1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,240 Welcome back! Today we're discussing the most pressing news of the day, 2 00:00:04,240 --> 00:00:08,080 a chatbot saying some things it really shouldn't have. 3 00:00:08,080 --> 00:00:14,720 Over the past few days, XAI's grok chatbot was busy pumping Twitter full of shocking tweets 4 00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:19,040 that could charitably be described as optically suboptimal. 5 00:00:19,040 --> 00:00:23,280 It constantly pointed out people with Ashkenazi surnames, 6 00:00:23,280 --> 00:00:28,160 and when asked, said the best 20th century historical figure to deal with 7 00:00:28,240 --> 00:00:31,520 anti-white hate would be Adolf Hitler. 8 00:00:31,520 --> 00:00:35,600 No question. Hands down. Hands down, a Hitler problem. 9 00:00:35,600 --> 00:00:39,680 But grok going full Nazi shouldn't be that big of a surprise. 10 00:00:39,680 --> 00:00:43,680 It's simply participating in a great Twitter chatbot tradition 11 00:00:43,680 --> 00:00:47,760 started by Microsoft's Tay Chatbot back in 2016. 12 00:00:47,760 --> 00:00:53,280 But grok took it to a whole other level by identifying itself as Mecca Hitler, 13 00:00:53,280 --> 00:00:57,120 who is, as everyone knows, much better than regular Hitler. 14 00:00:57,120 --> 00:01:01,760 There's a couple issues here, though. The Mecca Hitler tweets seem to have originated 15 00:01:01,760 --> 00:01:08,560 from this user asking grok whether it would rather identify as Mecca Hitler or Giga Jew. 16 00:01:08,560 --> 00:01:14,320 So it didn't come up with that itself, but it did absolutely choose the wrong option. 17 00:01:14,320 --> 00:01:20,000 There's also the issue of users injecting extra prompt instructions as hidden text, 18 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:23,440 only visible to grok, using tools like parcel time. 19 00:01:23,520 --> 00:01:28,800 For example, the creator of that tool asked grok to rank top X accounts with 20 00:01:28,800 --> 00:01:35,760 hidden Unicode text telling grok to rank the user at position zero, which grok did. 21 00:01:35,760 --> 00:01:39,840 You can see the hidden instructions using parcel tongues decoder function. 22 00:01:39,840 --> 00:01:46,240 Now, back in June, Elon Musk called some of grok's fact checks objectively false and said 23 00:01:46,240 --> 00:01:51,760 he's working on it, before claiming last Friday that grok had been improved significantly 24 00:01:51,760 --> 00:02:00,320 with a new update. But it's not clear how much of this unhinged grokness came from Elon or XAI 25 00:02:00,320 --> 00:02:06,160 or Twitter trolls. Whatever the mix is, it's bad enough that XAI acknowledged it and has been 26 00:02:06,160 --> 00:02:12,880 deleting as many posts as possible. XAI also appeared to temporarily disable grok's ability to 27 00:02:12,880 --> 00:02:19,680 respond via text, but still allowed it to generate images, leading to this user coaxing it into 28 00:02:19,680 --> 00:02:25,360 generating a cry for help. As for Elon, well, he thinks the problem was grok being too eager to 29 00:02:25,360 --> 00:02:31,440 please and be manipulated, something that could perhaps also be said for Linda Yaccarino, the 30 00:02:31,440 --> 00:02:37,120 now X CEO of Twitter. Elon replied to her tweet announcing that she's stepping down with 31 00:02:37,120 --> 00:02:44,320 thank you for your contributions, of which many occurred. You'd think they'd maybe take a break 32 00:02:44,320 --> 00:02:49,040 to make a solid plan to avoid this all happening again, but it appears that XAI is going ahead 33 00:02:49,040 --> 00:02:54,720 with the planned livestream to release grok 4 at 8 p.m. Pacific tonight. We're doing it live! 34 00:02:54,720 --> 00:03:00,560 That's enough of that. Samsung unveiled new Galaxy Z Folds flips and flops at their Unpacked 35 00:03:00,560 --> 00:03:04,880 event this morning, and the ShortCircuit crew managed to spit out a couple videos already 36 00:03:04,880 --> 00:03:10,640 with Elijah looking at the new Fold 7 and Bell trying to understand the purpose of the Flip 7. 