00:04:01.280that, you know, we were going to have prosperity
00:04:03.760again, because this tech industry was going to like drive a ton of job creation and blah, blah,
00:04:08.400blah. And so there was a real desire not to kind of look at the potential consequences, to not
00:04:14.440look at the downsides of this industry and these business models. And now I feel like part of kind
00:04:19.600of, you know, we have seen a more critical view in the past number of years, especially since 2018.
00:04:25.500And I feel like part of that is not just kind of like, you know, waking up to what is actually
00:04:30.840happening but also reckoning with the consequences of not you know looking at the potential downsides
00:04:36.400of these companies through those years through the early 2010 you know period um and now we're
00:04:42.320kind of trying to catch up and trying to be like whoa what have we unleashed under the world and
00:04:46.780now there's a real kind of desire to you know not just criticize the elon musks and jeff bezos's of
00:04:52.080the world but to say like we really bought into a lot of this stuff that silicon valley was selling
00:04:56.820us around how all we need is kind of new innovative technologies created by Google and Facebook and
00:05:02.300whatever, and that's going to make the world a better place. And we can see that that didn't
00:05:05.860work out. And so now we need to actually think a lot more critically about what these tech
00:05:10.340companies are telling us, but also how we address these really serious problems that do exist in
00:05:14.700society and aren't going to be solved from a shiny new technology. What do you think some of those
00:05:19.980consequences of not asking those questions during that time in technology, what do you think some
00:05:24.460of those consequences have been oh there are a ton right like the the easy ones to point to that
00:05:30.300like the mainstream would know about is like you know the social media platforms and like all
00:05:34.720they've done and like we love to kind of hate facebook and i'm totally on board for hating
00:05:38.560facebook right like don't get don't get me wrong um but i think that it's much bigger than that
00:05:43.660right like sure we have the cambridge analytica like leaks and the scandal around that and like
00:05:48.560You know, I think that that was kind of misconstrued a bit as saying, like, it was because Facebook, like, manipulated the populations of the UK and the US and all this stuff that we had this really terrible turn in our politics. And I don't think that that's actually accurate. I think it's a misreading of what actually happened.
00:06:06.000and like I think that there are just things happening in our politics for reasons that
00:06:11.620are not technological you know that are kind of affecting what people are doing which is really
00:06:16.660unfortunate but I think that like much more fundamentally and I think the piece that we
00:06:21.440tend to ignore a lot more is what this actually meant for workers as well right like obviously
00:06:27.480we had this massive boom in tech workers and people working in the tech industry that were
00:06:32.360making good salaries and like doing these startups and all this kind of stuff and the media was like
00:06:36.820very interested in that story right in how there there were these workers who were making all this
00:06:41.480money they had great benefits when they went to their jobs like free lunch and gyms and i don't
00:06:46.400know all the other stuff that tech workers get um but then like the the tech industry was also very
00:06:52.180like very clearly involved in affecting and attacking like the rights of workers in many
00:07:00.260different industries not just in the united states or or in other western countries but like around
00:07:05.220the world as well right and i feel like we have not really kind of grappled with that as much
00:07:10.800through the gig economy and of course the ubers of the world and things like that you know explicitly
00:07:16.040attacking the regulations on the taxi industry and ensuring that this profession gets turned
00:07:20.400into this kind of unregulated contractor model where these people are like like completely
00:07:25.760subjected to the rules of like uber and and the rules of these gig companies but then also like
00:07:32.680much more than that you know you think about amazon rolling out algorithmic management across
00:07:37.940its warehouses and turning warehouse work from like a unionized industry where people could make
00:07:42.820good money to like basically your equivalent of a minimum wage job or just a little bit above
00:07:48.240minimum wage right that's kind of like the standard if you're if you're in a community right it's the
00:07:52.780new kind of walmart is working at the amazon warehouse and this really changes like you know
00:07:57.740then you also have the like one of the things that i think is pernicious here actually is that
00:08:03.000like through the mid 2010s we had this narrative that automation and ai we're going to wipe out
00:08:07.140all these jobs right and we're kind of seeing repeats of that right now with the whole generative
00:08:11.320ai boom um but like that moment we have all this these narratives around it we're like oh my god
00:08:16.420the robots are going to take our jobs but actually what happens is the tech companies like deploy all
00:08:20.540these technologies to like decimate the labor rights of people across the economy. And we just
00:08:25.820kind of ignore that picture of it. But I think that's much more consequential. And I think we
00:08:29.900should be paying more attention to it. You have a great piece about this called
00:08:33.380Tech Giants Are Building a Dystopia of Desperate Workers and Social Isolation, where you write,
00:08:38.940tech companies like Amazon and Uber are creating a society divided between the served and their
00:08:43.160servants, where the friction of in-person interaction is eliminated. That friction is
00:08:47.820the stuff of social connection. A world without it is nightmarish. And I've talked about this a
00:08:52.860lot on the podcast. It's not something that I feel great about talking about, which is that
00:08:56.820during the pandemic, which was so hard for all of us, I definitely got, I mean, I've used the
00:09:03.920word addiction. I got addicted to buying quick crap on Amazon that I didn't need to give myself
00:09:11.340a quick serotonin boost because I was miserable, just like everybody else. I got addicted to not
00:09:16.700cooking and ordering Uber Eats. And when I had to take a step back and look at what I was
00:09:22.980contributing to personally, me, Bridget, it was really hard. It was hard to see not only that I
00:09:29.520had been so easily conditioned into not thinking about the person who was bringing me my Uber Eats,
00:09:34.720the person who was leaving whatever dumb thing I just bought on Amazon during a pandemic to my
00:09:40.560apartment, but also conditioning me to think when I want food, I certainly don't have to cook it
00:09:47.240myself, but I don't even have to go to the, I don't even have to call my local pizza place
00:09:51.860down the street and have a conversation with the person who owns it. I don't have to do that. And
00:09:56.220I wonder how did technology trick us into thinking that all of these things that are part of the
00:10:02.600fabric of life in a society, you don't need. And in fact, your life would be better without it.
