AI Creativity Doesn't Exist With Chloe Radcliffe and Ed Ongweso Jr.

0:02 Also media, Hello, and welcome to Better Offline. I'm, of course your host ed Zetra. I'm back in the iHeartRadio studio, bringing you it all live to tape technically from here in beautiful New York City. And today I'm joined by two returning angels of the Better off Line Choir from CS twenty twenty six and very likely twenty twenty seven as well. On my right, I have the wonderful Chloe Radcliffe. Hello, actress and author and writer and everything. At this point, you're I ever written a book but Iran Iran scripts and show.

0:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess, I guess, yes, yeah, writer.

0:49 And on top of the top of the show, you have a show coming up?

0:53 I do have a show coming up. Yeah, I'm doing my solo show. It's called Cheat. It's about how I have oh cheated in all of my relationships. The show does not condoniating. I think it is always bad. I think it always hurt somebody, But I think it happens all the fucking time, and nobody's willing to stick a microphone in front of their face.

1:07 And say that they did it. And I happen to be the one.

1:10 Anyway, I'm doing it August nineteenth and twentieth at Joe's Pub in New York City. It's gonna be I think it's really gonna be amazing. I'm I've seen it's.

1:19 I think it's going to be amazing.

1:21 I think it's gonna be fine.

1:23 Look, I'm very proud of the show. I have seen it. I've seen it hit people, and.

1:27 I watched the old version. It was fantastic and that was two years ago.

1:30 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:31 And of course, mister redwar On gways. So junior writer and critic, how are you doing, Eddie?

1:34 I'm doing pretty good.

1:36 So there are such different paces.

1:40 Well, I've been up since five in the morning because I've been doing media stuff all day. But that's that's the power of Zittron. But we're gonna start with you, Chloy. I wanted to actually ask you a very direct question. So you're going Hollywood, you've been in the act business. What have you seen of AI in Hollywood? Because if you read crap like the Ankler, yeah, they're like it's everywhere. Everything, every single thing is written in AI. Now what have you seen, if anything.

2:05 It is, I mean, it's carving out jobs like VFX and animation.

2:10 For sure.

2:10 There's a bunch of stuff in production, particularly in post production, that is really, really really being eaten by AI. Right, I don't know any screenwriters who are like actively using AI. It's totally possible that people are in the background and they're just not talking about it. I had so I, you know, at my core, I'm a stand up and I come from stand up, and I was like, no stand.

2:37 Ups are using AI. We all think it's fucking dumb.

2:38 And then an exec told me recently that she hears in so many meetings with stand ups that stand ups all use AI to write their jokes.

2:46 Or help them write their drugs, which is so fucking insane. It's so dumb.

2:49 And it's also like, well, that's why, I mean, I do think that there's a lot of comedy that's starting to sort of coalesce. It's starting to sound the same a little bit, and I'm like, I wonder if that's RYE.

2:58 So what's interesting about that, though, is because already seeing a monoculture develop outside of AI that people are trying to do the same thing and box up and sell it a million times. So I kind of unsurprised the idea that stand ups or write jokes.

3:09 Using names so embarrassing.

3:10 I want to I want if you're a listener of this show and you know one, please email me easy at better Offline dot COMMA. When something says something, yeah, this is important, and I do.

3:19 Look, I understand the idea of like having something to bounce your ideas off of, to say, like, what are other you know help me? Brainstorm angles on this concept helping brainstorm takes like I understand that impulse, But it comes down to the core debate around using AI in art, which is, do we value that art is made by humans?

3:43 And like, I just at my core, I.

3:45 Do, and do we value that when you're using AI, you know, as a brainstorming tool, what you are I guess. I guess there's the argument that you're like sort of weirdly using other humans because it's fundamentally eating ideas that other people have had.

4:01 And then right, and and.

4:03 So you are sort of like I can wrap my head around how somebody justifies it.

4:07 I don't mean to be like there's fucking tools, you know.

4:09 Like I mean, let me do that for you. Yeah great, Because just to be clear, I think if it having not done stand up but just witnessing enough of it. I feel like the only reason you wouldn't run your material by another stand up is they might not find it funny and they might give you direct feedback that you don't like or you don't respect them, Like it's one of the two, surely.

4:30 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I think a lot of people. I think the more senior you get in the industry, the less you're running your material by people, and the more you are just trying it on stage for the first time. Definitely, But yeah, you know, I like, to me, so much of this is uh, it really just comes down to the core of it matters if it is human versus a computer, I care less. If it is a computer, I'm impressed that we made a big database machine. I think the database this machine is very cool. That wow, that is it is just search too, that.

5:05 It's searched too. Yeah, exactly.

5:06 And and I do really care about the texture that comes from a person themselves.

5:12 Yeah. And also stand up is about the brittleness of human life. Like it's about like I don't.

