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Ai Hello and welcome to the Vir Cast the flagship podcast of AI mode. I'm my friend David Perce.,sels here, Hello sir What's up? How are you? How's life you had an electrician come into your house today and you explained this to me as, I haven't AIs in yet. Iven't I in yet What has happened? tellell me what's going on. So we got solar panels at the end of last year. You know, we chased up all the Biden tax credits we could get. Sure. So we leased an EV and we got solar panels And now the government pays me to charge my car Sorry. I know you don't want to, Donald, but you're doing it. You are the deep state now. You're paying me to charge the car. The way the net metering works out and the blah, blah, blah, in New Yorkate, they pay me to charge car. This is all great. The problem is Coned is a utility and it is bad in the way it's bad. and sometimes that they don't get it right And you have to call them and argue with them about that meteter. And so to do that you need the data from different your sol panel to be accurate. I discovered the da my sol panels is not accur I was losing arguments, I hate losing arguments. So I just Claud. pull the fifteen minute interval data of how many kilowatts My system thought It was doing how much Coned thought it was getting reconcile it all and then generate a troubleshooting email for the solar people and the electricians And I will say it was so rude. This email was so rude that I had to tone it way down, but it was right you just basically had Claog read your meter for you I had Claude read both meters, the Coned meter and this sort of an N phase meter. we have an N phase solar system. and it just pulled the interval data from both systems over a pretty long period of time. This is something I would never have the time to do. generenate the report and then diagnose the problem from that report. which is that the consumption CTs were backwards on Basically, Ced was getting half of what it should be getting. That was going to be my first guess. I was like, Oh, I bet it's the consumption CTs. But the email it wrote was like, Rin or shine production or not, air conditioners on, like it's wrong and you know it's wrong. And I was like, calm down. like bring it down a couple I just rewrote the email It was very demanding. It's not my problem, MDash. It's your problem. But it was it was one of those things where it's like, okay, I've got like two databases that don't agree What is the tool the tools right front me.' There's my AIVid yet prettytty good. Did you present your findings to this electrician as Claude told me? No, no Okay. You't That's good. good.ust so. Just I was like, look, I made a table. I'm not going presumably a computer was invaved She's that computer in love with Kevin Roous. I decline to say at this time. No No one knows U That is good. and that actually feels like a good and correct use of AI We're like, look, I have a bunch of numb Can you make sense of these numbers? And I'm sending so much power back to the grid, it offset my energy consumption. How's that And you poured water on the ground as you were doing it, just to prove the point. That's good. All right, we're not here to talk about electricians. We have a bunch of stuff to talk about today. There's a lot of AI news. The second two thirds of the show is going to be very lightning roundy. We just got a bunch of stuff to talk about, a bunch of stuff to get through But first we have to start with Google Zero Big week for Google Zero, Google reported earnings, someome really interesting stuff, particularly around search So we have some big Reddit news. You are in the New York Times, taking credit for Google Zero as you were wanting F time to time. Finally, shout out to Kake onong at the New York Times For being a real one and being like, I'm doing a Google Zero story and calling your boy But I want to start with a story from the Wall Street Journal which I think is actually kind of indicative of this whole thing about how Reddit, which we've talked about on the show, made a big AI data sharing deal with Google a while back worth sixty million dollars a year to basically turn Reddit into a database full of stuff for Google's AI overviews and things to pull from. This turned into putting glue on pizza. This is turned into some messy stuff, but is also made Reddit like crucially important part of Google's entire AI enterprise. And there was reporting this week that Reddit is actually thinking about cutting that deal out entirely. And there's a quote that says Reddit executives are assessing what the upside is of continuing to feed its content to Google J straightforwardly that they're like at sixty million dollars a year. This is no longer worth it to us to feed our data to Google. And I think if you start there, you can get at the whole problem Every Google is doing with AI right now. What did you make of this change This has been coming for everyone for so long. Google doesn't send you traffic Giving things to Google for free or cheap and sixty million dollars is cheap for a company the size of Reddit Giving things to Google for free or cheap economically irrational and everyone will stop doing it. And we can just go down the list of big publishers who are saying We're going to stop letting Google index us at all because we're not getting traffic or money. USA todayay, Politico, the economist, People Inc Reuters you, the New York Times will end up on this list sooner rather than later. They have a very testy relationship with Google. a company that we don't yet work for, but which is Merging with Vox Yeah a joint venture that will be called PMX when that deal closes. Pensky Media Corporation. They are openly suing Google over AI overviews, not delivering any traffic It's the whole publishing ecosystem is saying, yeah, this isn't worth it. And then importantly They paid Reddit sixty million dollars. That is a social media publisher, right? That's a platform. That's not a news publisher or a media organization. Reddit saying it's sixty million dollars giving our users content to Google it's not worth it. We might turn this off and Everyone has known this is coming. because I have been telling them it's coming for years and years and years. When Google's traffic, when the amount of traffic you see coming to you from Google goes to zero is left of your business Do you have one? Do you have an audience Do you have anything at all And Google turns off the economic incentives for all of these people to make new information will Google summarize in the AI overviews? What will be left And I don't think either side of that equation has had a good answer No. And in fact, the thing that has really shifted, you nameamed it all those publishers, I think we've been talking about this tension for forever, right that even if you didn't like what Google was doing with AI overviews. There was still this sense that the deal with Google overall is important enough that you have to keep doing it, right? that We We will continue to give our content to Google. We will let Google index and crawl our website. and in return, it will send us traffic. That has been the deal for forever. What are you gonna to do? Turn off Google. I've heard so many publishing CEOs say this to me What are we going to do not have Google traffic? And this has been Google's Trump card because you can fight JacBT, you can fight Claude, but you can't fight Gemini without fighting Google seearch. And this is, I would say, a matter of concern for people who are worried about monopolies in this country. It's also just a foundational problem for all of these people. Google has tied these things together that if you want to not be crawled by Google's AI systems, you can't be crawled by its search systems. It's not exactly that simple, but it is fundamentally that simple. It is that simple. I know Neil Vogel the see of people has said that that will result in more antitrust litigation. I am confident that the European Union, which just fined Google a billion dollars for self preferencing its products in search They will look at the tie between search indexing and AI training It is coming for everyone all the time. And, you know just to make the other argument I think the publishers have been equally stupid here because they were all hopelessly addicted to Google And they never thought that Google would do anything to harm the web. Most of them did not make other plans Just straightforwardly, most of these companies did not make other plans. They did not see the asteroid coming at them, even as I'm going to say it one more time. I would run around this industry being like Do you see the asteroid Do you see the increase in the percentage of zero click searches where Google keeps the traffic for itself or redirectits to its own platform? And do you see what AI overviews will do I've asked this question too soon d I up aot who will happily tell you that the web per Google's own estimation is bigger than ever and Google, per Google's ownone estimation is sending out more traffic than ever. and the publishers And kind of left unspoken all that is, and these idiots didn't do anything about it And I I find it hard to argue with that inside the house. Right? I get why they're all making noise out in the world, like you killed our businesses. You should make a lot of noise about that We're going to turn off Google search. We're going to turn off indexing because we owe you nothing This was never really an economic relationship. We're just turning you off. goodoodbye. But inside the house, it's like Gys, you did nothing You saw the problem and thought you could do nothing to solve it. Sure. And here we are at the end of that road because I think Belief There was something fundamentally mutually beneficial that would keep being mutually beneficial persisted in lots of industries for way too long, right? The SEO business has been relying on this for a very long time. And it makes a certain amount of sense. Google invented search advertising, the greatest and most lucrative business in the history of the internet And it worked as long as it kept sending a lot of traffic to websites. This was the whole idea People will go, they will click the links, everything will get better. And Google had incentive to grow that and to make more people click the links. People had incentive to make more content that ranked highly. This actually was in a certain way, mutually beneficial. It got very messy as Google ate the advertising business and lots of things became complicated. But that basic idea that we give Data to Google and Google giv us traffic in return seemed like it was relatively immune to problems because it worked for everybody. Because on the other side of that is an incentive to make new information for Google to index and surface. And if you don't have that in Google search, what do you have And I think everyone keeps conveniently forgetting that Google also owns and operates YouTube And so Googles source of new information is YouTube. There was just a Google core update. That's what they call it when they update the Google search algorithm everyvery recent Google search core update. has basically boiled down to, and now we're going to rely on YouTube even more. Yes right? The idea that they will summarize YouTube videos or drop you directly into the part of the YouTube video that most clearly answers your query. There's just a bunch of Oh, they had a hedge against us There was a hedge against publishers and social media and all this stuff, and it was always called YouTube. and here it is. Y