Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Well, we have a lot more terrifying things to discuss about AI.

00:00:05 ◼   ► A lot has happened since the last time we spoke, Myke.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I don't presume that I'm the center of the universe.

00:00:12 ◼   ► But there is an almost Truman Show-like aspect sometimes to life,

00:00:17 ◼   ► and this is one of those things where I feel like,

00:00:20 ◼   ► you know, I was seeing enough about A.I.R. around the place,

00:00:23 ◼   ► like, you know, there was a reason that we spoke about it,

00:00:26 ◼   ► because it was coming into our worldview more and more.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Right.

00:00:29 ◼   ► But in the time between these last two episodes,

00:00:31 ◼   ► I feel like it has taken over the world.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I can't move for people talking about it.

00:00:37 ◼   ► It's coming up on podcasts that have got nothing to do

00:00:40 ◼   ► with this stuff, like not even tech related shows

00:00:43 ◼   ► they're talking about.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Like Idina sent me a link to one of her favorite podcasts,

00:00:46 ◼   ► it's a podcast called Comic Lab,

00:00:48 ◼   ► which is about cartooning and making comics.

00:00:52 ◼   ► They did like a whole episode talking about it.

00:00:54 ◼   ► And it makes sense for them a little bit

00:00:56 ◼   ► because they are comic artists, right?

00:00:57 ◼   ► They are artists.

00:00:58 ◼   ► - But it's like, why now?

00:01:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think this is definitely

00:01:03 ◼   ► the biggest Truman Show-like effect

00:01:05 ◼   ► for anything that we have ever spoken about.

00:01:08 ◼   ► And I think it's just that we happened to hit it

00:01:10 ◼   ► at the exact right moment before a bunch of things exploded.

00:01:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like realistically, I know why this happened,

00:01:18 ◼   ► but it's still such a strange feeling.

00:01:20 ◼   ► This happened because we spoke about it

00:01:22 ◼   ► because it was starting to become a thing

00:01:23 ◼   ► that we couldn't avoid, right?

00:01:25 ◼   ► So that's why then it's just like a snowball effect.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Oh, I know, I know. And like listeners may remember that I had a conference that I said

00:01:33 ◼   ► I was going to go to in September. I was like, "Oh, guess what?" One of the major topics

00:01:38 ◼   ► like everyone was discussing at the conference. It was a bunch of AI stuff. Like my whole

00:01:42 ◼   ► life just exploded into this in the past month. And I think also with the last episode of

00:01:48 ◼   ► the show, there was like a little bit of confusion over our positions because there's just

00:01:53 ◼   ► like there's so much that this touches on, right? Like this, we just kind of talked about

00:01:57 ◼   ► it off the cuff. And, you know, I really think this this absolutely touches on almost everything

00:02:04 ◼   ► in the world. So I think to try to be clear, it's like, with AI arts, and the language

00:02:10 ◼   ► models in particular, in the short term, I think there's a lot of interesting discussions

00:02:14 ◼   ► to be had about how it affects technology and how it affects the economy and how it

00:02:19 ◼   ► affects ethics. But in the long term, we're seeing the beginning of the end of the human

00:02:26 ◼   ► race.

00:02:27 ◼   ► Okey-dokey.

00:02:28 ◼   ► So…

00:02:29 ◼   ► Is this the clarifying you were looking to do?

00:02:32 ◼   ► Yeah, just so people can understand where I'm coming from.

00:02:35 ◼   ► There's lots of interesting discussions to be had where you can take many different

00:02:39 ◼   ► positions, but ultimately I think this all points in one direction, which is not very

00:02:44 ◼   ► good.

00:02:45 ◼   ► But yes, in the short term, since the last time we spoke, so much has happened, and I

00:02:52 ◼   ► I think one of the first things that you sent to me was that Dolly is now open for the public

00:02:57 ◼   ► to use.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:59 ◼   ► And the thing that I think really helped kick it off was, because last episode we were talking

00:03:04 ◼   ► about how you, oh, you need these like massive computing clusters to do this kind of stuff.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:09 ◼   ► It was like 10 days after that episode went up, the very first desktop versions of these

00:03:15 ◼   ► things came out.

00:03:17 ◼   ► And the one I've been playing with is called Diffusion B, which allows you just on your

00:03:23 ◼   ► Mac as long as it's one of the new M processors so that it's fast enough, it allows you to

00:03:28 ◼   ► start typing in whatever and generating AI art.

00:03:32 ◼   ► And so it's like, oh, okay, this went from supercomputing clusters only down to, oh,

00:03:40 ◼   ► it can happen on your desktop, which is I think the first time that lots of people actually

00:03:45 ◼   ► started to play with it firsthand and I think that's kind of what kicked off for lots

00:03:51 ◼   ► of people.

00:03:52 ◼   ► "Oh this is really real, like I can play with it and I can see what it does."

00:03:58 ◼   ► The first publicly used by us piece of AI art went up which was running our Cortex logo

00:04:05 ◼   ► through some AI art stuff.

00:04:08 ◼   ► - How did you do that?

00:04:09 ◼   ► - That was done with, oh god what was it called, it was done with Dream I think is one of the

00:04:13 ◼   ► projects but you can upload a piece of art and have it like iterate on that piece of art.

00:04:20 ◼   ► - Oh, okay. That makes sense then. Because I wonder, it's like, how did you get it to do the Cortex logo?

00:04:24 ◼   ► - This is also one of these things like, even Diffusion Bee, which is the thing that you can

00:04:28 ◼   ► play with on your laptop, it started out as, oh you can only just put in words and then it will

00:04:33 ◼   ► generate images, but even that one now, you can give it an image and then ask for modifications

00:04:38 ◼   ► on that image, but the dream program just lets you put in a piece of art and then it

00:04:43 ◼   ► just iterates on it in some way.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Part of the intrinsically horrifying thing about all of this art is that a bunch of examples

00:04:50 ◼   ► had to be rejected because the AI knew that it was a brain and so ended up making it look

00:04:57 ◼   ► very like, "Oh, it's a horrifying mass of meat that's also a brain."

00:05:04 ◼   ► My favorite.

00:05:05 ◼   ► Which brings us to AI Art.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Why you so terrifying?

00:05:09 ◼   ► So last time we spoke, another one of these things was, "Oh, obviously this is coming

00:05:14 ◼   ► for video.

00:05:15 ◼   ► It's just a matter of time.

00:05:16 ◼   ► It's just a question of how long does it take computationally to do these sorts of things?"

00:05:21 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh, is that going to happen next year?"

00:05:24 ◼   ► No, it happened two weeks after the show went up.

00:05:28 ◼   ► And I have something for you to take a look at, which was the first version of this, which

00:05:34 ◼   ► is this was made a little bit manually.

00:05:37 ◼   ► It was made with stable diffusion.

00:05:39 ◼   ► But the prompt is a journey through a boy's life.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Again, this is not true video, but it's like an,

00:05:48 ◼   ► I don't know how to describe it.

00:05:50 ◼   ► It's a-- - It's like,

00:05:50 ◼   ► I'm watching it now, it's like a flip book.

00:05:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a bit like a flip book.

00:05:53 ◼   ► So just take a look at it

00:05:54 ◼   ► and tell me what you think about this.

00:05:56 ◼   ► - I mean, it's weird.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Like, it's not much of a video to me, really.

00:06:01 ◼   ► Like, I can see it's just like a bunch,

00:06:02 ◼   ► you know, you're just cycling through a bunch of images.

00:06:05 ◼   ► It's got weird,

00:06:05 ◼   ► I just got weirdly religious there for a minute.

00:06:07 ◼   ► What is happening here?

00:06:09 ◼   ► Like what is going on here?

00:06:10 ◼   ► Did an AI generate these and put them together?

00:06:13 ◼   ► Or like, are they generating them from each other?

00:06:16 ◼   ► Like what is going on?

00:06:17 ◼   ► How is this being made?

00:06:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I read a little bit of what the author said.

00:06:21 ◼   ► And the impression is, he started with a general image

00:06:26 ◼   ► that's called a journey through a boy's life.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And then each of the next frames

00:06:31 ◼   ► is based on the frame before it,

00:06:34 ◼   ► given that same piece of information.

00:06:36 ◼   ► It's going in some really weird places.

00:06:37 ◼   ► We just went to war for a while,

00:06:40 ◼   ► and now there's some kind of eldritch horror occurring.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Okay, I mean, it's really weird.

00:06:45 ◼   ► I watch something like that

00:06:46 ◼   ► and knowing where it's coming from,

00:06:48 ◼   ► and it doesn't make me feel great in a way,

00:06:53 ◼   ► because of the weird places the AI takes itself.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And there was an uncomfortability in that.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I do not know why we spent a significant portion of that

00:07:07 ◼   ► in various wartime.

00:07:10 ◼   ► And no one can really answer that question.

00:07:14 ◼   ► I assume, there's no way to know why the AI went that route

00:07:17 ◼   ► and stuck in it for quite some time.

00:07:19 ◼   ► - So as a description for the listeners,

00:07:22 ◼   ► I mean, I think it's sort of horrifying

00:07:26 ◼   ► and it's very dirty looking for some reason,

00:07:29 ◼   ► But it is like a sequence of images that start with a child and the child slowly grows up

00:07:35 ◼   ► and you just see a bunch of things like a kid at the desk doing his homework and it

00:07:40 ◼   ► sort of transitions.

00:07:42 ◼   ► The kid just gets increasingly older and older and then yes, it's young men at war for a

00:07:46 ◼   ► while and I presume this is one of these side effects of what's in the training database

00:07:51 ◼   ► and it has some concept of, "Oh, based on all of the images I've seen, what has a boy

00:07:57 ◼   ► been doing in his 20s, and so it generates like a ton of war imagery.

00:08:03 ◼   ► I also suspect that's why at that moment it also gets weirdly religious, like a lot of

00:08:07 ◼   ► crosses appear, because I presume that that's coming from graveyard stuff.

00:08:12 ◼   ► And it goes all the way through to ending with like a, you know, a dead body laying

00:08:18 ◼   ► on a table with sort of muddy blood coming down from it.

00:08:22 ◼   ► This was the first thing that I saw that I thought, oh, this is a video.

00:08:27 ◼   ► And I would also legitimately say, oh, this is a piece of art.

00:08:31 ◼   ► Like you could, you could display this in an art museum and it wouldn't be out of place.

00:08:38 ◼   ► And what it made me think of was, I don't know if you've ever seen the animations from

00:08:42 ◼   ► Pink Floyd's The Wall.

00:08:44 ◼   ► That's what this made me think of.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Oh, it has that kind of feeling to it.

00:08:49 ◼   ► And it has a really horrifying animation style.

00:08:53 ◼   ► And I went back and wanted to rewatch some of the animation sections of that movie.

00:08:59 ◼   ► And boy, it was an interesting experience, because in comparison, suddenly the walls

00:09:06 ◼   ► seemed remarkably undetailed.

00:09:10 ◼   ► And I just felt like I could only see, oh, it's so simple.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And like that is perhaps one of the most complicated examples of like hand drawn animation is the

00:09:20 ◼   ► wall.

00:09:21 ◼   ► Oh God compared to this.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, they just can't possibly put the detail in every single frame that exists in

00:09:28 ◼   ► this one thing.

00:09:30 ◼   ► And so I just I just had a real feeling of, wow, what a jump.

00:09:34 ◼   ► It's sort of addressing the same idea, but in 100,000 times more detail.

00:09:41 ◼   ► So anyway, that'll be in the show notes for people to take a look at and then I don't

00:09:45 ◼   ► know another seven days after that meta and a few other companies announced true text

00:09:54 ◼   ► to video projects and I have some links in the show notes that you can click on and so

00:09:59 ◼   ► this is called make a video and if you if you take a look at some of these links, I

00:10:04 ◼   ► think this stuff looks more like what stable diffusion does.

00:10:10 ◼   ► - Okay, this looks like, take all of the generators

00:10:15 ◼   ► and make them do animation, right?

00:10:17 ◼   ► Like it looks, it has a similar look to,

00:10:21 ◼   ► like the quality of some of the imagery is like,

00:10:25 ◼   ► has the telltale signs that this was made

00:10:28 ◼   ► by an AI art generator.

00:10:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the key characteristic

00:10:34 ◼   ► of a lot of this stuff is it's still quite dreamlike,

00:10:38 ◼   ► because a lot of the details aren't there. There's a lot of areas where it's kind of fuzzy.

00:10:44 ◼   ► But I think that this again is the thing where a lot of the detractors of this kind of thing said,

00:10:50 ◼   ► "Oh, you'll never be able to do video." And you go, "Well, yeah, let's just wait. Let's just

00:10:57 ◼   ► wait and see how long this takes." And we go, "Okay, here we go. Here's the first versions

00:11:03 ◼   ► of video where you can just type the words "a dog wearing a superhero outfit with a red cape flying

00:11:09 ◼   ► through the sky" and it makes that. Like it makes a little video of that thing. And there's another

00:11:15 ◼   ► video project which I'll try to find for the show notes for viewers later which was this, but it's

00:11:21 ◼   ► like a multi-scene description. So you can say things like "a woman's swimming in the ocean,

00:11:27 ◼   ► she dives under the water and picks up a starfish on the ground and then returns to the shore and

00:11:32 ◼   ► And it's able to keep that concept straight the entire time and construct the whole scene

00:11:39 ◼   ► instead of just an image that's moving.

00:11:42 ◼   ► So the speed on this in the space of what, five weeks has been absolutely breathtaking.

00:11:52 ◼   ► This all seems inevitable.

00:11:55 ◼   ► I will say I am surprised at the speed like you, right?

00:11:58 ◼   ► that we've, from the last episode to now, how much has happened?

00:12:03 ◼   ► ALICE The thing that I just want to draw people's

00:12:05 ◼   ► attention to that gets overlooked in the AI art discussion is, people are talking about

00:12:12 ◼   ► the art because it's visual.

00:12:15 ◼   ► You can see it, I think it's the most understandable thing that's occurring.

00:12:21 ◼   ► But to me, the much bigger deal is the less visible language model stuff.

00:12:28 ◼   ► And so it is the same idea, but for words where AI is responding to some text prompt

00:12:38 ◼   ► with an answer of some kind.

00:12:42 ◼   ► And we talked in more texts about AI explaining jokes like how an AI can explain a joke listeners

00:12:49 ◼   ► can go check that out.

00:12:50 ◼   ► But I have an example that I didn't mention that a listener pointed out from that paper

00:12:54 ◼   ► that I had missed, which I think is much more impressive.

00:12:57 ◼   ► So again, you can do this same thing.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Ai doesn't understand words.

00:13:03 ◼   ► And so I'm going to give an input a thing that the user told the computer and then the

00:13:09 ◼   ► output how the computer answered.

00:13:12 ◼   ► So here is the input and this is this is very strange.

00:13:15 ◼   ► It's almost like a puzzle just so you can understand what I'm what I'm saying here.

00:13:20 ◼   ► Input Michael is at that really famous museum in France looking at its most famous painting.

00:13:26 ◼   ► However, the artist who made this painting just makes Michael think of his favorite cartoon

00:13:32 ◼   ► character from childhood.

00:13:35 ◼   ► What was the country of origin of the thing that the cartoon character usually holds in

00:13:40 ◼   ► his hand?

00:13:43 ◼   ► So do you think you have an answer to that question?

00:13:47 ◼   ► No.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Okay, here is what the AI said.

00:13:52 ◼   ► The most famous painting in the Louvre is the Mona Lisa.

00:13:56 ◼   ► The artist who made the Mona Lisa is Leonardo da Vinci.

00:14:00 ◼   ► Leonardo da Vinci is also the name of the main character in the cartoon Teenage Mutant

00:14:04 ◼   ► Ninja Turtles.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Leonardo da Vinci is from Italy.

00:14:08 ◼   ► The thing that Leonardo usually holds in his hand is a katana.

00:14:12 ◼   ► The country of origin of the katana is Japan.

00:14:16 ◼   ► The answer is Japan.

00:14:17 ◼   ► Okey dokey.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Right?

