Latest / The Bill Handel Show / California Drawing Venture Capitalists | AI Actress Tilly Norwood’s Film Debut
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
- 0:04Speaker 1: six fortyfi AM six forty Bill Handle on a Monday morning,
- 0:13Speaker 1: July the thirteenth. Some of the stories we're looking at
- 0:16Speaker 1: the Cold War in Iran. Well, it's heating up. The
- 0:21Speaker 1: ceasefire seems to be ceasing, and the fire seems to
- 0:25Speaker 1: be increasing. Senator miss McConnell, Well, we have a picture
- 0:29Speaker 1: of him. He is looking a little worse for wear,
- 0:34Speaker 1: but it seems like he's going to be okay. He
- 0:37Speaker 1: had a fall and a concussion, but didn't have any
- 0:41Speaker 1: lasting injuries. And Lindsey Graham, Senator Lizzie Graham, one of
- 0:47Speaker 1: the most well known senators, has died. Now I'm going
- 0:51Speaker 1: to throw something at you which I have said before
- 0:55Speaker 1: and we've talked about it. The billionaire exodus from California. Yeah,
- 1:01Speaker 1: money leaving California, businesses leaving California. Regulation way too high,
- 1:10Speaker 1: taxes way too high, very difficult place to do business. Okay,
- 1:16Speaker 1: how about this. It's pulled in more than three hundred
- 1:20Speaker 1: and thirty five billion dollars in venture capital last year,
- 1:26Speaker 1: New York ten times less worth ten times more than
- 1:32Speaker 1: New York. How is that possible? Nearly eight billion dollars
- 1:39Speaker 1: and invested across two hundred and seven deals, led by
- 1:42Speaker 1: space and defense firms. But ninety percent of the new
- 1:47Speaker 1: money is chasing AI giants anthropic open AI, leaving non
- 1:53Speaker 1: startups AI startups smaller funds. They just don't have enough.
- 1:58Speaker 1: That's really what it's about. Are these AI companies, even
- 2:03Speaker 1: startups that have attracted so much money, unpreceded pile of
- 2:08Speaker 1: capital coming in. Why is that? Is it true that
- 2:14Speaker 1: we are over regulated, overtax You bet it is. But
- 2:20Speaker 1: the deep pool of talent, rich investors, tech infrastructure that
- 2:24Speaker 1: turns it around makes it ground zero for the AI
- 2:27Speaker 1: intelligence explosion. La San Diego, La, including Orange County, has
- 2:35Speaker 1: just an incredibly strong tech market and the infrastructure that's needed,
- 2:41Speaker 1: and a campaign for new tax billionaires have convinced some
- 2:45Speaker 1: ultra rich residents to shift other states. Texas does a
- 2:49Speaker 1: lot of that you have? Florida does a lot of that?
- 2:52Speaker 1: You have? Ohio? Come to Ohio, Come to Texas well.
- 2:56Speaker 1: The reality is, even though we have high property, high
- 3:00Speaker 1: energy costs, anti business regime, you know what, it's that
- 3:07Speaker 1: top talent and it's only here for the most part.
- 3:11Speaker 1: In California, now as rotten as everything is. The state's
- 3:16Speaker 1: economy grew five percent last year. That's huge, to a
- 3:19Speaker 1: record four point twenty five trillion dollars. We are number
- 3:24Speaker 1: four in the world economy the California it's it's a
- 3:33Speaker 1: monetary policy and revenue and income four point two five
- 3:39Speaker 1: trillion dollars more than every other country other than the US,
- 3:44Speaker 1: China and Germany, home to nearly four hundred billion dollar startups.
- 3:51Speaker 1: It's the go to address for space and defense tech companies.
- 3:56Speaker 1: I mean, it is just crazy. Three months that end
- 4:00Speaker 1: in June, California companies raised over one hundred billion dollars
- 4:04Speaker 1: in venture capital. Three companies Anthropic Project Prometheus, which is
- 4:10Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos Anderill Industries picked up seventy five percent of
- 4:15Speaker 1: that amount. Anthropic alone raised sixty five billion dollars, which
- 4:20Speaker 1: values the company at nearly a trillion dollars. Which none
- 4:25Speaker 1: of these companies it makes sense with evaluation, none of them.
