

works the best. It just came out

1:16:35

as like a male shell with no

1:16:38

age. And, but I do think like

1:16:40

Marcel is a lot more confident than me, for

1:16:42

example. And so there are sometimes when people are

1:16:44

like, you're Marcel the shell, there's like a tiny,

1:16:47

just a teeny tiny thing, like a pain of

1:16:49

sadness where I'm like, not yet, like I'm

1:16:51

not, you know, I'm not, I

1:16:54

am using aspirational personality. But yeah, I like to

1:16:56

just keep it in the zones that it's in

1:16:58

right now. Have

1:17:00

you known other actors that will speak

1:17:02

about losing themselves in roles and so

1:17:05

you know, worrying that they've gone too

1:17:07

far, they can't come back to a

1:17:09

place that they went when they stepped

1:17:11

into the shoes of a challenging character?

1:17:13

Yeah, I certainly have. I think maybe I

1:17:15

just haven't had that role

1:17:18

yet. But I definitely have

1:17:20

known actors like especially if they're playing characters

1:17:23

that in one way or another are connected to

1:17:25

their own like family

1:17:27

or cultural trauma or personal trauma,

1:17:29

that can obviously be really, really

1:17:31

hard. But you know, for me,

1:17:35

my work is so various. And I didn't

1:17:37

play a lot of cartoon animals too. So

1:17:39

that's a real, you know, a real buffer

1:17:41

for me, the real comfort zone in

1:17:44

terms of like that just absorbs stress

1:17:46

and it's not stressful. But yeah.

