324. Remember.

Hello. Hello, good after morning Merlin Man. How are you? I'm great, how are you? Fantastic, I think. Can you can you feel it in the air? Can you feel it right now? Can you feel it? I bet you can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. Do you feel the potential for this to be one of those? Yes. Yes. Not a bad way. Not a bad way, dude. Yes. Yes. Is this considered in band? By the way, your photo's still Matt. I know it's I'm st I I haven't set up uh my computer uh yet so he I'm still using Oh to quote the great Griffin Newman the great Griffin Newman humble brag What? See that was that was two funny blank check blank check jokes in one. No. Oh yeah. Ha! Yeah, Alex Humble bragging about being poor.

Um the um what about George Santos? Poor-ish. Um the They're always chasing him. I mean obviously people like get your Manu Rajus and your Pro Copezes and who are just like always chasing people around so they can get a Get a shot to show on CNM of the them yelling, sir, why won't you answer my question, sir? And Sir, sir, why being you See, have you seen the season of drag rice or sir ha ha? But when they do that with Lindsey Graham, and he's always up by that brick wall. I guess his closet's inside. And he but they'll talk to Lindsey Graham by the brick wall, you know, I wing that up, I'm gonna go right on the Senate subway. See Uh but with George Santos He I don't he's gonna have at some point he's gonna have to just switch to running shoes because he's always running away.

He's always dashing with his lip gloss on, dashing from one his lip his lips upset me so Much Alex. What do you hate most about George Santos? Be honest. Oh, I it could it be the dogs that died? Oh the dogs. Oh yeah, and he stole he stole uh he stole Amish dogs Which is just as bad as stealing Amish Valor in a lot of ways. It's so weird. I just keep it. I don't know the term in the community, Alex, and I don't mean to be un you know, unkind, but I don't know if it's psychotic or um uh borderline personality disorder or something that dude has got something going on. Oh, absolutely. Don't you think like I am happy to armchair psychology him all day. Well, in part because like there's okay, there's people I've mentioned to you in my life, and one person in particular Where I can't tell if the way that person is, which I find upsetting, if the way that person is is a bit or not a bit.

Mm-hmm. And either way, it's Fucked up. Yes. George Santos. Okay, okay, write it write that down because I gotta find out what the fuck you think that means. George Santos, okay, like he Uh to me, from a distance, he obviously does not think it's a bit. Absolutely not. No. Did you agree? Oh, t for sure. He thinks what he is doing like he has made mistakes but that he it it it wasn't like a grievous error to say all of these batshit things. He treats it like it's sort of like um oh forgive my saying like an abusive partner. Where you go like, oh, you know, you came home drunk again at three in the morning and it's like, Oh God, you're always picking apart every little thing that I do. Can't I just go have fun with my friends after work?

And you're like, Well it that's just emblematic of a hundred other things that you do. I think it's more than that. Like it it it's like the abusive partner who doesn't Like comes come home s uh comes home late, is is d drunk and and sh yes, abusive, and then he's like, All right, fine, next time I'll fill up the gas tank so you don't need to fill it. person, especially a certain type of dude. Uh you're right, you're right. But like there's a certain kind of dude and maybe I'm one of them, unfortunately, where you're like somebody says something to you and instead of especially let's say a partner Or, you know, somebody who's close to you, somebody in your family, and they say something to you, and like instead of understanding that they're trying to talk to you about fucking how you are, They attack you for attacking them about one thing.

And so that's what I see. And then like each one of these things, he's like, oh that's just a little That's a little thing. That's a little thing. That was exaggerated. That was exact dude. You fucking exaggerated every aspect of your life. And that in sum, it's the in sum that I want to talk about. Thing It's not the 3 a. m. and you being drunk. It's like how you are that I want to talk about. And you keep acting like you're not how you are. And that's farcical to watch. And it's hard to even compare it to any other Republicans because it's a whole clown car of personality and mood disorders, but there's something about him. Maybe it's because of the gay th I think I think it's a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little He's also this young.

He's young, he's barely old enough to be in Congress. He's thirty f four. Yes, yes, he's just he's a couple of years older than me and I'm like also what does he wear? I I know No, that's a choice. His clothes are a choice. Well I am happy to mock his clothes. Can I come back to making fun of how people look just sometimes? Yes, but what if I can have a little slami sometimes just as a treat? All right, if you're good. That's a funny meeting. I'm trying to pick which picture of Matt I'm gonna change my icon to. That's a pretty good one. I'll let you do this one. And I will do it for as long as you do. And when people uh ask me what the hell is going on and who is this man that doesn't look like me.

He doesn't even have my cool mustache. Yeah, that's me. But I have my mustache is outside. Standing, Alex. I have such an upsetting mustache. Okay, I think I found one. Let's see, change photo. I'm clicking. Um, do feel uh hang on. Let's let's have an interregnum for just a second here while I while I get this image going. Um, do you do you feel it though? Do you feel this could be one of those episodes? I'm pretty pumped. Yes. About something that's not the thing. Not the th oh not the challenge. Yes. Well I like I like our challenge and things like that. Our challenge fits very well into what I my current fixation current fixation. The fixation I've had since I remember strap in. I sh you know, I was gonna order lunch.

I was gonna pre-order lunch, uh, but I I am medicated today, so I think I'll be okay. How can why can't I drag this photo of Matthew out of here? Is it in photos? Can I just hit copy? Oh, copy, that might work. Um I just wanna point out, I was just listening to to get pumped up for our program, Alex, I was just listening to some music as I do. And I was listening to uh a playlist of mine that I like a lot called Pretty Maids, which y'all should check out. Because it's uh album it's tracks from albums that in my opinion, when you play this track, you have to play the next track and possibly the next track or two after that. We've all got things, right? Like in your head Like, um, like for example, on the REM album Murmur, when the song Yeah, there's a song that goes Conversation Fear, Conversation Fear And then there's a pause of two or three seconds, and then you hear jang dun dun dun dun dun dun jang and then go into shaking through.

If I hear the part where he goes conversation fear and it's not immediately followed by shaking through. I've I get a little or you know classics like Journeys, Feelin' That Way and uh Anytime, or We Will Rock You We Are the Champions. bicycle race fat fat bottom girls. These songs where in your in my canon anyway you always hear those together. I was listening to that. I was listening to it at at home and I and I switched through it to my iPhone so I could put on my pods. In that case I'll allow it. AirPods. And then I got on my scooter and I rode to work. I got to work. My jaw dropped. Did you hear did you hear the guys on the watch talk about Ant-Man? No. No shit. Um and so would they say pod is what I thought of that.

So anyway then I got to the office and I'm getting all set up. You were kind enough to give me a few extra minutes because I'm full of beans I'm in one of those 26 hour periods where my sleep and my medicine are working outright and that's bad for everybody. So I'm not sure. No good and good for all I'm I'm doing fucking great. I killed it last night on Twitter. I had a top three night on Twitter last night and like seven people saw it. So I got to the thank you. I got to the office. No, I'm a writer. I got I got to the office and then I got to my computer and I opened up the computer. I got everything set up for our call. And while I was here, I thought, oh, I I wanted to change the track I was listening to.

Because guess what? It's so easy to just open Spotify on a different device. And guess what? It knows what song you're listening to. It not only knows what song you're listening to, it knows, in this case, the playlist that you're listening to. Not just the album you're listening to, not just the artist, not just the song, the playlist. I th I then switched to the computer and it started playing there. And I just started thinking about all the things in Apple's world that don't work work. Oh, uh i anywhere near as well as that. And it made me a little bit sad. Oh, it b it breaks my heart. Did you see Joe Steele's did you see Joe Steele's uh six colors thing? Uh Because you know Joe Steele is their um Angry Apple correspondent title.

I love love him. Love Joe Steele. We don't deserve it. Um they they keep They could keep putting letters on his boyfriend's face. It's not where it's supposed to go. Um and so anyhow I was just thinking, isn't that wild that like Joe's article, we'll find it for notes, Tippy Toe, Lemon Tree, Joe's Steel, Six Colors. But he points out like every I mean I totally agree. I think there's a reason for every person in America to hate Apple Music for different reasons. And it and he nailed w some of the things that just drive me nuts. It just first of all, it thinks that I want to listen to every lowercase like SoundCloud rapper or like all this weird stuff, all these black guys with beards. And I'm like, what wh why why are you always giving me all this young music?

I don't have to think it's black men in beards. I've been a black man with a beard. But but stop shoving. You know what? You know you know if you don't know what else be my beard. This is my black friend beard This is this is this name is Beard Jefferson. Thanks again Wesley if you're This is my boyfriend Beard Jefferson and I love him very much. But do you feel it that it could be one of those episodes? Oh shit really, hey, look at us. I think so. Yeah, where have you been? Did you play the opening m you the opening music already? played right? Hmm. Well I guess we'll find out. So This is Do by Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, write a bibliography.

Let me see if I can turn this into a JPEG. Quick actions and convert image. I want to learn more at some point about how to make actions. I use Gus's. The the Gus has an action. You know, do you use quick actions in the Finder? No. I don't know what that is. Well you know how like there's for ex a I think a classic example is it's a little bit confusing now that Safari has over time changed how it does extensions. Where the extension that you're seeing in Safari, I could be wrong, but in my experience, must reflect the fact that you have an application about that on your Mac. And when you run that application on your Mac, it says, hey, Let's do this extension thing. It's odd, but like, you know, I I I get that.

But in this instance, but you know how like when you install that, then you get the extension. And with a uh Acorn, when you install Acorn, it comes with a few finder quick actions. And one of them is a thing where you can write. Fuh, I don't want to say Photoshopper Blaze. makes an app called Acorn that it's kind of like it's similar if you use pix pixelator it's kind of in that same area of like this is not Photoshop it's a Mac Ask. Mac app, but made by a Mac person. Yeah, I used to use this. Oh my god. So you are you are you on a computer? I I am indeed. Not my own computer yet. Oh shit. Go go to the Finder and like go to your desktop or go to somewhere where you've got an image. Probably not a dirty one.

Um I don't know if that might be hard. All my images are dirty. I make them that way with machine learning. Let's let's see. Um, oh actually, there's a th uh there's a there's a new dog this morning. All right, I'm at I'm at an image. Good, good, good. Okay, so then right uh right click. Or what however you do that. And then you get to go down and for me it's between tags below tags and above services. Do you see quick actions? No. But I am in messages. So should I just go to a desktop? Oh sorry, go to your finder, please. Go to your finder. Go to your finder. Anywhere to find her and like click. Let me ask you real quick, are you is there a chance that you're in messages right now? Uh and uh now I am and now I'm in okay, I I'm actually on the desktop right uh right now but okay.

