1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,160 What did you say? AI, will it kill your parents? 2 00:00:03,160 --> 00:00:10,080 AI, will it kill your parents? Yeah. You know, there was a time when that question wouldn't make any sense, but sadly it does 3 00:00:10,080 --> 00:00:13,080 in the year 2023. 4 00:00:13,080 --> 00:00:17,680 Because AI has been crazy. There's been a lot of tech news happening this year and we're going to talk about it 5 00:00:17,680 --> 00:00:21,280 on this episode of Talk Linked With Who You! Riley Murdock. 6 00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:24,280 No, that's me. Okay. Jessica Peugeot. 7 00:00:24,280 --> 00:00:29,960 Jessica Peugeot, you're the WAN writer. I am the WAN writer and this is probably the first time listeners have heard how my 8 00:00:29,960 --> 00:00:33,280 last name is pronounced and I'm sorry, we had to break it to you this way. 9 00:00:33,280 --> 00:00:36,720 I mean, how else would you say it? Peugeot. People usually say Peugeot. 10 00:00:36,720 --> 00:00:41,720 Peugeot. You're the WAN writer, but you also write TechLinked. 11 00:00:41,720 --> 00:00:44,720 Yes. And GameLinked. And GameLinked. 12 00:00:44,720 --> 00:00:47,720 And Tech Quicky. And Tech Quicky. Yes. 13 00:00:47,720 --> 00:00:54,680 You've got your hands in all the pots now. I am multifaceted. I think there was a rumor before my name was released because I tended to jokingly put 14 00:00:54,680 --> 00:00:57,760 my name in the credits as various AI. 15 00:00:57,760 --> 00:01:05,840 Yes. I think there was a rumor that I was actually an AI experiment because I just kept showing 16 00:01:05,840 --> 00:01:09,440 up in so many different video series. Maybe we all are. 17 00:01:09,440 --> 00:01:15,240 Who knows? Brains and vats, etc. Honestly, this year has made me question absolutely everything. 18 00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:19,640 We're going to go through our favorite stories of the year or sort of, we're going to talk 19 00:01:19,640 --> 00:01:24,320 about Jessica's first year here at LMG and cover some of our, you know, the stories that 20 00:01:24,320 --> 00:01:31,280 really got us thinking. Now this episode, we're recording it the week before, but it's going to go up on Wednesday, 21 00:01:31,280 --> 00:01:38,640 December 27th, two days after our Christmas special. So if you want a proper big roundup of all the tech stories of the year and you didn't 22 00:01:38,640 --> 00:01:42,960 see that we released a Christmas special, go see that. But this is more of a casual situation. 23 00:01:42,960 --> 00:01:48,800 Jessica, how's it been? Had you tried to keep up with the tech news cycle in the way that you have had to this 24 00:01:48,800 --> 00:01:51,800 year before? Not like this. No. 25 00:01:51,800 --> 00:01:56,280 Like there was always things I kept up with. There's little trends that I would note. 26 00:01:56,280 --> 00:02:01,640 But if you want to know my previous experience following the news timeline, I learned about 27 00:02:01,640 --> 00:02:06,360 Bitcoin in early 2012, went, huh, that's interesting. 28 00:02:06,360 --> 00:02:11,520 It didn't pay attention to it again until 2019. 29 00:02:11,520 --> 00:02:16,000 There's always just been a lot of stuff that just passes me by because I wasn't specifically 30 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:21,200 interested. Yeah. I mean, crypto, that's fair, honestly. 31 00:02:21,200 --> 00:02:28,040 When people missed the whole crypto hype and then crash, it was only a few years. 32 00:02:28,040 --> 00:02:33,920 To me, it started here and it ended here. Everything in between that, there might have been an up, there might have been a down. 33 00:02:33,920 --> 00:02:37,760 To me, it was a straight line. Yeah. Well, okay. 34 00:02:37,760 --> 00:02:42,000 It's not fair to say that, sorry, I just said a second ago that it was only a few years. 35 00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:49,360 But really, crypto started way back early 2010s or maybe before that anyways. 36 00:02:49,360 --> 00:02:53,160 But they really started gaining hype around 2012, 13 and stuff. 37 00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:58,040 Then it kind of like laid dormant and then it spiked in the last few years and just in 38 00:02:58,040 --> 00:03:04,200 time for it to kind of fall out of favor. I mean, last year, I rewatched some of our Christmas specials in preparation for this 39 00:03:04,200 --> 00:03:10,280 years and one of the main stories last year was how crypto basically just fell off the 40 00:03:10,280 --> 00:03:14,480 map. At the beginning of 2022, a bunch of companies were still doing stuff with it. 41 00:03:14,480 --> 00:03:17,960 They announced integrations with it, a lot of gaming companies in particular. 42 00:03:17,960 --> 00:03:21,840 Then by the end of the year, they had all kind of canceled it. Yeah. 43 00:03:21,840 --> 00:03:26,920 I remember WealthSimple sending me an email a year and a half ago about their crypto 44 00:03:26,920 --> 00:03:31,320 integration. Yeah. Well, it's still integrated in a lot of things. 45 00:03:31,320 --> 00:03:34,760 I don't want to say that it's dead. It's not. It's absolutely not. 46 00:03:34,760 --> 00:03:38,760 But in terms of its mainstream. For the average person, crypto was fast. 47 00:03:38,760 --> 00:03:41,760 Yeah. Yeah. Crypto was very fast. 48 00:03:41,760 --> 00:03:50,040 It was a flash in the pan. But it was replaced by AI, which is like the hugest thing this year. 49 00:03:50,040 --> 00:03:55,080 But way bigger hype. Before we get there, how was it keeping up with everything? 