This Week in Tech 996 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Hello, you're watching this Week in Tech with your contemporary host, Ian Thompson, along with Mike Elgin, digital nomad and technologist, and Emily Drabelbis, who is the senior reporter of PC Magazine and is an expert in AI and electric cars. Not surprisingly, we're talking AI and electric cars, but also the US Navy's security leaks, the Starlink satellite installed on a naval warship, and also the latest ideas when it comes to casual working. Should you be tracking your employees or not? All to come Podcasts you love.
00:33 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
From people you trust.
00:36 - Iain Thomson (Host)
This is Twit. You're watching this Week in Tech, episode 996, recorded on September, the 8th 2024, the Quiet Office Crackdown. Hello and welcome to the Week in Tech, your chance to hear about the latest news from journalists up and down the field, and indeed up and down in different countries. Today. My name is Ian Thompson. I'm a reporter with the Register, standing in for Leo Laporte, who is currently out and about on his travels, and we have an absolutely stellar lineup for you. Coming from senior reporter on PCMag, I've got to make sure I get this right. Emery Drybelbis, perfect, perfect, okay, fine, the only time we'll have to say it so far, so we don't want to get that one wrong. Now. You're an electric car maven based out of new york.
01:31
uh, it's been a great beat to be on of the last couple of years, I would have thought yeah, it's a fun one, obviously changing a lot, and then I also do ai um which, so I'm very busy yes, very busy indeed and joining us from barcelona, of all places, uh, mike elgin, and who you probably remember as the former presenter of tech news today here on the channel, but who is also columnist, author, uh, prolific journalist and currently glad traveling the globe trying out different foodstuffs and introducing them to others. How are things in Barcelona, mike?
02:05 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Fantastic. You know we're drinking a lot of cava and trying all the delicious things. It's been really, really great. And my wife does an experience the Gastronomic Experience, which starts next week. So it's going to be a lot of fun.
02:20 - Iain Thomson (Host)
How have you not put on 50 pounds since you started doing this? Because you've built a very successful business and you're still looking slim.
02:26 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I don't understand how you do it that's very kind of you, but it's entirely untrue. No, it's, it's um, it's tough actually. Um, we we're either on on the, you know, during, during experiences, we're eating a lot, drinking a lot and stuff like that. When we're not, we we fast a bit, we walk a lot that stuff like that. When we're not, we fast a bit, we walk a lot that sort of thing.
02:47 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Got it Been living rare sometime. So, yes, excellent. Right, let's crack on with the show then, because we've got some absolute doozies of topics, as all in specialist areas that you've been dealing with. Very sorry that we can't have Amy Webb here, but she's feeling a bit poorly today, but I'm sure she'll be back and always worth watching. So, right, the story, which I think is it, grabbed my attention. It grabbed a lot of people's attention.
03:11
The US Navy is going all Starlink Now. It appears that at least the official report states that certain officers on a USS warship decided that using the Navy's Wi-Fi just wasn't good enough, so they installed a Starlink antenna secretly and then hid it from the captain, who's now, I think, probably got a fatal blemish on his record. It kind of reminded me of when Wi-Fi was first introduced in offices and to consumers, and if you didn't want to use the office Wi-Fi, far too many people were plugging in sort of unpatched, unmonitored routers just to get their own particular trend on this. I mean, mike, you were around then. How on earth is this going on? It doesn't look good for the US Navy certainly. Mike, I think you've muted yourself, Mike.
04:05 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I think you've muted yourself. Sorry about that. What's interesting to me is I really don't understand how it works on a ship, right, that's sort of tossing in the waves and so on. How does it maintain line of sight with satellites? I've also seen people who've maintained a Starlink connection on their cars. So, uh, but it is a. It is a fantastically.
04:26
This uh story you're referring to of the of the sailors um is. It's a. It's a fantastically insecure thing to do and there's a lot of uh, a lot of us adversaries use all kinds of consumer technologies to track troop movements. Uh, if you remember, years ago they were able to determine where the secret special forces bases were in Afghanistan because they saw Fitbit data of people running around doing laps around the base and it was just a matter of hacking that data. In this case, who knows how secure this stuff is?
05:04
But clearly a horrible, horrible idea and um, but I think that the illicit use of um of starlink, whether it's in the navy or anywhere else is is going to be a big, big deal. I know that in cuba, for example been there a few times they there's a uh hidden underground of, of putting a satellite dish on the roof and then the person who manages to get that satellite dish charges all the neighbors and they get Spanish language, american programming at Telemundo, all that stuff and the way the business works is it's just a matter of time. So if they can maintain it without getting caught for a year and a half, then they start turning a profit. They get busted before then they lose money, and so all over the world where you're trying to prevent people from getting access, this is going to be a big deal and Starlink is ideal for this kind of thing in certain ways.
06:01 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Indeed, I think it makes the US Navy look worse in a little bit of a different way. Not as much cybersecurity. It's just like how do we pay so much in taxes and so much money goes to this organization and they can't get secure, high-speed internet on their ships for their people? I mean that's just crazy. There's just some disconnect between Silicon Valley or I don't know if Musk even puts himself in that camp and the US military. And the military used to be the most technologically advanced Absolutely 20, 30, 40 years ago, and now the tech industry has kind of taken over in terms of innovation and speed of that, and I think this just highlights it's just crazy that the military would be so far behind. Really highlights.
06:45 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
It's just crazy that the military would be so far behind. Really well and that's the other part of the story is that they're in fact testing Starlink as well, uh, for use officially in the Navy. So they're they're sort of punishing some sailors for doing it illegally and meanwhile they're also testing it to see if it's this is something that the Navy can use and, uh, we'll see. I mean, it seems this is yet another case where Elon, an Elon Musk company, is doing something the government should be doing.
07:09 - Iain Thomson (Host)
If the military wanted this kind of satellite coverage at these kinds of speeds, it should have deployed it, I mean there was an attempt with the Iridium network, which I think was eventually bought by, but that's very low bandwidth and, you know, yes, it does have global coverage, but but with very severe limitations. I mean, yes, you're right, I mean the us military, emily. The us military gave us gps. It gave us a whole bunch of things that you know wouldn't exist otherwise. And now, yeah, we've got starlink satellites. I think didn't I see a report this week that now two thirds of all the satellites in earth orbit are owned by Elon Musk.
07:43 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Wow, Well, there's Amazon. Amazon has the Project Kuiper. I'm not sure what proportion are Amazon, what proportion are Starlink and what proportion are Chinese, because I've heard there's just a huge amount of just debris out there satellites. So yeah, I don't know what the other option is for the Navy. What do you guys think? Is it just Amazon? Is it Starlink for the Navy? Like what do you guys think? Is it just Amazon? Is?
08:04 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
it Starlink? They have, you know, specific satellites that have to be aimed and they're very expensive and they're very difficult and you have to. You know they kind of essentially timeshare them with other military operations, and so who knows? Back to your question the actual, the Amazon version is a fraction of what Starlink is in terms of the number of satellites, it's 5% or something like that, and they're trying to catch up. The Chinese are working on it, ian. You may be old enough to remember when Bill Gates had a startup called Teledesic oh yes, he was trying to do this. It never went anywhere. It's been a great idea for a long, long time and Elon Musk's SpaceX had been the first Starlink being a division of SpaceX to actually do something that actually works and it's high speed and fast and all that kind of stuff.
08:55 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I mean it helps if you actually own the rockets to go up there, but I mean this is also something that Jeff Bezos is working on, and I'm sure Amazon would very much like to use his services, but it's not quite there yet.
09:06 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
It's also funny just to imagine what are they using that internet for. Like I think in the article, the example was they streamed the Super Bowl, I think it's just quality of life on the ships.
09:16
There's got to be some high proportion of time that members of the military are not doing anything and they just want to talk to a loved one, they want to go on Netflix, they want to just live kind of that civilian life and I suspect most mostly it would be used for that well, that that's, that's, that's exactly right, that this, um, you know, you have this division of the navy called surface warfare.
09:39 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
That means you're on ships, right, and these big aircraft carriers, big battleships. You think, oh, they're at sea, you know the sky? No, they don't see the sky for months. Most sailors don't go to the above deck for most of their deployment. It's miserable, it's like being in an underground bunker or something like that, and it's difficult enough to recruit during peacetime, during, you know, a fairly good economy, when young people have other work options, and so trying to demiserate the experience of being on a ship has got to be a priority for them.
10:14 - Iain Thomson (Host)
It's even worse on a submarine. I met a submariner once and he was saying that their emails are actually censored before they get to the ship if they're away on long deployments, because if a family member dies or a family member is very sick, it's going to lead to everyone getting upset, and so those kind of things are censored. Of course, if you're in a submarine, then getting Starlink even Starlink is not going to work in those circumstances. But yes, I guess it's a case of technology finding the way and it's the way these systems work. And we actually, speaking of Stalin, we've also got this backwards and forwards going on in Brazil. Now, Mike, have you made it down there on your travels?
10:54 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I have many years ago. It seems like it's an amazing country, it's a beautiful place and I do think this whole thing has been fascinating to see um, because just to explain that.
11:08 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Can you just explain to the, you know, to the, the viewers, what's going on, because basically it seems like we've had a very fast backtrack from, uh, mr musk on this one yes, kind of.
11:18 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Basically, what happened was that, uh, a brazilian judge ordered, uh, some accounts that were associated with the former president Bolsonaro and spreading disinformation to. They ordered X to remove those accounts in Brazil, right, so they wouldn't be visible to Brazilian citizens. Musk refused, and so they did. They went to the next part of the process Would you bring the Brazilian representative of X, a lawyer, usually before the court, so you can scold them? And all that stuff Learned that there was no such representative, which is against the law. You can't operate in Brazil unless you have a legal representative who can appear before courts. And so, and so they basically said you know, you're in violation of this order, so we're going to, uh, ban X. Well, what does that mean? What does banning X mean? It means you tell the telecommunications operators that they can't display X, they have to block it, right.
12:15
And so Starlink refused to do that. And so they went after Starlink and said, okay, we're going to start taking away your stuff, we're going to freeze your bank accounts, we're going to take the vehicles that you own. And somebody within the telecommunications bureaucracy said we could even go after their base stations, of which they have 23. And that would severely kneecap the ability of this to operate. And this is the most controversial part when we seize this stuff from Starlink, we're going to use it to pay off the fines that X owes us $3 million in fines Totally different company, or is it? I mean, this is an interesting thing. It's clearly a different company with different shareholders, but you have one company who's trying to route around the law for another company because the CEO of one is the owner of the other and making all the decisions, and so, anyway, that's where it stands. And so Starlink capitulated and blocked X. Now X is blocked in Brazil.
13:22 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Right, okay, I mean it does seem like the actual regulators there have got some teeth, unlike American ones. I mean, emily, it's hard to imagine an American regulator taking such a position on this, even the newly revamped FTC or FCC even.
13:36 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
That's my first thought is like, wow, they did that. I cannot imagine that happening in the US. And it's just such a different perspective because I think for them, they're just using this service. It's not, I don't know, twitter, x, starlink. They're kind of these like darlings of the US, like we could never turn on our own and turn it off. But Brazil is like I don't care about this company, I just our people use it. I mean, there is an issue there. Is there too much government power if the people are loving the service and using it for good, and how can the government just shut it off? And I think that's the central issue here that musk is also reacting to. But yeah, just my. My first instinct was exactly what you said, ian. I was just like wow, all right, that's different, it's a different place there well the roots of this.
14:21 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
The roots of this is very different as well. So in Brazil, they had a January 6th type event where people stormed the Capitol on behalf of the president who lost an election and, unlike here, they really went after everybody, including the president. So here, it takes us years and years to do any of that stuff. And I've been talking about this issue of regulating social networks. You see governments all over the world the UK, europe, the United States, elsewhere dragging executives of social networks, yelling at them, complaining about things and then ultimately throwing up their hands, saying, well, what are you going to do? And Brazil is actually doing it. They're actually saying they specifically said Elon Musk, just because you're rich, you're not above the law.
15:06
And the judge in the case Andrei de Moreus called Elon Musk a supranational entity and this is Interesting turn of phrase Absolutely.
15:18
And so I wrote a piece about this because I think this is an emerging thing that exists in our world that never existed before.
15:24
Because I think this is an emerging thing that exists in our world that never existed before, I call them supranational oligarchs because, basically, with a combination of SpaceX and X and Tesla, somebody like Elon and billions of dollars, somebody like Elon Musk doesn't really have to obey the law all the time, and I pointed out that if there was a space war for example, if Brazil tried to shoot down SpaceX satellites and SpaceX decided to shoot back at Brazilian satellites in retaliation, this is a war that Elon Musk would win, because Elon Musk personally controls a bigger space program and a better space program than the nation of Brazil.
16:03
And so you have these people who are rising in power, who have nation state-like power and ability. They have, like I said, space programs, other people. They fall into this. For example, if you remember, we're talking about disinformation swinging the social networks In 2016,. The biggest threat was from Russia, from a company, a privately owned company, called the Internet Research Agency, working on behalf of its client, putin, right, and that's the same guy who owns the private army, if you recall, who attacked Russia itself.
16:40 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, he did own. I mean, he's currently the world record leader on the most least successful skydiving operation. After his plane mysteriously.
16:47 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Exactly. Normally they fall out of windows, but I guess they made an exception.
16:51 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, it is more traditional for defenestration, certainly.
16:56 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
But this is an individual with a massive global influence operation and an army is one guy who owned that? Okay, another one is uh we're talking about, uh, so so jeff bezos is another potential one, space program, media empire, uh, plus he can, he could, if he wanted to kind of tweak what kind of books people read, don't read, uh, get exposed to get, get uh pointed to, and then the we're talking. I'm sure we're going to talk later in this episode about Telegram and its CEO.
17:28 - Iain Thomson (Host)
We're coming to that next, in fact. Good call.
17:30 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, but here's another guy, pavel Durov. He's a semi-supernational oligarch. This is a guy who has citizenship in four or five countries and he didn't even have to go to France. If he never went to France, he never would have been arrested and all the things we're going to talk about never would have happened. And he, in fact, at any time, could flee France, never be caught. He'd just go to another country that he's a citizen of, including Russia. Probably not a great idea. The Russians are not fans of Telegram. So we have the rise of these multi-hundred billionaire people and within six or seven years we're going to start having trillionaires and they're going to have space programs and armies and information networks and so on, and we have to do something, and I think it's interesting that Brazil is the first country that's trying to contain one of them.
18:20 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, this is it. I mean, Emily, do you think there's going to be action on the US front on this?
18:28 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
A government's going to get nervous and start, or is it still too much? That smacks of socialism, right, well, I think you can have a. There's a really interesting discussion here on just the the principle of the issue, which is like should a social media company take something down or any internet company take something down at the request of a government? Yeah, and if you flip that to the most extreme example which everyone would agree with, we don't like is basically, if russia asked google to stop showing you know, real information about the war in ukraine and search results or or, uh, you know an account that was trying to give light to something that putin was doing in russia, because, of course, if there is no information like that in Russia, nothing is going to change.
19:07
So Russia can ask US tech companies to do the same thing that Brazil is asking X to do. So I do think there are different situations, but I mean, I think that's just the principle and I do struggle with. I do think that Russia should not be allowed to do that. Yes, but in the Brazil situation, do we think it should be allowed? And I think that's what Musk is trying to get at in his way.
19:35 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I guess the thing is that once you reach a certain level of being almost post-economic, if it were, if any fine that could be levied on you is just back-of-the-chain stuff. And so many Amazon, google, microsoft, all of them, I mean. When Facebook got caught out with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, yes, they paid what? 5 billion, that was the equivalent of less than three months' profits, and they got the money back on the insurance mostly, anyway. I mean, what is the solution to this do? One of the ideas that was positive to me a couple of weeks ago was in finland and some parts of, uh, scandinavia, they actually you're actually fine based on, from a company perspective, revenue or profit, or from an individual perspective, your individual salary.
20:23
Now, this led to an unfortunate incident with a guy I've actually interviewed at nokia who received europe's largest traffic fine for going 78 miles an hour in a 50 mile an hour zone or kilometers per hour, because he just cashed in a whole tranche of nokia shares, and this was in 2001 when they were still a viable company. Um, you know, we've seen this really more recently in the eu, where they're talking about with gdpr violations you get fined as a percentage of your revenue. I mean, do you think this would work in the us, or would it just people kick up a storm about it fines for for violating things well, well, fines based on not on a set amount, but on a proportion of earnings uh, well, yeah, I think that could, that could happen.
21:06 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I'm not sure it would. It makes logical sense to me. Um, it would. It's hard to square that with. Should the fine be proportional to the severity of the crime, and then how do you evaluate that? And then people would say they're getting treated unfairly just because they're making money. And isn't making money good for the country and it? You know, of course it the US, so it wouldn't happen. But is it?
21:29 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
a good discussion yes.
21:33
One thing that's interesting about the Brazil case is that you know, elon Musk is famous for his controversial stand, that he believes that whatever's legal should be allowed, and many of the things that people have asked him to moderate away off of X are legal. They're just offensive or they're disinformation or something like that. And his contention was if it's legal, it should be allowed in every country. So every country has its own legal thresholds and you obey the law and go no further in terms of censoring and that sort of thing. So the order from the judge to remove those was a legal order from a judge, which was then backed up by the Supreme Court of Brazil. That's the law of the land in Brazil.