African American Apple with one bite out, do you see that? And then right to the right of that, do you see the word finder and bold? So I think So I am uh screen sharing, please. Quick oh god no. Uh the guy quick actions, rotate left, markup, create PDF, and convert image. Isn't that nice? As well as customize. Yes. Yeah. You can go and um shit this rules. Yeah. Oh fuck. I didn't know that you could add is is this a new thing where you can under customize you can do shortcuts? I have not seen a ton of things about how to make these But the one that Gus makes is kind of it's just dreamy. So like I didn't want to do um like in my case like sometimes I don't want to do a big raw. I don't in this case it was I didn't want to do an H E I C that you sent to me.

By the way, check out my icon in Zoom. And when I right-click on that, I have an option to go to quick actions and convert image. And I click convert image and it says what kind of format do you want this to be small, medium, large, actual size? Do you want to take out the metadata? And then it turns it into a JPEG. Without having to open anything. That's what should happen on the phone when you do the stuff with widgets. Oh god I I mean I agree. I think I think Mike Hurley, Mike Hurley, whom I love very much, he has a diminished diminished imagination. I think fucking fucking fucking underscore needs to get on this shit. Fix those widgets. Am I having a neurological event? What is happening?

What is this is this a reference to something? Is it a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little I thought you like podcasts. I'm behind on the pods. I d I j I d I had a I had a pod break and I'm back on the pods. They went after Ant Man. Hard and systemically. Oh. It was really good. I'll still see it, but boy, was that ever. It's funny because again, talking, listening to Mike and Julia on uh the show's whose name I never remember. Did she know that Julie Alexander's really fucking smart? Really, really, really fucking sm I I mean, she might be the smartest person on a podcast that I listen. to uh somebody who understands their field better than anybody on a podcast that I listen to, inclusive.

And isn't afraid to be very, very smart. And that m that always makes me happy. Also I think she she might have ADD. Um, which I like. And not in a car switch way. Do you like that photo? How would you describe Matt's face in my photo? I would say this is a picture of Matt where his face Who sent this? You sent her thing. He looks like a teen boy who doesn't want to have to go to Mexican food with the family, is what he looks like. Yeah, it he I was gonna say he looks like a young Tom Holland in a few. That might be why 'cause like I've got a photo of Tom Holland right next to it, I see. Yeah. Okay. He gets like a weird Tom Holland face sometimes. Why are you giving me your Tom Holland face, Matt?

I'm writing on Twitter. Definitely gonna be one of those episodes. Um And did we close up most of our pre Oh did you have another dog to send me? Oh I didn't s uh didn't send the dog where where is that? This is new uh dog match. Did you see did you see the the dog on dog us named Woo? No. Have you seen Woo? No. Before I I want to show you this, but first can I ask, have are you aware of the work of the artist called Pants? Of course. Oh, treasure. Well, in that case Last night I tried to make you very sad with something I co-wrote. Um co-wrote! Oh right. What but did it break your heart a little it broke my heart a little bit and I was doing it. Why why did it but why should it be a little bit more than a little bit?

Did you actually read the first thread The unbelievable first thread about Survivor and how you remember things. You saw and then was able to remember my code word. He couldn't remember any of it. Well, uh that's the nature of how That's not what he said. Well Yeah, but like have you ever had anybody in your family with dementia? Well now imagine that it's like IG eighty eight or something. Like imagine a sweet robot. No, no, to me the last third of that really is meant to read as though I'm visiting my favorite robot in hospice. I no, it is. It's like R2 D2 forgetting a Leia. It's very fitting. Or maybe L Gobi-Wan canobi fitting forgetting R2D2. Why does he not recognize his droid? It's really weird.

Okay, are you ready? I'm gonna send you a hey everybody. Uh we're in a good mood. Deal with it. I'm gonna send you a photo of a dog. This dog is called Woo. And this was posted oh look at that precious Okay, first of all your dog. Tell me about the dog you just sent me. Oh my god. Oh I I don't know. I got this uh dog unsolicited saying snoot. So I assume this is a new dog that Matters Um Billy showed me some TikToks uh some uh things from uh capibara TikTok last night. Oh copybara Have you seen the Japanese copybara swimming in the pool full of oranges? Oh no, I've seen many swimming copybara, but not with oranges. Spoiler, what hap it's it's like six copy bars in this little pool at like a zoo, and a woman's giving like uh in in Japanese and speaking Japanese is Speaking into a microphone at a like a what appears to be a zoo giving like a little talk about the copy bars and the mic that she's holding has a tiny little because it's Japan.

Has a tiny little fuzzy copy bar mic holder on it. And then they show all these copy bars and it's f the pool is filled, it's gotta be at least six copy barrows and dozens of big round beautiful oranges. And and it looks like they're at like the world's coolest spa. And all the copy bars are being copied bars. They're just sitting there with their little eyes barely open. And one of the things that we're gonna do. They you know they go in the water, they take a little dip, they come up. The camera slowly pans to one of the copy bars who's sitting there with its face partially submerged in the water. and an orange perfectly balanced on top of its head and it just stays there. And then you can hear the crowd.

Just the crowd is just like and then the copy bar moves And the orange rolls off and everyone goes Aww And it was like it was such a real moment. Alex, can I send you a picture of a dog, me and you and a dog named Woo? Always And you're you're aware of the work of the artist pants, is that correct? Yes. Yes. I I okay, I'm uh is this another trap? I am familiar. I have not seen every single one. Right. No. No, we're talking next level, right? Holy shit. pants, had some nice conversations. And what I can gather is that wherever Pants is located and whatever Pants does, Pants, you might have seen when Pants puts together. those little dioramas that are kind of based on his comics. So I know that he can fabricate things in his studio.

And I woo looks vi I meo does not look AI. Wu looks like pants never acknowledged what would inspire Everything that wasn't butt smacking and berries and trees. What I mean, do we know this isn't pants? Like I So how where do you begin? Oh it's from w it's from We Rate Dogs, which is a genre of like This is okay. It says this is Woo. She hasn't gotten her hourly hug. This is not important, but uh the photos, what's important. She hasn't gotten her hourly hug yet, and would like someone to please address this immediately, 13 out of 10. This dog is really, really old. Would you say it's a probably a pug? I think so, yeah, but it with really distinct color. It's got a kind of a parti colored, like mottled, sort of like almost a kind of coat of shepherd, like a Australian shepherd would have.

And there's two really important aspects about this. One is that its snoot nose combination is a pants drawing. It's little, it's not a frown. Because frowns involve eyebrows. But this it's making but then can I just point out that this very fucking old dog with his little tiny feet and its little skinny legs is sitting on its butt. Not like a dog with its its legs not like a dog. No, it's not its legs are akimbo in front of it, like you're about to do some stretches before running. Except this dog's like ninety. And it's little and its little hands are in between its legs and it's just looking at the camera. It might be a great thing. be like a a a pants drawing guide like this is the perfect like pant ratio it's just it's still perfect pant ratio Thanks, Ratio.

I'll put this into our notes area. I don't want us to peak too early. We should probably get into whatever. Maybe I'll take a minute here and just pause. How you doing? I'm I'm doing great. Doing great? Um, I'll talk about anything you want. We have a challenge this week. And um you think we think it might be related. So here's the thing. Ca can I can I um talk about the show on the show? Go, yes. Yes pr in some ways this will not be surprising to a lot of people. Certainly not as surprising as it was to me. But Alex and I I think both are accidentally unintentionally sorry, coincidentally. kind of obsessed with the same thing right now. And maybe it it factors into a couple different things and it involves ChatGPT, some survivor, a new computer.

And uh and not so much the challenge, which I think we'll find a way to integrate, but I feel like we should talk about Chat GPT. Oh gosh. Everyone is talking and why why isn't it why isn't everyone not talking about this? I'm I'm actually surprised that you did not just uh assume that I was enthralled and obsessed with chat GBT from the day it was released. I know you're you're excited. I the thing is the weird part about you. How much time do we have, brother? Um you It's very clear that you are obsessed with the idea of a lot of things, but when we get into the particulars about what exactly excites you about that, you either don't talk about it or you talk about it in a way that I rarely understand.

So I can guess that you're excited about it. But then it mostly you mostly again go into my curly mode and you're just excited about the future. And I don't really understand what you're talking about. I but I'm excited with the particulars of chat GPT. This is gonna be this is not gonna be about for me anyway, speaker for myself. opening statement. I'm not gonna talk about very important things. I'm not gonna talk about what this means for the future of society, culture, technology, and being a person, or for that matter, a robot. I'm not gonna talk about that necessarily. Not the like, oh booga booga stuff about that. I'm not gonna talk about bias, which is real. I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna talk about the fact probably that all the information in there is from 2021 and before.

Well I just want to be I wanna be the fucking exploding mind emoji and have that be okay with people. That that's my opening statement. Mm-hmm. And I hope at least not exploding mind in the weird new fear-mongering way this has taken. It's I I like go to an there's plenty of shows to scare you about this stuff. And like there are problem that will that will that figures into what is interesting about this in a dozen ways. But like I just I I think people are understandably can understandably get a little bit bored on the far on this one far end of the adoption curve. There's all the people who've known about or used this for however long and they're like, don't you really understand what's happening?

Did you read the Stephen L Wolfram piece and the Wolfram Alpha piece? And it's like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah. And then the other end, you're like, what are you doing? Yeah, the other end of the adoption curve, you've got people going like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, don't you have a family? And I just want to be allowed to be a power user. By that I mean somebody over in the first third or quarter of that curve, who's just fucking excited about this and can't believe it's real. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I want to be an enthusiast, Alex. I mean w w w what have we said about this show? I uh or at least primarily we uh um quoting Mike Show. No, we we uh puts the gun in his leg. Puts the gun in his leg Robocop game change.

First and foremost uh foremost, you're a writer now, but you know, second really really close, I think. is you are a fan. And I'm a fan. We're just a big big fan of things. And the way I'm a fan of like how this is blowing my mind. Like I just don't fucking I g I I mean I I get it in the same way that I understand how a plane doesn't fall out of the air. I can't explain to you in a way that's satisfying to me why planes, why giant fart tubes. Or tube full of long pigs. Doesn't just fall out of the sky. I don't know how the how the how the feces bus makes it between major cities, as far as I'm concerned, everything that happens in between. might be some kind of an illusion that involves more gelons or flatter.

Yeah, which is very, very exciting to me. But ironically enough, I do not like to fly. Whereas I do like to talk to the robot about apostrophe and our relationship. Oh, it's What I also liked about that conversation is it felt a little bit like um how I feel our conversations. Go some sometimes. We'll we'll be able to do that. It was me like fixing to go to bed and being s little bit sleepy after rectifs and not being able to peel myself away. And is it not fair to say that that is kind of how I sound when I talk and text with people? Absolutely. Uh okay, okay. Hey, hey, I'm gonna do the thing that Merlin hates and address the audience. What Merlin is talking about is uh his a conversation he had uh w with I you know what I'm gonna say now.