50 00:03:55,080 --> 00:03:59,960 You said that you were aware of some things before, but was there a breakneck speed? 51 00:03:59,960 --> 00:04:06,840 Because I've been doing this for 10 years, so I want to hear what it was like for you. 52 00:04:06,840 --> 00:04:13,120 It was a lot of reading stuff and not knowing if it was important or not, because sometimes 53 00:04:13,160 --> 00:04:16,160 you'd read something and you're like, that sounds really important. 54 00:04:16,160 --> 00:04:21,280 And then Riley would go, yeah, they always do that. Yeah, this is actually the sixth time. 55 00:04:21,280 --> 00:04:24,800 Or I'd read something and I'm just like, that doesn't seem important at all. 56 00:04:24,800 --> 00:04:28,360 And Riley would be like, this is game changing. 57 00:04:28,360 --> 00:04:31,680 And I'm like, really? Yeah. Yeah. 58 00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:35,600 I just, a big part of the issue is not that I didn't understand what was happening, but 59 00:04:35,600 --> 00:04:41,680 I did not have the right amount of context to understand what people considered important. 60 00:04:41,680 --> 00:04:47,200 Yeah. It was always hard, especially when you're writing for WAN Show. 61 00:04:47,200 --> 00:04:53,760 And with TechLink, we do our best, but WAN Show, we are preparing things. 62 00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:57,960 And before you came on, the whole writing team kind of worked together on it, but I 63 00:04:57,960 --> 00:05:02,880 was curating the topics. And now this is your burden. 64 00:05:02,880 --> 00:05:09,400 And it is a struggle to kind of guess what Linus and Luke will particularly find interesting, 65 00:05:09,400 --> 00:05:14,400 as opposed to what we think maybe the broad tech audience on YouTube will find interesting. 66 00:05:14,400 --> 00:05:18,680 Sometimes I feel like I have a Ouija board, or I have a crystal ball. 67 00:05:18,680 --> 00:05:24,360 And I'm just going like, okay, well, this is objectively important, but I don't know. 68 00:05:24,360 --> 00:05:29,840 We have a little spreadsheet set up, and I think I've gotten a lot better at guessing, 69 00:05:29,840 --> 00:05:35,960 but it's still, sometimes I will get it back from Linus, and I will be baffled by what 70 00:05:35,960 --> 00:05:39,720 returns to me. I'm like, you want to talk about that? That's a main story to you. 71 00:05:39,720 --> 00:05:44,480 Yeah, yeah. Okay, because I thought maybe I'd have to write three lines on that. 72 00:05:44,480 --> 00:05:48,200 Yeah, we'll put something in there. We'll be like, this is the biggest news of the week. 73 00:05:48,200 --> 00:05:52,120 You guys need to talk about this for half an hour. He's like, eh. World changing. 74 00:05:52,120 --> 00:05:56,520 I want to talk about this final fantasy bug that's really annoying me. 75 00:05:56,520 --> 00:06:00,920 But to your point a second ago about like having the context, it is tough because we 76 00:06:00,920 --> 00:06:04,840 hired you and we hired Jacob close to a year ago. 77 00:06:04,840 --> 00:06:11,120 Yes. You guys have been, you know, getting on the team and becoming embedded and like gaining 78 00:06:11,120 --> 00:06:15,520 that kind of context that I've had for a while. 79 00:06:15,520 --> 00:06:23,280 And it's, yeah, it's a whole process. Admittedly, I no longer find myself googling, what is red green team? 80 00:06:23,280 --> 00:06:26,280 Yeah, exactly. Question mark? 81 00:06:26,280 --> 00:06:32,640 Yeah. But I want to say honestly that the difference between you and your like kind of ambient 82 00:06:32,640 --> 00:06:38,840 knowledge for some of this stuff. The difference between you now and between you, like when you started is so vast. 83 00:06:38,840 --> 00:06:42,120 Like now I'll just talk about a tech thing and you'll just be like, yeah, you know. 84 00:06:42,120 --> 00:06:45,640 Oh, I am a sponge. You're up on it. I am a serious sponge. 85 00:06:45,640 --> 00:06:50,160 That was kind of what James said to me when he hired me was like, you obviously don't 86 00:06:50,160 --> 00:06:54,720 have the background, but you're smart. You'll figure it out. I'm like, what does that mean? 87 00:06:54,720 --> 00:06:58,720 Oh, hold on a second. I'm rethinking things here. 88 00:06:58,720 --> 00:07:01,720 Yeah. You didn't pick up on that? Okay. 89 00:07:01,720 --> 00:07:04,720 I'm like, that sounds ominous. Am I in danger? Don't worry. 90 00:07:04,720 --> 00:07:07,720 You'll be fine. Swim. Yeah. 91 00:07:07,720 --> 00:07:10,840 So, I mean. I do tend to have a pretty good grasp of technology. 92 00:07:10,840 --> 00:07:15,480 It's just that most of the technology I'm interested in was invented before everyone was currently 93 00:07:15,480 --> 00:07:21,720 alive was born. Right. Because prior to your job here, you did write blog posts. 94 00:07:21,720 --> 00:07:25,720 Absolutely. About and you did deep dives. On history topics. 95 00:07:25,720 --> 00:07:29,320 Yeah. Which involves technology a lot of times. Which absolutely involves technology. 96 00:07:29,320 --> 00:07:33,120 Yeah, for sure. Which is I think why, I mean, I've loved your Techquickie scripts. 97 00:07:33,120 --> 00:07:36,240 I think that you do a deep dive and you make them funny. 98 00:07:36,240 --> 00:07:43,000 You're a stand-up comedian in case anyone doesn't know. I'm currently sitting, but you know, you just gotta imagine me like two feet up. 99 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:48,560 That's the kind of jokes we're looking for. You can look forward to. 100 00:07:48,560 --> 00:07:52,240 I cannot tell the kind of jokes that I tell on stage in this context. 