1:17:49

Well, and that's like kind of the note that

1:17:51

I wanted to end this question on is like,

1:17:53

I think you better than almost anyone could just

1:17:56

speak to the joy of exploring your identity by

1:17:58

playing different character like my senses you really. enjoy

1:18:00

this. I love it and

1:18:02

I loved being Mona Lisa

1:18:04

because she's so horrible and

1:18:06

she has only like sort

1:18:08

of you know a hundred miles per hour

1:18:10

that's all she can do and she has no

1:18:12

remorse and I actually

1:18:15

can overthink things and I'm

1:18:17

a big like consider this

1:18:19

consider that person and it

1:18:21

really really ruins me

1:18:23

to feel like I might have hurt someone's

1:18:25

feelings so it's a wonderful sort

1:18:28

of like valve to

1:18:30

open up to just be totally horrible and

1:18:32

it does do something for me you know

1:18:34

it's like it feels good

1:18:36

to be able to be that person I

1:18:39

was actually weirdly just discussing this yesterday yeah

1:18:41

yeah all right so next

1:18:43

question comes from a listener who

1:18:45

wants to remain anonymous this

1:18:48

listener did not send a voice memo but

1:18:50

wrote in this is another one of these

1:18:52

asking for a friend questions but they literally

1:18:54

said asking for a friend and then their

1:18:56

question is is it ethical

1:18:58

to watch AI generated porn what's

1:19:01

that you well there's there's just

1:19:03

sort of some things you would want to

1:19:06

know as like a follow-up question right it's

1:19:08

like what how is

1:19:10

this AI generated porn created was

1:19:13

was this language model trained

1:19:15

on people who consented to

1:19:18

be in the videos that

1:19:20

they were in did

1:19:22

they consent to having their videos used

1:19:25

as part of this model my guess

1:19:27

is that anything that exists today the

1:19:29

answer to those questions is gonna be

1:19:31

no in enough cases that I would

1:19:33

be real real careful about which AI generated

1:19:35

porn I was consuming at the moment yeah

1:19:38

I mean there's also just a

1:19:40

lot of like porn from before

1:19:43

you know if you need it yeah you know like

1:19:47

luckily yeah you can just find it like with

1:19:49

the you know the performers from before they're

1:19:51

still they're doing it they're doing it right now that you

1:19:53

know so it's like literally doing it right

1:19:55

yeah I mean they are they're doing it

1:19:57

right now and so it's yeah at

1:20:00

least there's not going to be

1:20:02

a shortage. But yeah, Casey seems

1:20:05

really, I agree. He

1:20:07

seems right to me. Yeah. Now, here

1:20:09

are some things I would say sort

1:20:11

of in the future, you know, there

1:20:14

are some forms of like kink play

1:20:16

that are quite intense. And

1:20:18

or, you know, maybe even involve violence and

1:20:20

like where the performers might be at some

1:20:22

risk, whether it's like a physical risk or

1:20:25

an emotional risk. If we could offload that

1:20:27

risk to software so that like no one

1:20:29

was harmed in the making of these scenes,

1:20:31

that might be a good thing. So I

1:20:33

don't want to foreclose forever the prospect that

1:20:36

this could like have some societal value,

1:20:38

but I think it's gonna be a ways before we get there. Yeah,

1:20:41

I think the question around consent is the right

1:20:43

one to ask as of now, like a

1:20:46

lot of the stuff you

1:20:48

hear about is like

1:20:50

people being worried that their images are

1:20:53

going to be used without consent turned

1:20:55

into deep fakes put on the internet.

1:20:57

This is something that I know regulators

1:21:00

and lawmakers are very worried about. And

1:21:02

it's a real issue. Or I also

1:21:04

think there's going to be a lot of

1:21:06

celebrities who end up, you know, maybe they've

1:21:09

never done a nude scene in

1:21:11

a movie, but all of a sudden, they

1:21:13

have all these videos of them, you know,

1:21:15

appearing to be naked online that were generated

1:21:17

by AI. And so, you know, that kind

1:21:19

of thing, I think the answer

1:21:22

to is it ethical to watch AI

1:21:24

generated porn, I would say, you

1:21:26

know, I don't see

1:21:28

any reason it's inherently unethical, but I

1:21:30

also think it touches on a lot

1:21:32

of very sensitive issues in areas where you

1:21:35

could behave on ethics. One thing about porn always

1:21:37

touching on sensitive issues. That's right. A lot of

1:21:39

times that's part of it. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm

1:21:41

so sorry to ask to come

1:21:46

on your podcast. And they said that I

1:21:49

know I need this studio, the idea that

1:21:51

I could come on this podcast that's beloved

1:21:53

to me and I've just been so

1:21:55

nervous the entire time. It's so crazy. Somehow

1:21:58

it would take a turn into me. saying something

1:22:00

gross when I listen to it every week and

1:22:02

I think this podcast makes me so happy. I

1:22:04

feel so welcome. I love listening to

1:22:06

these friends. They make each other laugh so hard. They're great

1:22:09

information and then we're here and then I say something and

1:22:11

it's you know it's gross and

1:22:13

I'm so sorry. It was literally

1:22:15

perfect. No, it was perfect. You're

1:22:17

wonderful. No change. Okay, last question.

1:22:20

This one comes to us from

1:22:22

a listener named Ren Kulp who

1:22:24

essentially asks, hey can I

1:22:26

be a member of society in the future

1:22:28

if I don't always want to be on

1:22:31

the internet? That's where I'm at. I'm sorry.

1:22:33

Hey guys, my name is

1:22:39

Ren. I'm from Los Angeles. My

1:22:41

question is I in

1:22:43

the future would love to be on the internet

1:22:45

less, like less social media

1:22:47

presence, less availability. You know

1:22:50

I don't need other people knowing every inch of

1:22:52

my life but I worry sometimes

1:22:55

that if I scale back, that if I leave

1:22:57

the internet, that if I kind of don't check

1:22:59

on it anymore, that the culture might pass me

1:23:01

by, that I might all of a sudden be

1:23:03

the old guy in the room, that I might

1:23:07

not be as up to date on

1:23:10

the happenings of the world if

1:23:12

I were not on the internet

1:23:15

all the time. And so I just

1:23:17

wondered do you think it's possible to

1:23:19

live and be informed and engaged in

1:23:23

aspects of life in

1:23:25

the future without the internet? Thanks.

1:23:28

I feel that. Yeah

1:23:30

speak to that Jenny. I

1:23:33

think there are always levels of like are you on

1:23:35

the cutting edge of what the new language is? It's

1:23:37

like do you know all the new songs? Do you

1:23:40

know like where fashion is? You know like there's always

1:23:42

gonna be people who

1:23:44

want to be at the front of the line sort of

1:23:46

and like have the best view of what's changing and what's

1:23:48

the newest. I think there's a middle ground. I also think

1:23:50

it's like a really cool personal

1:23:53

like personal work to figure out like how

1:23:56

important it is to you. It's not

1:23:58

to be included but to like, know the newest

1:24:00

thing, like, why do you need that? And how important is

1:24:02

it to you? And I don't mean it in a judgy

1:24:04

way, like, why do you need that? But it's

1:24:07

a good question I ask myself that. I

1:24:10

was watching the movie Dumb Money last night. I don't

1:24:12

know if you guys have seen it. I loved it.

