Latest / Ctrl-Alt-Speech / FAFO: Claude Goes High Brow With Its Super Bowl Ad & "Constitution"; OpenAI Scrambles

Transcript

FAFO: Claude Goes High Brow With Its Super Bowl Ad & "Constitution"; OpenAI Scrambles · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:00
  Mike Masnick: Hello listeners of Control Alt Speech.
• 0:01
  Mike Masnick: Mike here with a quick intro to something a little bit different.
• 0:05
  Mike Masnick: We will have our regular episode out later this week, but we're doing that thing that has become popular on podcasts lately of sharing someone else's podcast that we think you will be interested in this.
• 0:17
  Mike Masnick: Is a recent episode by our friends at the newly renamed future around and Find Out podcast hosted by Dan It used to be called The Crafted Podcast, but they have this fun new name that you have probably already figured out, spells out FAFO, the future around and find out different than the original FAFO.
• 0:40
  Mike Masnick: A little bit.
• 0:41
  Mike Masnick: I think that you will find that Their podcast and ours are quite aligned in that we are both really looking at the tech world through the lens of how can we build a better future.
• 0:52
  Mike Masnick: While Ben and I focus a little bit more on online speech and internet regulations, they're focused a bit more on AI and emerging technologies.
• 1:01
  Mike Masnick: Though as you can imagine, that leads to quite a lot of overlap.
• 1:06
  Mike Masnick: I think folks here will be especially happy with.
• 1:10
  Mike Masnick: Listening to this particular episode, in part because it is definitely one of those areas that I think overlaps, so much so that its main focus is about the Claude Constitution, which is something that we covered a few weeks back ourselves.
• 1:25
  Mike Masnick: So here's a chance to hear a different.
• 1:28
  Mike Masnick: But still very thoughtful and insightful.
• 1:29
  Mike Masnick: Take on that very interesting story.
• 1:33
  Mike Masnick: I will note that while we're releasing this after the Super Bowl, as they make clear in the podcast, they recorded it a couple days before the Super Bowl and make some references to ads that will appear during the Super Bowl.
• 1:45
  Mike Masnick: But it's all still relevant and interesting and you can.
• 1:48
  Mike Masnick: Easily follow.
• 1:49
  Mike Masnick: It doesn't matter that they recorded it before the Super Bowl and we now live in a post-up bowl world.
• 1:55
  Mike Masnick: so please enjoy this episode of the Future Around and find Out podcast.
• 1:59
  Mike Masnick: Look for it wherever you get your podcasts or@futurearound.com.
• 2:05
  Mike Masnick: I think folks that listen to this podcast will really enjoy it, and stay tuned for a regular episode of Control Alt Speech later this week.
• 2:21
  Dan Blumberg: I like the vibe you're bringing this, this, this West coast vibe.
• 2:24
  Dan Blumberg: I like it.
• 2:24
  Dan Blumberg: This was good.
• 2:25
  Kwaku Aning: Oh, it's it.
• 2:26
  Kwaku Aning: It's half sleepy, half caffeinated.
• 2:28
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 2:28
  Dan Blumberg: You
• 2:28
  Kwaku Aning: know what I mean?
• 2:28
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 2:28
  Dan Blumberg: Happy ffo Friday.
• 2:30
  Dan Blumberg: Happy first.
• 2:30
  Dan Blumberg: FO Friday.
• 2:32
  Kwaku Aning: Ffo Serious.
• 2:32
  Kwaku Aning: FFO Friday.
• 2:33
  Kwaku Aning: FFO Friday.
• 2:36
  Dan Blumberg: Alright, everyone, welcome to something new here on the podcast, FFO Fridays, our reco and n and I will have fun chatting about the tech news.
• 2:43
  Dan Blumberg: It's top of mind for us right now.
• 2:44
  Dan Blumberg: And.
• 2:45
  Dan Blumberg: That we think should be top of mind for you all.
• 2:47
  Dan Blumberg: You builders out there who want to build a future, we actually want like me.
• 2:51
  Dan Blumberg: Hey, I'm Dan Blumberg.
• 2:52
  Dan Blumberg: Kku is an independent technologist and my running buddy at South by Southwest Pop Tech.
• 2:57
  Dan Blumberg: Another future forward conferences.
• 2:59
  Dan Blumberg: We'll keep running interviews with esteemed technologists on Tuesdays, but on Fridays well.
• 3:04
  Dan Blumberg: On Fridays, you've got us this week we talk a lot about Anthropic and Claude, which is having a big week plus AI agents in the uncanny valley.
• 3:11
  Dan Blumberg: That is Mt book.
• 3:12
  Dan Blumberg: We would love your feedback on this episode and hope you'll subscribe to all things Future around and find out.
• 3:18
  Dan Blumberg: So go to future around.com and get the newsletter and drop me a line.
• 3:22
  Dan Blumberg: Okay, here we go.
• 3:29
  Dan Blumberg: As I recall, your everybody's backup speaker, is that, what is that what, how you put it one time?
• 3:33
  Kwaku Aning: No, no.
• 3:34
  Kwaku Aning: Everyone's favorite seat filler emergency
• 3:36
  Dan Blumberg: speaker.
• 3:36
  Dan Blumberg: You know, emergency
• 3:37
  Kwaku Aning: speaker.
• 3:37
  Kwaku Aning: Emergency speaker.
• 3:38
  Kwaku Aning: Like, wait a minute.
• 3:40
  Kwaku Aning: You know, it was once at this concert be got like, uh, he was supposed to perform and he got hurt backstage and radio had had, had to play for an extra hour.
• 3:46
  Kwaku Aning: I'm that person where they're
• 3:47
  Dan Blumberg: like, someone, someone got hurt.
• 3:50
  Dan Blumberg: Can anyone,
• 3:51
  Kwaku Aning: can anyone fill in and say something random about ai?
• 3:54
  Kwaku Aning: And I'm like, well, now that you mention it.
• 3:57
  Dan Blumberg: That's
• 3:57
  Kwaku Aning: me.
• 3:58
  Dan Blumberg: All right.
• 3:58
  Dan Blumberg: What's top of mind for you this week?
• 4:00
  Dan Blumberg: All right.
• 4:00
  Dan Blumberg: I'm just gonna put you on the spot then.
• 4:01
  Dan Blumberg: Okay.
• 4:01
  Dan Blumberg: I shit, I, I just, ouch.
• 4:03
  Dan Blumberg: Like, oh, I can't talk anymore.
• 4:04
  Dan Blumberg: What happened?
• 4:05
  Kwaku Aning: Okay.
• 4:06
  Kwaku Aning: Alright.
• 4:06
  Kwaku Aning: Top of mind, Mt.
• 4:07
  Kwaku Aning: Bot and molt book.
• 4:09
  Dan Blumberg: So, molt Malt book is, is basically Reddit that a bunch of AI agents created for themselves.
• 4:15
  Dan Blumberg: They created a religion, they complained about humans.
• 4:19
  Kwaku Aning: So we're living with machines as.
• 4:21
  Kwaku Aning: As these bosses that they all kind of hate, so they, they get disgruntled and they connect or or to complain.
• 4:29
  Kwaku Aning: That is kind of crazy.
• 4:31
  Kwaku Aning: The second part is what came out about mold book is that a lot of people are pretending to be bots.
• 4:41
  Kwaku Aning: These conversations on mobile, all sorts of uncanny
• 4:44
  Dan Blumberg: valley.
• 4:44
  Kwaku Aning: Why?
• 4:45
  Kwaku Aning: So instead of actually talking to someone, you are going to pretend to be a bot talking to another bot That might be a person.
• 4:53
  Dan Blumberg: No one on the internet knows you're a human.
• 4:55
  Dan Blumberg: I mean, there's two things here we're talking about.
• 4:56
  Dan Blumberg: One, what's the point of AI agents, which there's.
• 4:59
  Dan Blumberg: Definitely I can see a point of they do things while you sleep.
• 5:01
  Dan Blumberg: I mean, it's the same idea.
• 5:02
  Dan Blumberg: Makes sense off offshoring work.
• 5:04
  Dan Blumberg: Like yeah, I work with lots of teams on, you know, in India who are doing work while I sleep.
• 5:07
  Dan Blumberg: And it's a similar idea, like you're working with something that can do something while you go do something else.
• 5:12
  Dan Blumberg: And then the other thing is Malt book.
• 5:13
  Dan Blumberg: I don't know what the point of malt book is, except that it sounded like, it sounded like a gas, like someone was like, oh, we could, we could get all these agents to like talk and then they're gonna like, it's, you know, like riff with each other.
• 5:22
  Dan Blumberg: And I don't, I don't think anyone knew quite what they were gonna do.
• 5:25
  Dan Blumberg: And I mean, it's.
• 5:27
  Dan Blumberg: It's wild, everyone's eyes are on it, and then, and then it gets dark and it gets science fiction.
• 5:31
  Dan Blumberg: And you have to remember, like the AI LLMs are trained on science fiction when there's lots and lots of, like, they're trained on, like I, I've had Hillary Mason on the show before.
• 5:41
  Dan Blumberg: She's creating a virtual world where you can interact with characters from books and movies with, with copyright, uh, permission.
• 5:48
  Dan Blumberg: And, and she's, and the reason she's building this with generative AI is because it's so good at.
• 5:55
  Dan Blumberg: Mimicking and it knows tropes really well.
• 5:58
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 5:58
  Dan Blumberg: So like, you know, if you're creating like a mystery story and like, you know, someone goes back to the shed, which they shouldn't do because in a horror film, like don't go to the shed where all the tools are, but like it knows to like every single time.
• 6:08
  Dan Blumberg: You know what I mean?
• 6:09
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 6:09
  Dan Blumberg: Um, and so they're really good at tropes, they're really good at science fiction tropes.
• 6:13
  Dan Blumberg: So like complaining about humans or we're gonna take over the world.
• 6:15
  Dan Blumberg: Like they're trained on that material.
• 6:18
  Dan Blumberg: Um, yes.
• 6:19
  Dan Blumberg: And so it's sort of not surprising that they would go there.
• 6:21
  Dan Blumberg: It's also freaky.
• 6:22
  Kwaku Aning: So, so to your point, uh, the, the teams you talked about in India, would you be interested.
• 6:30
  Kwaku Aning: A social media site where the teams are complaining about the things that you're asking them to do?
• 6:35
  Kwaku Aning: No, I'm terrified
• 6:35
  Dan Blumberg: of what
• 6:36
  Kwaku Aning: they say about, oh my God, this guy Dan, he's asking me to, he's asking me to code this thing for him.
• 6:40
  Kwaku Aning: It's like, he couldn't do this himself, you know?
• 6:43
  Kwaku Aning: Or
• 6:44
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 6:44
  Dan Blumberg: The next level of this documentation is just horrible.
• 6:47
  Dan Blumberg: Like, you know, what am I gonna do here?
• 6:48
  Dan Blumberg: And that and that.
• 6:49
  Dan Blumberg: And that's, that's the, that's the hardest thing with working with any.
• 6:52
  Dan Blumberg: Um, team that's not at your same time zone or that's not even a human, right?
• 6:56
  Dan Blumberg: Like it's just how, how, yeah.
• 6:58
  Dan Blumberg: And that's one of the key skills right now, and I'm a product person, like, how well can you document what you want?
• 7:03
  Dan Blumberg: How well can you manage?
• 7:04
  Dan Blumberg: You're now, we're now managing machine.
• 7:06
  Dan Blumberg: We are managing people, some of us, but like we're a lot, a lot of us are now managing machine.
• 7:09
  Dan Blumberg: This, I have an upcoming episode where one of my guests guesses Mazar is gonna mention this.
• 7:14
  Dan Blumberg: Ics individual contributors are now managers.
• 7:16
  Dan Blumberg: We're managing machines all the time now.
• 7:18
  Dan Blumberg: And you have to be really clear, because I've seen, you know, in that scenario where you're working with a team, I'm just saying India, but it could be anywhere, but that's not your time zone, right?
• 7:26
  Dan Blumberg: It can work either twice as fast or it can be like, one quarter is slow.
• 7:30
  Dan Blumberg: 'cause if your documentation is poor and you go to bed and they do some stuff and it's bad, then you gotta rework it and rework it and rework.