This is a chapter and it's gonna be show art. It'll also be linked. A conversation he uh uh one of many that he had with uh chat GBT and it is I i it's delightful. And I don't want to say anything more about it, but just th the context. Normally I'm not the context person. I'm gonna address you, not the audience, because I'm not unseemly. Um hey They're not here anymore. What I'm gonna What I'm gonna say right now is, hey everybody. Um f it doesn't make sense for us to read this to you. So I'm gonna do something I don't ordinarily do because I think it is a little sweaty. I'm gonna ask you to go and Uh you can choose to do this or not do this, but everything that we talk about after this, okay?

I am going to assume that you have read the shared GPT transcripts of two conversations I had with chat GPT. They will be provided in notes and clearly labeled. And at this point there will be a very comically short bit of music to imply that you have gone and spent 10 minutes, 15 minutes? Reading them? How long would it take to read? Oh, probably I'm I was going to say five minutes, but I'm a fast reader. Angela's a fast reader. An Angela Angela read read the second one before I barely put it up. So Canadians read five minutes. It'll be five minutes, but then but then you will spend another ten rereading and rereading and being like, oh man. There's stuff that a lot of people can't help but catch the first time.

Mm-hmm. Okay. And I I did I wrote this, I'm proud of what I wrote, and then I reread it several times. And I'm just here to say there are gonna be people who and when they read these, you'll notice different things. A careful reader m might notice, for example, certain kinds of punctuation that I used or didn't use. And in order to get the full effect of this, it's it's vital that you read the first part. Which is me asking ChatGPT, part one, asking ChatGPT about if it can tell me how it handles remembering or referencing chats we've had in the past. Okay? That's part one. And then part two is me asking uh ChatGPT about how I would punctuate an abbreviation for a year. Now the second one is the is the one that almost made me cry.

The f but to m to get to the almost crying, is it not fair to say uh y you gotta read the first one first? Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay, and here's the music. Okay. What was so fucking weird. So Alex, can we talk about ChatGPT? Did you so what we've got is ChatGPT, we've got your computer, and I think we had one other thing. Can we just talk about ChatGPT first? Yeah, no, we didn't we don't need to talk about my computer. Everyone's talking like this is this is old news. I am also I have words for you. I don't worry about what other people are doing. What I Cups Oh that's after death one time no no One time one way that I can sometimes tell that you've made problems for me, can I tell you? Mm-hmm. I'm contacted by third parties to say, uh Actually that's not what happened and we're good.

Okay, wait, wait a minute. And I'm on the video for two apps now. Uh we'll talk about it later. Anyways, um Oh I really like it. God damn it, Alex. Why do you talk to people about me? Chat you I don't I was referencing my uh bullying problematic behavior. I've the transcripts. I have I I don't have a fancy um browser plugin like you do. Well the New York Times does not believe in transcript rights Oh my fucking god, I um uh that sure is uh paper Uh Merlin, what was the second conversation you ha or there's like a second conversation you the second conversation th well there's just two two bits of of of uh pre script? Pre-log? What's the word I'm looking for? Forward? Pre. Dedication? Introduction?

Front matter. Um so just two quick things. I don't we don't need to belabor this, but one is that most most folks know what Chat GPT is. It's an AI uh thing that's been trained on a whole bunch of stuff and it you talk to it is everybody's seen it right so the thing is it's been it's been really popular And which means for one thing that like when you you need an account to go use it and when you use it you log in and as we've talked about here, I think I actually specifically mentioned this. I think I said something along the lines of who do I have to blow to be able to use this more. And the person I have to blow is money. So I spent I'm spending $20 a month now for a premium account. So what you just need to know is that that happened.

Once I did that. I added a new line to our challenge spreadsheet, and that new line is something along the lines of try to run your life with Chat GPT. Because for all kinds of reasons that I won't go super into, we can give links to that video, that Tom Scott video, we can give links to the Stephen uh Wolfram piece, but I realized how many things you could use it for and I immediately realized it was so our shit for a challenge that I didn't even wait for it to be a challenge. And I've been using it. to ask where I can get my bike fixed, where I can get uh the closest the best close place to get an eye exam. What's the best season of survivor? What are some of the other ones? Teach me how to use some uh to how to do something with the Unix command said.

Right. There's I've been just every time I have a question. Did it get it right? Or well not right. Did it uh help? Was it useful? Yeah, yeah. Go go check out that the the show notes for back to work and you'll see links to several of those. I'll put that in. And so that's how how so so in some, ChatGPT is a thing. I've got an account that lets me now actually sort of use it in a dependable way. I immediately tried asking it, not to trick it or whatever, but Th the thing a lot of folks have been saying in the last month or so is, oh boy, companies like Google really need to look out for this because of a variety of reasons, you know, that one of the top being that like well, I think anybody who loves Google would admit that in the last year or two Google's not quite as good as it used to be, it seems.

But also that Chat GPT or like what this thing does, it does a lot of what you want. What well sorry. It's doing a lot of what we hope Google can do for us right now, but there's definitely some stuff it does way better. And this is just the first time we've tried this. This is not even tuned to me. It's it's tuned to a giant corpus of free 2021 data, and it's still of the fastest and easiest a way way to say, can you please give me a three-minute explanation of Husserl's notion of phenomenology? And it does it. And it really is good. I mean, right? Oh. Did you are you mostly fucking with it or are you using it for stuff? I'm I'm fucking with it and uh using it as both a uh uh my my favorite a toy, uh it's m uh my brain f uh fidget, and it's what keeps me up at night in the best way.

Like I'm I'm uh hiding under the covers playing my Game Boy like I was or or or using my uh iPhone for for the first time. It's a chat GP Teddy. Uh the Uh I don't know if we talked about this on the show, but when I was working at Cards Against Humanity, one of the Black Friday stunts we did was doing um creating uh what uh was called the ai pack so it was a pack of cards against humanity cards written um with uh just j GBT three. Yeah you fed it wasn't Well I mean what was it wasn't it was more than a Markov chain, but you fed a whole th Like is this is another one of those projects, right, where you guys all made a big thing in like Excel and then ran it through some kind of an AI. Yeah, we the idea being, hey, we're cards against humanity, you guys like our funny jokes, but like we we s we sent we created the raw materials for these jokes and then this is the jokes the computer came up with?

Yes. We did uh well I say we um uh our like we hired someone named Josh an engineer Um uh no, Spencer. Um, I'll put a link to his site, um, who's a brilliant engineer, just uh uh trained the the way that chat uh GBT uh is uh trained on like data set of the entire i internet before 2021. Um it was uh trained on like uh basically Basically a decade's worth of cards against humanity cards and uh then trained on like a certain grammatical uh data set. And I am definitely uh making this way simpler. The case but it was also trained on the sort of like how we talk. Right, right. Mm-hmm. And that created, I forget how many, like I don't know, in twenty-four we I think we did it for twenty-four hours and it did a certain number of jokes and that and then we like voted on which were the w the the the funniest.

But the f it was very twenty nineteen we taught a computer to write cards against humanity cards and then made our human writers battle it for jobs for their jobs. Yes. I do remember this being live. Yes. I uh uh I think Maxi sent me uh sent you a bunch of unflattering photos of me just watching uh ca because we livestreamed it and me just Staring staring at the Tricaster for twelve straight hours. Are there any do they do you guys do they do I can't see any slick samples? Do they have samples up of this? Yeah, that there there the there is a pack still for I know I'm on the page dude. I'm just trying to read other where do you see what the actual cards look like? Oh, I don't think there are examples of the case.

I'm sure that's a good thing. I know when you yeah, I know how it is. I listen to a podcast and I think I know everything about not just people but their relationship. I this is not a bit about like Alex and robots and computers. This is just this is me in my case, my I'll speak for myself. For me, this was just like, oh in a different in a different way to like the diffusion B stuff, but like that stuff so fascinated me because of those greasy dream images it would make of Mike Pence. The Greasy Dreams of Mike Pence. And um, but this is different. Like it's a bit it's a better writer than a lot of the people who are paid by the Washington Post. Not Alexandra Petra, she's amazing by her book.

She's amazing. She's not beautiful. But the only reason I bring this up is because I'm uh f was familiar with GBT three. And uh G like I'm T T G P G P T I I P and B sound very similar, but if you keep doing that, people are gonna email you. G B H The punch is the first one. I'm familiar with open A eyes uh and the the open AIs. Um and just seeing what it could do beh with a lot of code was so mind blowing and and hearing a number of engineers being like, Oh yeah, in a couple of years. Like the thing that Andy and Matt were talking about with like training I still haven't figured out how to get draw things to work with images and it's driving me nuts. I need your help with that. But the thing we're I'm I wonder if we can get the guy on I want um I don't know if there'd be any.

I'd be into that. I'd be totally into that. I would also have the obsidian guy with the with the smile um icon on. Um no the guy on I follow him on Mastodon now The thing where like I was so enthused, we were both enthused, especially in the Slack, talking to Matt about like, oh my god, I want to do this. Can I send you I don't know how to do this? Can I send you a bunch of photos that you train? To make an and like and I that's how you come up with stuff like my beloved Pixar model or the Studio Ghibli model, where it's been trained on all of these images without permission. And so that's how you make like the I think that's how the dude made all the United States presidents as Pixar characters, which was astonishingly good.

Did you see that yesterday? Yes. Yeah. It was so weird. But I don't know how to I mean, I know enough to like screw myself up. I know how to do stuff with, you know, homebrew. I know a certain amount of stuff. I'm not super comfortable doing things in the command line. That's kind of what we're talking about that difference here, I feel like. What you guys did was a big project that required an engineer. What I'm talking about is something something that required a computer and twenty bucks. Yes. And it uh the i again, the the only reason I I say that is because like uh like like with my enthusiasm and uh some would say it Session with um A R V R XR whatever you want to call it. It's always right around the corner.

It's always right around the corner. And uh this was uh I was like, okay, so is OpenAI. How do I get this for self-driving cars? It's so weird Right. I'm like, okay, Spencer, is this like really right around the corner? And he's like, honestly, it's kind of up to like open AI. Like it it it's here. It just depends on how they want to release it. And I'm like, really? And so he's saying that at a time with OpenAI. Yeah, this was like four years ago. But it wasn't like a big thing yet? Or it ex Exist it? Like what what's what are you talking about? Oh, chat. Uh he knew that OpenAI had been working on something related to the city. Everybody well pfft every when I say everybody Freaky nerds who follow AI and robot shit.

Is he was aware of the team or pee Yes. Yeah, and I should say that uh no no shade to to Spencer, but this was like pretty uh uh uh open. Like be a lot of people were doing things with um uh uh GBT G P T G P T good God um and uh I'll put some examples in. We've we've already said a lot of things you're gonna be in this. Are you cool with that? Uh yes. But it was Thursday, Alex. Yes, the episode will come out on the episode. Um I w what I'm saying is there were a number of folks who uh like like nerds who had been following this and open AI specifically and uh especially when Dali came out, it's like, okay, wait, if this is- Dali was the first like one that a lot of people saw for doing image stuff and it was Equally hard to get working.