and the economic or traffic incentives to make new information on the open web are plummeting. Now, There's a flip side to this, which I think supports Google's argument that the web is getting healthier than ever. We just had Amy Lanssey, whos a CEO digital in North America, a huge advertising agency. and she told me on a Titter a few weeks ago, their number of inbound requests to make landing pages and build new websites and make things that particularly for commerce, like they're an advertising agency, obviously for commerce. that are the web. so that people can come and transact more directly on the web because they've had search experiences AI experiences. She's like that, I you would never think that that would be up and that is up Oft in e commerce world, the web might actually be healthier than ever because the agents are running around clicking on websites for you. Right. And that's great if you're an e commerce business. It is horrible if you're a consumer and you want information that isn't branded content from e commerce providers. And it is horrible if you are a publisher or a social media site that would like to traffic in non commercial information And I think I think the idea that Actually all of the interternet is just becoming a series of databases to be mined by these other things just continues to be true, right? Like a lot of people recently have been citing this big internet report that Cloudflare did said that more than fifty percent of internet traffic is now non human, which suggests that it is in some way AI bots. There was also, I just pulled this out of that report. It says today, for every hour spent online searching for information, only fifteen minutes spent on the open web Traditional search behavior is collapsing as users shift to AI driven discovery and consumption. Instead of visiting multiple sites to source and compare information, users simply type a prompt and receive a nearly instantaneous consolidated answer That's step one, step two is agents. They just go buy the thing for you. And right as we talked about on the show on Wednesday Everybody's idea about aentic AI ends in transactions. And so that is the next thing. That's how everybody makes money. Everybody understands how to make money off payment processing. We can kill the web as long as payment processing exists is fundamentally what a lot of these companies are betting on and fine with Every day, a new startup making payment rails for Aentic AI. gets its thirty billion dollars wings. like that' that is the that is teech Crunch every day in some way, right? Yeah. And fine B by the way, no shiadated techrunch, that's just the business they're end of the companyies talking about their bening announcements You see that news. all the money flowing into rails for agents across different things. And right next to it is, are we having good experiences Are we getting better information? Is the deal that all of us on every side have made with Google that it would organize the world's information in a compelling way and useful way. Is that being upheld? I don't know the answers to this. And even in their earnings They didn't quite hit on search, right? There's like a little bit of a miss on search. Yeah. Yeah, like barely. It was a very funny thing they missed by like a hundredth of a billion dollars, which is it was very tiny miss in the scheme of things, but like Again Google search has been Ging like crazy for forever. This business has been immune to everything. And then you have Google coming out and saying, we're spending way more than we thought. on all of this AI stuff, our compute costs have gone crazy. We're kind of becoming a chip company as much as anything. Google has changed as a business so much and it's betting on so many things in so many directions and there's a perception that Gemini is behind All of that is okay as long as search continues to be searched any Teny, tiny like hole in that case starts to look like a big scary problem for Google. And so when they report these earnings, they're like, oh, look, we're going to spend two hundred billion dollars this year on AI related things. And also our search business is not doing as well as you thought. evenven by this much, we're not doing as well as you thought and everybody panics because it's clear and Google even alluded to this in their earnings call that They see some pain in the transition. to basically how do we make money from AI? Be surprise, they don't know because people don't click the links. This is what I mean, right? Like when I search best lawnmower, Google relies on the fact that a lot of people will click the link to the sponsored site for the lawnmower. And if Google has built a thing that has trained people to not click any of the links it has a problem. L Google is creating a world in which its own best business model doesn't work anymore. And Google will tell you that people click the links and I can tell you from my own experience and from all of these publishers and from fucking read it. peopleople aren't clicking the links. They're not And they also hate the AI spam that is infecting all these sites because the spammers are trying to get themselves in AI summaries on Google. We have a big story coming out from me asato about AI spammers attacking Reddit every single day. I mean, I see it and Reddit mod's having to fight back I'm really excited about that story. I think's going about next week. But the problem is the incentives to put information on the web are getting away from Google in real ways And so the web is getting polluted. Google's best resource for ages has been their index of the web Right? That's the thing that they have that no one else can couldn't compete with There's the bing inex of the web which isn't as good No one else has iteix to the web can compete. So Google seearch was the dominant winner. And because they had the best ofs to the web, the Google seearch interface was the dominant winner. Whether or not you thought it was good or getting worse over time even though it was getting worse over time because SEO was destroying the Google search interface. Chat CB shows up in twenty twenty three and says, what if we just told you the answer? And I think this will go down is something Google really has to reckon with. Change Google search to look almost exactly like its disruptive competitor Right, So you enter an AI overview, now you're just chatting That is exactly the same interface as Chat ShBT. It's exactly the same interface as Claude. It's exactly the same interface as Croc. Everyone is just giving you answers in pretty much the same format. stealing all the same information in exactly the same ways. Now Google isn't differentiated because it doesn't have the best interface on top of the best index It has the same style of output as everyone else. right Yeah What are you going to do And that index isn't getting better, it's actually getting more blluted with the S. And it's potentially going to start hemorrhaging some of the actually useful sources of information who no longer feel like it's a good trade likeike you can just see how this starts to turn on Google in kind of a death spirally kind of way The worse Google search gets the worse it will get. Do you know what I mean? L that I believe, you know, the answer and here's my optimistic case answer for all these companies is to start paying for information in a way that keeps that information away from their rivals So if all the publishers quit, letting their sites get indexed by Google first company that will show up on their doorstop Op AI You don't want to be index by Google. We will pay you a bunch of money to beexed by our new web search agent, which will do whatever it's going to do You know who will pay more money is Google Sure, have more money They' are a more stable company that probably make the economics that work in different ways But that is I think, good for the ecosystem. But then you're putting yourself in the same position that Reddit is in now, which is to say, we've given you all of this data And what you're giving us back is essentially neutering the traffic to our site. No, what they're saying is what you're giving us back is not enough money. Maybe, Mbe thenen what you're arguing is at the end of this road, everyone is just in the business of providing stuff to AI indexes and I think that is bleak and I hope that's not the answer, but there is probably money on the way down in that answer. And this is, I mean, this is the thing that every publisher is going to have to stare hard at right now, right is Do we want to takeake the money out on the way down, like in the way that a lot of people took a lot of money from Facebook to make video that no one ever watched and it all eventually fell apart Do we do we want to do that again? Knowing that at the end of this, we have essentially obviated ourselves out of business by training people to use a different product to access our information Or do we need to completely pivot the way that we have thought about what our thing is and how people find it and access it which for twenty years has not been the media's strong suit Yeah, David, you've met these guys, you know which one it is I'm like Google Zero is coming and I'm like, no, it's not That is five years of my life. I started a news startup in twenty nineteen and one of our very first conversations, a very important person who I will not name, said, What if we don't even have a home page? Who needs home pages anymore And I don't think we've learned a single lesson as an industry since that meeting in twenty nineteen. My one piece of tiny pushback on this is They all did just get burned. right? These organizations they've all gotten burned. Yes. The thing came true The thing they did not want to believe would happen. Absolute The traffic numbers are pretty staggering. There's a chart in that Wall Street Journal story showing how much people's traffic areur down and it's like it is the sort of thing that it has become absolutely unignorable for everyone in this industry. You might say that Google traffic has gone to zero Somebody should really there's a traffic zero, maybe we'll call it. Wait think. But it happens. so now they got to do something. And if the outcome here is it is economically viable to employ people to make the raw information that gets fed into AI engines that people use to summarize it all At least there's an economic incentive to make new information Right now there isn't really one, like the information itself isn't valuable, unless you're selling something. And the whole world being lists of great products to use on a hiking trip sponsored by REI is just the bleakest shit possible. Yes. So if we do get to a place where in some roundabout way of payments, reporters exist, that might be fine I don't know which way it's going. I think we just might disagree on the degree to which it's optimistic to suggest that the best possible case for a reporter going forward is to feed data into ChAGPT Even if it's new data. Do you know what I mean? dont I don't know that I find that as blissfully rose colored as it sounds like you do. Well, if you know any media CEOs who are interested in product innovation, you give me a call L looking forward to that. All right, we We should take a break and then we've actually got a bunch more AI adjacent stuff to talk about. so we'll get into that. 