22:18
But Elon Musk disagreed. He said no, this is an illegal order. So his position was I decide what's legal in Brazil and not the Brazilian Supreme Court, which, again, a supranational oligarch would think that way. Right, but make no mistake, the US companies censor all the time all around the world, especially social networks, but even companies like Apple removes all kinds of apps that promote democracy in China. Yeah, that's what I was getting at, yeah.
22:54
They do it because they want the money from those countries, and I like to frame it that way, because people one way it's usually framed by apologists of Silicon Valley companies is well, they have to obey the law in the countries where they are. And my position is no, they don't. They're violating human rights for the money. That's what this is, and so we shouldn't sort of sugarcoat it and give them a pass. Apple does not have to operate in China, sugarcoat it and give them a pass. Apple does not have to operate in china. Right, they want to because it's tons of money.
23:29 - Iain Thomson (Host)
So you know, we're talking, we're just haggling over the amount, right, I mean, yeah, of what you'll sell out for well, I think in the in the chinese vpn case that emily and yourself were referring to, this is a one of those classic cases where it's like, well, it's kind of like it makes it such an ethical gray area because, yeah, apple, well, okay, the rumor was that China, the Chinese government, basically told Apple, you need to ban these VPNs. Apple said no. Chinese government said nice factories, you've got here. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to them, and you know I mean. So that kind of pressure and the pressure that you mentioned, emily, is from russia is also incredibly troublesome. So there just doesn't seem to be a way out of this which is going to make everyone legal, everyone happy and everyone satisfied with the results, unless there's something new that can be seen on it well, there's also another axis of power, which is just the user base in brazil, because, you know, musk and twitter and all, all companies, literally all companies, want that money from.
24:29 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
That's an emerging you know, probably emerged already in many ways country with tons of people who us companies and they want their money and so that I wonder if that's why musk complied just the future of the platform in that region.
24:43 - Iain Thomson (Host)
That's an interesting prospect because I mean, as we've seen, just the future of the platform in that region. That's an interesting prospect because I mean, as we've seen, I think part of the problem why we've seen so many sort of financial worries and layoffs within Silicon Valley firms here is that essentially for things like social media companies and search as well, there really is no more growth to be had domestically and internationally. It's slowing down massively.
25:04 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
So you know a british struggling, yeah, struggling financially.
25:08 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I mean, the last thing they want is brazil, you know, saying you can't come here one of the largest markets on the planet and, yes, one of the fastest growing, I used to imagine right.
25:16 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
So I like that brazil recognized that power and I wonder if that's partially where it came from. Um, that being said, I don't think bra Brazil is some kind of shining beacon of morality here, like there's incredible corruption and huge issues, so it's kind of just two people fighting and I don't know. I don't even know who's right Because, by the way, brazil hasn't released the names of the accounts that they didn't like that were spreading content on X, so we don't even really know what's going on here.
25:47 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, just put that out there. If it turns out they're spreading neo-Nazi content or something, then it's just like, well, maybe they should have beaten us, but we'll see. I mean, while staying on the topic, while we were discussing this earlier, telegram out of interest. Are you both users or no? Nope, are you both users or no?
26:04 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
no, never me neither to be honest, I hardly even know what it is got it.
26:08 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, I mean, basically, it's the. There's been a lot of misinformation this week about this whole thing. First off, it's not end-to-end encrypted for a start, uh, but it's. It was run out of russia. Now, as, as you say, mike, it's we have this transnational guy running it who was arrested by the french police, held for three days and I think the ignominy of that, I think, was something which really came off and he released a statement today saying well, ok. Or a statement this week saying this shouldn't have happened. There are legal ways to go around this. You didn't need to arrest me. By the way, we are changing our moderation policies a little bit. I mean, it does seem like it's these micro steps that need to be made to actually rein things in rather than just saying, you know, let it all go.
26:50 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, the um. One interesting dimension to this is that I've been having a discussion about this with a friend of mine who's who's got some interesting ideas about. It is that like, how do you, how do you as a government, decide to go after a company or go after its CEO personally? So you know if, if, if, face, you know, if Meta does something on Facebook that's objectionable, they'll find Facebook, the company, $2 billion or whatever. Then the company pays that. Fine, they don't put Mark Zuckerberg in handcuffs and drag him in, and so that's an interesting choice.
27:29
I don't know all the particulars in that. It could be that the company itself is just thumbing its nose and there's no there, as in Brazil, there's no throat to choke. There's nobody there to you know, you have this international thing that just slides in through the internet and you can't really get your hands on the company. So you go after the CEO. I mean, maybe that's their thinking. Again, there's a lot of details about this. We don't know. Essentially, what they're doing is they are claiming the French authorities are claiming that Telegram is not cooperating because of the policies of Duroff himself, because of his leadership with law enforcement. So if there's CSAM material, there's terrorism going on.
28:11
They actually didn't list terrorism in their list of crime types but, financial irregularities and so on, and so, since he won't cooperate, they're accusing him of not collaborating. What's the word I'm looking for? Of basically allowing it on purpose? That could be the equivalent of a bargaining position. They've already gotten concessions and Telegram has already changed a bunch of policies and changed the wording on their website and added some features and put a report button to flag illegal content, and they've now let people which they didn't before report private chats to moderators, and so it's already had an effect of changing Telegram and how it works, and maybe that was the aim. But again, like the Elon Musk case, we don't really have all the particulars. The French government is not really talking. It's an ongoing investigation, so we really don't know all the details.
29:04 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, that's interesting. Sorry, Emily.
29:06 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Go ahead, you start it.
29:07 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I just figured there was an interesting parallel in how the AI industry is developing at the moment, because obviously this is something you cover a lot and we've now had most of the major plays in AI saying, yeah, okay, some kind of regulation is something we'll accept. I should imagine there's been some frantic lobbying going on and talk behind the scenes. Does it seem like the AI companies themselves are getting behind the idea of maybe just a little bit of oversight wouldn't hurt?
29:38 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
For me.
29:39 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, sorry.
29:40 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah. So I mean I wrote about. Anthropic was like, yeah, okay, we should be regulated and it should be the bare minimum, just testing, before you launch something different protocols to make sure that you haven't released some pure evil into the world, basically. And then who else was I mean Elon Musk? I mean he tweeted about that. He was in support of regulation in the California bill. It's certainly a far less developed opinion just a tweet, whereas Anthropic wrote a multi-page letter laying out all the issues and why regulation was a smart idea. I did think that in that particular case, meta and Google and OpenAI were not a fan of the California AI bill.
30:21 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Oh, I'd heard they'd come around on it, but I may be wrong on that.
30:23 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Okay, well, I think I might be out of date and I know it passed and they're just waiting for Newsom to approve it or not. Yeah, yes, you know who cares if they approve of it as well. Like you know, they're not going to want to be regulated.
30:38 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
No no, no, so there's also that Oftentimes, whenever it comes to regulation of the tech industry, everybody says they want regulation, and what they mean is that the giants want some regulation that's very expensive because it limits startups from getting into the space, and startups want regulation that hobbles the pace or the advantage of the deep pockets of the larger companies. And so if AI companies and again I don't have the details either, but if they were against the California regulation and came around to it, my guess is that those companies had them tweak it a bit and make a barrier to entry of cost for upstarts because they like that kind of regulation.
31:29 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, I do appreciate that they are supporting this bill because for the past two years since ChatGPT launched, I've basically seen OpenAI and all these AI companies using calls for regulation almost as a PR stunt. They're like, hey, we're ethical, we want regulation, we want regulation, we want regulation. And the initial headlines were like, oh, but AI wants regulation and creates this atmosphere that, oh, they're so ethical and they want to do good. But I didn't hear any specific ideas on what to regulate. I didn't see them working to get anything across the line. It just felt like complete hot air.
32:03
And so to actually have anthropic musk, and now it sounds like the other big ones supporting a specific bill that has gone through a legislative process and could go into law. I thought was really significant and a breath of fresh air for the past two years of nonsense so I mean anthropic, do seem to be particularly sort of forward thinking on this.
32:23 - Iain Thomson (Host)
They've they've made it very much a selling point almost from the start that you know this is not Wild West stuff that, like some people who we used to work for, type thing.
32:34 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, it seems like the CEO is a good guy. I don't know. What do you think, Mike?
32:45 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
have been aggressive at uh harvesting content without permission. You know, ask for forgiveness, that sort of thing, which is, uh, you know, a major issue in the industry. They just go and grab stuff and if somebody complains, maybe they'll hash out a deal, uh, open. Ai was not able to get a deal with the new york times. The new york times sued them, but that was just basically, um, you know that they didn't like the terms and the negotiations they had, so the New York Times turned to a lawsuit. So this is a big, big deal, which, to me, is ultimately not going to be a big deal about the copyright of content that's used to train these models, because, again, the chatbot element of AI is nice, but the real power of AI is all these non-chatbot things. Also, it's not necessarily large language models, it's small language models pushed out to the edge, to the end user, as far as possible, and that there's a lot of effort behind the to to be able to facilitate that. So the the place.
33:46
When people think of AI, they think of generative AI, chatbots trained on huge data models. Well, that's cool, that's nice and all that stuff, but I I'm looking forward to the cure for Parkinson's disease. I'm looking forward to all these other millions of other things that that AI is going to bring to us, and I really think that, you know, I'm looking forward to all these other millions of other things that AI is going to bring to us, and I really think that I'd also like to see legislation in California to grease the wheels of this thing, because AI can have enormous benefits, but we need to be open-eyed about the risks and the dangers and to attack those. I feel like some of the legislation I've seen not necessarily the California one is all these sort of peripheral issues that, in the larger scheme of things, is not going to really make a difference.
34:35 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, I mean, so many of the AI systems which we don't see talked about as much as you say, are internal companies having their own small countries having their own highly specialized ones? I mean, emily, with something like this, is regulation actually going to work or are companies going to say, oh, we were just testing something, it's not a proper AI system and therefore we're not actually liable in any way?
34:56 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Of course it depends on the enforcement and how seriously they take that. What this legislation doesn't do is solve all the issues with AI. We don't have California, you know, white horse, saving us from issues like copyright, which Mike brought up, which I don't believe is addressed in this bill. It's more about safety and testing protocol, this one data set that has copyrighted books in it. So I mean I'm sure all of them are using it, just Anthropic admitted to it on record and so they got a lawsuit.
35:30
But I'm pretty sure all these companies are just training on all the same data, just gobbling up everything that's out there. At some point they'll run out or slow in what they can get, unless it's open AI, getting all these content deals that they're working on. That the New York Times denied them, but at some point the differentiator is going to be more like how you use the tool, how it works with smaller models, compatibility with other aspects of your tech life. So all of this is very, very much not regulated. There's just one bill in California that's saying don't put out something heinous with the potential to be heinous, and if you do, we have the power to say that's heinous stuff. That's pretty much what we're getting.
36:13 - Iain Thomson (Host)
It looks like Gavin Newsom is going to sign it. I mean he's thinking presumably about a presidential run at some point and he's very much the consummate politician, so it's a possibility. It's one of the things that we're going to have to go into, but there's an awful lot more to cover. But coming back on the copyright thing, the Internet Archive will be coming up shortly but in the meantime Leo will be attending and letting you know what's new on the Club, Twitter and channel.
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37:59 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Now back to the show thanks, leo, and hope you're enjoying enjoying your trip over to the East Coast at the moment. Now, we were talking about companies regulating and trying to crush out the competition a couple of minutes ago and we had the disturbing news that the Internet Archive has lost its lawsuit. It's being sued by a bunch of publishers, and if you're not familiar with the Internet Archive, you really are missing out on something rather nice. Basically, they've archived books, music, for short-term loans, I mean, in the case of books, maybe one hour at a time, but they were taken by book publishers to court. They have lost their appeal. Manuscripts, documents that would otherwise not be available, are now basically going offline for the duration. It comes back, I guess, to what we were saying about regulation. Yes, copyright is important, but when something like this, which was providing a very low cost, very free service in many regards, is now basically having to shutter its uh, its books? A question for both of you, I mean can something like the internet archive survive in the modern environment, or should it?
39:15 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
yes and yes if I may that was fairly straightforward.
39:19
Yeah, I mean it's. It's this case actually may help the financials of the internet archive, because now it's in the news, people who support it may be more inclined to support it with donations and and financial things. But what should? The whole issue of books and libraries and in this case, the open library, which is the, the thing that, uh, the part of the internet archive that is under, you know the loss, that case is weird.
39:47
My sister's a librarian and they you know librarians are radical free speech people. They want to get all the information out to everybody who wants it. Period, that's what they want to do. But when they, when they loan electronic books, they have this pretend scarcity thing. So you go to one of the big libraries subscribed to different types of services that offer the electronic books and then you go there and a popular book you might have to wait three months or four months because they only have a certain number of copies. It's this pretend scarcity that protects the copyright holders and it's weird. It doesn't make sense. But it also doesn't necessarily make sense to make all books free, because then nobody would write them, because there'd be no money involved.
40:37
The internet archive is doing something that even your public library can't do and doesn't do, which is just unlimited. They don't pretend to have scarcity in digital books. They just say if you want to check out this book and borrow this book, then go for it. You know there are no limitations and that's what they're being sued for. So the whole thing is kind of weird. I really, you know, I really don't know what to. I really don't know how, in a perfect world, all libraries would have unlimited books or unlimited amount of loaning, a million people could borrow a book and also authors would make a living, but I'm not sure how those things go together.
41:19 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, I don't know why. I feel like it might be trendier to support the Internet archive, but I I feel like what they're doing is a little bit questionable. Um, I don't know why, like it's. Maybe this is like a you know a bad stance or something, but I think I'm just going to run with it. And it's just like, why are they able to just put out copyrighted books for free? I mean, they're a nonprofit, which is good, so that means they have less of a motive to do something bad with it or, like, accelerate that behavior in a way that spirals out of control, which is different than, for example, an AI system which is consuming copyrighted books and just tanking the publishing industry and then making all the profits. So I think that's probably the difference between the two. But I mean, yeah, what's the incentive to write books if there's no value on it? And, in society more widely, what's the incentive to create quality information if their society doesn't put a dollar sign on it?
42:18
And it just the whole internet has kind of like, brought us down on the internet quality, and maybe this is a way to start putting it back up, and that's how I feel about it.
42:31 - Iain Thomson (Host)
No, I mean you made me think about it in that you know you work at BC Mag. Now, I used to work at BC Mag when it was a print publication and in the UK we charged what? Three, I think about three or four pounds for each month's issue and people paid that and it funded, you know, the pc mac labs, which were internationally recognized as being damn good at what they did. So if people are giving this stuff away for free, then where's the funding going to come for?
42:56 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
for that exactly and I mean, I have some familial influences too. My dad was a publisher his whole life and I grew up learning about the history of that whole industry and just seeing it kind of go down. And there's just something weird going on where we have access to more information but we don't feel smarter. So what's going on?
43:17 - Iain Thomson (Host)
There's some interesting psychological research saying that stuff that you read online you retain for much less long and it's sort of in and out as opposed to if you sat down and read through a textbook or a novel or something like that it would get more entrenched in the brain patterns. Um, and you, you know you take it more seriously and you think about it more. And I mean, mike, I take your point about librarians, because I've known a few and they are absolute badasses when it comes to freedom of information. And the Internet Archive is a nonprofit, it's run on a tiny shoestring and it does have an awful lot of books that you couldn't get elsewhere, you couldn't even buy. But at the same time, to the point that Emily raises and which I kind of agree, was as a journalist myself, if people aren't willing to pay for content, then where's the incentive?
44:02 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I think that my gut feeling tells me that they should at least follow something similar to what the libraries have to follow. There should be some kind of. So you have an international bestseller that just hit the market, it's a hot new book. Maybe you do what libraries have to do, where you set up a system where you have to wait for that one, but that book that's out of print, that was printed a hundred years ago, that's precious. Let the three people who want to read that read that on, you know, in an unlimited way.
44:32
I think there's a, there's a happy medium and ultimately, as I understand, the internet archive. A big part of what the their mission is is to retain things and basically not allow, like the way back machine, for example, to not allow us to lose stuff that was put on the internet. Okay, well, so unlimited loaning of hot new books that just hit the market doesn't seem directly in line with that particular part of the mission. I could be wrong about that, but it seems like it is important for them to digitize all the books that they can and also to make them available. But the unlimited part, I think, is the part that is. I would personally like to see that, but it's. I think if libraries are limited, they should also be similarly limited.
45:19 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah.
45:22
It's problematic but, as you point out, we are losing colossal amounts of data and colossal amounts of content simply because if it goes out of print and it's not online. A family relative, who I can't name because he'd kill me used to work at Abbey Road Studios. There, for example, they have Beatles bootleg or Beatles mastering stuff which can only be played once, because they've only got the hardware and the heads on the tape machine to actually play it once at any kind of like decent quality. Now, in those kind of circumstances, obviously what they did was ripped the best quality copy they could, but then they're not going to put that out because, you know, until you know, the remaining beetles decide to let them. But we are losing a colossal amount of content. There is talk that all the stuff that was stored on microfiche and tape, for example, is going to be lost within the next 20, 30, 50 years maybe. Um, that's going to be a colossal loss to humanity. But yeah, letting a library do it in a sensible way seems to be the way forward on this.