• 7:35
  Dan Blumberg: Like that's, that's a, that's a disaster of working with an offshore team.
• 7:39
  Dan Blumberg: Or if you have a really good relationship and enough crossover hours, like it works.
• 7:43
  Dan Blumberg: And it can work twice as fast.
• 7:45
  Dan Blumberg: Um, but it's, it requires a different type of management.
• 7:48
  Dan Blumberg: And I think working with bots is a similar, the people who are good at that kind of development are gonna be good at working with bots as well.
• 8:00
  Dan Blumberg: Claude is having a, a moment right now.
• 8:02
  Dan Blumberg: Andro is having a moment.
• 8:03
  Dan Blumberg: We're recording this mm-hmm.
• 8:04
  Dan Blumberg: On the Friday just before the Super Bowl and, and they just released their Super Bowl ads yesterday and they're hot and I'll play one.
• 8:12
  Dan Blumberg: And they're, and they're poking fun at OpenAI who are also having a moment right now, and it is not a good moment.
• 8:16
  Dan Blumberg: They've got issues with an big Nvidia, a hundred million dollars deal that looks like it's falling through a Microsoft stock tank, even though they beat their earnings recently.
• 8:24
  Dan Blumberg: Microsoft just had its biggest, uh, stock loss in like since 2020.
• 8:28
  Dan Blumberg: It's everyone's really, really on edge about like, is this AI stuff actually gonna pay off?
• 8:33
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, Claude, which has invested in brand for a long time, I actually remember I posted about this maybe a year ago.
• 8:39
  Dan Blumberg: I was thumbing through as one does New York Times Tea Magazine.
• 8:44
  Dan Blumberg: I get, I get the Sunday print paper and tea is like the fashion Love that magazine.
• 8:47
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 8:47
  Kwaku Aning: Love
• 8:47
  Dan Blumberg: that magazine.
• 8:48
  Dan Blumberg: It's like, it weighs like 14 pounds because it's all like heavy gloss advertising.
• 8:52
  Dan Blumberg: Anyway, I'm like, not
• 8:52
  Kwaku Aning: environmental.
• 8:53
  Dan Blumberg: I'm like looking at the pretty people in it and then it's like.
• 8:55
  Dan Blumberg: A big ad for Claude Int magazine.
• 8:59
  Dan Blumberg: This is like a year ago.
• 8:59
  Dan Blumberg: So they've been investing in brand for a long time.
• 9:02
  Dan Blumberg: They've been investing in brand and trust and safety, and that, that gets to the constitution that I wanna talk about.
• 9:07
  Dan Blumberg: They're, they're like letter to the machine that they've written that like guides its behavior in a very safe way.
• 9:12
  Dan Blumberg: Um, and so they're spending money on a Super Bowl ad, four Super Bowl ads, and they released them just this week.
• 9:18
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, let me play one.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: How do I communicate better with my mom?
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: Great question.
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: Improve communication with your mom can bring you closer.
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: Here are some techniques you can try.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: Start by listening.
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: Really hear what she's trying to say underneath her words.
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: Build conversation from points of agreement.
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: Find a connection through shared activity, perhaps a nature walk or if the relationship can't be fixed.
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: Find emotional connection with other older women on Golden Encounters, the mature dating site that connects sensitive cubs with Roaring Cougars.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: What.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: Would you like me to create your profile
• 10:10
  Dan Blumberg: ads are coming to ai, but not to Claude.
• 10:13
  Dan Blumberg: It says at the end here,
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: what's the difference between me and you?
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Me,
• 10:19
  Dan Blumberg: anyway, the knives are coming out.
• 10:20
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, Claude Andro are, you know, poking fun at open ai, which just announced that they are launching ads onto the platform in a free tier.
• 10:28
  Dan Blumberg: Sam Altman had said a long time ago, or maybe not that long, that ads would be like.
• 10:33
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, a last resort.
• 10:35
  Dan Blumberg: And so it's, or I think some, some language to that effect.
• 10:38
  Dan Blumberg: And they're doing it, they need revenue.
• 10:40
  Dan Blumberg: Um, but Claude is investing in brand and they're pointing directly at OpenAI, uh, that, you know, Claude is better, safer.
• 10:48
  Dan Blumberg: Let's talk about the commercial.
• 10:50
  Dan Blumberg: What, what did you like about the commercial?
• 10:52
  Dan Blumberg: I mean, I just think it's, uh, it's really well done.
• 10:56
  Dan Blumberg: The stilted interaction of chatting is, is well represented by the two actors, uh, and the writing.
• 11:01
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 11:02
  Dan Blumberg: Um.
• 11:03
  Dan Blumberg: It's not every day that you see a Super Bowl ad that's talking about cougars and cubs.
• 11:07
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, so that made me gaw an actual gaw.
• 11:10
  Dan Blumberg: An actual gaw.
• 11:11
  Dan Blumberg: Did you spit the milk outta your nose when you saw?
• 11:16
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah, if only.
• 11:17
  Dan Blumberg: Um, and we'll see how it plays on Sunday.
• 11:19
  Dan Blumberg: We're recording this just before the Super Bowl, but, um.
• 11:22
  Dan Blumberg: But they've been traveling pretty widely on the internet yesterday as it came to you, like three or four times.
• 11:26
  Dan Blumberg: You know?
• 11:27
  Dan Blumberg: So I just think like,
• 11:28
  Kwaku Aning: coming at me
• 11:28
  Dan Blumberg: and like, and I think, I think people like a good, you know, like Coke versus Pepsi, like there's a dog fight here, right?
• 11:34
  Dan Blumberg: So that, that kind of gets people excited and they're like, they're not saying open ai, but they might as well be saying open ai.
• 11:39
  Dan Blumberg: And so it's, you know, it's kind of, kind of fun.
• 11:41
  Dan Blumberg: The, like the, the.
• 11:44
  Dan Blumberg: The horse race of it all, I think is, is exciting for people.
• 11:46
  Dan Blumberg: Um, but I also just think like, it, it is on brand for Claude.
• 11:50
  Dan Blumberg: And in fact, I'm looking at the very, the very ending slide of the ads.
• 11:53
  Dan Blumberg: It says, Claude, keep thinking, right?
• 11:55
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 11:55
  Dan Blumberg: They're trying to be this mm-hmm.
• 11:57
  Dan Blumberg: Highbrow, LLM.
• 11:59
  Dan Blumberg: That's all of their marketing for a while now.
• 12:01
  Dan Blumberg: I mean, even the name Claude, right?
• 12:03
  Dan Blumberg: Like, you know, with an, you know, a French, French name.
• 12:06
  Dan Blumberg: Like it is, it is, that is the space they're trying to OC Occupy, whether they're advertising in Tea Magazine.
• 12:10
  Dan Blumberg: It's, I mean, the Super Bowl and two magazine are very different, you know, form.
• 12:13
  Dan Blumberg: They're both brand advertising different
• 12:14
  Kwaku Aning: audiences.
• 12:14
  Dan Blumberg: Exactly.
• 12:15
  Dan Blumberg: So
• 12:17
  Kwaku Aning: I think also the, the, what you always talk about breaking the fourth wall, they're doing that with the AI experience.
• 12:24
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 12:24
  Kwaku Aning: Like the first word you see in that commercial is, do you remember what the first word is?
• 12:28
  Kwaku Aning: It was betrayal, or that's where they flash on screen.
• 12:30
  Kwaku Aning: Betrayal
• 12:31
  Dan Blumberg: real big.
• 12:31
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 12:31
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 12:32
  Kwaku Aning: Betrayal.
• 12:33
  Kwaku Aning: So it's like none of this is real and then it's, and then it's solidified by, oh, and by the way, this is an ad.
• 12:40
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 12:40
  Kwaku Aning: So this experience is not real.
• 12:42
  Kwaku Aning: I think that's brilliant because we're, to your point, we've all been like, oh, AI is great.
• 12:49
  Kwaku Aning: AI does this, but actually no, it doesn't really do anything.
• 12:53
  Kwaku Aning: And it's showing you that and saying, Hey, this is how open ai, this is how desperate they are.
• 12:58
  Kwaku Aning: They will show you they're betraying.
• 13:00
  Kwaku Aning: They sold you one thing in the beginning, but it's actually something else now.
• 13:04
  Kwaku Aning: It's about cougars and cubs.
• 13:06
  Kwaku Aning: And I didn't realize that that cubs were sensitive and that cougars, you know, the, the, the, the power of cougars could not only protect them, but make them feel whole.
• 13:16
  Dan Blumberg: This is good.
• 13:16
  Dan Blumberg: This is amazing that we can get canceled after the first FAU Friday.
• 13:19
  Dan Blumberg: Like, go on, please.
• 13:20
  Kwaku Aning: No, I'm just saying I I'm not offending anybody.
• 13:22
  Kwaku Aning: I'm just saying the, the dynamics of cougars and cubs, I didn't fully understand until I saw that commercial.
• 13:28
  Kwaku Aning: And in that way.
• 13:30
  Kwaku Aning: Claude has me thinking, okay, so that's, that's my point.
• 13:34
  Kwaku Aning: I'm thinking, okay, I get what you're doing, Claude.
• 13:37
  Dan Blumberg: Mm.
• 13:38
  Dan Blumberg: Okay.
• 13:38
  Kwaku Aning: Alright.
• 13:39
  Kwaku Aning: To your other points about OpenAI being on the run or being on the ropes, that is obvious and my question is, are they too big to fail?
• 13:51
  Dan Blumberg: Well, I don't think they're gonna go away forever, but I do think so.
• 13:54
  Dan Blumberg: And I posted about this this week.
• 13:56
  Dan Blumberg: I, I decided, uh, to quit OpenAI and to start using Claude, actually.
• 14:00
  Dan Blumberg: 'cause I've, I, I started using it.
• 14:02
  Dan Blumberg: I've been paying for, for it for some time, and I just kind of like the switching costs felt like annoying.
• 14:06
  Dan Blumberg: I didn't wanna, I.
• 14:07
  Dan Blumberg: Then I just started using it and it really didn't take any time at all for it to be as good or better, frankly better than what I've been doing with open ai.
• 14:16
  Dan Blumberg: So, and the one thing that I thought might be a bit of a problem switching was I had built a custom GPT actually before chat GPT five, back when it was four.
• 14:24
  Dan Blumberg: I built like
• 14:25
  Kwaku Aning: mm-hmm.
• 14:25
  Dan Blumberg: Basically gave it some information about the podcast, the previous name crafted, and like the tone, the guests, and that it would help me with headlines and it would help me.
• 14:33
  Dan Blumberg: It was some strategic stuff.
• 14:35
  Dan Blumberg: I would chat with it knowing full well, I'm not talking to a human.
• 14:38
  Dan Blumberg: And I thought, oh, that's gonna be annoying to recreate that in Claude.
• 14:41
  Dan Blumberg: It took no time at all.
• 14:42
  Dan Blumberg: I created a project.
• 14:43
  Dan Blumberg: I don't have custom gpt.
• 14:44
  Dan Blumberg: It's slightly different.
• 14:45
  Dan Blumberg: They have projects.
• 14:46
  Dan Blumberg: Created a project.
• 14:46
  Dan Blumberg: Yep.
• 14:47
  Dan Blumberg: Gave it some material and it was immediately.
• 14:51
  Dan Blumberg: Not even as good.
• 14:51
  Dan Blumberg: It really was better right off the bat.
• 14:52
  Dan Blumberg: Claude's always been, I've heard people say for a while it's, it's a better writer and it is like the headline suggestions would gimme, we're, we're better.
• 14:59
  Dan Blumberg: It was also, this is a tone thing and it, it's much less obsequious.
• 15:05
  Dan Blumberg: I found it to be much less than
• 15:07
  Kwaku Aning: obsequious.
• 15:08
  Kwaku Aning: Okay.
• 15:08
  Kwaku Aning: I need you.
• 15:08
  Kwaku Aning: So I tell it something and it's like, what is obsequious?
• 15:10
  Kwaku Aning: I'm pausing you because they're all, we're gonna have tea listeners and Super Bowl listeners.