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Visit upwork. com right now and post your job for free That is upwork. com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow That's you P W O R K d. comot Upwork . com So we have a bunch ofI news to talk about. There's no sort of big broad theme here, but just a bunch of stuff going on, We should talk about U Butili, I genuinely need you to explain this first one to me because either there is something about this story I don't understand or I am going to melt down in an aggressive way on this podcast in a couple of minutes Can you explain what happened between openpen AI and Hugging Face this week I do like the way to say huggging face. Hugging Face. A company I don't know anything about. What actually is Hugging face? Huging Face is like a platform to store AI models and it's like GitHub for AI. Okay. And that really implies that people know GitHub is, but it's the first vest audience Do know what I mean? It's a place to put things for AI. It's a place to put things and collaborate on AI stuff. and lots and lots of people use it. and it is a central source of truth in the AI community. So there's hu face. Open AI is testing GPT five point six Soul on cybersecurity benchmarks There's one called XPoint Jin and they basically said, goo figure it out, findind a solution for it. the model broke out of the sandbox it was in Then it went and broke into hugging face and stole the answers. This is as reductive as it gets, but it stole the answer to the test And it's not supposed to do that. Hugging Face says its own AI agents detect it and stop the breach. They're now trying to spin this as a partnership Wh there's actually a partnership to solve it. Wh knows when they're investigating everything, They're going to bring it to some kind of conclusion. and you really have to either believe that the models are so capable they can evade open AI's own systems and that every we're all in danger all the time or that maybe hugging face it was too easily breached. There was no social engineering, which is like a good and important thing to note. If you're the sort of person who cares about the model tricking the CO of hugging face in pututting his password. Yeah. o. But here's the summary here. In one example, the model chained together multiple attack factors, including stolen credentials and zero day vulnerabilities to find a remote code execution path on a hugging face servers. It's tot the answers for the test. How much do you want to overreact to this is like It is up to you. Can I tell you my personal choice? Yeah. A lot How is this not like a screaming five alarm fire about what these models are capable of and what they can do. Hugging face is saying, oh, isn't this adorable They came and hacked our system and stole the answers even though we were just trying to prevent you from doing so. And open eye is like, o, look, how adorable we hacked into install their information. And it's like we're just supposed to think this is like a normal, okay occurrence because everybody is just trying to laugh at it off and pretend it's fine This to me is absolute disaster on all sides. This means Hugging Face has a problem. This means open AI has a problem. This means these things can do the things that they keep promising us they can stop them from doing like This is they kept putting guardrails on Mythos and calling it fable and everybody's like, well, we can just make it Mythos again. Like The idea that these models can either be put on rails by the company that makes them or forced into a box by the companies that employ them is clearly not correct. And for all of us to pretend that this is just a delightful, silly thing that happened is not okay. It turns out I do understand this story and everyone needs to be angrier about it Like if you want to make it worse or you want to make it better Uh Let's go with worse and then better. Let's Let's end in a happy place for David All right, so worse is It is true that the models keep getting out Right? Like Open eye was not in control of its own model and didn't even detect that it was doing this. even though it was in a sandbox And by openA ass account, which we have to trust, the sandbox had no external connections, like aside from being able to download packages to the sandbox that models should not have be able to have network access and they blew it Straightforwardly, that's bad. That is bad. And so we gave it nothing and it did it anyway. is not good. Right. And and then you can make it even worse. you say this is the what you would call the paperclip problem where you like tell the machine to make paperclip and it vaporizes the human race and turns it all on paper clips becausecause it's just doing what it's told which is to the solution to which by the way, it cheated. I do want to point out that it cheated on the test It didn't look at the problems and solve the problems. It was like, I can probably steal the answers and it went and did that anyway. So this is all bad. yeah. Okay, here's how I can try to make it better. Okaykay This model in the testing environment had no guardrails at all So this it would not be the model that is deployed to any normal people or any normal customer outside a very select set of Security researchers or whatever we're going to come to in whatever regulatory framework we'll eventually come to. It is true that openight this all happened. This model is guardrail free model I don't know if I made this better. So what you're saying is this'll all be fine once we have a completely rational and thorough regulatory system for artificial intelligence. L I said, I don't know that I made it better I'm I'm just pointing out that this is the model ofing guardrails If' like if I'm the CEO of Hugging Face, am I not sitting in my office going, gosh, it's good that Seoul didn't decide that the best thing to do was burn my office down in order to get L I just how is either everybody is lying and these things are vastly less capable than we think and everybody is just trying to make marketing moments out of cybersecurity disasters weird, but sort of a thing or Eone should be more alarmed by this than everyone seems to be. And I really think both of these companies are trying to pretend that this was not a terrifying overreach by an AI model and a terrifying lack of protective ability by hugging face. And everybody has real incentive to try and save face here. So they're trying to just like, lock arms and laugh it off. This feels bad to me. Maybe I'm missing something. If I am missing something and you are a more sophisticated AI person than I am, I would love to hear from you. Versecast at diversse dot com Tell me why I shouldn't be at like complete run around the neighborhood screaming levels of panic about this because this is where I am. Eough with this one, I'm feeling bad enough as it is. Let's move on to another AI thing that frankly won't work nearly as well, which is that SubSac added an AI detector to theoretically figure out which of your many, many newsletters have been written by AI. I should say it's powered by Pangrram, which we had a whole vircast about last week with Jake Kasternakis. Really good. Panram is sort of the one tool in this space that most people seem to agree actually works at detecting AI My immediate reaction to this from SubSac is just kind of what a self own to have to roll this thing out on your platform. But what do you think about this, Niline All the distributors of content, all the pllatforms, if you will, are stuck in a trap. where they're getting flooded with AS sla And many of the platform owners are also purveyors of AI or invested AI companies or have taken investment from DCs that are heavy on AI, and they're stuck in the middle R If you're Google and you' on YouTube and YouTube is being overrun with slop Finest of lines to walk You cannot say the output of Google's AI tools are bad Everyone hates the slum Meta is caught in this trap Substack startup I have a lot of feelings about SubSack But all their VCs are like heavy AI guys and undoubtedly publishing AS Lw U this is the challenge Every platform right now is you have to somehow embrace the fact that AI is coming and people want to use AI in whatever way they want to use it, and people hate the slump And you have to detect it and you have to tell people to turn it off What are you going to do? And they keep trying to pretend It's not about getting rid of the stuff that sucks that no one wants, but it's just it's about transparency and helping people understand the difference. Like here's a quote from Chris Best, the CEO of Subsc He says the core problem is not people using AI or the quality of its output. strong disagree, but let's keep going The problem is when there is a mismatch between a reader's expectation and reality, especially when they unwillingly invest their attention in something with no human thought on the other end clawed fishing. I want to say A, cllawed fishing is an excellent term And kudos to Chris bestest andone to Chris He and I have beefed but I'll give him call Cog fishing is excellent and I will use it This is not correct, right? Like The idea that actually what people want is sort of separation of two good things is not at all. actual reality. What people want is a way to not have AI in their feeds It is it is people don't want an AI feed and an not AI feed. Sora did a really good test of if people want an AI feed. and the answer is they don't. Meta did a really good test of whether people want an AI feed and the answer was they don't. People want a non AI feed. and all of these things are designed to get AI out, but for all the reasons you just said, they can't say that. And they're stuck Let me ask a question of you in by extension, Cris bestest, the CO substack. He's here right now. I can get him. What is an automated system to delete content that people find offensive If not content mperation, Chris. Would you call that content moderation? Would you say that it's weird that you are more permissive of outright racism and Nazis on your platform? than the output made by Claude boy. Core problem is not people being Nazis or the quality of their output when there's a mismatch between a reader's expectation and a read, you can just put it all right there What are we describing? Is it content moderation Is it the ability to detect certain kinds of content? and make sure it does not find an organic audience because the people don't like it This is a really interesting question actually. So SSack relatively famously has been very hands off on this front and Famously to my face. Famously to you. Yeah. a clip that has been seen by every person on TikTok at this point. But look, sincerely, I think reasonable people can disagree on on how SubSac should moderate the people who write newsletters on its platform Feel that way, however you want. S. The idea that It was actually willing to take a step this drastic. And in a time like this, with technology like this, this is a drastic step to say We are going to loudly announce that something is AI is a big step. What do you think It means that Substc actually pushed over the line to say, we are going to do this in a way that they have not been willing to before One, I am not as high on Panram as everyone else's. Okay whether or not they can actually detect AI text at scale over time using more AI It's just a big question mark. I saw a thing on threads the other day that was like, here are twelve prompts to make your AI writing sound less like AI. See what I'm saying? It's like, right, we're just this is the cat and mouse game forever and ever and ever and ever. This is just one problem.. Maybe more existentially and more depressingly The market has spoken And it is clear that the market will reject AI content more vigorously then it will