1:24:15

I loved it so much. And one of

1:24:17

the things that really got me was that

1:24:19

I was like, I don't

1:24:21

understand how the people are communicating with

1:24:23

each other. Like, I was just completely

1:24:25

floored by how funny everyone was and

1:24:27

how sassy. Like, everyone seemed so cool.

1:24:29

And I was like, wow, that really

1:24:32

has passed me by. I'm not there

1:24:34

anymore. And I think there will

1:24:36

be a layer

1:24:39

of, like, communication and culture and

1:24:42

that kind of style, like, communication

1:24:44

style and, like, visual style.

1:24:46

Like, graphics. Like, I was, like, looking at the graphics and

1:24:48

the way people were, like, making little videos. And I just

1:24:50

was like, I am not on the internet. I've never seen

1:24:52

any of this. Wow.

1:24:54

But I also think that the rest of

1:24:57

the world is still there. And there won't

1:24:59

be this, like, terrible loneliness or shutout if

1:25:01

that is what happened. And I do kind

1:25:03

of live that. I really do. I

1:25:07

also, like, use my social

1:25:09

media so that people can know when I

1:25:11

make my work. Because even though sometimes I'm

1:25:13

in, like, larger projects, I'm actually kind of

1:25:15

like a rather,

1:25:17

like, I feel like my performances are rather

1:25:19

niche. And I, like, need to let people

1:25:21

know when they're happening. And I think there's

1:25:23

a middle ground. And I think it's really

1:25:25

worth it to step off if that feels

1:25:27

right for you. It doesn't have to be

1:25:29

a judgmental thing. It could just be a

1:25:32

happy sort of, like, loosening.

1:25:35

Yeah. I love it. I mean, again, this

1:25:37

goes back to feel comfortable managing your relationship

1:25:39

with technology. You want to take a step

1:25:41

back from something, take a step back from

1:25:43

something. You know, most people do not perform

1:25:46

on the internet for money. It so happens

1:25:48

that the three people making this podcast do.

1:25:50

But, like, most people are not like that. And that's

1:25:52

OK. I think the one thing I

1:25:54

would say, though, is don't

1:25:57

disengage completely. Like, we

1:25:59

do. need engaged citizens in this

1:26:01

moment. That's going to mean getting the news

1:26:03

and getting the news in 2023 and 2024

1:26:05

is going to mean going online to get

1:26:07

it. You know, there were the I read

1:26:09

a couple stories after Trump one where people

1:26:11

would just sort of like move to a

1:26:13

secluded area and we're just basically like wake

1:26:15

me up in four years and would like

1:26:17

go to extraordinary lengths to never hear about

1:26:19

anything that was happening. That is not a

1:26:21

recipe for the survival of democracy. Okay, so

1:26:23

if you need to take a step back

1:26:25

because you're upset by what's on the news,

1:26:28

certainly we've all felt that I can totally

1:26:30

respect that. But don't you know, keep

1:26:32

keep at least a little bit engaged.

1:26:34

Yeah, I think the this is something that I

1:26:37

think about a lot because I've always been a

1:26:39

person who likes to know about things like the

1:26:41

minute they happen. Right. We're journalists, we like to

1:26:43

be up to speed. But also like I was

1:26:45

always the person like explaining the new meme at

1:26:47

the dinner party or like, you know, telling people

1:26:50

what this, you know, piece of slang that the

1:26:52

teens were saying on tik tok is and like,

1:26:54

as I've gotten older, that has become less possible

1:26:56

for me because I just don't like have as

1:26:58

much time to spend scouring the deepest recesses of

1:27:01

the internet anymore. And so I just don't know

1:27:03

stuff. And there's been a surprising amount of like

1:27:05

joy and freedom in that like, I don't have

1:27:07

to know about things the minute they happen. Some

1:27:09

if it's important, somebody will tell me or I'll

1:27:12

see it a day later. And it's not the

1:27:14

end of the world. So I would just say

1:27:16

like, like be open Ren to the possibility that

1:27:18

you might actually be happier

1:27:20

and actually more informed if you sort

1:27:23

of allow a little time

1:27:25

to pass between when something happens and when

1:27:27

you hear about it or see

1:27:29

it. Oh, well said. All right.