- 4:28Speaker 1: And there is a big issue as to with the
- 4:32Speaker 1: amount of money being thrown and invested in AI by
- 4:36Speaker 1: the hundreds of billions of dollars, does it pay well?
- 4:43Speaker 1: These companies and investors are playing the long game on
- 4:45Speaker 1: this one. This is not going to be your traditional
- 4:49Speaker 1: businesses to you have a year of burning money and
- 4:53Speaker 1: then all of a sudden it starts turning a profit.
- 4:57Speaker 1: LA Southern California ranked only to Silicon Valley and New
- 5:01Speaker 1: York actually, but New York's way way down. Bobby Franklin,
- 5:06Speaker 1: president of the National Venture Capital Association industry group, says
- 5:12Speaker 1: investment activity is actually picking up. Fundraising is improving. Early
- 5:19Speaker 1: signs that the IPO market is coming up. Early signs,
- 5:24Speaker 1: but it seems to be right now. AI well, AI
- 5:29Speaker 1: in aerospace, defense companies also are up. You have industrial parts, software, consulting,
- 5:36Speaker 1: life sciences, other sectors in Southern California attracted venture money,
- 5:43Speaker 1: but as I said, nearly ninety percent went to AI
- 5:45Speaker 1: firms ninety percent. Last year it was sixty five percent.
- 5:52Speaker 1: And according to Stanford University in a study, if you're
- 5:57Speaker 1: a tech company and you're not an AI company, it's
- 6:01Speaker 1: going to be very, very difficult to raise money. Smaller
- 6:08Speaker 1: middle of the road venture funds without large AI holdings
- 6:12Speaker 1: are just struggling to get the money, struggling to get
- 6:15Speaker 1: venture capital. And you can't build a company, particularly a
- 6:18Speaker 1: tech company, without venture capital. It just doesn't exist. It's
- 6:21Speaker 1: actually hard to build any company that grows rapidly without
- 6:26Speaker 1: venture capital. You just need it. You need it for infrastructure,
- 6:30Speaker 1: you need it for marketing, you need it for R
- 6:32Speaker 1: and D. Okay, Now, of course we've all been to
- 6:37Speaker 1: Costco and we all know what Costco is about in
- 6:42Speaker 1: a big way. Not only the great prices, of course,
- 6:44Speaker 1: the membership cup club where you pay money to become
- 6:48Speaker 1: a member. One hundred and forty five million people are members,
- 6:53Speaker 1: and this is just straight money in their pockets. So
- 6:58Speaker 1: how does Costco sell more than any other food purveyor
- 7:03Speaker 1: out there? Not only the samples I mean, excuse me,
- 7:06Speaker 1: not only the discounts you get because of the way
- 7:10Speaker 1: they produce their retailing model a big box store. No
- 7:17Speaker 1: displays other than there's your one product up there and
- 7:21Speaker 1: then the price. Nope, here's how it works. It's mojo
- 7:26Speaker 1: and that is samples, the free samples virtually everything in
- 7:31Speaker 1: the food part of the store. And people love free food.
- 7:37Speaker 1: Costco loves free food. Why is that because Costco makes
- 7:42Speaker 1: a fortune from free food. Now, you would think that
- 7:46Speaker 1: free food those samples would increase sales a little bit.
- 7:51Speaker 1: They are astronomical sales. And the people. I love the
- 7:55Speaker 1: people that give the samples. First of all, it's all
- 7:58Speaker 1: ages now, and now they have old people that are
- 8:00Speaker 1: about to die, which they didn't have before. They have
- 8:02Speaker 1: people that don't speak a word of English. That is
- 8:06Speaker 1: fairly new. And it runs all the way from people
- 8:08Speaker 1: who just don't care. I mean, they're just there putting
- 8:11Speaker 1: the samples up to carnival barkers who are really into it.
- 8:17Speaker 2: Chicken nuggets, Get your chicken nuggets here, free sample of
- 8:20Speaker 2: chicken nuggets.