46:33 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, so I majored in history. In undergrad I went to Columbia and I remember they took us all into the library one day and we met with the Columbia Rare Manuscript Librarians. We saw all these incredible archives and they brought us into this room and they were like, by the way, a huge amount of history is being lost because it's not being recorded on the internet. And all of us you know history nerd students were just aghast like what? All the history is being lost? And so, yeah, does the internet archive? Are they going to solve that problem? I mean, they're the best we have right now. I just wonder, like thought experiment, would it be better if the libraries were funded to do that, or is it this private effort? And it's just, it's like the same question on everything right?
47:21 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, it's interesting. I mean, were they actually in the process of digitizing the stuff when you were there? I mean, it seems like some organizations are now they've. I mean, the British Museum has now given permission for some of their rarest and most valuable documents to be scanned and put online. Is that kind of voluntary thing the way forward?
47:39 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, they do. They do make a lot of efforts and I'm sure there are tons of efforts going on around the country and in the world to do that as well, and it's not just the Internet Archive. I mean they've been doing this for forms of documentation and different types of technology. You know way before this there's other forms of publicizing things that are not on the Internet that would have gotten lost. That you know libraries and others are keeping going, so they'll keep doing their thing. I mean libraries and others are keeping going, so they'll keep doing their thing.
48:09
I mean I just suspect they don't have the technology or, you know, the means in a lot of ways to do what the Internet Archive is doing. Or they might focus on something special. So, like the Columbia Archives, they have tons of stuff about New York City, you know during World War II, or just specifically what was happening in New York throughout history, and that's kind of their focus. Or if they have some rich alum who has this and that connection to Abbey Road Studios, like you and you want to donate that one thing to the Columbia Archives. So they have these treasures. So it's different. It's different than the Internet Archive, and the Internet Archive spans just a huge reach, so I think that's why we talk about it in these discussions with this person and part of me.
49:06 - Iain Thomson (Host)
The more you read into it, the more it's just like. Actually sounds like a bit of a scumbag, but still, um, the fbi has busted a museum in I think. There's a musician in south carolina, um, who has been using ai to create to create music in conjunction with a couple of other people, um then putting up on spotify. When he first tried it with his own music, he couldn't make enough to live on, so then he got this automatically generated music, put it on, released a bot army to start downloading it and streaming it from Spotify and other services and, by some reports, was pulling in 1.2 million a year from this by the time he was finally collared. Is this future paying for content actually going to people like this?
49:45 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
The wrinkle in this story is that he had set he had set up bots, to quote unquote listen to it. So the downloads were his own bots. That's the most shady part of what he was doing. I mean, if he was putting out music that people are enjoying and downloading because they liked it so much, I think you know that'd be great, right? He was doing 661,000 streams per day and how many songs did he make? I mean, it was just like thousands of hundreds of thousands of songs, and if they were good enough songs that people would put them in their playlist and stuff like that great. But it was just mostly bots. So it was just. He was the producer, the consumer, everything, and just extracting money and nobody goes up against the record labels and wins.
50:32 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
But yeah, I mean, this guy is crazy, this guy is absolutely nuts.
50:37 - Iain Thomson (Host)
He's, he's oh no, tell us what you really think, yeah what a crazy guy.
50:42 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
And I mean just obviously became a criminal. He seems like he wanted to, seems like he wanted to at the beginning be an artist. He's trying to put his own money up on Spotify. Didn't make any money, probably was like screw this, screw this whole industry. I'm going to take it down, I'm going to play, I'm going to beat them at their own game. And it sounds like for the past seven years he has been generating AI music. So this is before ChatGPT, before now we talk about AI. So he's just been cranking out tunes on the computer for a while and listing it on Spotify and I don't know if he was just mad that he couldn't make money like that. So he was. I mean, just wild story make money like that.
51:29 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
So he was. Yeah, I mean just wild story. Just to contextualize, this snoop dog recently talked about how much money he makes from spotify streaming and he said uh, for a billion streams, a billion downloads, he makes 45 000 could grief that wouldn't even cover his weed simole that's right.
51:46
So that's why I mean that's one of the. You know he makes his money from concerts, from tv appearances and all the other stuff, but it's not streaming. No, if snoop dogg is not making any money from streaming, nobody is right yeah, maybe then we wouldn't have to watch him the olympics, he could just go away. Ah, why was he there?
52:06 - Iain Thomson (Host)
him and shack, they won't go away it did seem odd, though, that he was popping up all over the olympics. What on earth was that about?
52:14 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
you know olympics I think he had a deal to host the olympics really, oh grief.
52:20 - Iain Thomson (Host)
This is why I don't watch the olympics anymore, if they're pretty sure he wasn't even on the high school track team.
52:25 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I mean, this is very strange.
52:28 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, spotify is definitely okay. I wouldn't say Spotify is definitely ripping off artists. But I went to see an old guy called he's an old guy these days, he's 70, called Midgeor, who used to be lead singer of Ultravox, and he was saying you know, know, one of the things he really misses about the past was royalties, because if you were a band member, you know you could have like four or five smash albums and that would basically cover your pension fund just in terms of royalty payments. But with the advent of streaming there's a lot of old bands out on tour again. Of late I've noticed jiran. Jiran has been around. Uh, morrissey is still touring, of all things. Uh, new order have been touring, but I have to say we went to see one of their gigs and the voice just isn't there anymore, but this is a similar issue where it's like now we have access to all this music.
53:18 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
It's so amazing, we love it, we pay eight dollars a month for it yet the music industry is in shambles, so it's. We're getting access to more low quality music. So it's the same type of thing I was saying with just books and information on the internet. We're getting access to so much of it, but now we all complain about how it's low quality and this is benito hi.
53:39 - Benito (Announcement)
This is like a, actually a subject that is near and dear to my heart. This is something that I talk about a lot with Leo. Spotify as a company. They're the ones responsible. Them and the record companies are the ones responsible for really fleecing artists at this point. Spotify is also starting to get a little shitty with the AI music of their own creation. They're starting to make their own putting it out, and now that cuts out the record labels and that cuts out artists. So all the money is spotify's money now, yeah, that's sort of the part to me that really starts looking like okay, then now they're trying to cut out musicians and the record labels yes, doing the same thing yeah, and I mean also the, the thing that does kind of grind my gear about.
54:24 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I mean back when, back when I was in the other room doing a video cast, I've got a bunch of CDs behind me because when I'm working it's nice and simple you just throw a CD in the player and you work to music and there's a. What have you got with all those CDs? It's like well, I like to own music, I don't like to borrow it. And Spotify and I think TikTok and Apple have all said, basically, if you snuff it and your relatives don't have your password, then you no longer have that music. You know, this idea of passing down records and books and the rest of it to the next generation could be a thing of the past.
54:59 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, and the other weird thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is that you were talking about how, back in the day uh, you know, artists, could, you know famous bands, could make real money from the from their actual, you know, recorded music. And back in those days they didn't make money. They often lost money on concerts, so the concerts were promotion for the albums. People would buy the albums and people don't realize this, but in the 90s, a CD with the one song that you like and the 12 songs you don't care about cost $18 in the 90s, adjusted for inflation. I don't know what that is, but that's how much money people would pay to own music. As you say, they're super expensive and that's why artists one of the reasons why artists were making so much money. Nowadays you get a Spotify account, you're streaming unlimited, but then you go to a Taylor Swift concert and it costs. How much does it cost to go to the concert? It's crazy expensive.
55:59 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, in the UK we've just had Oasis reforming Now. I gather Oasis weren't quite so big over here, but in the mid to late 90s they were absolutely huge in the uk. Oh, they were huge here.
56:08
They were huge here. Yeah, oh, really, okay, fine, I mean, they were just I don't know. I it seems like one or two tracks are known, but it's they've just announced they're reforming because, well, unofficially, because one of them has just had to pay a 20 million dollar pound divorce settlement. Officially it's because, oh, it's time and it's time to bring the music back to the people and plus, a lot of our fans back then are now 30s or 40s. They've got a bit of disposable income. Let's see if we can harvest a little bit of that. So, of course, they went to ticketmaster, which um applied what? What do they call? Disruptive pricing is the polite way it's. It's kind like AIs, don't get it wrong. They just hallucinate. Disruptive pricing isn't gouging people for every penny you think they pay. It's a dynamic way of ensuring more quality in the market. But yeah, tickets for that standing room tickets were going for nearly 400 quid. That's over 500 bucks and it's just ludicrous. Surely this car continues's good, interesting, mike.
57:09 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
You gotta put that together for me, because I remember it the way you said it like touring, they didn't make money, and now like something has happened where they only make money on tours, so I've been kind of like mulling that over. So thank you for for pointing that out. Um, I just thought about all this because I just threw out my childhood CD collection. No, oh, like two days ago. Oh, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have brought this up. No, it's okay. I'm going to start a vinyl collection then, right.
57:36
I have, I have. It's just so crazy If you think about, even in my lifetime, just how radical the music consumption has changed. Like I looked at my cds and the reason I threw them out, it's like all the now cds. You know my coveted avril lavigne cd, you know all these things that are just now. They're just like tattooed on my heart and I don't have them, but it's like I can't even play those cds anymore like I don't know.
58:02
I don't have a cd drive in my computer. I don't have a would even call it a boom box. Like I don't, that doesn. I don't have a CD drive in my computer.
58:07
I don't have a what do you even call it A boom box, like I don't. That doesn't even exist in my brain anymore. So it's like just in just a couple decades, like just my entire consumption has changed and that has got to be like one of the fastest, swiftest just change in how we operate to the point where I just just threw it out. There had no other option. Really, am I gonna do frame it on my wall? That'd be weird.
58:26 - Iain Thomson (Host)
What am I gonna do. I know it's, although, to be honest, there has been a slight uptick in vinyl sales and it's not because people are actually playing vinyl because, as you say, no one's got the kit anymore.
58:37 - Benito (Announcement)
Um, they're not not a slight uptick, and it's the greatest uptick since, like the 70s or something well yeah, I know, but are people actually playing it?
58:44 - Iain Thomson (Host)
because I don't know again. This, this guy. The recording studio was just like. You wouldn't believe the amount of people who are buying framed lps at the moment and sticking them on the wall. It's become a huge industry for the you know for people are playing it.
58:58 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
People are playing it. I will say like, I yeah, but you know, I like kind of tried to get into it is a huge trend right now, um, but I'm just like it. Just it stops too quickly.
59:08 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
You know, it's like a lot of other things, yeah yeah, it's like a lot of other things, this you know. Owning and playing vinyl records used to be the mainstream thing that literally everybody did. It was just what you did. And then now it's for enthusiasts, hobbyists, miscellaneous hipsters, I mean. Think about, for example, horse riding. A horse Used to be. That's how you got around. If everybody had a farm, you had horses. Horses were everywhere. Now you have to be kind of a horse person and invest a lot of money. Boats is another example. In the future, cars that you drive will be in the same category. They'll still exist. In 30 years, most everybody will take self-driving cars and and sort of like passenger drones. Yeah, uh, but people will still drive their old four around because they'll. You know it'll be an expensive hobby for for super enthusiasts, and that's essentially where we're at with vinyl yeah, I mean it's.
01:00:04 - Iain Thomson (Host)
There was a sort of slight uptick in vinyl. I'm a big into my electronic music and and raving, so, um there, you knew you were with a good dj if they were actually spinning wheels. Actually, you know mixing records right there on track nowadays. Far too often not with all bands, but with some of them it's just somebody comes in, hits a button on their laptop and then fiddles around with the sound levels of the feeling, especially, um, especially good at it. But yeah, it's, I would say just a point, emily usb, cd drives an absolute uh bonus, because I'm like you. I you know I upgrade my computer regularly and there is no, there are very few computers where you can get with a CD, dvd drive on. And, mike, I should imagine, as you're now a digital nomad, you got rid of most of the music playing equipment, if not all, or is there some in storage?
01:00:54 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Completely. All I mean everything is my laptop. When we watch TV and movies, it's all on the laptop. That's all we got. So I'm happy to invest a fortune in a laptop, which is to say that I have an Apple laptop.
01:01:10 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Hey, they're kind of affordable in some of them compared to other brands.
01:01:13 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, that's true, but it's basically. Yeah, I don't have the luxury of anything like that at all and I'm pretty happy with that. I think think it's great it's, it's a, it's a valuable trade trade-off for me. I'm willing to make that trade-off yeah, yeah, I mean it's that.
01:01:31 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Flexibility certainly, um, but it's just every now and then. I'll just like you know, I'm in the middle of a rush job, I don't have the time to muck about with spotify and various other things stick a cd in the thing and and and go along with it. But yes, I mean it's.
01:01:48 - Benito (Announcement)
Wait, none of you. None of you kept a big folder full of MP3s.
01:01:53 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, when I moved over here, I laboriously ripped most of my CD collection and left it. Left it Well, yeah, very nice, but I didn't back up the portable hard drive that I ripped it onto. So I had like two, two gigabytes of music and just gone. You know, um, luckily, I mean, the cds were still in storage, but it was um, let's just say, uh, my then girlfriend, now wife, learned some interesting british swear words that day. But, um, yeah, I mean, this is something.
01:02:24
Well, as I said, we are going to have to deal with though, because you know, patterns are changing. But I don't, just don't see is to your point, emily. You know people aren't happy with the quality of music they're getting buying by and large, and musicians just can't make it pay, it seems. You know it's unless you're selling, selling these mega stadium tours. And I agree, I don't understand how they turn from being well, how they turn from being loss-making into actual profitable ventures. Although, if you look at some of the Pink Floyd gigs from the 70s and 80s, they spent a colossal amount on them.
01:03:00 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
But yeah, I mean we could be out of the golden age of music, yeah, I mean, I think it's all in life support right now A little bit the arts just just gotta keep going Right, right. The AI wave, and anyone who can can support should, is kind of where we are.
01:03:17 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I can't help but think that that technology, which has caused this problem entirely, is also the solution, because, uh, there's got to be some uh broad-based movement towards something like spotify not spotify, I'm sorry, substack for for musicians and artists uh to to basically mix their own or hire people, uh collaborate with two or three people to put together music and publish it directly, with whoever's publishing it getting a small cut, instead of the other way around, where the artist gets a small cut. You know, I'd love to see some sort of a thing by a company like Apple. Of course, that will never happen because they're going to want way too much of the money but I'd love to see somebody build a platform that is not where the music itself is uh not controlled by studios, by by any of the rest, and it's directly controlled by by people and not like a company like spotify, and where they can publish things. Keep 90 of it, 95 of the of the income, um, does anything like that exist? Yeah?
01:04:25
it's called band camp, band camp is that really broad patreon?
01:04:28 - Iain Thomson (Host)
as well, I think, would work on that front. Um, yeah, although it's I don't know, I just, you keep on hearing from band camp and from you know, patreon and others, that some people are making, you know, 10 000 a month from this, but it's that it's kind of like youtubers or instagram influencers, you know. It's like, yes, there might be half a a dozen people who are pulling in megabucks, but there's an immensely long tail of people who are just like what did I earn this month? Ooh, $3.20.
01:04:58 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
The problem is that basically, people just use Spotify or something like Spotify. The vast majority of music listeners just do that because it's easy. Same reason we use Amazon because they have our credit card and it's coming tomorrow, so just do that. But I but I'd love to see a broad-based uh embrace of of like away from spotify, because it's really I think that's the that's a problem yeah, it's been a mission of my life, but it's like impossible because everybody loves it and it's so cheap.
01:05:26 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I use spotify. I mean, I'm saying all these things, I use spotify, I will. One interesting thing in the music world I have done is I have started taking guitar lessons so that's been like six to eight months of that.
01:05:37
And that's cool because I'm actually directly supporting the musician, he who teaches me, so he kind of uses me to make money to fuel his tours and things. So I don't know what really compelled me. I wonder if all of this stuff kind of fits into it like wanting to get back to something real, get back to something offline, something unique you can't hear, something just not so perfect and available on the internet probably as part of it, hasn't been auto-tuned to death and back and run through focus groups to see who liked what and the rest of it's.
01:06:10 - Iain Thomson (Host)
This used to be what making music was about. But um, on the concert thing I did, I was attending a billy brad concert, of all things, a couple of years back and he makes an awful lot of money with cd sales simply because he comes on at the end of the show. He goes by the way way, I'll be signing at the back and you can't sign a digital file, or at least not in any way that you could show anyone else. Oh well, good luck on the guitar stuff. What kind of material.
01:06:37 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I mean when it comes to guitar, I like rock or folk.
01:06:40 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Okay, Well, folk, I'm sure your neighbors will appreciate the folk. Maybe not so much.
01:06:46 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Well you're giving me a lot of credit. I'm really not. I'm not like jamming on the chords. I don't have that confidence just yet. I would love to. This is it?
01:06:54 - Iain Thomson (Host)
And I mean Mike, you're currently in the land where almost everyone seems to have a guitar and enjoys playing it, and playing it often very loudly and badly, and so on Barcelona subway, if my last trip there was anything to go by.
01:07:10 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, and yesterday we uh my wife and I were walking across town and there was a sort of an open park where they had a concert, uh, stand set up and all that stuff and they were playing and, uh, man, they were good the guitar playing. There's like three people playing acoustic guitar at an incredible speed. It was really phenomenal. And uh, yeah, it's just part of the culture here. It's just really incredible what they do with guitars around here.