5:18 Absolutely oh totally.

5:19 I mean, like an AI can tell you an amalgamation of what other people have taught, have said about anxiety, but an Ai does not experience anxiety and will never actually have a personal uh a personal touch a person understanding.

5:34 It's not going to push back, it's never going to say yet that sucks.

5:38 No, well, I mean also because in a small part, because a lot of what he is suggesting sucks.

5:43 It's from a stand up. From a stand up, it's.

5:45 Also a glazing machine. It exists to make you feel good about it, which is not what you want from it from the stand ups I know, including you. It's like you don't want people to just be like that was Drey.

5:55 Well no, oh, stand ups want that desperately if you actually want.

5:59 To sort of it's not say yes, but when you're on stage, you want that. Off stage, when you want the joke to be good, if you want to run materially.

6:06 Well, so, now what you're coming to is again this is actually it's it's a very human principle. And that principle is do you want to push yourself to create art that is the best it possibly could it could be? Or are you satisfied with something that is that serves the purpose of getting a laugh or insert whatever right that serves the purpose. Going back to Hollywood. Are you satisfied with something that serves the purpose of moving pictures in front of your eyes for twenty to fifty minutes right or twenty to one hundred and twenty minutes whatever, or do you want? Do you have the drive within yourself to make something that is earnestly creative and boundary pushing and interesting and feels new. It feels like a

6:54 new take on an old topic on the thing that we've all thought, you know, that's making people in the audience scene, that's making yourself feel seen, whatever, And that's it's the that line is where is to me what divides people who I respect versus people I whose efforts I don't respect as much, And the people whose efforts I don't respect as much wind up oftentimes falling in the category of hack. And hack is built to crush, and that is the only purpose of hack. What hack is to do is to be the broadest possible uh take, or broadest possible reference or broadest possible punchline or broad as possible topic that the most people can relate to, so that it crushes. But to me, it crushes without

7:40 us all.

7:40 And it's it's content versus are are you a machine? And it's kind of a funny version ed you're on substack. Of course you might have seen this. My favorite version of this right now is substack. In their first good product move in possibly ever, they added something called pangraam ai, which is like a decent AI check and none of these things are union naturally correct, so you can hit a button that says check for AI. You'd think one thousand, nine elevens happened on substack because people like I can't believe this. I can't believe that they're shaming me. They're shaming me for using AI and it's beautiful.

8:13 It is beautiful. I sadly found out a bunch of essays I've quoted length because they were they had you know, they're like academic reports, and I was like, oh, you know this is you know, it's it's tears and whatever. But it points out the direction of something that I was interested in following up were ridden with jenator of a.

8:33 I hit up the authors. They have not responded.

8:37 It's like most of substack is. My girlfriend pointed this out to me. This is her idea, just to give her credit, but she found this and showed it to me. And it's great because there are these people who are like, actually, it's unfair to point this out. Would you judge someone if they used autocorrect? No, that's a different thing. That's not the same thing at all.

8:55 That's not autocorrect. Is not an idea.

8:57 Yeah, I think it's fair to say that if you are presenting this as if this requires your attention to read at length, just as I'm hyperlinking all my sources, just as I'm articulating all the sources of my thinking. If there's another author, you should know that.

9:13 And I should know the thing is as well. It's like you can kind of tell, and I say, this is someone who writes way too long. Whenever a regular person starts writing four thousand word says you're like, ah, it's the three things. It's just like, well, yeah, while you're doing this, and it's like the first link is this, It's like, okay, motherfucker, I know what you're up to.

9:34 And it's like alarming how much of financial journalism is this now? And it's really interesting watching the fraction it fracturing here because you've got some people like I've used it for search and like I really shouldn't I use it for brainstorming. And then the people who are getting the most angry like, oh, use it, you use it for everything? Yes, use it to find out how to go to the toilet.

9:53 And now they're exposed.

9:54 Yes, right, they're they're they're uh, they're outsourcing their decision making to aar.

10:00 Yes. And the funny thing is is, I don't know if you're so sure of how good this is, why you so anxious? Why are you so upset about this? Is it?

10:08 If you that's funny, that's funny. Yeah, yeah, just laying behind it, if.

10:11 You think this is good enough to run your work or your business. And I see these I see the most insane.

10:17 It's such a funny thing.

10:18 Well, my favorite substec one is people like, well, I have ADHD and autism and actually you can't judge me for this. And I'm like, well, guess what I've got both of I got the full fucking deck. Heare, mother, I got both those. What you're gonna do now? And what their argument is is it helps with executive function. Oh, it helps with this. It's like, yeah, it doesn't. You're off, You're kind of you think it's helping with that you can't tell it's writing for you, and I think it's just watching people trying to justify this in all walks of life is so funny because it again it's like, if this is such a great thing and you're so proud of it, why aren't you just with your whole chest being like, yeah, I actually think this is right.