00:11:56.460And so this is like the whole incentive behind it. And I remember like all the way back in, I think it was 2014, maybe it was 2015, Lauren Smiley, you know, who writes for Wired now, but she wrote this piece called The Shut-In Economy, where she was like outside of Oakland for a while, and then she moved back in.
00:12:15.280And all of a sudden, it was like people were, or maybe she moved into San Francisco, it was like, you know, it was in the Bay Area somewhere. And she saw that, like, there were all these people now that all of a sudden were like, you know, home a lot or at work a lot. And they were getting a lot of things delivered and like contracting a lot of services, because the gig economy is just kind of booming in that in that period, right. And she was like, what is going on here? Like, this is really weird. This is not really good. You can see the distinction between the served and the servants basically very clearly in this model.
00:12:44.120And sure, it allows a few more people to become the served, but that means you need a whole bigger kind of population of servants to serve them effectively.
00:12:53.000And what we saw during the pandemic was really like an expansion of this model where many more people became the people who were kind of like relying on gig services and e-commerce websites and all this stuff to get everything delivered to them so they could stay home and kind of isolate.
00:13:07.320But then you also needed this whole population that for a while we were calling essential workers, you know, to like deliver all this stuff and do all this work for the people who were staying home and working from home and all this stuff.
00:13:19.840And like we've just kind of like moved on from that moment and not really thought about the kind of larger implications of that.
00:13:26.580And like I do think that there were consequences and there were some shifts that happened during the pandemic with those whole labor models.
00:13:33.280But I think that part of what we see right now with like the big whole generative AI push is again like this kind of return of this narrative that, oh my God, like the AIs are going to take away all the jobs when actually like what we're much more likely to see is like the continuation of tech companies like kind of using technology against workers to further kind of, you know, create more precarious employment and things like that.
00:13:56.840And I think that is like what a lot of the media narratives don't suggest, but I think that's much more likely to be what comes out of it. And if we're not paying attention to it now, then it's going to be much more difficult to like stop that happening because we're too focused on like, you know, AGI and digital minds and all this like sci-fi bullshit.
00:14:14.360Oh, my God. I actually heard this on your podcast. I forget who the guest was, but I do think that there's this Overton window thing happening where there was a time where if I told you that in between you and your mental health care professional would be a skeezy tech company, you would be like, what the fuck? Of course not.
00:14:36.680And now that is commonplace with services like BetterHelp, right? And so I think that you're so right that tech leaders want to be the wedge between us and, you know, the business of being a human. And we're going to become more and more okay with the different things that they're okay. Like, I don't want Jeff Bezos in the middle of my healthcare, right?
00:14:57.780I use one medical, and that is exactly what the fuck is happening right now, right?0.75
00:15:01.060Like, I'm not really comfortable with, like, these very intimate things about my body and0.91
00:15:05.420my health, there being a Jeff Bezos interference.
00:15:08.800And I think that sort of without us really paying attention and really thinking about
00:15:12.900it, more and more intimate spaces, it has become commonplace to think that a tech leader
00:15:18.260would be in the middle of your ability to, like, talk to your healthcare professional
00:15:25.080Yeah. And I think that you really clearly see that during the pandemic, right? Because lockdown orders happen. There's an expectation that we lock down or at least that we physical distance from one another. We don't see as many people. So we're spending more time at home. We're using our devices more. We're watching more things on streaming services. As you say, we're using more of these services to get food and get other things delivered to us.
00:15:48.520And what we see like over the course of like the first year or two of the pandemic is that like the profits and the revenues of all these companies absolutely soar, right? And so it shows you that the more that we kind of use their services, the more that we look at their our screens, the better that is for them. And they're incentivized to ensure that we spend more time as possible, like engaging with their services kind of in front of our screens, all these sorts of things. And I would say like, that's exactly what the metaverse push was, right? Like, how can we get you in front of a screen much more like the smart glasses?