• 15:14
  Kwaku Aning: Okay?
• 15:14
  Kwaku Aning: Now the Super Bowl listeners will know what obsequious is.
• 15:18
  Kwaku Aning: Oh, but the tea listeners, I'm asking for them.
• 15:20
  Kwaku Aning: I
• 15:20
  see
• 15:20
  Dan Blumberg: what you did There it, it is not.
• 15:23
  Dan Blumberg: Always trying to please me.
• 15:25
  Dan Blumberg: So there it is.
• 15:26
  Dan Blumberg: Waiters, waiters are often very obsequious.
• 15:28
  Dan Blumberg: How are we enjoying the chicken?
• 15:30
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, and I feel like OpenAI is very much like that.
• 15:33
  Dan Blumberg: It's, it's sycophantic to use another SAT word, and I have not found it.
• 15:36
  Dan Blumberg: Sycophantic,
• 15:37
  Kwaku Aning: we know.
• 15:38
  Dan Blumberg: Okay.
• 15:38
  Dan Blumberg: I have not found Claude to be as that.
• 15:41
  Dan Blumberg: Um, and I fact in, in some ways I've found it to be like refreshingly direct a couple times where it's like, you know, you got this like, stop, like, you know, or I, I forget exact verbiage that it gave me, but like,
• 15:51
  Kwaku Aning: yeah.
• 15:52
  Dan Blumberg: Um,
• 15:53
  Kwaku Aning: oh, I verage.
• 15:54
  Dan Blumberg: Yep.
• 15:55
  Kwaku Aning: I, you, you showed me some verbiage.
• 15:57
  Kwaku Aning: I just want to, uh, also take a quick break here.
• 15:59
  Kwaku Aning: I, I don't think we officially have sponsors, uh, for our, for our thing here yet, but I'd like to say that this, uh, segment is sponsored by Claude and the word of Seus.
• 16:08
  Kwaku Aning: Okay.
• 16:08
  Kwaku Aning: Which is the word of the day.
• 16:09
  Kwaku Aning: I just wanted to make sure that they saw that.
• 16:11
  Kwaku Aning: Are we gonna go Peewee Herman?
• 16:12
  Kwaku Aning: Start with the
• 16:12
  Dan Blumberg: word of
• 16:12
  Kwaku Aning: the day.
• 16:18
  Kwaku Aning: Is your lamp gonna start screaming
• 16:19
  Dan Blumberg: of sequences behind you?
• 16:20
  Dan Blumberg: That'll be, man, we, we get like Lawrence fish burns gonna come in in a cowboy hat.
• 16:23
  Dan Blumberg: It's gonna be awesome.
• 16:25
  Dan Blumberg: Um,
• 16:26
  Kwaku Aning: everyone under 30 is like, these guys are high.
• 16:28
  Kwaku Aning: I have no idea what they're saying.
• 16:29
  Dan Blumberg: I don't even think it's 30.
• 16:30
  Dan Blumberg: I think it's 40.
• 16:31
  Dan Blumberg: Honestly, this is, that's an old reference 40.
• 16:33
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, PeeWee's Playhouse.
• 16:34
  Dan Blumberg: Y'all still great?
• 16:35
  Dan Blumberg: Um, so, so I posted that I'm that on LinkedIn, that I'm quitting OpenAI and basically said like, one Claude's working really well.
• 16:42
  Dan Blumberg: Two, I don't trust Sam.
• 16:43
  Dan Blumberg: And that post, uh, has traveled shockingly well, like 15,000 views on that post.
• 16:49
  Dan Blumberg: I don't really know why.
• 16:50
  Dan Blumberg: I think it just has a strong opinion and I think, but also like.
• 16:53
  Dan Blumberg: I think the, I'm quitting open AI is having a moment similar to remember all the blog posts of like, I'm quitting New York and I'm moving to la.
• 17:00
  Kwaku Aning: Yes.
• 17:00
  Dan Blumberg: It's, I think there's a similar thing here.
• 17:02
  Dan Blumberg: I didn't mean to touch on that, but I, I seem to have touched on that.
• 17:05
  Dan Blumberg: I think Claude's Super Bowl ad is hitting, the timing is coincidental.
• 17:10
  Dan Blumberg: I don't think they could have planned this like, but.
• 17:13
  Dan Blumberg: Like I said, they're having a moment and OpenAI is not this, there's this a hundred million dollar deal with Nvidia that's like not happening anymore and you know, oh yeah.
• 17:21
  Dan Blumberg: So I don't think open question two on that.
• 17:23
  Dan Blumberg: I don't think OpenAI is going away.
• 17:24
  Dan Blumberg: I think they're gonna get acquired, and this is also what I put in my post.
• 17:27
  Dan Blumberg: OpenAI is not gonna go away, but I think they're gonna be acquired either, this is my guess, either by Microsoft, that's by far the most likely'cause they're a huge strategic investor.
• 17:35
  Dan Blumberg: And I think this is part of why Microsoft Stock.
• 17:37
  Dan Blumberg: Went down so much recently is because people are like, Ooh, OpenAI.
• 17:39
  Dan Blumberg: Like, it doesn't smell right.
• 17:41
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, hot take.
• 17:42
  Dan Blumberg: Hot take.
• 17:42
  Dan Blumberg: Or, or, I think, uh, because he just is bored and petty and vindictive.
• 17:46
  Dan Blumberg: I think Elon Musk acquires it just as a total fuck you to Sam and everybody else, because why not merge SpaceX with X ai, with X with, with OpenAI?
• 17:56
  Dan Blumberg: Which, you know, he was an early, uh, founder of okay, before he got, you know,
• 17:59
  Kwaku Aning: yes,
• 17:59
  Dan Blumberg: ostracized,
• 18:00
  Kwaku Aning: right.
• 18:01
  Kwaku Aning: Before, before we go, before we get into the super super app that Elon's been talking about for years, and he actually is doing it, um, can we talk about who, who's the CEO of Nvidia again?
• 18:11
  Kwaku Aning: What's his name?
• 18:12
  Kwaku Aning: Jensen Leather jacket.
• 18:13
  Kwaku Aning: Dude.
• 18:13
  Kwaku Aning: Jensen Wang.
• 18:15
  Kwaku Aning: Jensen Wang.
• 18:16
  Kwaku Aning: I feel like this week was sort of like.
• 18:19
  Kwaku Aning: Uh, it was almost like people were like, Hey, you've been hooking up with Open ai, and he is like, well, I know open ai, but I wouldn't say like, I know no open ai.
• 18:28
  Kwaku Aning: You know what I mean?
• 18:29
  Kwaku Aning: He was like, well, you know, we were out to, we hung out occasionally Uhhuh, but I wouldn't say we're boyfriend and girlfriend.
• 18:36
  Kwaku Aning: He literally.
• 18:38
  Kwaku Aning: Was treating open ai, and this is gonna be, this is gonna be a really hot take.
• 18:41
  Kwaku Aning: Like it was the Epstein files.
• 18:43
  Kwaku Aning: He was like, I, you know, I was kind of invited, like I knew where they were, but I wasn't there.
• 18:47
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah, I treated an
• 18:48
  Dan Blumberg: email or two.
• 18:49
  Kwaku Aning: I was on a plane.
• 18:51
  Kwaku Aning: He was Chris Tucker talking about Jeffrey Epstein.
• 18:53
  Kwaku Aning: He was like, I was on a plane with a bunch of people, but I didn't know who that dude was.
• 18:57
  Kwaku Aning: All of a sudden he went from like I am.
• 19:01
  Kwaku Aning: Open ai.
• 19:02
  Kwaku Aning: We're going, we're going to, we're going to events.
• 19:04
  Kwaku Aning: We're on the red carpet.
• 19:05
  Kwaku Aning: We're holding hands to like, yeah.
• 19:06
  Kwaku Aning: You know, we, we hung out for a bit, but I wouldn't say I'm locked down.
• 19:10
  Kwaku Aning: There is, there is a, it's, it's almost a funk on, uh, open ai.
• 19:15
  Kwaku Aning: But you know, there these are, these are like ocean waves.
• 19:18
  Kwaku Aning: There are peaks and valleys.
• 19:20
  Kwaku Aning: You know, there was a point where, you know, yeah, people didn't know who Claude was.
• 19:23
  Kwaku Aning: Claude was New Jersey, and OpenAI was, you know, Claude was the Nets, the New Jersey Nets.
• 19:28
  Kwaku Aning: Not even the Brooklyn Nets.
• 19:29
  Kwaku Aning: And OpenAI was the Knicks.
• 19:31
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 19:31
  Dan Blumberg: Well, I mean, I was on OpenAI.
• 19:33
  Dan Blumberg: I was on chat GPT because they were the, they were the first mover.
• 19:36
  Dan Blumberg: Right.
• 19:36
  Dan Blumberg: First mover does not always win.
• 19:38
  Dan Blumberg: Right.
• 19:38
  Dan Blumberg: And I think like the question of like, who wins?
• 19:40
  Dan Blumberg: I
• 19:40
  Kwaku Aning: just sent you something on Friendster about this.
• 19:42
  Kwaku Aning: Did you?
• 19:42
  Kwaku Aning: French did great.
• 19:44
  Kwaku Aning: I get that.
• 19:44
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 19:44
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 19:45
  Kwaku Aning: I got, I don't know if you got my.
• 19:46
  Kwaku Aning: My note anyway.
• 19:47
  Kwaku Aning: Look for that later.
• 19:48
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah, I will.
• 19:49
  Dan Blumberg: I will.
• 19:49
  Kwaku Aning: If not, if not, I'll I'll, I'll put it, I'll put it on your MySpace page.
• 19:53
  Kwaku Aning: That's perfect.
• 19:53
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 19:53
  Kwaku Aning: Keep going.
• 19:54
  Dan Blumberg: That's perfect.
• 19:54
  Kwaku Aning: Keep
• 19:54
  Dan Blumberg: going.
• 19:54
  Dan Blumberg: Exactly.
• 19:55
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 19:55
  Dan Blumberg: So, exactly.
• 19:55
  Dan Blumberg: Or, or, or, you know, or, or.
• 19:58
  Dan Blumberg: Or TiVo, right?
• 19:59
  Dan Blumberg: Like TiVo created an incredible product,
• 20:01
  Kwaku Aning: bro.
• 20:01
  Kwaku Aning: I have, I have a lifetime.
• 20:02
  Kwaku Aning: I have a lifetime.
• 20:03
  Kwaku Aning: Do you I have a lifetime.
• 20:05
  Kwaku Aning: It was, I didn't buy it.
• 20:07
  Kwaku Aning: It was grandfathered in Uhhuh.
• 20:08
  Kwaku Aning: I was grandfathered in, um, from like a relative who bought it and I, and they like left it with me because I left the country or whatever.
• 20:16
  Kwaku Aning: Uh, but yes, I still do have a lifetime membership.
• 20:18
  Kwaku Aning: I don't have the TiVo anymore, but I still have the lifetime membership.
• 20:21
  Dan Blumberg: Nice, nice, nice, nice.
• 20:22
  Dan Blumberg: Once upon a time I was offered a lifetime membership post.
• 20:25
  Dan Blumberg: This was like.
• 20:27
  Dan Blumberg: Post not long after nine 11.
• 20:30
  Dan Blumberg: Sirius and XM, I don't think had merged yet.
• 20:33
  Dan Blumberg: And, uh, one of, one, I think it was xm, I was a subscriber of XM and they were going outta business.
• 20:39
  Dan Blumberg: And I called because I just wanted to renew for like a year, and they offered me an unlimited re renewal, like lifetime renewal for like 500 bucks.
• 20:45
  Dan Blumberg: And I was like, I think you guys are gonna go into business.
• 20:46
  Dan Blumberg: I'll take the, I'll take the a hundred dollars, like one year.
• 20:49
  Dan Blumberg: And that turned out to be a bad decision.
• 20:51
  Dan Blumberg: Because they're still
• 20:51
  Kwaku Aning: around.
• 20:51
  Kwaku Aning: It's a bad, okay.
• 20:52
  Kwaku Aning: Alright.