11:00 And it's also funny when there are a few people who are like out with their chest being like yeah, I wrote this or they and it sucks it. Actually, I've been still on the lookout this year and last year for like, okay, what are some interesting workflows that people have created where they're writing at length with AI And most of the time it's what they think is interesting is they've asked a bunch of long drawn out, like you know, well crafted prompts, but the pros is horrible.

11:29 It's still defined by like the limits of the models where they don't really want to take a stance, so they're exhaustively like documenting both sides of any discussion or debate. That's not really what you want him to write in.

11:40 It'soring sort of by nature.

11:44 And on top of that, the way they lead into every point has to say, this is one thing I've noticed that's the same dramatic weight no matter what the point is, and it's always way too much. It's always like, the the most important thing happened, and it will be a report I sided in a single sentence in seven it's like a oh the BIS report from this. It's just like, Okay, well you took three hundred words to lead to a single thing and then didn't build on it at all because you didn't read it, because you didn't you definitely didn't read the thing, because you definitely didn't write this.

12:13 And because the AI model doesn't have its own personal judgment calls about what isn't isn't the most important, And then if the person is completely outsourcing their decision making, then they are also not making tho judgement.

12:24 You know.

12:25 Yeah, your moral values don't come into it. And that's an important part of writing, especially if you're doing something or you're trying to argue what people should believe in. Right, If I can't sense any sort of urgency and you're hedging constantly, then and you're using an AI tohead, what's the point of that?

12:39 Yeah, what I think it is is that so I understandably, these people don't want to talk to me very much due to the thing they want to talk to their Yeah, they want to talk to right, But what they the few that will engage with me, they'll say, well, I take an idea to it and I go back and forth, then I edit what it says. I'm just like, then you're just copy pasting their words, and like, well, what's the difference between that and a human editor? The answer is the answer is when I speak to Matthews, he's a human being with the same demented mind as me, and we workshop ideas. So sorry, Matthews, A fucking legend is the better offline legend of reality, and he is he and I will work for things and sometimes it

13:18 be like, I don't know about that, man, I don't know that makes sense. And that's the most valuable thing in the world. That is more being told bad idea or I don't really get it is the best feedback in the world. The best thing in the world is just someone being like, oh, you derisively talk about yourself sometimes clothing sell Oh well, I'm not an expert. Actually being able to explain something to someone who is a layman is actually way more useful than to an expert, because otherwise.

13:42 Thank you, I am a hero you are.

13:44 Yeah, thank you. But it's it really is it?

13:48 Oh?

13:48 Also, I think I think a relationship where somebody is able and willing to critique someone else's work is actually one of the most respectful relationships because it is intrusting that the creator, the writer, the think or whatever with it is inherently trusting that that person can handle the criticism.

14:07 And can better their work.

14:09 And it is to me, it's it feels so much better when somebody looks at me and is like, hell, yeah, what you did is like it's really not good enough, because I'm like, thank fucking God, I'll fix it. I want to get I want to make it better.

14:21 And then the converse of that is when you impress them, you've actually impressed the true when they're like, damn this bangs.

14:26 It's honest.

14:37 And the other thing that these AI people they you ever see them mentioned taste online. These AI fricks like taste, and the way they use taste is like how like the frang e from Star Trek the Next Generation talk about I don't know everything, or just like dice online.

14:54 I do not understand that the one girl, the girl who works in Hollywood is like.

15:00 ID, It's fine.

15:01 It's a really simple comparison. It's guys online who refer to women as females. It's this thing females. Yeah, yeah, they we need taste in our models. And what they mean is discernment. But they're not smart enough to actually realize that, and you can't train discernment. Discernment is contextual and cultural and all these other things. And when you say this to AI people, they're like us being superior.

15:23 It's being superior to people you don't really understand. It's like they're being superior. Show me some stuff that you've written that actually is good.

15:31 So this okay, So this actually will go back to your Your very initial question to me was about I sort of answer about stand up and not Hollywood more broadly, but Hollywood from a creative standpoint. So it's hollowing out post production stuff.

15:43 But just actually before I forget, is that stuff it's hollering out chat GPT and stuff like that, or is that another kind of AI?

15:52 I don't know.

15:52 That's that's kind of thing. And that's the thing like, because all the AI gets complained anyway, I talked to question, I apologize.

16:00 No, no, no, no, you're good.

16:02 The when I think about like the actual creative output within Hollywood, because that's what people, right, people are like, we're going to make a whole movie with AI. We're going to make a whole whatever you're gonna be able to make. It's I mean, it's the famous video of.

16:15 What was it, Tom Cruise and the.

16:18 Which actually ended up being green screen and like a bunch of like non II stuff.