01:07:32 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Excellent. Well, I wonder what Leo's listening to in New York. Probably well, actually, if New York is anything to go by, somebody's screaming at him on the bus or the subway. But we'll see. And let's have a quick word from him now.
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01:09:10 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, I'm glad you mentioned hybrid working, because that's something we're going to be talking about now. In the uk, um pricewaterhousecoopers, who are one of the top four, or big four accountancy firms as they're known um, given the extent of market consolidation, has announced it's going to start using location data on its staff to um check on everyone's hybrid work performance to make sure they are in the office or out with clients when they say they're supposed to be. What would the aim of enforcing a three-day in the office work week? Now, I don't know. The idea of a three-day in the office is complete asathema to you. But I mean, emily, do you still go into the office or are you completely work from home? Or live at work, depending on how you look at it these days?
01:09:54 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
So we are pretty much a remote organization, but I am, I guess, a closeted boomer or something, because I like going into the office. So I elect to go in a couple of times a week and kind of wish others would too.
01:10:10 - Iain Thomson (Host)
God, Clusted Boomer. I think we've just got a title for the show there. But yes, it's, I don't know. I feel like an anomaly as well in that I'm in the office usually four or five days a week. I kind of like it because journalism is a very social profession.
01:10:25 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
You know it's like yeah, it's fun Talk to about ideas.
01:10:29 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, tossing ideas across the desk in the news meeting and that sort of thing. I don't know about that. I mean, I'm sure, Mike, you're going to disagree with me on this, but I would say that if the COVID lockdown taught me anything, it's that IM and video are a very poor substitute for actually being there in person, apart from the fact that you actually have to be there in person, which imposes certain geographical restraints. But you seem to make it work. So what's your secret?
01:10:56 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Well, as my second grade teacher would tell you, I don't play well with others, so I like just doing my own thing. But I think that remote work has been one of my beats for about 12 years or so and I've formed a theory, which is that we talk a lot about remote work and digital nomadism and what that's mostly about is flex work, and what flex work is mostly about is not about where you work, but when you work, and I think what what employees really want is the ability to stop work in the middle of the day and deal with their child or you know hand, you know deal with the person who comes over the house to fix the washing machine or whatever. Uh, modern life is too stressed. The time constraints on us are are too stressed, and I fully support the idea of people like the two of you who want to go into the office. Like you were saying, emily, the problem is that if you're in the office by yourself, it's kind of like working from home, except you're not home. But I think people should be able to work. Let me back up. I think companies will benefit if they embrace the technologies and the management styles that enable people to work when they want so much more asynchronous, rely much less on real time interaction, and also people can work where they want. I mean, I think there are a lot of people who like to leave the house, get dressed, you know, sort of have this mental transition into their work life helps with work life balance and all that kind of stuff.
01:12:32
The problem with these kind of edicts is what we're reading a lot about is that they're essentially driven by people who have old kind of thinking about this. A lot of people who are leaders in organizations became leaders because they're good at working in an office, working with people, managing people directly one-on-one. That's what they're good at. That's why they're succeeding in their jobs, why they're in charge, that's why they're leaders. And so they just intuitively feel like I really want to see people, I want to interact with people, and what that essentially is is it's what I would call a collaboration bias. So you can have two extremes. You can have a collaboration bias. This is driving things like open offices. Facebook's office in menlo park is the world's largest open office. If they decram gazillions of people into this one room separated by little little uh, you know, sort of like uh barriers, like the cubicle type things.
01:13:27 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yes, I've been there, and with the brutalist architecture as well, it looks very, very bizarre, but sorry, gary.
01:13:32 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, but what's left behind is what I would call a deep work bias. So I'm a huge fan of Cal Newport's work and talking about deep work and those are two separate things. Many of us need both of those. Some of us need only one or the other. If you're in sales marketing, something like that you're really going to have a collaboration bias. You're a social creature. That's why you got into that realm of work.
01:13:55
I've seen people in sales organizations the way they, like four or five people, are all thinking like the groupthink thing is like very important to that kind of work, whereas the kind of work I do writing opinion columns I really don't want to talk to anybody unless I'm interviewing them, and and then I just want I want hours of uninterrupted silence to do deep work.
01:14:16
And in fact, the deep work type of work is monetarily more valuable than the collaborative, a collaborative type of work.
01:14:25
And so when companies say, okay, everybody in the organization has to work in the office five days a week or three days a week pretty much the same thing as a digital nomad. By the way, making somebody work one day a week in the office means they have to live within range of the office. Right, it's a tether, it's a kind of way to keep people physically close, whereas if you say, hey, we're a remote organization, you can work wherever you want. We'll pay for coworking space if you want to work around other people, but if you want to work from home, you can, and if you can work from home, you can work from Rome or you can work from anywhere, and that is something that's very valuable to some people, people like me who really like to travel and move around the world, and so I'm in favor of all the type of work styles. What I'm not in favor of is blanket edicts which help some people and harm other people in terms of their quality of life, and the problem is that they're going to lose some good employees.
01:15:31 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, this has happened already. When Apple introduced its edict to get everyone back into stuff, they actually lost the head of AI over that, which is an incredibly important position. I mean it's.
01:15:42 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Well, but there you go. The truth is that companies like Apple and others who have these edicts are also advertising for remote work jobs, because there are certain types of jobs like that one they should have done it on this one, where the person is so valuable and they're so difficult to hire and they're so you know, the competition wants them you see this a lot in AI that they'll basically just say, hey, this is, we know, you're going to want to work remotely, so this is a remote position. They do that in private on the job boards in public. They have this edict because the rank and file employees they want in the office. So even the most strident back to work edict issuers are actually somewhat hypocritical on this point for the really valuable, rare positions.
01:16:32 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I was going to say Oracle were very keen on this, and yet Larry is spending an awful lot of time in Hawaii at the moment. So it's one rule for one and one rule for the other, it seems. But I mean, emily, we were talking earlier about there is an advantage in sort of collaborative working from a journalistic perspective, in that you can toss these ideas backwards and forwards. Um, I mean, are you seeing any indication from on your side on the east coast that this is actually gaining some ground? Because certainly in california, which was very laid back about such things, is we're really seeing a serious crackdown now yeah, I'm not.
01:17:07 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I haven't heard of too many crackdowns like this. This pwc story almost feels like a year old to me or something like like a year ago it was like, oh, they're cracking down, everyone's coming back to the office. Now it's like this quiet crackdown where you just hear more and more friends being like oh yeah, I'm in three times a week, oh yeah, I'm in four times a week and I week, and I'm like, oh wow, really, and I'm still doing or pretty much, I'm a remote employee, although, like I said, I go in. I think you're right, mike, that it is really beautiful that now we have ability for different work styles and there are certainly situations and types of people who really thrive not going in five days a week.
01:17:43
Off the top of my head, personality types, like you're saying, non-collaborative fields, where it's just really more productive to just put your head down and go Software engineering comes to mind. Also, if you have a medical issue or if you are raising children or you're taking care of an elderly parent and you need to be on call Any on call at home that you have to be really thrives. I do think that there's something sad that we don't, as people aren't seeing the value of congregating together in an office, like there's something really off with that. I mean, that was supposed to be the whole thing, that why we made cities, why we come together, why we have friends, why we have families, why we have friends, why we have families, why was the point of getting together? Because there's some kind of social and intellectual capital that we can get from each other, and there is just something off to me that that's not happening in an office environment and I don't know if it's a mismatch.
01:18:39
Everyone just hates their job and now we're learning it or the way offices are set up are just not supporting that human behavior. To me, there's just something wrong that it's a huge outcry where it's like oh, I have to congregate with other people that I work with. I hate that. Why do people feel that way?
01:19:00 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, I think there's also a slightly wider point. With the growth in particular of electronic communication, a lot of people just don't seem to feel comfortable, particularly post-COVID, with that kind of level of personal interaction. I mean, I was over seeing family on the East Coast a couple of weeks ago and the extent to which my niece uses her phone to actually make phone calls compared to everything else she does on it, it's, it's got to be down third, fourth, maybe the fifth, most common thing. She, you know she uses it for um, and this just seemed to be a generational thing. I don't think this is just a covered thing. There must be something, some technological reason behind it yeah, well, I mean, I so many thoughts.
01:19:44 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
First of all, emily, quiet crackdown. I love that phrase so much. It's as a counter to quiet, quitting, I guess. But the thing is that you know, we here in the United States, or over there in the United States I'm in Spain Uh, it's a, it's a culture of, of extreme workaholism, essentially. And we, um, I know so many people. Well, I'll give you an, I'll give an example Some of the people that we meet when we're abroad, who join our gastronomatic experiences, uh, a few of them haven't traveled much because their whole career they've had two week vacations.
01:20:25
We had this couple of entrepreneurs who owned some small retail shops and hadn't taken a vacation in 25 years, or something like that, and so we've been conditioned, I feel like, to a certain extent, to get our social life from work, in addition to our healthcare and all the rest.
01:20:43
I think it would be much healthier for us to have a professional relationship with the people we work with for the most part and have a social life outside of that, with our neighbors and all that kind of stuff.
01:20:56
But again, as Ian pointed out, since COVID people have become introverts and sort of like socially uncomfortable and all that stuff and that, uh, that could be helped by people going back to the office. I don't know. I just think that. I just think that we should, um, we should pursue relationships outside the office. We need to do something about our workaholism culture, um, and, and many of the people who, like you, were pointing out who may be taking care of somebody or they have responsibilities during the day, most of those people are willing to work late at night, through the weekend, whatever it takes, as long as they can be there for the person they have to do the things they have to do. And, again, this is part of that workaholism culture. But there's got to be a way where we're not relying on our companies for social life and meeting our future spouses and all that stuff. Most people met their uh, used to meet their spouses at work.
01:21:51 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Now it's I don't know, uh it's basically apps at this point, as far as I can tell you know if you approach strangers on a door and on a dance floor or or, you know, in a bar or something, then you're likely to get very short shrift.
01:22:05 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, and I've worked in for much of my career.
01:22:12
I've worked in newsroom type environments and you know it's great, Like there's certain aspects of the social part of that that's great.
01:22:19
I distinctly remember you know a bunch of people that I loved working with and a few people that I hated working with, and you take the good with the bad in those kind of circumstances you figure out how to navigate it.
01:22:32
But I just feel like we're sort of in this between space right now where I think technology will give us 90% of what we used to get, and by technology I mean spatial computing, holographic representatives of our employees. Sounds ridiculous, but I think at some point that's going to psychologically feel a lot closer to in-person contact with coworkers than video conferencing and all the stuff we do now. And the other point that has to be made is that the way that our work for most people has been internationalized, even if you go to the office, the idea that your team is all there in the office is very rare. Usually we're interacting with people all over the country, all over the world, even when we're in the office, and so the idea that we're interacting with people remotely is here to stay, no matter where we are, yeah, remotely is here to stay, no matter where we are yeah, it's here to stay, I think it's.
01:23:29 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I think you make a good point with, like the holograms and stuff. That would, I think, maybe be better than where we are now, because I feel like, you know, it's been three, four years since the pandemic and I would say that video chats are not the same as being in person, and I think maybe we can all just agree on that. And in the beginning it was like, oh, it's the same as being in person, and I think maybe we can all just agree on that. And in the beginning it was like, oh, it's the same, it's the same, this meeting's the same. I kept saying everything's the same, right, this discussion's the same. Oh, an email's better. And it was like this aggressive, effusive, everything's nothing's changed, it's actually better. And I think it is not the same. And there has to be a time and a place for all these tools that we have, and now video calls are just one more tool in our toolbox, but I feel like there is absolutely a place for in-person still.
01:24:16 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Our brains hate video conferencing because when we're on a meeting with 25 people, throughout the entire two-hour meeting, no matter who's talking, 24 of those people are looking at me and I'm looking at myself, and so it's like it's our brains just flip out because it's so unnatural. Whereas with holographic spatial computing meetings you know you have a white board over there and all the holographs are looking at the whiteboard and when that person's talking, they're all looking at that person in your brain, even though there's nobody physically present. Your brain's happy with that because that makes sense. It slots into what we understand in terms of how reality works.
01:24:56 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I did a holograph thing at CES last year. It was like you step into a box and it I know you, you go behind a camera and then it kind of scans you and like, creates basically your hologram, and then it it appeared in a box and that box could be anywhere. Is that what you're talking about, Mike?
01:25:16 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Uh, that that's the kind of technology we're going to have lots and lots of it. But I think that the, the, the, the, the. The thing that I have in mind is, uh, apple vision pro and their, their, their new uh personas, the, the. The thing that I have in mind is, uh, apple vision pro and their, their, their new uh personas. The way the personas work. They're no longer in a box, the. Now you have a torso, essentially, or, you know, chest up, you have a person and you can all look at the same content. You can position them around the room.
01:25:39
They can be roughly uh, life size, and we're clearly moving to a world in spatial computing where we're going to make what we're going to be able to do what you can't do easily in video conferencing, which is make eye contact. We'll be able to make eye contact with a hologram. The hologram person will be making eye contact with a hologram and it'll feel like an in-person conversation with real-time gestures, facial expressions, body language, all the things that are not conveyed in written or audio, right? So I think that we're sort of past the world where we all work together in an office and we're not yet to the world where everybody's a hologram, you can conjure up these ghosts of living people all the time and have physical 3D conversations with them.
01:26:24
We're in the between period and I don't think we should be giving up on it yet. I think we need to plow forward with the technology and get there as fast as we can. Unfortunately, if you buy Apple Vision Pro, it's going to cost you more than $4,000 by the time you actually run your credit card, and that is just. That's not going to fly for mass adoption.
01:26:44 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I'm not even sure the technology had to use. That is going to fly, though, because I tried out the so-called metaverse when it first came out and it was just like this is. You know, it's like second life, but not as good. And with all of these holograms I get the eye contact thing, and body language, I think, is also going to be incredibly important. I mean, emily, when you got this, was this a full body thing and you could interact normally and move around normally?
01:27:14 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I don't know what this thing was. If you really think about it, it kind of just sounds like a camera feed, like a scan. It was like a video of me one place and then I was appearing very lifelike in another place.
01:27:26 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
So that's pretty much what it was the reason you were, the reason your hologram was in a box, was that they were achieving three-dimensionality without the viewers using glasses or anything like that. What where we're headed is, uh, augmented reality glasses that look more or less like regular glasses, where, unlike apple vision pro, we see the real world through clear glass, not as a video feed of the real world. What what Apple is really doing is they're giving us augmented reality using virtual reality gear and high end virtual reality gear. So there it's video, pass through and uh, but again, as soon as everybody has the, the, the right uh kit on their eyes, we don't need the boxes and we don't need VR goggles.
01:28:08
What we need is a reduction in the price of manufacturing for high quality augmented reality glasses, and we're three, four, five years away from that, which is not to say that this year and next year we're not going to see a lot of interesting products that are not quite ready for prime time in terms of social acceptability. In terms of the look of the glasses they're too bulky, they look weird. There are a couple of companies that are coming very close, but mark my words, the thing that's going to replace the smartphone is augmented reality glasses. They're going to go wildly mainstream and they will give us holographic um face time, basically yeah, I, I just don't feel the hardware.
01:28:46 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I mean, yeah, and I read your piece and I've been looking around on this, but two big limiting factors that I can see. First off is battery life, because you've got to have a functional battery. You can't be plugging these things in every 45 minutes or an hour or two hours. You've got to get a full working day battery life out of them. It's kind of like when laptops really became accepted as business tools was when you didn't have to have the damn thing plugged in, you know, otherwise it would die on you within if you're doing anything remotely difficult with it. Um, I think the other big thing is, as you say, is social, because, you know, are we going to get to a point where, if you, if you're not using this technology, it's going to get to a point where, if you're not using this technology, it's going to be a?
01:29:29 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
career drag, as it were, maybe.
01:29:31 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I think I don't know that's an interesting question glasses, goggles of any kind, whether it's Apple Vision Pro or Ray-Ban metaglasses is quick access to AI, chatbots and information, and what we really need is some. We need agentic AI, which is AI that's kind of like a chatbot but is actually has is more governed by its own goals and objectives its own, the ones you gave it right. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to look out for me, look around the world, see the opportunities. You know the stuff I like.
01:30:12
You know the stuff I want to avoid. You know what I'm doing. You know where I'm going. Help me out, give me turn by turn directions, without me asking you to give them to me. You know that sort of, that sort of agentic AI is going to be so valuable because it's basically empowers the individual person, and so you know, I love the cliche that's now, I think, something of a cliche which is to say that you know, most people will not be replaced by AI in their jobs. They'll be replaced by a person partnering with AI, and I think so. I think that there will be a huge disadvantage for people who don't use this kind of technology.
01:30:48 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Oh, absolutely. I mean, as a journalist, I use an AI system at least once a day. I don't trust it particularly, but I'll use it to get ideas, do research, that sort of thing.
01:30:56 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I spend so much time fact-checking you know perplexity.
01:31:01 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I know I've got the same problem. Is this something you find as well, emily? I?