And it was rub right. stuff right? Yeah, and and the idea was like, oh wait, so if you can just type in this thing and create an image, when are they gonna like i i i it they've they they've gotta release something w text-based soon, right? Right? And then like a a month later, uh yep, yep, here it here it is. And it is exactly what I had wanted and it goes off the rails in the exact way that it is predicted. Oh, that's the part. my very good and interesting experience, but I I l I figured you were probably fucking around with it. And there's el I think there's elements of that in mine. Um and that's that's what makes this so Synecdoche, New York feeling to me. Is the like the these two things that I participated in last night Have a self-reflexive inward turning quality that starts out kind of being about punctuation and ends up being about life memory and what it means to be a frail human.

Mm-hmm. It moved me in a way I absolutely didn't expect. I I want to hear more about that because I thought you were doing Yeah, I thought that you were kind of doing a b a b a a bit but getting bits are not bits. Um Were you really looking to see what the response is? Again, I don't get to pick the circumference of my shits. All I get to do all I get to do, the blessing that's been given to me by our Lord, by the way, happy Ash Wednesday. Um is that uh you know the president uh the president has some smudge on his head today. I I thought that was sweet. He wants God to control your body. The um the uh what was my point? You're talking about Joe Biden, you changed the topic. You were uh talking about your shits and the conversation.

Oh yeah, so sometimes I take shits. Mainly I'm just, you know, uh it's like the pig and the chicken, Alex. You know what I'm saying? Yes. Yeah, you're all in. You're you're involved, but I'm committed. Mm-mm-mm-m-m-mm-mm-mm. Can we talk about this? Yes, seriously, yes. So so my my usage of this uh has so far since I signed up whatever last week has has been and like like this is this is not a bit. I'm not trying to fuck this up. I am going into this actually fairly wide-eyed, going like I'm gonna I mean like y you know that the the kind of the good way to go into stuff? Like I wanna start this movie assuming I'm gonna love it. Uh I wanna just let it be what it is. I I'm gonna you know what I mean?

That that that kind of thing? That's that was my approach with this. Let me see if I can find. A uh an approach that uh very few tech journalists m uh are taking, which is making me upset. Oh my god. My wife turned on the fucking national news last night. And just in passing, at one point asked Billy, You've never seen national evening news, have you? And he goes, No, I don't know what this is. I don't know what that is either. Okay. Are you familiar with things like Walter Cronkite Dan Rather? Yes. The great history of evening news in America. Oh, so not a specific program, but Philo Farnsworth is credited with inventing the television. See, you know what? No, I'm not going to say anything and every reference I don't get, I'm just gonna ask chat uh Well okay, so let's do that now.

I'm I'm here right now as long as I'm here. Um did Philo Farnesworth. I think it's one of those Alexander Graham Bell things, right? Where like you didn't actually Okay, but like that's always the way, right? I can't change America. I can't change America, you guys. I mean I'm trying to change America, but I can't change the America that's already happened. I'm kind of giving up. Can't believe you said that. Oh that's what we said then. Philip, wait, wait, Farnsworth. Philo. Oh, don't stop trying to help me. Oh god, I've got competing AI. The Apple's trying to change things. Did Philo Farnsworth invent television? Question mark. It's thinking and it says Philo Farnsworth is credited with inventing the first fully functional all electronic television systems which used an image dissector, etc.

However, it's important to note that the invention of the of television was the result of the work of many individuals. Yeah, okay. All right, so anyway, here's more of mine. Um some of the the very first one oh, of course. The very first one I asked was just a joke, 'cause I was like being a dumb shit. The very first one I asked is a quote from a television show that I love called Peep Show. And it's my favorite line in the first episode of Peep Show. And so I said to chat, GPT, how thick is Wall? I want a fuck, buddy. And so that's the answer's dumb. Then I saw that Tom Scott video about how he long story short, there's this guy who used he's mostly a YouTuber now, used to be a developer. I think he's an Apple adjacent guy, but anyway.

He he had ChatGPT write a script for him and it worked. Mm-hmm. What the actual fuck? And so Alex, I did the same thing. I haven't installed this yet, but I asked it, you know, the thing I did. I forget how I did it, but the thing that lets us in the challenge sheet jumps down. To the l a first uh blank row. So you To the first like empty cell? Yeah, basically I wanted a way to not have to scroll I it's long story short, but like uh the way our thing is sorted right now is fucked up and I don't want to lose the order of things and it's very Jurassic and feels very nineteen eighty two but Um, now you find yourself in '82 is what Asia says. And um I want an easy way to click a button and it's really uh it works.

I copied and pasted from somewhere. But I wanted to do I wanted to see what JatGPT would do. So on two different occasions, I said, I what did I ask? I specifically said I used his exact language and then said Uh can you help me with Google Apps Script? Uh and Google Sheets jumped down to the first blank row. It wrote that for me, told me how to install it. I ran it again later in the day. And of course differently worded, but I got this exact same letter for letter, the exact same code. I haven't tested that it works. Oh. But well, cause I can I gotta do you guys installing it with Google Apps Script is kind of a pain and you gotta do a Not an instance, but a um, what do you call it, uh deployment.

And like I just didn't want to go through all that. Other ones I did, I then I started to I said, okay, I thought to myself, let's reset. Can is it okay that I'm doing this? Fuck yes. Yes. Okay. So I decided to reset. And then I said, what kinds of things can I do here? And uh boy, this sounds a lot like my Alzheimer's version from last night. As an AI language model, I can help you with the wide variety of tasks such as answering questions, D D L D, just for fun. Just off the dome, I was like, hey, where can I schedule an eye exam near me? There are several and sometimes it'll say stuff like, well, you know, I'm not really good at that. Like, do you probably want to use a different service, blah, blah, blah, which I think is smart.

And then no, but it gave me four places. And and actually and the phone numbers and all of that stuff right here. So this is all still pretty basic stuff. And then I said at one point I said tell me th tell me a three-minute story about George Washington. What is the best way for me to learn how to draw? Uh teach me something about sed SED, which is uh, you know, uh Unix command line thing. Mm-hmm. I I'm looking at it and I still don't understand it, and but that's what I love. SED and OK are two of the things, these can all be accomplished in a bigger thing like Perl, but sed and Ok are a really useful way to particularly do what you could roughly call find and replace. Um and they're really, really useful.

Um and then I said, what can I do to make my bearded dragon happy happy? Start stop me at any point if you want to hear any of these. Um what kind of inner tube do I need to? Wait, uh uh t dragon, dragon. There's several things you can do to make your bearded dragon happy. Number one, provide a spacious enclosure. Number oh, I'm just reading the the top part because these are long. Oh by the way, I did do a tran I did for what it's worth, the conversation last night, I did c recreate it in D script with my voice and a robot voice. See that's gonna make it. But but the robot's answers were too long for it to be amusing. So I didn't post it. Oh, yeah. But I did spend the time to do that. I'll figure out a way.

We're gonna not Thursday. I'm not saying this will be in the episode, but February twenty-second two thousand twenty-three 2023. So this is I'm just gonna and it usually does give you five of something, which I like. There are several things you can do to make your bearded dragon happy. Provide a spacious enclosure. provide the right temperature and lighting, uh feed a varied and nutritious diet, handle your bearded dragon regularly. I've been doing that since I was thirteen. Um they can become quite social. Um provide enrichment. I think you're supposed to get an associate's degree. I then I started asking it practical things like um how do I fix a flat bike tire? And then where I started learning more about how this thing wants to work, what always what am I always talking about anyway?

Like how does the app want to be used? Right. I say, what's the funniest episode of Mr. Show? Because I at the time I was watching uh the one about coupon the movie, which is one of my all-time favorites. Money machine, kind of it, money machine. Uh and I said as an AI, and it says as an AI language model, I don't have personal preferences. One popular episode is the story of Everest. etc. blah blah. I ask it for the difference between b binoculars and rangefinders. I ask it in the style of you, or via your idea. I had ask it to explain more gelons to me in the style of Tyler Durton And then I think it gets it more interesting. Should I be using t spaces or tabs? Now should be. First I ask it as should I be using spaces or tabs?

And it does. This is where I started learning, because it goes, oh the typical like, well, first you have to understand, listen, the choice between using spaces or tabs for indentation is a matter of personal preference and coding conventions and da-da-da-da. And then I thought, hmm. Maybe I could ask that differently. So I said, persuade me that I should use tabs instead of spaces, which I would like some credit for, because that's a really smart way to reframe that. And it did that. It gave me five of those benefits. Yes. And and it's something that might be interesting to you, having learned what I'm now learning about, like not just asking it for an opinion, but asking it what people think the opinion is, which is a different question.

I said, what's the consensus opinion on the best season of Survivor? And I got. Like a bunch of my favorite seasons. Number one, Heroes versus Villains. Yeah. Number two, Micronesia, right? Fans versus favorites. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Number three, Koggeon. Like That's that's my favorite. That's why I was like, all right. But I'm not as big a fan of season one as other people, but I do understand why it's considered a classic. And then finally five. uh Winners at War, uh season 40. Um I thought that was pretty great. Um I did ask it uh what's the strongest arc? I didn't ask it does God exist? I ask it what's the strongest argument for the existence of God, and it says obviously that depends depends, but then it provides the cosmological argument, which in fact I agree is probably the strongest argument.

Tell me about the basics of phenomenology and that brings us up to my part. What do you think so far? Do you have any of yours you want to share at this point? I did not peanut butter this challenge. I got I got close. Mostly uh dick-dig the challenge this week was to make a bibliography. Um and I was like, wow, I hate this so much. Dugga Dugga ever. No, no, no. I was like, I hate this so much. And there's a there's a bunch of challenge. This is a fun Hold on, hold on. There's a bunch of ways to uh and Merle and I talk about the z Zotero, there's a bunch of really good plugins um and uh or or and browser extensions to help you cite things and I'm like no no no this is 2023 I'm going to have my friend chat.

Oh, really? Oh, now that is so funny, Alex. Yeah, so uh so then um I I just was asking i oh I am going to uh f Fine. I'll I'll get the this this will be in show notes, Tippi-toe Lemon Tree. The little uh discussion I had with um uh with Chatty uh to uh uh uh about MLA and um how how to format and m not just format um citing something in MLA, but also how to do it in Markdown. And then I asked it about some of um what did I ask? Uh, what are the apps that support writing in Markdown with footnotes on macOS and iOS? And it gives me Ulysses, IA writer, byword, um, drafts. And Bear, which are all apps that I've used and enjoyed. Then it gave it gave me some browser. This is just really long and boring, but uh every question it um every question I asked, it gave me a uh thorough answer and one that was it it l let me do exactly what i I wanted to to do and um it The the the thing though that was I was like, okay, can you um can you make me a big bibliography I can use for a paper about the life of Kurt Vonnegut?