00:16:18.400all that stuff the idea is just like you need to look at screens more and it's like i i don't
00:16:22.420actually want to do that but i i think on your point about health care is interesting as well
00:16:26.380because i've been thinking about it a lot lately because i'm in canada right um and so our health
00:16:31.580care system is a little bit different and i have like even bigger concerns where like you know at
00:16:36.080least in the states like the health care system is already private and so like to a certain degree
00:16:40.360you're shifting from like one private provider to another but like i i think it's really kind
00:16:44.820of worrying to see the potential like encroachment and the further encroachment of like private
00:16:50.260companies on public health care systems and and especially like how technology and digital
00:16:55.740technology provides a means for that to happen because the argument is like oh this is like new
00:17:01.020technology it can't be done by the public sector so you need to contract it from the private sector
00:17:05.400and bring it into your public health care system and then like you know we we could say that that's
00:17:11.400not going to make any difference but really like it's kind of what i call like a sly privatization
00:17:15.200that's happening there and it does start to change the logics of like what is actually happening in
00:17:19.500the system and it's not just a canadian problem like you know we see these things happening in
00:17:23.600the uk where there's a big push to privatize and other countries where i've talked to people
00:17:27.280so yeah you know a bit of a different perspective there but those are things that i i worry about
00:17:32.760too even just beyond like the general encroachment into health care that these companies are doing
00:22:07.300I'm very lucky that that is my experience in the world.
00:22:10.460But sometimes when I—and I would probably have said that most people who have the ability to get out into the world, they want that.
00:22:18.340They see that as a good thing, as a part of life.
00:22:20.280Then I hear people like Lex Friedman or sometimes Elon Musk talk, and I don't think we're all on the same page.
00:22:25.540I think that some of these people who are hugely influential in technology, for them, how can I put this?
00:22:34.020For them, spending more and more time, the idea of spending more and more time in front of screens with technology, sort of immersing yourself around technology as a human is good.
00:22:45.220And thus, they are leading us into this future where that is more and more commonplace.
00:22:49.820And because of the way – I think partly because of the way that, like, tech press sometimes covers these people, we don't stop and think, like, well, is this the person that we want designing the future?
00:22:59.740This person who has, like, describing a very weird relationship with their robot vacuum or whatever.
00:23:06.080There's not a relationship that I want to have, but this is the person who is put in charge of designing the future of how I will relate with technology.
00:23:15.660And, like, I think there's so many things, like, to explore there.
00:23:19.520basically but i think like on a larger level i think i would say that like i i wonder to what
00:23:26.400degree like the the views and perspectives of these people at the top of the tech industry
00:23:31.540are actually kind of like you know reflective of wider desires among like the average public and i
00:23:38.000would say it's actually quite limited like i i think that people are definitely like excited by
00:23:42.660the idea of humans doing more in space and and people generally like the idea of like electric
00:23:48.040cars and sure there's some conservatives who don't like that but like you know in general like i think
00:23:52.160these broad ideas are things that people find appealing but i think that if you dig into like
00:23:56.840the more kind of niche the more kind of specific um viewpoints of these influential tech leaders
00:24:03.020i think that you'll quickly find that if people knew more about them they would think that it was
00:24:07.500really weird and like really um separate from what most people think like a good life actually looks
00:24:14.460like. And I think like, you know, maybe this is a bit stereotypical, but I think a bit of that is
00:24:19.380related to how a lot of these people in the tech industry who are successful in this particular
00:24:24.320industry do seem to be like socially stunted in many ways. If you look at the Zuckerbergs,
00:24:30.140the Elon Musks, like, you know, Lex Friedman, of course, you mentioned like a lot of these people
00:24:34.180do seem to have difficulty with like social relationships. And I'm not going to like
00:24:39.000diagnose them on this podcast but i think that also shapes the way that they think society should
00:24:44.600be set up and and like what the future should look like and so we have these people who are like
00:24:50.160very kind of socially isolated and have difficulty relating to other people then kind of trying to
00:24:56.940design or trying to dream up like what society is going to look like for everybody else and that
00:25:01.880naturally shapes how they think that that society should look and how we should all interact with
00:25:07.420one another in the future when most of us don't have that issue and would like to spend more time
00:25:13.520kind of getting to know other people and of course we know right now that you know there's plenty of
00:25:19.180talk about it there's kind of like a loneliness crisis um in you know i would say like the western
00:25:24.600world probably broadly um and like i think that that is linked one to our greater reliance on
00:25:31.100technology but i would like go back much further and say that it's also a result of the way that
00:25:35.380we've designed our communities to be like you know very suburban in many cases so you're really
00:25:40.560distanced from a lot of the people that you might care about and it becomes more difficult to
00:25:45.020actually reach them because of transportation all these sorts of things so like i think that's
00:25:48.780rooted in like you know much more kind of like physical geographical problems and then the tech
00:25:53.700industry because of this is how it works it responds to that by saying not maybe we should
00:25:58.600rethink the way that our communities are set up so that we can encourage like you know people to
00:26:04.080live closer together for us to like fund public social spaces where people can come together and
00:26:09.240you know they don't need to uh you know pay to go somewhere to do something um but also beyond that
00:26:15.080they would say like instead of proposing those things that that might actually address the issue
00:26:19.220they would say you know what we need to actually make people more social or make people interact
00:26:23.200with one another more is actually a new technology that will enable them to do that where whether
00:26:27.860it's like facebook and how that is kind of imagined to connect the world or like the metaverse because
00:26:33.420now we don't need to go spend time with people in person we can just put on a vr headset and we can
00:26:39.380put on these other technologies on our hands and on our bodies that allows us to feel a physical
00:26:43.480presence in a virtual environment and like great for all the tech companies because they're
00:26:47.660constantly tracking us they're getting all the data on us they're showing us ads all the time
00:26:51.040we're in this virtual world that they completely control but i think it's like a terrible idea of
00:26:55.560what a future would look like if we actually like moved in that direction instead of just saying hey
00:26:59.420Maybe we should make it easier for you to see the people that you care about and get away from the technology that these companies want you to be looking at all the time.