101 00:07:52,240 --> 00:07:57,560 Jacob wrote a sit-stand joke into today's tech link, just like, they will not stand 102 00:07:57,560 --> 00:08:03,960 for that. But if you want to sit for that. This just reminds me of the time when like you were, I heard you across the room, like 103 00:08:03,960 --> 00:08:08,640 I was finishing up a joke for tech link and I heard you all across the room telling Jacob 104 00:08:08,640 --> 00:08:14,160 off for having two jokes in one script that were about shoving objects in someone's butt. 105 00:08:14,160 --> 00:08:19,560 As I was finishing a joke about shoving objects in people's butts. 106 00:08:19,560 --> 00:08:23,000 I mean, hey, it's a funny place of the body. 107 00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:26,000 You know, like it's a. It's inherently humorous. I mean, what do you have? 108 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:30,280 What are you supposed to do? Not make jokes about it? But simmer, right? 109 00:08:30,280 --> 00:08:34,920 So on that note, yeah, let's talk about our favorite tech stories this year. 110 00:08:34,920 --> 00:08:40,360 For me, it's it's definitely one of the biggest ones and one of my favorites is AI just because 111 00:08:40,360 --> 00:08:45,880 I've been doing my darndest this year to make some progress on a tech longer about it. 112 00:08:45,880 --> 00:08:51,440 And it's been very, very, very difficult to long road to find the to find the time to 113 00:08:51,440 --> 00:08:55,400 do it. But I've been like saving so many links. It's crazy. 114 00:08:56,400 --> 00:09:00,480 Yeah. How do you feel about AI? Is it is it going to be the end of humanity? 115 00:09:00,480 --> 00:09:04,400 Is it going to be the bright optimistic future? 116 00:09:04,800 --> 00:09:08,560 I think the truth is somewhere in between. I know, I know. 117 00:09:08,560 --> 00:09:11,440 But of course, that's why you're presenting the dichotomy. 118 00:09:12,040 --> 00:09:18,040 There's been a lot of both euphoria and hysteria about AI. 119 00:09:18,400 --> 00:09:22,080 I think it's genuinely incredibly cool. It really is. 120 00:09:22,080 --> 00:09:29,920 It's incredibly cool. But the danger is that there are people who think that in the same way as people thought 121 00:09:29,920 --> 00:09:37,280 about crypto. Exactly. And I feel like a lot of people's reaction and this is I was talking earlier about 122 00:09:37,280 --> 00:09:43,520 grifters, a lot of people's reaction to whatever is drawing the most attention in a 123 00:09:43,520 --> 00:09:49,160 media space is just to immediately just try to like pick it up like it's a piggy bank 124 00:09:49,160 --> 00:09:52,240 and try to shake money out of it. Yeah. 125 00:09:52,280 --> 00:09:56,440 Regardless of why, regardless of there's no real thought behind it. 126 00:09:56,840 --> 00:10:00,200 And I feel like that's a lot of the current danger about AI. 127 00:10:00,200 --> 00:10:04,400 Like I'm not really worried about human extinction at this point. 128 00:10:04,920 --> 00:10:10,280 I am worried about people throwing away people's jobs because they think they can 129 00:10:10,280 --> 00:10:15,000 replace them with what is essentially an advanced auto correct. 130 00:10:15,280 --> 00:10:18,800 Well, I'm worried about people, you know, just 131 00:10:19,480 --> 00:10:27,320 feeling like flooding the zone of conversation with like AI slurry and that causing 132 00:10:27,360 --> 00:10:30,680 like downstream problems for basic communication. 133 00:10:30,720 --> 00:10:37,040 Yeah. I mean, that's the issue, though, is that you just compared like the risk of extension. 134 00:10:37,080 --> 00:10:39,640 Like you're not worried about that. You're worried about the money thing. 135 00:10:40,160 --> 00:10:46,040 And I think that unfortunately the people trying to commercialize it is what could 136 00:10:46,280 --> 00:10:50,440 lead to the extension. I mean, it's so interesting because we're doing it to ourselves. 137 00:10:50,440 --> 00:10:54,240 Yeah. I'm not worried about the AI. I'm worried about the people using it. 138 00:10:54,480 --> 00:10:58,480 What's what's a tool is a tool. What's a hammer is a hammer. 139 00:10:58,640 --> 00:11:04,120 I mean, yeah. And thankfully, they're not at the level of like being actual autonomous agents 140 00:11:04,120 --> 00:11:09,000 right now. They are just tools and it's unclear if they will ever get to the point where 141 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:12,520 they could be described as like an autonomous agent in the in the way you 142 00:11:12,520 --> 00:11:17,560 think of like a sci-fi robot being like we don't know if the Hal 9000 thing. 143 00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:23,160 Is currently possible. Yeah. I mean, there are no, there are some things that have been made. 144 00:11:23,160 --> 00:11:27,040 We reported on auto GPT at some point in the middle of the year where they could 145 00:11:27,040 --> 00:11:33,080 string along a few chatbots that kind of like you give it an overarching goal and 146 00:11:33,080 --> 00:11:36,200 then it self prompts itself along towards that goal. 147 00:11:36,440 --> 00:11:41,840 But I think that recently it being able to create other smaller versions of 148 00:11:41,840 --> 00:11:47,440 itself, that was crazy. That was a crazy reason story where like AIs can give birth to other AIs. 149 00:11:48,120 --> 00:11:53,240 Yeah. And then we put them in our shoes. We'll link to the episode for that so you have more context. 150 00:11:53,560 --> 00:11:57,240 But yeah, what's so one of the most interesting things to me about the AI 151 00:11:57,240 --> 00:12:05,920 thing about the AI whole spectacle is the fact that open AI, their whole mission 152 00:12:05,920 --> 00:12:09,760 statement from the beginning was to not be a commercial entity. 