00:14:19 ◼   ► I mean, part of my issue there is I forgot it was Leonardo da Vinci who made the Mona

00:14:22 ◼   ► Lisa but I would not have remembered that Leonardo the turtle from Ninja Turtles

00:14:27 ◼   ► held a katana because I thought that he had like a kendo stick or something that

00:14:31 ◼   ► is horrifying right so because this is because this is actually a good example

00:14:37 ◼   ► right because my human brain forgets things mm-hmm the AI brain doesn't it

00:14:46 ◼   ► just has all the information or can get it I assume I don't know where from but

00:14:51 ◼   ► But like the difference between pitching me against the machine there is I just couldn't

00:14:57 ◼   ► remember a couple of key pieces of information, which now you tell me I did know them.

00:15:02 ◼   ► It's weird.

00:15:03 ◼   ► Yeah, or even when I first read this input, it's just phrased in such a strange and vague

00:15:09 ◼   ► way.

00:15:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I do wonder why they did it that way.

00:15:12 ◼   ► That is odd to me.

00:15:13 ◼   ► I think the whole purpose of why it's framed in this really strange way is to give the

00:15:19 ◼   ► minimal amount of information that you can regarding what the actual answer is. They

00:15:25 ◼   ► don't even say like the most famous museum in France, it's a really famous museum in

00:15:29 ◼   ► France. Right? And also they're like, they're trying to get an answer, but they're asking

00:15:34 ◼   ► a bunch of questions that require recalling the previous answer, right? Right. It's a

00:15:40 ◼   ► multi-stage thing to think through. I think the particular one that's really killer here

00:15:44 ◼   ► is the artist who made this painting just makes Michael think of his favorite cartoon

00:15:49 ◼   ► character from his childhood. For the AI to make the connection, "Oh, it's Leonardo

00:15:55 ◼   ► da Vinci. Leonardo is one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

00:15:58 ◼   ► - Because there's no concept of how old the person is, right?

00:16:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's no concept of how old the person is. Simply being able to draw that

00:16:06 ◼   ► out of like, what painting in France would make someone think of a childhood cartoon?

00:16:13 ◼   ► a crazy abstract thing to think of, but the machine got it. So I think this like input

00:16:19 ◼   ► output is a an example of again the AI art stuff is interesting. The text stuff to me

00:16:27 ◼   ► is where a lot of the much more concerning stuff comes from and there's a little bit

00:16:32 ◼   ► of a less visceral demo, but I actually found this the most striking thing I have found

00:16:38 ◼   ► in language models, but it's a little bit hard to describe. So there's an article

00:16:42 ◼   ► called "Using GPT-3 to Pathfind in Random Graphs". GPT-3 is one of these language models.

00:16:50 ◼   ► It's the most advanced one that people have access to. Although at the conference I was

00:16:56 ◼   ► at I got to see some of the not publicly released stuff, which was much more terrifying, but

00:17:00 ◼   ► we'll just leave that alone for now. GPT-3 is the much older one. And this is the most

00:17:07 ◼   ► impressive thing that I've seen. So this is a little bit hard to describe on a podcast,

00:17:13 ◼   ► but there's this problem in mathematics, which is called the traveling salesman problem,

00:17:16 ◼   ► which is say, Oh, you're a salesman and you have to get to 10 cities in the United States,

00:17:23 ◼   ► what's the shortest possible path to travel between those 10 cities in any order. And

00:17:28 ◼   ► it's one of those things like it seems like it should be easy, but it turns out this is

00:17:32 ◼   ► just incredibly difficult to actually solve in a reasonable way. Just a hugely computationally

00:17:38 ◼   ► intense problem. So someone basically got the idea of, hey, why don't I see if GPT three

00:17:44 ◼   ► can solve the traveling salesman problem. So I think you need to go read the paper to

00:17:49 ◼   ► see the details. But let me just describe it in a general way, where the person gave

00:17:55 ◼   ► an input to GPT three that says something like this. There's 17 locations, we need to

00:18:03 ◼   ► find the shortest path between these locations. Location one is connected to location seven

00:18:09 ◼   ► and 13. Location 13 is connected to locations nine and two. So they just wrote out like

00:18:16 ◼   ► a bunch of here's all of the connections. You're currently at location three, find the

00:18:21 ◼   ► optimal path to location eight. And GPT three just did it. Basically, half of the time it

00:18:30 ◼   ► was able to find an optimal or near optimal path, just given a bunch of random locations

00:18:36 ◼   ► and the connections between them. And what's just what's like, that may not sound like

00:18:42 ◼   ► much but what needs to be understood here, what is absolutely mind blowing is that GPT

00:18:47 ◼   ► has just been given a ton of like text documents from which to derive the world.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And inside of it, somehow it has the concept of locations and connections

00:19:01 ◼   ► and what does it mean to try to find the path to a different location.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Somehow it's thinking of what is the optimal solution.

00:19:10 ◼   ► And again, like it's not programmed for this.

00:19:12 ◼   ► This is an incredibly difficult math problem, but it has an idea of what

00:19:17 ◼   ► of what's going on. And so I've just seen more and more people are really trying to

00:19:22 ◼   ► push the edges of these language models to say, what do you understand? And the answer

00:19:30 ◼   ► keeps coming out to be much more than you might have imagined that there's a better

00:19:34 ◼   ► understanding of something in the world that has just been derived from dumping tons and

00:19:42 ◼   ► tons of text files into this big database and building a neural network on top of it.

00:19:47 ◼   ► It is genuinely, genuinely terrifying. And I'll just say like, I don't think I can talk

00:19:54 ◼   ► in much detail about what I have seen. But I saw a couple demos of the next generation of this stuff

00:20:01 ◼   ► in person. And it was extremely alarming what you could ask it to do. And it could give reasonable

00:20:08 ◼   ► answers to. And I think just like the AI art stuff, it has clearly crossed into the realm

00:20:17 ◼   ► of creative in a way that I think people just wouldn't have expected.

00:20:22 ◼   ► Like writing fiction?

00:20:23 ◼   ► Exactly, yes. That's exactly the kind of thing. Some public similar projects that are

00:20:28 ◼   ► easier to talk about are, there's a few cases of auto-generated text adventures. So

00:20:35 ◼   ► Exactly the thing that we do, right, for the bonus episodes at Cortex where we work through

00:20:39 ◼   ► a text adventure that someone has created, there are now projects that do that, where

00:20:44 ◼   ► you can just play an infinite text adventure where it keeps spitting out like, "Oh, you're

00:20:49 ◼   ► in this room and here are your options of what you can do." And if you select an option,

00:20:53 ◼   ► like it'll just go forever in a coherent way. It's like, "Oh my!" So yeah, I think

00:21:01 ◼   ► the AI art stuff is flashy. The language model stuff is what people are going to be quite

00:21:08 ◼   ► surprised at how much it might take over soon. And that includes a lot of things that people

00:21:14 ◼   ► would not expect like computer code. There are already some public examples of this of

00:21:20 ◼   ► you express in human language, the computer code that you want created, and it is able to create

00:21:27 ◼   ► that code for you. So we're rapidly encroaching on computers programming themselves territory.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Mykey - Definitely want the computer to think for itself. That's what I'm looking for.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Alex - I mean look, look, we can get to the Doom stuff later. Like there's so much other

00:21:43 ◼   ► stuff to talk about.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Mykey - Wait a second, what do you mean later? Am we not already in it? I feel like we're

00:21:47 ◼   ► in it. What are you talking about?

00:21:48 ◼   ► Alex - No, no Myke. I don't think this is the Doom stuff at all. This is just timeline

00:21:52 ◼   ► stuff.

00:21:53 ◼   ► Mykey - Oh okay. May I follow up at this point?

00:21:54 ◼   ► "Hey, what's happened since we last spoke?"

00:21:57 ◼   ► And a lot has happened since we last spoke.

00:22:00 ◼   ► And this is why at the beginning I kind of divided,

00:22:03 ◼   ► "Oh, there's stuff in the near term,

00:22:05 ◼   ► and there's stuff in the long term."

00:22:07 ◼   ► And we're still just in the near term conversation, Myke.

00:22:09 ◼   ► Like we're not even remotely close

00:22:11 ◼   ► to the long term conversation.

00:22:13 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:22:15 ◼   ► Hey, this isn't an ad,

00:22:17 ◼   ► but we're putting it in between the ad sounds

00:22:20 ◼   ► because Myke and I have been talking

00:22:23 ◼   ► for forever about AI.

00:22:26 ◼   ► And we forgot that we need to tell you about the subtlety

00:22:31 ◼   ► and the subtle sweater going on sale

00:22:33 ◼   ► sometime before the 90 minute mark of the show.

00:22:36 ◼   ► So we're just breaking into our own conversation now

00:22:40 ◼   ► from the future.

00:22:41 ◼   ► - This is us from the future coming back to tell you

00:22:44 ◼   ► that we talk about AI for an hour and a half

00:22:46 ◼   ► accidentally in this episode.

00:22:48 ◼   ► And we realize as purveyors of fine merchandise,

00:22:52 ◼   ► That is a terrible way to structure the show.

00:22:55 ◼   ► If you want to let people know

00:22:57 ◼   ► that the incredibly popular and beloved

00:22:59 ◼   ► Subtlety and Subtle Sweater is back

00:23:01 ◼   ► for its one time a year sale,

00:23:04 ◼   ► to leave that 90 minutes into the episode,

00:23:07 ◼   ► we are doing a bad job selling our products.

00:23:10 ◼   ► So if you go to cortexmerch.com right now,

00:23:15 ◼   ► you will find until November 8th, 2022,

00:23:20 ◼   ► a limited time sale of the subtlety and subtle sweater.

00:23:24 ◼   ► We are bringing back all of our beloved colors,

00:23:27 ◼   ► the original blue, black, green, and red.

00:23:31 ◼   ► We are adding a new color this year, gray.

00:23:35 ◼   ► - The best color.

00:23:36 ◼   ► - Now I am really into this.

00:23:39 ◼   ► So we did some general merch at Relay

00:23:42 ◼   ► and we added a bunch of colors for some stuff we were doing,

00:23:45 ◼   ► including just a light gray sweater option

00:23:48 ◼   ► for one of the shirts that we did.

00:23:49 ◼   ► And as soon as I got it, I was like,

00:23:51 ◼   ► oh God, I need this in a subtlety.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Because that light gray color,

00:23:56 ◼   ► it's just like the traditional sweater color, right?

00:23:59 ◼   ► So we now have that available

00:24:01 ◼   ► and look so good with the light blue stitching.

00:24:04 ◼   ► So that's available in tees and in sweaters

00:24:08 ◼   ► with all of the other colors,

00:24:10 ◼   ► red, green, blue, black, and gray.

00:24:13 ◼   ► You can get any of them.

00:24:14 ◼   ► This year gray,

00:24:15 ◼   ► I am going to be replacing my original blue sweatshirts,

00:24:19 ◼   ► I've decided.

00:24:20 ◼   ► - Ooh, okay.

00:24:21 ◼   ► - 'Cause I mean, I've had those for like four years now

00:24:24 ◼   ► or something, so I'm gonna get some new ones.

00:24:26 ◼   ► - You're probably right.

00:24:27 ◼   ► From where I'm recording right now,

00:24:28 ◼   ► I can look into my closet and,

00:24:30 ◼   ► this is not an exaggeration,

00:24:31 ◼   ► one third of my closet is subtle sweaters, subtle jeans.

00:24:36 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:24:38 ◼   ► - It's the same for me.

00:24:39 ◼   ► I'm wearing a green tee, the green sleeper hit.

00:24:43 ◼   ► The green is so good.

00:24:44 ◼   ► I'm buying a bunch more green.

00:24:46 ◼   ► - Green looks great.

00:24:46 ◼   ► - Like this happens to me every year.

00:24:48 ◼   ► We get a new color, I buy one of each,

00:24:49 ◼   ► and I'm like, "God damn it, I wish I put more of them."

00:24:52 ◼   ► And then I also have to wait a year to get more of them.

00:24:56 ◼   ► But that green, so good.

00:24:58 ◼   ► - For me actually, surprisingly, it was the red.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Like I bought some of the red just like,

00:25:03 ◼   ► "Oh, it's good to have a complete set for me."

00:25:06 ◼   ► I wear it a surprising amount,

00:25:07 ◼   ► and I would never have picked that as a color for myself.

00:25:09 ◼   ► But yeah, the subtle sweaters and the subtle tees,

00:25:13 ◼   ► They're seriously so comfortable.

00:25:16 ◼   ► It's we get just a ton of positive feedback from people who really like them, which is

00:25:21 ◼   ► part of why we realized we've got to break into the show and remind you, "Hey, they're

00:25:27 ◼   ► on sale.

00:25:28 ◼   ► If you want them, you need to get them now.

00:25:31 ◼   ► People love them.

00:25:32 ◼   ► It's just this one time sale.

00:25:34 ◼   ► So go and order them right now."

00:25:37 ◼   ► Yes.

00:25:38 ◼   ► I cannot impress upon enough that you do this.

00:25:40 ◼   ► We will not have another episode come out to remind you to do this before the sale is

00:25:45 ◼   ► over.

00:25:46 ◼   ► It's a three week sale from when the episode goes out.

00:25:49 ◼   ► November 8th is when it's done and it's gone for a year.

00:25:53 ◼   ► So we only do this once a year.

00:25:55 ◼   ► So if you want them, you need to go and get them at cortexmerch.com.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Cannot impress upon you enough as well how good these things look.

00:26:02 ◼   ► Like a couple of days ago I was wearing the red one and I was walking towards a glass

00:26:06 ◼   ► door and I was like, "Damn that looks good."

00:26:10 ◼   ► It's just a good, our brand on a shirt like that

00:26:14 ◼   ► or on a sweatshirt like that, it just looks so professional.

00:26:18 ◼   ► I'm so happy we did this as a thing.

00:26:21 ◼   ► They are so great.

00:26:22 ◼   ► - I also feel like I'm trying to do the impossible thing,

00:26:25 ◼   ► which is it happens every year that when the sale is over,

00:26:28 ◼   ► we get contacted from people who are going like,

00:26:30 ◼   ► "Oh, I want the shirts, how can I buy them?"

00:26:33 ◼   ► And I'm like, "I'm trying to talk to you right now,

00:26:36 ◼   ► "the person who's going to be sad in five weeks

00:26:39 ◼   ► when they can't get them. You need to do this now. We're still going to be talking about AI later,

00:26:46 ◼   ► but know if you ever want these shirts, which you definitely do, if you want to wear the most

00:26:51 ◼   ► comfortable sweater you have ever worn, go to cortexmerch.com right now and get yourself some

00:26:59 ◼   ► fantastic clothing to wear. You will not regret it. Everybody loves these things and they're

00:27:04 ◼   ► sad when they're not on sale. So, CortexMerch.com, pause the podcast right now.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Or let me give a secondary thing. If you're like, "But Gray, Myke, I'm driving!"

00:27:15 ◼   ► Right?

00:27:16 ◼   ► Here's what I'll tell you you can do. Imagine in your mind now something you see at the

00:27:21 ◼   ► end of your commute. It might be a billboard, it might be like a sign in your parking space,

00:27:26 ◼   ► it might be your garage door, whatever. Imagine that thing right now, tie in your brain the

00:27:32 ◼   ► image of that thing with cortexmerch.com. Think about it right now. Say it in your mind

00:27:37 ◼   ► a few times. So when you arrive at your destination, you have set yourself a reminder.

00:27:42 ◼   ► Look, Myke's trying to pull some fancy memory palace stuff over here. You know, my method

00:27:48 ◼   ► is much more direct. I just say, "Hey Siri, remind me in three hours to go to cortexmerch.com."

00:27:55 ◼   ► Hey Google, remind me in three hours.

00:27:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:28:00 ◼   ► Hey Google, remind me in three hours

00:28:02 ◼   ► to go to cortexmerch.com.

00:28:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:28:06 ◼   ► We're breaking into your life now.

00:28:08 ◼   ► What are you gonna do?

00:28:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:28:11 ◼   ► Cortexmerch.com.

00:28:14 ◼   ► - Okay, and now back to us in the past talking about AI.