01:31:04 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
know I've got the same problem. Is this something you find as well, emily? Oh yeah, absolutely. I think journalism is one field where everyone keeps saying it's going to replace us, and I just feel like it's actually particularly ill suited to our field for that reason, and also because we're trying to create new stuff that's not on the internet, so it's just a different thing, yeah, so sometimes I don't use it because it almost slows me down.
01:31:24
So if I have a clear vision in my head I'll just go, and I don't want any chatbot nonsense to mess me up. But maybe in the beginning it's helpful to get the juices flowing.
01:31:34 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, I mean I did try. When OpenAI first came out, I was just thinking maybe I could use this, because what's the most boring stuff? We have to write Financial results releases. Without a shadow of a doubt, it's built around you know analyzing series of numbers. This should be easy as pie and of course it fell. At the first hurdle it was just like no well, hang on, they've got the net income wrong. The revenues was taken from last year's revenue and you spend more time editing it than you do.
01:32:03 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
That then you'd save from writing it yourself the most boring thing I have to do is like writing press releases and we get those, you know, like on nda, so it's like before it's even released. So I'm still stuck in this like boring purgatory because the chatbot doesn't know about it yet, so it's not not helping me well you should.
01:32:24 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Journalism is finding out what somebody doesn't already know and doesn't want to print it but I would.
01:32:30 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I would recommend uh, perplexity or find for that sort of thing, because it'll do real-time stuff, it'll. You can say I'll only get this from youtube, or only look at content that's been published in the last 24 hours, or, um, you know, here's a pdf and summarize it for me. Don't use any other source and just look at this and give me the explain this scientific paper, like I'm a sixth grader. It'll do all that kind of stuff, which is really nice. But I think for journalists, the best use of AI is it helps us with blind spots. Like you say, initially, when you're starting to think about an idea, you're like, oh, I'm gonna write about these big tech companies that do X, y, z, and you can tell the AI well, you know, here's a company, here's a company, here's a company, here's a company, what other companies fall into this category? And they'll give you two more and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, you know. And so it's a very quick way to get your list of ideas fleshed out with a couple of things you hadn't thought of.
01:33:27 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I agree. No, I mean I agree. I'm working on a feature on the cyber insurance industry at the moment and it's not an area I knew massive amounts about. I was very helpful in identifying some companies that I hadn't actually identified, but I think, fundamentally, it's going to come down to as you say you're not going to people aren't necessarily going to be replaced by ai. It's going to be people using ai tools that are going to going to get the better jobs in that regard. But, um yeah, we're gonna have to see how that works, because I get the feeling we're in the middle of an industrial revolution type shift.
01:33:59
So um and for all the talk about how it's going to be a wonderful ai future where we have tons of leisure time and we use all this stuff for free. I've got my doubts on that front and I don't think I'm being overly cynical on that. Yeah it's going to be great for the companies. Oh yeah.
01:34:16 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
They'll get a lot more work out of us for the same money.
01:34:18 - Iain Thomson (Host)
But in the meantime we've got other things to discuss. We've got a big review of the electric car industry which will be leaning on you, emily, for Emily, because we've had some moves this week. But first we've got some words from Leo, fresh from his vacation over the other side of the country.
01:34:36 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
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01:36:36 - Iain Thomson (Host)
We're dealing with enormous monetary costs in terms of running these very large models and in researching the smaller ones. There's also, to be frank about it, the environmental cost. We've just had a report out this week showing that data centers are actually vastly increasing their carbon outputs. Google and Microsoft have both had to admit they're not going to hit carbon targets. Based on this, is there a smarter way to do this? Are we likely to find a smarter way to do this, or is it still going to be throwing huge amounts of data in?
01:37:11 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, I've written about the carbon issue too, and it basically seems like we need to have more efficient computing, we need to have more efficient calculations, we need to have AI that's more selective in the types of information it sifts through for each inquiry and it basically the process of getting the information to the page needs to be a lot more efficient, because right now, it's taking huge amounts of data centers and electricity to generate, you know, an image. Your stupid little image requests like oh, a platypus playing hockey is like going all around the world and taking like huge amounts of data, and that's absolutely absurd. So what we need is, um, incentivize these companies to make you know cheaper, more efficient computations worth their while. That's what we need yes, I feel like.
01:38:00 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I feel like there is a lot of progress being made and likely to be progress in the future for the things that we're doing now that are super wasteful uh, in generating, you know um, these models that we use right now. But I'm sure that silicon valley will come up with all kinds of uh resource hogging technologies to to replace that. And see, that seems to be the trend lately for um, one thing that comes to mind is nvidia, which has a vested interest in lots and lots and lots and lots of NVIDIA chips working around the clock in massive data centers churning away at stuff, and they have this amazing concept called physical AI, digital twins. Essentially, their idea is that you take a robot, for example, that's going to be working in a factory, and the way you do it now is a lot of trial and error. You've got a big robot arm to pick up widgets and move them somewhere, do something like that, and they train and train and train and train and train. This robot takes months, and then they finally get it and then the robot in a virtual digital twin of that robot and the factory and the building and the temperature and everything is physical AI. It has temperature, inertia, gravity All these things are in this virtual model.
01:39:20
And then you can do this training of the robots. At 10,000 times the speed they can practice something 10,000 times in a couple of hours. And then, once you've trained it with the software, you just take the software from the digital twin, you put it in the physical robot and knows how to do the task. This is computationally gigantic. I mean this whole idea of every factory, every car factory, every widget factory, every sort of thing, having a digital twin that continues to live in perpetuity side by side with the physical thing, where you can model all these things in the factory with individual parts, that if you replace a part on the robot you replace a digital part in the virtual twin. This is computationally massive. And if this really takes off and everything becomes as robotic as NVIDIA thinks it will, and using the system to train it, I mean it doesn't matter how many efficiency, how much efficiency we can get for generating chat, gpt and chatbots like that, because there's just so much more computation to be done with these things.
01:40:30 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Well, we would obviously need renewable energy, that goes without saying.
01:40:36 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yes, I mean although data center operators don't seem to be that good at that sort of thing. I mean, we've had a number of data centers open up in Arizona, of all places. Now I understand the tax benefits are great for the companies in the short term, but the little thing called water that you tend to need in large quantities I think it was Facebook or one of the large tech companies also just announced plans to build a data center, but to do that they were going to have to receive guarantees from the local power company who gets certain amount of supplies, and it just seems like a very intensive process and one which people aren't thinking through at the moment right now.
01:41:14 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I also just want to say I don't know about you guys. What you just said about digital twin is incredible, but the phrase digital twin is like my pet peeve. Like you heard about this concept of like x, like when you're dating, like oh, when she chews their mouth open, like that's my ick, like I hate that. That turns me off from her immediately, like that's the concept of like an ick. It's like a thing on tiktok. Just like the phrase digital twin is like my tech industry ick. It is so jargony and like just drives me crazy. But I I agree that it's very cool, so just rename it. It's my one request.
01:41:49 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
It's used in different ways, like the, the, the one that. The usage that annoys me is when you're referring to a digital twin of a person. Uh, that bugs me a lot. Um, a digital twin of, like a factory doesn't bother me so much, but, yeah, we'll change it because it bugs you.
01:42:06 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Thank you, I just I just imagine all these people sitting around in a boardroom just being like it's like a digital, like a digital twin, and they like think it's this like really cool term and it's like, okay, it's all right, just calm down.
01:42:19 - Iain Thomson (Host)
We've all got our bug bears with me. It's hallucinate, you know the system hallucinates. No, it gets it wrong. You know, it's like if I, if I'm sitting in exam and I I get a question right, I'm very sorry, I hallucinated that answer and you have more questions than you really want as well. It's just like you're hallucinating in the exam. Mr thompson, right, let's have a talk about your minutes. But yeah, I mean, we've all got those little bugbears and I'm sure, mike, you've got your.
01:42:44 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
You know it's yeah, mike, do you have one?
01:42:47 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
yeah, well, well, I, I we probably don't have time for it before the next ad. We can ask nito about that. But, like, the thing that I've been on a um, serious, uh series of diatribes about is the humanization of robots and ai, which really, really, really bothers me. For example, there's a huge industry of humanoid robots that is coming online and actually being used in factories, from Tesla to you know. There's a bunch of there's some companies like Tesla that are using their own, so I think there's a couple of Tesla robots who are like moving batteries around in the factory or whatever, robots who were like moving batteries around in the factory or whatever.
01:43:25
They're super inefficient and I do not buy the justification that the value of humanoid robots is the fact that they can operate in spaces that are designed for human beings. They can sit in chairs, they can get in cars, they can open doors, they can do all the. If our spaces are designed for humans and therefore a human shaped robot that bends with elbows and has fingers and all that stuff can operate in those human environments. This is such baloney, uh, especially for factories. Factories are designed for machinery mainly, but also people. They have flat cement floors that where wheels, uh, can roll, and a robot that is on wheels is vastly more efficient than one that's like walking or using a supercomputer to like actually do bipedal locomotion. So we're designing these factory robots after the bodies of paleolithic cavemen, basically, which makes no sense unless the makers have a kind of God complex.
01:44:25
There's so much effort, both in software for AI, so look at the GPT-4.0.
01:44:33
They envision Scarlett Johansson talking to us like a regular person, like their friend, and Elon Musk himself said that the Tesla robot is going to be like your friend and he wants to build 20 million of them or 20 billion of them or whatever it is he said crazy thing he said, and I'm just like why? Why do you want us to? Why do you want to hijack the mental hardware that we're all born with, that favors other human beings, for empathy, for all these things, why do you want to hijack that for your machine? I really don't trust it at all, and I think there should be a movement to oppose personality chatbots and personality AI and also humanoid robots, because, at the end of the day, that's all they are. They're just designed to manipulate us into treating it differently from what it is, which is either software or hardware, or both Right, so so I really that kind of stuff really bugs me when Apple tomorrow is probably going to may roll out their their new generative AI personality replacement for Siri.
01:45:42 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yep.
01:45:43 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
And I want nothing to do with it. I think that the personality and the voice and the intonation of AI chatbots should be specifically designed to not trigger any false, delusional thinking about the agency or the thought process of the AI. It has none right and we need to preserve that intuition.
01:46:04 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I I mean we're going precisely in the opposite direction of this. I mean, you mentioned siri, but it's endemic across the space when you're asking one of these devices to do something for you, it's inevitably responding with a female voice. Now I understand the reasons behind that because you know very psychological reasons we, we are more likely to follow their, follow their instructions, which is why, you know, when the us air force started doing cockpit, you know, in cockpit warnings they used a female voice because they figured they tested and found the male pilots were more likely to accept it. But a friend of mine has two daughters and he's this makes him really quite, I wouldn't say angry, but he gets really quite verbose on this, particularly particularly after you know when it gets late into the evening that he doesn't want his daughters thinking that that's exactly what.
01:46:54
You know it's a woman's job to do these things and you know, as you say, we don't really want totally human robots anyway, because they're vastly inefficient, you know. So we're evolved to be a bipedal running species on the savannah. It's just um, why, how that works in the common factory setting, I don't know. I mean, emily, what's your thoughts on this? It just it seems like we're going in a variety of different ways and all of them good so many thoughts, how many thoughts do we have to take an ad break?
01:47:28
um yep do we have to?
01:47:30 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I feel like we need to like dig deep into this yeah, I don't want to have.
01:47:33 - Benito (Announcement)
Let's take the break and I'll come back hanging over my head, all right then let's throw down apple, intelligence no no, that's far enough.
01:47:41 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Um, and also, we should talk. We should do the electric vehicle talk after the break as well. But, yes, we'll do with AI first. But yeah, I mean, it's a lot of unruly stuff to talk about. I mean, we've seen various presentations on this. We're going to see one on Monday, as you say, mike, with Apple, and once again, the hype is going to be completely over the top. I mean, speaking of over the top, you saw the Tesla robot when they first announced it some bloke in a shiny suit, yep, presuming it was a bloke, it was just. I couldn't understand the thinking behind that. I mean, was it just like? Were you honestly expecting us to think, right, okay, well, it's a bloat, you know it's someone in a shiny suit, but um, well, I'll tell you.
01:48:31 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I'll tell you my, my, my belief. My belief is that there are multiple motivations for humanoid robots. Uh, one of them is that so much of what happens in technology is just people trying to actualize the stuff they read in science fiction books when they were kids. That's why all the billionaires have their own space program and play with the rockets and all that kind of stuff, and I think they they all also learned the wrong lessons from these books.
01:48:58
Exactly, right, exactly. The metaverse is a dystopia people. But I think the darkest if is if you make something that's kind of like a human. You're kind of like a god of course that's all motivating, yes it motivates.
01:49:17 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I mean, there's so much money in it and it's all this god complex and that's ai is feeding it so much. It's like the productivity of the boss. It's all just a big God complex that does happen to be very convenient for the people who are using it. So it's this like toxic flywheel.
01:49:35 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
They're kind of like people, but they obey me exactly.
01:49:38 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yes, and will never rebel, right, right.
01:49:42 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
One thing on the female voice that bothers me is that for some reason, people want to say female voices are shrill or this and that they don't like a female voice. And in the White House, they don't like a female voice as the CEO, they don't like a female voice in certain places, but they do like a female voice as like an AI assistant, and that's just. There's something really just perverse about that and like make no mistake, that is not power for women. That is like just a further acknowledgement of women as this kind of like weird subservient thing, and so I'm I'm all out on that. I don't like that. I don't think female voices should become like AI voice. That's just. That's a no, don't use my voice.
01:50:30 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
My son has a company that makes a. It's called Chatterbox. It makes a smart speaker that's voice interactive. It has a button on it too, so it's not listening all the time, it only listens when you press the button, and he deliberately created a, uses a robot voice that sounds like, uh, kind of like a child, and you can't tell the gender and I think that sort of thing you want to. You can understand everything it said this chatterbox says, but it's not like oh, this is a boy, this is a girl, this is a man, this is a woman, uh, it's just a clearly an american. It has an american accent, but, uh, you, it's, it's has its own voice and it has no gender and it all that stuff. So I think it can be done and, um, my son, kevin, has done it and and I think that's the way to go cool yeah, yeah, I like your idea too about making the ai is like kind of intentionally unlikable or not having a personality um, it should be unnoticeable.
01:51:29
You shouldn't stop and think, wow, I just feel really good about this. I don't know if you've used piai no no, but it's.
01:51:36
It's a chat bot that you talk to and it's extremely personality focused in it. You ask it a question, it'll go this on this long-winded answer and then it'll ask you a question and it tries to engage in this conversation and it's always like kissing your butt. Oh, that's so smart, you know, it's funny, like it's always, you know, and that just bugs me. Uh, there should be a whole science, there should be a whole uh major and in universities to design voice interactions, that you don't notice any of that stuff. It doesn't seem like a robot voice. It doesn't seem like a person that goes right down the middle and just is clear and you understand it. It answers your question and then shuts up when it's done answering your question. Where's the effort to have that be the goal for these agents that are going to be dominating our world?
01:52:31 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I think the effort is going into almost making them addictive. And that's where people are. They want to be making jokes.
01:52:39 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
You're going to be falling in love with them, and that's what people want Well, Xiaoice, which is Microsoft's product and developed by researchers in China, had I don't know, I think it's over 700 and something million users. They had it in the US for a while. They discontinued it. Now it's in three countries, but something like a quarter of the users of Xiaoice told it that said I love you to the chat bot, and this is modeled after a teenage girl girl. The whole thing is just completely creepy and and I I consider that a massive failure, like they would consider that a success, like people are so, uh, sort of you know they, sort of you guarantee it.
01:53:21
There are a number of people who are substituting shall ice for an actual human relationship. Right that they're preferring that. This is very bad. This is very unhealthy, and I think that a chatbot that does that to people is a big fail in my book.
01:53:36 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I love it. I feel relief hearing you say this. If AI could progress in a way that's not addictive, not harmful to women, does not just make a small amount of people a huge amount of money, great, let's do it.
01:53:50 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
You shouldn't be relieved because nobody in the industry is saying these things.
01:53:53 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I know, but that idea is refreshing. It's a good one.
01:53:55 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, no, I mean, if wishes made it so, then certainly. But, as you say, there's a lot of money riding on this and a lot of executives who don't particularly want to, um, give up control and or revenue for, for philosophical points that could be healthier for their end users. Um, I mean particularly with the on the ai front. It's as you say, there is this, uh, mike, there is this. There's a definite creepiness in people feeling they're in some way involved and I remember when, when Siri came out, people were taking the mickey out of it on TV shows and it became a comedy point and the rest of it. But you know, this kind of thing is going to spread because there are people that, for want of anything better, consider those relationships to be valid and in some way almost attractive. It's a very disturbing part of human psyche.
01:54:49 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
That's right. And you know, there's a parallel problem with virtual reality, where people who may live in circumstances where they feel powerless or they have an ugly environment or they have no social life, will increasingly turn to virtual reality to have all those things and they'll prefer it to the real world. And the same thing is happening and will increasingly happen with social chatbots that people will prefer because they feel comfortable with it. They, you know, and, and, and I, and I just think it's so bad and all wrong, and I think that it's up to the industry to prevent this from happening, because if they keep going down the path they're going in, they're going the opposite direction. They're trying to like, as Emily says, they're trying to addict you, they're trying to get you committed to this thing.