reject outright racism and outright sexism I don't know how to feel about that Right? Like Maybe you should just let it all ride. I have a lot of feelings about sububstack just surfacing Nazis over and over again, which is a problem that just keeps repeating itself.. just to be totally blunt Substack has built very, very good content moderation systems. They have them They're not hands off. Yeah. They have them for a lot of reasons. They have them for copyright infringement purposes. They have them because there is some stuff they will not put in a recommendation system. They've built it all. It's all there And now they're using it to filter and moderate AI content. They just added another category to their existing content moderation infrastructure And the market has not demanded that they use that infrastructure to to moderate like outright racism. And I you know Mbe that's the internet, mayaybe that's the world we live, mayaybe that's twenty six. and Dark Woke is going to make its comeback whenever it makes its comeback because pendulums do swing back But I this part of the information ecosystem is much more tolerant of one thing than another. And I do think it's very notable an ecosystem that will tolerate some horrible speech. seems to have no tolerance for AI That is, you know, you talk about data center protests and have the negative public perception towards AI There it is again. We will have outright racism and sexis on these platforms that will occur No penalty, them and the usage numbers will keep going up. They will steal all your information. They will invade your privacy, all that stuff. Targeted advertising will come at you. They will have problems with children and all the stuff that they do Not none of that hurt them But people hate AI content so much that we're going to build in the filters Can I offer you? the funniest possible counter examample. Sure What if you did this in the exact opposite direction That's what's going on at Prime Vide at Amazon right now. So there is this great Reuters story that we quick posted about earlier this week, basically saying that they're going through a big reorganization of the way that Prime Video, the actual platform works and rethinking the way that the homepage works, rethinking the discovery systems, the personalization systems And apparently Jeff Bezos himself has shown up and demanded from what it seems just more AI He says, do more AI to it to the Pime video team appears to be what's happening here. Like make the interface like vibe code the interface. No, I think what's happening is they seem to be wanting to make it much more AI programmed in a really interesting way. Like use more AI, presumably Amazon's AI to do more personalization, to do more algorithmic recommendations presumably there will be a million powered by Alexa things on that I don't know. He just like there's a thing we posted that there's an image that Prime Video is using to promote Death Race two thousand which is very obviously AI generated So maybe that's the future two where instead of we're going to get personalized posters for every title generated with AI. like This really has like Sergey Brin coming back to Google and demanding to AIify everything energy to it. whereere Bezos is like, takeake Prime video on AI And we just, what if we put more AI in front of people? Which in a moment where AI Sop is filling up all of these platforms everywhere and people are aggressively fighting against the use of AI, particularly in movies and shows. This is a very funny energy to be putting into your streaming service right now. There's a Lauren Sanchez joke here and I can't I can't find it And maybe I don't want to. Maybe the future of this is every one of the posters is AI generated and Lauren Sanchez is in every one of them. She fly a helicopters right. Uh I'm I'll set that aside. You can send me the jokes you want. It does have that AI has a marketing problem energy to it People would like us better if we would just show them more AI which I hear from every corner of this industry. And it also there's probably some amount of Prime Videoss interface is already just like a carnival Like it's already just trying to sell you so much stuff, it might as well just try to sell you some more stuff they Amazon has always just been the least concerned about taste W class in its video streaming interface. Very much so. Like it is just the most capitalistic hell hole that has ever existed in the history of television And so of course, he's like, I don't know Use AI to do more recommendations of the last thing You saw on ammazon. com and make that shoppable. I could not tell you what this actually means, but it is It's very good that it's just going to be loud and stupid all at once. Yeah. And maybe that's the joke maybe I do think there is a real energy behind a lot of this stuff that suggests all of these people think All we need to see is more examples of how AI is already making our lives better And what if you were just confronted with how great AI is more often You would learn to love AI And I just don't think that's Like I mean, the confidence with which this is repeatedly said to me is off the charts If only people could see, it's If you had three great use cases and then you're an AI convert for life, and it's like, have you looked at the polling data? I know. Well, and I think about this next to things like Letterbox, which there have been all these rumors that Somebody's gonna to buy letter box recently There is this big push happening towards recommendations for movies and TV shows and people wanting them to be human R Like staff picks are coming back. People want the experience of Having another person tell them what is good. Letterbox is so important because it has lots of data from actual people telling you what is good. and there is just this rebellion happening against What I don't want is a personalized list of movies that are perfectly tuned to me and then actually movies that you made because of that data you have about how to perfectly tune them to me People understand the pipeline that is feeding this slop to them and they want out of it. And so what we're getting is just louder AI recommendations from Amazon Prime Video sureure. Why not? knock yourself out? I do like that he looked at all of Amazon. He's like, I know where to put the AI What's the ugliestone page we have? How do I put some more stuff on it Do you want to talk about this meta AI detection system before we go? I know, I know you love an AI detection system Do you want to talk about this one before we switch gears? I mean, it's the theme of our little segment here is can you find it and can you kill it Can you can you preditor the AI? Yeah C could content seal Ma' have stopped five point six soul. I'm must say probably not. No, definitely. So shout out to Jess Weatherbad, who iss on our team. I long ago told Jess that her beat was creators in creativity and creative tools, which in the age of AI has meant She knows more about the systems to detect AI content than almost anybody alive. apart from the people who are making the systems. But I think that she knows more about these systems than the people who made content seal at Meta You can go read her story. She has spent more time reporting on C twoPA and contontent authenticity Initiative and Google's Synth ID. She is in the weeds of these things. She's her reporting is great. and she saw that Meta was announcing this. And I think we have the only story that's like Because she understood that the only rational response is what? So the entire industry is basically coalescing on Google Synth ID, which is an invisible watermark over images and videos that is pretty hard to strip away. And a lot of people wantan to use syynth ID. So Apple is going use it, they announceced it at WWC, OpAI is going use it. There's another standard called C twoPA content credentials met us on ab board of C twoPA So's Googber, right? So's Google. Yeah I mean, these are like evolving, there's a lot of complication about how they work together. Does't matter There's just a lot of this going on in the world already. Stards that exist, and a lot of the arguments for these standards are they needed to exist, so they exist. We're all going to use them and they allll get better. R And importantly, they're only really valuable if the distributors of the content of the platforms use them.. Which is an important reason to only have a couple of standards Right. So everybody understands that all the images are being labeled the same way and then the content provenence is being labeled the same way But it doesn't matter if you open up X and you don't see the label Th then it doesn't matter if the standard exists or not and maybe X will never show the labels and like here we are, this is the whole problem standard Anyway, met and introduced new one called Content Seal And it does not work with any of the existing standards. It doesn't work like syynth ID. Meta has not built any of the tooling for people to detect it. Meta's own detector is rate limited. So even if you get images that are labeled in contontent seal and you try to detect them, they will stop you and partially this is for security so people can't reverse engineer it. They're not using it on their own platforms. It is just It's malicious compliance. This is like Stalantis making hybrid Jeeps. to sell gas jeeps in Europe. likeike it is that thing exactly It's the Ferrari Lucee of Cent standards you know what I mean? Yeah. Like look, we made an EV. We're so proud of it. It's to get around to your regulations, one hundred percent what content C is. Super cynical, Meta answered some of the questions on the record, didn't answer some of our other questions on the record. Why are we doing this instead of using the already existing standard? It's because Meta does not want its AI images to get detected and filtered by other people's systems, which is what will happen if you give people the tools to turn the AI off I think Ma is also not super eager to filter it in its own systems. Like Adam is Ary has been on the record saying We don't want to filter out AI content, that they are also like SubSack interested in letting you know what's what, but not letting you filter it out. And if you actually do a good job of telling people what's what, they will filter it out. And they will demand a way to filter it out And so meta is actually in a weird way sort of incentivized to not have a system that works And this is a particular problem for Instagram because every photographer of any note uses tools that now have a bunch of AI in them, notot even necessarily generative AI. If you use D noise in Lightroom, you're right up against the line what AI is and you should probably label it becausecause AI is inventing some pixels, but it is just d noising an image. Should you be punished for denoising an image using the most state of the art deenoising tool that exists I know ike I truly don't do I do it without any regard for anything anymore Maybe Maybe Every piece of advertising content ever to be made in the modern era be labeled as AI generated because it has all gone through Photoshop someone somewhere has undoubtedly used generenitative remove And increasingly, all of those companies are just going to happily make AI slop advertisements about everything all the time. And in fact all the time, that is fundamentally the new business model for Meta and Google and everybody else is just make her creative with AI and target it with AI and we'll solve all of your problems with AI. I'm going to tell you, the CEO of W Shan N Iron, who