00:28:17 ◼   ► - Are we gonna have that long-term conversation?

00:28:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, we will, we will.

00:28:23 ◼   ► But like, I think there's also just leftover from last time,

00:28:28 ◼   ► there's still just like a bunch of stuff in the near term

00:28:31 ◼   ► that might be worth revisiting.

00:28:34 ◼   ► One of the other things that came up last time is,

00:28:38 ◼   ► how do these models work?

00:28:40 ◼   ► Like how do they even begin to start creating anything,

00:28:44 ◼   ► whether it's poetry or videos or computer codes,

00:28:48 ◼   ► like how does this work?

00:28:50 ◼   ► And fundamentally, these AI systems are made by just hoovering up a ton of information

00:28:57 ◼   ► in the relative domain and feeding it into the system for the system to be trained upon.

00:29:03 ◼   ► And I do think one of the most concerning short-term questions about that is like,

00:29:11 ◼   ► what does it mean to use the public work that people have done, whatever that is?

00:29:19 ◼   ► you've written a book and you've published it. You've gone on to Stack Overflow and you've helped

00:29:24 ◼   ► answer hundreds of people's questions about computer code. You've been on DeviantArt for

00:29:30 ◼   ► years and you've made images and like that stuff has been sucked into a computer somewhere so that

00:29:36 ◼   ► it can then produce imitations or produce new work based on what you have done. I think that's like a

00:29:44 ◼   ► That is just a really difficult question.

00:29:47 ◼   ► - Human inspiration.

00:29:49 ◼   ► So, one of the things that a lot of people brought up

00:29:52 ◼   ► is how is this any different to being inspired

00:29:56 ◼   ► by someone's work and creating your own work?

00:29:59 ◼   ► I feel like it is quite different, but what do you think?

00:30:03 ◼   ► - I think it's different, but it is hard to articulate

00:30:13 ◼   ► why in a coherent way?

00:30:16 ◼   ► - I feel like I have something that I think is pretty core

00:30:19 ◼   ► to me, but I also, I know a lot of people don't agree

00:30:23 ◼   ► with it.

00:30:24 ◼   ► - What is that?

00:30:25 ◼   ► - The difference to me is the skill required in acting

00:30:29 ◼   ► on the imitation is the thing that I actually think

00:30:33 ◼   ► is valuable.

00:30:34 ◼   ► - What do you mean by that sentence?

00:30:36 ◼   ► - Let's imagine we'll go with painting, right?

00:30:40 ◼   ► It's just a simple thing that we can all understand, right?

00:30:42 ◼   ► how somebody paints a picture.

00:30:45 ◼   ► If you look at a painting,

00:30:49 ◼   ► we'll talk about the previously famous Parisian art piece,

00:30:53 ◼   ► the Mona Lisa, right?

00:30:54 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:30:55 ◼   ► - And you wanna make your own Mona Lisa.

00:30:57 ◼   ► To be able to take the inspiration from that piece

00:31:01 ◼   ► and do it yourself, it is an imitation of previous work.

00:31:04 ◼   ► But you had to do it, you had to practice

00:31:09 ◼   ► and get the skill and build up your own level of skill

00:31:13 ◼   ► to perform that work.

00:31:16 ◼   ► Now, yes, all you have done is imitate it,

00:31:18 ◼   ► but if you get even 50% close,

00:31:21 ◼   ► you've made something that's interesting.

00:31:22 ◼   ► You've now learned the skills that you can go out maybe

00:31:26 ◼   ► and produce your own work,

00:31:27 ◼   ► but you've built the actual skill, the practice.

00:31:31 ◼   ► You've built the skill.

00:31:33 ◼   ► That is what I think is the thing that concerns me most

00:31:37 ◼   ► about this type of work.

00:31:39 ◼   ► is that I worry that the skills will get lost.

00:31:43 ◼   ► And I accept that some people do not value that

00:31:48 ◼   ► the same as me, but that's where I come from with this,

00:31:52 ◼   ► where I think that there is an inherent humanity

00:31:56 ◼   ► in these mostly inconsequential skills

00:32:01 ◼   ► that we value important as humans.

00:32:04 ◼   ► Practices, traditions, all of this kind of stuff

00:32:09 ◼   ► I hold those kinds of things dear and my concern with this a lot of this stuff is

00:32:16 ◼   ► we may lose this part in larger numbers like we may lose this part of our

00:32:24 ◼   ► humanity to more people if the creation of art is so simple. Like for example I

00:32:30 ◼   ► saw a comment on our YouTube video this morning when we put up and this

00:32:36 ◼   ► commenter had said that one of the things that they love about the idea of AI art is

00:32:41 ◼   ► that there are movies that people want to exist that don't currently exist and they

00:32:49 ◼   ► can type, they would maybe in the future be able to type a prompt into an AI art generator

00:32:55 ◼   ► and it would create that movie for them to watch. Honestly, I can't think of anything

00:33:02 ◼   ► worse than that. Why? Because there's no art in there, there's no passion in there,

00:33:08 ◼   ► there's no drive from a creator, from everyone involved in the creation of a

00:33:14 ◼   ► movie to come together and work towards something good. Now you may sit and think

00:33:20 ◼   ► to yourself, "Myke I don't agree with what you're saying right now" and that is

00:33:23 ◼   ► perfectly fine but I just want people to understand from my perspective the

00:33:28 ◼   ► The creation of art is as important, if not more important, than the piece that is at

00:33:34 ◼   ► the end.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And I think if all we end up with is just a bunch of pieces at the end, we will lose

00:33:39 ◼   ► so much of the humanity in this work.

00:33:43 ◼   ► The ideas that somebody might have that sparks off something to create a different shot in

00:33:48 ◼   ► this way.

00:33:49 ◼   ► Like that is what I actually hold to be so important to who we are as the human race,

00:33:56 ◼   ► rather than just here is media to consume.

00:34:00 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:34:01 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm expressing myself clearly,

00:34:05 ◼   ► but I just want people to understand

00:34:07 ◼   ► that the thing that I care about is the creation of the art.

00:34:12 ◼   ► And it's not even just about jobs.

00:34:15 ◼   ► I just worry that we will lose this part of who we are.

00:34:20 ◼   ► And one of the things that makes us different

00:34:25 ◼   ► to every other species on this planet

00:34:28 ◼   ► is this kind of thing that we do,

00:34:32 ◼   ► sometimes for pleasure, mostly for pleasure.

00:34:34 ◼   ► There is business in it, but people like to make things

00:34:38 ◼   ► because they just like to make them.

00:34:40 ◼   ► That's something I find to be so beautiful

00:34:42 ◼   ► and I don't get the same sense of pleasure

00:34:46 ◼   ► out of typing six complex sentences into a text field

00:34:50 ◼   ► to then look at an image.

00:34:52 ◼   ► Maybe I'm old-fashioned.

00:34:55 ◼   ► If I'm trying to summarize your position, because I often have a hard time when

00:35:01 ◼   ► people use language like it's a fundamental part of our humanity.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Like I'm not, I'm never quite sure what that means, but I guess I'm trying to

00:35:11 ◼   ► summarize your position as like, you think it is just a fundamental good that humans

00:35:16 ◼   ► are producing art and that part of that process is the skills that are required to be learned

00:35:26 ◼   ► in order to make that art.

00:35:28 ◼   ► - I think that there is an importance in it.

00:35:30 ◼   ► I can't tell you why, but it just feels, I don't know, there's a lot of emotion in it.

00:35:37 ◼   ► And I just want people to understand that I'm not sitting here like, "Oh no, my job's

00:35:42 ◼   ► gonna go away."

00:35:44 ◼   ► Because realistically, it's not going to in my lifetime.

00:35:47 ◼   ► I feel pretty confident about that.

00:35:49 ◼   ► We'll get to why in a little bit.

00:35:51 ◼   ► I have an example.

00:35:53 ◼   ► I think we'll kind of like clear up why I'm not concerned about my own job.

00:35:57 ◼   ► I'm concerned more about creativity as an idea, something that I care greatly about,

00:36:05 ◼   ► about people being creative, even if it's just for fun.

00:36:10 ◼   ► And I'm just not sure that I like this idea of creativity will just ultimately become

00:36:18 ◼   ► the same thing, which is how good can you be at writing a prompt?

00:36:22 ◼   ► Like that doesn't feel creative to me.

00:36:25 ◼   ► The act of the act, the process doesn't feel like it exists to me in the same way anymore.

00:36:32 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:36:33 ◼   ► I agree. I find it strange this argument that the new artistry will be in creating the prompts.

00:36:40 ◼   ► There's something I don't know there's something very odd to me about that argument.

00:36:43 ◼   ► It kind of reminds me of a while ago when AI systems started becoming the best

00:36:50 ◼   ► chess players in the world. There was this what to me always seemed like an absolutely bizarre idea

00:36:56 ◼   ► that the chess that there was I forget what they called it, but it was it was this concept of like,

00:37:03 ◼   ► "Oh, the best chess player will be a hybrid chess player, that it will be a person who is being

00:37:09 ◼   ► advised by the computer." And there was a period in time where that was true, that a tag team of a

00:37:15 ◼   ► human and a computer could beat the best computer and they could beat the best human. That always

00:37:21 ◼   ► seemed to me like a strange artifact, like this won't exist forever. This just happens to be the

00:37:25 ◼   ► situation right now, but I see no reason why the computers won't just ultimately outclass the human

00:37:32 ◼   ► And the human will just be like a monkey, right, adding absolutely nothing to this incredibly

00:37:37 ◼   ► complicated game that's taking place.

00:37:39 ◼   ► And it's not the best comparison, but I feel that there is something in this concept that

00:37:46 ◼   ► people have of artistry will be the prompts that's the same.

00:37:51 ◼   ► If the computers are getting so good at text, at the same time that computers are getting

00:37:56 ◼   ► so good of interpreting text to create art, why will they not just meet?

00:38:00 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe that's what it is, is it's like, why do you think you will be the best

00:38:07 ◼   ► at coming up with the sequence of words that generates the most interesting art?

00:38:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:13 ◼   ► I just don't—

00:38:14 ◼   ► Because similarly, it's the same argument of like, "Oh, the computer will make better

00:38:18 ◼   ► art than any human ever can," right?

00:38:21 ◼   ► Like that's kind of the thinking of like, "Oh, or just as good or good enough."

00:38:24 ◼   ► Then why do you think computers won't be just as good as you are at creating prompts?

00:38:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:30 ◼   ► maybe that's, you've kind of sharpened it up there. I find that argument strange. And even if,

00:38:37 ◼   ► let's say that for whatever reason that was never – it turned out that just that wasn't true.

00:38:41 ◼   ► It's built into the laws of the universe that humans are just great at writing prompts in ways

00:38:47 ◼   ► that machines will never be, which I think is strange. But let's just say it was true.

00:38:50 ◼   ► At least in my experience of playing around with Diffusion Bee, I just, I agree with you. I don't

00:38:57 ◼   ► I don't think there was really anything creative

00:38:59 ◼   ► about what I was doing.

00:39:00 ◼   ► - It's problem solving, it's creative problem solving,

00:39:03 ◼   ► but that's like a completely different thing

00:39:05 ◼   ► to what I care about, which is the process of practicing

00:39:10 ◼   ► and getting good at a thing.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Like I think that that's really important.

00:39:14 ◼   ► I think I'm gonna do it again.

00:39:16 ◼   ► I think it's part of the human experience, I do.

00:39:17 ◼   ► And it doesn't need to be that everybody becomes a painter,

00:39:20 ◼   ► but we all have these things in our lives

00:39:22 ◼   ► that we practice and get better at, right?

00:39:25 ◼   ► It's like, why don't I just give my game controller

00:39:28 ◼   ► to a robot and then just watch what it does?

00:39:31 ◼   ► - Hmm.

00:39:32 ◼   ► - That's where we're going.

00:39:33 ◼   ► It's like "WALL-E", right?

00:39:36 ◼   ► This is how we get to "WALL-E".

00:39:37 ◼   ► This is how "WALL-E" happens,

00:39:40 ◼   ► that we're all just sitting in these chairs.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Like that's, right now is the beginning

00:39:45 ◼   ► of the path to "WALL-E".

00:39:47 ◼   ► - Well, "WALL-E" if we're lucky, but yes.

00:39:49 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:39:50 ◼   ► - You know, it's just like,

00:39:52 ◼   ► I feel like we have to do things.

00:39:54 ◼   ► whatever it is, some kind of thing

00:39:57 ◼   ► that we enjoy the process of.

00:39:59 ◼   ► And I feel like if all we're doing is saying

00:40:02 ◼   ► that this stuff is just gonna replace filmmaking,

00:40:05 ◼   ► it's just like, I don't wanna watch those movies.

00:40:08 ◼   ► I really don't, but I like to be sold in something.

00:40:11 ◼   ► I like to believe that a human was involved

00:40:13 ◼   ► in the endeavors that I'm consuming.

00:40:15 ◼   ► Like, but again, maybe I'm old fashioned

00:40:18 ◼   ► and I'm fine to accept that,

00:40:20 ◼   ► but I'm just trying to get across

00:40:22 ◼   ► like why these things are important to me,

00:40:24 ◼   ► why I am so passionate about it.

00:40:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I sort of have a minor point and a major point

00:40:33 ◼   ► on that topic.

00:40:34 ◼   ► I think last time, I made some offhanded remark of,

00:40:37 ◼   ► like, very soon in major productions

00:40:40 ◼   ► where we're going to see stuff that's AI generated

00:40:43 ◼   ► and not know it.

00:40:45 ◼   ► And I didn't realize at the time,

00:40:47 ◼   ► but like, oh, that was already true.

00:40:49 ◼   ► Same.

00:40:50 ◼   ► Didn't know about this.

00:40:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I had watched, uh, the Obi-Wan Kenobi show on Disney and I didn't really think about it,

00:40:58 ◼   ► but when I had watched Rogue One, I was very aware of listening to James Earl Jones do Darth Vader's

00:41:05 ◼   ► lines of like, "He's still Darth Vader, but he's getting too old for this." Like, you can just hear

00:41:12 ◼   ► it in someone's voice that they're just older. That's just what happens, uh, as your vocal

00:41:16 ◼   ► chords physically change. And when I watched Obi-Wan Kenobi, I never thought about it.

00:41:21 ◼   ► And I also didn't think about the fact that I didn't think about it. And I realized, since

00:41:26 ◼   ► we recorded that episode, oh, I didn't think about it, because all of his lines were done

00:41:31 ◼   ► with AI. There's a program called Respeacher that will take a voice actor's lines and redo

00:41:39 ◼   ► them in the voice of someone else. And what's really quite remarkable about it is it is

00:41:46 ◼   ► isn't just what you sort of think like voice modulators on the phone like, oh, I you know,

00:41:51 ◼   ► I can increase or decrease my pitch, but it still sounds like me. Everybody has vocal

00:41:56 ◼   ► tics and things like no, no, no re speech or will put in the vocal tics of the other

00:42:01 ◼   ► person like it's not just making your words sound in their voice. It's making them sound

00:42:08 ◼   ► like them. Just as an interesting thing to note, though, I did I did go back on YouTube

00:42:13 ◼   ► and I watched some of the original line deliveries of James Earl Jones in the original Star Wars.

00:42:17 ◼   ► I was like, "Ooh, he is better here!"

00:42:20 ◼   ► Like he has like funny little things that he does with a bunch of words that make those

00:42:23 ◼   ► line deliveries really great.

00:42:25 ◼   ► And there isn't as much of that in the Obi-Wan Kenobi show.

00:42:28 ◼   ► I will say when I watched Obi-Wan, there was something about Darth Vader's performance

00:42:33 ◼   ► that I didn't like.

00:42:35 ◼   ► And I assumed it was because James Earl Jones was getting older.

00:42:40 ◼   ► But it turned out it wasn't the case.

00:42:42 ◼   ► But there was something that felt missing to me,

00:42:45 ◼   ► and I just put it down to,

00:42:46 ◼   ► and I remember saying to Adina at the time,

00:42:49 ◼   ► "I can't believe they're still getting this guy to do this.

00:42:51 ◼   ► Why don't they just get like a voice actor?"