16:22 Yeah, hell yeah.

16:24 But the idea that we will make things that people can watch that are fully purely AI, or that are some vast, vast vast majority, yeah, is fundamentally going to suck. It is what right, that's what you're saying, and or it's going back to what you're saying, And I agree that like that will happen. I do think that will happen.

16:43 I think it will happen from outside of the current studio studios and guild creative guild model. I think that you know, somebody in some warehouse will create an AI model that will be putting out right.

16:56 They may they just they just put out one and it looks like adult shoes a film, but it will.

17:04 Get good, right, Like, there will be people who are able to you know, fill your entire your entire short form feed can be filled with stuff that looks kind of AI verticals that look kind of like Hollywood, right, and it is going to be crap whatever to whatever degrade art exists, it is And what is lacking there is It's exactly what you were saying. It is the discernment for people to say, to stand up and say this is not interesting enough for me to count as my entertainment. And I think that people have less of that pushback now. I think they have less willingness to push back like that now. And I think I think that people have less of that willingness to push back against to employ discernment now than ever. And I actually

17:53 lay the blame of that at the feet of the Endless Scroll, not at the feet of AI. Like I think the AI sort of came in and was this incredibly powerful tool. But because our standards for entertainment have already kind of been nuked by the Endless Scroll feed, now this incredibly powerful tool can come in and produce stuff that's shit, and we're not gonna.

18:17 Push Well, my controversial perspective on that is, I think streaming media is a bad idea. I think streaming media, I think Netflix streaming media is a terrible idea because it's both what you're saying, Chloe, and just the overall sense that there is unlimited content, so the sense that you could just build as much of it as possible and it'll be fine. I will say, I don't think it's going to take over just because it's too expensive.

18:38 It's also it's so hard to actually make a cogent video of longer than a few minutes, and.

18:44 Do you not think that it will get good enough in a year?

18:48 The problem is is that there's a bunch of psychological things with movies that they'll have trouble really totally, totally there is I think over in Asia, I forget where they've got a lot of these ones which are coming out which just like tight, like short melodramas that are watched for me.

19:04 Yeah, but seeing these on my feed where it feels like they catch on not because they're good, but because it's absurd. Like there's just one of this black girl as a mermaid. Her classmates found out and they're racist, so they're just saying slurs and I looked in the comments to see okay, and you know, I get a sense of this is virals is getting people liking it, and it's mainly just like sort of engagement bait.

19:30 I've also seen a fair amount of evidence that those things are body like they're paying to push them into the algorithm. Because there was a big thing New York Times think last year about like a really successful AI house it's making AI films and the views just randomly crashed, and I mean, I would there's this company called higgs Field AI that's doing really dodgy influencer stuff. They just bought for those of you listening, the twelve of you will know. I mean, there's this thing called Marcus the Worm, which is a guy in a v VR environment going Robert anyway. One of the Marcus accounts sold to higgs Field AI and it's just AI dog shit. Yeah yeah, they just sold it to an AI slop account. And

20:13 it's really hard to pass the success of them. And like how actually because to your point, Eddie, it's like people are laughing at them because they're really like some of them are so bad.

20:23 I think that there is going to be a sort of I think that there's going to be a split between people who put a premium on something that they know was made by people, and people who are completely willing to accept just moving picture on my screen. Yeah.

20:39 Yeah, And I think the well, we're already kind of seeing it more with the substack stuff, but people are violently rejecting this, And I think what the AI people hope happens that people are just so beaten down. I get the opposite feeling. People are getting more and more angry, people are getting more aggressive about it. People are I mean, there's this whole thing of the did you see the open ai influence a day? I paid for a bunch of influencers to go to like an open AI thing in upstate New York and like, I don't know, I'll walk around being.

21:07 Try to do this with them on to the.

21:09 Fact and they're like she and that was yeah when she flew them out, and they're like this this isn't an It's like that, oh yeah, we don't. They can't kill themselves. We have nets to catch them. No, but this it was just like, we don't use any water at this data center. Come and check it out. But I looked into it and it was mostly influencers who only already did claude stuff or like open a eye stuff.

21:32 So but the occasional ones that didn't, they had to post videos from like like a person that said a slur in twenty twenty one, like they were like, I'm very sorry for using chet GPT, I swear to god, I mean the whole Did you see the Hank Green thing?

21:45 Oh yeah I did.

21:47 So there's this science communicator struggle. There's some people are going to email me about this. So I'm gonna be happy. He's a science communicator. Just to be clear, he's beloved. He's got a lot of things wrong about he's got things wrong about testosterone and autism. Like I've so. He has fallen hookline in the sinker and been sponsored by control AI and Effective Altruist Institute. Anyway, during one of his videos, he goes he just apropos nothing, just goes well it means this and thank you for the pushback.