is retiring, and you should come back on dec Coder to tell me who's going to be next That'd be great. He was on Dcoder and he said the generative fill and remove tools in Photoshop. are being used at the same rate as layers whichich means literally everyone is using. Everyone is using them all the time Uh I mean, that's their stat you can believe it or not, but that is that's what Adobe is claiming and this is the problem for all these labeling tools because if you over apply them, everyone gets mad. If you undera apply them, everyone gets mad. And Ma is like, what if we made a fake standard? no one uses it and then claim it exists ree cyical It's rough out there. Where is the AI goes up right with where is the computer in foundational Vvergecast questions going. All right, that's enoughAI for now. We've got a bunch of gadgets and stuff to talk about. So let's take one more break We'll be Support for the show comes from rippling Rtaining your best employees should always be top of mind, especially if they are in high demand And while it's impossible to predict the future, rippling AI can help you identify who might be a flight risk. That's because Rippling AI is built on your live global workforce data, giving you full visibility into your business and the ability to stay ahead of the curve Say you want to retain top talent J just ask rippling AI Who are my top performers this year Instantly receive a workforce report highlighting your top employees with supporting data like recent performance reviews and engagement metrics But it doesn't stop there. Rippling AI can turn these insights into a proposed retention strategy including a recommended ten percent spot bonus for top performers All you have to do is tap conffirm and a spot bonus is added to next month's pay run. So don't settle for AI. That's all talk. to rippling. Ai slash verge and get AI that turns insight into action That's R I PP L I N G AI slash Vverge Sign up for exclusive access today Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project, one app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them talk to each other. That's where Auto comes in, an all in one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform, no messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo. com slash boox. That's Odoo. com slash boox AI assisted and Eentic coding is helping you build faster than ever. But if your data layer is a bottleneck, what's the point? Instead of wrestling with rigid schemas or translating data formats, MongoDB's native data model mirrors the language LOMs already speak. It ships at the speed of AI is acid compliant and scales to handle massive Fortune five hundred workloads. Ask any developer. It's a great freaking database Start building at Mongudb. com slash AI All right, we're back. It's time now for the hype test where our friends Ross and Ashy come and tell us about what's cool in the world. This one is unsponsored, which I'm telling you because at some point in the near future that will not be true. But for now it is unsponsored. And today it's just Ross, Ross, welcome back. Y. Welcome to Favor Town, buddy. Welcome to Flavor Town. How y you doing? I'm Gy Fiery. Diners di is does. Devices, we got it all anyway. we're getting sued Diners, drive ins, dies and devices There's something there as you guys. There's something there. This is your hot one, so you're welcome.orry. We're gonna take all that sponsor money and we're gonna to pay it directly to God Fury And find what are we doing here There you go. If you'd like to sponsor us, that'd be great I don't know if the food Netork is buying podcasts advertising at this time. We're open to it. Welcome to Flavor Town is a thing I am willing to say every for enough money. Boss, what do you have for us this week? All right, this week, I am going to make the case for being hyped about Avengers Stay with thank you. Nope, he me. Nope,. That was not the pitch I received when this began Okay, so let me back up. This week, Marvel has finally released the first public trailer of Doomsday, along with ticket presales for both the standandard theaters and Infinity Vision, which is it's kind of IMAac like premium large format. They can't get iMAac, so they made their own, basically. I can we just can we just pause on this for just Yes So One could call it infinity Vision One could also call it lies. Is that is that a fair? Well to be IMax right now is like an ever escalating series of lies Right there's like proper IMAax and there's like fake MAax and there's like levels of fake IMAax Then there's Zach Snyder, IMax, which is just for three grayscale and HBO Max I don't know, man. It's go ahead. Tell me what Infinityis iso ahe What We are all learning iMax forformartts in real time as we're try to get odyssey tickets. Infinity Vision is though just go to that real quick. It was announced in April during Cinema Con, which is where all the theater owners get together to get presentations This is Disney saying we are making a certification program. It is premium large format. It's going to give you that kind of like exclusive iMAX like experience. It's obviously not saying IMAX U But it's not out yet certification is kind of in the works. We know there's going to be seventy five such theaters in the US three hundred international, which kind of sounds like a lot, but to your point, you have almost two thousand. IMAax or IMAax k. designated systems worldwide so it's a smaller foprint. This is what I mean by it's Tue Imax is what forty theaters in the whole world. Something like that. It's forty one, which is a number that I' have seen Lots of places recently. Everybody is all of a sudden very aware of the map of seventy millimeter IMax theaters. Very much so But we haven't seen it in action yet. We're not going to, I think, until September. September is when Marvel's going to or Disney's going to release Avengers in game Encore, which is in game, plus a few more minutes of footage, a new post credit scene because Of course. Didn't you say you were going to make a case? I am going to make a case. I got get I got to get to the infinity vision. I can't justify infinityivision, but I will justify Doomsday because the trailer's out and I think there's a lot of takes on it, particularly online, that's kind of meh, it's nostalgia debate But I do want to like just do the numbers argument real quick The trailer had over five hundred million views in the first twenty four hours, which is the second largest trailer debut of all time. More importantly, though It got sixteen million dollars in ticket pres sales in the first twenty four hours. That is the third biggest presele since COVID behind only the Spidery Man films I do think the online reaction is pretty met. think I think the trailer reaction is in many ways justifiable. Trailers should be an art form and this is not What I would call a piece of art. We got a great comment on the site about the trailer that was like Marvel has done the impossible. They've made a whole movie about people looking at things off camera. which feels exactly correct about the trailer. And it does because the trailer manyways feels like homework, right? It's like remember this, remember this? G, it's ready Player one the adventers' experience. Yeah. Do you remember this guy? this guy. Doember this guy Listen to this music, neededle drop this guy, like the whole And at the end, another guy appears. Yes. Oh my Godd. Let's not forget. it's Robert Downey Jr. practicing this kind of faux Eastern European in youriverse is called Lot Vvariant, a Lotvarian accent But yeah, it is a lot of people and I think what Marvel iss doing in many ways, is kind of like the kind of regressive nostalgia debate You love these people. Chris Evans is back. We don't know why he just is. R Jany is back. He' something And I think there's a lot of plac to be cynical, but clearly with like the audience while angry online is there and willing to give Marvel another chance. And I do think there's this a lot of pent up from the people who kind of went into it loving in game and then just tapered off. And I'll admit I'm one of those people. I sat through twenty nine hours of Marvel movies and live blogged it for the Vverge. I was just at AMC Theaters and Upper Westide losing my mind and then writing about it and getting paid to write about. So first off, thank you for that. It was wonderful. It was a great experience for everyver. Wonderful. I've lost three years of my life on the other side, but whatever, we made the content machine go. Um But I do, you know, I think I'm hopeful that and the reason they're going back to nostalg debate is because this is the hey, just forget about everything that's happened the last five, six years We're going to go back and kind of cap off not just the Marvel MTU but also kind of like that Fox X men kind of like, let's just remember that happen and kind of give it the proper send offff. It's a real, let's remember some guys kind of energy. It is. I just want to point out they already sent off the Fox X men. Literally that movie was like, goodbye to this. Well so wait, so this is actually my clection. There was a montage sequence at the end that was literally goodbye to this. Ross, I think they ran timeime of yourour life They did, actually. Yes, they did. You did come back from. You can't ungraduate from high school. Neil first they killed half of them and now they're back. they can do anything they want. Well, okay, but Professor Xavier has died on camera for a film like eight times at this point. Wait I'm sorry, the argument I heard here was they did a fake ax and a lot of people watch this tri W okay, Ross. let me ask you a question that I think is at the center of what I'm trying to figure out here, which is H. They tried to do this thing where there was one era of Marvel that ended and then there was going to be a new era of Marvel with new stars and new characters and new movies. that that none of that Like it didn't it just it all sort of died with with the original characters. And this movie It seems like a good idea in the sense that it is an admission that that first era everybody liked and kind of nobody came along with them into the second era they were trying to build. So they're just going back to the first thing. They paid everybody a lot of money to go make the old kind of Marvel movie with the old characters that everybody liked It's probably going to Right? Like this it feels sort of cynical and sad that this is what it's come to that like It turns out everybody lik Robert Downey Jr. so we're going give you more Robertowney Ji. Is it as simple as that? Like we're just going to pretend that the sort of second era post all of these characters didn't exist and just go back to them again M much higher salaries theirs she' five hundred million dollars to do two movies. Unreal. Congrats, Robert. Congrats. I think there is a in an extent there is a little bit of that, and I don't necessarily think it's a terribly a bad thing, right? This is not a movie that's designed to win an Oscar. Sometimes the theater experience is just spectacle. Right? The Odyssey is a good movie, but it's also just a spectacle. And I think in many ways, that's what Aventures is being set up to do. Just go have fun in the theaters and enjoy this moment. You know, if you want to get into, obviously it's not enough time for this, like the three biggest sins of Marvel's history. I think one is Disney pllus stretching their creative so thin that they just couldn't figure out to do and they put too many characters in, right? They lost the focus Number two, I