01:55:47
I've seen so many studies, uh, working on some of the pieces I've written uh, lately. Uh, here's what you know. They're doing a lot of this, uh research in Italy, of all places. But they found that, um, they tested a humanoid. You know the inner human interaction with a humanoid robot versus a non-humanoid robot, and humanoid robots have eyes and when you make eye contact with the eyes of a humanoid robot, the similar chemical thing happens to your brain as making eye contact with another person and making eye contact with a person is a very loaded act.
01:56:23
It can signal aggression and certain things it can signal affection. It can make people bond a little bit. There's all these things that happen. We also have that with our dogs. Dogs evolved to give us the puppy dog eyes because that bonds us with the dog. It's good for the dog survival, it's good for the human survival, and so this is something that exists. And now people are feeling this with robots. Well, to me, this indicates that the industry should be preventing this thing from happening, but instead they'll go in the other direction and they're going to put puppy dog eyes on all the robots because they want us to be deluded into having a false sense of what the robot is. And it really bugs me I mean, I was remembering the first Atlas tests of humanoid robots to having a false sense of what the robot is and it really bugs me.
01:57:06 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Interesting. I mean, I was remembering the first Atlas tests of humanoid robots and there they specifically wanted humanoid robots because of the reasons that you were saying. They can drive cars, they can navigate through rubble, they can open doors and that sort of thing. Now I can see personally there's a valid, I can see a valid argument for that, but in terms of the digital design and the way that we're doing this, I'm glad you mentioned dogs, because there was some interesting research that cats evolved meowing because most cats don't, most felines don't meow and they evolved it around humans to sound like a small child. So that, oh, what's up with the kitty. And actually I've got one staring at me right now, but we shall have to see how that one turns out.
01:57:48
I don't think AI cat's going to work, but in the past we've had things like Clippy, who were actively reviled. I mean, when they actually turned off Clippy by default. It's the first time in a Microsoft press conference I've seen journalists stand up and applaud. You know what I mean. It was just this terrible, terrible thing. Now why did that fail and why would AI work instead?
01:58:10 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Microsoft Bob failed two years before Clippy failed, true, true, and in both cases they were anthropomorphic characters that you were designed to feel to humanize technology, but had the opposite effect. They're always intruding. They would always say this kind of tone deaf thing um, so those are both from microsoft, shall? I's from microsoft and tay was from microsoft. So in four big ways, microsoft tried and failed to have a human or robot. Tay, if you remember, was trained on social media and especially twitter and spewed all the racist things you would expect something trained on Twitter would spew.
01:58:48
You have chatbots like Replica, kooky Rose, blenderbot, eviebot, simsimi, chaiai, indieworld, ai, bliss and the Pi that I mentioned before. These are all examples of chatbots or characters that are designed to have personality and they all failed in the sense that a huge number of people, or most of them, found them annoying, sort of very bizarre. In the case of Shallice, they found them not annoying enough and that was problematic. And my belief is that we tend to think that formal writing, like writing a research paper or writing an essay for college or writing a business email, is a difficult problem for a chatbot, and in fact it is not. It's very easy.
01:59:36
These things are rule governed. They're based on a sort of a detachment, social detachment, and because you're doing business, you're doing business, you're doing business right. It's business like tone of voice, whereas a casual chit chat with a friend, I think, is vastly beyond the capability of ai. And because tone is everything, the response is it's very easy to get it wrong and you see this with with pie all the time. It's just when, whenever they try to to instill a personality, it's always like, you know, it's like a wonderful parlor trick for five minutes and then eventually it's like oh, this is just so tedious, you know, just give, just give me the information I'm looking for. And so I just think that, um, first of all, I don't think that we have the technology to have a convincing back and forth, casual, friendly conversation. That's meaningful on the one hand. On the other hand, once we do have that capability, I don't think we should use it, because I think that's just again, it's all based on diluting the human and I don't know why.
02:00:46
And the other thing is, these things lie right. Any sort of chatbot with a personality says oh, I'm feeling great today. No, you're not. You're not feeling anything, you're lying to me. Everything it says, they claim experiences they've never had. They claim thoughts they've never had, or they don't claim it, but they basically interact as if they've had those thoughts right. There's a big tech industry behind emotionally intelligent chatbots that read your emotions and so you're feeling sad, so they'll adjust their tone. Well, they don't feel empathy, they're faking it, they're lying to you and it's like I think the public needs to be more aware of this stuff and to reject it wholeheartedly. I don't want to be lied to by a machine. I don't want to be deluded by software. I just want something that will give me, that will improve, that will magnify my abilities as somebody who's trying to get things done.
02:01:41 - Iain Thomson (Host)
But fundamentally, I mean people know what's going on, right. I mean they know that there's an AI that isn't actually feeling it, or do you just think they don't care?
02:02:06 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
AI, they were, you know, cgi and stuff like that. And these, these influencers have modeling gigs. There's a famous one, spacing on the name for now, that poses with celebrities and does all this kind of stuff, and you know it'll be like, oh, here's my new outfit and it's a CGI character. And then you see 10,000 comments oh, looking good. You know all this stuff. Who do they think they're talking to? I think most of those people know it's a cgi. They know there's no there there. They know they're talking to somebody who isn't there and they don't care. They want the interaction and they just don't care that it's not a real person and I think that's worse than not knowing this is it, emily.
02:02:37 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Do you agree that people are just quite happy as long as they get the service that they want?
02:02:43 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
well, luckily, not a lot of people are using all these services yet, so we're kind of at the at the beginning of it. Um, I think people will like talking to services that endear them, unfortunately so, um, the problem with clippy and and the like of likes of clippy I don't know what other characters there are. You mentioned a lot is they weren't personalized to the person, so maybe there's a small set of people that love clippy and just love when he appeared on the screen but, everyone else was like that's the most annoying piece of trash I've ever seen.
02:03:13
Get that, get that away. So now, with the ai is personalized. Everyone has their own version of clippy and the weirdest, wackiest version that speaks to some part of their brain, and that's why the ai is successful and that's something people should probably watch out for. That, if you like it.
02:03:29 - Iain Thomson (Host)
It knows too much about you let's find out what's what's next up on the agenda with twit and who's going to be supporting it this episode of this week in tech brought to you by express vpn.
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02:06:51 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Um, I know, emily, you've written about this. A bunch of other people have as well. Sweden has given us many wonderful things and some terrible ones. Um, abba is a wonderful thing. Uh, ikea has somewhat mixed, as it proves that, just because the scandinavians aren't vikings anymore, they can still muck up your weekend by missing out a couple of screws. And Ikea has somewhat mixed, as it proves that, just because the Scandinavians aren't Vikings anymore, they can still muck up your weekend by missing out a couple of screws. And now, in key, but Volvo, who are usually seen as one of the most you know green lefty car companies out there, much beloved here in the East Bay in Berkeley they've just announced that they're basically scaling back their electric car plans and they're not going to hit the 2030 deadline. They're not alone in this. General Motors has also said it's having problems, and various others. So, emily, are we facing a stalling in the electric car side? Is it going to take a lot longer than we first thought, or is this just growing pains for the industry?
02:07:43 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
It's growing pains. So a lot of these companies are still seeing year over year increases. So, like the Ford F-150 Lightning, for example, is up 160% year over year. So all Hyundai is up. Kia is up. I just wrote an article that the Honda Prologue has been just growing exponentially month over month since it was released earlier this year. It's now selling more than the Mustang, mach-e, the Ioniq 5, and all the big ones. Of course, tesla is in a league of its own, but if we take out Tesla, the ones below Tesla.
02:08:16
The prologue shows there can be new cars that still do really well. Volvo is interesting because it's kind of what I think it's kind of having to confront that it's owned by a chinese owner at this point. So with the new tariffs, um, it's not really profitable to sell chinese evs in the us for volvo they've been taken over by the chinese, but yes, they have been taken over by the chinese. This is actually not new. This has been happening for years. Their parent company is Geely, which is a.
02:08:47
Chinese company. So that is why they didn't release the Volvo EX30 in the US, which is supposed to be a $35,000 EV. I have friends who placed reservations for it. It was supposed to be a very exciting new car. I thought it was really cool. It was the one that I felt like was actually geared towards me and I was like, yay, it's exciting, it's coming. Then the Biden administration did their tariffs on Chinese cars so that made it less profitable. Now the Volvo EX30 is not coming to the US until who knows when. I just saw it in Europe two weeks ago, so now it's elsewhere. So I think with Volvo they're kind of realizing like, oh shoot, we're producing all these cars through these Chinese manufacturing. Now what is our business model in the US?
02:09:36 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Interesting. So is this down to the 100% tariff which was introduced by the current government?
02:09:40 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yes.
02:09:41 - Iain Thomson (Host)
And that applies to all Chinese-owned companies Interesting, because that's going to set a fair few people back. I mean, in terms then, of how the American market is developing, I mean, yes, you mentioned Tesla is sort of way above everything else, although I have seen bumper stickers saying I bought this before I knew he was a madman. But I mean, do you see Tesla's sales sort of actually going down, or are they just the rest of the other manufacturers are catching up?
02:10:08 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Tesla sales in Q1 were down year-over-year, which created basically a panic, and Elon Musk has subsequently fired the whole supercharging team, if you remember that. He's kind of like pivoted the. I think he's decided he's kind of bored with making cars. He's like, yeah, whatever, it's a bizarre decision, whatever decision.
02:10:28 - Iain Thomson (Host)
The supercharging network, though. It had such an advantage there, why on earth would they shut that down?
02:10:33 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
um, well, it was very interesting timing because they had just signed deals with all the other car makers to make them compatible with superchargers. So theoretically, all the other evs were supposed to have access to superchargers by the end of this year, early next year, and that's been very delayed since he acts the supercharging team, so he has pivoted more into his ai stuff. So, tesla, I mean, they're still doing well. Um, they were down in q1, I can't. They're down slightly neutral or up slightly like not a lot of change in Q2, I forget.
02:11:07 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Right.
02:11:08 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
But you know they still try to sell cars. I mean, they just have tons of sales tactics Like they still want you to buy cars. They're not set. But EVs are still selling. It's just slower and we really haven't cracked the affordable EV, and that is the problem.
02:11:25 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Really.
02:11:26 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yes. So that was why it was sad that that Volvo got the kibosh, because it was 35K and that would have been a bit better than the 45, 50, 55. That's kind of standard. Yes, and the issue there is all about the battery. So we have not been able to make cheaper batteries Again because the Chinese control the entire battery supply, or like 90, 95% of it, and the minerals that go into the batteries. They have mines all around the world. So when it comes to if you're a Ford, you're a GM, you want to make a cheap battery, it's like where the heck, how the heck am I going to do that? I mean, you have to buy it from someone who's going to sell it to you for a price. So that's really the central tension in the industry, and it's not me just saying that. Ford, when they announced their shift to hybrids recently, they said in the press release and I could not believe this they said they can't keep up with the Chinese.
02:12:18 - Iain Thomson (Host)
They actually admitted that Wow, they actually stated that directly.
02:12:21 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yes, they said it's unreasonable with Chinese competitors. Of course they didn't say we can't keep up with the Chinese.
02:12:26 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I was going to say right. That would be impressive honesty for a press release.
02:12:31 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Right, especially for Ford. They clamped down on their messaging. They used the word Chinese and competitors in the same sentence, in which also talked about it being an unreasonable to keep up with them.
02:12:44 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Got it Okay.
02:12:47 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
And that's just very relevant to the volvo thing yeah, no definitely yeah I mean what's?
02:12:51 - Iain Thomson (Host)
what's the situation where you are mike? I mean you're seeing a lot more evs on the on the road in europe uh, not, not like in california, um, nowhere near that.
02:13:01 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
But you see, um, you see some. You know, in this of Europe the ordinary cars are fairly, you know, relatively fuel efficient. You don't see a ton of huge pickup trucks like you do in California. You don't see a lot of SUVs or big cars, a lot of very, very small cars that are fairly fuel efficient already.
02:13:23
But I think that the problem is one problem is a kind of a lack of commitment by the US government. It's kind of of two minds. So we've learned in the last like 20 years and by we I mean they, the politicians have learned that if you want to get your party reelected, you make sure there's, you know, the prices are generally low, and the best lever on the price of things is the price of gasoline. And so, and the way you lower the price of gasoline is you oversupply it. And so the US in the last, you know, 10, 20 years, has really been ramping up oil and gas production, which has kept you know people complain about gas, gas prices, but it's actually, compared to almost everywhere else in the world, very low in the united states, and this is the problem if gasoline was as expensive in the united states as it is in europe, I think there'd be a lot more interest in buying electric vehicles um something that came up when I moved over here.
02:14:21 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I was talking to the taxi driver literally on the airport, from the airport to the hotel, and you say, oh, it's terrible. Here gas prices are going up to four dollars fifty a gallon. You were just like mate.
02:14:32 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
It's equivalent about 13 or 14 dollars a gallon in the uk and we're quite cheap compared to some in europe what's funny is the americans, uh in europe, will look at gas prices and they're like, oh, that's not a bad, oh, that's a leader. Yeah, I thought that was a good price for gas, but that's the price for a leader.
02:14:49
This is really expensive, yeah, and so you know that that's part of it, uh, so I, I sort of blame the government. They should be. If they're going to be over producing oil for political reasons, they should be, uh, they should be more heavily subsidizing electric vehicles and and you and they're already doing it to a certain extent, california does it to a certain extent we need a lot more of that, I think. I also think that more it's surprising that car companies are not following Tesla's lead.
02:15:21
The genius of Tesla back when Elon Musk was a genius when he came up with all this stuff, was that electric cars were always this boring sort of granola head, sort of like Birkenstock wearing kind of a thing that's clunky and slow, and they were super ugly, aerodynamics and all that stuff for the efficiency. And it's like, hey, we're going to make the fastest car in the world and it's going to be electric and it's going to be fun, it's going to have ludicrous modes, it's going to have all these buttons, big screen and it's going to be this crazy thing. And where is that learning with all these other car companies? These electric cars are purely based on like here's the deal, here's how much electricity costs and here's all the no. Make it fun, man, make it, make it like really exciting to drive in some way. And I think so. I think they've failed us, the government has failed us, and here we are not, not accelerating toward electric vehicles more personally.
02:16:19 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Emily, you mentioned the affordability of the cars, but also the fuel now, I guess is is increasingly an issue, and I don't know what it's like over on the East Coast, but PG&E, apparently now if you're running a smart meter, you will get charged more for your power if it's being used to charge up your car, which seems counterproductive in some ways. But I mean, is it not just the purchase price but also the running costs that are making the difference here?
02:16:42 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I don't think the running costs here. I don't think the running costs. I mean in a lot of places it's still cheaper to have an electric vehicle or comparable, unless you charge only at, like superchargers which are at a higher rate for the electricity. Um, I think the biden administration had a very admirable go at making evs a new normal um, I think they should be commended for that and have faced an enormous amount of backlash I'm thinking there's a butt coming here no I think maybe that's it.
02:17:15
I mean I just say, but because they kind of walked it back a little bit again after, like all the backlash, it wasn't it wasn't like pure, pure, but I mean I think they did, you know, funded billions of dollars in battery research and chargers and just got all the states on board. The states have incentives now. The federal $7,500 incentive actually got better over the course of the Biden administration. You can now get it at the dealer and it just reduces the cost of the EV up front.
02:17:43 - Iain Thomson (Host)
That's been a very successful policy.
02:17:45 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Instead of having to wait to file with taxes, there's been a lot of wins. There has been pushback from the car companies themselves and really the price of the car and the charging situation are the two issues. If you get yourself in an EV. It is way nicer to drive. Anyone who likes cars can admit that it's like, yeah good.
02:18:11 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
So I have a plug-in hybrid, it's a plug-in Prius and it's the greatest thing ever, I think. I don't worry about charging stations, but if I have the time I just drive it down the street from where I stay in California to abucks, where there's a free charging station, and I sit there in starbucks and in four hours it's completely topped off for free and that gives me 24 miles, which is not very much, but it's like free right and but, but again, I think it's the perfect solution.
02:18:43
I don't whether you know if the price of gas goes way up, I charge it more often, If, if, if it does, if, if I never charge it, I still get like 53 miles to the gallon through regenerative braking, all this other stuff, and I just think that that's. I don't see what. I don't understand why there isn't a lot more plug-in hybrids. It's such a great solution for this interim period we're in where we're sort of between gas and electric vehicles.
02:19:07 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Those are very cool. They're a little expensive.
02:19:11 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
A little expensive but massively reliable and very inexpensive to maintain. They cost nothing to maintain my previous Prius, which is a hybrid but not a plug-in hybrid.
02:19:27 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I mean, the maintenance costs were like $65 every two years or something like that. Never broke down, no problems. You never lost a battery, because we run a prius and the battery died on us about halfway down route five, which is not the place to break down, let me tell you. But yeah, I mean the hybrid also. The other thing with the hybrid is you do lose a lot of boots by uh, trunk space, as we say, as you, Especially for the plug-in.
02:19:47 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
It has a bigger battery, so it's like there's almost no trunk space, so that's a problem.
02:19:51 - Iain Thomson (Host)
But the very nature of the cars that are being promoted. I mean, emily, you mentioned the Ford F-150, enormously popular. It was almost enormously popular as a petrol engine as well. So I can kind of understand why they went for it, even though, having driven one, I wouldn't do it again. But I mean, why are they going for the larger cars first? Why is no American manufacturer seriously trying to do something as cheap as the Chinese? Is it just that the Chinese have the batteries and they're holding them to themselves?