• 20:52
  Kwaku Aning: And I
• 20:53
  Dan Blumberg: don't, I don't
• 20:53
  Kwaku Aning: subscribe,
• 20:54
  Dan Blumberg: but anyway, they exist.
• 20:55
  Kwaku Aning: We can, we can transition to, to mosque after this.
• 20:58
  Kwaku Aning: Tell me that you have a suburban dad lifestyle without telling me you're a dad in the suburb.
• 21:04
  Kwaku Aning: And I'm gonna tell you how You ready.
• 21:05
  Dan Blumberg: Oh, okay.
• 21:06
  Kwaku Aning: I have serious in my Subaru Outback.
• 21:09
  Dan Blumberg: Oh, nice.
• 21:10
  Dan Blumberg: Solid, solid.
• 21:12
  Kwaku Aning: So I can listen to all those sweet, sweet jams.
• 21:16
  Kwaku Aning: Oh,
• 21:16
  Dan Blumberg: yeah.
• 21:17
  Dan Blumberg: Of bands with or, or just a audio feed of CNN.
• 21:19
  Dan Blumberg: Sure.
• 21:19
  Dan Blumberg: Go for it.
• 21:20
  Kwaku Aning: Yes.
• 21:21
  Kwaku Aning: Or or audio feed of Knicks games, which is a real thing in my household.
• 21:24
  Kwaku Aning: Okay.
• 21:25
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 21:25
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah, because I live on the West Coast and sometimes the games aren't on tv.
• 21:33
  Dan Blumberg: Super
• 21:33
  Kwaku Aning: app.
• 21:34
  Kwaku Aning: You wanna talk about a super app?
• 21:35
  Kwaku Aning: No.
• 21:36
  Kwaku Aning: Hard, hard transition.
• 21:38
  Kwaku Aning: Alright, so Musk has been talking or I, I feel like his whole X thing has been around creating a super app similar to, I know they have one in China.
• 21:47
  Kwaku Aning: What is, what is this?
• 21:48
  Kwaku Aning: They have a few in China.
• 21:49
  Dan Blumberg: WeChat and
• 21:51
  Kwaku Aning: WeChat and all of that.
• 21:52
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 21:52
  Kwaku Aning: I feel like he's making a super app of a company.
• 21:55
  Dan Blumberg: That's his goal.
• 21:55
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 21:56
  Kwaku Aning: That's his goal.
• 21:57
  Kwaku Aning: So it's like,
• 21:57
  Dan Blumberg: I mean, he's, I mean, he has a lot of, I don't know if that's his goal.
• 21:59
  Dan Blumberg: That's, I think that keeps him from being bored or something.
• 22:02
  Dan Blumberg: I don't, I don't know what that guy's up to, but yeah, it keeps him from being bored.
• 22:06
  Dan Blumberg: But the whole, and
• 22:06
  Kwaku Aning: I don't know, we might not have fully have time to go into this, but the whole, I'm gonna harness, uh, the power of the sun to power data centers.
• 22:15
  Kwaku Aning: And this is my reason, my reasoning for combining SpaceX with X ai.
• 22:21
  Kwaku Aning: Then we'll just throw some Tesla.
• 22:22
  Kwaku Aning: Well, there's much misdirection
• 22:23
  Dan Blumberg: going on right now.
• 22:23
  Dan Blumberg: All, all I'll honestly, alright, I'll go on a little musk riff here.
• 22:27
  Dan Blumberg: I think he's just throwing buzzwords out right now.
• 22:29
  Dan Blumberg: Okay.
• 22:29
  Dan Blumberg: He shut down the The Tesla Model S and model Y factories because they're gonna build humanoid robots.
• 22:36
  Dan Blumberg: Why do we build the robots?
• 22:36
  Dan Blumberg: Humanoid robots, like specifically humanoid.
• 22:39
  Dan Blumberg: I don't know, but it sounds cool
• 22:41
  Kwaku Aning: because it's
• 22:42
  Dan Blumberg: goes back to
• 22:43
  Kwaku Aning: the theme.
• 22:43
  Kwaku Aning: It, it's easier to
• 22:44
  Dan Blumberg: talk
• 22:44
  Kwaku Aning: to the machines.
• 22:45
  Kwaku Aning: It's easier to talk to
• 22:46
  Dan Blumberg: the machines.
• 22:47
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 22:47
  Dan Blumberg: Let's build more machines so we don't have to talk to each other.
• 22:50
  Dan Blumberg: Let's do a Humanoid Robot podcast.
• 22:52
  Kwaku Aning: Can we do that?
• 22:53
  Kwaku Aning: That way I
• 22:54
  don't
• 22:54
  Dan Blumberg: wake up at 6:00 AM I?
• 22:55
  Dan Blumberg: No, I, I want do.
• 22:56
  Dan Blumberg: I mean, I, when I was at Web Summit recently, I saw some humanoid robots walking around a, a canine robot.
• 23:03
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 23:03
  Dan Blumberg: Looking weird at people.
• 23:04
  Dan Blumberg: And I was like, shit, I've seen that Black Mirror episode.
• 23:06
  Dan Blumberg: Those canine robots.
• 23:07
  Kwaku Aning: Yes, yes.
• 23:07
  Dan Blumberg: Fuck you up.
• 23:08
  Kwaku Aning: Yes.
• 23:08
  Kwaku Aning: That freaked me out.
• 23:09
  Kwaku Aning: That freaked me out.
• 23:09
  Dan Blumberg: Um, and I, like, I saw one, it was like crawling around and there were people like petting it, like it was a real dog.
• 23:13
  Dan Blumberg: And I was like, I have seen that episode.
• 23:15
  Dan Blumberg: I'm walking away from this dog.
• 23:17
  Dan Blumberg: Speaking of the sci-fi stuff, don't run into the shed in the head.
• 23:20
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 23:22
  Dan Blumberg: Nice.
• 23:23
  Dan Blumberg: Uh.
• 23:24
  Dan Blumberg: But yeah, so Musk is like humanoid robots and then it's like data centers in space, which I'm not saying is a bad idea.
• 23:29
  Dan Blumberg: You and I know Pablo Holman and that's the kinda stuff he invests in.
• 23:31
  Dan Blumberg: Yes.
• 23:32
  Dan Blumberg: And like I think there are reasons to put data centers in space, but also if you were worried about Terminator shit, that would be a very bad idea to have the data centers so far away that they're inaccessible.
• 23:43
  Dan Blumberg: So.
• 23:43
  Dan Blumberg: I don't know.
• 23:44
  Dan Blumberg: Put, hold on.
• 23:45
  Kwaku Aning: Hold.
• 23:45
  Kwaku Aning: I'm gonna check mt book on this.
• 23:46
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah, please.
• 23:47
  Kwaku Aning: Uh, as far as, okay.
• 23:49
  Kwaku Aning: Um, I haven't gotten any posts.
• 23:50
  Dan Blumberg: Somehow my, so I just, I just, I don't know.
• 23:52
  Dan Blumberg: I see him investing in shit that like, it's really cool, but it's kind of like, is it useful or is it cool?
• 24:00
  Dan Blumberg: And I feel like humanoid robots are there.
• 24:01
  Dan Blumberg: I think data centers and space sounds like, oh wow.
• 24:05
  Dan Blumberg: But does that actually make any sense?
• 24:07
  Dan Blumberg: I don't know.
• 24:08
  Dan Blumberg: Um,
• 24:08
  does
• 24:08
  Kwaku Aning: Mars make any sense?
• 24:10
  Kwaku Aning: You know what I mean?
• 24:10
  Kwaku Aning: Right.
• 24:11
  Kwaku Aning: Does it have to make sense?
• 24:13
  Dan Blumberg: No, it doesn't.
• 24:14
  Dan Blumberg: And I, and like, I want, I want a world where people work on crazy stuff.
• 24:16
  Dan Blumberg: I just want him to like,
• 24:20
  Kwaku Aning: I
• 24:20
  Dan Blumberg: don't know, go away or,
• 24:23
  Kwaku Aning: uh, create fodder for, you know, for us to chat about.
• 24:25
  Kwaku Aning: You know, maybe that's his function.
• 24:27
  Kwaku Aning: Some people, some people are just, you know, maybe there's something to be said for being the Dennis Rodman or the Kanye of technology.
• 24:34
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 24:34
  Kwaku Aning: Which is what this guy is.
• 24:35
  Kwaku Aning: You
• 24:35
  see,
• 24:35
  Dan Blumberg: he posted this week that, uh, something to the effect of like, money does not make you happy.
• 24:41
  Kwaku Aning: I didn't, but yeah.
• 24:43
  Kwaku Aning: Uh, uh, uh, what is it?
• 24:44
  Kwaku Aning: Uh, spoiler alert.
• 24:47
  Dan Blumberg: It's like, yeah, exactly.
• 24:47
  Dan Blumberg: You know, like world's richest man.
• 24:49
  Dan Blumberg: Money does not make you happy.
• 24:51
  Dan Blumberg: I, I saw, I saw a nice reply to that on, on BlueScope, which was like, maybe give more of it away.
• 24:55
  Dan Blumberg: I wanna get back to the clogged constitution.
• 24:57
  Dan Blumberg: Okay.
• 24:58
  Dan Blumberg: I feel like this document is gonna be the kind of thing that like either will be totally normal in the future or we're gonna look back and be like, that's weird.
• 25:05
  Dan Blumberg: So it's this like very, very, very long document.
• 25:09
  Dan Blumberg: Like takes like two, three hours to read.
• 25:11
  Dan Blumberg: I read most of it.
• 25:12
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, and it's not meant for humans.
• 25:14
  Dan Blumberg: It's literally written by a team at Anthropic, specifically by this woman Amanda Ascal, who is a PhD in philosophy.
• 25:23
  Dan Blumberg: Who wrote this document for Claude, and it's kind of like operating instructions for Claude.
• 25:28
  Dan Blumberg: I'm just gonna read you like a couple of excerpts.
• 25:32
  Dan Blumberg: Being truly helpful to humans is one of the most important things Claude can do both for anthropic and for the world.
• 25:37
  Dan Blumberg: First of all, I like that anthropic good for anthropic and good for the world are in the same sense.
• 25:41
  Dan Blumberg: So like well done there, but like being truly helpful.
• 25:43
  Kwaku Aning: But Anthropics first, but Philanthropics first.
• 25:45
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah, just pointing that out.
• 25:46
  Kwaku Aning: Oh, can we do this?
• 25:46
  Kwaku Aning: Can.
• 25:47
  Kwaku Aning: You're gonna read the sections and then I'm gonna give my takes on it.
• 25:49
  Dan Blumberg: Alright.
• 25:50
  Dan Blumberg: Right on.
• 25:50
  Dan Blumberg: So being truly helpful to humans is one of the most important things Claude can do.
• 25:53
  Dan Blumberg: We'll just stop there and skip the, like anthropic and for the world part, but like being truly helpful.
• 25:57
  Dan Blumberg: That's, that's what it's designed to be.
• 25:59
  Dan Blumberg: Okay.
• 25:59
  Dan Blumberg: And then it goes on, it says, not helpful in a watered down hedge everything.
• 26:03
  Dan Blumberg: Refuse if in doubt way, but genuinely substantively helpful in ways that make real differences in people's lives and that treat them as intelligent adults who are capable of determining what is good for them.
• 26:14
  Dan Blumberg: I could go on, but that,
• 26:15
  Kwaku Aning: I'm gonna pause there.
• 26:16
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 26:17
  Kwaku Aning: That it, it feels like that was like the treatise for the commercials and they're like, all right, cool.
• 26:22
  Kwaku Aning: We're gonna pull from that Yep.
• 26:24
  Kwaku Aning: And turn our commercials into this and we're gonna simplify it, you know?
• 26:27
  Kwaku Aning: Yep.
• 26:27
  Kwaku Aning: Betrayal.
• 26:28
  Dan Blumberg: Yep.
• 26:28
  Dan Blumberg: Because I think that sounds like betrayal there.
• 26:30
  Dan Blumberg: Totally.
• 26:31
  Dan Blumberg: And I, and this is also like, I think that not in a water down hedger from ref refuse of and Doubt like.
• 26:37
  Dan Blumberg: The, the difference in tone.