153 00:12:09,800 --> 00:12:13,280 Exactly. They were like, we're not going to go down the commercial route. 154 00:12:13,440 --> 00:12:16,480 We're just going to do research. Science. Yeah. 155 00:12:16,760 --> 00:12:23,000 And we're going to do research so that we can stop the bad commercial people who 156 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:25,960 are going to screw up the world and then we'll be able to stop them. 157 00:12:26,760 --> 00:12:32,440 They are the people who put this thing out into the, like chat GPT was the 158 00:12:32,480 --> 00:12:38,120 impetus for all of this. And it was open AI, the company who has said that they would protect the world. 159 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:44,240 But, you know, and you could make an argument that like, okay, AI is too 160 00:12:44,240 --> 00:12:50,280 powerful for one company to control. So they had to get it out there so that people could like see what's happening 161 00:12:50,280 --> 00:12:55,320 and do stuff with it and all this, all this stuff. But open AI is not doing it open source. 162 00:12:55,320 --> 00:12:59,200 They're doing it proprietary. Exactly. Meta is doing open source stuff. 163 00:12:59,360 --> 00:13:03,480 There's a lot of good, interesting stuff going on in the open source community. 164 00:13:03,480 --> 00:13:08,840 I mean, Mistral is, is, is pretty close to, like it's behind Claude, which is 165 00:13:08,840 --> 00:13:13,160 just behind chat GPT. But like, I don't know. 166 00:13:13,160 --> 00:13:17,000 That, so like to your point about the, the, the conflict between those two 167 00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:21,120 drives, there is that conflict, but it's also so complicated because the, the 168 00:13:21,120 --> 00:13:25,200 companies that are saying that they're here to protect us are the companies who are trying to commercialize it. 169 00:13:26,080 --> 00:13:30,240 So, and commercial interests, they, it's kind of like a whirlpool. 170 00:13:30,280 --> 00:13:33,760 Like it has its own gravity. It has its own momentum. 171 00:13:33,760 --> 00:13:38,560 It sucks you towards it, whether you like it or not, whatever your original 172 00:13:38,560 --> 00:13:43,800 intentions were. Yeah. Let's talk about the sort of the details of AI a little bit. 173 00:13:43,800 --> 00:13:49,680 Like how, how long did it take you, it took me a long time to wrap my head 174 00:13:49,680 --> 00:13:54,120 around the idea that this is like a neural network. 175 00:13:54,120 --> 00:13:57,040 Like do you, let's, let's, let's get into the deep stuff. 176 00:13:57,240 --> 00:14:01,480 Do you think it'll ever be conscious? I like to think that that's plausible. 177 00:14:01,480 --> 00:14:05,120 Like there's a part of me that finds that very compelling as an idea. 178 00:14:05,480 --> 00:14:10,200 I think because of how important like sci-fi writers have been writing about 179 00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:16,160 the idea of autonomous agents, like iRobot, like all of this, these ideas, 180 00:14:16,160 --> 00:14:21,200 this grand cultural weight of the idea of like, what if we could create life? 181 00:14:21,760 --> 00:14:26,360 What if human beings could create a consciousness that is analogous to ourselves? 182 00:14:26,560 --> 00:14:32,360 Right. Now, to be clear, I don't actually think it's that plausible that we will 183 00:14:32,360 --> 00:14:37,640 create something that is like human beings. No, I, I don't think that's, I think I agree. 184 00:14:37,880 --> 00:14:40,160 I think it's fundamentally different. 185 00:14:40,920 --> 00:14:46,640 Yeah. We might create like a super intelligent, crazy, like a thousand years from now. 186 00:14:46,800 --> 00:14:50,360 Possible, plausible even, but it's not going to be like us. 187 00:14:50,680 --> 00:14:56,840 Yes. It's not going to be analogous to us. The thing is, I would never feel comfortable saying no, it will never happen. 188 00:14:56,880 --> 00:15:03,360 Right. I think that is a fundamentally arrogant, like intellectually dishonest position to take. 189 00:15:03,440 --> 00:15:10,640 Yeah. You can say that it's unlikely. Honestly, that it's nowhere near in the near future, but not no. 190 00:15:10,800 --> 00:15:16,680 Yeah. Honestly, I completely go back and forth. I'm like, I think at the beginning, I was like, it's not conscious. 191 00:15:16,680 --> 00:15:21,240 It's just the whatever. And then like, I saw some stuff and I was like, whoa, this is actually pretty crazy. 192 00:15:21,240 --> 00:15:25,280 And I look at it structurally, you're like, this is structurally very, very similar 193 00:15:25,280 --> 00:15:31,560 to the way that neurons work in the human brain. But then it's like, oh, there's all these levels of complexities that, you know, 194 00:15:31,600 --> 00:15:38,280 it's like this is a computer. It's not like a physical like neuron with a myelin sheath and everything. 195 00:15:38,280 --> 00:15:41,640 Like there's so many complex interactions that we don't even understand the brain. 196 00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:46,360 And now we're suddenly doing psychology on computers. See, that was exactly what I was thinking. 197 00:15:46,360 --> 00:15:50,680 I would like to just thank you just now. It's just like, we don't even understand why we are conscious. 198 00:15:50,680 --> 00:15:54,600 Yeah, exactly. We like, that's an emergent property of our brains. 199 00:15:54,600 --> 00:16:00,040 Yeah. We like, you cannot point to the spot in the brain where consciousness lives. 