02:20:22 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yes, that's it. I read a lot about this and one of the things two things I want to happen with US car culture. I want all pure gas cars to be gone. I want hybrids to be the new normal. They're still gas cars. Everyone relax, they run on gas.
02:20:37
They're just smarter. They're an advancement in technology, so we need to have that blanket Two. I think there needs to be more variation in US car culture in terms of smaller cars being considered legitimate, whereas we can consider these gigantic cars where you pay so much money and you don't get any more value for it. It's just bigger.
02:20:58
I don't see why we can't just let people who want to buy smaller cars just let them be and just have that be an option. It's very efficient. It just goes down to, when it comes to evs, the battery. The cost of the battery does not make it possible to make a 25 000 ev and that is what honda and gm basically partnered to make that happen to do like a small, affordable 25 000 ev. They scrapped the plans after a couple years because they said it's not affordable.
02:21:27
So, it's literally just about the cost of the battery. Everything is in that. And even Ford, like the Mach-E, the Lightning, it was so cool when they did that. Ford, the stodgy American company, just electrified the F-150. It was so cool, I mean, that was back in 2002. Now they're walking back because it's too expensive and they can't deliver on it for the rest of their customers in different price points. And that's why the Republicans get oh now, evs have so many problems, but it's like if they were just cheaper there'd be so much less scrutiny. So we're just stuck on the price, basically. And of course charging is an issue too, but I think price is a bigger issue.
02:22:10 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
So do you think that we should just let the Chinese cars flood the market? I mean, I think there's a. I'm serious.
02:22:16 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
That's the question. No, that's the right question.
02:22:18 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, because that would be kind of great for the goals of electrifying the the car market. It would and it would pave the way no pun intended for all the electrical stations. It would make it more of a mass product and sort of put a lot of pressure on on domestic, uh, car makers. To figure it all out, I just think that you know we're so uneven in our, our blocking of chinese technology. They, they, make all our iPhones. We're flooded with Chinese goods all the time. It's in our food supply. All that stuff. That's all okay somehow, but this thing that would dramatically improve our environment, which would save lives and improve health, and all that other kind of stuff, reduce global warming, all that we're like, oh, no, no, no, not that.
02:23:05 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Well, you asked the right question. The issue is that I don't know that it's necessarily environmentally friendly to prop up China, which is producing an insane amount of emissions. Yes, so really that's just a separate issue. The other thing that makes this more serious than an iPhone, and why it's been recognized by the US government as a national security issue, is that batteries are the future of energy independence, and so it's an energy independence issue. So if you just let them run away with it, it's different than them running away with iPhone production.
02:23:38 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I mean, I can kind of see the logic behind that, but the question is how then do we regain the battery, a level playing field in the batteries? Because my understanding is that right now, particularly when it comes to rare earth materials, china is hoarding these and not allowing much in the way of export. They also own most of the mines that do it, although there have been talks of restarting ones in the US, is it going to be possible to catch up with the Chinese and actually beat them at their own game on this one?
02:24:04 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Well, we certainly would have to get started. There are very large lithium deposits in the US that are contracts to be mined and I think the Thacker Pass one might be open. So anyone who's listening and who's an expert chime in. But yeah, we basically, if we put half as much energy into building social media apps or holograms or whatever into like battery technology, and we had more college programs for battery technology, we had kids interested in it who actually know what it is and want to, you know, build the future of that technology, we could have better cars, we could have iphones that last for days and days and days without charging. We could just have better batteries, you know.
02:24:47
But if there's no momentum towards that in the US, or there's really. It's politics miring that effort because the Biden administration allocated billions towards domestic battery production, gave startups that I have spoken to tons of money to keep going and building either traditional lithium ion or new chemistries which are coming down the pipe.
02:25:08
So really we seem to fund it and have the interest, and then we can do it. We have lithium, we have good mines, we have great national labs, we have everything. We don't have the appetite, and that's where the US just is not doing what it needs to be doing.
02:25:23 - Iain Thomson (Host)
So culture, where the car is so central, it seems, seems remarkable that they're going falling down on that front. But also, as you say, for energy security. We're going to need a lot of this technology. Um, I mean, people laughed at tesla's gigafactory, but that does seem to be a wise move from what you're saying yeah, I mean.
02:25:42 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Well, tesla makes gigafactors all over the world, including, including in China.
02:25:45 - Iain Thomson (Host)
But you mean just making batteries. Well, yes, I mean just making batteries and improving the technology.
02:25:54 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, it's a worthwhile endeavor. Yes, it's a worthwhile thing.
02:25:57 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I'm sure you and I both have the same problem, in that our email boxes are filled full of revolutionary new breakthrough in so-and-so lab or so-and-so university which could revolutionize it, and we've been getting these for 10, 15 years and really not seeing any progress. Is it just that it's too difficult to do on scale or, you know, the funding dries up.
02:26:17 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah. So I kind of wanted to get in my reporting. I really wanted to understand the battery technology situation because of my belief that is the central problem and solution to this whole thing. So there is actually progress in battery technology. I will say the issue with a solid state battery or sodium ion or lithium, sulfur or graphene, all these other chemistries, is just scaling them in the production and there are people who are getting much closer to that and the reason you don't see it now is because they're building the factories now like they are. They're coming. There's multiple I can think of in my head that are like being constructed, and then you will start to get more of the scale and that's why I think at least hyundai and their recent press release.
02:27:04
They said they think EV demand is going to pick up around 2030. Well, what's happening around 2030? All of these battery promises are supposed to be coming around 2030.
02:27:15 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Gosh that's a hell of a lead time, though. It takes like two, three years to get a chip fab up and running, as Intel are discovering their cost at the moment. You know having to wait until 2030, I'm not sure the environment can wait that long. I'm pretty sure the EU isn't. I mean, certainly the EU has been moving on this and the UK is moving the same way to sort of actually ban internal combustion engines from being sold in new cars, and the dates are changing from 2030 to 2035 or whatever. I mean, do you think those kind of straight-off bans no more fuel for cars being sold are workable under the current situation? Are we going to have to wait for the battery manufacturers to actually get their goods on the market before we can change?
02:27:57 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I don't think that would be workable in present day. I do think there is a place for gasoline. Again, I think it should be hybrid, but I don't think, where we are today, that would service everybody If you live in a rural area or if you just want to take a weekend trip and you don't want to stop to charge all the time.
02:28:18
I mean, it's just certain things where it becomes impractical. And so you would just either need what we're seeing now, which is incremental improvements in range, so if it goes from 270 to 280 to 290 to 300 and then kind of peters off after that, except for Lucid's at like 500.
02:28:38
But either you keep doing little things to get more range, like rewiring the car or making a better battery management system or having a heat pump or just these little things they can do to the car, or you have to just wait a couple years, and then there should be something that is next level okay that we're hoping is around 2030, but I mean looking at clock right now.
02:29:02 - Iain Thomson (Host)
That's in six years yeah, I know it's not by when you're having fun, isn't it? Yeah, but I mean, the charging networks seem to be there or don't seem to be holding things back from what you're saying, um well, they are, they are.
02:29:16 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
It's just like if you can't even get the car, you're not going to charge it that's a fair point.
02:29:20 - Iain Thomson (Host)
yeah, yeah, um, that's a british guy I follow on youtube and he did actually manage to drive coast to coast a couple of years back in a Model X, but it meant in some cases staying overnight at RV camps and using that fairly inefficient way of charging.
02:29:37 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
You can do it, it's just not fun. It used to be a party trick to say, oh, I took a road trip. It's like in an EV. You can do it, but you don't really want to.
02:29:46 - Iain Thomson (Host)
No, you need that level of hassle. It's. How is it in europe, mike? I mean, are you seeing charging stations around where you are?
02:29:53 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
yeah, I mean here and there you see charging stations. There's a, there's a little restaurant we go to in italy that's in the middle of nowhere, and they have a tesla charging station there.
02:30:02 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I'm just like, okay, that's interesting I found one in scotland, you know, and it was just like, okay, that's interesting, I found one in Scotland you know, and it was just like in the Highlands of Scotland and you were like, wow, this is spreading fast, it's incredible.
02:30:14 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
But but here's a question for you, emily what is the impact of self-driving cars, which seem a lot more viable with this success of Waymo in, in, in, I think, three markets right now. I've I've taken, I think, once taken away, or twice a Waymo in, I think, three markets right now. I've taken, I think, once taken or twice a Waymo in San Francisco, and it is amazing how well that works. So, if you think about, you know you're talking about 2030, which is a goal, right, so that, in reality, these batteries coming online is going to be later than that, right, if, if the battery industry is, like every other industry, not meeting its goal, um, so, so let's, let's look at 10 years, or eight to 10 years, uh, before we have, like, american battery technology really hitting the market in a way that's going to make a big impact. Where will self-driving cars be then? Those will be mostly electric, right, and so how does that impact the use of combustion engines in general? Would that help them decline, and to what extent do you think that'll happen?
02:31:17 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I think right now Waymo and Cruise. Well, cruise is off. They got booted out of San Francisco after a bunch of controversies. They're operating more in city environments, which is where EVs really shine. They actually have a higher fuel economy in cities than on the highway, so it's flipped from gas cars and then they're just operating in these small environments. They're also operating from the perspective of a fleet provider which knows exactly how much mileage a specific vehicle is going to need and can call it back to charge. So it's a little bit different than these consumers who are just wanting to push the mileage constantly to the edge or the range constantly to the edge From a fleet perspective.
02:32:00
It tends to be easier for buses or taxis and things, so I think that's good. It's just the regulatory approval is not there and maybe that will also take eight to 10 years.
02:32:13 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, I mean this is it. You mentioned cruise and generally parking on top of pedestrians isn't the best advertisement for your product, as has happened here in San Francisco. But I mean, I've tried the Waymos as well, and fascinating. Love the drive, love not having to deal with a taxi driver who had opinions which you didn't really want to listen to for various reasons. But they are very geographically limited. As you say, this is not something which is going to be rolled out across the country. I think we've only got three or four cities now which are allowing them, and those have been heavily mapped out for years. I mean it's, I can't see them working. New york, for example, can you? I mean that would, that would be two through at least two, three years down the way before they actually had that.
02:32:56 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Plus they'd have to deal with new york drivers and which are nearly as bad as san franciscan ones I don't know why anyone's newber driver in new york is like a very specific version of hell, so maybe, maybe that would be good at self-driving, um, but if you think about both these topics it's also interesting to think of, like elon musk and tesla in eight to ten years, like what is? They're very, very difficult problems, both of them the electric vehicle situation and the autonomous vehicle situation, and there there's a lull in both. So I mean twitter's not making money. So like what, what is elon musk gonna do?
02:33:32 - Iain Thomson (Host)
well, yeah, I mean this, is it? As you mentioned, the um, the so-called full self-driving, is not full or self or or sometimes not even driving. You know it's um. I do you think that they've basically taken their eye off the ball on that, or is it just that there are technological problems which are going to take a lot of time to work through?
02:33:53 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I think their eye's on the ball. I mean, basically that's what he did with trying to like firing the Supercharger team. I mean, I don't know why he had to fire them to focus on AI, but they are focusing more on AI now and I think they well they said this month the Cybertruck is getting full self-driving, so see that thing driving itself on the street.
02:34:15 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I saw one in the UK and, given the size of our streets, everyone was just laughing at it because it was just like squeezing its way down on a narrow London street and you were like that's not a good look. Really, it's so funny.
02:34:28 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I'm in New Jersey and you would not believe how many EVs there are here. It's crazy. It's like a new utopia, like if you go on a hike or you go to the grocery store. It's like EV greatest hits. You're looking around the parking lot.
02:34:47 - Iain Thomson (Host)
It's like Mercedes, bmw, tesla, tesla, tesla, tesla, cybertruck, tesla, tesla, tesla, cyber truck, cyber truck. It's crazy. Interesting is that, because new jersey has a particularly has some advantage in that front?
02:34:51 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
or is it just that, yeah, there's some good tax incentives um, there's a lot of rich people, a lot and a lot of homeowners a lot of how?
02:34:58 - Iain Thomson (Host)
yes, a lot of homeowners and people with yards, because this has always been the problem in the cities.
02:35:02 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
You can't yes, you can't have an electricity flex out of your second floor apartment and charge up the car that's the problem in china too, because people, a lot of people, live in these big apartment buildings and no place to charge electric cars, and so that was a problem. But uh, I think they're slowly getting to the point where they have the charging stations or apartment complexes I was gonna say try throwing electricity flex out the window in san francisco and someone's gonna think it before it's even reached the car.
02:35:41
But yes, then a cyber truck went by, then a cable car went by and I'm like I am definitely in san francisco, this is the most san francisco traffic I have ever seen. A friend of mine also took a picture of a red light where there were three wamos in a row at the red light.
02:35:58 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, very, very cool, they seem to be conspiring yeah, I went to um austin tex and it was when Cruz was still having fun and being a surface and I couldn't believe how many were driving around the city just constantly learning. They're learning, their cameras are picking up everything and they're just going around just driverless, passengerless, learning the city. I did have a little bit of like an existential crisis because it was like they're going around the city and I'm also seeing tons of people who appeared to like be homeless or on drugs. They were passing out Narcan on the streets, which is what you administer.
02:36:38 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah.
02:36:40 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
And someone has an opioid overdose. And so it was like this crazy contrast of just like these self-driving electric cars and then Narcan being passed out, and I was just like my brain was just I. I was like I don't know where we're going, I don't know what we're doing yeah, I know, just so.
02:36:55 - Iain Thomson (Host)
It does seem like a dystopia at times, but it was so crazy yeah yeah, well, we shall have to see um.
02:37:01 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
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02:38:20 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Thanks very much, Leo, and hope you're enjoying the trip away. Now we've got a couple of other stories which we can go through, one of which comes back to what we were saying about US government investment in infrastructure and how this is going to work. We've had proposals this week coming through about toughening up the actual root backbone of the internet, as it were, the border gateway protocols. But we've also had the government willing to invest in chip firms in a big way over the last couple of months, and it was that I wanted to touch on initially.
02:38:55
In that intel, who was a former, you know giant of the chip business and an american leader in pretty much every way possible, is looking like it's in serious trouble at the moment. They've tried to re-engineer the they. Basically I've been covering this for a while and they just haven't been investing in their chips. And now they're coming to the US government and saying give us billions in funding. It kind of admires with the electric car thing. Now, if that's working on, as you say on batteries, Emily, I'm wondering whether you and Mike think this can actually work on processes as well, because at the moment Taiwan and China are well, china not so much, but Taiwan certainly is, if you'll forgive the pun, eating our chips on this.
02:39:38 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Well, I think you're the expert here. But I will say also the CHIPS Act was very significant legislation to increase domestic production. Sounds like it's not working, though.
02:39:48 - Iain Thomson (Host)
The problem is the long lead time.
02:39:49 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I think you know it's like it takes two, three years to get a chip fab up and running and it costs billions, I think we're just a little like we should have done this two administrations ago, with both batteries and chips, and so that's why it's so important that, now that we've had the CHIPS Act and the battery funding and all that that we've talked about has actually been passed, it's very important to keep going, because we're already behind.
02:40:14 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's a worrying concern and I think we always kind of hope the administration would do these things two or three administrations ago. But if they're politically dodgy situations and and well, in the case of intel, you you had management who preferred to spend on share buybacks than they did on actual investing in technology, and now we have a situation where I think it was also covid which kind of reinforced this a bit in that they suddenly worked out well, hang on, if china doesn't sell us this stuff, we haven't got the capacity to produce it ourselves. It's I'm trying to see if there is. I guess that there is a parallel with evs on that front.
02:40:53
It's just like yeah china is in a very strong position in a bunch of industries. Taiwan is in a very strong position in the chips industry, um, and now there are some european counterparts coming up, um, as a possible futurologist, mike, what's your take on this?
02:41:09 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Well, I mean, the difference is that with the electric vehicle industry, you have a bunch of companies that would sort of benefit equally from all the things that a government can do, including subsidizing purchases and all that kind of stuff. In this case you have fantastic chip manufacturing companies in the United States who are succeeding wildly NVIDIA, qualcomm, et cetera, doing different kinds of chips Intel. It seems to me that the problem is the leadership of Intel. They seem to me to be a somewhat visionless company and have seemed that way for many, many years. They were sort of addicted to the crack cocaine of being behind the PC industry a few decades ago and they just rode that industry up and kept churning out Endless.
02:42:04 - Iain Thomson (Host)
X86s.
02:42:06 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Exactly, industry up and kept churning out endless, exactly and and now we live in a world where where it's like, okay, that's not really this robust, uh, growing, thriving market anymore. And, um, as with the two of you, I get press releases and see press, uh moves by intel over the last like 15, 20 years and they always make me scratch my head. They launch this thing where they're going to do, uh, they're going to do internet of things, stuff, and then they stop doing that and then they're going to launch a pc division. It's like, why are you doing that? And then they sort of sell that and then they they buy something, then they sell it and it's kind of like they seem to just be floundering generally. Now we're talking about the foundry business which, yeah, lost seven billion last year.
02:42:47 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Already has lost over five and a half this month.