00:27:07.780And I think there is a fundamental fuckery happening with us as regular people and the people who make technology and make money from us regular people.0.88
00:27:18.560I think there is a fundamental fucked up relationship that we really need to question.0.95
00:27:24.500And I think part of it is that tech leaders have been able to convince us, the regular people, quote unquote, that we're not smart enough to understand it.0.93
00:27:37.460You'll never even be able to figure it out.
00:27:39.100So this technology that is already impacting so much of your life, shaping your day-to-day, that is like enmeshed with your daily experiences, you don't even need to ask questions about it, right?
00:27:50.340You don't even get to, who are you to question these tech leaders who are so smart?
00:36:31.900It's what's funny to me that these, it's such a fallacy because it's both like, I am so brilliant and, you know, so good at business, blah, blah, blah.
00:36:40.500So I'm going to utilize this completely nonsensical anti-science way of spreading that.
00:36:48.360It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, they both can't be true.
00:36:50.140Either you're really smart or you're, like, falling for something that completely flies in the face of how genetics work at a very basic level.
00:37:00.780And, like, you very clearly see it reflected in, like, everything that they're talking about, right?
00:37:05.280And I do think it's funny because, like, on the one hand, they present themselves as these, like, brilliant engineers who, like, understand everything.
00:37:11.980And like, you know, the whole thing about these Silicon Valley founders is that like, you know, going back to like the PayPal mafia days and stuff like that is like they really believed that they had this kind of inherent knowledge, this knowledge that allowed them not just to understand technology, but to move into any industry that they thought was ripe for kind of technological disruption and disrupt it basically, right?
00:37:37.380You know, Elon Musk can go into banking and cars and space and Twitter and whatever. And because he is just the smartest person in the world, he will know exactly what needs to happen for all of these sectors to be transformed and made better by the tech industry.
00:37:51.060And I think what we've actually seen, like if we actually look at the impact of the tech industry, is that in some cases, yes, they have made things more efficient, if they have kind of organized things properly. Like if you look at, as much as I hate Amazon, like its supply chain and logistics system does seem to be like, you know, quite an impressive feat that it has put together, right?
00:38:12.000There's a whole load of exploitation that it's built on and like all that kind of stuff.
00:40:40.400That doesn't mean that I would be a good president or that I could solve, you know, like, homelessness or something.
00:40:46.920Like, it's incredibly—it's hubris, but it's also—it's so, like, narrow-minded that you think that because you maybe are smart in one sphere,
00:40:57.180that that is always going to translate over
00:40:59.120because of something particular and innate to who you are.
00:41:19.400they've been graced with this like an inherent intelligence
00:41:21.980and, you know, the tech industry for whatever reason
00:41:25.060is like, can just do everything and whatever. And, you know, they also kind of like apply this
00:41:30.200kind of software mindset to everything to the physical world, even when it doesn't doesn't
00:41:34.760work out. And so, you know, I think that one of the things that's been refreshing over the past
00:41:39.220few years is to see kind of a greater awareness around, you know, these people and their flaws
00:41:45.740and how they're not kind of like messiahs and great people who are like making the world better,
00:41:50.780but actually like, you know, exploiters who, you know, are making massive profits off of a ton of workers, workers who they're trying to like, hide behind, you know, the kind of veil of technology. But actually, you know, they are creating these systems that are built on exploitation. And like generative AI, of course, is another version of this, you know, even though it's presented as just being like, oh, technology and computers, like doing all this magical stuff.
00:42:18.880there's there's always kind of workers below it that like we like to ignore um and so i think one
00:42:23.940of the things that's been positive is seeing people wake up a bit more and certainly not
00:42:27.840everyone has certainly like you know i would like more people to have done so but i still think it's
00:42:32.460positive to see us moving in this direction to see that like as soon as new technologies are
00:42:37.140announced and kind of unveiled and rolled out now that you know very quickly there's a discussion
00:42:43.220around you know does this make sense should we be regulating it like what are we doing about this
00:42:48.120like we see with chat gpt or we saw about the metaverse like people just quickly ridiculing it
00:42:53.280as soon as mark zarkerberg rolled it out and like i think that's a really positive like change
00:42:58.460because i wonder if we would have saw that like a decade or so ago um and also like you know how
00:43:03.860crypto was sure you had a lot of people who were like really invested in it and really believe
00:43:08.720that crypto is the future and whatever but you also had this really strong community who was
00:43:12.760saying like hold up this does not make any sense this is just spammy exploitative ponzi scheme
00:43:18.060And we can't allow this to go anywhere. And I think that we've seen like, you know, the kind of the steam kind of has come out of that bubble, right? Like it has collapsed. Sure, they're not all gone. But I think that these things are like positive. And they give me some hope that like, we're at least sort of going in the right direction. And we just need to keep kind of, you know, keeping up the good fight to ensure that as, you know, the tech industry keeps kind of pushing these new waves of hype, that, you know, there are critics who are around who are looking at what's happening and saying,
00:43:48.060hold up just a minute. What these people are saying makes absolutely no sense. And we need
00:43:54.640to be looking not at the PR and the marketing lines that these companies and the executives
00:44:00.140like Sam Altman want us to be thinking about and looking at and talking about, but to actually
00:44:06.060look at the real impacts to be informed by history and how these things have worked out in the past
00:44:11.400because the tech industry loves to ignore history. And to actually try to get some lessons about what
00:44:17.920might happen so that we can respond like proactively instead of being a few years down
00:44:23.560the line and realizing like, man, we've let this go a bit too far. It might be impossible to roll
00:44:27.880it back at this point. Right. So, yeah, I take some hope from those things.