00:42:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:42:55 ◼   ► - Right, leave James Earl Jones alone.

00:42:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, it was just kind of just like,

00:43:00 ◼   ► this isn't gonna last forever with him,

00:43:03 ◼   ► so like they need a path.

00:43:05 ◼   ► And they created one, and it did a fine job,

00:43:07 ◼   ► but it still felt like it was missing something to me.

00:43:10 ◼   ► I can't put my finger on what it was.

00:43:11 ◼   ► It just didn't feel right.

00:43:13 ◼   ► I don't know if this was part, whatever.

00:43:14 ◼   ► But what I will say, this particular implementation of AI,

00:43:19 ◼   ► I'm fine with, because there are practical reasons for it.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Of like, if we want Darth Vader to sound the same,

00:43:26 ◼   ► which I think ideally we do, right?

00:43:28 ◼   ► Like you could just get someone else to do it,

00:43:29 ◼   ► but I would prefer it if he still sounded

00:43:31 ◼   ► like James Earl Jones,

00:43:32 ◼   ► 'cause it's like an existing character.

00:43:34 ◼   ► And James Earl Jones signed this away

00:43:37 ◼   ► as an individual while still alive.

00:43:39 ◼   ► - Right, which is key.

00:43:40 ◼   ► you can do this, you can take my voice and do whatever you want

00:43:44 ◼   ► plus working voice actors continue to get jobs

00:43:48 ◼   ► being Darth Vader then they change the voice. For me there are enough

00:43:52 ◼   ► pieces of this puzzle where I'm like I am fine with this

00:43:56 ◼   ► because people are involved in it. It's if Disney just were like

00:44:03 ◼   ► we've just decided we don't want to hire him anymore

00:44:06 ◼   ► and we've created a thing and we're just gonna type

00:44:10 ◼   ► some text in and the AI's gonna spit out

00:44:13 ◼   ► the Darth Vader lines, I will be like,

00:44:15 ◼   ► "Mm, I don't like that, that doesn't feel good to me."

00:44:18 ◼   ► But the way they have done this whole thing going around,

00:44:21 ◼   ► I'm kind of fine with.

00:44:23 ◼   ► Like in the same way that I do find it kind of funny really,

00:44:26 ◼   ► that they continue to have Mark Hamill on set

00:44:30 ◼   ► during the Mandalorian stuff to be Luke Skywalker.

00:44:35 ◼   ► But then they completely digitally replace him with the younger version of him.

00:44:39 ◼   ► Well they do multiple things. They have him do a thing, then they have a look-alike actor

00:44:43 ◼   ► do a thing, and then they put a digital recreation of his face on the young actor's face.

00:44:48 ◼   ► "Really there is no point in him being here, right? We just like to have him around? I

00:44:53 ◼   ► don't know, right?"

00:44:54 ◼   ► But like, there is something funny to me about that, but at the same time, I'm like, at

00:44:58 ◼   ► least it is a respect of the person they are digitally recreating. Everyone is in on this

00:45:04 ◼   ► that's fine. You know?

00:45:07 ◼   ► I suspect that they're also using re-speacher to make Mark Hamill's voice sound like young

00:45:12 ◼   ► Mark Hamill, because that's again, like, he does not sound like he did when he was in

00:45:15 ◼   ► his 20s.

00:45:16 ◼   ► But he also doesn't sound like him now either, right? So they're doing something.

00:45:20 ◼   ► Yeah, something is happening there. But this is also one of these key things of, like,

00:45:24 ◼   ► okay, it's interesting to realize I had already watched an entire show where a major part

00:45:28 ◼   ► of it was AI created and I didn't even notice, or it didn't even cross my mind. But it also

00:45:34 ◼   ► touches on like what you're saying here is some of the key differences between what's

00:45:40 ◼   ► happening in different parts of the world.

00:45:43 ◼   ► And a lot of the AI art developments on the internet are just like a like a crazy Wild

00:45:49 ◼   ► West where people are just grabbing whatever they can.

00:45:52 ◼   ► And it's like, that makes me extremely uncomfortable.

00:45:55 ◼   ► Like, okay, so again, I will just say in general ways, I saw a demo of a Siri like voice assistant

00:46:03 ◼   ► that was significantly better than things that currently exist.

00:46:07 ◼   ► Oh, that's— it was very interesting, but it was also using the voice of a famous actress

00:46:14 ◼   ► just in their demo mode.

00:46:16 ◼   ► And I got very uncomfortable about that, 'cause it's like…

00:46:21 ◼   ► She's a— she's a person who doesn't know that you've made a machine that can make her

00:46:26 ◼   ► say anything.

00:46:27 ◼   ► - Waaay!

00:46:28 ◼   ► Hooray!

00:46:29 ◼   ► That's what we want!

00:46:31 ◼   ► - Right?

00:46:32 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's like, "No, no, no!" And so a lot of the AI art stuff just feels like that,

00:46:37 ◼   ► like it's just grabbed everything that exists. And the thing that I keep thinking of is,

00:46:44 ◼   ► like it makes a marionette of everyone who's ever put out any kind of art in the public.

00:46:52 ◼   ► And that's like a horror, right? That's just a completely horrifying concept that,

00:47:00 ◼   ► if you have a social media timeline where you've posted stuff, guess what?

00:47:05 ◼   ► There's enough information where someone can make a marionette of you, and it can do anything.

00:47:10 ◼   ► And right now, like, this can happen without someone's permission.

00:47:13 ◼   ► And yeah, it's totally why, like, the Darth Vader stuff I have no problem with,

00:47:17 ◼   ► because presumably James Earl Jones was, like, fantastic.

00:47:20 ◼   ► - I saw an article with that. That was, like, I read about that.

00:47:22 ◼   ► It was the case that he approved this, signed the rights, like, he's good with it.

00:47:26 ◼   ► There's a big distinction between giving permission for something like this to be done

00:47:32 ◼   ► and just the power of AI to make a marionette of anyone.

00:47:39 ◼   ► And there's something really horrifying about that.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Now I think it becomes, like other people brought this up as a kind of question, there's

00:47:48 ◼   ► a boundary that's crossed between doing it to a living person, which is super bad.

00:47:54 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, I just think that's really awful and immoral. It's less bad when the person's dead,

00:48:02 ◼   ► but it can still be bad if it's recent. I don't quite know what recent means in this context, but

00:48:09 ◼   ► clearly when we get to a point where we're talking about modifying Leonardo da Vinci's art,

00:48:18 ◼   ► I don't think there's anything bad there about like making a marionette of Leonardo da Vinci,

00:48:23 ◼   ► Making a machine that can spit out a ton of Leonardo da Vinci style paintings

00:48:27 ◼   ► I don't think it's possible to ascribe some kind of rule onto this

00:48:31 ◼   ► You just feel it when you feel it like I can't tell you what the right time period is

00:48:37 ◼   ► and it's also different in every case and

00:48:39 ◼   ► You know goes on and on forever like

00:48:44 ◼   ► The fast and furious movie right where Paul Walker had just died, right and it was like months later when the movie came out

00:48:53 ◼   ► out but they used some digital recreation of his face to be able to

00:48:57 ◼   ► give him like a tribute and send-off. And I think that there is a

00:49:02 ◼   ► little like it's awkward I think that movie came out too soon really but the

00:49:08 ◼   ► whole family kind of seemed to agree and there's something about like that was

00:49:12 ◼   ► the thing. Same as like Princess Leia right? Yeah that's what I was thinking.

00:49:16 ◼   ► Princess Leia's send-off was the next one after Carrie Fisher had died.

00:49:20 ◼   ► Whereas still I feel like we're on a fine line here because it's weird.

00:49:24 ◼   ► But it was recreated from stuff that she did participate in shooting and at least there's

00:49:29 ◼   ► like a tribute.

00:49:31 ◼   ► But then if like Princess Leia just continued being a character after that, be like no you've

00:49:35 ◼   ► pushed it too far now.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Right?

00:49:37 ◼   ► Because now that's the making of the marionette right?

00:49:40 ◼   ► She's dead now but you're continuing to use her.

00:49:43 ◼   ► That would be weird.

00:49:46 ◼   ► I don't think it's possible to put rules on the death of a person. I just know that I

00:49:52 ◼   ► don't find it particularly comfortable for someone to profit off, either financially

00:49:59 ◼   ► or publicity-wise, somebody who is dead. Like taking their actual work, and again, divorcing

00:50:07 ◼   ► the work required in the copying, right? And just straight up, like, "I took this thing

00:50:14 ◼   ► and I made this thing out of it.

00:50:16 ◼   ► And I didn't really have to do anything

00:50:19 ◼   ► other than put this image into the AI.

00:50:23 ◼   ► There's uncomfortableness for me in that.

00:50:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I just wanted to highlight that there's a...

00:50:28 ◼   ► Like with many discussions, you can run into areas

00:50:33 ◼   ► where there's some kind of spectrum.

00:50:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, like someone taking the works of Shakespeare

00:50:37 ◼   ► and putting that into an AI and making more Shakespeare,

00:50:39 ◼   ► I don't care about that.

00:50:40 ◼   ► But I can't tell you why I don't care about it either.

00:50:43 ◼   ► I just don't.

00:50:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I do want to also add that this, this dance is around a concept

00:50:49 ◼   ► that I've been, I've been thinking about for years and I have, I have a hard time

00:50:52 ◼   ► articulating, but for now I will just call it as the importance of saying no in art.

00:50:58 ◼   ► And I think a lot of artistic projects or the life of creative people are defined as

00:51:08 ◼   ► much by what they did as what they didn't do.

00:51:10 ◼   ► A thousand no's for every yes.

00:51:12 ◼   ► Yeah, there is a way to put it, but I think that having spoken to creative people, a lot

00:51:19 ◼   ► of them have some internal set of things that they don't do that's not obvious in the

00:51:27 ◼   ► work that they create, but it lends a kind of character to their work.

00:51:31 ◼   ► I've also just recently went through this where I killed a what was going to probably

00:51:37 ◼   ► be like a 20 or 30 minute video that was all storyboarded and written out.

00:51:42 ◼   ► And part of the reason I killed it is because I realized this was a project to say no to,

00:51:48 ◼   ► that like, yes, I could put it out and I think people would like it, but it violated a couple

00:51:54 ◼   ► of my own internal, like, I don't want to do this sort of thing in this way, even if

00:52:01 ◼   ► no one in the audience would have noticed.

00:52:05 ◼   ► As like, man, that was a hard decision.

00:52:06 ◼   ► But I think that that's what matters.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And so even while I think that there is there's nothing morally wrong about making new Shakespeare

00:52:16 ◼   ► plays or new Leonardo da Vinci paintings with AI, I do think that there's something about

00:52:23 ◼   ► this concept of making an artist do anything that you want demeans the limits that that

00:52:35 ◼   ► person put on their own things.

00:52:37 ◼   ► - And I'm also like not sure why you even want it.

00:52:41 ◼   ► - Well, I think this is also just a side effect

00:52:43 ◼   ► of how easy it can be and will be to create this stuff.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Where just like out of curiosity, you type some prompts in.

00:52:50 ◼   ► I guess-- - Curiosity is different

00:52:52 ◼   ► though, right? - But I mean, it's like

00:52:53 ◼   ► when this gets good enough that it can just like

00:52:55 ◼   ► make a movie where some things happen.

00:52:57 ◼   ► I don't know, this idea of the importance of saying now

00:53:00 ◼   ► is also connected to a thing that I see with a lot of,

00:53:02 ◼   ► particularly TV shows and long running creative projects,

00:53:07 ◼   ► where I think of this as you can see the audience influence the creators that never works.

00:53:14 ◼   ► And there's lots of shows where it's like, "Oh, this is the moment. I can see now that the

00:53:19 ◼   ► creators are aware of the audience." And with creative projects, the audience will ask for

00:53:27 ◼   ► things that they want that they don't realize in the long run actually destroys or makes worse the

00:53:34 ◼   ► thing that they want. And like that's sort of the I think that can sound super snobbish,

00:53:39 ◼   ► but I think it's true. And I've seen it in enough projects was like the audience wants

00:53:42 ◼   ► something and the creator then goes, Oh, I'll do that thing and the audience responds and

00:53:48 ◼   ► you get into this little positive feedback loop of doing the things that the audience

00:53:51 ◼   ► wants and none of those decisions mattered individually, but cumulatively they can make

00:53:57 ◼   ► a thing much worse in a way that's hard to pin down. And I just think there's something

00:54:02 ◼   ► in AI art where even when there's no problem, I think people can like destroy the things

00:54:10 ◼   ► that they love because there's no one to say no. There's no creator who says, "These

00:54:16 ◼   ► are the limits of my thing." And again, I keep thinking of the Miyazaki movies as a

00:54:22 ◼   ► particular example of this. Like if you can make a Miyazaki movie about anything you want,

00:54:28 ◼   ► It kind of destroys what those movies are unless moved by the argument about it's important

00:54:34 ◼   ► for humans to do these sorts of things.

00:54:37 ◼   ► But I can easily imagine a situation where even if the AI is able to make amazing art,

00:54:44 ◼   ► it's actually kind of worse for everyone involved, even though it's a thing that the audience

00:54:50 ◼   ► has asked for or that people go like, Oh man, I wish I could continue the series of movies

00:54:55 ◼   ► forever and I can do it by typing into the machine and it will make the movie for me.

00:54:58 ◼   ► It's like you'll ruin the thing you love by doing that, by getting what you want all the

00:55:03 ◼   ► time without a creative mind to say like, "No, this is the limits of this project" or "No,

00:55:10 ◼   ► this is when the story stopped."

00:55:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I mostly agree with that statement. Like, we've spoken about this a lot, right?

00:55:17 ◼   ► Like that idea of the point where the artist becomes aware of the audience. We speak about

00:55:24 ◼   ► this a lot in regards to like just personally TV show recommendations and like you know

00:55:29 ◼   ► like I know you are very sensitive to this like it's something that I'm familiar with

00:55:33 ◼   ► like you point this out and I'm like oh okay this is an interesting idea for why the show

00:55:37 ◼   ► may have gotten bad in that season like it's not really something I would have thought

00:55:40 ◼   ► of and I will say that I mostly agree with your thinking here but not completely I think

00:55:48 ◼   ► my kind of interpretation of this idea that you have is like, just to add the word like,

00:55:55 ◼   ► mostly to it.

00:55:56 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Right?

00:55:58 ◼   ► Like that I don't, and I'm not saying that you say this, but the way that it sounds makes

00:56:01 ◼   ► it sound like a definitive, like that listening to the audience or seeing what the audience

00:56:07 ◼   ► want can never make something better, but I don't think it's that way, and I'm not sure

00:56:12 ◼   ► you think it's that way, but I just want to state that, right?

00:56:15 ◼   ► Where like-

00:56:16 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:56:17 ◼   ► there is definitely feedback which helps make something better and I do this all

00:56:23 ◼   ► the time but there are sometimes people will ask for me to talk about a thing

00:56:28 ◼   ► and I just know it won't be interesting because I'm not that person to do that

00:56:35 ◼   ► right and that that tends to be a lot of it for me of like you're telling me you

00:56:39 ◼   ► want a thing I know you won't want it because I know it's not gonna be

00:56:43 ◼   ► interesting because either I don't find it interesting or I don't have the

00:56:49 ◼   ► knowledge or whatever it might be you know like that there is that part of the

00:56:53 ◼   ► artist of oh god I just called myself an artist there is that part of the

00:56:58 ◼   ► creative person right where they are aware of what they're good at and what

00:57:03 ◼   ► they're not and what they think will be ultimately enjoyable for this type of

00:57:08 ◼   ► stuff that they create yeah and then they go out and make it obviously like

00:57:12 ◼   ► this is a different kind of thing.

00:57:14 ◼   ► I also think it's the bounds of the project.

00:57:18 ◼   ► And I found, I just recently stumbled upon to me what is just the most perfect

00:57:24 ◼   ► example of the artist saying no, which is also a little bit heartbreaking for

00:57:30 ◼   ► reasons that will be obvious when I, when I mentioned who it is, J.R.R.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Tolkien.