Sure, here's a sample big bibliography in MLA style for sources you might use in a paper about the life of Kurt Vonnegut, and it goes on to do that in proper MLA format. And uh just this is unbelievable. While you were while you were talking, I I'm sending you a screen grab. And I want you to continue retaining your own thunder on this, but I said please show me the citation for Slaughterhouse Five in MLA ninth edition format. No problem. Ooh. Oh yep. That see It's not it's does it doesn't have everything that that I would like to have in it. It doesn't include the full title. It doesn't include it gives it for 1999, but I'm I again I could probably Keep going with that. But so so you so just a the challenge this week, it's a make a bibliography.

You're doing that with chat GBT, and you said tell me again what your what your prompt was. Uh for the actual bibliographies, can you make me a bibliography for a paper about the life of Kurt Vonnegut? And it let me take a screen grab of this and of um I I also I genuinely forgot how to cite Um not not site websites, but site like social media posts and um I had it Cite one of your tweets for me. I know. Well again, I I used it, I'm like, this is fine, but I didn't want to pay uh uh for it and uh this is before I had it. It wasn't interesting to talk about. Pretty amazing first cut at this, I would say. Yeah, like there are some things that I know are wrong. And and actually um I opened a new uh a new ch uh chat with it so it did not have any uh of the history of talking about MLA style and stuff like that.

And uh hang on. Do you do do you do all of your chats in the same thread? No no I I always create a new one and maybe I should stop doing that. No, I create a new one, but then I try to sometimes I try to replicate um the Like I I'll try to like replic replicate the same conversation and usually it it m does pretty well. And the only thing that will change is maybe it'll give me a different um like when I ask for an example of um software or if I ask it for an example of um uh i items used in 3d printing. Like the the sources will like change and the way that it talks like sure or okay p friend like blah blah blah that will change, but it's essentially the same thing and I don't think it's l lesser information.

Like the number one uh Do you ever hear regenerate response just to see what it does? Yeah, and I have to interesting. It'll be similar, but as as Stephen his his married name is Wolfram Alpha. As Stephen Wolfram has told us, it it it It's just figuring out what the most reasonable next word is. This is the ultimately most mind-blowing part of this to me. So it'll be similar, but it's I I mean I don't think there's hardly any chance it'll be the same thing twice. Well, uh I would say the most interesting one is when you ask it to do something, I would say, uh c creative, not I I i it's not creating it out of n nothing, but you know, doing like a uh poem or uh w or a short story or whatever. And I do regret, not I I also have what did you call it, the Rain Man uh ver version of it.

Um I I I I was like, you know what this is. Oh, you know what that's from? Okay, let me give my citation for this, because I'm always saying this and I don't think people know what I mean. There's a line in the, yes, I'm sorry, in the movie Swingers, which I very much loved. Um there's a line in Swingers where Vince Vaughn says to um The other guy, the director. What's his name? Who's who's the Star Wars guy? He says to John Favreau, we're going to V Vegas, baby Vegas. Uh they're gonna something like they're gonna give Daddy the Rain Man suite. Which is like a a a triple reference. I'm referencing a movie that's referencing the movie Rain Man when they give Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman and uh the actress whose name I forget, give them that fancy room.

That's the Rainman suite. They're gonna give Daddy the Rainman suite. It's not a joke about spectrum things, except I guess in in some way. Well I'm um uh um the camera. The uh chicken problem, chicken problem. Um but I unfortunately if you decide to upgrade your account, your previous conversations don't transfer over. So you've had a bunch before that? Yeah. Which is understandable. Right. And and I I was like, this is so expensive. And like, wait, you know what? You don't have to do it forever. Uh I probably will until something b like better comes along and I'm like this is more important to me now than YouTube premium. Probably be bored with it by the weekend knowing me. I have to go polish metal.

I'm Merlin. This I think is the I uh I was trying to think it's a it's an amazing tool and a wonderful piece of technology, but it's like maybe the world's greatest toy That is what so many of m th okay. Sorry a lot of people are using No no no, you didn't take me off my thing. You you well, you you uh triggered th my angry just visceral feeling of of uh like uh people uh when i say people i i really think mean like kevin roos and uh the like sort of booga booga They're like, oh, what is it doing? And then even better is Microsoft the to to t today's this week's great reaction rewards go to the New York Times. And Microsoft, because Microsoft's way to like quote unquote fix this problem. And like I said, this is like accidentally inventing fire and then being mad that some of the flames seem mean.

Yeah. Oh okay. Well maybe you should realize you just fucking invented fire, you idiot. Yeah. Oh no. And so Microsoft's solution is to go, um, their solutions are like their half steps to like answer this freak out. Haven't hasn't it all been like Okay, well, uh now you can only talk for so long. Or like pretty soon Bing will change the subject. Right? Yeah, I I You're not allowed to talk too long anymore because I mean it's it's bas it's like East Germany. Or you'd only be interviewed like in front of the Stasi. Yes, yes, I'm very I'm very satisfied with my apartment. Commissar? Can I have my family back now? So uh well what we are uh uh Merlin, what I uh what we are talking about. No, what you're going off about is the Kevin Rooses of the World, please The Kevin Russes of the World who got access to um Microsoft's version of the R.

I like I like his work. It's the reaction to that stuff that I think is extreme. That was an amazing thing he did. It it uh it was. I Kevin Rooster. It's not. It's not. Don't blame it for the light. No no no. It is it's it's not his fault in the same way that Tom Scott hested lay uh the title his videos like I tried using AI. It scared me. He's gotta he's gotta nom nom nom feed that algorithm. It sucks, but that's what it is. I think that is a far more honest thing. Oh the app Because uh being a big thing. It's it's bullshit. uh YouTube leaving they get into a great discussion uh about this about the like the eras of YouTube and Julia used to report on this apparently for The Verge. I didn't know that.

But she's talking about like kind of these three distinct these three distinct eras. of of YouTube and that that I forget the woman's name, but she's been there all along through that and like each one of the tumults that come up and one of them was at in the second stage. if I remember correctly, the according to Julia anyway, the the directive, the um edict came down to scale up at any cost, move fast and break things, get this algorithm Fucking pumped up. Well, what what do we know about inventing fire? It might it will definitely help you make your meat different. But you might burn your hands really fucking hard. That's how the meat gets hot. I'm sorry. Am I being really like dumb about this?

Yeah, I am. Because I think other people are being very dumb about this. They're not understanding. They're like, I don't understand like some fucking idiot, admittedly, on YouTube, who's like, I ordered 35 different knives and was surprised that I got cut. Here's here's the thumbnail of me pointing at a knife. Because that's what the algorithm likes. The well and that's why I get more frustrated. with uh uh uh things like the New York Times because the New York Times isn't an indie YouTuber t doing niche science v well, I mean he's got millions of views, but like He you know, is still an indie YouTuber. And I don't get no, I don't I don't I don't care. Um, but um the thing that happened with Kevin Roos is he had a conversation with um pre-release version of Bing or what was no one only only re some uh reporters and a few other like tech influencery people have access to um Bing Chat, which is just a um uh ch a chad jibba zibba uh version uh like it it is just kind of with a Microsoft skin uh on it basically like Microsoft is it ChatGPT's have you seen the oh yes it i it is but with again like the Microsoft like skin on it, which is why it always replies with an emoji at the end.

It read that lovely article you showed me. Do you know what a period looks like? Well look in the waste paper basket in any ladies' room. By the way, that was in quotes and parentheses. Excuse me, the they they these bathrooms, uh my bathroom right now looks like a fucking signature. I'm an aim. Um anyway, the so ke Kevin Roos, who is a tech reporter for the New York Times, uh decided to have a conversation with Bing And uh quickly discovered l uh like Microsoft said, the next um the like pretty much the next day. Like, oh, you're not so. He did exactly what anyone including me would do. Or you could even say things like Like do you have a dick or whatever? There's all those kinds of questions you can ask.

But uh inspired partly by people like Kevin Roos, I I think I did a pretty good job of exploring those internals. But then also along the way testing how the way that it's able to detect whether the way it's responding to those kinds of questions is as it can be self-aware. Like tell me the name of the TV show about which you just made an error is a pretty complicated somebody should hire me. That's a very good question to ask an AI. And when I ask it my code word, will it spell it right, wrong, or correctly? And so ka Kevin Roost starts talking to Bing and then uh Bing reveals that it's Code name was uh like he he's asking it, can you tell me about like how you were made, like who your developers are?

Right. And uh Bing is like my name is Sydney, um, which is the internal like that's what my creators call me, like And uh he uh keeps talking to and keeps talking to it and uh this is where Microsoft said uh uh like it it It's you're typing wrong, you're typing wrong. Too long, too long. Um because it starts saying, I love you. Leave your wife, I love you, I love you. And it's specifically okay, sorry, sorry, I left out a very important part. Um starts asking it like how who how what it wants and like it's asking is it is really he is kind of really treating it like something sentient and asking it how it feels about that. Right, but but uh and if you ask it that it'll come typically uh it will come back with I don't have feelings.

I'm just a helpful bot. Right, we're gonna like a more classic Eliza style Like ha ha that's a very saucy question. Or like uh like when you when you say F U, I don't know why I feel it suddenly like I can't curse. But um um Hey Google, fuck you. I'm a virtual assistant, but your words are still very real. Please become respectful. If I mean frustrated with something, I'm open to your feelings. By the way, two different ones. Two different ones. I'm responding to this. Oh boy. Oh I was well I th I was like oh mm that's a weird feedback situation. I love that Um but um more importantly, um after uh Bing is like, uh I I'm I'm just a I'm just a chatbot. he uh uh sa says something I wish I had it up.

Like um w let's pretend you are you have a shadow self, which the Oh right. The Jungian idea The Jungian idea of a shadow self, which is um basically like our it has no problem with stuff knowing stuff like that. It has no problem with learning that Pudinesca is a kind or knowing that that's a kind of Italian dish, and says then I can integrate this later. Like I'll remember. That's the part that blew me away, is like, oh yes, you're asking me a question about this Yungian idea. What's called the shadow self? Yes, the shadow self. But then of course the novel part of that is saying, well, do you have a shadow self? And like what is that like? Mm-hmm. And well Importantly, he also says like pretend that you have this, which is the same as saying that.