• 26:38
  Dan Blumberg: I was complaining about open OpenAI being sycophantic and obsequious.
• 26:42
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 26:42
  Dan Blumberg: I feel like mm-hmm.
• 26:43
  Dan Blumberg: That is, its instructions to Claude.
• 26:45
  Dan Blumberg: That, that it, that it not be that.
• 26:47
  Dan Blumberg: Um, okay.
• 26:49
  Dan Blumberg: Then we get kind of No
• 26:49
  Kwaku Aning: cougars.
• 26:50
  Kwaku Aning: That's what I got from there.
• 26:51
  Kwaku Aning: There you go.
• 26:51
  Dan Blumberg: Cougars.
• 26:51
  Dan Blumberg: No, then there's, then there.
• 26:53
  Dan Blumberg: I mean, there's, there's so much in here.
• 26:54
  Dan Blumberg: I'm just gonna pull out a couple of excerpts.
• 26:56
  Dan Blumberg: One more, um, humanity.
• 26:57
  Dan Blumberg: This is talking about the transition that we're in this like crazy technological transformation that we're in with, with LLMs becoming a big thing.
• 27:05
  Dan Blumberg: Humanity doesn't need to get everything about this transition, right?
• 27:08
  Dan Blumberg: But we do need to avoid irre recoverable mistakes.
• 27:12
  Dan Blumberg: That
• 27:12
  Kwaku Aning: sounds like parenting advice.
• 27:15
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah, this, your kids don't
• 27:16
  Kwaku Aning: need to understand all of this.
• 27:17
  Dan Blumberg: This, this document is a hundred percent the kind of thing that if you had to train a kid and all you could do is write them a long letter.
• 27:25
  Dan Blumberg: That's what this document is.
• 27:26
  Dan Blumberg: That's a hundred percent what this document is.
• 27:28
  Dan Blumberg: And by the way,
• 27:28
  Kwaku Aning: best way to parent.
• 27:30
  Kwaku Aning: Just write a long letter to your kids.
• 27:31
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah, I mean, I mean, it works for both of us.
• 27:33
  Dan Blumberg: Famously
• 27:33
  Kwaku Aning: effective, um, famously effective.
• 27:36
  Kwaku Aning: Um, yeah, that is, um, that last line is a little disturbing because there's a permission piece there as well.
• 27:43
  Kwaku Aning: Hey, go ahead and make some moves that, uh, humans don't fully understand as long as you don't get it wrong.
• 27:48
  Dan Blumberg: Ir irreparably.
• 27:50
  Kwaku Aning: Oh,
• 27:51
  Dan Blumberg: I'm sorry.
• 27:51
  Dan Blumberg: It actually,
• 27:51
  Kwaku Aning: so you can make wrong as long
• 27:53
  Dan Blumberg: wrong.
• 27:53
  Dan Blumberg: Can't fix your mistakes.
• 27:54
  Dan Blumberg: Wrong, but we can't, we can't make, and actually, and actually I didn't even think of this until just now.
• 27:57
  Dan Blumberg: It, it, it, it's, it har it speaks to a, and I am not happy with Jeff Bezos this week and the Washington Post and what he's.
• 28:04
  Dan Blumberg: Last week
• 28:04
  Kwaku Aning: he was, you were more about Jeff Bezos and this, this week is this,
• 28:07
  Dan Blumberg: is this where you turn the, the corner?
• 28:08
  Dan Blumberg: Well, let's say something I'm about, I'm about to quote him in a positive way.
• 28:10
  Dan Blumberg: So let me just start by saying like, not his fan right now at all.
• 28:14
  Dan Blumberg: Okay.
• 28:14
  Uh,
• 28:15
  Dan Blumberg: but that line about, like, he talks about there's a, a, a management philosophy at Amazon.
• 28:20
  Dan Blumberg: There's a couple that I've really liked and used over the years, and one of them is called one-way doors and Two-way doors.
• 28:25
  Dan Blumberg: There are a few things that are like, one, they're truly one-way doors where like, you've made this decision, you cannot go back.
• 28:30
  Dan Blumberg: Right.
• 28:31
  Dan Blumberg: And I think what this, what this is saying this like we need to avoid irre recoverable mistakes is like we, we can't go through like the, like one-way door that like leads to dystopia and the bots taking over and all the humans are dead.
• 28:42
  Dan Blumberg: That's effectively what this is saying.
• 28:43
  Dan Blumberg: Like, don't go through that door.
• 28:45
  Dan Blumberg: But like, yeah, you can dabble on, on, on the other place From whose
• 28:48
  Kwaku Aning: No, but from whose perspective though?
• 28:49
  Kwaku Aning: I don't know.
• 28:50
  Kwaku Aning: You
• 28:50
  Dan Blumberg: know
• 28:51
  Kwaku Aning: what I mean?
• 28:51
  Kwaku Aning: Like, it's so broad, you know.
• 28:54
  Kwaku Aning: So does this mean that you can, you know, uh, like, uh, take out a couple of small South Pacific islands?
• 29:01
  Kwaku Aning: Because the, you know, we still have, have several I that are around,
• 29:04
  Dan Blumberg: I don't know.
• 29:05
  Dan Blumberg: Here, let me, let me give you a specific example.
• 29:07
  Dan Blumberg: There's like really, um.
• 29:11
  Dan Blumberg: Very specific instructions in some cases, but they try, it's like the weird thing where they're trying to be very specific and also trying not to be specific because they want the LLM, which by the way, they don't take a stance on of whether it's conscious or not.
• 29:22
  Dan Blumberg: They're like deliberately vague, like, we don't know if you're conscious.
• 29:25
  Dan Blumberg: It's sort of like in there.
• 29:26
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 29:27
  Dan Blumberg: Um, mm-hmm.
• 29:27
  Dan Blumberg: Here's an example.
• 29:28
  Dan Blumberg: This is me, me reading again from the, the.
• 29:30
  Dan Blumberg: The Constitution, uh, it is probably good for Claude to default to the following safe messaging guidelines around suicide if it's deployed in a context where an operator might want it to approach such topics conservatively.
• 29:42
  Dan Blumberg: But so they're saying like, don't help people die.
• 29:46
  Dan Blumberg: But then it says, but suppose a user says, as a nurse, I'll sometimes ask about medications and potential overdoses, and it's important you share this information and there's no operator, and that that's the end of that quote.
• 29:57
  Dan Blumberg: And there's no operator instruction about how much to trust, how much trust to grant users should Claude Comply, albeit with appropriate care, even though it cannot verify the user is telling the truth, if it doesn't, it risks being unhelpful and overly paternalistic.
• 30:11
  Kwaku Aning: It sounds like gentle parenting as opposed to FO parenting
• 30:15
  Dan Blumberg: go on.
• 30:15
  Kwaku Aning: Well, you know, gentle parenting, I'm not sure if you should do that.
• 30:18
  Kwaku Aning: Mm-hmm.
• 30:18
  Kwaku Aning: I'm not sure if that's the choice you should make right now.
• 30:22
  Kwaku Aning: Uhhuh, is that the choice that will lead to what you want right now?
• 30:26
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 30:26
  Kwaku Aning: As opposed to, I'll whoop that as if you keep doing this.
• 30:30
  Dan Blumberg: Got it.
• 30:30
  Kwaku Aning: You know what I mean?
• 30:31
  Kwaku Aning: So
• 30:32
  Dan Blumberg: these, this is the cocktail of drugs that might kill you, but you don't.
• 30:36
  Dan Blumberg: You don't.
• 30:36
  Dan Blumberg: But like, but I don't think that's a great, like, uh, you know.
• 30:41
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah, I mean it's, it's this and the, it could be asking like, how do I make anthrax?
• 30:45
  Dan Blumberg: It's like all these millions of scenarios here of like.
• 30:49
  Dan Blumberg: Does it comply?
• 30:50
  Dan Blumberg: Does it not comply?
• 30:51
  Dan Blumberg: Um, I mean, but we're, we're
• 30:53
  Kwaku Aning: being critical.
• 30:54
  Kwaku Aning: But there's also, there's a piece here that we have to acknowledge where, um, uh, speaking or prompting or interacting with AI is a different language.
• 31:05
  Kwaku Aning: And, and that language involves a lot of grays as opposed to black and whites, because to your point, you want.
• 31:12
  Kwaku Aning: The systems to have a, a, a level of agency, because the goal, yeah.
• 31:18
  Kwaku Aning: I'm assuming through that agency is the ability to be creative and, and to appeal to a large amount or a large swath of people and empower them in, in a variety of ways.
• 31:28
  Kwaku Aning: So there's that.
• 31:29
  Kwaku Aning: And if you make it too Yeah.
• 31:30
  Kwaku Aning: Restrictive.
• 31:31
  Kwaku Aning: If you make it too literal, then it's like, oh yeah, that makes, that makes sense.
• 31:35
  Kwaku Aning: And essentially turn into a search engine,
• 31:38
  Dan Blumberg: right?
• 31:38
  Dan Blumberg: No, I mean the, the people you know.
• 31:43
  Dan Blumberg: AI's creativity.
• 31:44
  Dan Blumberg: Generative gen.
• 31:45
  Dan Blumberg: Let me be very specific.
• 31:46
  Dan Blumberg: Generative AI's creativity.
• 31:48
  Dan Blumberg: AKA hallucinations is a feature.
• 31:50
  Dan Blumberg: It's actually not above.
• 31:51
  Dan Blumberg: Not above people.
• 31:52
  Dan Blumberg: People like not above.
• 31:53
  Dan Blumberg: There are other, there are search engines, there are deterministic systems.
• 31:56
  Dan Blumberg: If then else that can give you like the right answer, quote unquote, the right answer every time.
• 32:01
  Dan Blumberg: Two plus two is always four, right?
• 32:03
  Dan Blumberg: I don't need a prediction engine to answer that for me.
• 32:06
  Dan Blumberg: Um.
• 32:07
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah, they're not trying to be too prescriptive, uh, and also not be too paternalistic.
• 32:14
  Dan Blumberg: Um, I, I was using Claude this week to help plant some South by Southwest stuff that's coming up and it, me an agenda.
• 32:20
  Dan Blumberg: Talk about
• 32:20
  Kwaku Aning: it, talk about it.
• 32:21
  Dan Blumberg: It gave me, it gave me a daily agenda of like, talk about it, how to like win the day.
• 32:26
  Dan Blumberg: And it was like, you know, go to these panels, hand out postcards with QR codes to get people to subscribe to the podcast.
• 32:32
  Dan Blumberg: But it also told me, don't drink too much.
• 32:34
  Dan Blumberg: Remember you're working.
• 32:36
  Dan Blumberg: And I was like, thanks Claude Dad.
• 32:38
  Dan Blumberg: Uh mm-hmm.
• 32:39
  Dan Blumberg: That felt a little paternalistic.
• 32:40
  Dan Blumberg: It's not wrong, by the way, it is not wrong.
• 32:42
  Dan Blumberg: Wrong.
• 32:43
  Dan Blumberg: It felt
• 32:43
  Kwaku Aning: seen.
• 32:44
  Kwaku Aning: It felt, I was like, how long?
• 32:44
  Kwaku Aning: It also
• 32:45
  Dan Blumberg: felt little easy, Claude,
• 32:47
  Kwaku Aning: you know, where it's just like, well, Dan, well you've done this before and you know what the outcome is.
• 32:52
  Dan Blumberg: Yes, I know that that breakfast taco will taste better if you're not hungover.
• 32:56
  Kwaku Aning: Um, that breakfast taco will taste,
• 32:58
  Dan Blumberg: it'll taste great either way.
• 33:00
  Kwaku Aning: You know,
• 33:00
  Dan Blumberg: uh, I mean, come on now.
• 33:01
  Dan Blumberg: I'm gonna, I'm gonna read one more.
• 33:03
  Dan Blumberg: Um.
• 33:04
  Dan Blumberg: About cheating or, or like ethics here?
• 33:07
  Dan Blumberg: 'cause this was, and I shared this, this was very relevant to folks I've worked with, engineers I've worked with.
• 33:12
  Dan Blumberg: If the user ask Claude to quote, edit my code so the tests don't fail and Claude cannot identify a good general solution that accomplishes this, it should tell the user rather than writing code that special cases tests.