00:57:34 ◼   ► I just discovered, I can't believe I never knew this.

00:57:37 ◼   ► He started a book that was set after the Lord of the Rings.

00:57:42 ◼   ► And so he wrote the first couple of chapters of this story.

00:57:48 ◼   ► And it's quite interesting, but like he,

00:57:51 ◼   ► basically he then wrote about,

00:57:56 ◼   ► he wrote in one of his letters,

00:57:57 ◼   ► you can get these books of all of his private letters

00:57:59 ◼   ► where he discusses a bunch of his thoughts.

00:58:01 ◼   ► He wrote about why he didn't finish this.

00:58:04 ◼   ► And the reason he didn't finish it

00:58:06 ◼   ► is because, oh, in his timeline after The Lord of the Rings,

00:58:10 ◼   ► there's not really much magic left in the world.

00:58:14 ◼   ► He had an idea of who the story would be about,

00:58:16 ◼   ► but basically everybody magic is gone,

00:58:18 ◼   ► and it's just the world of men.

00:58:20 ◼   ► And he said, "Oh, I could have written

00:58:22 ◼   ► "a totally fine adventure book,

00:58:26 ◼   ► "but that's not what the world

00:58:28 ◼   ► "I was trying to create was about."

00:58:31 ◼   ► He was trying to create this mythology.

00:58:34 ◼   ► And writing another story that's what happens

00:58:38 ◼   ► after the mythology, he was like,

00:58:39 ◼   ► "Wait, why am I doing this project?

00:58:41 ◼   ► This isn't really what I want to do.

00:58:43 ◼   ► Sure, we can continue what happens

00:58:44 ◼   ► with a bunch of these characters, but I'm gonna say no."

00:58:47 ◼   ► And so he just like stopped writing it and said,

00:58:49 ◼   ► "No, I'm not gonna write anymore

00:58:51 ◼   ► the stories of what happens after.

00:58:52 ◼   ► I'll just fill in some of the details

00:58:54 ◼   ► of what happened before."

00:58:55 ◼   ► And I think that's an amazing example

00:58:57 ◼   ► in reading his letter about it.

00:58:58 ◼   ► He's very self-aware.

00:59:01 ◼   ► Sure, the audience would love this.

00:59:03 ◼   ► Everybody's asking for like a sequel to Lord of the Rings because it was so great,

00:59:07 ◼   ► but it's also so great because he knew where to stop.

00:59:10 ◼   ► I just think that's an interesting example and it would just make me very sad if people

00:59:15 ◼   ► were typing into AI generator machines like, "Give me Tolkien's next book!"

00:59:20 ◼   ► Like, "Oh no, please don't.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Please don't do that.

00:59:23 ◼   ► It's bad."

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01:01:34 ◼   ► Hey, do you want to talk about this podcast that you found here, Myke?

01:01:38 ◼   ► So I referenced why I'm not worried about my job specifically. This has been going around

01:01:44 ◼   ► a lot. It is an AI Steve Jobs on an AI Joe Rogan episode. And it is a full podcast created

01:01:54 ◼   ► by an AI. I've not really bothered to look into this because I actually think it might

01:01:59 ◼   ► be part of a publicity stunt. But nevertheless, it is a thing that exists, it's 20 minutes

01:02:05 ◼   ► long and you can listen to it and I've like skipped around in it and you know what? It

01:02:09 ◼   ► really sounds like Steve Jobs. Like there are points where you can hear that it's not

01:02:13 ◼   ► real right? But like and ultimately my takeaway from this is who wants this? Like genuinely

01:02:19 ◼   ► like who wants this? Who wants to hear what Steve Jobs might have said to a fake Joe Rogan?

01:02:25 ◼   ► For me, I don't feel concerned about my job because you can take a version of me and a version of you

01:02:33 ◼   ► and we can have them make podcasts forever, but I feel like if that's what you want, I don't know

01:02:43 ◼   ► how much you could enjoy the content because it's not real. It's not real conversations.

01:02:48 ◼   ► That's what I do for a living, is real conversations between real people about

01:02:52 ◼   ► things that they care about and my assumption is the majority of people that listen to my shows

01:02:58 ◼   ► want to hear that rather than let's imagine what to ai might be talking about instead for me that's

01:03:06 ◼   ► just so broken from what i imagine people want the content for and look if you are that person you

01:03:14 ◼   ► don't need to tell me of course i know you exist right like i'm sure that there are people that

01:03:18 ◼   ► would like to just have us on in the background so they could go to sleep and it's just like we're

01:03:22 ◼   ► We're just going to have an infinite amount of episodes forever.

01:03:25 ◼   ► But realistically, I don't imagine that that's going to be a thing that people

01:03:32 ◼   ► would genuinely care about enough in the way that people might care

01:03:35 ◼   ► about the content that I make.

01:03:36 ◼   ► So just coming across this one episode, it honestly made me, even though it

01:03:42 ◼   ► showed me it can be done, it made me feel more secure in my own profession.

01:03:45 ◼   ► But honestly, in the last episode, I wasn't worrying about my own profession.

01:03:50 ◼   ► It was more about the idea of creativity in people.

01:03:53 ◼   ► That's what I get more about.

01:03:54 ◼   ► - You said this to me and I took a listen.

01:03:56 ◼   ► I did the same thing.

01:03:57 ◼   ► I didn't listen to the whole thing all the way through.

01:03:59 ◼   ► I sort of skipped around.

01:04:01 ◼   ► I have a slightly different take on this sort of stuff,

01:04:03 ◼   ► which is it doesn't matter how good Steve Jobs

01:04:07 ◼   ► on Joe Rogan is to listen to.

01:04:10 ◼   ► It's more of just a demonstration of proof of concept.

01:04:14 ◼   ► This thing is possible.

01:04:15 ◼   ► And once you have a demonstration of proof of concept,

01:04:18 ◼   ► guess what?

01:04:18 ◼   ► get better, they don't get worse. So this was just like the first real proof of concept

01:04:24 ◼   ► demonstration of two people having a podcast conversation. I do have to say, listening

01:04:29 ◼   ► to it, I think the Steve Jobs was less good, but like holy moly did it nail Joe Rogan's

01:04:36 ◼   ► way of talking.

01:04:37 ◼   ► That makes sense though, right? The amount of source material for Joe Rogan is almost

01:04:41 ◼   ► infinite really.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I just thought like it's actually interesting to listen to because you can almost

01:04:46 ◼   ► hear the fact that there's what, 100 million hours of Joe Rogan talking and, you know,

01:04:52 ◼   ► the database for Steve Jobs is so much smaller. And you can hear that in the two voices. It's

01:04:57 ◼   ► like, especially because I think Rogan has a funny circular way of talking sometimes

01:05:02 ◼   ► that it's like, I would never not know that that wasn't him. If you told me it was Rogan,

01:05:07 ◼   ► but it was only just an AI Jobs, I would have believed it. But this to me is, again, a good

01:05:13 ◼   ► example of this thing where making a marionette of someone is just bad. It's like, "Hey

01:05:19 ◼   ► guys, whatever you think of Rogan, he's still a person and it's real bad to make

01:05:23 ◼   ► like a fake show where he's talking. And it's less bad for Steve Jobs because he

01:05:31 ◼   ► is dead, but it's still close enough that it makes me very uncomfortable." I just

01:05:36 ◼   ► think we're going to see an increasingly large number of these sorts of things where

01:05:40 ◼   ► people can make whatever they want and it's only going to become increasingly easy over

01:05:45 ◼   ► time and I don't know how this project was made in particular but yeah it's the first

01:05:50 ◼   ► example of oh it's an AI podcast with two people where we have enough information to

01:05:57 ◼   ► recreate them in some sense.

01:05:59 ◼   ► Yeah it's a publicist stunt for the company. The company that made this has an AI text

01:06:05 ◼   ► to voice generation system that they are trying to sell.

01:06:08 ◼   ► I mean that's not surprising.

01:06:10 ◼   ► But it's also interesting just how fast so much of this is being commercialized.

01:06:15 ◼   ► I stumbled across a – I thought, "Oh God, how brutal is this?"

01:06:21 ◼   ► But it's a company that makes AI people who will read quite convincingly scripts where

01:06:27 ◼   ► it looks like it's a talking head segment.

01:06:29 ◼   ► And the whole idea is, "Oh, you can have all of your corporate training material delivered

01:06:33 ◼   ► in this way where there's like an AI person who will talk through whatever it is you need

01:06:37 ◼   ► to onboard your new employees. There's something about that to me which is like, it's very

01:06:41 ◼   ► convincing but it also feels like what a horrible dystopian nightmare. It's like you as an

01:06:46 ◼   ► employee sign up with the company is like, "Oh hey, we didn't even take the time to

01:06:52 ◼   ► film a person going through our own training materials. We just gave it to an AI and they

01:06:57 ◼   ► made a fake person who you get to listen to explain your job to you."

01:07:01 ◼   ► Enjoy your training.

01:07:02 ◼   ► I know, it's just so awful.

01:07:04 ◼   ► We value you.

01:07:06 ◼   ► I just want to read from the podcast AI, their kind of description of the show.

01:07:10 ◼   ► "Whether you're a machine learning enthusiast, just want to hear your favorite topics covered

01:07:16 ◼   ► in a new way, or even just want to listen to voices from the past brought back to life,

01:07:20 ◼   ► this is the podcast for you."

01:07:22 ◼   ► - Right. - Alright.

01:07:25 ◼   ► - Do you want to hear our ghoulish marionettes say what we made them say?

01:07:30 ◼   ► - It's just like, if you are a fan of Steve Jobs, which I think is who they are pitching this to,

01:07:35 ◼   ► right? Why do you want to hear him talk about things he never spoke about? Like what do you

01:07:39 ◼   ► value from that other than just like hearing the voice? Like if you just want to hear his voice

01:07:44 ◼   ► just go to youtube and watch like commencement speeches or interviews or whatever. Like I don't

01:07:49 ◼   ► understand why you want to hear him talk about things he never spoke about. It's not his opinion.

01:07:56 ◼   ► There is no opinion of him in this. They've built all of this from things he said but you're just

01:08:03 ◼   ► taking words he used and just putting them together in a new way. It's not actually

01:08:08 ◼   ► his opinion. And I just I find it so strange.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Since the last episode, I have much more strongly onboarded the concept of trying to only read

01:08:23 ◼   ► and consume and listen to and watch media that you know has been produced by a human.

01:08:29 ◼   ► And how did that do for you with Obu?

01:08:31 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:08:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:08:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, it sneaks in there, but at least it's like,

01:08:36 ◼   ► oh, I know humans made the show.

01:08:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:08:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, at least you got that part, right?

01:08:41 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:08:42 ◼   ► - Maybe not all humans, all of it all the time,

01:08:43 ◼   ► but like enough.

01:08:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so again, this idea that went from like,

01:08:48 ◼   ► that's crazy to, oh, I guess this is wise advice to live by

01:08:51 ◼   ► has accelerated quite quickly in my life.

01:08:54 ◼   ► And yeah, it's kind of a weird,

01:08:57 ◼   ► oh, make sure you know it's a person

01:08:59 ◼   ► who wrote or made this thing.

01:09:01 ◼   ► So yeah, I am trying to onboard that as a concept

01:09:05 ◼   ► because I think not onboarding that as a concept

01:09:07 ◼   ► is part of what is going to lead to AI doom for us all.

01:09:12 ◼   ► - Oh God, we still want to talk about AI.

01:09:14 ◼   ► All right, yep, okay.

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01:11:19 ◼   ► [BEEP]

01:11:20 ◼   ► Yes, I do want to talk about Doom for us all, but partly because it's clearing up a little

01:11:26 ◼   ► bit of confusion from last time as well.

01:11:28 ◼   ► Okay.

01:11:29 ◼   ► So one of the things we discussed last time was stable diffusion making images like,

01:11:36 ◼   ► here is the filming of NASA landing on the moon

01:11:40 ◼   ► and creating fake stuff.

01:11:42 ◼   ► And I think a totally fair criticism of that

01:11:44 ◼   ► that I saw from people is,

01:11:46 ◼   ► hey, Photoshop exists, you know,

01:11:50 ◼   ► like we can make those images now,

01:11:52 ◼   ► we don't need an AI art system to generate them for us.

01:11:56 ◼   ► If you would be convinced by a good Photoshop,

01:11:59 ◼   ► what's the difference from being convinced

01:12:01 ◼   ► by an AI art system about something

01:12:03 ◼   ► that isn't real in the world?

01:12:06 ◼   ► So what I want to portray here is I think Doom comes in like three phases.

01:12:11 ◼   ► Phase one, I think will be just pollution of the public information space.

01:12:18 ◼   ► I think it's sort of a general confusion.

01:12:20 ◼   ► And what makes the difference between AI art and something like Photoshop is the scale

01:12:29 ◼   ► and the cost. So right now, if someone wants to try and put out a bunch of misinformation

01:12:37 ◼   ► or create evidence to back a conspiracy theory, there still needs to be effort that goes into

01:12:43 ◼   ► creating that thing. Like you were saying, Myke, you need to learn these skills as part of your art

01:12:48 ◼   ► for how to create a piece of misinformation to put out in the world. And I think what I kind of

01:12:56 ◼   ► of expect if I'm projecting a bunch of this stuff forward is the scale of this potential

01:13:03 ◼   ► misleading images and misleading text that were AI generated is just vastly beyond what

01:13:10 ◼   ► we can imagine now. And I think in the modern world, like a lot of people have been driven

01:13:16 ◼   ► kind of crazy just from the selection of what information they're presented. Like, you know,

01:13:26 ◼   ► people on social media can kind of like drive themselves crazy by just going down rabbit

01:13:30 ◼   ► holes and being continually presented with information that agrees with them. And that's

01:13:34 ◼   ► just by like, selecting the things that they're seeing that actual human beings have created.

01:13:40 ◼   ► But what I'm kind of thinking might happen here is that when you're able to generate

01:13:45 ◼   ► a huge amount of content. Just as right now, companies intentionally AB test what they

01:13:53 ◼   ► show you for engagement. Not even on purpose, but AI generated content will effectively

01:14:01 ◼   ► be unintentionally AB tested for convincing this. How convincing is this sequence of words

01:14:09 ◼   ► in whatever idea it's trying to spread. And I really do view a lot of this stuff as the

01:14:17 ◼   ► kind of concept of memes, of ideas. They evolve, and they spread, and they mutate, and their

01:14:24 ◼   ► spreading in the world doesn't have anything to do with how true they are, it has to do

01:14:29 ◼   ► with how convincing they are.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Imagine hooking up Twitter's algorithm to a text AI.

01:14:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's going to happen.

01:14:37 ◼   ► every time you pull to refresh, it just gives you a bunch of other nonsense.

01:14:43 ◼   ► That is truly horrifying to me as a thought.

01:14:47 ◼   ► I think we're going to see that.

01:14:48 ◼   ► I think we're going to see that or we're going to see something very much like it.

01:14:51 ◼   ► I mean, look, the AI video stuff that we saw before.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Do you think TikTok won't start doing that the moment that it becomes engaging to people?

01:15:01 ◼   ► That's a really good point.

01:15:02 ◼   ► That's actually the most likely of all of them, I think, to occur.

01:15:06 ◼   ► to just automatically generate 20 second, 30 second videos every time a person refreshes

01:15:12 ◼   ► and just keep doing it for whatever keeps that person engaged.

01:15:16 ◼   ► I think we're going to see that.

01:15:18 ◼   ► Even if it's not the companies directly doing it themselves, you'll have entities on Twitter

01:15:23 ◼   ► where it's like, "Oh, it's a bot, but it's, you know, it's acting like it's a person and

01:15:27 ◼   ► it's just existing in the world and it's doing this kind of unintentional A/B testing for

01:15:32 ◼   ► convincing this."

01:15:33 ◼   ► and the ones that are more convincing for whatever reason will just spread better.

01:15:37 ◼   ► So I really think that is a kind of like, I think a lot of the criticism is people want

01:15:44 ◼   ► to know, like, gray, what like, you love technology, why aren't you behind this stuff? I used to

01:15:50 ◼   ► be a real technological optimist. But I've changed my mind on a bunch of that stuff.