00:49:16.000Yeah. So I would say I'm definitely skeptical of a lot of the narratives that we're hearing,
00:49:24.080right? And again, that's just informed by seeing how things have worked out in the past,
00:49:30.960right? By seeing that this is an industry that really depends on constantly kicking up new hype
00:49:39.300cycles um in order to keep investment flowing in order to keep people making money in order to keep
00:49:46.320interest on kind of their industry and their products and what you very clearly saw was that
00:49:52.000you know after the crypto collapse and after you know the the kind of ridiculing of the metaverse
00:49:58.060and after the raising of interest rates in particular the tech industry really needed
00:50:02.680something right it really needed you know a next big thing to kind of show to everybody to make
00:50:09.740sure we were all talking about to make sure it stayed relevant and again to keep money flowing
00:50:14.380right to keep money moving through the system um and so generative ai has emerged as that thing um
00:50:21.880and so i look back at the mid 2010s as we were talking about when there were all of these
00:50:28.240narratives around how robots and AI were going to take all of our jobs, right? And millions of
00:50:32.920people were going to be out of work. Like there were studies saying like 40, 50% of people were
00:50:36.900going to lose their jobs in the coming years, all this kind of stuff. There were going to be no more
00:50:40.820truckers because self-driving cars were going to replace them all. There were going to be no more
00:50:44.900taxi drivers or Uber drivers because self-driving cars were going to be everywhere in the next few
00:50:49.860years, right? Still waiting for those self-driving cars. I know there are a few on the streets in
00:50:55.460san francisco and stuff but like they're really not a mass transportation system and what we saw
00:51:00.340during the pandemic was actually uh we needed some more truck drivers because the the whole
00:51:04.640kind of supply chain was a mess um and part of the problem there is because uh truck drivers
00:51:11.100have had their working conditions and their wages so pushed down over recent decades that people
00:51:15.560don't want to join the profession and so it's not because like robots are getting rid of them it's
00:51:20.380because working the working conditions suck and we actually need more of them um but anyway that
00:51:24.840that's kind of, you know, getting away from the point. But so I saw all of that and I saw like
00:51:30.620all of the narratives around that moment and how there was a lot of excitement and a lot of belief
00:51:35.080that like robots were going to replace baristas and they were going to replace elder care workers
00:51:39.920and all this was just a few years away and never happened, right? What we actually had was technology
00:51:45.000being deployed in, you know, the ways that we've been talking about where it ensured that workers
00:51:50.520were reclassified from employee to contractor, where it ensured that their pay was lessened,
00:51:56.700where it ensured that they were more precarious, where it ensured that there was algorithmic
00:52:01.020management and more surveillance of them. These were the actual kind of legacies of that period,
00:52:06.560not destroying jobs and all that kind of stuff and not making things a whole lot more productive.
00:52:11.420We didn't actually see a whole lot of investment in automation through that decade. The scholar,
00:52:16.380economic historian, Aaron Beninov kind of found that when he went and actually looked through
00:52:20.200the data for that period, what we actually saw was, you know, just all of these kind of
00:52:25.160surveillance tech and all this kind of stuff used against workers. And so when I see what's going
00:52:29.440on right now, I see the hype cycle I was talking about. I see kind of the return of some of these
00:52:35.160narratives from the mid 2010s, you know, OpenAI released a paper talking about all the jobs that
00:52:40.600were at risk because of chat GPT and all this kind of stuff. But that's not to say that there
00:52:46.560aren't real threats that are being posed by this technology, where, again, it can further disempower
00:52:52.860labor. It can further ensure that they're more precarious. It can further push down wages.