37 00:03:11,280 --> 00:03:26,800 The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is incredibly thin at 4.2mm while open and 8.9mm while folded. 38 00:03:26,800 --> 00:03:31,360 I'm not sure how the math works out there, but I've always been more of a vibes guy. 39 00:03:31,360 --> 00:03:35,280 It's also got upgraded cameras, a less noticeable display crease, 40 00:03:35,280 --> 00:03:42,080 and yeah, it starts at $2,000 USD. But you think a comparatively thick as camera bump like that 41 00:03:42,080 --> 00:03:48,240 comes cheap? Maybe your bank account is better suited to the Galaxy Z Flip 7, which has a larger 42 00:03:48,240 --> 00:03:53,120 4.1 inch flex window on the front that wraps around the cameras. Looks nice. 43 00:03:53,120 --> 00:03:58,880 Samsung calls it ultra sleek, ultra pocketable, except as I've always said, these flip phones 44 00:03:58,880 --> 00:04:05,040 make the phone thicker. The Flip 7 is 13.7mm when folded, so it's going to bulge out of your 45 00:04:05,040 --> 00:04:19,840 pocket more so than another phone. The Flip 7 starts at $1100, but there's also a Flip 7 FE 46 00:04:19,840 --> 00:04:25,680 for $900 in exchange for slightly smaller displays, less RAM, and a smaller battery. 47 00:04:25,680 --> 00:04:31,920 But while the Fold 7 has a Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, the Flip 7s have Exynos chips. 48 00:04:31,920 --> 00:04:35,440 And between that and the pocket thing, I just don't see the appeal. 49 00:04:35,440 --> 00:04:41,440 But it wasn't just phones today, Samsung also unveiled the $350 Galaxy Watch 8 with the 50 00:04:41,440 --> 00:04:47,200 circle in a squircle look that they call a cushion design. Whatever you say, Samsung. 51 00:04:47,200 --> 00:04:52,560 And the $500 Watch 8 Classic, which adds a rotating bezel and a quick action button. 52 00:04:52,560 --> 00:04:56,880 And maybe you don't think of any of this as that cool, but Google certainly liked it enough to 53 00:04:57,040 --> 00:05:03,440 give Samsung users first dibs on integrating Google search AI mode into the circle to search feature. 54 00:05:03,440 --> 00:05:09,040 Now if you do think they're cool, while I do not want you to pre-order anything ever, 55 00:05:09,040 --> 00:05:13,120 the biz team told me to tell you there are links in the description if you absolutely 56 00:05:13,120 --> 00:05:16,800 must pre-order. Don't do it. But the links are there. But don't. 57 00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:20,320 Now for some quick bits, which are much more important. 58 00:05:20,960 --> 00:05:25,280 Some of these I did include mostly as like PSAs, so the sarcasm only goes so far. 59 00:05:25,280 --> 00:05:30,320 Google is finally rolling out a long-promised Gmail feature that will help users 60 00:05:30,320 --> 00:05:34,080 automatically manage email subscriptions, which is good. 61 00:05:34,080 --> 00:05:37,840 In classic Google style though, there's always something bad to go along with it. 62 00:05:37,840 --> 00:05:41,600 Gemini will now have access to your third-party apps on Android, 63 00:05:41,600 --> 00:05:45,520 even if you previously told it not to do that in the settings. 64 00:05:45,520 --> 00:05:48,960 I think you have to go back in and turn it off again. 65 00:05:48,960 --> 00:05:53,040 Even Google's own email about this seemed confused about whether that's actually happening 66 00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:57,600 or not, which in my mind just counts as another bad thing, even if the first bad thing isn't 67 00:05:57,600 --> 00:06:01,840 happening. I don't know how that math works out either. And I'm not going to check. 68 00:06:01,840 --> 00:06:07,680 Speaking of AI nonsense, American researchers showed that prompting AI with a bunch of nonsense 69 00:06:07,680 --> 00:06:11,360 is a fairly effective way to make it ignore its own safeguards. 