think unfortunately, COVID changed a lot of creative plans and they kind of struggled to kind of bandaid together you know, some kind of cohesion because everything must be connected And three, I would argue that acquiring all the Fox IP backack meant we have too many toys. We don't know what to do with them. and I think this is in two ways, it's The spectacle that people want, like let's just have something fun on screen. Remember the good moments. It is just a nostalgia play and I don't think this is inherently a wrong thing for what it will feel like in theaters And then also the We're just going to move on after us and try to taper things. That's the hope, right? That is the hope of We're just going to like try to get focused or just toss a lot these toys away. We'll pick it back up in five minutes. How many times must we kill the X men We're like we're sending back the time. Now we they're young X men. We're gonna to kill them too. oldld X men and young X men die in the same like But now they have the original com Epandex to die in. So you get to watch James Marsen in blue tights. Again, I would possibly be making a case. I will say just in defense of Robert Downey Jr. Yes He talks real fast and so words per minute, it's a deal I appreciate the doomsday spec sheet here. As a fellow fast talker, that's kind of the To me, the whole thing here is like just to go all the way back to the beginning. the whole reason infinity Vision exists is because Marvel lost all of the IMX screens to Doom Part three, which is going to be a vastly better and more interesting movie that I think is going to absolutely just eat Doomsday's lunch. Oh, that is a take. No, no way. We're way over. We gott to be done here. But I think everyone wins. Here's. That's just a lot of more cool shit to watch in theaters. And that's great. It is about to be between between Dune And Spiderm Man and Doomsday, it is about to be a pretty fun action superhero nerd movie fall and I'm pretty excited about it. Yep. It's gonna be. Are you excited about Spiderman, Ross? Brand new day into it. Very excited. V veryy excited for Spidererman. There's comic C us this weekend for nerd journalists everywhere that was that Marvel did the big Hoge presentation. They do a lot of promises. those promises shift because of COVID and business realities. But it is going to be just interesting to see like How Marvel does it Kein Fiigi currently on an apology tour for a lot of the stuff they've done before. This is their positioning of trying to be the underdog going into it. I don't think that necessarily works when you're a company that this big,. I do think it is interesting to kind of watch the tea leaves and see. You know, there's enough people here who are willing to give you that chance and let's just see if you can actually deliver on it I love the optimism. And just so everyone knows, if you preorder tickets for Avengers Dooms Day now and then the movie is terrible, Guy Fieri will personally refund you your ticket m. He's going to sponsor this show by buying everyone tickets to Avengers Doomsay. It's Did always wonder what would bring the Vverge to its knees. And the guy Fury lawsuit was a dark horse There it goes. I'm ready for it. This is the way I always wanted it to go. All right, Ross, good to see you. Thanks for coming. Cheers y'all. All right, now it is time For America's favorite podast within a podcast n a carars' a tummy Yeah, al right That just gave me very intense and I mean this is a compliment. Day rave at a Vegas pool energy in a way that I really enjoyed. Oh, I had low rider crwise I think it's I think that's roughly the same energy. 's in there. You're like you're bouncing up and down in a Camaro. I'm like kicking it in a kabana Your knowledge of low runner culture is completely just like offensive. I don't even what? I'm very sorry. That theme remix was from Chris Swick who said and this is a very good part of this email says no AI was used, not a fan of AI. Everything was done in Garage Band. Big fan of garageand. We love to see it That's very good. Neil, what would Brendon do this week? U Fant man. We actually have a clip this week. So if you recall last Thursday President Trump gave a sort of rambly incoherent late night speech about election interference? Sure you know, and then he referenced a bunch of documents, everyveryone looked at the documents. And even the New York Times was like President lied about documents. Yeah, whichich is like a big step for them Like none of it made any sense, but the thrust of it is that the elections were interfered with and he should have won in twenty twenty even though That all happened and he was in charge of the government in twenty twenty whichich is just a real fact no one can hold on to.. Who was the president in twenty twenty is a real question that the Republicans of our country cannot deal with. Which has led to a full week of John Osf TikToks. Have you seen these Just him grilling people about whether Joe Biden won the election in twenty twenty. and everyone obfuscates and he just askks them the question,, it's very good Anyway so that was a speech B Many networks covered it, many did not likeike even like Fox news the next day basically was like, well, that happened. That was weird. I moved on to the next thing. Anyhow, as is their right They have First Amendment rights new programs. They're also just like on, I think, in Republican And also just like in the Republican Party, this is not a winner Like relitigating twenty twenty is not a thing they all want to do. It doesn't win in elections. In fact, sometimes it loses in elections. Anyhow. some networks covered the speech in primeime, some netorks said' NBC and ABC did not. NBCN ABC our broadcasters Guess who loves to infringe the speech of broadcasters? ur boy, Brendon Carr Who's FCC nominally controls the rights of broadcasters using the public airwaves. So he was asked on Fox News this week if It was acceptable for NBC and ABC to not air Trump's remarks in prime timee. H Here's what he saiding. They could air the president's remark. and I said, of course they should I'm Brendon Carr. I'm the chairman of the Federal Communic ions Cnect. And they should do so because they have an obligation at the end of the day to operate in the public interest to serve the needs of their communities. And I think making sure that people have access to significant presidential addresses is part and parcel of what all broadcasters should want to do. There's been a lot of interest in Congress. Obviously we' got a letter from Congress, you know asking us to investigate the decisions to do this or not do this and you know, we're reviewing the letter itself at least at this point, and there's been a lot of interest in this, so we'll see where it goes. Okay, I have several thoughts B all means. Dot number one Brendon Cr recorded this video on like an iPhone three G from the quality of the thing Do you think he got an actual letter? Like do you think someone someone mailed a letter? There's some Republican backbencher who's like, you should arrest the thinky mouses for not running Donald Trump and maybe like, sure, it doesn't matter. This is all just like text to canan I punish you? Right for I don't like. This was this was thought number three is that this is very much reminiscent of Brendon Carr saying we can do this the easy way or he can do this the hard way It's very clear he has no moves here. like he's not shy about saying what he's going to do when he thinks he's going to do something. But in this case he just kind of gestures at it. He's just like, huh We're going to look at this with sort of a meaningful look on his face which is very Brendon I mean, he can definitely incur costs and launch sham investigations. and bring the wrath of the federal government down on various. speakers for not uncritically rebroadcasting the president's remarks on election interference. Do you want to live in a country Dfinitionally, the government says it is in your interest to listen to the president. No That's not the country I was raised in. Being able to ignore the president is one of the great joys of being an American. Being able to just openly be like, no, I'm choosing to never listen to you maybe the only quality of being an American that we all share. It's a very funny time to remember that like we mostly didn't used to think about the president. Yeah. sccrew that guy. I don Who is he? Get out of my face. Shut up. I don't have to listen to you. is the most important thing. right next to that if you listen to what he says Being able to provide access to the important presidential addresses is certainly in the public interest There's so much access to everything Donald Trump says. Yeah There's so much access that Truth Social announced a new business line where they will give Wall Street traders early access to truth social posts because you can trade ahead of the markets based on whatever Trump says which is just a remarkable kind of open corruption, But like that's how much access there is. Yep You have to make a pretty big case that not carrying a speech on the broadcast airwaves that no one is watching is not in the public interest, even though everyone who might otherwise receive broadcast television almost certainly has a phone with YouTube on it and they're just one like sideways glance away from receiving this address on all of the millions of other places that are carrying it The reason that he's doing this is to make it so that anyone who has a big distribution platform is scared of the government's power to restrict speech, and that includes the internet platforms. And mark my words, he will find a way to go from broadcasters to the internet the second it's proven that he has any power over the broadcast. Y. I mean, you can see how this turns into Brendon Carr being mad that this speech wasn't the first thing on YouTube's recommendations paid for everyone on YouTube in the United States. You can just see it. Right. You open X and it's that we love what Elon's doing with Starlink. and we love that when you opened X, the presresident's speech was right there. Yeah We really wish TikTok would do that and we're going to call our friend Lry Eson and make sure that happens. Like it's just You know what, your phone runs on the public airways You can see where he's going. Anway, that's been Brendon Carrars, Dummy, Brendon. If you wantanna argue against the points I've made here or just come on this show and introduce yourself in two hundred forty p, you're welcome to do it You'relcome to do it we can send you a camera. M you appeared to not have access to the latest in greatad in technology I would welcome the opportunity. anday, that's been Brandon Car is a dumm M' favorite podast in the podcast It always just ends in the right. I exit that headspace during that and it's very helpful. I'm told, by the way, we got a shout out at Trustcon. which is like a trust and safety conference where people really care about free speech and how platforms operate so I appreciate that Amazing The Brendon Carr is a dummy cinematic universe. It is open to all. We love you here I have a Ramag an update for you That out there anyay? No gadgets are going to be for sale ever again. So framework, the PC manufacturer. I think one of the companies frankly we, at the Vverge are like most excited about. They're doing a lot of really interesting things and really interesting ways reached out to a bunch of people who preordered the laptop thirteen Pro, which I would say, it came out, I think in April By all accounts, probably Framework's most exciting most