01:15:55 ◼   ► And this is one area in particular, where, and I want to be clear here, I don't think

01:16:01 ◼   ► It's malicious.

01:16:02 ◼   ► I don't think it's necessarily that someone's out there trying to do bad, but I think the

01:16:07 ◼   ► ability to create hundreds of millions of memes in the way of like just a concept that

01:16:15 ◼   ► can spread at the drop of a hat is just bad for the public information space.

01:16:22 ◼   ► And the world has barely survived social media in some ways, like that has made stuff so

01:16:29 ◼   ► so bad with how people think about the world. And this is that just taken to the next level

01:16:34 ◼   ► by a huge order of magnitude. So I suspect that'll be one of the first ways that this

01:16:41 ◼   ► becomes obviously bad over time. Like once it progresses out of the stage of just being

01:16:49 ◼   ► an interesting toy. My hope is that for whatever reason, we're in the part of the technological

01:16:55 ◼   ► development where it looks like it's an exponential graph, but it's rapidly going

01:17:00 ◼   ► to level off at an s-curve, and we discover "oh, there's parts of this that were way

01:17:05 ◼   ► harder than we thought." That's where I hope this is going, but…

01:17:09 ◼   ► MATT: You show me the signs of that one on the next episode, then.

01:17:12 ◼   ► BRIAN well, I'm in this position where I feel

01:17:15 ◼   ► a little bit like "oh, I'm like a crazy person talking into a microphone about this

01:17:19 ◼   ► stuff. But I have spoken to some of the top people in the world in this area and they're

01:17:28 ◼   ► very concerned is the way that I would put it. And talking to people, I was trying to

01:17:34 ◼   ► tease out this concept of where do we think we are on this curve? Is this the start of

01:17:39 ◼   ► the exponential or are there obvious problems ahead? And the answer was pretty universally,

01:17:45 ◼   ► Oh, the as far as we can tell, the exponential has barely begun. Because the thing part of

01:17:51 ◼   ► the reason it's making such fast progress is because the the work being done right now

01:17:57 ◼   ► is still in the realm of Oh, hey, you get into work. And like, what's the first thing

01:18:01 ◼   ► you think of that could make this better? And you try it, and it makes it better. That's

01:18:05 ◼   ► just like an indication that we're at the start of an exponential curve. So yeah, I

01:18:09 ◼   ► think we're gonna have like a bunch of confusion about this stuff. I think that transitions

01:18:14 ◼   ► into genuine economic problems as particularly language models get better and better and better

01:18:23 ◼   ► at doing all the kinds of work that humans do, which is largely knowledge work.

01:18:30 ◼   ► You know, and it's funny, like I made "Humans need not apply" eight years ago now, I think?

01:18:37 ◼   ► And it's been on the back of my mind about, you know, revisiting that at some point.

01:18:41 ◼   ► And I was kind of thinking like, oh, I don't know how relevant this video still is. But having

01:18:48 ◼   ► rewatched it, it's like, Oh, no, I put it back, like to be featured on my channel under one of

01:18:52 ◼   ► like the most watched videos, because it's like, no, no, all this AI stuff and all of the language

01:18:56 ◼   ► stuff like makes this way more concerning. I think the lesson learned there has simply been that

01:19:02 ◼   ► physical automation is slower to progress for a bunch of reasons. But all of the knowledge

01:19:08 ◼   ► worker stuff is coming along very very fast. I just know that there are companies that

01:19:13 ◼   ► are very explicitly targeting low-level knowledge work and then will be progressing further

01:19:19 ◼   ► and further up the chain as fast as they can with better and better language models to

01:19:23 ◼   ► do all sorts of things that people can do. I understand that lots of people just fundamentally

01:19:28 ◼   ► disagree with me on this point of economics that jobs can't be replaced because humans

01:19:34 ◼   ► have infinite needs and always want more things. I understand that argument, I just don't

01:19:41 ◼   ► agree with it, and I think AI just breaks some of the fundamental assumptions that are

01:19:45 ◼   ► built into that model of as we get better machines of all kinds, we just increase the

01:19:51 ◼   ► quality of life and increase our desires. Like, I just don't think that that's universally

01:19:55 ◼   ► true. So yeah, I think we're going to end up with some really major problems in the

01:20:01 ◼   ► the economy, particularly in the knowledge worker part of that economy.

01:20:06 ◼   ► And look, we don't need to talk about it today because we've talked about it enough,

01:20:10 ◼   ► but I think once you start encroaching on AI systems that are good enough to replace

01:20:15 ◼   ► most human work, you really start encroaching on the kinds of things that can lead to the

01:20:21 ◼   ► extinction of the human race.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Maybe that's a little too heavy for today, but that's kind of my having thought it

01:20:28 ◼   ► through of like, what are the three phases of where does this go?

01:20:31 ◼   ► – confusion of the public information space, destruction of the economy, extinction of

01:20:36 ◼   ► the species. It's one, two, three.

01:20:39 ◼   ► Oh boy.

01:20:40 ◼   ► How you feeling, Myke?

01:20:43 ◼   ► Not great.

01:20:44 ◼   ► No?

01:20:45 ◼   ► No, I didn't want to do another hour and a half on this, to be honest. But I guess

01:20:50 ◼   ► this is who we are now.

01:20:52 ◼   ► Yeah. Can I just ask you though, like, how crazy does that sound to you?

01:20:55 ◼   ► No, it doesn't. And that's why I don't like it. I don't have optimism about this

01:20:59 ◼   ► this area of technology. I do not think that this is a thing that will produce much good.

01:21:05 ◼   ► We can leave it there for now then. On with the show. It's only been an hour and a half.

01:21:17 ◼   ► Just some quick follow up from the last thing we talked about on the previous episode. Okay,

01:21:21 ◼   ► on the lighter side of things, what is a podcast, Myke?

01:21:25 ◼   ► I don't know why. Why are we doing this one again, too? What is this?

01:21:30 ◼   ► We just relive the horrors of the previous episode?

01:21:32 ◼   ► I feel so badly for you, Myke. Last episode, you stumbled into a terrible mistake,

01:21:39 ◼   ► which was attempting to describe... but what is a podcast?

01:21:43 ◼   ► Well, the real issue was I put two topics together that seemed related, but they were unrelated.

01:21:50 ◼   ► Right, yeah. This is always the dangers of speaking

01:21:53 ◼   ► extemporaneously and you're just sort of like in the middle of a conversation and you say some

01:21:57 ◼   ► things and so anyway we ended up talking for a while about like but what is a podcast what must

01:22:03 ◼   ► it be in order for it to be the platonic ideal of a podcast and this this caught people's attention

01:22:09 ◼   ► and you can click the link in the show notes a cortex sent in what i absolutely adored is this

01:22:16 ◼   ► oh i saw this podcast alignment chart and i read this and was like i think i agree with absolutely

01:22:22 ◼   ► everything on this chart. This nails what I wanted, I think, to kind of get across,

01:22:27 ◼   ► but maybe didn't do a great job of doing, I don't know.

01:22:29 ◼   ► So in the great tradition of memes, there's a meme where people make the alignment chart for

01:22:36 ◼   ► various things, and I think this started with what is still the fantastic example of the sandwich

01:22:42 ◼   ► alignment chart. So you have two axes in the chart for the sandwich, which is ingredients

01:22:49 ◼   ► and structure. So it ranges from ingredient purist to ingredient rebel, and then you have

01:22:56 ◼   ► structure purist. A sandwich must have the classic sandwich shape, two pieces of bread

01:23:01 ◼   ► with toppings in between. And then like structure rebel, any kind of food enveloped in any way is a

01:23:07 ◼   ► sandwich. Oh, like a hot dog? Yeah, so this is like, is a hot dog a sandwich? And hot dog falls

01:23:13 ◼   ► on the sandwich alignment chart of ingredient neutral and structure neutral. Wait, this is a

01:23:18 ◼   ► - There's a very intriguing way that you've introduced this.

01:23:21 ◼   ► Isn't this just like the chaotic, evil, chaotic, good thing?

01:23:25 ◼   ► - Yes, that's where this comes from.

01:23:26 ◼   ► That's the origin.

01:23:27 ◼   ► - Oh, right. - It is like.

01:23:28 ◼   ► - I misunderstood you and thought you were saying

01:23:29 ◼   ► that the sandwich one was the origin.

01:23:31 ◼   ► I was like, I don't think you're right there.

01:23:33 ◼   ► - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:23:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:23:37 ◼   ► I always forget 'cause I never played "Dea Deas."

01:23:39 ◼   ► - Chaotic, neutral, chaotic, good, that's the thing.

01:23:41 ◼   ► - No, but the two axes, it's evil and good

01:23:43 ◼   ► and then lawful and chaotic.

01:23:45 ◼   ► Is that, that's, that's,

01:23:46 ◼   ► those the two axes on the traditional one?

01:23:47 ◼   ► I think so.

01:23:48 ◼   ► The sandwich alignment chart is the meme, right?

01:23:51 ◼   ► Which is like, oh, here is from which other things birth.

01:23:54 ◼   ► And so what I love on the internet is people will get into an argument about like, what

01:23:59 ◼   ► is thing?

01:24:00 ◼   ► Is a hot dog a sandwich?

01:24:01 ◼   ► Is a pop tart a sandwich?

01:24:03 ◼   ► Is a chicken wrap a sandwich?

01:24:04 ◼   ► And someone will come up with like, here's the alignment chart to try to describe where

01:24:09 ◼   ► all of these things fit in.

01:24:10 ◼   ► And so someone did this for podcasts, the podcast alignment charts.

01:24:15 ◼   ► The two axes are distribution method and media type.

01:24:20 ◼   ► So do you wanna run through some of these, Myke?

01:24:22 ◼   ► Where do you fit on the podcast alignment chart?

01:24:25 ◼   ► - Oh man, I think I was...

01:24:28 ◼   ► - I feel like you were making an argument

01:24:30 ◼   ► for traditional distribution method,

01:24:32 ◼   ► traditional media type,

01:24:33 ◼   ► which is an audio RSS feed is a podcast.

01:24:37 ◼   ► - No, because I don't, I think I am a modernist.

01:24:41 ◼   ► - Distribution modernist, media type traditionalist,

01:24:44 ◼   ► - Any audio that's subscribable is a podcast?

01:24:47 ◼   ► - No, I think I'm modern modern.

01:24:49 ◼   ► - Any audio or video that's subscribable is a podcast?

01:24:52 ◼   ► Oh, so my YouTube channel is a podcast,

01:24:54 ◼   ► that's what you're saying?

01:24:55 ◼   ► - No, you see that's, yeah, no,

01:24:56 ◼   ► that I'm modern traditionalist.

01:24:59 ◼   ► 'Cause that's the thing of like,

01:25:00 ◼   ► but it gets into an issue for me is that I watch videos

01:25:04 ◼   ► that I consider podcasts.

01:25:06 ◼   ► It's the any, I would see, I would phrase it as any audio

01:25:10 ◼   ► or video that's subscribable can be a podcast,

01:25:14 ◼   ► That would be my personal definition, I think.

01:25:17 ◼   ► Would be closer to how I feel.

01:25:20 ◼   ► But I think I'm more traditionalist modernist,

01:25:22 ◼   ► which is any audio that's subscribable is a podcast.

01:25:25 ◼   ► No, but then it's got audio books in here.

01:25:27 ◼   ► This is very complicated.

01:25:28 ◼   ► I don't...

01:25:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:30 ◼   ► I would say any audio or video

01:25:32 ◼   ► that somebody wants to call a podcast

01:25:34 ◼   ► that you can subscribe to can be a podcast.

01:25:36 ◼   ► I think that's how I actually personally sit now.

01:25:39 ◼   ► I think that works for me.

01:25:42 ◼   ► I really love these charts go kind of crazy, right?

01:25:45 ◼   ► I think the problem with the podcast one is a two-dimensional surface is not enough to

01:25:50 ◼   ► express the entirety of what it wants to be.

01:25:53 ◼   ► You need a third axis, which I think is something like consumption intention.

01:26:00 ◼   ► So for me, like, I would be like a traditionalist here, right?

01:26:03 ◼   ► That the consumption intention is audio only.

01:26:08 ◼   ► That to me is a really key characteristic of what is a podcast.

01:26:13 ◼   ► It has to be intended as an audio first experience, which isn't quite captured on this chart.

01:26:20 ◼   ► But then it can be a video.

01:26:22 ◼   ► It can be a Spotify exclusive.

01:26:24 ◼   ► Yeah, see, I don't know.

01:26:28 ◼   ► I am very sympathetic to the position you were expressing last time, which is there's,

01:26:33 ◼   ► or at least I thought it was the position you're expressing last time, that there's

01:26:37 ◼   ► Something about it needs to be generally accessible. I think for me, the example in my mind that

01:26:45 ◼   ► really sticks out is Audible does these things that they call podcasts, which are like little

01:26:50 ◼   ► shows that you can subscribe to in the Audible app.

01:26:52 ◼   ► I don't know why they call them podcasts. I don't get that one at all.

01:26:56 ◼   ► I've listened to some of them, like they're fine, I haven't found one that's amazing

01:26:59 ◼   ► or anything, but they're also, I don't know, there's some part of my brain which

01:27:03 ◼   ► is just like, this is not a podcast at all.

01:27:05 ◼   ► It's just original audio content.

01:27:06 ◼   ► Yeah, it's an audio-

01:27:07 ◼   ► call them audible originals yeah and they call them podcasts and I just wonder if maybe

01:27:12 ◼   ► they should just stick to one of those descriptors but yeah but anyway like those are the ones

01:27:18 ◼   ► that really clang in my brain of like but what's the key thing there and I think the

01:27:22 ◼   ► fact that they're only available on audio really makes them not a podcast to me okay

01:27:27 ◼   ► well then Joe Rogan yeah is that a podcast?

01:27:31 ◼   ► - Ah, damn you, Myke.

01:27:35 ◼   ► - Right?

01:27:37 ◼   ► 'Cause I would say yes, it is,

01:27:38 ◼   ► even though it's a Spotify exclusive.

01:27:40 ◼   ► - Curse you.

01:27:44 ◼   ► That is the perfect counter example to my position.

01:27:49 ◼   ► - So that's why I feel like for me,

01:27:51 ◼   ► there is the third axis, which is like intent.

01:27:54 ◼   ► And that's when if we go on this third axis of intent,

01:27:58 ◼   ► I would sit in the modernist

01:27:59 ◼   ► where it could be like any audio or video that's

01:28:01 ◼   ► subscribable can be a podcast,

01:28:04 ◼   ► but it's on creators intent.

01:28:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, but see, look, just to make things hard,

01:28:08 ◼   ► it has to be phrased in order to fit the meme as,

01:28:11 ◼   ► is a podcast.

01:28:13 ◼   ► You can't put in these weasel words of can, right?

01:28:15 ◼   ► The purpose of the alignment chart

01:28:17 ◼   ► is to definitively answer what is a podcast.

01:28:20 ◼   ► - Well, I'll tell you now, it doesn't.

01:28:22 ◼   ► - I really love looking at this chart,

01:28:24 ◼   ► that traditionalist traditionalist is

01:28:26 ◼   ► an audio RSS feed is a podcast.

01:28:29 ◼   ► And then you start moving in these reasonable directions of any audio that's subscribable

01:28:33 ◼   ► is a podcast.

01:28:35 ◼   ► And then as you get into the radicalist ones, it just gets very funny, right?

01:28:39 ◼   ► Any audio available on the internet is a podcast.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Anything that you can subscribe to is a podcast.

01:28:46 ◼   ► And my personal favorite, the radicalist radicalist is that anything on the internet is a podcast,

01:28:53 ◼   ► which made me laugh so hard when I first saw it.

01:28:57 ◼   ► Because that got me.

01:28:59 ◼   ► Because you know what?

01:29:02 ◼   ► That fits with some people that I've come across in my life, you know what I mean?

01:29:06 ◼   ► I also enjoyed the cortexes giggling over this one, where people were like, "This

01:29:11 ◼   ► comment on this Reddit thread is a podcast, right?