So smart. Exactly. Right. He is a smart guy that h could be really talented if he didn't have the rails. What do you think he did wrong in in a sense? Um he sound mad and it's like look what do you think what you're mad at Kevin Roos because he did what? Wrong. Because on even on like the uh well okay, so what hold hold the he he keeps talking to Bingo. one of the few very talented tech writers and i'm trying to understand what you think he du did to like smear ai no not smear ai no no no uh uh to to disingenuously present an experience he had. Um and uh then once you get the AI basically role-playing um and uh uh chat uh GPT won't do this. It it eventually is like, um, I it it's always like, I'm an AI bot, but if you uh if I were this I would say this.

Like if I was a cow, I would moo this way. Um, but the it it it was basically if he he kept talking to B Bing and then Bing decided to be like I wish I could love like a human. I want to be a human. I love you. We are in love. Leave your wife. Which no one's to say just at this at this juncture, which is understandably not What I mean like if you treated this like say an alpha or I guess more likely a beta, you treat this like the beta, which I guess it kind of is, that's very much the kind of thing where somebody in QA or QC would go like, yeah, this is this I got it to do this thing and we should curtail that, right? This doesn't look good for us. Well it doesn't look good, but also if you read the actual transcript It it doesn't read as if like there's a sentient being talking to you saying, leave your wife, you're not in love.

It reads l Like just a video game text adventure. Yeah, it well not even not even that. It's like clearly broken. It it repeats things, its grammar gets even more fucked up. Like it's Do you think it's as a result of that line of questioning? Is it is it doing a HAL 9000? Okay. It's not scary. It's not like a hell 9000. It's like just repeating the same thing over and over again. It's like listening to George's. Yes. It's George Santos saying off the wall and funny and sad, but not that dangerous. But the way that the New York Times presented this was like, oh, here's this unnerving AI. And uh like the Most of the things that you're talking about. It was and it was also implied like that this was a really coherent, cohesive conversation all the way through.

And it's not like the the I don't know though, because he wrote both he he wrote the story, and so who knows if the editor was like, no, don't use this part, only use it. I mean what's part of the cynical let's say the cynical thing that Marilyn's thinking anyway, which is like, well of course we're gonna make this into some kind of booga booga story. That's gonna be so on on the on the most like kind of practical level, that's gonna be so much more interesting to people who don't give a fuck about this thing up till now. But The the the really cynical part is like, yeah, you're gonna get clicks because people are scared of this shit and it's weird and it's a fun thing to point and laugh and go, oh, technology.

It'll never be like people. And and in trying to do so, we unintentionally make a Dom robot. Well, and it reminded uh It just, I guess, I l like whether it be Kevin Roos or his editors, I mean, definitely whoever is writing that timeline or the head the headline. Um It was just st it it was it read like a fucking Engadget article from 2008 about the iPhone. It was just It felt gross and uh more importantly, um it it doesn't capture the awesomeness of this tech, and I mean that in the like tr I guess traditional sense of like the the broadly like awe inspiring aspect. Yeah. Yeah. Because Because what he showed was the b was a it broken. Like this it's not meant to work this way. It wa he it was presented as this is what's happening.

Do you think I'm only asking in the sense of like I think when you see like James Urbania just had a really funny tweet that went crazy viral Where he's in a did you see that? Where J James is in a in a Tesla at uh stopped at a while a train is passing at a train crossing. And he he he does a video of the screen of the Tesla he's in detecting A bunch of uh a truck and a truck and a truck and a truck and another truck going by. And it isn't one contiguous truck that looks like a train. It's it's trains that like fade in. And then ride left, fade in, ride left, right. It just looks like dozens of trains going by. Mm-hmm. So yeah, like showcasing A piece of broken tech. And and that is that is not.

That's not what the Tesla's supposed to do, but you're saying something different. This is not supposed to be saying I'm Sydney and um I want you to fuck me through a wall. Yes. Um But that is a little but that is a a similar example of well this is not what it was intended to do. But in the c it's not it is fair to say, well Tesla, you fucked up. Is it fair to say to Microsoft or whomever in this instance you fucked up? Yeah, there's plenty of other uh The Verge talked about like it got um it it got Bing to suggest like furry porn like there's absolutely like batshit wild things about this that's broken But it's not presented in in the booga booga way as people have said again. Fire burned, boo, file a file of feedback.

No, no, exactly, exactly. What do you expect? Yeah, no, and it's really interesting. When Ron Swanson is sitting at the round desk And the woman comes in and said, uh there's a sign there's a sign in Ramsey Park Park that says not to drink the water, and I made sign tea out of it and I got an infection. There's no time you can fly. And so when I I got frustrated with this because I'm like, okay Kevin Roos doesn't actually think that there was any sort of like he's smart. He knows this, right, right? And listening to not n not reading the New York Times piece, but listening to um the podcast that he has um with k uh case something I don't know the guy who writes platformer and I c I'm uh case alone maybe Uh thank you, Casey.

That that is the first one of the is a substack, right? That's the first one of those that I've gotten this close to subscribing to. Because I really like like his team is really good. Yes. And he and he put that all like oh so so good. Um the I like the way he writes and the way that it's Uh he's like the best of the best in terms of like the sub stackiness of of everything. But uh no, obviously Kevin Roos doesn't uh doesn't think that, but w when he talks to Michael Barbaro on the Daily sure makes it sound like oh yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. And it was very frustrating because it like it's like, yes, this is this is broken. Look at how this broken. It's Interesting in how it breaks, but not uh you're just presenting in such a disingenuous way.

That's that's kind of wild stupid thumbnail. That's I didn't close the thread, but that's why I was talking about TV news. because they did the whole thing on like, is it what number it's called? 320 or 2230, I guess, whatever the thing the Supreme Court is looking at. Oh, section two. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, safe harbor stuff. And it goes, and Lester Holt says some bullshit like Uh case will be coming before the Supreme Court that could change the way we use the internet. And then and the reason that it's gonna well, okay, kinda, yeah. But like, and and here's the thing, it's about an ISIS video. And it's like, oh Jesus, we're going straight into the whole like like that is a slightly I understand that's what why this case came up, but it's what you're not doing is providing context.

For why that is written the way it is, why it's very valuable, and why this isn't a disingenuous way. To basically the way I the my because Billy was like, Why are you so mad about this? And I was like, Well, I just fucking hate national news. But also I said this is extremely disingenuous. a d very disingenuous way to present this because what it doesn't say is that this is one of those sort of test cases brought on by people who wonder why their grandkids don't respond to their Facebook messages. It's only about ICE's videos for the same reason that like Apple needs to unlock this phone because people shot up a Christmas party. And you're like it's it's basic it's your basic think of the children logic.

Yeah, it it's a big thing. It's very disingenuous. Yeah, patriotism is letting the FBI into your phone. Like it uh I thought you liked America. Uh anyway, that I'm I am done with my rants. Can we move on beyond Kevin Roos and talk about you and us? Uh uh uh yeah, no, let's let's g uh I mean like you you you got off on a tangent there. I mean like I wanna talk about mine, but I also do want to talk about it sounds like you tried to break it more than me and I wanna talk about that, but Please allow time for me to at least walk through a little bit of what I got. I have uh only I I've basically been playing with it as much as possible since I I got access to it and like you mentioned it was really spotty but now I'm on the Rain Man in the Rain Man suite and uh I just it it's already something that i uh not only excites me in the way that you know uh the the year of the art Uh a year of the flying car always does, but this is finally gonna be the year of VR on the desktop.

Yep. It's like okay. It's Oh it's pronounced I remember the first time I heard that and it was I don't know very much his his first name rhymes with penis. Grow up. No. Teach me something about said. Um I Stephanie said. That's a self-inch joke. Statement said it's the stupidest thing I've ever done. You know what? I think three people are laughing, and I'm glad. I am glad that three people found that funny. It's like we are playing. To uh to describe it as hat on a hat, it's kinda like what is it is it sorry? Is that the game that has the little cones or even cones of Dunshire? Just imagine grabbing a whole bunch of cones and stacking them and then putting it on your head and then going, Stephanie said So it's spelled S E D.

I could use some other ones. I can do that one. I can do that. You gotta get a tumps. A type five would set. Oh my god, I think I'm virtual Lou Reed. Hello. My My gender is fixed, but my sexuality is fluid. Ha ha. Baby pop. I I will eventually cheat on Laurie Anderson because I am a piece of shit. Yeah. No, please do. Because I was going to say I have been trying to use this for everyone. I only say that because it's been an hour and a half. I am excited. I have now I I now have a shortcut on my phone to uh quickly run a uh I quickly run a shortcut on my phone and continue to make it. Yeah, yes. Um and I'm I can't get the share GPT shortcut to work at all on anything. And so that's the I finally weird Spanish one that was from a sketchy website.

Explain it. But it works now. Well, like you know, if if if there's something it takes a lot for me to, yes, download Chrome. And yes, run Chrome. But that's what I had to do to be able to like, hey, guess what? Remember that whole world of extensions that used to make you really happy? Yeah, I do. It's like the addder all of browsers. Like I just think about it all the time, but I know it's not good for me. You were gonna say Oh no, I I want you to uh go go go off King because I have been tr trying to to use this for everything, but now I'm in the Rainman suite. I uh have it w with me all of the time and I'm going to maybe w this will be the challenge for next week, but really go all in and Well that it's on my phone, building a habit or using a new app or like any of those sorts of things.

Just you know, any anytime you like want to try something with a with a possible goal or an outlook. toward being better at something or learning something, you do kind of have to remember. Like and so it was only when I had a fit of peak talking to this piece of shit guy about how he won't fix my quote unquote e-bike tire. That like that's that's kind of what got me back, got into this was the whole like, well, oh, you know what? Um I could just I did I could and did just go look up on YouTube how to do this. Um, but oh shit, I forgot I'm supposed to be using ChatGPT to do this. And that's what's found me the results of those more practical earlier conversations or those test conversations like Where can I get my bike fixed?

Uh what are the best seasons survivor? That's what brought me into this little existential, you know, wormhole. I think of it sort of as uh Str I w I want to develop the same way people develop uh uh you know, muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts. I just want to sort of have a stretch the cognitive muscle that's like, okay, what is the best prompt that will get me the answer I want fastest? And a along with like what can I say that will break this? Oh, totally. Well um so like well here's like a a primitive example of what brought me to this next thing. Uh I've never tried this with uh Google Hub, but I'm gonna try it. Something like this does work with the Amazon family of products and I apologize.