mainstream laptop ever People are pumped about this thing. time They reached out and said, esssentially They had gotten a cost update from a memory supplier that was, quote, more than double that of the prior inventory And not only have prices gone up In fact, they didn't have the configurations for everybody So they've now just change the amount of memory that they're shipping to certain people because they they literally, they're like, we have enough We have enough memory modules to ship all of the PCs that have been preorddered, but we don't have enough of every sKU in all of the right configurations.. So they're actually having to reconfigure people's computers in order to be able to ship them to them. U And the prices are going up. They're offering people the chance to cancel and get full deposit refunds. so anybody who wants out of this deal can get out of this deal. but basasically There is a strong chance that you are not going to get the computer that you preordered because frramework literally can't make it for you because of Ramageddon. Also prices have gone up. let's see, the one with the sixteen gigs of memory and five tel gigs of storage, a very sort of mainstream configuration went up one hundred dollars and the like mega one with thirty two gigs of RAM and a terabyte of storage went up eight hundred dollars from two thousand ninety nine dollars to twenty eightllars ninety nine cents. This is this is just where we're at. And this this to me is another fascinating turn in this one because we've gone from Everything is vastly more expensive to a certain set of devices is no longer economically feasible to make, which is starting to kill low end phones, and I think it's going to start to come for more stuff to literally the combinations of storage and memory and CPU. don't exist in the way that we need them to anymore. And so basically you're left Pick parts out of the bin and try to sell them to people is essentially what's available to people. And this is this is what Ramagedd is doing to everybody. This is so depressing because I think Framework is such an interesting company and people were so into the ideas of these products and We've talked a lot about how All of the increasing costs might put pressure on repairability. framework That's The whole game. Yeahah Right? These are super modular computers. You can repair them, you can fix them, you can upgrade them as they go They should be the solution They are getting crushed. byy the problem It sucks It does. And I think our commenters have been kind of mad at framework for basically not being able to satisfy all of its preorders based on the theory that You know, you have a lot of pre orders, you should have made sure you had the inventory for it. And that's fair. It's also just completely not how the world works. All of these companies operate at much slimmer timelines Nobody is storing giant warehouses full of laptops for months on ends, just in case you get the preordders, which is not how it works. And then on the flip side compompanies big and small like Apple is going through this now where The rA that is made available to you is basically some dude calls you and says, I have this much RAM, it costs this much. Do you want this? Seriously, this is what we've been hearing from companies that the deals don't exist. just you get a list of available products and a price and you say yes to it because you don't have any choice. And up and down the scale of these companies, this is what has happened because so much of the supply And so much of the demand has been allocated elsewhere particularly to the AI uses. this is just what has come for every company. And I think I I agree that It would be great if Framework had a way out of this, but I find it very hard to be mad at frramework. This is just This is the symptom of what is happening to everybody else too. And it's a real shame I don't think anyone has really contended with what an AI backlash supercharged by people being mad that they can't buy PC's looks like or like gaming PC's or the cost to buy a GPU to for entertainment purposes Like Once you start screwing people's free time in that way with like their entertainment Like the backlash only gets worse. I've been thinking a lot about GTA six in this way because we are we're running at probablybably the biggest game release of the last decade and a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of people going to want to game and buy new consoles and upgrade systems and make sure that they are ready for this thing as it comes out And they're all about to be confronted by just absolute disaster anarchy in front of them whichich good ties well into GTA six. It does. That's true We're gonna to live GTA six in the world as' sting a police car to buy a new GPU. Well, GTA six. No, they're gonna to take the RAM out of the police car. That's true. Police cars do have an awful lot of Ram in them now. They're doing a lot of surveillance What's your next lightning round item? it fits right in with our theme here Which is everything's getting expensive and weird things are happening because of it.. So you know, we're heading into Apple season here. We're expecting one touchcreen, Max, new iPhes,' get folding fifty thousand dollars ultra, you know, something' It's all going to be very expensive. They killed the Apple Car project, but they're going to sell a foldable phone for roughly the price of the Apple Car is where we're headed. Would you like a new Toyota camerry or would you like a folding iPhone choice is yours Apple is rumored to be handling this with a new upgrade program that will bring least to own pricing to the iPhone, the Mac and the iPad. And then right next to that is some code reportedly found in IOS that would let Apple cut off virtually all of the apps on your phone if you miss your payments Whoy is that dystopia Yeah, there's a real the first thing in there you kind of had me in the first half, you know what I mean? where it's like this is it's that that seems Okay. I think peopleeople should be moving more towards we own our gadgets than we rent our gadgets from a large company But especially at this moment, the idea of Having some kind of cleaner upgrade system is all fine. But then you throw in and if you miss a payment, Apple will become the repo man and take your phone away from you and this gets bleak. Super, super, super fast Yeah, so it's called Partner Fance loock, which is an incredible name. It would prevent you from erasing or selling devices that are in restricted mode, if you have payments to whoever your partner that you're financing it with is. and it will block all the apps except for phone, settings in the app store, which is very funny You can give us money for apps, but you can't do anything with any of them I was really hoping you were going to say it blocks everything but like the journal app you can write down what a bad person you are. That's the only prompt in journal. It was like, Siri, I will not prompt you into feeling guilt for misonayments It's part of findind My. It hasn't been announced. We don't know if it's going to ship, but you can see where Apple's taking this Y Right. And even leasing, sure, right rightight now there's iPhone financing, there's upgrade options. you're, you know, most financing is people understand it. you cut the price of the phone twenty four or thirty six installments, you pay the monthly and at the end of it, you own the phone. Leasing is like Apple's going to take the front back. so you pay a lower rate to own part of the phone. it's very much. morere renting the phone really. All of this is to ease the impacts of payments but then also make it so people don't just steal the phones But do you want that level of literally like credit checking on your phone, disabling your phone, except for being able to browse the app store like a little kid like like it like scrge your hands up against the toy store window.one. I wish I wish I could download HBOax when. I simply do not have the resources. That's good news. And then the other thing is the upgrade h the Apple upgrade thing will reportedly be for basically only higher end devices. There's some evidence that the base iPad The Apple Watch SE, the MacBook No will not be included. So it's very clear We talk a lot about Apple's constant interest in moving you up the price scale. This is a way to do it. that makes it slightly more palatable because they're like, well, you you just pay over time. everybody If anyone's ever shopped for a car lease You know, the push to the top trim because it's only ten dollars more month is It's always sitting there I think This is bad I like the answer to all of this Ramageddon stuff should be own your stuff and keep it longer And you should have more control over your technology, not rent things from companies because they're cheaper I'm going to find a way to hack in your phone and tell it that you're leasing it for me and just put you in partartner finance lock from time to time. If you could lock everything on my phone, but the journal app, that would honestly make my life faster. I would bet you, partartner finance lock is more effective at controlling screen time than Apple's actual screen time or parental control features Oh, for sure That's the key is buy your kids an iPhone and then when they use it too much, just don't pay for it anymore. Weve fixed it. That's really good. I'd like to not pay for this iPhone between the hours of six PM and like ten AM. Just be laate on every payment. It's good. I have another phone to tell you about. Can I tell you about a phone God. Did you see this thing, the light flip this week U We have a new flip phone. Oh, this looks sick. This is what I'm saying The light phone, they've been making stuff for forever. Kai Tang, and one of the co founders is going to be on the show next week. That's going to be really fun. They've been at this for a very long time And Neili, the reason I bring this up to you is because A, they made a flip phone and it looks like blocky and futuristic and kind of out of the matrix and it looks so sick But also When I asked why they made this phone, this phone is essentially the light phone three. turned into a flip phone. There's a two point eight screen two point eight inch screen up top D pad and number keys on the bottom. Ver simple phone not designed to do all that much It's a light phone andip phone for But I asked him, why did you make a flip phone? Wh make this? And the thing he said to me immmediately was because we kept talking to people who had our phone and they said, I like everything about it except People see it and think I'm using a smartphone. I need something that doesn't look like a smartphone. I don't want to be seen using a smartphone that it has become a status symbol in some of these communities to not be using a smartphone And the form factor of a flip phone has become in a very real way status symbol not a symbol that you're a loser who can't afford smartphone. It's totally inverted And I think that's fascinating. I will connect this dot directly to my obsession with influencers and young people spepending too much money on the Canon G seven X? Yes, totally which is an ancient point shoot. It's a good point shoot. It's just ancient And then I watch because I'm obsessed with it, I get a lot of videos of people like screening with the settings and the setting, they always turnre on is turning on the flash which is choice.. And it's because firing a flash at night makes your photos look good And then you can do it and then you're like point in shoot photos are better and you just like fall all the down rabbitole. Yep I love this unbundling that's happening. Right? The whole smartphone was convergence and now there's a little bit of divergence happening love it can't en not I think it's great. This phone is two hundred and ninety nine dollars, which I think is probably the right price for it. You can also pay thirty nine bucks a month to get the phone plus lights service, which they seem to think a lot of people are going to do that as a as a secondary device to a smartphone that that price might work for a lot of people, which I think is really interesting I have gotten So much feedback from people who are in this into this phone, include it like on our staff out in the world, in our comments, there is something about Like what if we made a very sexy reed blocky futuristic looking flip phone that people just immediately understand There's something about it that just works It's really good. I will say one option in case you're not interested buy another piece of hardware or another Service plan is you can just have AT and T and then your phone networ That's my experience. It's a life. It's a choice. Yeah One of the reasons I pay so much attention to my kid is often my phone just simp won't work in their school. And so when I go to their events, I'm like I'm going to watch the presentation here. 