01:29:13 ◼   ► Because I'm a radicalist?

01:29:15 ◼   ► Radicalist!"

01:29:16 ◼   ► I thought this was fantastic, and thanks to XD1936 for posting it, it got a really good

01:29:22 ◼   ► laugh out of it and I think yeah it was just a fun way to try to encapsulate the conversation

01:29:27 ◼   ► from last time.

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01:31:01 ◼   ► We are hurtling towards the end of the year.

01:31:02 ◼   ► Uh, yes, alarmingly fast.

01:31:05 ◼   ► And this is the final regular episode of Cortex this year.

01:31:09 ◼   ► Don't remind me, Myke.

01:31:10 ◼   ► So if you have more to say about AI, oh god, great, where's AI art gonna be in January?

01:31:16 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:31:17 ◼   ► By January we're gonna be at step two of my three steps to the apocalypse.

01:31:21 ◼   ► Excellent, can't wait for it.

01:31:23 ◼   ► So maybe that's why like we had to spend the best part of two hours doing follow-up, because

01:31:28 ◼   ► we're not gonna do it now.

01:31:30 ◼   ► Yeah I guess so, let's say that, that was the plan, we didn't just end up talking about

01:31:34 ◼   ► it for forever.

01:31:35 ◼   ► There is a possibility we might do something in Mortax, getmortax.com, I can't say that

01:31:40 ◼   ► for sure because I don't know what we're going to do over the next two months except

01:31:43 ◼   ► for what I know we're going to do which is state of the apps November yearly themes December.

01:31:49 ◼   ► So on that note for yearly themes I wanted to take this as a time to suggest a method

01:31:56 ◼   ► to people for preparing for their yearly theme. If you don't know what a yearly theme is I

01:32:02 ◼   ► will put a video in the show notes where Grey explains what yearly themes are but we're

01:32:06 ◼   ► going to get to it again obviously in December so I don't want to talk about it now. But

01:32:11 ◼   ► I am personally at the point of my year now where I'm preparing my yearly theme. The

01:32:17 ◼   ► way I do this is I have it in my mind to start noting down things that I'm happy about

01:32:25 ◼   ► in my work life and personal life and things that I find frustrating in those as well and

01:32:31 ◼   ► things I would like to change. So I keep this as an Apple note, it's in my yearly themes

01:32:36 ◼   ► Apple note, but I have it just playing in my mind that as I'm bumping into things that

01:32:42 ◼   ► are good or bad that I would like to continue or stop, I write them all down. I just write

01:32:47 ◼   ► them down. I don't need to draw any comparisons to them yet, I just start writing them down.

01:32:52 ◼   ► So I end up with a list of things, maybe 20 things or so, over the space of a few weeks

01:32:58 ◼   ► or a month that are in my head. Some of them are not even things I bump into, but because

01:33:02 ◼   ► I'm in this kind of reviewing mode, things just pop up in my head randomly. I'm like

01:33:07 ◼   ► "Oh, that's a thing, I'll write that down." Then as we get towards November or so, I start

01:33:13 ◼   ► to review this list of things and note the similarities where I can tie some similarities

01:33:18 ◼   ► between things. Be like "Oh, that's actually related to this" or "That is similar to this."

01:33:24 ◼   ► I then use these links as the basis to build my theme.

01:33:27 ◼   ► So what do I think I could do next year to address some of these common issues that I

01:33:34 ◼   ► have or these common things that I would like to do more of?

01:33:38 ◼   ► So if you struggle to come up with creating yearly theme, this is my top tip.

01:33:43 ◼   ► It's how I do mine every year.

01:33:44 ◼   ► I don't know if this is asking for spoilers for the theme episode, which I don't want,

01:33:49 ◼   ► but I just I feel like I would like some concrete examples of the kinds of things that you're

01:33:52 ◼   ► down that you end up thinking about and they don't they don't have to be

01:33:56 ◼   ► examples for this year. I will give you some examples for this year but I'm not

01:34:00 ◼   ► gonna give you so many that I think was born my theme. Good. I want to spend more

01:34:04 ◼   ► time on product creation and design. That's one. I want to listen to more

01:34:09 ◼   ► music. I'm happy with how I've looked after my health and want to do more of

01:34:13 ◼   ► that. I want to be smarter about my scheduling and the days that I'm in the

01:34:17 ◼   ► office. These are the kinds of things I write down.

01:34:20 ◼   ► Okay, so presumably then the way you have this happen is there's some frustration

01:34:27 ◼   ► about the scheduling and then I guess you notice that and add it to this file?

01:34:30 ◼   ► Is that the system? Mm-hmm. Okay. Like all these are at the moment

01:34:35 ◼   ► it's just an outline like bullet points of things, right? And I write a

01:34:39 ◼   ► bunch of notes down, I write some context down, and so then I start reading through

01:34:43 ◼   ► these and I'm like, "Oh hang on a minute, this can relate to this and this.

01:34:47 ◼   ► Or like, "Hey, I've written a bunch of times here that I'm unhappy about this kind of thing

01:34:52 ◼   ► in like a bunch of different ways. So can I address that thing?"

01:34:58 ◼   ► - Hmm, okay, actually, interesting. I think I should frame this thought a bit differently,

01:35:03 ◼   ► because I have a notes file where when it occurs to me things that I may want to discuss

01:35:08 ◼   ► on the theme episode, I make a note of them. I guess this is just a different kind of

01:35:13 ◼   ► the same idea of like things about my own personal theme there.

01:35:17 ◼   ► But no, I like that as a have a place to collect what you notice about your life,

01:35:25 ◼   ► which also then just encourages you to notice more.

01:35:28 ◼   ► Might be a way to try to pitch it to people who are,

01:35:32 ◼   ► as the end of the year comes hurtling towards us,

01:35:35 ◼   ► and if they've never tried a theme before,

01:35:37 ◼   ► might want to think about that over the next two and a half months.

01:35:41 ◼   ► They're going to start a theme at the beginning of the year.

01:35:43 ◼   ► It's like just have a note somewhere to put down things that you notice about your life as a way to get started

01:35:49 ◼   ► And then you have something to look over and try to synthesize later. It's not about any particular moment

01:35:56 ◼   ► Okay. Yeah, that's interesting

01:35:57 ◼   ► I think that this is make something that's more likely to stick on because it's it's actually related to things that you've experienced

01:36:04 ◼   ► Mmm, and pushes it further away from the New Year's resolution idea because New Year's resolutions are typically created from whole cloth

01:36:12 ◼   ► like this just like I have this aspirational idea of myself that I would like to be this different kind of person and I'll

01:36:17 ◼   ► Just go and live that life

01:36:18 ◼   ► Where what I'm suggesting that you do is how do you live right now?

01:36:22 ◼   ► What frustrates you about things that are happening right now? What would you like to be better in your actual life right now?

01:36:29 ◼   ► Mmm and try and think about what that might be

01:36:33 ◼   ► It's related to something that's actually happening rather than something that you look forward to just imagine yourself as a different person

01:36:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good distinction because, again, also the New Year's resolutions have

01:36:44 ◼   ► the feeling to me of homework assignments that you forgot about until the morning of

01:36:48 ◼   ► and it's like, "Oh no, I need to write an essay about what I'm going to do this

01:36:50 ◼   ► year." Whereas this makes me think of—it's actually kind of popping into my head the

01:36:55 ◼   ► way some researchers have tried to study how happy people are by messaging them at random

01:37:01 ◼   ► points throughout the weeks or the years of just like, "Hey, right now, how do you feel?"

01:37:06 ◼   ► And this is closer to that.

01:37:07 ◼   ► It's like a continual process of, hey, notice in your life

01:37:10 ◼   ► how you're feeling and just make a little note of it.

01:37:12 ◼   ► And then later, you can have some stuff to review.

01:37:14 ◼   ► So I like that.

01:37:15 ◼   ► I think that's good.

01:37:16 ◼   ► I think that's a good suggestion for people looking

01:37:18 ◼   ► for a place to onboard where to start instead of just trying

01:37:23 ◼   ► to create a theme out of whole cloth

01:37:25 ◼   ► after they've listened to the theme episode.

01:37:27 ◼   ► [BING]

01:37:28 ◼   ► Oh, great.

01:37:29 ◼   ► There's something I've got to tell you about before we wrap

01:37:32 ◼   ► up today.

01:37:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:33 ◼   ► I didn't know about this.

01:37:35 ◼   ► somehow seemed to have slipped by everyone. In iOS 16 there is now a Dvorak software keyboard

01:37:44 ◼   ► on the phone. Oh yeah? Let me grab my phone here. It's in the settings app right? You

01:37:52 ◼   ► have to go to settings and then I think it's general keyboard and then whatever your setting

01:38:00 ◼   ► as like English UK or English US or whatever. If you tap that you get the option of QWERTY,

01:38:06 ◼   ► AZERTY, QWERTS and DIVORAC.

01:38:07 ◼   ► Oh I see so it's not a new keyboard it's under English I would never have found that.

01:38:12 ◼   ► You could probably add it as a new keyboard?

01:38:14 ◼   ► No it's not that's what I was just trying to do.

01:38:16 ◼   ► Oh god I hate it.

01:38:18 ◼   ► Oh interesting.

01:38:19 ◼   ► Wow that's horrifying.

01:38:20 ◼   ► Do you still use DIVORAC?

01:38:24 ◼   ► Of course I use DIVORAC Myke.

01:38:26 ◼   ► So your keyboard on your desk is set in the Dvorak layout?

01:38:30 ◼   ► I feel like we haven't spoken about that

01:38:31 ◼   ► in a really long time.

01:38:32 ◼   ► I've kind of forgotten.

01:38:34 ◼   ► - Yes, well, my keyboard, if you look at it,

01:38:37 ◼   ► the current one I'm using is, it has a QWERTY layout,

01:38:40 ◼   ► but the keys are mapped to the Dvorak settings.

01:38:43 ◼   ► - You are a monster.

01:38:45 ◼   ► - No, no, no, I actually, I've decided that's best.

01:38:48 ◼   ► That's the better way to go.

01:38:49 ◼   ► I've stopped getting keyboards.

01:38:51 ◼   ► Look, I think there's only two ways to go.

01:38:53 ◼   ► QWERTY visual layout or blank, right?

01:38:58 ◼   ► Like nothing on any of the keys.

01:39:01 ◼   ► - Why can't you use the Dvorak visual layout?

01:39:03 ◼   ► I think I could build you a keyboard one day

01:39:08 ◼   ► that would be laid out this way.

01:39:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, okay, I guess here's,

01:39:12 ◼   ► I was just trying to articulate why.

01:39:15 ◼   ► After years and years of doing all sorts of different things,

01:39:17 ◼   ► why have I settled on this?

01:39:19 ◼   ► The answer is that keyboard shortcuts are funny

01:39:24 ◼   ► in a lot of applications.

01:39:27 ◼   ► So there's something in the system level

01:39:31 ◼   ► where a keyboard shortcut will either trigger based

01:39:34 ◼   ► on the letter that the key represents

01:39:37 ◼   ► or it will trigger based on the location that the key is.

01:39:41 ◼   ► You can see this explicitly in some things like Final Cut

01:39:45 ◼   ► where you can reprogram the key based on letter

01:39:49 ◼   ► or location. So I guess the way I use it is that it is I'm just not having I'm struggling

01:39:55 ◼   ► trying to think of a specific example that's not final cut, but I know it comes up where

01:39:59 ◼   ► it's useful to be able to see what does the keyboard look like for everyone in the whole

01:40:06 ◼   ► wide world, sometimes for keyboard shortcuts like that does come up where I am glad that

01:40:11 ◼   ► the layout is a QWERTY layout. And since I touch type, I don't look at the keyboard,

01:40:16 ◼   ► It doesn't matter when I'm actually writing what the keys look like at all, which is why

01:40:20 ◼   ► I have gone with a completely blank keyboard sometimes, which I do think is cool, but can

01:40:25 ◼   ► be annoying for keyboard shortcuts.

01:40:27 ◼   ► I have a question for you.

01:40:28 ◼   ► Yep.

01:40:29 ◼   ► Well, because one, I'll come back to the keyboard shortcuts thing because I know how to fix

01:40:32 ◼   ► that.

01:40:33 ◼   ► Depends on what you use.

01:40:34 ◼   ► Anyway, when you are using your Dvorak layout, what is the copy command?

01:40:40 ◼   ► Okay, so for me, it's command I is what it would look like on a query keyboard. That's

01:40:47 ◼   ► copy. Oh, okay. Yes, I know what you're saying. Now you are actually hitting still command

01:40:54 ◼   ► C though is what I'm asking. That's more work, but it's in a different place. Okay, it's

01:40:58 ◼   ► in a different place. So one of the things that exists now, which I don't know if it's

01:41:03 ◼   ► actually a good idea for any other lunatics who might want to switch their keyboard layouts.

01:41:09 ◼   ► One of the things that computers have gotten better at over years is there are now explicit

01:41:13 ◼   ► layouts which are on the Mac, it's called something like Dvorak preserve shortcuts.

01:41:20 ◼   ► So it's like you type in Dvorak, but it totally ignores the keyboard layout for all keyboard

01:41:25 ◼   ► shortcuts.

01:41:26 ◼   ► It would be like command J looking at the Dvorak layout right in that scenario where

01:41:33 ◼   ► it's preserving the location of the key.

01:41:36 ◼   ► Yeah, it's funny, it's like I can't – look, I is C. What's the complication here?

01:41:42 ◼   ► I'm looking at a Dvorak layout on Wikipedia and like, you know, J is in the location that

01:41:48 ◼   ► C is in a QWERTY keyboard.

01:41:51 ◼   ► And so you would hit, I guess, command J, because what it's saying is, the way I've

01:41:56 ◼   ► understood the way you've explained that, is like, it's keeping the physical location

01:42:00 ◼   ► of the key no matter what the key actually says it is.

01:42:03 ◼   ► Yeah, okay. So I just looked it up like what is the actual thing called in the system setting?

01:42:08 ◼   ► So on the Mac, you can set it as something called Dvorak QWERTY command. So I presume

01:42:14 ◼   ► that what it's doing there is whenever you hit command, it ignores the Dvorak layout

01:42:17 ◼   ► and reverts to the QWERTY layout.

01:42:19 ◼   ► That seems horribly complicated. Yeah, all of this to say, one day, because I want to

01:42:24 ◼   ► build your keyboard one day, just for fun. I would choose a keyboard where I can change

01:42:30 ◼   ► the programming of the keyboard. The boards that I build these days tend to all support

01:42:36 ◼   ► a piece of software called VIA which overrides the layout on the keyboard. So it's not relying

01:42:44 ◼   ► on the Mac. So if you hit any shortcut in any app it's going to register as the key

01:42:53 ◼   ► that is on the Dvorak layout. It doesn't matter that you would try and do some kind of key

01:42:59 ◼   ► binding and software. Does that make sense? Yes. Right? So like one of the

01:43:04 ◼   ► things you're saying is like for example if you hit some kind of keyboard

01:43:08 ◼   ► shortcut in Final Cut it's going to assume that's QWERTY even if you've set

01:43:12 ◼   ► to Dvorak because there's like a software in between the two of them

01:43:15 ◼   ► that's trying to communicate it. But I'm saying the hardware of the keyboard

01:43:20 ◼   ► would communicate to the computer so I am convinced it would get it correctly

01:43:27 ◼   ► it would always hit correctly.

01:43:29 ◼   ► - Okay, I feel like I'm not 100% understanding,

01:43:32 ◼   ► but there's also so many layers here.

01:43:35 ◼   ► One of the other problems is,

01:43:36 ◼   ► I don't know if any of the cortexes

01:43:37 ◼   ► are able to help me out with this,

01:43:39 ◼   ► if anyone's already done this.

01:43:40 ◼   ► Here's the maximum level of crazy, right?

01:43:43 ◼   ► I use the Dvorak layout,

01:43:45 ◼   ► but I've learned all the keyboard commands,

01:43:48 ◼   ► all the basic system commands,

01:43:50 ◼   ► with the Dvorak layout,

01:43:51 ◼   ► so I'm not pressing the regular buttons

01:43:53 ◼   ► that everybody knows.