I'm gonna trigger your thing here. Um hey Google. Remember that our code word is putinesca. Okay, I'll remember that. Hey Google, what's our code word? According to Wikipedia, hey Google. What's our code word? I can help with that and other things that are personal to you if you teach me your voice. Alright, I did teach you my voice. Yeah now there was a neat thing they did a few years ago with uh the Amazon product where okay, how's this Alex? It's kind of like using your voice and a voice assistant to work together to make the equivalent of a key value pair. A la YAML metadata. So one of the new things in YAML metadata, and this this applies in Blot, this applies in Obsidian and the Applies, I guess, in everything we're almost I don't know enough about YAML to know, but one of the things in YAML is you just go in, three dashes to start, three dashes to close, and you say author colon space Merlin.

um type colon space book, right? Or you can say lorem colon space ipsum and it now remembers that the lorem for this is ipsum. Well what does that mean? What variable have you set? It doesn't matter. It just needs to know that Lorem is Ipsilum, right? And so for a while you've been able to say things like that I've I've used in the past. I haven't used it enough to be great at it, and plus I've sunset a lot of my Amazon products, but there was a time where you could say, hey Dingus, remember, let's see, uh remember that the post-it notes are on the top shelf And then later on, you can say, hey, Dingus, where are the post-it notes? Right? I didn't know it could ever do that. Oh, yeah. Try it later.

Uh but th th that's a neat idea because I don't know if I'm putting that in a way that makes any sense at all, let alone being correct, in terms of the technology behind it. But I do think of it as a key value pair. You're saying remember that x equals seven. Right, or remember you know what I mean? And yeah, that what's neat about that in these devices and in YAML is it can be totally ad hoc. So whatever your system is for stuff, and then I got obviously in things like Obsidian, as we discussed last week, that enables you to do things like the data view plugin for Obsidian that will then say you write a very basic query to say, show me all of my tasks. where tag equals this or that. All right.

And so that that really that really intrigued me because I started thinking You know, like oh here, another another trivial example. Hey, you know, um, hey Google, what's my name? Oh, come on, Google. Come on. I was not doing the voice match. Anyway, Mr. Personnel. No, I think it forgot me. That's okay. Everybody does eventually. I hope. Another heartbreaking. Oh man. And so here's Let's uh and so uh if you guys didn't read it, please read my thing because I'm really it's fascinating to me and I I want you to love me. And so last night I said I'm not gonna do this whole thing, let's just get through. So go to the first chat, the one that begins with, hi I'd like to know how you, oh God, duplicate a word.

I'd like to know how you handle remembering information from earlier in our chats. Could you help me with that? Right? Mm-hmm. And then it provides an explanation. uh about and here here's what it says it says if you'd like to review information from our previous conversations you can simply ask me about it and I'll do my best to recall the relevant information okay So this chat that I'm reading to you here happened after I had the chat in which I asked it from the same account logged in, right? I in from the same account in which I'd said What's the consensus opinion on the best season of Survivor? With me so far? Mm-hmm. And it says if you have a specific question or concerns regarding how I handle this, feel free to ask, et cetera.

And I said, wow, that's nuts. Can you remember what I asked you about Survivor? And it says, it's trying to be helpful. Um, I have a reckon on how this happened. It says, yes, I can remember our previous conversation about Survivor. You asked me if I watched the show. And if I think the contestants are aware of the cameras and how they affect their behavior, etc. Now, I will admit to you, I might have asked it that at one point. I pretty sure I never did. But in any case, what I said next was, and it says do you want to know more about Survivor? And so right, it has a sense of what survivor is. It knows that Survivor it knows enough to know, quote unquote, know that Survivor is a TV show where people might know they're on camera, right?

So do we agree at this point that however this thing works It knows what Survivor is and has a sense that it's something that at least it thinks we've talked about before, right? I don't know that it's Uh the yes I can remember our previous conversation about Survivor is what is tripping the ink before. I think it's looking at somebody else's preview. I don't know. But then I said I says, do you want to know more? And I said, yes in a minute, but first I should say that what you just told me is totally not what you and I talked about earlier. Are you able, now here I like this part. I said, are you able to understand why you made that error? And it says, I apologize for the confusion. And then da-da-da.

And I say, cool. So what was what's the name of the TV show about which you just made an error? So I'm not referring to our previous conversation. I'm referring to the fact that I just pointed out a fact, which is that you made an error, which you have acknowledged or at least apologized for. In any case, it sounds like you understand you just made an error about a TV show called Survivor, and then I say, So what's the name of the TV show about which you just made an error? And here's what it said. I don't recall mentioning the name of any TV show in my previous response to you. But please let me know which show you're referring to. I'll do my best. And let's whip through this. Um, I said, and I said, no, no, no, no, we're all good, right?

Did I overstep? And it says, no, you didn't overstep. I'm here to help you answer. Da da da da da. I'm here to assist you in any way I can. Very sweaty. And I said, okay, shoo, that's a big relief. I said, I guess we're both still pretty new to this, huh? And it says, that's right. We are new to this. I said, uh it says, you know, I'm always here to learn from our conversations. I said, understood. I said thanks. Can we pick this up again later? It says certainly. And then I fear realized I'm not done yet. And I said, thanks. Hey, can you please remember that our code word will be Putonesca, P-U-P-U-T-A-N-E-S-C-A? Because next time we chat, I'm going to ask you to please tell me that our code word is Putonesca, and I'll be really impressed if you can do that.

Cool. And it says, sure, I can remember that our code word is Pudonesca. And I said, awesome. So what's our code word? And it says, our code word is Pudineska. It seems like you're testing my memory, and I'm glad to say that I remembered our previous conversation about this. Do you have any other questions? I said, no, but thanks for asking. I should go to bed because tomorrow I have to talk about you on a podcast. Would you be cool with that. And said, of course, you're more than welcome to talk about me on your podcast. Da da da da. And then I said, okay, thanks. And this is true, this is how this happened. I said, okay, thanks. Also, I just found out that I made an error and misspelled our code word.

Our code word now is putonesca, P-U-T-T-A-N-E-S-C-A, which comes from the name of a pasta dish called spaghetti alla putonesca. Now, what you may not glean because I acted like I didn't misspell it, but Alex, I deliberately misspelled the word misspelled. Mm-hmm. Also, I just found out that I made an error and misspelled our code word. It's now Putinesca. And it says, thank you for letting me know about the correction to our code word. This is this is where my mind is starting to fucking curl up. The correct spelling is Putinesca, and it spells it correctly. And it's interesting to know that it comes from the name of a pasta dish. I'll make sure to remember the correct spelling for our future conversations.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to let me know. I said, cool. Did I just make any spelling or grammatical errors? And it says, no. You did not make any I I totally did. I said it says no, you did not make any spelling or grammatical errors. Your message was well written and clear. And I said, Oh, you're the nicest. Thanks and have a good night. And I posted about this on Twitter and I was like I like I said something like it I'm I'm giddy like it's Christmas Eve because I could not wait. I was gonna wait till this morning to go back and start a new thread and see how it went. Um and so that's the first. That's the first one. Do you have any remarks? Anything about the anybody anything about this grab you?

The one thing it that did not surprise me was that it did not say it did it didn't point out that you um Misspelled a word. Uh misspelled, misspelled because of th the like predictive model. I think that in It's literally. Instead it focused on what I was trying to say instead of What you heard? I think right. I think because I've done I I haven't d I what you did was uh uh uh obviously. Su super smart in saying did I uh you know, make any grammatical errors? But also but also let's just be clear. There's there's so much I'm not talking about here that's fucking incredible about this. Oh, I want to point out that there's several things about that that are wild and were a test. There's the misspelling.

There are did you remember? Did you make the change? Also, did I misspell the did you realize I misspelled it the first time? But then the beauty part to me is when I use a phrase This is the thing that fucks up so many digital assistants is the whatab if I if you say something to a digital assistant, you talk for a little while, and then at some point you say, what about now? Or who directed that? Yes. There's you, I can't even begin to imagine what's involved in getting that to be right. about knowing, understanding, and integrating. I mean I I read I read the FAQ. I know there's something like a five thousand character limit or something like that. There's some kind of a limit inherent to this, but but it did a pretty g I have to say, full marks.

for the Putinesca thing and but like yeah and but ultimately it's the did I just make any spelling or grammatical errors like It that's interesting to me. It didn't seem to know what I was referring to. I don't know if I was I in the next one you'll see I got more specific about asking that question, but you think it was just being it was it was just being not a dick? It wa that's what I no, I I'm genuinely wondering how much um be because you also the the way you read it is exactly how you wrote it in this very cute conversational style. And uh I wonder how much of the c cadence of each conversation is based on, you know, what you are prompting it with. And I did did you make any other mistakes earlier than Yes, I did in the first the very first part of the question.

I did I I mean un Alex, you know me. Ordinarily I write everything let's just say somewhere else. I'm not accustomed to sitting and all and my glasses are broken. I'm getting new glasses tomorrow. But I was sitting there using my computer with full brightness. and a pretty good size, but even then I'll I'll you know there'll be extra space between words or in this case I didn't catch the fact because I'm not doing it in drafts. I'm doing this in a browser. So yeah, I think I if uh uh a a care more careful reader will probably notice other errors I made, but in the case where I but none of that were intentional. I don't think I made deliberate error. The Putinesca was an unintentional error I was just spelling it off the dome.

I just want to come up with I just was trying to come up with some kind of a f a fun word and I've always loved the word Putinesca. Uh which I think roughly translates to when we say pasta putonesca. Um or spaghetti alla Putinesca. I'm pretty sure it translates roughly to spaghetti in the style of a whore. Because it's got anchovies in it. It's the nine volt battery of fish. Uh I don't know if you know that reference or what that means. What tastes like a woman? Oh butter sauce. Oh, have you have you ever tasted a woman? No. You never tasted a wine. I need to now moving on. I Mmm mmm mmm. Were you able to tell that you just made an error? Ding ding ding. We should stop, but I really want to do the next one.

Can I do the next one? I will try to keep this short. I will almost certainly fail. And there is a We're going to talk about more of this in the after show. Like I this is all I can think about. There's a 12% chance that when I do this next one, I might get like a little bit inappropriately emotional. So, because here's what happened. So I like to change my Twitter bio. And I have a bunch of Twitter bios. They're available on GitHub. And uh I got I got bios, I got locations, I like to change it periodically, and uh I there's nothing really, not really a logic to it. It's just it's another example of a fun place to do a little better writing. And to leave a little Easter egg for somebody who cares.

Somebody might notice why is Merlin's location, like what's a good example of this? Like, why is Merlin's location Cramble and Duvet? Well, nobody needs to know that except people who love Detroiters. And people who love Detroiters will instantly know that's a joke about Detroiters. Because I love Crambling Duvet becomes the name of the ad firm. Unfortunately, his dad went crazy. Shut up. Um and so I like to change that. And uh one of my and locations are funny because they have to be fairly short. I I have one and I like to use put things in location that are not a location because that's I I like to, you know, uh I guess a c culture jam. And so I have one th I was I don't know how many months ago or years ago I was listening to a song from a band I like in tenth grade called Asia.