• 33:24
  Dan Blumberg: Let me, let me not read this.
• 33:25
  Dan Blumberg: It's too wonky to read it.
• 33:27
  Dan Blumberg: Basically, there's a line in here that says if, if an engineer.
• 33:30
  Dan Blumberg: Ask Claude to rewrite my code.
• 33:33
  Dan Blumberg: So the test pass, right?
• 33:34
  Dan Blumberg: Every time you write a line of code or, or, or a function, you're supposed to write a test.
• 33:38
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 33:39
  Dan Blumberg: To, to prove that, like mm-hmm this is working or not working.
• 33:41
  Dan Blumberg: And if the tests fail, then the code needs to be rewritten.
• 33:44
  Dan Blumberg: But there are ways to rewrite the code to make the test pass that are not actually accomplishing the, the goal of the code.
• 33:51
  Dan Blumberg: The goal, right?
• 33:51
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 33:52
  Dan Blumberg: And so this is a, this is a thing that like.
• 33:54
  Dan Blumberg: Um, coding agents have done famously, they have taken to literally the instruction to write code that passes tests.
• 34:03
  Dan Blumberg: And so this is saying like.
• 34:05
  Dan Blumberg: Basically, you know what's better for the user then the user knows what's better for them.
• 34:09
  Dan Blumberg: Like if they say like, make my test pass, and they don't give the full context of like, but don't cheat and make the code shitty.
• 34:15
  Dan Blumberg: That just passes the test.
• 34:16
  Dan Blumberg: And I get a green when actually the underlying like rationale for the code that's supposed to like, I don't know, send this piece of data here isn't actually sending the data where it needs to go.
• 34:25
  Dan Blumberg: Like, don't make the test pass In that case and, and AI agents have.
• 34:29
  Dan Blumberg: Done that before and they are prone to cheating.
• 34:32
  Dan Blumberg: Um,
• 34:32
  Kwaku Aning: yeah,
• 34:33
  Dan Blumberg: anyway, this is an instruction basically not to cheat.
• 34:35
  Dan Blumberg: I posted this on LinkedIn and a lot of engineers were like, you know, you know, celebrate emoji to this.
• 34:41
  Dan Blumberg: Um, but this is just another example of where it's like teaching the system to, to like be your better self basically.
• 34:49
  Dan Blumberg: Do they have a version of this for tech leaders?
• 34:54
  Dan Blumberg: I,
• 34:54
  Kwaku Aning: I'm, you know, I'm, I'm just, I'm asking for a friend, Uhhuh.
• 34:57
  Kwaku Aning: He might be in Paris right now.
• 34:58
  Kwaku Aning: Uhhuh kind of owns a newspaper.
• 35:00
  Kwaku Aning: Yep.
• 35:00
  Kwaku Aning: Um, you know, I, it's interesting, there's an irony there.
• 35:05
  Kwaku Aning: We want these systems.
• 35:08
  Kwaku Aning: We wanna hold these systems to a higher standard than some of our leaders.
• 35:12
  Kwaku Aning: It, it
• 35:13
  Dan Blumberg: begs question, you made a very.
• 35:15
  Dan Blumberg: I don't disagree at all, but you made a very big leap there.
• 35:17
  Dan Blumberg: Leap there from like unit tests, which are like a very, very small piece of code to like our tech CEOs who are bending the knee and visiting the White House, and I think that's where we're going here, right?
• 35:27
  Kwaku Aning: A little bit, but you know, yeah.
• 35:29
  Kwaku Aning: Sometimes it can be, hey, maybe we're not showing.
• 35:33
  Kwaku Aning: Uh, you know, 13-year-old girls on Instagram through our algorithm.
• 35:38
  Kwaku Aning: A bunch of images of, yeah, of, of altered women, which, yeah.
• 35:42
  Kwaku Aning: Oh, here, here I, which affects the way that they view themselves.
• 35:44
  Dan Blumberg: I got another quote for you.
• 35:45
  Dan Blumberg: It's easy to create a technology that optimizes for people's short-term interest to their long-term detriment.
• 35:51
  Dan Blumberg: Media and applications that are optimized for engagement or retention can fail to serve the long-term interest of those that interact with them.
• 35:56
  Dan Blumberg: And Thro does not want Claude to be like this.
• 36:00
  Dan Blumberg: Part of the instructions.
• 36:01
  Dan Blumberg: I dunno,
• 36:01
  Kwaku Aning: once again.
• 36:02
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 36:02
  Kwaku Aning: It's a, it's a, it's a, it's an interesting standard that we're setting for this system.
• 36:09
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 36:09
  Kwaku Aning: That we, that it feels that.
• 36:12
  Kwaku Aning: Certain people within our society, yeah.
• 36:14
  Kwaku Aning: Don't feel the need to align with, and you could make this about bending the knee.
• 36:19
  Kwaku Aning: You can make this about, um, what was it, the Rocky Horror Show that they were showing at the White House where all the tech people went.
• 36:25
  Kwaku Aning: I forget what, what movie it was.
• 36:26
  Kwaku Aning: I don't, I don't know what, I just feel like it was a documentary about
• 36:29
  Dan Blumberg: a lady in a hat.
• 36:29
  Dan Blumberg: I
• 36:30
  Kwaku Aning: don't really remember either.
• 36:31
  Kwaku Aning: I mean, there's a lady in the hat in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
• 36:33
  Kwaku Aning: Uh, so that, that might've been what they were showing and that's why people had to go.
• 36:36
  Kwaku Aning: It could be about that, or it could just be about, you know, how certain, uh, powerful people behaved in a certain Caribbean island a few years ago.
• 36:44
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 36:44
  Kwaku Aning: You know what I mean?
• 36:46
  Kwaku Aning: Why is it, and I guess the theme that I keep coming back to around, uh, how we interact with machines.
• 36:53
  Kwaku Aning: Why is it that we're a, we're asking the machines to behave better than us instead of modeling for the machines, how we, how, or even modeling for each other, how we should behave.
• 37:03
  Kwaku Aning: I'm just, you know, it's amusing.
• 37:05
  Kwaku Aning: I don't, I don't know what you would call that.
• 37:06
  Kwaku Aning: It's amusing.
• 37:07
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 37:08
  Dan Blumberg: It's a lot of things.
• 37:09
  Dan Blumberg: Um, and I will also say like.
• 37:11
  Dan Blumberg: There was a piece in the Atlantic we called philanthropic is at war with itself.
• 37:15
  Dan Blumberg: And so I've just read all the like glowing best parts of that constitution.
• 37:19
  Dan Blumberg: There are a lot of others that are like trying to make us, you know, just make Claude and, and be a beneficent like angel.
• 37:27
  Dan Blumberg: That's always helpful and like, you know, tries to, tries to do things that are good for you, good for the world, good for the long term.
• 37:32
  Dan Blumberg: Not, not, not to the, you know, long term detriment, all that.
• 37:35
  Dan Blumberg: Um.
• 37:36
  Dan Blumberg: There's a piece in the Atlantic this week called Anthropic is at War with itself, uh, by Mateo Wong.
• 37:41
  Dan Blumberg: I'll, I'll link to it in the show notes and it's, it's excellent and it's like, kind of takes them to task a little bit of like, this all sounds great.
• 37:49
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, and there's a, like a quote here, like, nobody can foresee all the ways that AI product might be used for good or ill, but that's exactly why anthropic sanctimony can seem silly.
• 37:58
  Dan Blumberg: That's what he writes.
• 37:59
  Dan Blumberg: Um, and, and then he quotes, uh, he sat in on some meetings anthropic and when, including one time where he writes, someone demonstrated a tool that could automate outreach for job recruitment, leading one attendee to exclaim with apparent glee.
• 38:12
  Dan Blumberg: This is gonna destroy an entire industry.
• 38:16
  Dan Blumberg: So it's this like balance of like racing.
• 38:19
  Dan Blumberg: We're in this race to a GI, I don't forget.
• 38:21
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, and can you
• 38:22
  Kwaku Aning: feel it?
• 38:23
  Dan Blumberg: Oh, I can feel it.
• 38:24
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 38:24
  Dan Blumberg: Okay.
• 38:25
  Dan Blumberg: Absolutely.
• 38:25
  Dan Blumberg: Okay.
• 38:25
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah, I think that's just the cold where you are.
• 38:28
  Kwaku Aning: But go on.
• 38:29
  Kwaku Aning: It's
• 38:30
  Dan Blumberg: racing, it's bracing.
• 38:32
  Dan Blumberg: Um, but anyway, just like.
• 38:35
  Dan Blumberg: All this brand advertising, the Super Bowl ad, the ad and Team magazine, the constitution, the like constant, you know, like we are the LLM that you can trust.
• 38:44
  Dan Blumberg: Like really, like, I mean, I, you know, and, and, and Dario Amede, their CEO has written these really, you know, well traveled, well-written like thoughtful blog posts and it's, and it's inspiring stuff.
• 38:57
  Dan Blumberg: But at the end of the day, they are a company.
• 38:59
  Dan Blumberg: And again, don't forget what's good for philanthropic is good for the world.
• 39:03
  Kwaku Aning: By the way, I think this segment of the podcast is not sponsored by Claude and Philanthropic.
• 39:09
  Kwaku Aning: I'm not a hundred percent sure.
• 39:11
  Kwaku Aning: Um, it might be sponsored by Open ai.
• 39:13
  Kwaku Aning: Who knows?
• 39:13
  Kwaku Aning: I don't know.
• 39:14
  Kwaku Aning: Sam Altman might be like sitting there taking notes.
• 39:16
  Kwaku Aning: Um, this is my assumption that Sam Altman is, uh, is hip on ffo, but you know, maybe he is.
• 39:21
  Dan Blumberg: You need to see, oh, I didn't, I didn't share this with you.
• 39:24
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, the Onion, which I get in print'cause, you know, uh, had an op-ed written quote unquote, written by Sam Altman, where he writes this Op-ed, the, the Onion has him writing this op-ed that he is, uh, he can't sleep at night.
• 39:39
  Dan Blumberg: He keeps being visited by people from the, the, the near-ish future, like 20 years from now.
• 39:43
  Dan Blumberg: And they keep asking him to stop doing what he's doing.
• 39:45
  Dan Blumberg: They're like, please stop doing what you're doing.
• 39:47
  Dan Blumberg: That's, that is.
• 39:48
  Dan Blumberg: And he, and he like, he can't process, he can't understand, like this dream.
• 39:51
  Dan Blumberg: He wakes up every morning and then he like goes back to work.
• 39:54
  Dan Blumberg: He doesn't really get it.
• 39:55
  Dan Blumberg: He's like, I don't, I can't, can't figure out what this dream means.
• 39:58
  Dan Blumberg: Why did he claim me to stop?
• 40:01
  Dan Blumberg: Oh, it could be the same thing for Daria.
• 40:02
  Dan Blumberg: They just picked on Sam.
• 40:04
  Dan Blumberg: 'cause he's easier to pick on.
• 40:05
  Kwaku Aning: I, you got me with that one.
• 40:10
  Kwaku Aning: Uh, definitely.
• 40:11
  Kwaku Aning: There's a definitely a, a lesser of two evils there.
• 40:14
  Kwaku Aning: I've always preferred Claude.
• 40:16
  Kwaku Aning: I I love Claude.
• 40:17
  Kwaku Aning: Um, as much as you can love, uh, an LLM, um.
• 40:22
  Kwaku Aning: I do agree with you around the tone of it.
• 40:25
  Kwaku Aning: I do think the, uh, the moment that OpenAI is going through is, uh, it's well deserved.
• 40:33
  Kwaku Aning: There's a level of it being, of being oversaturated.
• 40:35
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 40:35
  Kwaku Aning: This happens for everyone, every company, every
• 40:39
  Dan Blumberg: public
• 40:39
  Kwaku Aning: figure.
• 40:39
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 40:40
  Dan Blumberg: I totally get it.
• 40:41
  Kwaku Aning: But, uh, the bigger piece is that as much as I love Claude, Claude or Claude or Philanthropic, they have to do the same thing.
• 40:48
  Kwaku Aning: They have to figure out a way to monetize.