1:27:31

That's it for our hard questions. Jenny, do you

1:27:33

have any questions for us? Oh,

1:27:36

my gosh, I guess. And I don't

1:27:38

know if it's like, I don't

1:27:41

know if you'll want to answer this. And you

1:27:43

talk about it a little bit or sometimes you

1:27:45

guys like joke, but like, are

1:27:48

there ever days when

1:27:50

you're like me and you

1:27:52

are really, really scared that

1:27:55

it seems that the people who are

1:27:57

making the AI don't, but

1:27:59

they don't know. know, like how it works. And I know

1:28:01

you've discussed that a bit, but, um,

1:28:03

and maybe I have missed it and you

1:28:06

have given that, but yeah, is there, um,

1:28:09

are there ever days where you, where

1:28:11

you feel a bit bleak about it? Kevin.

1:28:16

Yeah. I mean, I, I, um, you

1:28:19

know, we've, we've talked about this on the show,

1:28:22

but I sort of went through a period this

1:28:24

year where I was feeling very bleak, not just

1:28:26

sort of in the existential, like we're all going

1:28:28

to die scenario, but like, you

1:28:30

know, I'm a creative person.

1:28:33

I write words for a

1:28:35

living and I was sort of having,

1:28:37

I don't know, you could call

1:28:39

it like a mini existential crisis after chat GPT

1:28:42

came out and it was like, Oh, wait a

1:28:44

minute. It's this thing that I am doing

1:28:46

that I've been doing my whole career.

1:28:49

Like, am I obsolete? Um,

1:28:51

essentially. And you know, I've

1:28:54

come to a better place over the course

1:28:56

of the last year or so on, on

1:28:58

that. I now like, I don't feel like

1:29:01

I, or we, uh, are obsolete. I

1:29:04

don't necessarily think we're all going

1:29:06

to die. Um, and

1:29:08

so I, and I, I've

1:29:10

found that my own, the thing

1:29:12

that I can do during the

1:29:14

periods when I am feeling bleak, that helps me is

1:29:17

just to, um, to

1:29:19

try something new with the technology. Like

1:29:21

if I'm feeling scared about AI, like

1:29:23

I'll go draw a picture with AI

1:29:25

or I'll go like, you know, use

1:29:27

it to solve some like esoteric,

1:29:30

you know, problem that I'm having or teach

1:29:32

myself something. And, um, and then

1:29:34

that, that like just knowing that the technology can

1:29:36

be used for that kind of good stuff as

1:29:38

well as the scary stuff, um, just helps me

1:29:40

balance out my own perspective. I don't know, Casey,

1:29:42

how do you feel about this? I like that.

1:29:45

I mean, yes, I also absolutely feel those moments

1:29:48

of fear. I think that, uh,

1:29:51

there are some really good futures that

1:29:53

are possible. And I think there's some

1:29:55

really scary and bad futures that are

1:29:57

possible. And I think it's uncomfortable. close

1:30:00

to a coin flip as to like which world

1:30:02

we wind up living in. And that's scary, right?

1:30:04

I wish I could just kind of relax knowing

1:30:06

that it was all gonna be okay, but like

1:30:09

I don't feel that way. But that's

1:30:11

like why I'm a journalist. I want to

1:30:13

try to understand this stuff better. I want

1:30:15

to explain it to other people. I want

1:30:18

other people who are in positions to act,

1:30:20

to act. I want people who are just

1:30:22

like citizens of this country to vote, right?

1:30:24

And I just want to believe that if

1:30:26

we do those things, we make the good

1:30:28

futures much likelier. And that's how I just

1:30:30

kind of manage the the theaters day to day.

1:30:33

I love that. That's really nice to know. And I

1:30:35

guess like thinking about it, I'm like, one

1:30:37

of the reasons why I started

1:30:39

listening to your podcast was because

1:30:42

I don't know anything about this area.