22:12 And he's like, oh, yeah, I was using it for research. And he's still to this day it's like, yeah, I was using it for research. I looked at the script. I didn't say that in the script. It's just like no one says I appreciate the pushback other than an AI model. Regular people don't say that in the flow of conversation. But he is basically like, I'm going to shut down this. I'm going to stop producing for a while.

22:34 I relied too much on AI and it's like, it's so bizarre because that. I don't think this is changing. I don't think it's going to become more permissible to use AI. AI is everywhere now, whether you like it or not. But that doesn't mean people are tolerant. People are getting like aggressive like them. I don't think the AI industry realizes how angry people are. And to be clear, I'm not encouraging anger or violence or anything like that.

23:00 I don't have to. I think people are already angry. I saw a video from a few months ago of a data cent a getting canceled and a guy running outside and going like it's canceled and everyone cheering. When Open Eye finally dies, it's gonna be like Corson and the end of Return to the Joy and the remake.

23:14 Specifically, I hope another reference I don't get. I hope the Jedi, which one is sound jesuscribe, Sorry, everybody, man, all of all of your all of your nerd fans who were gonna come to my show, are like, we're canceling those tickets. And I love nerds and I love you, and I actually the ticket tell me that I will comp you a year's subscription to my premium news letter if you buy a ticket.

23:38 I mean, oh, well, that's that's a big over.

23:41 Uh.

23:41 One. One time, I when I didn't want to have a conversation with a friend, I asked him to explain the plot of the matrix to me then, and we burned a couple of hours and then we would get to like I would be like, and what happened in the next one.

23:52 I was going through a breakup and I had to hang out with this friend.

23:55 And I did I like, really didn't want to talk about.

23:57 My break up. And I was like, what, oh, and what does Trinity do?

24:00 It's a like a libertarian mouse.

24:03 What's the architect and what does that symbolize?

24:07 And I was so interested, what's Zion?

24:09 Oh wow?

24:10 Oh interesting? And you were just inside your head describe Yeah, those things. You could never have a conversation like that with AI. We actually you could get a boring of the majors, but he wouldn't be there.

24:22 He would Yeah, I could just well, now the.

24:24 Voice mode that you could got that going, right, you.

24:27 Can go with Chloe. They got they got this thing now where they got voice mode for these things. And they're all buying little microphones like I barely even type anymore. You know, it's smell crazy in there also. But they're just sitting there being like computer, computer, No at the code now, No delete that code. Oh, I don't like it. Computer.

24:45 And these motherfuckers never share their code. They never shared the software they're building. They're just working on AI for fifteen hours day, so you know it's ship. You know, they don't you.

24:53 Know, tell me wait, okay.

24:55 I've just had a friend who works he works in in track and and he was like, my goal is to build an AI agent for myself so that every single morning, my AI agent can just tell me what emails are in my inbox and I can tell my agent, you know, what to respond to who, and that I never have to be.

25:19 In my inbox. I can just talk to my AI agent, right.

25:22 And when he says that, I'm like, honestly, that sounds amazing.

25:25 I can't. I'm sorry, emails are not that hard.

25:30 I yes, I agree, and like we all deal with emails, but I'm like, it's hard. It's like that fantasy is very seductive, right, right. The idea that I can just be like and tell me what's in my inbox? Yeah, and tell her I can do the twenty fourth, but we need to push it by a half an hour and.

25:48 Tell him that, right, Like that is very it's very very tempting.

25:53 I see that. But my thing is like I feel like if I don't read an email, like I don't want to respond to it, Like I don't want to just be like dashing stuff up. Because also, if you don't read a contract and you sign it, you're still bound by it. And that's how I feel with my emails. Just like, for sure, if my AI agent decides to call someone the wrong name or swear at them or send them an attachment that's just my last seven years tax returns, Like I don't know, I don't know what's happening, and maybe it will work.

26:19 And what if they would say that the AI is not going to make those mistakes, I.

26:22 Wouldn't believe them. But the other thing is like how much time are you saving How much time are you realistically? I'm sorry, is is your inbox so person that I've never met? Is your inbox so huge? But this is the thing as well, It's the grander promise of AI. It's like, what are you getting back? What is this saving you? And everywhere I look it's people are working more, They're not actually saving time. Like the thing the problems I have in my life don't come from too many emails.

26:48 I also think, as I'm thinking about this for myself, I'm like, I think I ingest information so much more clearly when I am sitting in front of the email, reading it, thinking about my response, typing out my response, rather than just sort of having a chat with a robot. I'm not really clinging to that information, and I'm not really having new ideas about oh fuck, I should actually talk to that other person about this, and I should ask them if they haven't in here?

27:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

27:13 I think there's also this thing where it's like, you know, a lot of the desires and automation are how can we get assistant labor, how can we get some form of slave labor servant labor? Like what shortcut can we do? And I feel like for a lot of the impulses around like making your home a bit more smart or making your digital life a little bit more streamlined, they are like, what if we could get the thing a human does, But like you're saying, you still need the human right. The reason why the assistant works with the assistant literally is is a person goes through them and talks with you about them, and not like you're playing a game of telephone with overviews and summaryes.

28:05 These things dilute your life to a series of calendar appointments and emails when it's not like it's I don't know, it's Wednesday. I've been on a bunch of calls all day. I don't want to do anything after four thirty pm. I might regularly go after six pm, but today I don't want to do this, And honestly, the only AI thing that's actually impressed me. I'm going to tell you a story now, random. I get reached out to by this company called Mattic that makes a robot that mops and vacuums you floor, and it fucking rocks because all the data is on the device. And I called it Turdsley, and it cleans my floors and it's great. Eighteen hundred fucking dollars.

28:36 What it's like.

28:37 It looks around your apartment and maps it out with radar, but it's all kept on device.

28:41 I know, shit in corner? What's wrong with what's wrong with you?

28:45 What's right?

28:46 Why did you do this shit in that corner?

28:49 Again?

28:50 Is this pub the time? And that's the thing. It's like, why do I like this? Is I don't have to mop my floor because and also I didn't. I mean that's true. Also I didn't pay for it. But I think that that's the thing. This thing is eighteen hundred dollars and it does very straightforward things very well. But that's the thing. Eighteen hundred bucks to clean your floors and these people like twenty bucks that will do everything. No, it won't, because your life is not a series of bits of data or watching your screen. It's the crazy bullshit that happens around it, and your emotions, your your intocrine system and how your life is going and how you feel that particular day and what you're capable of doing.

29:32 And I don't know. I don't think that is data that can be captured, nor is it data that can be fucking trained on there. And to your point, Eddie as well, they really want a slave, they really They keep fucking talking about AGI and they're like, yeah, we just want a conscious being that will trap.

29:48 And then the will in a cellar and he'll run the.

29:50 Microph he'll doke everything, Richie, and he'll do the work for.

29:54 Us and we will get paid. And we will not do anything for him, but we will own him, yes, the AGI, and we will keep.

30:03 Those who walk away from Omolus outside of his training.

30:06 Yes, what we're doing, which actually leads me neatly into Mark Zuckerberg's recent blog. Before we wrap up, I just want to read you one little quote from this piece of shit motherfucker. Now, this is a blog called The Future is for everyone.

30:20 Most trustworthy man, the.

30:22 Most trustworthy and damn man out there other than Clammy Samueltman himself. The notion that AI is so dangerous that only this, that the only safe path is an extreme concentration of power, seems inherently problematic. So, just to be clear, this is the guy who owns all of social media and his idea of the future is that everything should be shared other than the stuff he owns, and he is saying that he believes that delivering super intelligence to everyone is the way to answer the question of how people decide what matters in their own lives. And you may wonder what the fuck does that mean? And that's because he doesn't know either. He says, everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals,

30:59 and everything you can care about. This man has spent one hundred and fifty billion dollars or more on data centers to build that.

31:05 That's the thing.

31:06 I ran it through a pangrim and it said it was one hundred percent humor, which makes me think a team of interns and lawyers right.

31:14 My favorite is something something as insane as this robot will help you figure out what you want in your life.

31:20 Might actually have been written.

31:21 By This is actually really good though. Everyone will have incredible tools for creation to express your ideas. My eight year old daughter can already code her ideas and produce videos in an evening that would have taken me months or been impossible previously. What the fuck are you talking about? Mark?

31:37 Why are you letting your eight year old daughter in front of an LM?

31:40 Also, what are you doing that that you know she could do it a few days. That would take your months.

31:45 Now we're designing a robot together, are they? No, you're not. Meanwhile, researchers at Meta are generating novel crystal structures that are ideal for augmented reality glasses, and engineers are creating new apps in a fraction of the time it would have taken before. So he's actually happening at Meta. Last year, an old man with dementia was talking to a Kylie Jenner branded Bart and he then got on a train to New York and then fell over and died and that was the end of the story. Also, you could have sex chats with the John Cena Bart, even if you said you were a child. This is meta. This is what Meta builds.

32:19 Now.

32:20 Now, the reason I brought this up is I have spent most of the day talking to people about the promise of AI, and whenever I try and bring up real things it does. Everyone says it can summarize emails, it can it can do research. No one will talk like this because this is not real. The promise of AI is a fucking life. And also all of these people live in compounds, disconnected from the world. Why why why.

32:43 That's why his kid has to have sex chats with the John C. No no no, no, no no no.

32:50 Chloe was misinformed on that one.

32:52 That was not.