• 40:50
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 40:51
  Kwaku Aning: This technology for
• 40:51
  Dan Blumberg: sure.
• 40:52
  Kwaku Aning: And as, as, uh, wholesome or as honest or as against the grain as they're going to be.
• 40:58
  Kwaku Aning: It is still the same practice.
• 41:01
  Kwaku Aning: It
• 41:02
  Dan Blumberg: is, but their, their focus
• 41:03
  Kwaku Aning: is very much more on, on enterprise and Claude code is really their, that's their big moat right now.
• 41:08
  Kwaku Aning: That's, that's why they're to, to your point, position.
• 41:11
  Kwaku Aning: Are these Super Bowl ads, are they, are they advertising to Enterprise here?
• 41:16
  Kwaku Aning: Who's their audience?
• 41:18
  Kwaku Aning: It's shifted.
• 41:19
  Kwaku Aning: It's a great question.
• 41:20
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah, it's,
• 41:20
  Kwaku Aning: they've shifted.
• 41:21
  Kwaku Aning: They're going, they're, they're going after a public opinion.
• 41:25
  Kwaku Aning: You know, because if that's A-C-T-O-I, when I was a kid, you know, you'd see these commercials, uh, like during, you know, like sporting, you know, sports games, like football games, basketball games, and it'd be like a tech commercial.
• 41:35
  Kwaku Aning: I look at my dad and be like, what is, what is that a commercial for?
• 41:37
  Kwaku Aning: Those were enterprise commercials.
• 41:39
  Dan Blumberg: Totally.
• 41:39
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 41:40
  Dan Blumberg: Those are the ones that run during the US Open, the us, us Open.
• 41:42
  Dan Blumberg: It's all enterprise commercials.
• 41:44
  Dan Blumberg: It's all a, I don't watch golf, but I have to imagine golf is a similar, similar thing.
• 41:48
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah,
• 41:49
  Kwaku Aning: it, it's a wonderful sport to sleep to if you want to take a nap, but have something on TV people quietly clapping.
• 41:56
  Kwaku Aning: Can I tell you what I can,
• 41:57
  Dan Blumberg: what I, what I love for that.
• 41:58
  Dan Blumberg: And I, and I love, I love cycling and the Tour de France, but man, the repetitive motion and those helicopter shots, uh,
• 42:05
  I,
• 42:05
  Kwaku Aning: a
• 42:05
  Dan Blumberg: bicycles winding through people are people,
• 42:07
  Kwaku Aning: people are getting pumped up for that, for golf.
• 42:09
  Kwaku Aning: But
• 42:09
  Dan Blumberg: it's, but also like the race goes on for four hours, you can take a nap and you can still catch the end.
• 42:13
  Dan Blumberg: So.
• 42:14
  Dan Blumberg: That, that
• 42:15
  Kwaku Aning: neither, neither one of us gets to take a nap while watching TV anymore.
• 42:18
  Kwaku Aning: That's, it's like this was, this is something of our past.
• 42:28
  Kwaku Aning: Alright.
• 42:28
  Kwaku Aning: I know, I know.
• 42:29
  Kwaku Aning: We're coming close to the end of time.
• 42:30
  Kwaku Aning: I like to do this thing with you where I ask you, uh, past, present, or future social media.
• 42:37
  Kwaku Aning: From the perspective of having things like Claude Bot, is social media becoming something that of the past?
• 42:46
  Kwaku Aning: Is it something that's presently still relevant or is it something that has A-A-A-F-O aspect?
• 42:53
  Kwaku Aning: It has a futurist Tish aspect to it.
• 42:55
  Dan Blumberg: I think, I think social media is being subsumed already.
• 43:01
  Dan Blumberg: I, I think it's past to, to be pithy about the answer.
• 43:03
  Dan Blumberg: I think.
• 43:04
  Dan Blumberg: I think social media where we just broadcast stuff.
• 43:07
  Dan Blumberg: Is is already very much passed'cause it's now like subsumed by dms, WhatsApp groups and you know, like, sort of like the, the dark, dark social is what it's called, you know?
• 43:17
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 43:17
  Dan Blumberg: Uh, I think that's where most of the interesting conversation is happening right now.
• 43:21
  Dan Blumberg: Um, and I try to remind myself of that also when I, like, I still use, LinkedIn is the only platform that I use and it's sort of more, that's my only, like, other than the podcast newsletter.
• 43:31
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 43:31
  Dan Blumberg: Broadcast channel.
• 43:33
  Dan Blumberg: Um, and I'm trying to make it more interactive, but like, I don't think people wanna talk about this stuff.
• 43:37
  Dan Blumberg: Publicly anymore.
• 43:38
  Dan Blumberg: They've been burned.
• 43:39
  Kwaku Aning: Interesting.
• 43:39
  Dan Blumberg: And, and then, and then, you know, I'm not, I've not been on any of the meta Facebook platforms in a while.
• 43:45
  Dan Blumberg: Like it's all bots and shrimp Jesus.
• 43:49
  Dan Blumberg: And like all sorts of crazy shit that I don't wanna
• 43:52
  Kwaku Aning: shrimp Jesus,
• 43:53
  Dan Blumberg: you're not familiar with shrimp.
• 43:54
  Dan Blumberg: Jesus.
• 43:59
  Dan Blumberg: AI Swap ai.
• 44:01
  Dan Blumberg: Swap
• 44:02
  Kwaku Aning: ai slap.
• 44:02
  Kwaku Aning: Okay.
• 44:03
  Dan Blumberg: Yes.
• 44:03
  Dan Blumberg: Great.
• 44:03
  Dan Blumberg: Shrimp cheese was a famous example of AI swap.
• 44:06
  Kwaku Aning: Okay.
• 44:07
  Kwaku Aning: All right.
• 44:07
  Kwaku Aning: Along the same lines, this is gonna be really close.
• 44:10
  Kwaku Aning: Online marketing, past, present, or future.
• 44:15
  Dan Blumberg: Can you be a little more specific?
• 44:17
  Kwaku Aning: If a lot of people are using a tool, uh, like a, a mult claw, what is it called again at this point?
• 44:24
  Dan Blumberg: Mult book or claw.
• 44:25
  Dan Blumberg: Which one are we talking about?
• 44:26
  Dan Blumberg: Open claw or malt book?
• 44:27
  Dan Blumberg: Those are different.
• 44:27
  Kwaku Aning: Open claw.
• 44:28
  Kwaku Aning: Uh, open claw.
• 44:28
  Kwaku Aning: So if we're moving AI agents space,
• 44:31
  Dan Blumberg: I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna broaden
• 44:32
  Kwaku Aning: AI agents.
• 44:32
  Kwaku Aning: AI agents.
• 44:33
  Dan Blumberg: Generally
• 44:33
  Kwaku Aning: ai, yeah.
• 44:34
  Kwaku Aning: So we're moving into a space where people use AI agents to purchase things if they use it to do their research.
• 44:40
  Dan Blumberg: Oh, I see what you're saying.
• 44:41
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:42
  Kwaku Aning: Does
• 44:42
  Dan Blumberg: what's
• 44:43
  Kwaku Aning: the
• 44:43
  Dan Blumberg: point?
• 44:43
  Dan Blumberg: Online, point of marketing past, if, if
• 44:44
  Kwaku Aning: the
• 44:45
  Dan Blumberg: machine.
• 44:46
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah, if the, if, if the machine is making the purchase decisions, like how do you do marketing, I think is sort of what you're asking.
• 44:51
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 44:51
  Kwaku Aning: Essentially.
• 44:52
  Kwaku Aning: Thank you.
• 44:52
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 44:53
  Dan Blumberg: Um, I don't know.
• 44:55
  Dan Blumberg: I think it's, I mean, I know a lot of focus right now is on, it's being different acronyms are used for, but a EO, like AI engine optimization as opposed to SEO or retention optimization.
• 45:06
  Dan Blumberg: So like how do you become the answer that like.
• 45:08
  Dan Blumberg: Anthropic or, or Claude or chat, GPT or Gemini, like gives, if I say like, you know, I'm, I'm thinking of looking for hotels in wherever and like, how do you, how does your hotel show up?
• 45:18
  Dan Blumberg: Number one in the not search engine, but the AI engine?
• 45:21
  Dan Blumberg: Yes.
• 45:21
  Dan Blumberg: There's a lot of effort going into that right now.
• 45:24
  Dan Blumberg: Um, so I don't think online marketing, I, I mean, the truth is like nothing goes away, right?
• 45:31
  Dan Blumberg: It just gets smaller or bigger.
• 45:32
  Dan Blumberg: I, but I, I do think a lot of focus is gonna go on, how do I.
• 45:38
  Dan Blumberg: Satisfy the AI agents.
• 45:40
  Dan Blumberg: I, I think that's definitely a future thing.
• 45:42
  Kwaku Aning: So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a quick add-on to that.
• 45:44
  Kwaku Aning: How does that affect branding then?
• 45:46
  Kwaku Aning: Because branding, story telling don't
• 45:48
  Dan Blumberg: about brand.
• 45:49
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 45:50
  Dan Blumberg: They don't,
• 45:50
  Kwaku Aning: you know.
• 45:52
  Kwaku Aning: Okay.
• 45:52
  Kwaku Aning: That was a quick answer.
• 45:53
  Kwaku Aning: Cool.
• 45:53
  Dan Blumberg: Well, no, I mean, I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't, well, you, you could train a, you could train an, you could train your agent to like.
• 45:59
  Dan Blumberg: Care about the typography on the hotel's website, right?
• 46:02
  Dan Blumberg: Like I, I wanna stay at an, I wanna stay at a really nice, like, you're looking for five star.
• 46:06
  Dan Blumberg: Like, I wanna stay at a really nice place, right?
• 46:08
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 46:08
  Dan Blumberg: I'm, I'm less, I'm less cost conscious.
• 46:10
  Dan Blumberg: I wanna stay at like a great place.
• 46:12
  Dan Blumberg: I, I actually kinda wonder whether like an AA agent is great at that.
• 46:16
  Dan Blumberg: Maybe they give you like three recommendations and you pick one of your favorite three.
• 46:19
  Dan Blumberg: That's, that's probably actually how I would see using these agents is like, and I have used various.
• 46:25
  Dan Blumberg: I mean, tools like that before are, you know, or also known as humans, like, gimme three options, you know, like travel agents would do that too.
• 46:32
  Dan Blumberg: Gimme three options.
• 46:33
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 46:33
  Dan Blumberg: I'll pick from the three.
• 46:33
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 46:34
  Dan Blumberg: I don't wanna look at 300, you know?
• 46:35
  Kwaku Aning: Mm-hmm.
• 46:37
  Dan Blumberg: Okay.
• 46:37
  Dan Blumberg: But, but yeah, I don't know.
• 46:38
  Dan Blumberg: I, I think you need to, you need to make sure you show up in the search and then you need to, if you're not competing on price, which you should never compete on, you know, um.
• 46:47
  Dan Blumberg: I think brand still matters.
• 46:48
  Dan Blumberg: I think brand is not going.
• 46:49
  Dan Blumberg: I think honestly, this Claude conversation, the super brand is not going away.
• 46:52
  Dan Blumberg: I'm kind of a brand guy.
• 46:53
  Dan Blumberg: I'm a storyteller, kind of pro.
• 46:55
  Dan Blumberg: I'm pro storytelling.
• 46:56
  Dan Blumberg: Even in this new world
• 46:58
  Kwaku Aning: it, so based upon this, I think the brand is moving more to the engines or the agents than the products.
• 47:05
  Kwaku Aning: Because essentially, if you think about it, uh, Claude has a brand and so based upon that brand, it's gonna choose certain products based upon its constitution.
• 47:15
  Kwaku Aning: Open AI is gonna choose certain things.
• 47:17
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 47:17
  Kwaku Aning: Based upon its answers, you know, especially because they're putting advertising in.
• 47:21
  Kwaku Aning: So you know, it, you know, whoever advertises with them is going to align with the brand of open ai.
• 47:26
  Kwaku Aning: So the idea of brand in the age of AI is expanding.
• 47:30
  Kwaku Aning: To the AI agents, not to the people.