00:52:57.600We're seeing the front end of that, the most obvious piece of that is the writers and the
00:53:03.080screen actors who are undergoing contract negotiations right now. The writers are even
00:53:07.880on strike. And one of the things that they're concerned about is how AI can be used in their
00:53:12.060industries to kind of reshape their performances, to change the words, to, to kind of generate,
00:53:17.760you know, scripts or, or generate writing that they would have to rewrite. And it would mean
00:53:23.020that there would be less work to do for them. And it would also mean that the quality would
00:53:26.760decline. Like, I think that those are more of the risks of generative AI if we're looking at the
00:53:32.660potential impacts. And I would say that right now, these technologies are also being sold to us in
00:53:38.000such a way where like they're going to become ubiquitous in our lives we're going to be using
00:53:42.480generative ai and chatbots all the time they're going to be like rolled out into everything this
00:53:47.980is just the new way of the world i think a lot of people are being too quick to like accept that as
00:53:53.920inevitable um when i don't think it is like think about the um voice assistants that were rolled out
00:54:02.080in the past like six or eight years how many people actually use those regularly anymore i
00:54:06.800certainly don't. And I read a story recently that suggests actually a lot of people don't.
00:54:11.400This is not just anecdotal evidence. So, you know, I think that there's a lot of things that
00:54:16.160the tech industry rolls out that we think are like the next big paradigm that we think are
00:54:20.220going to revolutionize everything. And it doesn't actually play out as planned. And I think the
00:54:24.760final point I would make on this is that when we look at generative AI, what we actually see is
00:54:29.620that it increases like the cost structure, it increases the cost of doing these things. So if
00:54:34.540you're switching over a search engine from the way it works right now to like generative AI and
00:54:39.340chatbots, the cost per search goes up, you know, quite significantly, actually, because it uses
00:54:44.620more computer power, because it's trained on these massive models, because it relies on all this
00:54:48.960centralized kind of computation, right, in these massive data centers that these companies own.
00:54:54.560And I think that that's another piece of this that maybe there's not enough talk about,
00:54:58.060because certainly you have the Sam Altmans of the world going out and saying this is going to
00:55:01.840empower every individual and we're going to have chatbots that are like personalized for you and
00:55:06.540all this kind of stuff but actually what this technology does is you know we've been talking
00:55:11.160about like antitrust and breaking up companies and the issues with like monopolization in the
00:55:15.860tech industry for a few years now what this actually does is like kind of cement that power
00:55:20.340because you can't really have generative ai without scraping all of this data from the web
00:55:25.880without having this centralized kind of computing infrastructure that only a small number of
00:55:30.200companies globally can actually control. And so if we do move in this direction, we're kind of
00:55:36.320building in the power of these large companies in a way that we were trying to challenge a few years
00:55:41.080ago. And that suggests to me that they're also kind of responding to that fact. You know, there
00:55:46.160was a story just a few months ago about how the tech companies had very quite successfully kind
00:55:51.860of challenged and kind of blunted the push for antitrust. And now that the Republicans have taken
00:55:57.320over one of the houses in the States. Sorry, I can't remember which the Senator, the House or
00:56:03.020whatever. Anyway, they took over one of those. And so now it's pretty much going to be impossible
00:56:06.960to get any like real antitrust legislation through for the next number of years, I would say. So the
00:56:13.500tech industry is very concerned about these things as well. Very kind of alert to this. So yeah,
00:56:19.060those are all of my thoughts on gender AI. That's really helpful. And I think it does
00:56:24.680like, you know, I'm, I'm on TikTok a lot and I do think that it's, it really is reflective of like,
00:56:31.760it's a, it's a, it's a little bit of a hustle and the people who are selling you the hustle have
00:56:36.760money, there's money to be made. Right. And so I see people who are like, oh, AI is going to change
00:56:40.720everything. You're going to need to know how to integrate AI into your work. So better sign up
00:56:45.700for my course and I'll tell you. Like, it's like, it's, it's, it just, it just feels like a little
00:56:50.980bit of a hustle. And that's the way it's always been, right? Every single time there's a new
00:56:57.220shift like that. I remember when it was popular to like when Kindle and self-publishing and all
00:57:04.860that stuff was taking off on Amazon, there were a ton of courses. There were a ton of people trying
00:57:08.820to sell you the way that you were going to be a successful self-published author and all this
00:57:14.360stuff. And there's all these courses around SEO and search engine optimization to ensure that
00:57:20.860your website is going to like get to the top of the search results and like this is something that
00:57:24.880happens every single time and i think it's very uh indicative of this happening again that like
00:57:30.880some of the um like you know beyond the kind of pr lines from sam altman's and like the the real
00:57:37.720ai boosters that you see the people saying that like you know it's a massive threat to humanity
00:57:42.560using these kind of long-termist uh arguments uh against it saying that you know they're on
00:57:48.120the cusp of digital minds all this stuff is complete bullshit by the way um you know but
00:57:52.700the other like big narrative that you see on twitter and and tiktok and like all these other0.95
00:57:57.560social media platforms is like the hustle bros and the hustle people like going really hard like
00:58:01.920the linkedin the linkedin folks as well like this is all the stuff you need to know about ai this is
00:58:06.580how it's going to improve your workflow help you write emails like all this blah blah blah0.88
00:58:10.120yeah it's it's a load of bullshit those guys have taken over twitter like i almost it's it's just so0.98
00:58:16.800fucking boring and like I almost miss like I don't know it's just it's just such empty boring0.99
00:58:23.800garbage that I can't you can't even like dunk on it you can't even like all it is it just like1.00
00:58:28.480clogs up your feed and where your feed is already like worse than it was five years ago anyway you0.98
00:58:33.420know it's just it's so boring totally the whole website is like going downhill and it sucks
00:58:40.360because like you know that there was such a community there like it was it was fun to be
00:58:45.520on twitter um but like i certainly use it less than than i used to i'm not like off it altogether
00:58:51.200but especially when you see it like slowly moving in this kind of direction that elon musk is taking
00:58:58.200it where like i think he's explicitly making decisions to kind of reshape it as more of like
00:59:03.880a right-wing platform right like parlor failed gab failed true social is a joke like you know they
00:59:09.640they still want to control like you know the the kind of way that we communicate with one another
00:59:14.760They still want to control the media that's long been like part of the rights, you know, kind of desire what they want to do.