- 8:23Speaker 1: So why does it work so much? And this has
- 8:29Speaker 1: become legion in terms of their influencers. There are people
- 8:35Speaker 1: that go around every day a couple things about Costco
- 8:39Speaker 1: that are horrible about the samples at my Costco. It's
- 8:43Speaker 1: the Korean ladies that will literally push you out of
- 8:46Speaker 1: the way and tackle you. And then you have the
- 8:50Speaker 1: long lines people just waiting for those samples to come
- 8:54Speaker 1: out of that little toaster oven. And sometimes there are
- 8:58Speaker 1: seven or eight people, sometimes there's ten people. And you
- 9:02Speaker 1: come back and you run out and you come back
- 9:04Speaker 1: and we're gonna be ready in ten minutes.
- 9:07Speaker 2: Now.
- 9:07Speaker 1: Neil is a Costco aficionado and has studied Costco. So Costco, well,
- 9:13Speaker 1: you know, chicken nuggets are a big deal, Burritos are
- 9:16Speaker 1: a big deal. People line up to those. Those little
- 9:20Speaker 1: energy drinks and health drinks. Nobody lines up for those. Nobody.
- 9:27Speaker 3: You're right the vast majority of the time, you don't
- 9:31Speaker 3: when Max was small that we would try like baby
- 9:36Speaker 3: stuff or things like that snacks for him.
- 9:39Speaker 4: But think about it this way.
- 9:41Speaker 3: I'm gonna guess with my wife and me, probably six
- 9:50Speaker 3: or seven out of ten times, if we try something
- 9:54Speaker 3: hot or warm and we like it, we.
- 9:56Speaker 1: Buy It's that's the entire issue.
- 10:00Speaker 3: Something about getting it warm. You're probably they're a little hungry.
- 10:03Speaker 3: You're gnauching while you're shopping, and I think it keeps
- 10:07Speaker 3: people mosing around. They put them in different locations. It's
- 10:11Speaker 3: just nothing better than sampling something and going, I really
- 10:16Speaker 3: like that.
- 10:16Speaker 4: I'm going to bring that home.
- 10:18Speaker 1: A couple things. Costco when it gave up our Hebrew
- 10:21Speaker 1: National hot dogs, when they give up their chiros, it
- 10:24Speaker 1: was the end of the world for a lot of us.
- 10:27Speaker 4: I don't see those choices personally, I don't.
- 10:30Speaker 1: Oh my god, they were fabulous. Also, one of the
- 10:33Speaker 1: big issues in which Costco shoppers are devastated is the
- 10:36Speaker 1: sample stopped during COVID. Oh my god, the human.
- 10:41Speaker 4: Er how much they lost during that period.
- 10:44Speaker 1: It just was of that. Yeah, here's what studies actually,
- 10:49Speaker 1: their studies about this handouts thrill shoppers keep coming back
- 10:55Speaker 1: for more. And as you said, something when you taste it,
- 10:58Speaker 1: and I've done this by it. But here's what normally
- 11:01Speaker 1: happens is I've thrown away Costco food, which is hard
- 11:05Speaker 1: to believe, and that is I'll take a sample of
- 11:08Speaker 1: something and it tastes pretty good, so I will buy it,
- 11:12Speaker 1: and when it gets home, I go ahead and heat
- 11:16Speaker 1: it up, prepare it, and it just doesn't taste as good.
- 11:21Speaker 1: It just doesn't work for me. The samples, there are
- 11:24Speaker 1: something about samples that put it on another level when people.
- 11:29Speaker 5: Buy for you because they're free. Yeah, that's true, you
- 11:33Speaker 5: taste the free yep. Also with Costco, it's not just
- 11:40Speaker 5: goosing sales. Free samples are actually driving more annual fees.
- 11:48Speaker 1: They did a study. Annual fees go up when they
- 11:52Speaker 1: do samples because they compared when the samples go down,
- 11:58Speaker 1: annual membership go down. And also you know that first
- 12:03Speaker 1: impression that tastes good, Well, sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't.