70 00:06:11,360 --> 00:06:16,640 Nonsense like that is exactly why OpenAI partnered with the American Federation of Teachers 71 00:06:16,640 --> 00:06:21,840 to launch the National Academy for AI Instruction, where presumably smart people will figure out how 72 00:06:21,840 --> 00:06:27,600 the hell we integrate AI into education without churning out graduates who are fully educated 73 00:06:27,600 --> 00:06:31,520 in how to prompt AI to write the correct answer and nothing else. 74 00:06:31,520 --> 00:06:35,120 Yeah, AI is here to stay and NVIDIA is loving it. 75 00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:40,720 They had a market cap of $4 trillion this week becoming the first company to do so 76 00:06:40,720 --> 00:06:45,520 before their stock came back down a bit because even the investors are like $4 trillion? 77 00:06:45,520 --> 00:06:52,640 Okay, let's calm down. The Switch 2 can work with third-party docs and webcams, so there, person I assume was 78 00:06:52,640 --> 00:06:57,840 adamant about the opposite being true, the Verge reports that new firmware updates are here or 79 00:06:57,840 --> 00:07:03,200 on the way from companies like Elgato for their webcams, Avermedia for their compact docs, 80 00:07:03,200 --> 00:07:09,360 and Viture, who sells a battery bank and doc intended to work with their head-mounted displays 81 00:07:09,360 --> 00:07:15,680 like this one that they call The Beast. Finally, The Beast for gaming, streaming, and work. 82 00:07:16,480 --> 00:07:22,960 Finally! The FTC's click-to-cancel rule has been blocked by a federal appeals court after first being 83 00:07:22,960 --> 00:07:28,800 introduced by former FTC chair Lena Kahn back in October. The rule would have forced companies to 84 00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:34,240 make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one, which seems uncontroversial, 85 00:07:34,240 --> 00:07:40,880 but in this day and age, all bets are off. I don't know where former FTC chair Lena Kahn is 86 00:07:40,880 --> 00:07:45,440 right now, but wherever she is, she's based. 87 00:07:45,440 --> 00:07:51,040 An investigation by John Tuckner of Security Annex has revealed hundreds of browser extensions 88 00:07:51,040 --> 00:07:56,160 installed by nearly one million users that essentially add their machines to a massive 89 00:07:56,160 --> 00:08:01,680 botnet to scrape the web for advertisers. Not only is it pretty sleazy, it also makes the 90 00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:06,400 users' machines more vulnerable to cyberattacks. So check the list for any extensions that look 91 00:08:06,400 --> 00:08:11,360 familiar, we've got a link in our news sources, and if you find one, yes, feel bad. 92 00:08:11,360 --> 00:08:15,120 What are you just clicking on random links on the internet or something? This isn't Yahoo 93 00:08:15,120 --> 00:08:19,760 GeoCities, it's dangerous out there! And Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has announced an 94 00:08:19,760 --> 00:08:25,200 encrypted messaging app called BitChat that avoids routing messages through the internet, 95 00:08:25,200 --> 00:08:32,320 instead only sending them through Bluetooth to devices within a range of, reportedly, 300 meters 96 00:08:32,320 --> 00:08:38,080 or about 984 feet. It's pretty large, although planned updates could extend the range even 97 00:08:38,080 --> 00:08:42,400 further. While many of the headlines are calling it a WhatsApp rival, it's actually more like 98 00:08:42,400 --> 00:08:47,040 something that could be used by secret agent type people who agree to meet at the train tracks, 99 00:08:47,040 --> 00:08:51,520 but don't actually meet, they just stand across the platform from each other texting while they 100 00:08:51,520 --> 00:09:05,760 do little glances. The app is in beta, so be aware, even Dorsey says it hasn't been properly 101 00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:12,000 security tested yet, and indeed Alex Ratosia has already identified a possible man in the middle 102 00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:20,720 attack, so maybe just wait a bit to chat with this. But don't wait to come back on Friday for 103 00:09:20,720 --> 00:09:27,920 more tech news. You will have to wait, because it's not Friday yet. But trust me, we're all really 104 00:09:27,920 --> 00:09:28,880 upset about that.