00:59:22.100You know, they have Fox News, but they also kind of strongly influence like the liberal media, quote unquote, as well to kind of pull the narratives in that direction.
00:59:31.520So obviously they want to do that on social media as well and have been effectively doing so for many years.
00:59:36.220We can go back to the reporting on Facebook and like how Zuckerberg was like worried about kind of pissing off the conservatives or making it look like he was taking actions that would go against them, even as their pages were like getting the most kind of views and growth and all that stuff.
00:59:49.760And so now you see like Tucker Carlson starting a Twitter show. Like, how does that make any sense? We see DeSantis, like as we're talking, DeSantis is going to like announce his presidential bid this evening. You know, and obviously all these kind of right wing folks just get so much additional traction or they don't seem to think so, I guess. But, you know, they get promoted a lot on Twitter now because of how Musk has changed things around and let all the Nazis back on and all that stuff.
01:00:16.900Like, yeah, it's just a it's a real hell site. Like we used to joke it was a hell site, but like now it's really a hell site.
01:00:22.440Yeah. I mean, something I've noticed is that people are starting to come around on the fact that Musk has been parroting pretty extremist, far right talking points.
01:00:32.240And it's not a new thing. It's been doing it for kind of a while.
01:00:36.020Why do you think that is something like even people that I respect in tech press didn't really engage with that, honestly, I feel or like weren't able to.
01:00:45.420There was always this vibe of like, maybe it's just like an edgy thing that he's doing or it's like I once read someone saying like, oh, he's trying to save the environment by making buying electric cars that he makes look more appealing to people on the right to help solve climate injustice.
01:01:06.760Why do you think it was so hard for people to just like take him at his word and like listen to the things that he says and believe them when he says them?
01:01:14.160yeah like what you're describing is like how far of a stretch some people go to to like justify
01:01:20.900exactly what he's doing and what he's saying right um i i think that the the key thing here
01:01:26.820is that for such a long time elon musk was like you know he was kind of the tech god he was the
01:01:35.720guy who was kind of he was the figure who was kind of held up from the tech industry especially
01:01:42.280after the death of jobs that was like doing all of this wonderful stuff for us he was investing
01:01:48.280in the rockets and was going to take us to mars and he was building the electric car and was going
01:01:52.300to save us from climate change and like all this kind of stuff right and the media did hold him up
01:01:57.640as this figure who could really do no wrong and who we really had to like worship as not just like
01:02:04.780this incredible tech entrepreneur but as the builder of the future right like he had a vision
01:02:09.980that nobody else had that you couldn't get from the political system or anything like that.
01:02:14.760He was the future and he was someone that we had to trust. And I think that even though that has
01:02:21.700started to shift in recent years, I think that first of all, it took a while for the media to
01:02:27.540really wake up, I think. Even as you did have them publishing more critical stories on Elon Musk,
01:02:33.000they would still publish the puff pieces as well. Even what was it last year? He was still
01:02:38.640name times person of the year or whatever like even as he was increasingly being engulfed in
01:02:44.120controversy there were a ton of stories about the racism and sexism in his factories you know there
01:02:49.160was the story i believe about him um like sexually assaulting the flight attendant i believe that was
01:02:54.380just before that happened like there was all this stuff that was kind of coming out about elon musk
01:02:58.620and he still got this this title right um and so i think that like unfortunately like i think that
01:03:05.200there's a lot of people who really believe in the cult of musk and who are not just kind of like
01:03:10.160personally invested but also let's be real they bought a tesla or they bought tesla stock and
01:03:16.620they're like financially invested in elon musk because one of the things that is like somewhat
01:03:21.040unique about tesla is there's a lot of quote-unquote retail investors people that are not
01:03:25.640institutional investors who own tesla stock which is a bit less common right it's because elon musk
01:03:32.040has all these fans and they've bought in and they kind of believe what he's doing and where he's
01:03:35.960going and they want to follow him. Of course, some people have woken up. But then the other
01:03:40.540piece of this is there were a lot of people who reported on Elon Musk who got to know Elon Musk
01:03:47.280because they're access journalists. And I won't name names, but maybe you can think about who I'm
01:03:51.020talking about for a number of years who really helped him to kind of build up the reputation that
01:03:58.620he had and wanted to ensure that they maintain that connection to him. And I think also kind
01:04:04.560of saw him in the way that they presented Elon Musk to the public and didn't want to recognize
01:04:10.940that not only is he kind of a bad person who is ensuring that transphobic talking points,
01:04:20.760who is ensuring that kind of white nationalist talking points, like all of this kind of really
01:04:25.300terrible political stuff is being furthered and that he's like actively sharing it and promoting
01:04:30.380it and believing it. Um, but also that they're, how they presented him for so long was also
01:04:37.640wrong and was not an accurate reflection of who he was and what he was doing and his impact on the
01:04:44.040world because they created this narrative around him. They created this character of Elon Musk and
01:04:49.520he was, you know, this was a valuable property that the media had created and kind of sold to
01:04:55.720the world. It was great for him. It allowed him to get investment. It was also great for them
01:04:59.380because every, anytime they publish anything on Elon Musk gets a ton of views, right? People love
01:05:05.680him, people hate him, whatever people want to read about him. And so that was great for the media as
01:05:10.480well. And that's part of the reason that they, that they kind of created this narrative around
01:05:13.820them, that they created the character of Elon Musk. But if you go back to the very early days
01:05:18.280when he is starting Zip2, when he's starting X.com, you can see the stories about how he is0.99
01:05:24.200a terrible manager who is an asshole to the people who work for him, right? This is not unknown. This0.98
01:05:30.020is very clear at that time. And that continues as he starts other businesses as well. And like,
01:05:35.140we see the stories time and again through his history of like who he actually is. But I think
01:05:40.700that some of these people who worked in the media, who kind of were incentivized to promote him in
01:05:45.840this way ensured that that aspect of his personality and who he was was always downplayed,
01:05:51.300was always kind of hidden from the public, was not part of the persona that was sold to us.