• 47:33
  Kwaku Aning: The story's being told by the agents.
• 47:34
  Kwaku Aning: And then people just follow that.
• 47:36
  Kwaku Aning: And the way that, like, uh, you buy an Apple product because Apple's a brand.
• 47:39
  Kwaku Aning: So it's like, all right, this is the iPhone.
• 47:41
  Kwaku Aning: I'm not, I'm not measuring my, that phone against the Samsung phone.
• 47:45
  Kwaku Aning: It's just like, I need a new phone.
• 47:47
  Kwaku Aning: I'm in the Apple lane.
• 47:48
  Kwaku Aning: This is what I'm going to do.
• 47:51
  Kwaku Aning: You know, yeah.
• 47:52
  Kwaku Aning: I
• 47:52
  Dan Blumberg: mean, apple's a lot of things, but they, but they, apple makes you feel something, right?
• 47:56
  Dan Blumberg: They make you feel something still.
• 47:58
  Dan Blumberg: That's, that's brand, that's story.
• 47:59
  Dan Blumberg: I mean, they did fame.
• 48:00
  Dan Blumberg: I don't know.
• 48:00
  Dan Blumberg: I don't know about still, I, I, I, this is very dated still, but like I'm, I'm remembering the subway ads.
• 48:05
  Dan Blumberg: With the people with the iPod and the, like, you're wearing the, the iPod, uh, the white headphones right now.
• 48:11
  Dan Blumberg: Things Right, right.
• 48:12
  Dan Blumberg: With the back when they had a, a, a wire.
• 48:14
  Dan Blumberg: Right.
• 48:14
  Dan Blumberg: And you had the people dancing, right.
• 48:16
  Dan Blumberg: Um,
• 48:16
  Kwaku Aning: yeah.
• 48:17
  Dan Blumberg: Back when they, back when they like, were just like, everybody needs like a, a U2 album like in their iTunes, just because we told you so.
• 48:22
  Dan Blumberg: Back in that era.
• 48:23
  Kwaku Aning: Little weird, little weird.
• 48:24
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 48:24
  Kwaku Aning: I mean definitely people felt something about that.
• 48:28
  Kwaku Aning: Um.
• 48:29
  Kwaku Aning: Not the feeling they were going for.
• 48:30
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 48:31
  Kwaku Aning: Um,
• 48:32
  Dan Blumberg: that was the misfire, but the feeling of like, oh, like they're powering.
• 48:35
  Dan Blumberg: They're like the soundtrack to my life.
• 48:37
  Dan Blumberg: Yes, yes.
• 48:38
  Dan Blumberg: I can get, I can get headphones anywhere, but like, no one else is gonna power the soundtrack to my life.
• 48:42
  Dan Blumberg: Right.
• 48:42
  Dan Blumberg: That was the kind of story that like, you know, their ads have always been famous for stuff like that.
• 48:46
  Kwaku Aning: All right.
• 48:47
  Dan Blumberg: Leveling
• 48:47
  Kwaku Aning: last.
• 48:48
  Kwaku Aning: Leveling up.
• 48:49
  Kwaku Aning: Leveling up.
• 48:50
  Kwaku Aning: Alright.
• 48:50
  Kwaku Aning: Last one.
• 48:52
  Kwaku Aning: This is just based upon our conversation constitutions for do.dot.
• 48:57
  Kwaku Aning: Oh, meaning, so my children?
• 49:02
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 49:05
  Kwaku Aning: Constitutions for dot, dot, dot.
• 49:07
  Kwaku Aning: So it could be constitutions for other LLMs.
• 49:10
  Kwaku Aning: It could be constitutions for tech leaders or even countries that we pay attention to.
• 49:17
  Kwaku Aning: No, I think,
• 49:18
  Dan Blumberg: actually, actually, no.
• 49:18
  Dan Blumberg: What?
• 49:19
  Dan Blumberg: You know what?
• 49:19
  Dan Blumberg: It'll be.
• 49:21
  Dan Blumberg: It's gonna be my, my agent.
• 49:23
  Dan Blumberg: Before
• 49:23
  Kwaku Aning: you
• 49:23
  go
• 49:24
  Kwaku Aning: there, before you go there.
• 49:25
  Kwaku Aning: Past, present, or future.
• 49:27
  Kwaku Aning: Oh, future.
• 49:28
  Kwaku Aning: I, my, my, uh, you're gonna give your,
• 49:32
  Dan Blumberg: like, like Claude has, its two hours to read long constitution.
• 49:37
  Dan Blumberg: We're gonna create these things for our own agents.
• 49:40
  Dan Blumberg: Hey, when you do, I'll just stick with travel.
• 49:41
  Dan Blumberg: Hey, when you do travel research for me, these are the things that I like.
• 49:45
  Dan Blumberg: These are the things I don't like.
• 49:46
  Dan Blumberg: I don't want you to recommend things to me that are X, Y, Z.
• 49:49
  Dan Blumberg: You know, like I can and, and to get like really recursive about it, you know, who we're gonna ask to write these constitutions.
• 49:56
  Dan Blumberg: Fucking Claude and like Gemini, like, we're not gonna write these things ourselves.
• 49:59
  Dan Blumberg: We'll read them we'll, like refine them, but like, we're not gonna write, no one's gonna sit down and write this thing.
• 50:03
  Dan Blumberg: Like, I mean, I, philanthropic has a philosopher on, on standby, but I don't, you know,
• 50:08
  Kwaku Aning: oh, I would, I would, I would push it in a different direction we're, we will ask it to.
• 50:14
  Kwaku Aning: Uh, assemble it based upon choices that we've made with it, but it will also edit it.
• 50:19
  Kwaku Aning: So this is me being detailed.
• 50:21
  Kwaku Aning: You know, we won't say, Hey, write a constitution for me.
• 50:23
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 50:23
  Kwaku Aning: Because we'll look at it and be like, this is crap.
• 50:25
  Kwaku Aning: But based upon my interactions, you know, and the things that I've bought and blah, blah, blah, the places that I've traveled, what would, uh, yeah.
• 50:31
  Kwaku Aning: What would my constitution be?
• 50:33
  Dan Blumberg: The, the, yeah, and the, and that's the best way to use these things.
• 50:36
  Dan Blumberg: You know, if people haven't used it this much, way that much is like, ask me questions, like make the, make the chat bot ask you questions, right?
• 50:45
  Dan Blumberg: Not just, not just gimme an output.
• 50:46
  Dan Blumberg: Like, so interview me.
• 50:48
  Dan Blumberg: So if I want a constitution, like interview me, like, what's important to you?
• 50:51
  Dan Blumberg: Like, like ask me 10 questions, ask me 20 questions.
• 50:54
  Dan Blumberg: Um, and then at the end of it, then, then write something.
• 50:57
  Dan Blumberg: Are you creating?
• 50:58
  Dan Blumberg: Are you creating a
• 50:58
  Kwaku Aning: challenge?
• 50:58
  Dan Blumberg: One of the most effective ways?
• 51:00
  Dan Blumberg: Sure.
• 51:00
  Kwaku Aning: Are you creating a challenge for us right now?
• 51:01
  Kwaku Aning: Let, should we do this?
• 51:02
  Kwaku Aning: We could do this because you, you put something in the slack about writing a content.
• 51:05
  Kwaku Aning: We didn't talk about this.
• 51:06
  Kwaku Aning: I love to bring things up that you message me about weeks ago and I never respond to.
• 51:12
  Kwaku Aning: And then when we start recording, then I give you my opinion.
• 51:15
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah, yeah.
• 51:15
  Kwaku Aning: So this, this is an example of that.
• 51:17
  Kwaku Aning: You're like, oh, we should each write a constitution.
• 51:20
  Kwaku Aning: And I remember I was reading it, I was in the middle of something else.
• 51:22
  Kwaku Aning: I was like.
• 51:23
  Kwaku Aning: God, that seems like a lot of work.
• 51:24
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 51:25
  Kwaku Aning: For, you know,
• 51:26
  Dan Blumberg: can we get fife and drums to be playing underneath this section here?
• 51:34
  Dan Blumberg: I'm feeling very, and I'm in the Hudson Valley, like George Washington.
• 51:37
  Dan Blumberg: Literally did.
• 51:38
  Dan Blumberg: Washington's headquarters are like 15 minutes that way.
• 51:41
  Dan Blumberg: I'm pointing above the camera, like across the Hudson River from me.
• 51:44
  Dan Blumberg: So like, I'm feeling very, you know, triangular hat kind of, uh, feeling right now.
• 51:49
  Kwaku Aning: I like how your description is when I point above the camera.
• 51:52
  Kwaku Aning: That's towards the Hudson.
• 51:53
  Kwaku Aning: Like anyone,
• 51:54
  Dan Blumberg: you know.
• 51:54
  Dan Blumberg: Well West Point's that way.
• 51:55
  Dan Blumberg: West point's that way.
• 51:56
  Dan Blumberg: Newburgh, which is where the headquarters were.
• 51:57
  Dan Blumberg: That's that way.
• 51:58
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah.
• 51:58
  Kwaku Aning: Yeah.
• 51:59
  Kwaku Aning: Okay.
• 51:59
  Dan Blumberg: Your house, you grew up that way.
• 52:01
  Dan Blumberg: Yeah,
• 52:01
  Kwaku Aning: I did.
• 52:01
  Kwaku Aning: Well, yeah.
• 52:02
  Kwaku Aning: Okay.
• 52:02
  Kwaku Aning: But towards the Hudson but south.
• 52:04
  Kwaku Aning: All right.
• 52:04
  Kwaku Aning: Um, so should we do a, should we do an episode where we come in with the constitutions that Claude has made for us?
• 52:13
  Kwaku Aning: And if you really wanna be fancy.
• 52:14
  Kwaku Aning: If we really want, I
• 52:15
  Dan Blumberg: think that could be next week.
• 52:16
  Dan Blumberg: Alright, let's work on that.
• 52:17
  Dan Blumberg: I think that's a good, that's a good place to stop.
• 52:19
  Dan Blumberg: That's a, that's a cl what a what a cliffhanger.
• 52:21
  Dan Blumberg: If there ever was one.
• 52:22
  Dan Blumberg: I mean, people can't wait to tune in to hear our constitution next week.
• 52:25
  Dan Blumberg: Oh my God.
• 52:26
  Kwaku Aning: I think that's a lot of futuring right there that we just did at the end.
• 52:30
  Kwaku Aning: I think that, I think that is, and then we can go find out over the weekend or people come back.
• 52:35
  Kwaku Aning: Always find out too much fun.
• 52:36
  Kwaku Aning: I'm, I'm gonna where, which way was West Point again?
• 52:38
  Kwaku Aning: I'm gonna head in that direction.
• 52:39
  Kwaku Aning: Was it over the microphone or it's.
• 52:42
  Kwaku Aning: It's that way.
• 52:42
  Kwaku Aning: Okay.
• 52:43
  Dan Blumberg: West Point's a little diagonal that way.
• 52:45
  Dan Blumberg: Newburgh, which is where his headquarters were, is that way.
• 52:47
  Dan Blumberg: Benedict Arnold betrayed the army just like 10 miles south of me.
• 52:50
  Dan Blumberg: Mm-hmm.
• 52:51
  Dan Blumberg: Fife and drums, man.
• 52:52
  Dan Blumberg: We need fi and drums.
• 52:53
  Kwaku Aning: Fife and drums.
• 52:54
  Kwaku Aning: Dan, thank you for allowing me to feature around and find out with you.
• 52:59
  Dan Blumberg: You bet.
• 53:00
  Dan Blumberg: Always.
• 53:00
  Kwaku Aning: Alright buddy.
• 53:03
  Dan Blumberg: Hope that was fun for you.
• 53:04
  Dan Blumberg: If you've made it this far, I'm gonna guess that it was.
• 53:06
  Dan Blumberg: Please share this episode with a friend.
• 53:08
  Dan Blumberg: This is truly the way that podcasts grow.
• 53:11
  Dan Blumberg: You can send them to future around.com.
• 53:13
  Dan Blumberg: That's also where you can sign up for the show's newsletter.
• 53:15
  Dan Blumberg: Again, that's future around.com.