02:42:49 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
This in the first six months of this year as well and still, the year is still young and so, and so they just the foundry business which used to be the the core of what they did, you know, making chips. They seem to be unable to uh, design a process and keep up with the schedule. Uh, they've had quality control issues. They just seem to be in a realm where they just can't handle what they're trying to do, and it's a real problem. But again, I think what we need is more competition in the spaces that Intel operates in, rather than propping up this, what I assume is a poorly run company. I really I'm not going to say that with a lot of confidence because I really don't know how well it's run, but it just they seem to be nowheresville for the last decade and a half, while all these other chip manufacturing companies are just killing it.
02:43:44 - Iain Thomson (Host)
And so I mean, they used to have engineers in charge and then they changed changed to having marketers in charge and that doesn't seem to have worked particularly well, but NVIDIA pulled it off. I just don't understand why they got so so far behind and so lackadaisical in terms of their future planning.
02:44:00 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, part of it is just NVIDIA is both a visionary company and they're super lucky. Nvidia is both a visionary company and they're super lucky. So you know, basically, generative, generative ai thing hit. The best thing going for that were graphics chips. Right. So they were making graphics chips that that could handle all this parallel processing and were super powerful and they were ideal for a training the models and then b, delivering them and and doing the processing, the back end, and they just scaled, delivering them and doing the processing in the back end, and they just scaled up massively and now they're pivoting to specialize in AI. But they're also an incredibly visionary company and all the ways in which they're visionary are exactly the ways that Intel seems not to be visionary.
02:44:46
Intel just seems to be on the same track. They don't seem to be responding well to competition. Of course you think things like microprocessors. Just building the fab takes a decade or something. It's a crazy long, difficult business, but still at some point they're going to have to respond and sort of keep up with what their competitors are doing business. But still at some point they're going to have to respond and, and and, uh and and sort of keep up um with, with what their competitors are doing. And uh again, what I where I love to see my tax dollars go is not propping up this money losing operation, but uh but funding startups and funding um competition in the spaces where Intel impedes.
02:45:29 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, I mean we have been seeing an awful lot of releases about custom AI chips, you know, which are specifically designed to burn through this as fast and efficiently as possible. I mean, emily, have you seen any real progress in this, or are we still at the press release level, do you think?
02:45:44 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Well, I just want to quickly so, mike, on NVIDIA being visionary, how do we square that with what we were talking about earlier, with AI and character-driven replacing humans with robots thing? Because from my understanding, I had some coworkers who went to the NVIDIA keynote address several months ago. They walked out feeling completely like there's no future for humanity because apparently nvidia's vision is to just to basically replace humans with robots, to mirror, mirror or mimic. Kind of got lost between those two words, both our intelligence and do all the things that we talked about earlier that we think are evil.
02:46:30 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Well, the vision is that they are not only talking about all of the areas of growth in robotics and AI, but they're actually backing it up with not only hardware but also amazing software. Some of the things they're doing in software that supports the development of AI using their chips is the reason you buy their chips, because they're so advanced in terms of the software. But they have great demos and great support for humanoid robot training, for the development of it, for the operating system for humanoid robot training, for the development of it, for the operating system for humanoid robots, and they also have even more impressive lineup of support for, and vision around non-humanoid robots. I mean the, the, the, the nvidia vision is that everything is going to become robotic right, robotic, not robots, but robotic, and that's really the way to go. So, for example, in the areas where Amazon is using I forgot the brand name, but they're using humanoid robots in their factory and what those robots are doing right now is they're picking up these bins when they empty out. You know, human workers empty out the bins with parts and whatever it is they're doing, and the robots, like, shuffle over and pick up the bin and they walk it back and put it where it goes so it can be filled up again. Okay, well, that is, they have two robots doing that. That replaces robotic bins. So before they had that, they had robot. The bins themselves had wheels and some intelligence would follow a line in the factory floor and put itself back way more, way more intelligent. And that's how not just how factories should work, but how our homes should work.
02:48:12
The idea that we're going to have Rosie the robot, like with a feather duster, going around being our housekeeper is ridiculous. We're going to have a Roomba type thing vacuuming the thing. We're going to have a robotic dishwasher. We're going to have a robotic, this robotic. That everything's going to be robotic, and that's for me, that's the vision I'd like to see. If you look at agriculture, for example, you're not going to have, uh, you know, humanoid robot farmers and overalls going through and plowing the fields. You're going to have robotic tractors you can have robotic. You're going to have robots going through all night, uh, identifying weeds and zapping them with lasers. So you don't have. I saw that release?
02:48:46 - Iain Thomson (Host)
yeah, that news story, yes, it's um emily did this seem remotely. I mean, they showed that appeals to me.
02:48:53 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I hate weeding.
02:48:54 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yes, yes and also we hate herbicides, right, right. So so it's, it's a, it's a way to use technology not to, not to destroy the food and make it unhelpful, but to do the opposite, to back off on the chemicals, but anyway, so the vision for them is anything that can be robotic. We're there with a way to train it, to develop it, to control it, to the operating system, to everything, and so, yeah, the hope for humanity. The way that they look at it is they're big on the partnering with humanity part of it, but they're an accelerant. They're very un-Intel-like, right?
02:49:35
Whenever you read about Intel, you see them speak and all this kind of stuff. They're scrambling to keep up With NVIDIA. They're doting the industry to keep up with them. They are so far advanced with almost everything they're doing that it really makes it clear to me when you contrast those companies and they are in different businesses, to be sure, but if you contrast those two companies, if you're going to fund anything, as the government, you want to fund more're gonna, if you, if you're gonna fund anything as as the government, you want to fund more, invidious, you don't want to just flush money down the intel toilet. Uh, until they can figure out how to how to how to deliver on what they're what they're attempting to do well, there's a mental image which is going to linger.
02:50:20 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Sorry, emily, you about to say something no, I was.
02:50:23 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I was just mulling that over, like you yes, just okay fine well, is it like the intel logo going down the toilet, or?
02:50:32 - Iain Thomson (Host)
is it like there is intel inside the pan?
02:50:34 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
there is intel inside the toilet bowl.
02:50:35 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Yeah, yeah yes, I'm speaking of other american companies who were once, you know, by words for efficiency and excellence and are now well, let let's say not to be polite. I mean, we've seen the problems with the Boeing Starliner. Over the last couple of months. We've got a couple of astronauts stranded on the ISS, although Boeing's PR was very keen to say they're not actually stranded, because we didn't say how long the mission was going to be going on, for they're just temporarily delayed. And now the Starliner returned to Earth this weekend and they're going to have to hitch a ride on SpaceX. Now, mike, you do an awful lot of international travel. What's your take If it's a Boeing? Are you still going?
02:51:19 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, I'm very. I think they're in the ballpark that. You know, the part of the problem is that we have a lot of innovation, especially by SpaceX, in the rocket industry and you know, I think that the other companies, like Boeing, are essentially trying to keep up with SpaceX in terms of the aggressive schedule of rolling out new platforms and new technologies and stuff like that, and they're really not able to keep up, but it's it's a lot of pressure on them. I think it's fascinating that, uh, that SpaceX has been so successful and is the fallback for for us to to deal with the international space station, to bring people and cargo back and forth, um, but but I I think that, uh, I would love to see even more redundancy, right? So if, um, you know, I'm a big, big believer in the space program, for NASA to have a robust space program and to be to have a ambitious space program, and also I'm a big booster no pun intended of private companies doing this stuff as well, I think you know that we as a nation have the money to make sure that, like, if we're going to be, uh, throwing a boeing, uh starliner spacecraft up up to the space station, then we got a spacex, one ready to go right there already, right so?
02:52:41
And maybe three of them like this, this thing that we went through where we decommissioned the space shuttle and they didn't really have a backup and then had to rely on the Russians for a long time, and then now we're relying on a private company. I'm happy to rely on private companies, but we should be relying on multiple private companies, right? And this idea that, well, we just can't get a rocket up there for a year or so, this is unacceptable for the United States. I think that they should be doing whatever they can to not have this situation. Not that it's a crisis.
02:53:14
I mean, there are astronauts up in the space station. Astronauts routinely stay up there for a year or two at a time, and it's not a big deal. It's just that we should be able to do what we're trying to do. Yeah, rockets, right and uh, and we have the, the capability to do it, and and we have, you know, several companies that can potentially participate, as well as nasa itself. So I I just I think it's, it's an embarrassing uh failure and it's just uh shouldn't, it shouldn't exist.
02:53:51 - Iain Thomson (Host)
No, I agree, it's immensely frustrating for someone who grew up with America leading in this sort of thing. I mean, yeah, private companies still are up to a point, but I just think when the big names go down, then it's just a little bit humiliating for everyone at Boeing, but also not a great look for the US in general. I mean, I guess we're kind of facing the same problem with Tesla, emily. I mean, yes, sales are dropping off a bit, but they're still very, very good and, as Mike pointed out, they did make the electric car sexy. But you know, I have heard bad things about Teslala's. You know um build quality at the moment? Um, certainly, leo had a model x which he was very keen to give back once the lease expired. Um, you mentioned you were in new jersey. Do you actually have an electric or are you a hybrid?
02:54:38
no, I just have a beat-up, old subaru yeah, yeah, I mean it's, but the number of the number of teslas out there and the people that feel very, very much in love with them, and yet there's just that concern that they could go the way of the way of Boeing and just get lost into into exploring AI and let everything else drop, which is, you know, concerning a very on a number of levels, not least national security.
02:55:05 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, I mean hopefully they keep it going. I think there's enough critical mass of people who have Teslas that they'll be supported. I don't feel concerned about that.
02:55:15 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Okay, yes.
02:55:19 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I think in the space topics what I'm thinking about is with obviously private versus public is the debate. I will admit I'm biased. I have a lot of love for Boeing just because I used to live in Seattle and I had a lot of brilliant friends who worked for.
02:55:33
Boeing, I would hear about them going to work. I had a lot of insight into what it was like to work at Boeing. I did their factory tour like two or three times when people visited me and they had those little flutters of like oh America, like oh, this is so cool and I just I don't know. I had a good, really good, experience with Boeing and I when I was working at Amazon. At the time I used to be frustrated with my friends like what they would tell me about their projects. That sounded so slow and I was like you need to like speed up.
02:56:02
And they were like, well, it's a different business, or safety concerns this and that, and it's like I just feel bad because I spent so long thinking about how slow and stodgy boeing was. And now, when they have all these huge crises, everyone's like, well, they need to go slower, they need to go slower, they need to be more careful, they need to be more careful. And it's just like, ah, it's like they're really caught between the two, because now they're competing with SpaceX, which is like only going fast Boeing wants to be doing, but then if one more thing happens, it's like glass house Like if one more stone throws, like like this, I'm just like, oh, no, boeing, come on. Like, hold on, yeah, yeah.
02:56:42 - Iain Thomson (Host)
I mean as journalists, we kind of we yeah, I mean as journalists, we're kind of on both sides of this, because on the one hand you know it's kind of like we have to report the news, but on the other hand, you're aware that if it gets. I mean, I've had pictures every time a Boeing aircraft has the tiniest fault. I now get pictures from PRs about it.
02:56:58 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah.
02:56:59 - Iain Thomson (Host)
And the fact of the matter is, it's nothing at all to do. It's to do with you know, know, in most cases, it's to do with airliners not, you know not maintaining their aircraft, possibly, rather than fundamental flaws, but it is that that perception, and perception is, is hugely important, particularly when you're being flown, either you know, through the planet, around the planet, or through space yeah, it's like a downward spiral with Boeing PR, and it used to just be airplanes and now it's a spacecraft.
02:57:28 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
And for me, spacex is not a substitute for Boeing, just because of the visions of the companies are so different. I'm kind of shocked that SpaceX is still pushing the bi-planetary or multi-planetary species thing you saw a tweet today. Yeah, it used to be on their website a couple years ago. It's very much still there and it's very much still the purpose of the company yeah and I do not desire that.
02:57:54
I would like to live on earth with trees and water and natural sunlight. So I just it's cool and very, very impressive what spacex has been to do, but I am not in love with their vision and I don't know why that is happening.
02:58:10 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Neil deGrasse Tyson has a wonderful comment on that the idea of terraforming Mars and having millions of people move to Mars and for Mars to be made habitable by human technology. He says that if we have the technology to make Mars habitable, we have the technology to make Earth habitable, to fix all of the environmental problems that we've caused. That would be far easier than making Mars habitable Earth, and so it's kind of ridiculous idea and I agree with you. I don't think human beings are human beings and the idea that we're separable from our planet I think is is a bit of a delusion. But there's other news that's happened recently and based on seattle-based um uh aerospace companies. That's really interesting. There's a company called um radian aerospace yeah, based in seattle, they were founded in 2016 and they're working on uh a product called the x-33.
02:59:08
It's basically like a space shuttle, but it it's instead of being launched with a rocket, it's got rockets on board, but instead of attaching this plane to a rocket, then sending it all up into space and then having this plane-like thing come and land in a runway, it actually is just the plane, without the rocket, and it has a rail system, so it's basically on this high-speed rail and when it takes off from the rail it's going like 600 miles an hour, 500 miles an hour, something like that very fast, about as fast as a passenger jet would be going at high altitude.
02:59:42
It's doing that at ground level at high altitude. It's doing that at ground level and they are talking about reducing the cost of a pound of payload from its current $10,000 a pound, which is what it costs right now, to $1,000 a pound. So it'd be vastly more efficient, highly reusable, again using a lot of the intelligence from the space shuttle, but this sort of a next level space shuttle. I love this idea and, again, I think that the solution to some of these problems of these aging giants that were innovative maybe they're losing it now whatever the solution is more companies competing in space. It's competition.
03:00:21
More competition, more innovation and so I'm kind of rooting for Radian, for radian, and I think that they are. We need more radians and um and and I think that, uh, that that's the way to go. We need a lot more companies building rockets and things that take us to the space station, to, to, to the moon, to, to elsewhere, uh, so I'd love to see it and I'm kind of rooting for them.
03:00:45
This this basically news of what they're planning was rolled out. The concept page right now was rolled out, I think, like a week and a half ago or something yeah, I mean I'd like to see more electric aircraft, but that doesn't seem to be happening as yet.
03:00:56 - Iain Thomson (Host)
It doesn't seem. It doesn't seem that you can get the power to weight ratio that that makes sense for other than short hops they're going to do electric planes first, that's much closer yeah.
03:01:09 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
I think we should just send everyone. I don't like to space Create another planet.
03:01:13 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Douglas Adams' ARC-B solution That'd be cool. We've all got to get our heads down because Apple is doing a major launch tomorrow. The register hasn't been invited. Have you heard anything, Emily or Mike I? The register hasn't been invited. Have you heard anything, Emily or Mike? I'm presuming it's going to be more AI all the time and maybe a shiny new eye thing or two.
03:01:32 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, we have one person from PCMag going, at least maybe one or two, but yeah, I'll just probably be reporting on the Apple intelligence stuff. So much of what we talked about tonight. This is a really good primer for tomorrow.
03:01:46 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Excellent, emily. Are you expecting the desktop robot, this green that pivots and faces you and all that stuff?
03:01:53 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
that mark sounds like I need to look into that after this.
03:01:56 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, I mean mark, mark german, I think he's been alone in reporting it. And this is one of those things where it's like you always think apple's about to to announce something, but then it's like three years later and they announce it. Yeah, so we'll see. But definitely the Apple intelligence stuff is going to be there the new iPhone, all that stuff.
03:02:12 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
Yeah, they even delayed the Apple intelligence thing. I kind of lost the thread because they were like, oh, we're updating Siri and they're like, oh, now it's not coming with iOS 18 in, it's coming next year. So they lost my attention a little bit. So we'll see if they can get it back tomorrow.
03:02:26 - Iain Thomson (Host)
Well, tim Cook's, no Steve Jobs, when it comes to holding people's attention. But you know, maybe if they actually produce, we shall have to see. It's been a marvellous chat, thank you very much. I think we've covered a lot of the important areas, but, emily, thank you for your insights, certainly on AI and electric cars. And, and, mike, it's got to be getting incredibly late over in barcelona, so what time is it over there? 2, 12 am. 2 12 am all right, so about time for dinner then in some dinner time, exactly.
03:02:57 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
It's definitely time to to go have dinner and uh and relax for the end of the day. No, it's, uh, it's, uh. It's not late by barcelona standards, to be sure, but I'm very happy to do this. Uh, ian, if I can just do a quick plug, if anybody wants to join us, I mentioned a couple of times the gastronomad experiences. Just go to gastronomadnet.
03:03:15 - Iain Thomson (Host)
If you want the travel culinary wine experience of your life, sign up and join us in one of our locations excellent, and you can get the latest from emily as well, on on the av and av, ai and other markets, as well as as as the career develops. And, of course, if you feel like popping into the register, then by all means you can see some of our copy there. Uh, leo, we're back for other, for the next twitter, I believe, but um in the meantime, next week, uh, we'll be hosted by davin for hardware aha, aha.
03:03:46
It should be great indeed. He's taking a longer break than expected Marvelous. Well, always a chance to get a new host in and see what other people are thinking. But in the meantime, another tweet is in the bag.
03:03:58 - Emily Dreibelbis (Guest)
He's amazing. Doing the twit. Doing the twit, all right, doing the twit, baby. Doing the twit.