33:02 And it's just this I think is like this. This is what I think is so vulgar about AI though, which is the the people up the top who don't use this ship, who don't touch it, just like it's gonna do everything for everyone as happens for me with my army of servants I pay right now. I'm just gonna give that to everyone else. How I don't fucking know.

33:21 That's someone else's job. Everything is someone else's job.

33:23 It's a hard problem and we need to figure it out together.

33:26 And not me, you're going to figure out. And it just it feels like living in an alternative reality sometimes because they talk about this ship like building robots with their daughter or whatever.

33:36 So to me write some ship like this, like you know, you get the same thing. Go live in a digital virtual reality where you can pay three million dollars for a square foot of virtual space and you'll realize your dreams.

33:48 Do you ever go in the metaverse? You ever try out?

33:50 I will never go there.

33:54 I will die.

33:56 I will die A million times didn't go to the the robot. Now keep away from keep me from.

34:06 It's so crazy that actually so the promise of it. I let's like take that semi seriously. Yeah, it is insane to me that the goal at the end of the day is this thing that is inherently so human, which is answer the unanswerable question that you know exists within the blackness of your soul, right, Like that is it is like he is grappling with, look inside yourself, why do you feel unfulfilled when you wake.

34:39 Up in the morning.

34:39 Yeah, and he is saying, now we have invented a technology that will answer that, and that there's no bridge to that gap. There's no reason why this technology is going to fill the unfillable hole that we have not been that that people have been grappling with for hundreds of thousand of years.

34:59 Maybe Yeah, he's like, he's like, this tool will find my soul. It's definitely in there. I didn't find it in the metaverse' But that's actually a really good point. It's these people are a reft of culture, the bereft of love and joy, Like they don't seem to enjoy anything.

35:15 Well, you know, he's got the Julius Caesar cut a gun and enjoys culture.

35:18 The way they spend their money is not like, well.

35:22 This is what's weird. So these these people do not want to make product. They don't want to make art or jobs or products. Really they want to make money. Yeah, but they do benefit from art and products and they and I think that is what is so off putting about them that it's like, this guy is dealing with the same problems that we are dealing with.

35:45 He's dealing with the He's on the same search.

35:47 He's on, you know, the same hunt for a purpose and fulfillment that any of us are. And it feels so smarty to say I have a way, I have figured out how to answer that that soul question better than any of you dumb focks.

36:09 Yes, with my computer machine.

36:11 Which it does the same thing as everyone else's.

36:13 Right right.

36:14 It feels it's it's very very off putting to watch somebody benefit from art and enjoy enjoy human talk about wanting it and then like hand a thing to us that is inherently non human connection, that is inherently non human, and that inherently just makes him money.

36:32 Yes, and ultimately is just an extraction tool. There also is nothing like what he's doing. Just what he's describing with super intelligence for all, like a smart assistant that knows everything it does. It doesn't exist, it's not what he's talking about. Kind of reminds me of just talking before the show about this about Sam Altman was interviewed on recently and.

36:50 He was like, well, what's it going to do. It's gonna be it's going to be able to answer wishes.

36:55 And it's first of all, the moment they bring up magic, it's like, and.

36:59 I do you was that a joke? Was he trying to be funny? And you said no, no.

37:04 It's also humorous man, just like.

37:07 And he said yeah, and then you won't believe the wishes ill that he sounds like honestly, he occasionally slips into trump for like if it's just like it's good a grant any whish you want, eh, though you won't believe it beautiful wishes, But he said, because it's the.

37:20 Same kind of like soullessness, just like over promising. But what I was watching it earlier, it was like three questions and the seven was like, you won't believe the kind of wishes it will answer, and he's just like, what the fuck you? When you don't experience problems, I guess you just stop having ideas, when you just stop having any friction in your life, You're like, what fucking people deal with email?

37:43 Do you think if sam Aldman's initial plan when he was pitching the golf monarchs for seven trillion dollars, if that had been successful, do you think he'd be speaking about it in even more grand terms or just the same sort of like, it's a genie, it's a gin.

38:00 I know.

38:01 Also, I love the idea of just being like, yeah, it's a genie, it's a gin, a gin, which is, you know, famously always friendly, famously never a never a deal with consequences or costs of any kind, no famous stories about this at all, including a Laddin.

38:18 Yeah, definitely not in that region of the world about.

38:21 Yeah, Jesus correct with him as well. I think he would have gone exactly the same path, because if he'd got seven trillion dollars, would be in the same fucking place. We'd be doing the same shit. Because large language models are inherently limited, because and this is not even a technical point, there is only so much that you can get from training something you are they It's what happens when you're disconnected from humanity and culture and love and joy, and you see the world as ones and zeros, and you say, Okay, how do I learn? Well, I just read one hundred books.