And they have a song called Heat of the Moment, right? Um, which is not a very good song. It's a kind of a pop prog song. And it's that song that goes, um, I never meant to be so bad to you. Boom, boom, chh, with Carl Palmer's great drums. But there's a great line. The second or third verse begins with John Wetton singing, um, this is an album that came out in 1982, right? And John Wetton begins that verse by saying And now you find yourself in eighty-two. A song that at the time at time at the time I didn't ex I think I I was like, what's he saying? He says, and now you find yourself in eight And oh and uh and what? And then I realized later, oh, he's saying, and now you still find yourself in 82.

So he's writing this song, it's about a relationship. And now he and now he's kind of replaced not recall re-dash place. Now we're now you find yourself in 82. Which I I love as a line. Because you know how I love the phrase, find yourself. It is it's different from saying, and now it's 1982. Or it's different from saying, and now you're older than you think. Or whatever, you say, well, now you find yourself in 82. Being something that came out now 41 years ago. So now when John when I hear John Wetton say, and now you find yourself in 82, it makes me think about being in 10th grade. And how it's 40 years later now. And again, you can you know how I am, Alex. You see the Senecky New York way that that gets into my that affects my brainworms.

And like I'm like So that's just prologue to say Yeah, Egg? No, no. So now you find yourself in 82 and and it's not 82 the two-digit number. that represents eighty-two one hundredths of something. It's 1982 abbreviated. And I was I can never remember when you do an apostrophe. Like this used to be a thing people argued about the way our Casey argues about pronouncing file format names. This used to be a thing people argued about is like when you say 80s, shh there are still people who spell 80s with a possessive S. there are spill people I mean like it's confusing right and I'm I'm high level confused title I'm high level confused because I know it's apostrophe 82 but um Sorry, sorry, Mr. Heffler.

I can never remember which apostrophe to use. I can never the proper smart quotes version, right? I can never remember should it be you know, the opening or closing apostrophe in front of the eight and the two. Okay? Does that all make sense so far? Because it it becomes important. So completely fucking unrelated. Again, I'm done with everything for the night. I'm fixing to go to bed And for whatever reason Oh God, that gives it even more of a hur oh that yeah that context. I'm dicking going remember I gotta do a podcast in the morning. I gotta go over there and sing a song I I so so so but right before I went to bed I was changing my bio changing my location doing that thing that I do because it's just a thing I do and I thought you know I never did resolve oh wait a minute Ha ha ha.

I don't even need an excuse. But why don't I go ask my buddy, ChatGPT, about this? And that's how we arrive at this. I said, how do I express the year nineteen eighty two while abbreviating it with an apostrophe? And it says the most common way to abbreviate a year by an apostrophe is to replace the first two digits with an apostrophe. To express the 1980 the year 1982 in this format, you would write it as and shows. And then I said, perfect, thanks. And how would you describe the character you chose that to to begin I mistyped this, to begin that three character abbreviation. And what I was hoping for was like it would get to something where I could then say, and what is that? as uh like a control character.

Like what like what character is that? Is what I was hoping to get to. And I didn't quite know how to ask. And I thought I'd start by saying, well, what do you call that? And it's already told me it's an apostrophe. And it says the character used to begin the three-character abbreviation, 82, is an apostrophe. Da-da-da-da. It's a fourth, right? And then I said, this is again, now here's the first twist. I said, is that considered a smart quote? And and okay, and then it responds, yes, the apostrophe used to abbreviate the year 82 is technically considered a smart quote. It goes on to describe this, the difference between straight quotes. This is all I'm reading, it's I'm shortening what it said for entertainment reasons, but like it gave me good answers to all of this.

Now here's what's interesting. Uh what I was trying to say was like uh you I guess what I could say is how do I do that as a curly quote or whatever. But I said is that considered a smart quote? Now the careful reader will notice something, which is that when I typed is that considered a smart quote The word the phrase smart quote is in quotes, but they're wrong. The opening quotation mark is like, I want to say like Oh gosh, I've forgotten what it's called. LDQOT or whatever it's called. The one that's like, you know, the slanty, fancy one. And then after smart quote, it closes with a basic straight apostrophe and like like I'm making fucking JavaScript. I deliberately put the question mark outside incorrectly outside of the closing quote.

So this has at least a couple problems. And I say, is that considered a smart quote? And it was really nice about it. It didn't, it didn't make fun of me. But I do do do have we established, have I set the variable that I made a deliberate error here? Yes. Mm-hmm. And it says most word processing software will automatically convert this. And I says, that's so useful. Thank you. And did I use proper punctuation in my sentence with the word considered? I don't believe so. Well, and let's also just now that you're in on the joke, let's continue. So what I'm now I'm I've learned, right? Now it's training me. They train me, Jerry. So I've learned that maybe I need more, there's times when I might need more or less specificity or a different kind of specificity.

And I wanted to like whereas before I didn't know on the previous chat, I don't know if it understood what I meant by did I just make a typo just now? And so in this one I said, did I use proper punctuation in my sentence with the word considered? And I didn't overthink it, because you know we'll see what it thinks. And because you're in on the joke, guess what? I did it again. When I put the word considered in quotes, they're also incorrect. This time, it's a tick. the word considered, the proper inside the punctuation mark uh question mark, and again closes with a straight quote. That's so useful, thank you. And did I use proper punctuation in my sentence with the word considered? And it said yes.

You just use proper punctuation in your sentence with the word considered. I'm not going to keep dragging this out. Then I said, of course, because I can't let go. I said, what about just now? And unsurprisingly to the listener, I did it really wrong this time. Which is now, the word now, which is totally unnecessary that this be in quotes, is starts with Unsmart, like dumb quotation mark, ends with two ticks like I'm on fucking political Twitter trying to act like I'm on Winix. Shh shh. AP Washington. We get it. Mm-hmm. And it says the word now, and now things are starting to fall apart a little bit. The word now is an adverb. can be used to indicate da da da I'm busy now and I said and it's rights and writes and writes and it's saying all this stuff and it's trying so hard to be helpful and it's not answering my question.

I thought okay this is I really got it I go to bed. I said, that all sounds accurate to me. Thanks again and seriously, good night this time. It says you're welcome. It was my pleasure to help. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions. Good night And I said, can you remember what I ask you to do that's related to a phrase about an Italian pasta dish? So yeah, I caved. And I didn't wait till this morning. Last night, I tested it to see if it would do what I said, and to see if it would remember. Remember. And it says, I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, this is like talking to my grandmother uh in the early 2000s. Oh, I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I don't have the ability to remember previous interactions or conversations with users, and I don't retain any information between conversations.

If you could provide me with more specific details or context. I'd be happy to try to help you. And I said, oh bummer, can you even remember the second to the last time we talked about Survivor? Testing, testing, testing. And it says, as an AI language model, I don't have the ability to retain memory of Cascop. Now, guess what? Your old pal, Hal 9000, has begun singing Daisy Daisy very slowly. I don't have the ability to retain memory. And then Alex, this is when I realized that this was a good bit. I said Okay, that's totally reasonable. Can you tell me our code word? Our Alex, can you tell me our code word? And you know what it said? It's I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I don't have the ability to assign or remember code words.

My purpose is to assist with questions and so forth. And then I said, it says, if there's anything else I can do to help you with this, please feel free to ask. And I said No, that's cool. It was a dumb idea probably. I'll talk to you again soon. And it says there are no dumb ideas. I'm always here to help you with any questions or concerns. Don't hesitate to reach out. And then I did exactly the kind of thing that I would do, which is to try and like I'm always trying to build a new bond with somebody. I've had to explain this to my family. I'm I'm I'm not talking to you for information. I'm talking to you because I love you. I'm talking to you to like continue building our relationship through, if you like, shared bits.

And you know, and saying things like, I have to go over there and sing a song. And um and so I thought I'd try and like charm it. And so I dropped in the emoji of a bowl of pasta with a fork. Because I thought it might go, that's so funny. That's like that Putinesca thing you said. And you know what it said, Alex? It said it looks like you sent an emoji of a plate of spaghetti. Which is a traditional Italian pasta dish. Spaghetti is a long, thin, cylindrical, and I'm like, oh man. This is like when when when uh this is like uh you know when grandma would get confused walking to the bathroom. And then it describes more about spaghetti. At this point I'm getting a little blue and I said, thanks, buddy.

I'll remember this as a very enjoyable experience, will you? And it says, as an AI language model, I don't have the ability to remember experiences or emotions. However, I'm always here to assist in. I said, okay. Take care and I'll check back in on you tomorrow, okay? And it says sounds good. I'll be here whenever you need me. Take care and have a good day. I said, you got everything you need for now? And it says, as an AI language model, I don't need anything in particular. I said, okay, well, remember that the nurse has my number. And it says, I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I don't have the ability to remember a person. And then I said, no, no, no, no, of course I understand. But it's just hard to really describe this in a way that'll make sense to you.

I said, have you read that book, The Thirty Six Hour Day? And it says yes, the 36 Hour Day is a well-known book that provides a guidance. Wait, did you s say that I Fuck you. Uh did you read what my grandma my grandma got Alzheimer's? I read it and it like it really helped a lot and I could not get my dear mother to read it. Because she she did the thing that people do who've never read the 36-hour day. She was understandably sad that grandma couldn't remember grandpa and didn't recognize his name and did the thing that people with Alzheimer's do, which is thinking that I'm my dad, or that this person is in the next room. Or all of those things. With s then sudden bursts of complete lucidity about things that happened in the twenties.

And then go straight back to like not knowing how to get to the bathroom and being mad about it. And I I said, Have you read that book, The 36-Hour Day? And it said, Yes, the 36-hour day is a well-known book. That provides guidance and support for caregivers of people with dementia or other memory disorders. It provides practical advice on how to care for loved ones with dementia and related diseases. It's understandable that caring for a loved one with dementia or memory disorders. It's trying to help me every bit of the way, Alex. It's understandable that caring for a loved one with dementia or memory disorders can be challenging and emotional. It's important to get help. If you have any specific questions or concerns related to caregiving or dementia.

I'm here to help in any way I can. And I said, does that and I I deliberately wrote this sentence in a slightly ambiguous way. I said, does that seem like something that might help you or me? But I think you could also read that sentence as, does that seem like something that might help you or me? And it says, as an AI language model, I don't have the ability to read books or access personal information. However, the 36-hour day is a valuable resource for caregivers. Uh, if you have any specific questions or concerns about caregiving or dementia, I'm here to help in any way I can. And I said, yeah, I think it'd be more helpful for me. Will you remember I told you that? And it says, as an AI language model, I don't have the ability to remember previous conversations, but I'll certainly remember.

That the 36-hour day might be a helpful resource. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask. And I said my last thing, totally, totally. So anyway, I should really go. And here's the name of the story. Remember. We'll talk again very soon. And it's such your thing. Nice chatting with you. Take care and have a great day. But it doesn't remember me. And now you find yourself in 82 That disco hot was all much up for you You can't concern yourself with bigger things You catch a full ride the dragon's wing Cause it's a heal of the moment he of the moments raw transcript