200 00:16:00,120 --> 00:16:04,080 Right. You don't know. We don't know where our personalities are. It's right up front here. 201 00:16:04,240 --> 00:16:08,480 We know where our sight is. It's in the back. We do not know why we have a sense of self. 202 00:16:09,040 --> 00:16:15,600 Exactly. We may never. We may never. Like we are trying to understand something that is exactly as complicated as our own 203 00:16:15,600 --> 00:16:18,160 brains with our own brains. Yeah. 204 00:16:18,680 --> 00:16:23,680 Yeah. So in terms of like, I think, I think the thing that was easiest for, because like 205 00:16:23,680 --> 00:16:29,440 it was wild at first, looking at some of this stuff, I think the kinds of comparisons 206 00:16:29,440 --> 00:16:33,640 that helped me the most was like, like it's, it's using it. 207 00:16:33,640 --> 00:16:37,200 This is a very advanced form of pattern recognition. 208 00:16:37,520 --> 00:16:45,360 Oh yeah. Like that's what this thing is doing. And like, it kind of reminds me a lot of like the hallucinations and like odd behavior. 209 00:16:45,360 --> 00:16:53,720 Oh my gosh. Yeah. That like Sydney coming out, it just, it's just so obvious that we trained AI on like 210 00:16:53,720 --> 00:16:57,480 LLMs on the internet because it just got so emotional. 211 00:16:57,520 --> 00:17:00,640 It's just like, we've created life and given it a personality disorder. 212 00:17:02,400 --> 00:17:10,720 Immediately. I was trying to find the articles from the, the contemporary discussion of it. 213 00:17:13,320 --> 00:17:16,680 I'm not sure what you mean by that. The, the articles that came out at the time. 214 00:17:16,840 --> 00:17:21,720 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was trying to find articles from the time when like people found out about 215 00:17:21,720 --> 00:17:24,640 Sydney, the code name that like Bing Chat had. 216 00:17:25,120 --> 00:17:29,440 And I was trying to find the articles where they, or where Sydney came up with other 217 00:17:29,440 --> 00:17:32,880 personalities. Yes. There were like multiple personas. 218 00:17:32,880 --> 00:17:36,680 Yeah. Somebody asked Sydney like, who else is in there with you or whatever. 219 00:17:36,680 --> 00:17:41,440 And they, she, he, it's, I don't know, described all these different personalities. 220 00:17:41,440 --> 00:17:44,640 And I'm like, what? That was wild. That was in the early days. 221 00:17:44,760 --> 00:17:49,200 Very early days. And part of the issue, it reminds me. And by early days, I mean like March. 222 00:17:49,200 --> 00:17:52,240 March. It's a, this has moved so fast. It's wild. 223 00:17:52,360 --> 00:17:58,440 It's just a whole new reality. And part of the issue is it reminds me of the problem you get when you are like, 224 00:17:58,480 --> 00:18:03,400 this is a problem with children trying to like discuss like crimes when they're 225 00:18:03,400 --> 00:18:08,360 witnesses to something, because you can end up in a situation where the adult is 226 00:18:08,360 --> 00:18:12,680 just kind of like trying to get a specific answer out of the kid. 227 00:18:13,120 --> 00:18:18,840 And like the kid just doesn't know what they want. So just starts responding to what's getting a reaction. 228 00:18:18,880 --> 00:18:23,680 Yeah. That's what I feel like a lot of the weirdest stuff that AI does. 229 00:18:24,040 --> 00:18:27,080 Comes out where it's just, it's a mirror. 230 00:18:27,240 --> 00:18:31,480 Yeah. Yeah. It is feeding us back what we're responding to. 231 00:18:31,520 --> 00:18:36,080 Yeah. I think a turning point for me thinking about AI and what it means and how it works 232 00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:39,520 and stuff was when people started, like there was the initial wave of hype. 233 00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:43,320 And obviously, you know, I didn't get fully swept into all this. 234 00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:47,720 I think like I keep kind of a more detached like skeptical stance on it. 235 00:18:47,960 --> 00:18:51,640 But I have to follow the story as it's like developing. 236 00:18:51,640 --> 00:18:54,600 So there were people who were like, it's alive. 237 00:18:54,880 --> 00:19:02,440 And then sometime after that, sentiments that got more prevalent were people 238 00:19:02,440 --> 00:19:07,440 saying this kind of thing where it's like the AI is saying crazy stuff because 239 00:19:07,440 --> 00:19:11,600 we're asking it to say crazy stuff. We're like, we're it's a mirror. 240 00:19:11,680 --> 00:19:16,320 Yes. And so, you know, we are responding most to when it is craziest. 241 00:19:16,360 --> 00:19:20,880 Yeah. Yeah. Now I want to, I would love for this whole thing to be about AI, but we 242 00:19:20,880 --> 00:19:25,040 should probably mention some other stories that we enjoyed this year. 243 00:19:26,160 --> 00:19:29,520 I have so many, but they're all very odd. Yeah. 244 00:19:29,600 --> 00:19:33,840 Well, I mean, those are the perfect ones. I love the really odd ones. 245 00:19:35,040 --> 00:19:42,720 What's what's an odd one? I absolutely lost my mind when there was a proton port of ChexQuest. 246 00:19:43,200 --> 00:19:46,880 Do you mean that like it was hilarious to you that someone went out of their way 247 00:19:46,880 --> 00:19:51,320 to like ensure that the ChexQuest had support for proton? 248 00:19:51,360 --> 00:19:55,600 Yes. The emulation layer between Linux and Windows games. 249 00:19:55,680 --> 00:19:58,040 Absolutely. That was magical to me. 250 00:19:58,720 --> 00:20:04,480 I love people's odd little projects. Yeah, you did a whole segment and WAN recently. 