38:51 I read a hundred books, and then I talked to the smartest person I know for seven hours. I listened to Lex Friedman, and I have peptides every minute and everything will be optimized when in fact, our experiences inform us, and we have no idea what experiences will inform us in what ways. Some of the best things and most interesting ideas I've had have been in the weirdest places, or like middle of the night when I've not slept, when I got to bed too late, where I didn't eat enough, so I woke up hungry. I'm like way, and it's not because I'm hungry, It's just because my brain goes, hey, well, if you looked at this part of the Earnings and.

39:29 Again this is this is the line between a human experience which is inherently unpredictable, versus a machine experience which the goal the goal of which is to make it as predictable as possible. And I mean, I'm thinking about Hollywood. You were asking about Hollywood at the beginning. It's like, Hollywood is a business of unpredictability, yes, And the point of making art is to take a shot, and you don't know if it's going to work, and you don't know if it's going to flop. And we are trying tech people and finance people, I think, are trying to lay a lens of predictability and your your language growth at all costs onto my business.

40:12 Which is inherently a business of unpredictability.

40:15 And I think that that's art, you know, art and human experience is valuable when shit hits when you don't expect it to.

40:23 And also the other thing too, Yes, and this a lot of great art is not doesn't have an answer. Like I just watched Last Year's Girlfriend, watching twin Peaks the Return, there's a large amount of that where you just have to kind of work out Joe Lynch would never have told you no, he would have he would have just said no, Like the Fireman creating. I can't actually continue that spoil twin Peaks there, but it's like some of the stuff that happens, you just have to kind of experience. You can't generate that because that's whatever the hell. I think he had a like deeply spiritual process as well.

40:54 They're one of my favorite interviews with him. He's like, you know, you go to the movies and people want to talk about the movie when it's done, and it's like the movie was the talking.

41:03 Yeah, you have to just do that and then leave and sometimes there aren't answers, And I think that that that's the thing, and that's the fundamental thing of all of this. It's like, oh, they must be an answer for everything. Everything must be normalized and packaged and financialized and commoditized. And the funny thing is is I feel like this is the end run of capitalism as we know it. That's my big Like people think it's the AI ball. No, I think we're at the end run of this stage of capitalism and whatever follows will be chaos because the markets are no longer based on reality.

41:33 They're completely divorced from any any material value.

41:36 And even the discussion of AI, it's like, yeah, it's so powerful, is it? Or is does it just use a lot of power? Everyone interprets everything based on like these fucking shadows in the walls of the cave, and the very fundament of meaning is being stripped out, partly because these companies think they can normalize creation of stuff of everything, that everything can be generative at the highest cost possible, just most in the same way. So we're four years in and we're still reading the same ship.

42:03 They were saying this shit about super intelligence in twenty twenty two. They was promising this bullshit for years, and it's still work. People can I will get an email from one of you people I love most of you. Some of you email me and you're like, well, actually, I've proven that this is they don't you realize that you could do this?

42:21 And one person emails with an entire breakdown of return of the Jennet.

42:28 Email me, email email, No, you canail me. If you find my email on my website, you can email me.

42:34 First sex Movies email.

42:37 I'm going to wrap this up here, Eddie. We can people find you.

42:40 Big black Jack a bit on Twitter and the tech bubble on substock.

42:47 Hell yeah, and Chloe go the show.

42:49 I am, Yes, I am at Chloe badcliff on all socials like my last name Radcliffe, but bad and my show is in New York at Joe's Pub August nineteenth and twentieth.

42:58 It is called cheat And if if you email me a receipt of your ticket, I'll give you a year of the News Left.

43:04 Wow, I mean that's crazy. Yes, that's a crazy It's.

43:07 A good deal anyway, thank you all for listening. I'm of course did the spin and in verse week where you've got the big episode at the end of the week versus on the Wednesday. That was because of technical differences. We will be back next week. I think we're gonna have Steve Brooke one for Steve Book of Games. Next is going to return, and we have some really interesting shift see Yes twenty twenty seven. The people in front of me don't even know this. Count Newport's going to join us one for Count Import and we might even have Brendan Lee Mulligan. Oh yeah, it's gonna be It's gonna be fucking great. I'm really I'm already planning Cees twenty twenty seven. When I tell people this, they are horrified.

43:38 They are really, they really don't like to be It's like how the years pass plan I'm the planner, all right, Listen as much as I joke about it.

43:47 You're all incredible. I hear from you every day on the subreddit, on email, on signal, on even the Bloomberg terminal. Thank you so much for your support. We're winning everyone. Thank you all, and.

43:55 I love you all and kill a delivery robot.

44:00 I'm not endorsing. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.

44:12 The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, m A T T O s O W s ki dot com. You can email me at easy at Better Offline dot com or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot Where's youreed dot at to visit the discord, and go to our slash.

44:38 Better Offline to check out our reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

44:43 Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media.

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