- 12:08Speaker 1: Now Costco itself doesn't do it. Demonstration people don't work
- 12:12Speaker 1: for Costco who do this. One of the companies is
- 12:17Speaker 1: Club Demonstration services that hire people, and if you look
- 12:22Speaker 1: at them, I think the people that are hired are
- 12:24Speaker 1: either special needs, unintelligible in terms of language, so old
- 12:31Speaker 1: that they're falling apart. That tends to be the people
- 12:35Speaker 1: who do the sampling certainly not. And you know what,
- 12:41Speaker 1: even though it costs, well, it really doesn't cost because
- 12:47Speaker 1: the amount of money that Costco makes by having those
- 12:50Speaker 1: free samples, and it brings out the worst of pizza
- 12:55Speaker 1: people too, especially with things like pizza rolls. Seems like
- 13:00Speaker 1: it's all you can eat buffet. A few names for
- 13:05Speaker 1: these people that go around Costco and literally for hours.
- 13:09Speaker 1: Then I'll do that free samples here, I'll go back
- 13:12Speaker 1: three four times for the same sample. And I'm embarrassed
- 13:16Speaker 1: to do that, so I turned my shirt inside out.
- 13:19Speaker 1: I will sneak up and they don't care.
- 13:23Speaker 4: You know, these people don't with the story mustache.
- 13:27Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm not alone. You know what they call
- 13:29Speaker 1: what Costco people call these people locusts, jackals, zombies, trash
- 13:34Speaker 1: pandas I like that vultures. Costco samples. It's a world
- 13:44Speaker 1: onto itself. Okay, Now, Tillie Norwood is an actress sort of,
- 13:53Speaker 1: this is a I in a very interesting way. She
- 13:57Speaker 1: is or it's going to be the star of a movie.
- 14:03Speaker 1: And filmmakers and audiences have first of all asked who
- 14:08Speaker 1: deserves the credit for it? And what is she? Well,
- 14:11Speaker 1: she's certainly a character, but she's an AI generated character.
- 14:16Speaker 1: And boy, that's changed everything around about acting artistry. Now
- 14:21Speaker 1: you know what the word actor means. It's you know,
- 14:24Speaker 1: actors or actors, and they're people. Well, Tilly Norwood is not.
- 14:31Speaker 1: She's basically or it's basically codes and pixels. And last
- 14:37Speaker 1: week's an announcement that Tilly would star in this feature
- 14:41Speaker 1: film called Misaligned sparked once again the debate about AI's
- 14:46Speaker 1: impact on Hollywood jobs and something even more basic, What
- 14:50Speaker 1: is Tilly? Is it a she? Is it?
- 14:54Speaker 2: Or her?
- 14:54Speaker 1: Is it an it? And you have a reader's comments
- 14:58Speaker 1: on the Times came in a me One urged journalists
- 15:02Speaker 1: to stop writing about this thing like it's a person.
- 15:04Speaker 1: Another said, how is this not just an animated film?
- 15:08Speaker 1: A third objected, She's not an AI actor, she's an
- 15:11Speaker 1: AI software program. Now a quick word. No one's ever
- 15:16Speaker 1: confused Woody from Toy Story right with the voice of
- 15:19Speaker 1: Tom Hanks. The characters themselves are well in this case, characters,
- 15:29Speaker 1: not animated characters. Do they deserve acting awards? And till
- 15:33Speaker 1: he is testing whether these assumptions are holding? Is this
- 15:39Speaker 1: a performance? The gal who started this, a woman who
- 15:42Speaker 1: started this, Elaine vander Velden Right, Elaine vanderveld got her
- 15:48Speaker 1: start she was a filmmaker, moved into AI and she says,
- 15:51Speaker 1: I understand the fear. I had the same fear when
- 15:54Speaker 1: AI first came out. Now, this movie is set in
- 16:00Speaker 1: the Tilly Verse. It's a coming of age drama. The
- 16:05Speaker 1: feature follows Tilly, who is an Aianity. So it's about
- 16:08Speaker 1: an Aianity with no lived experience of its own that
- 16:13Speaker 1: gradually develops desires, ambitions, shame as it learns to be human.
- 16:18Speaker 1: So it's about the very question of what Tilly is.