01:05:56.820And so now there's kind of a reckoning, not just with who he is, because some of these people will
01:06:01.260say, oh, he's just changed in the past like six months. No, he's always been this person. And now
01:06:05.660he's just being more open about it. And so there's a reckoning, not just with that, but also like
01:06:09.960with what we've been told about him for a long time. And some people really don't want to engage
01:06:14.380with that and don't want to believe that he was always who he is now and is just being
01:06:19.480more open about it and want to pretend that this is kind of a break from what they knew
01:06:23.480before, or again, is some kind of like, you know, three-dimensional chess sort of a thing
01:06:28.740that's going on where he's actually trying to get conservatives on board with climate
01:06:47.260And I think it's difficult to be hopeful sometimes, like seeing the state of the world, seeing the climate getting worse, seeing the continued influence of the tech industry and the worst people in that industry.
01:06:59.920But I feel like if I didn't have hope, I would just be totally depressed and stuff.
01:07:04.420So even despite the fact that things look bad, I feel like I have to be hopeful.
01:07:08.540And that's not to say that there aren't things that do give me hope.
01:07:11.460As I was saying, I feel hopeful seeing people push back against the tech industry and seeing the broader realization that we have around these people in the industry, around what they are doing, and the recognition that they're not who they have been sold to us to be.
01:07:29.980But then like on top of that, it's also quite inspiring to see, especially in the past number
01:07:35.660of years, a lot more organizing, not just in the tech industry, but like in the society
01:07:41.220more broadly, people kind of pushing back against, you know, actions of the tech industry,
01:07:47.080people unionizing, like all these kinds of things I think are really hopeful because
01:07:52.240they suggest that, you know, maybe we're moving in a direction where people are getting really
01:07:57.660pissed off with the way that things are and are trying to, you know, change those things are
01:08:02.660trying to ensure that we don't keep moving in that direction. And of course, you know, I guess
01:08:07.560the flip side of that is that we also see that organizing happening on the other side among the0.89
01:08:12.460fascists and the white nationalists who are trying to make the world worse. But I think that it's
01:08:17.840almost like inevitable that in the stage of capitalism that we're in, we're just going to
01:08:22.540see this kind of polarization. And, you know, the goal is to ensure that we have as much energy and
01:08:27.720power as, as we can build like, you know, on the left and among people who actually care about like0.97
01:08:33.560regular people and not just like, you know, all this kind of fascist, racist garbage that we're0.90
01:08:41.780increasingly seeing to kind of build a better world. So I feel like, I feel like that's a bit0.96
01:08:46.020mixed, but I would say on the whole, I am hopeful that, you know, even though things are going bad
01:08:52.040in some areas, I think that there's reason to believe that people are willing to fight for
01:08:57.220something better. And, you know, hopefully that continues. Well, your work is a beacon of light
01:09:03.620in what sometimes feels like an ocean of garbage. Where can folks listen to your podcast and all the
01:09:10.140cool stuff that you're doing? Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me. It was really great to chat. I
01:09:16.180would say uh you know um i the podcast is tech won't save us it's like on all the podcast platforms
01:09:22.100wherever you listen it should be there um i also have a newsletter called disconnect which is over
01:09:26.740on sub stack you know i you know people have mixed uh opinions on that platform i certainly do as well
01:09:32.000but if you want to read it it's over there um you know you can follow me on twitter or mastodon or
01:09:37.800blue sky you know i i post a bit on on those platforms still yeah i would say those are the
01:09:43.500key things. This has been amazing. Is there anything that I did not ask that you want to
01:09:48.280make sure it gets included? I don't think so. This has been great.
01:10:13.500Person is our producer and sound engineer.
01:10:15.740Michael Amato is our contributing producer.