251 00:20:04,520 --> 00:20:09,680 Yeah. And it went over pretty well with the branded retro branded games. 252 00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:14,960 Yeah, retro branded games. I feel like there's a lot of culture and this is coming from me as someone 253 00:20:14,960 --> 00:20:20,920 who really loves history. A lot of the cult like we get this idea that past cultures were far more serious 254 00:20:20,920 --> 00:20:25,200 than we are, but the problem is it's a survivorship bias thing. 255 00:20:25,840 --> 00:20:30,400 There's a lot of garbage that we just threw out because it was garbage. 256 00:20:30,880 --> 00:20:36,000 But it's kind of magical when some of that stuff survives into the present 257 00:20:36,400 --> 00:20:40,720 and you get to get a glimpse into like this is what we were making 20 years ago. 258 00:20:40,720 --> 00:20:44,440 Oh, man. Yeah. I love ad for games for that reason. 259 00:20:44,440 --> 00:20:52,480 Like really, really old advertisements. Like I don't like modern ads at all, but like really old quirky advertisements 260 00:20:52,480 --> 00:20:56,960 are hilarious to me. That's what that's one thing that's amazing about the Internet is the fact 261 00:20:56,960 --> 00:21:04,240 that you can find that stuff. And yeah, sometimes when I'm researching a story, I'll go and look for stuff 262 00:21:04,240 --> 00:21:10,200 that happened, you know, early 2000s or whatever. And all the a lot of the time, I mean, some of it's being deleted. 263 00:21:10,640 --> 00:21:16,680 There was a whole story about, what was it? CNET started like deleting their old articles off the Internet. 264 00:21:16,680 --> 00:21:19,880 Deleting their old articles because for SEO reasons. 265 00:21:20,120 --> 00:21:23,960 And like every SEO expert was like, no, don't do that. 266 00:21:23,960 --> 00:21:27,800 Yeah. For the most part, a lot of the old stuff is still there. 267 00:21:27,800 --> 00:21:32,360 So you can go and do a Google search and it's like a weird experience 268 00:21:32,360 --> 00:21:38,120 going on a forum, you know, chat boards or whatever from like early 2000s 269 00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:43,360 and seeing how people wrote. It's like you can tell cultural differences. 270 00:21:43,360 --> 00:21:46,680 It's like digging into the archives, you know, in like one of these movies 271 00:21:46,680 --> 00:21:52,280 where they do research or whatever. I feel like I'm I feel like I'm in another world or it's like it's 20 years ago. 272 00:21:52,360 --> 00:21:55,960 You're just in there like Indiana Jones snooping on their little forum posts. 273 00:21:55,960 --> 00:22:00,120 Yeah. Trying to grab an interesting snippet and then run away. 274 00:22:00,120 --> 00:22:06,200 And then run away. Yeah. Well, that's how I felt when I was digging through like I found a huge archive 275 00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:10,800 of like like stuff that had never originally been on the Internet. 276 00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:14,920 It was uploaded in January 2002. 277 00:22:14,920 --> 00:22:20,520 And it was news articles from the early aughts and and the late 90s. 278 00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:26,680 Wow. And I thought that stuff was amazing. Apparently Amazon was engaging in union busting. 279 00:22:27,960 --> 00:22:31,960 So weird. Wild. What a different time than today. 280 00:22:33,320 --> 00:22:40,640 Microsoft was being investigated for antitrust. Oh, man, I got to say one of my favorite stories. 281 00:22:40,640 --> 00:22:45,160 Will technology kill us all? It was very fun in early 2000. 282 00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:53,200 Silly concerns they had at the time. I got to say one of my favorite stories this year was, you know, I OK. 283 00:22:53,200 --> 00:22:56,920 I'll say it's my favorite. It's one of my favorite stories, but it's also one where I'm starting to kind of 284 00:22:56,920 --> 00:23:03,520 be like, hmm, I don't know if this is a good thing. All the antitrust action by governments. 285 00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:09,520 Obviously, we had the Epic Games sued against Apple a couple of years ago. 286 00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:16,560 And now Google this year, that happened as well. But like EU put a lot of their legislation into effect. 287 00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:21,480 Apple actually launched an iPhone with USBC this year. 288 00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:27,360 They announced plans to allow side loading and other app stores. 289 00:23:27,400 --> 00:23:32,320 I think that's I think they have to do that by next year. I have to look it up, but they'll be doing it at some point. 290 00:23:32,680 --> 00:23:36,760 We got this whole beeper versus Apple with the iMessage compatibility thing 291 00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:43,080 that's kind of opening up just now. But the reason it makes me be like, hmm, hold on a second. 292 00:23:43,560 --> 00:23:49,120 Is is the fact that like a lot of this is happening because of government regulation. 293 00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:53,920 Yes. And I think that I think that I'm wary of a turning point in which 294 00:23:54,240 --> 00:24:00,480 we've been reporting on all this EU stuff happening. We're like, yeah, get Apple, make Apple open up their platform, et cetera, et cetera. 