- 16:22Speaker 1: But how about when Tilly becomes a superhero or becomes
- 16:27Speaker 1: someone in the hospital who is dying, who becomes any
- 16:32Speaker 1: performance out there transforms himself or herself without the technology
- 16:40Speaker 1: that is used from real actor to some kind of
- 16:45Speaker 1: a monster. This is someone who is one hundred percent
- 16:49Speaker 1: not a person now right now? Well, the technology is
- 16:57Speaker 1: saying people have to deal with this, people have to create.
- 17:00Speaker 1: But what's AI going to do? AI is going to
- 17:06Speaker 1: expand on Tilly? Now? Real emotions? Here is the issue.
- 17:13Speaker 1: Can an AI generated character really produce real emotions as
- 17:20Speaker 1: far as looking like a person? Man, sometimes you can't tell, Neil,
- 17:26Speaker 1: you're really into tech. How soon do you think that
- 17:29Speaker 1: people will not be able to tell at all who
- 17:33Speaker 1: is real and who is not.
- 17:35Speaker 3: I think they have models currently that are at that place.
- 17:38Speaker 3: We just haven't seen them yet. It's moving so quickly
- 17:40Speaker 3: and they have kind of parsing out how we get it,
- 17:45Speaker 3: and we're seeing it, you know, slowly. But they said
- 17:48Speaker 3: that they asked the same questions with animation. Once computer
- 17:52Speaker 3: animation came into the field, the question was would it
- 17:58Speaker 3: be real enough? Could you strike emotions? And the first
- 18:03Speaker 3: transition of that I think was probably Jurassic Park when
- 18:07Speaker 3: they went with the digital dinosaurs dinosaurs instead of stop
- 18:10Speaker 3: motion like raping Friehausen.
- 18:14Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 18:16Speaker 1: Anyway, the folks that sag after are going completely nuts
- 18:20Speaker 1: as well as they should, because these digital figures are
- 18:26Speaker 1: as you say, they're going to be real We did
- 18:29Speaker 1: a segment on this show where I was not here.
- 18:37Speaker 1: It was a digital rendition of my voice. It was
- 18:41Speaker 1: pretty good, but you could tell that it was not perfect.
- 18:45Speaker 1: But these programs learn and if we kept on going
- 18:49Speaker 1: with that, it would get better and better. And keep
- 18:51Speaker 1: in mind, we have over thirty years of my voice,
- 18:58Speaker 1: my inflection, my views, I mean everything. If you've been
- 19:04Speaker 1: listening at all, you know how I talk, you know
- 19:07Speaker 1: my inflection, you know how depraved I am, you know
- 19:10Speaker 1: how bad my puns are. AI is going to be
- 19:14Speaker 1: able to produce me where they don't have to pay me.
- 19:18Speaker 1: It'll just be a figure in a.
- 19:21Speaker 3: Computer once they can figure out how to do you know,
- 19:25Speaker 3: simple malaprops or spit when they talk or chew.
- 19:30Speaker 4: You're out of a.
- 19:31Speaker 1: Job, yeah, I mean, we're all out of jobs. I
- 19:34Speaker 1: think the first one to go is Amy with the
- 19:38Speaker 1: News only Amy, because you do the news and you
- 19:42Speaker 1: don't put a lot of emotion. You don't put a
- 19:44Speaker 1: lot of you in there in terms of your views
- 19:48Speaker 1: of the world. Because you do news and.
- 19:50Speaker 4: I also have a little show called wake Up Call.
- 19:54Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're interviewing people. Okay, let me put it
- 19:57Speaker 1: this way. You're right during wake up call. Well, let
- 19:59Speaker 1: me throw upthing at you. A guest that the producer
- 20:04Speaker 1: creates and has a topic, let's talk about weather, right,
- 20:09Speaker 1: weather changes in weather, climate change, and then just throws
- 20:13Speaker 1: it into AI. There's Amy asking about that question, and
- 20:19Speaker 1: there is the AI weather person answering that question, even
- 20:22Speaker 1: talking about what's going on right now. Well, maybe you're done.
- 20:26Speaker 3: It's not going to happen for now because we're guaranteed
- 20:28Speaker 3: human Yeah promos on iHeartRadio.
- 20:31Speaker 1: Well, yeah, by contract. But when does AI become a contract?