's beautif I would say that's my personal solution is to stare at the five GE indicator on my iPhone and be like, well, this won't work. I should pay attention to my family. My fun new thing is at my house, I constantly have two bars of service but actually have no service. Yeah. That's good. so it's I'm just my phone is lying to me state of Verizon and it's really extremely delightful I'm We've won race to five G David. I don't know if you're aware this. We've been doing robot surgery in a grape from the back of a robot car for the past se years. Yeah, And this changed everything about how fast I download Netflix now. All right, David, I got one last one. Okay I can't do it on my own. As you know, whenever I talk about carplay, I have to summon the ghost of Jon. Welcome Joinna Sttern to the Rroadcast I'm here. Hi good From the new things Sut. Look at how fancy Doid we get like a pop up or something fancy This is this is actually before we get into this, Joanna, Neil and I were debating what your like walk on music should be U the sort of Joanna Erance music Do you have strong opinions on what you think your entrance music should be I am doing a talk next week and I am having them do Mr. Ribato Oh, that's f good Just like always be selling. It's all right.ld you've sold the book on anotherough of our shows. Oh my gosh, she's got to wr. Oh my gosh It's all right. The Dakota book coming out next year. We're going to It's going to be horrible for everyone. I need to talk to you about what is going on with Ford. Yeah, I know messaged you panic I was panic. I would say we had like a little argument over over I message today. Ford announced with Apple that the maps in the next generation EV that it's making will be Apple Maps, which is huge. I think it's the first time Apple has let any automaker directly integrate Apple Maps Ford's new platform is a big deal. It's going to start with a thirty thousand dollars electric truck, but it's the future of everything. They built it in the skunk works They're very proud of it. Joanna text me and said, This is what Farley said to her u dececoder that they wanted to do CarPlay ultra, but they didn't want all of it. And I'm saying no, Apple just wants to use maps. Like this has nothing to do with CarPplay. And in fact, regular CarPlay is in the announcement Ford's going to keep using regular Carplay. Joanna, what do you think is going on here I think we're both right. I think that than Ford and Apple have had a long standing relationship, and we had, as I talked with Farley, had thought that maybe Ford was going to do Carplay Ultra But Farley on your very show about a year ago, told me on Deoder, told me that I don't have this quotes in front of me, Basically frustrated with Apple because Apple was asking for too much data and too much of the control of the clusters and all of the stuff in the car So I think these two companies were talking. And a deal was struck somehow around we want to work with Apple. These are some of the most valuable data things we want from you, Maps being one of them. They're going to also be using this for self driving capabilities and to build a platform on And this is where they got. And so in this next EV platform of the future that Ford is making, This is sort of the Apple contribution. And it's not Google, right? And I here now now Neili, you make your point Okay, it's good. Joonna is like missed my first podcast. Now I will make my point. We're debate style. We're doing it. Well, no, I teed you up perfectly for your point, which is the Google part of this Yeah, I mean, the back and forth here is that these big smartphone vendors have tried to get ever more deeply integrated into cars. Google has made some headway. Right? A bunch of cars run Android automotive, which is a whole operating system that just runs my GM EV is just runs Android. It runs Android twelve on Intel, which is not great. That's what it runs. whichich you think is better than Carplay, just so everyone's clear Neil's out on cararPay and in on Android twelve That's the thing you should know aboutal. I don't want to be held to that. I'm going to say that it is effective at letting Gem and I turn on Spotify and doing Google Maps navigation, which is what we prefer. and that is fine, right? Whatever. I'm Apple did Carpllay Ultra, which is a very complicated system works in a lot of different ways and mostly carmakers have rejected it. right? I think you can get Cpo ultra and Aston Martins which is fine because if you had ever looked at Aston's existing You can user interface, you'd be like, get this out of my face. And I think Asen was like, we don't want to spend money on this. They announced it in Kia and Hyundai vehicles. That was a year ago. There's not even a glimmer of the shipping. and in fact new new vehicles from that brand have a whole system that they've built in other countries already. So like they're moving ahead on their own just doesn't seem like the smartphone makers are getting traction taking over the cars And I know Ford was like, We have to have carplay in our cars. That's our big differentiation against GM. We're going to have it. Why would I Why would I compete with your phone And I think they did not want everything that came with Google. And I personally think Apple was just happy to get a paying customer for Apple Maps. This is a big expensive product that does not make them any money And I think that ultimately as Apple was this they were saying, hey, look at CarPlay Ultra. this is great. And Farley and his team were like, no, we want some parts of what you want, but we don't want you to control everything. And so this is where they got Wh my take is wrong We'll see it If someone from Ford wants to confirm this on or off the record, please call me. There's a part of this where the maps for where the EV chargers We're going to enter a destination. It will tell you how much battery you'll have at the end and the charging stops along the way is very important There's a lot of apps that can do it, but you need that in the vehicle espeally for EVs. And then there's the autonomy part where it's not these maps that are really helping the cars drive themselves R? There's like another class of very high resolution maps and systems and sensors that actually enable autonomy. And this doesn't seem like anything to do with that. And it's also unclear how Blue Cruise wishes Ford's autonomous system willll fit into it. So I just think Apple essentially got nowhere with Corpay Ultra. As an existing, I'm a mocky driver and I still don't know what I'm doing about my lease that expires next month Existing maps in there is terrible truly terrible, not usable. So that is why I have Carpllay. And I go between Apple Maps and Google Maps, but that is fundamentally what Ford is just saying here is We arere done, we arere done trying to do this We have chosen Apple here that has made a special deal for us versus Google. I mean they're the only ones to get this. This brings me to my theory about this as someone who does not interview C car CEO's. This doesn't matter at all. This relegates Apple Maps to being like a slightly better version of the Tom Tom navigation that shows up with a rental car that you immediately get rid of because you plugged your phone in. This is like having A little bit of navigation, but no other features solves no problems. Everybody's still going to plug in their phone and just do carplay What is even the point of this? No where use What maps do you use when you use caray I go back and forth between Google Maps and Apple Maps Apple Maps. I think Apple Maps is better navigation. Google Maps is much better place data But I'm going to use either one over the thing built into my because I have to plug my phone in anyway.. But in the future and this is what Ford is at the disadvantage of is it doesn't have the Tesla and it even doesn't have what Rivian's doing, which is the self driving component to this. And so eventually when you're or me when how you doid. We're not sure what kind of car your car if the future don't know what the ds that you're driving right now that this is going to be even more important. And so I think that's what Farleie' trying to say is like, we can't do this on our own. We needed to team up with someone that has this great maps data. We We are still going to do some autonomy. There's a big autonomous announcement to this What's our partner here? Oh our story just got updated. As have breaking news. We have a statement from Ford about autonomy in our peace Apple is not building for its self driving technology for it saidting email. Ford is developing our next generation eightS in House through Latitude AI, their wholly owned autonomy subsidiary. Apple msolutely important mapping enabler. This is This is what David is describing. They need a map Apple sold them a map. Apple gets to make some money on maps. It was previously making no money and threatening to do advertising on maps I bet Google wanted a whole bunch of Google stuff. Ford didn't want to give it up. Yes Gg we're going to tra our own cars off of this. and Ford said, No, thank you. Yes. It will be fascinating to see if any other car makers start adopting Apple Maps because the Tom Tom stuff is all bad Have you driven a Silantis vehle? You don't want to this anyhere. It's de your face. Yeah. The reason I think it works for JM is because JM is just running Android. And so what you get out of the box is Google Maps, which is the thing most people want And so like, you you get to They get to cover the first sin here gain, it's under twelve on Intel. I have a lot of feelings about it every sing day, but it's fine. It just does the job I don't J.y do you think you're going to buy a new fort now because it has No, it's not available right now. This is all like this is all the prep for the twenty twenty seven big reveal that Farley's been prepping for. and but my lease is up next month I do Joanna, will you come back on the show and the three of us can litigate this decision? I'm serious. Sure. There's a whole virgecast in Let's buy Joanna a car, and I think we should do it I have the hottest take for what's finished by next, but we should do that an entire epode of that. It's going we should we should we should do it live so we can get real