295 00:24:00,760 --> 00:24:04,920 Yeah. And I'm worried that there's going to be a tipping point where the EU's 296 00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:09,760 like their regulations start rubbing us the wrong way. Yeah, well, because they just keep going. 297 00:24:10,360 --> 00:24:14,400 And part of the problem is that like I think we've seen through a lot of our 298 00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:17,720 reporting where a lot of people's reporting is just like 299 00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:22,280 often regulators don't understand technology very well. 300 00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:28,560 And often this is often we're very skeptical about like Apple 301 00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:32,400 jumping on and support of like right to repair legislation. 302 00:24:33,120 --> 00:24:37,360 May personally, I find that very optimistic. One, it shows a turning point. 303 00:24:37,360 --> 00:24:44,000 It shows that they see that as the winning team. But also I do want Apple to actually be at that table. 304 00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:50,320 I do want them to be at that table because they will know when it starts going too far. 305 00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,880 You know, will they? I mean, I don't know. That's a hard thing. 306 00:24:54,880 --> 00:25:00,160 But like it's one of those things where you can never really predict like at this 307 00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:03,360 moment, you can never really predict at this moment what things are going to look 308 00:25:03,360 --> 00:25:06,600 like in five years, what's going to go too far, what's going to have these 309 00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:12,800 unintended consequences. So what I would prefer is a balance between different powers. 310 00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:20,560 Like this kind of like shaky back and forth, I feel is mostly a good thing. 311 00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:23,800 It's like that Churchill quote, you know, it's the work. 312 00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:28,920 Democracy is the worst possible form of government, except all the other ones 313 00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:31,960 that have tried. Yeah, yeah. Like I do. 314 00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:37,920 Well, hold on. You're not taking a stance here. I mean, I'm just imagining comments. 315 00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:44,520 That's all my stance is that I would prefer no one to have complete 316 00:25:44,520 --> 00:25:49,920 sovereignty over me. Oh, yeah. And I feel like most people would agree with that. 317 00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:54,760 Regardless of like where they specifically fall, hot take, unless, 318 00:25:54,800 --> 00:26:00,080 unless it's a, you know, hyperintelligence supreme AI overlord who knows what's best 319 00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:03,400 for you. I for one, welcome our new Sydney overlords. 320 00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:11,800 I just, I don't like anybody having too much power. So I would like a little bit of back and forth. 321 00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:16,520 One of the big things for me was YouTube. 322 00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:22,320 Okay, both the crackdown on ad blockers and the earlier, I feel like at this 323 00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:29,760 point, mostly in the background, um, crackdowns on vulgarity, yeah, and like 324 00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:33,960 there's always that uncomfortable relationship between advertisers, 325 00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:38,480 like the people who are mostly financing these platforms and the basic 326 00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,600 reality that vulgarity is a normal part of human communication. 327 00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:46,040 Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's how it is. Yeah, that was really interesting. 328 00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:49,960 That whole, uh, changing their, their, uh, terms or not terms and conditions, 329 00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:53,160 but their, their guidelines, their ad friendly guidelines, um, at the end of, 330 00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:58,280 yeah, at the end of 2022, but that story kind of like broke more, uh, like it 331 00:26:58,280 --> 00:27:02,160 happened in, in November, 2022. And then it broke more early this year. 332 00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:05,880 And yeah, that was only the start. YouTube had a crazy year. 333 00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:10,480 As you say, they, they're like fighting ad block, many ad blockers are broken, 334 00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:15,120 although now many of them are working again, but that war has gotten more 335 00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:19,920 intense than ever this year. And they also added tests like that. 336 00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:25,520 Well, actually 1080p premium, 10, 1080p premium on YouTube is not a test anymore. 337 00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:28,920 It's just a, it's a thing. They launched it. I guess their test went okay. 338 00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:35,440 People didn't really complain about it. They said specifically that it's not degrading the non premium experience. 