- 20:35Speaker 1: So anyway, you're finished. First, You're welcome. Kono is finished
- 20:40Speaker 1: real first, Yeah, probably.
- 20:42Speaker 4: Cono physical touch AI.
- 20:44Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I'm sorry. AI can't control a board. You're
- 20:48Speaker 1: absolutely right. They can't AI control me. That's my entire
- 20:55Speaker 1: point when it comes to Will. AI not only can
- 20:59Speaker 1: do everything that Will does, but it doesn't care. You
- 21:02Speaker 1: don't know, I know AI. Okay. We end the show
- 21:07Speaker 1: with a story about California wolves. California wolves, they were
- 21:12Speaker 1: almost extinct. Matter of fact, I think they weren't in
- 21:15Speaker 1: California for years and years, and it used to be
- 21:17Speaker 1: back in the day. I'm talking about the early days
- 21:20Speaker 1: wolf pelts. You would sell it a wolf pelt and
- 21:23Speaker 1: get a lot of money because they were attacking sheeps
- 21:25Speaker 1: and chickens and cows. Well, guess what they're doing. They're
- 21:29Speaker 1: attacking cows. And now you've got farmers, cattle farmers are saying, Nope,
- 21:40Speaker 1: we can't do this anymore. Well, researchers that you see
- 21:43Speaker 1: Davis found that cattle DNA in seventy two percent of
- 21:47Speaker 1: wolf scat samples as wolf crap, and mule deer, which
- 21:54Speaker 1: is the natural prey in California, in forty five percent
- 21:57Speaker 1: of samples versus seventy two percent. Wow. Well, wolves are
- 22:03Speaker 1: becoming more dependent on cattle. Why because it's much easier
- 22:07Speaker 1: to feed on slow moving, fatty cows. Then go after
- 22:12Speaker 1: the dwindling deer population because mule deers move at a
- 22:16Speaker 1: pretty good clip cows don't. And so wolves are back
- 22:23Speaker 1: and they're actually starting to euthanize wolves, and the environmentalists
- 22:27Speaker 1: are going completely crazy. And also keep in mind, I'd
- 22:30Speaker 1: love to see a study how many environmentalists are vegans,
- 22:34Speaker 1: and I'll bet you there's a whole lot of them.
- 22:38Speaker 1: They hate cows. And by the way, this study doesn't
- 22:40Speaker 1: show this, but it is a real problem. So the
- 22:45Speaker 1: gray wolves are back. They're eating your steak, and they're
- 22:50Speaker 1: back to wolf pelts are going to be sold for
- 22:54Speaker 1: a lot of money. All right, we're done. That's it.
- 22:58Speaker 1: Amy comes back and will comes back tomorrow with a
- 23:02Speaker 1: wake up call, which is probably not going to be
- 23:04Speaker 1: very long until AI kicks in. Neil and I join
- 23:08Speaker 1: at six to nine Cono, whose job definitely is going
- 23:13Speaker 1: to be replaced by Ai and probably will be the
- 23:17Speaker 1: last man standing in choosing topics. The rest of us
- 23:22Speaker 1: not so much. So stay tuned because we're not going
- 23:26Speaker 1: to be here very long. I just want to let
- 23:28Speaker 1: you know. No, Gary and Shannon also to be replaced.
- 23:32Speaker 2: What.
- 23:33Speaker 3: No, that's Andy Reesemeyer right there. I can tell by
- 23:36Speaker 3: the hair. No one has hair like that. He's like
- 23:39Speaker 3: a young Conan O'Brien.
- 23:43Speaker 1: Oh I know Andy.
- 23:44Speaker 2: I thought I.
- 23:46Speaker 1: Thought it was weird because Ann normally sits there and
- 23:49Speaker 1: Andy doesn't look anything like Ann. No, just on the weekends.
- 23:53Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a lot of fun, expensive but fun but fun.
- 23:57Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, we're done, guys, Gary and Shannon up next
- 24:01Speaker 1: tomorrow morning. We do this all over again. Kfi am
- 24:05Speaker 1: six point. You've been listening to the Bill handle show.
- 24:08Speaker 2: Catch my Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
- 24:12Speaker 2: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app