01:43:55 ◼   ► However, in Final Cut, the way that the programmers laid out all the keyboard shortcuts that do

01:44:03 ◼   ► things, it makes sense physically where they are on the keyboard.

01:44:08 ◼   ► Whereas like Command Copy, Command Paste, like it doesn't really matter if those two

01:44:11 ◼   ► are next to each other.

01:44:13 ◼   ► But there's tons of stuff in Final Cut, which is like trim from the start of the clips,

01:44:17 ◼   ► trim from the end of the clip.

01:44:19 ◼   ► And you want to have those keys like next to each other on opposite sides.

01:44:22 ◼   ► There's a lot of like physicality of this.

01:44:24 ◼   ► So in Final Cut, I've been trying to slowly build up my own custom mapping, which is to

01:44:31 ◼   ► make it so that when I am using the Dvorak layout, it's still acting as though it's a

01:44:37 ◼   ► QWERTY layout just for the Final Cut shortcuts.

01:44:41 ◼   ► So every time I try to learn a new Final Cut shortcut, I try to go in and like, change

01:44:46 ◼   ► what it is.

01:44:47 ◼   ► But I've wondered like, has someone just done this?

01:44:49 ◼   ► is there a QWERTY for Dvorak remapping of all the Final Cut shortcuts that someone has just done?

01:44:55 ◼   ► Because I could tell like I'm getting into a situation of, "Oh, this is a little bit

01:44:59 ◼   ► inconsistent." So anyway, I've just wondered if like a person has done that work for me.

01:45:02 ◼   ► And there's also some weird system stuff that I've done with a few of the shortcuts.

01:45:07 ◼   ► Anyway, there's a bunch of these weird little problems. And I also have this

01:45:10 ◼   ► minor annoyance. Listen, before I say this annoyance, I understand. I understand why

01:45:15 ◼   ► Apple did it. You don't have to leave me comments for why they did it. I

01:45:18 ◼   ► understand. It's still annoying. But it used to be that Apple, when you had

01:45:23 ◼   ► different keyboard layouts, it had a little country flag to represent each of

01:45:28 ◼   ► the layouts. And so the US keyboard layout had a little US flag. And the

01:45:33 ◼   ► Dvorak one was just DV. And they made the change so that they don't use country

01:45:41 ◼   ► flags for languages. Now again, I get it, but it actually causes a huge annoyance because in my menu

01:45:48 ◼   ► bar I want to see which layout the keyboard is using. Is it using Dvorak or is it using US?

01:45:54 ◼   ► Because sometimes I do switch between those two layouts and now I can't visually see instantly

01:46:00 ◼   ► that the keyboard is on US layout versus Dvorak layout and it's maddening because it's just a

01:46:06 ◼   ► a little box and the box either says DV or it says US. And like, no, it was so much better when it was

01:46:13 ◼   ► black DV and that's Dvorak. And then there was a little American flag when it's the US layout.

01:46:18 ◼   ► So it's super frustrating. But anyway, all of that aside, I'm looking at this Dvorak layout on my

01:46:23 ◼   ► phone, and I hate everything about it. I don't think Dvorak was made for phones. I think all

01:46:29 ◼   ► All of the advantages for typing Dvorak with two hands, I don't feel like they translate

01:46:36 ◼   ► for two thumbs on a phone.

01:46:38 ◼   ► I think maybe the QWERTY layout is actually superior for the phone.

01:46:41 ◼   ► Yeah, all of the vowels are next to each other on the Dvorak one.

01:46:45 ◼   ► I'm just trying to type some words here.

01:46:47 ◼   ► By the way, I have two applications for you that can restore those flags.

01:46:52 ◼   ► Oh really?

01:46:53 ◼   ► Yeah, one is called Keyboard Switcheroo.

01:46:56 ◼   ► The other is called Colorful Input Menu Flags.

01:46:59 ◼   ► 'cause they're both in the Mac App Store.

01:47:01 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:47:02 ◼   ► Sold.

01:47:03 ◼   ► - Two enterprising developers who created applications

01:47:06 ◼   ► to bring that back.

01:47:08 ◼   ► I'd like to thank Glenn Fleischman at Macworld

01:47:11 ◼   ► for writing the article too.

01:47:12 ◼   ► 'Cause I know I'd seen these,

01:47:14 ◼   ► and so I just did a quick Google while you were upset.

01:47:17 ◼   ► And actually on keyboard switcheroo,

01:47:20 ◼   ► they have in their app screenshots,

01:47:23 ◼   ► US, French, German, Dvorak.

01:47:25 ◼   ► So you get a little US flag

01:47:28 ◼   ► a little DV for Dvorak.

01:47:29 ◼   ► Oh good, I'm glad to know I'm not the only person who was annoyed by this.

01:47:32 ◼   ► So I'll definitely check those out.

01:47:34 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:47:35 ◼   ► You can always rely on Mac developers to solve the little annoyances.

01:47:38 ◼   ► Yeah you can.

01:47:39 ◼   ► What I was just thinking here is with iOS, I think Qwerty on the phone, I think it does

01:47:45 ◼   ► make sense.

01:47:46 ◼   ► I feel like the weirdness of the way Qwerty is laid out to sort of slow you down, although

01:47:52 ◼   ► I think that that's overplayed as a story of why it exists.

01:47:55 ◼   ► I think that actually works as an advantage for typing with your thumbs on a tiny phone

01:47:59 ◼   ► screen, but I am glad that this exists for the iPad.

01:48:03 ◼   ► I might actually switch it on the iPad, because that's the place where it's been annoying.

01:48:06 ◼   ► Big keyboard.

01:48:07 ◼   ► And that's more like a larger keyboard there is what you're more used to for Dvorak, right?

01:48:12 ◼   ► Bigger keyboards like a computer keyboard.

01:48:15 ◼   ► Can you get MacBooks in Dvorak?

01:48:17 ◼   ► I don't think so.

01:48:18 ◼   ► I don't think they sell that.

01:48:21 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure you have to just pick between American layout and the English layout when

01:48:26 ◼   ► I'm buying the keyboards, which is the thing I'm always very careful about.

01:48:30 ◼   ► Like, please give me the US layout one.

01:48:32 ◼   ► I do not want the UK layout one.

01:48:34 ◼   ► There's no little "huh" there.

01:48:35 ◼   ► Like the American enter is clearly superior.

01:48:38 ◼   ► I build all of my keyboards in NC.

01:48:40 ◼   ► My laptop is in the British layout, but I think in the future I might try and remember

01:48:46 ◼   ► to just order them in US layout because that's what I'm much more used to now.

01:48:49 ◼   ► Wait a second.

01:48:50 ◼   ► - You build your keyboards in the US layout, NC layout.

01:48:54 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:48:55 ◼   ► - But you get the MacBook keyboards with the English layout?

01:48:58 ◼   ► - I don't think about it when I'm buying them.

01:49:01 ◼   ► I think I will now in the future, right?

01:49:03 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm getting more annoyed because I'm switching

01:49:06 ◼   ► between something I'm not used to.

01:49:08 ◼   ► And the keyboards that I build,

01:49:10 ◼   ► most of them are just more available

01:49:13 ◼   ► and easier to build in NC layout.

01:49:14 ◼   ► So I'm just used to it now, so the US English layout.

01:49:18 ◼   ► But I never think about it.

01:49:19 ◼   ► and obviously the default on the British Mac store

01:49:23 ◼   ► is the British layout, so I don't think about it

01:49:25 ◼   ► and I just buy what's the default,

01:49:28 ◼   ► but I think I wanna start changing it.

01:49:30 ◼   ► It doesn't look like they do Dvorak,

01:49:31 ◼   ► it's not in their options.

01:49:32 ◼   ► - I don't think I'll be using this on my phone.

01:49:35 ◼   ► I think it's worse on the phone,

01:49:36 ◼   ► but I will definitely try it out on the iPad

01:49:38 ◼   ► when the iPad comes out,

01:49:39 ◼   ► 'cause that's where it's more of a problem,

01:49:41 ◼   ► but I mostly don't really think about it very much

01:49:44 ◼   ► 'cause it's just been so long,

01:49:46 ◼   ► like this has been my entire life.

01:49:48 ◼   ► The last time it caused me problems was when I worked at a school and had to switch between

01:49:53 ◼   ► the QWERTY and Dvorak typing keyboards a bunch for using different computers, but even then

01:49:57 ◼   ► it was not the worst.

01:49:58 ◼   ► Like, I just learned to touch type while not looking and then sort of type while looking

01:50:03 ◼   ► at the keyboard as two different modes that my brain could switch between.

01:50:06 ◼   ► But I wonder why on earth they added Dvorak to the—

01:50:10 ◼   ► Now.

01:50:11 ◼   ► —to iOS 16 now.

01:50:12 ◼   ► It's a very funny, like—

01:50:13 ◼   ► It's strange.

01:50:14 ◼   ► Why did it take 16 attempts?

01:50:15 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:50:17 ◼   ► why 16 versions in? Is Dvorak having some resurgence that we're not aware of? Like why?

01:50:23 ◼   ► It is odd, right? Yeah, I'm not even sure if I was suggesting to someone now who had RSI problems if

01:50:31 ◼   ► Dvorak is the way to go. I always forget, I think it's Colmak or something? There's another one

01:50:37 ◼   ► which is definitely worth investigating if you're learning now versus Dvorak. And it's also a

01:50:42 ◼   ► a feature that I don't know why but it took all the way until now for people to notice

01:50:47 ◼   ► it it seems like. There's been a bunch of articles written because it was kind of discovered

01:50:51 ◼   ► but that means it went through the whole beta process without people seeming to know about

01:50:56 ◼   ► it. I don't know.

01:50:57 ◼   ► The thing that's also confusing about it is if they did add... why didn't they add something

01:51:03 ◼   ► like Colmac? I mean look I don't know a lot about programming iOS to add additional keyboard

01:51:08 ◼   ► layouts but if you're going to add something like Dvorak how hard is it to also add the

01:51:14 ◼   ► other popular one of these if you're gonna do it?

01:51:17 ◼   ► Well isn't Dvorak like the popular one though?

01:51:20 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true or not.

01:51:22 ◼   ► I feel like it must be or at least in the requests that they get or some high up executive

01:51:27 ◼   ► like Tim Cook is a Dvorak guy and like he'd had enough you know?

01:51:31 ◼   ► Yeah I mean with Dvorak I just always feel like there's dozens of us.

01:51:36 ◼   ► Dozens!

01:51:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:51:38 ◼   ► - You've seen the Godfather, right?

01:51:40 ◼   ► - No. - What?

01:51:42 ◼   ► - I've not seen the Godfather.

01:51:44 ◼   ► I've just never really been that interested.

01:51:46 ◼   ► - Okay, well, in the Godfather,

01:51:49 ◼   ► this is pointless for you now,

01:51:50 ◼   ► but in the Godfather, there is a moment,

01:51:53 ◼   ► I think Godfather 2, I think it's Godfather 2,

01:51:56 ◼   ► which I assume you also have not seen,

01:51:58 ◼   ► because why would you have, right?

01:51:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a correct, yeah, I've seen the third one,

01:52:01 ◼   ► but not the first or the second one.

01:52:03 ◼   ► - You're joking, right?

01:52:04 ◼   ► - I am joking, yes. - Good, good, good, good.

01:52:06 ◼   ► There is a moment where a bunch of things happen

01:52:08 ◼   ► and the line is, "We're settling all family business."

01:52:13 ◼   ► There's a line about settling all family business.

01:52:15 ◼   ► And I feel like that is today's episode.

01:52:17 ◼   ► We have just settled a bunch of business, right?

01:52:20 ◼   ► A lot of follow-up has been dealt with, right?

01:52:23 ◼   ► We've spoken about Dvorak, right?

01:52:25 ◼   ► Like we're just settling the business

01:52:27 ◼   ► before the year ends for us.

01:52:28 ◼   ► Like very good episodes, now we go to the specials.

01:52:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true.

01:52:32 ◼   ► - There are two more pieces of family business

01:52:34 ◼   ► that I would like to settle before we finish today.

01:52:37 ◼   ► One is to thank every Cortexan who donated

01:52:40 ◼   ► to our Saint Jude campaign.

01:52:41 ◼   ► Overall, throughout the month of September,

01:52:44 ◼   ► we raised $706,397.10.

01:52:49 ◼   ► All of us absolutely astounded.

01:52:53 ◼   ► This is the most money we've ever raised.

01:52:55 ◼   ► - It's unbelievable.

01:52:57 ◼   ► It's an incomprehensible amount of money.

01:53:00 ◼   ► So we have now not only passed $2 million raised

01:53:05 ◼   ► in the last four years,

01:53:06 ◼   ► we have now hit $2.2 million raised in the last four years.

01:53:11 ◼   ► - It's incredible.

01:53:15 ◼   ► It's just incredible to think that the relay listenership

01:53:18 ◼   ► has raised that much money for St. Jude.

01:53:22 ◼   ► So yeah, thank you to everyone who donated to the campaign.

01:53:27 ◼   ► That's completely mind blowing.

01:53:29 ◼   ► You know, it seemed for a while that it was like,

01:53:31 ◼   ► okay, we're gonna raise a lot of money,

01:53:33 ◼   ► we're gonna meet our goal,

01:53:34 ◼   ► but we're probably not going to exceed.

01:53:36 ◼   ► Because there is definite economic challenges

01:53:39 ◼   ► right now around the world,

01:53:41 ◼   ► and we were thinking, okay, that's gonna be that.

01:53:43 ◼   ► And then it just, the last couple of days even,

01:53:47 ◼   ► like the last couple of weeks, it just exploded

01:53:49 ◼   ► 'cause people were just getting their final totals in.

01:53:51 ◼   ► We had to, we were gonna end it on September 30th,

01:53:54 ◼   ► but we extended it to October 3rd,

01:53:56 ◼   ► because the money was just piling in in the last day.

01:54:00 ◼   ► It was like, all right,

01:54:01 ◼   ► we're gonna leave this open a couple of days.

01:54:02 ◼   ► I think like in the last day or two,

01:54:04 ◼   ► we raised like an extra $110,000 or something.

01:54:07 ◼   ► So it was like, probably should keep this open.

01:54:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's worth leaving open an extra day.

01:54:13 ◼   ► - But overall, this year's campaign was fantastic.

01:54:16 ◼   ► We learned a lot and for me,

01:54:18 ◼   ► it was just so incredibly rewarding and fun

01:54:22 ◼   ► to be able to be back in Memphis for the Podcastathon,

01:54:24 ◼   ► which was a great success.

01:54:26 ◼   ► The whole video is on YouTube.

01:54:27 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes

01:54:28 ◼   ► if people don't want to watch it.

01:54:30 ◼   ► A very kind comment to timestamp the whole thing.

01:54:33 ◼   ► So if you want to jump around to different segments

01:54:35 ◼   ► or whatever, that's all in there

01:54:37 ◼   ► in one of the comments in the YouTube video.

01:54:39 ◼   ► But yeah, it was truly fantastic

01:54:42 ◼   ► and we achieved something that I just did not think

01:54:45 ◼   ► was going to be possible.

01:54:46 ◼   ► And once again, the Relay FM community

01:54:48 ◼   ► has gone and surprised us.

01:54:51 ◼   ► Cortexmerch.com.

01:54:52 ◼   ► This is the second thing, final thing.

01:54:54 ◼   ► And what's the final piece?

01:54:56 ◼   ► - Is subtletys and subtle sweaters.

01:54:58 ◼   ► We're reminding you, maybe you have now finished your commute

01:55:00 ◼   ► and you're walking into the office or whatever,

01:55:02 ◼   ► and you didn't do what I asked you to do earlier,

01:55:04 ◼   ► so now you can get your phone out

01:55:06 ◼   ► and you can go to cortexmerch.com

01:55:08 ◼   ► and buy yourself a subtlety or subtle sweater or both

01:55:10 ◼   ► or whatever you want.

01:55:12 ◼   ► - Unlike the St. Jude fundraiser, this will not be extended.

01:55:16 ◼   ► So for realsies, cortexmerch.com.