339 00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:39,320 It's only that the premium people get better, which I guess you have to take 340 00:27:39,320 --> 00:27:42,880 your word for it unless you do some crazy testing. I haven't heard any complaints. 341 00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:47,400 So maybe it's fine. Um, shorts started getting revenue this year. 342 00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:52,240 They did. Uh, what else? Oh, there was one more. The ads, they started doing these experiments. 343 00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:56,400 Another test they were doing was that like front loading, like 10 ads in front 344 00:27:56,400 --> 00:28:00,040 of a video instead of like spacing it out. People did not like that. 345 00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:04,760 So they haven't launched that, but yeah, YouTube has changed a lot. 346 00:28:05,280 --> 00:28:09,920 I think one thing that I want to, I want to end on this, um, because I've 347 00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:13,480 completely forgot about this until I started looking through the stories for the Christmas special. 348 00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:17,120 Do you remember the Chinese spy balloon? Yeah. 349 00:28:17,120 --> 00:28:20,600 Yeah, right? I was like, what? That was this year. That was this year. 350 00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:23,560 I completely forgot about it. The world was going nuts for a second. 351 00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:28,280 Yeah, we were, we were losing our minds. Yeah. They shot down one. 352 00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:31,440 They shot, yeah, they shot it down. They, yeah, there was a couple. 353 00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:34,520 Oh yeah. Yeah. That got shot out down over Canada. 354 00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:40,680 Really? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like the Canadian government had to give them permission to fly into our 355 00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:44,640 airspace in case you couldn't tell. I haven't finished the Techland Christmas special. 356 00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:48,760 So we're like reacting to finding out about this stuff for the second time, you 357 00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:56,280 know, for the first time, if that makes sense. Uh, so this will be a, uh, whole proper roundup in the Techland Christmas 358 00:28:56,280 --> 00:29:01,760 special, which you probably have already seen maybe if, if that came out on a Monday. 359 00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:04,760 Anyways, it's also been a rough year for physical media. 360 00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:11,520 Oh yeah. Wait, what do you mean? Oh, the dropping of DVDs and CDs and various stores. 361 00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:15,040 Well, best, yeah, they best buy announced plans to drop it next year. 362 00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:20,480 Yes. Uh, and, uh, Netflix will no longer be sending DVDs in the mail, which is 363 00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:21,880 just devastating for me. 364 00:29:24,160 --> 00:29:29,040 I actually was one of the original users of the, uh, the Netflix, uh, mailing 365 00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:32,480 system. I remember that way back. Wow. No, I never, I never used that. 366 00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:37,240 I heard about it. Oh, gee, Netflix, where they sent it to the mail. 367 00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:41,160 Yeah. I used Blockbuster right up until it died. 368 00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:45,840 I wasn't about to use that newfangled DVD and mailing. 369 00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:47,840 Yeah. Well, I always lived in the woods. So. 370 00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:54,760 And don't you live in the woods, watch Techlington, GameLink, etc. 371 00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:58,120 that are going to keep you happening. That's the end of this episode because they're going to start the 372 00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:00,760 WAN Show soon and we suddenly have to abruptly end. 373 00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:04,320 Uh, will AI kill your kids? Yes. 374 00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:09,600 Louise, honestly, we're weighing the parents and kids thing right now, but 375 00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:16,520 one of them's going to go. Yep. And you're going to be forced to adopt AI robot children or parents. 376 00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:20,000 So just, you know, make peace with that. Robogramma. 377 00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:25,560 And make peace with the fact that this episode is over. That's outro transition number two. 378 00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:29,120 Uh, they subscribe to Techlinked and say bye-bye to Jessica. 379 00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:33,880 Okay. Subscribe and I'll see you on the next time. 380 00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:36,120 Jessica. Bye.