1:30:44

I've been sort of like

1:30:46

in rejection of it, but also because I'm

1:30:48

really afraid of it. And

1:30:50

it would be better to hear

1:30:52

like human beings with good personalities

1:30:54

talk about something that makes me

1:30:56

a bit uncomfortable and that I

1:30:59

do feel separate from because the

1:31:01

gap will close a bit and I

1:31:03

will be involved. I'll like be aware

1:31:05

of discussions. And I think

1:31:08

that is really, I know for me,

1:31:10

it's been worth a lot. I love that. It

1:31:12

means so much to us. Yeah, I mean a

1:31:14

lot. Honestly, like we started this show just because

1:31:16

we are so fascinated by the stuff. We wanted

1:31:18

to share it with other people and not just

1:31:20

because it was interesting in an intellectual way, but

1:31:23

because we think it's important to whatever world we

1:31:25

wind up living in. Totally. And I would just

1:31:27

say like Casey, the one thing that I'll disagree

1:31:29

with you on is like this is not a

1:31:31

coin flip because a coin flip involves that it's

1:31:33

total luck. And as we've said

1:31:35

on the show before, as I continue to believe,

1:31:37

like we are in control of

1:31:40

this technology and all technology. We build

1:31:42

it, we deploy it, we make rules

1:31:44

about it. Like it is not purely

1:31:46

a passive role that we have in

1:31:49

deciding how the future goes and a

1:31:51

lot of how the future goes will

1:31:53

depend on the decisions that people in

1:31:56

positions of authority, but also just people who use

1:31:58

this stuff and have a voice in and a

1:32:00

platform feel about

1:32:02

it and what they decide to speak up about.

1:32:05

Very well said. All right, Jenny, it has been

1:32:07

the dream of our lives that you are here.

1:32:09

If people want to know what you are up

1:32:11

to next, should they follow you on Instagram or

1:32:14

where would you like to send them? Well,

1:32:16

actually that is true. They should follow

1:32:18

me on Instagram because

1:32:20

I do post about when my new work

1:32:23

is coming out and I'm about to announce

1:32:25

a couple of things that I am truly

1:32:27

thrilled about. I can't do it yet, but

1:32:31

I will soon. What a

1:32:33

tease. I know, sorry. But

1:32:36

I do, it will be there. And

1:32:42

so, yeah, that's a good place. Yeah,

1:32:44

because I don't have Twitter or

1:32:47

X anymore. And it is

1:32:49

Jenny Slate on Instagram. So super easy to find.

1:32:51

It certainly is. I just wanted to say one

1:32:53

more thing to you, Jenny, before you go. And

1:32:56

it's actually something that you once said to your

1:32:58

dear sister, you are a magnificent woman. Keep shining

1:33:00

your power out. Very

1:33:04

well said. Really good. Thank

1:33:27

you. In

1:33:37

the right hands, AI can help create a

1:33:39

safer, more equitable future. To

1:33:41

empower those who will shape our world, Intel

1:33:43

launched AI for Youth, equipping students

1:33:46

worldwide with the mindsets and skill

1:33:48

sets to create responsible AI solutions.

1:33:51

The program has already inspired one student to

1:33:53

develop an AI model that can help predict

1:33:55

depression and other mental health issues. AI

1:33:58

for Good starts with pretty AI. everywhere.

1:34:00

It starts with Intel. Learn

1:34:02

more at intel.com/stories. Before

1:34:09

we go, Casey, I have a special surprise for you.

1:34:11

Oh boy. Do you remember last year we sang a

1:34:13

special holiday song? I do remember that. And it was,

1:34:16

we let chat GPT write it and it was to

1:34:18

the tune of Jingle Bells and it was all about

1:34:20

all the tech news that we covered in 2022. It

1:34:22

was a really fun bit.

1:34:24

Well, it was really fun and I decided we

1:34:26

should repeat it this year, but instead of having

1:34:28

chat GPT write it, I went ahead and wrote

1:34:30

us a holiday song. Oh my goodness. Like you

1:34:32

wrote it yourself? I did. Okay. Okay.

1:34:35

So this is the lyrics to

1:34:38

our holiday song. Okay. We're

1:34:40

gonna sing it together. Are you ready? Yes. Okay.

1:34:42

So this is to the tune of the 12

1:34:44

Days of Christmas. Okay. And it's called Hard

1:34:47

Fork and Christmas. And

1:34:50

we have a track that's going to come in momentarily

1:34:52

and then you and I are going to sing this

1:34:54

together. Now, are we alternating or we have to sing?

1:34:56

We're singing it all together. Okay. Okay. Is

1:34:59

your singing voice warmed up? No. On

1:35:03

a hard fork in Christmas, my true

1:35:05

love gave to me a board

1:35:08

A band F T. On

1:35:12

a hard fork in Christmas, my true

1:35:14

love gave to me two GPUs

1:35:17

and a board A band

1:35:20

F T. On

1:35:23

a hard fork in Christmas, my true

1:35:25

love gave to me three

1:35:28

cyber trucks, two GPUs

1:35:30

and a board A

1:35:32

band F T. On

1:35:35

a hard fork in Christmas, my true

1:35:38

love gave to me four

1:35:40

Google bars, three cyber

1:35:42

trucks, two GPUs and

1:35:45

a board A band

1:35:47

F T. On

1:35:49

a hard fork in Christmas, my true

1:35:51

love gave to me Sam

1:35:55

Makeman's feed

1:35:57

for Google

1:35:59

bars. Three cyber trucks,

1:36:01

two GPUs, and a

1:36:04

Ford A-Pen FT. On

1:36:08

a hard-forkin' Christmas, my true love

1:36:10

gave to me six

1:36:13

metal off-noose, seven

1:36:16

big pin-free. Four

1:36:19

Google bars, three cyber

1:36:22

trucks, two GPUs, and

1:36:24

a Ford A-Pen FT. Keep

1:36:27

going, this is great. On a

1:36:29

hard-forkin' Christmas, my true love gave

1:36:31

to me seven

1:36:34

robotaxes, six metal

1:36:36

off-noose, seven big

1:36:38

pin-free. Four

1:36:41

Google bars, three cyber

1:36:43

trucks, two GPUs, and

1:36:46

a Ford A-Pen FT.

1:36:50

On a hard-forkin' Christmas, my true

1:36:52

love gave to me eight

1:36:55

blue sky invite, seven

1:36:57

robotaxes, six metal lawsuits,

1:37:00

seven big pin-free.

1:37:04

Four Google bars, three

1:37:06

cyber trucks, two GPUs,

1:37:08

and a Ford A-Pen

1:37:11

FT. On

1:37:14

a hard-forkin' Christmas, my true love

1:37:16

gave to me nine

1:37:18

deep big scandals, eight

1:37:20

blue sky invite, seven robotaxes,

1:37:23

six metal lawsuits, ten

1:37:25

big pin-free. Four

1:37:29

Google bars, three cyber

1:37:31

trucks, two GPUs, and

1:37:33

a Ford A-Pen FT.

1:37:38

On a hard-forkin' Christmas,

1:37:40

my true love gave to me ten

1:37:43

Ford room dramas, nine big

1:37:45

big scandals, eight blue sky

1:37:47

invite, seven robotaxes, six

1:37:50

metal lawsuits, and

1:37:52

a big pin-free. Four

1:37:55

Google bars, three cyber trucks, two GPUs,

1:37:58

and a Ford A-Pen FT. And

1:38:01

a Ford A-Bend F-E

1:38:05

On a hard-forking Christmas,

1:38:07

my true love came to me Eleven

1:38:10

B-R headsets and four-room

1:38:12

dramas Ninety-pig candles, eight

1:38:14

blue sky, invite seven

1:38:17

Bobo taxi, six metal

1:38:19

lawsuits And

1:38:21

bankman breed For

1:38:23

Google's large free cyber trucks

1:38:26

to G.P. And

1:38:28

a Ford A-Bend F-E One

1:38:32

more time One more Freakin'

1:38:34

Christmas, my true love came to

1:38:36

me Twelve-world coin

1:38:39

whirbers, eleven B-R headsets

1:38:41

Ten-order dramas, nine B-Pig candles,

1:38:43

eight blue sky, invite seven

1:38:46

Bobo taxi, six metal lawsuits And

1:38:49

bankman breed For

1:38:53

Google's large free cyber trucks

1:38:55

to G.P. And

1:38:59

a Ford A-Bend F-E

1:39:03

Happy Holidays,

1:39:05

Casey Happy

1:39:09

Holidays, everybody Happy Holidays, everyone Do

1:39:11

they keep data on the most

1:39:13

skipped parts of podcasts? Because I

1:39:15

think we might just set a

1:39:17

new record I think we actually

1:39:19

just got ourselves a new platform for every major podcasting

1:39:21

platform Well, we had a good run Yeah See

1:39:24

you next year See you next year Hard

1:39:27

Fork is produced by Davis Land and Rachel Cohn

1:39:30

We had help this week from Caitla Presti We're

1:39:32

edited by Jen Poisson This episode

1:39:35

was fact-checked by Caitlin Love Today's

1:39:37

show was engineered by Corey Triple Original

1:39:40

music by Diane Wong, Rowan

1:39:43

Nemestow, and Dan Powell Our

1:39:45