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Vibe Coding is BS w/ Charlie Meyer | Better Offline

By Better Offline

Summary

## Key takeaways - **Vibe Coding is Often Demoware**: Vibe coding, defined as software that works well during a demo but fails in day-to-day use, is often just demoware. AI tutors and tools that generate dashboards are examples of this, as they may not function as intended when used by actual users. [01:06], [01:14] - **Replet's AI Shift Alienated Educators**: Replet, once a beloved online IDE for teaching coding, alienated its user base by enabling AI autocomplete for students without an opt-out. This change, implemented without clear communication, led to inflated grades and frustration among teachers. [02:43], [05:31] - **AI Coding Platforms Lack Real-World Utility**: Many AI coding platforms, like Replit and Lovable, are sold as 'vibe coding' solutions, but their actual utility is limited. Users often spend money on these platforms only to find they don't deliver functional software, with the common defense being a 'skill issue' on the user's part. [04:36], [11:00] - **Scaling Law Hype Outpaced AI Progress**: The excitement around AI, particularly with scaling laws suggesting exponential performance gains from larger models, created a bubble. However, the anticipated breakthroughs, like GPT-5, have shown only marginal improvements, indicating the freight train of progress may have ended. [31:35], [35:30] - **AI's Promise of Automation Falls Short**: Despite promises of automating tasks, AI often fails to deliver. Examples include AI recommending faulty software like Descript for audio editing or accounting software making frequent categorization errors, highlighting that AI-driven automation is not yet reliable. [25:36], [49:34]

Topics Covered

  • Is AI Software Just "Demoware" That Fails Daily?
  • Is "Vibe Coding" a Fraudulent Lie?
  • Is AI's High Cost Worth Its Marginal Utility?
  • Does AI's "You Got This" Message Annoy You?
  • Why Did AI Scaling Laws Fail After GPT-4?

Full Transcript

Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm

your host, Ed Zitron.

We're here in the beautiful iHeart Radio

studios in New York City. And I've got a

guest, of course, Charlie Meyer, the

esteemed blogger and CEO of Pico.

Charlie, thank you for joining me.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So

yeah, you've you've gained some, I would

say, notoriety recently by making blogs

that go against the oinking of the hogs

of the valley, and I I think your

scaling laws piece was the one that

really got me going.

>> Uh yeah, so I I uh my blog gets some

love and mostly hate on HackerNews.

That's my distribution channel. And so

I'm trying to get off of that. We're

going to try and build like a newsletter

type thing. But yeah, I'll post on

Hacker News and every once in a while

I'll get something that blows up and

I'll get my uh get my haters in there.

So,

>> so what is it that's pissing them off?

>> Uh so like I had a post a few weeks back

that was on I called it LLMs or the

ultimate demoare, right?

>> And so I define demoware as software

that you make the software and it works

well in the 30 minutes that you're

showing it off to executives or

whoever's going to buy it, right?

>> And then it doesn't do the thing, right?

Right. It doesn't do the thing

dayto-day. And so I I listed some

examples and my startup's in edtech,

right? So we do, you know, and so like

that's always something that I pick on

is is I really hate AI tutors and we can

get into to that and and how that all

works. But um so I said, "Oh, I listed

out a few things that I thought were

demoware." So it's like, "Oh, vibe

coding that makes dashboards." You know,

it's an easy thing to pick on. And then

I said, "Uh uh, you know, AI uh tutors."

And I said, "Well, maybe the kid won't

want to talk to an AI tutor."

>> Yeah.

>> That was the critique I made, right? Is

like maybe they just don't want to talk

to him.

>> Yeah. won't want to talk to a person.

>> They want to maybe they want to have

like a teacher who is like in the

classroom.

>> Crazy idea.

>> Maybe.

>> Yeah. But did people not like that?

>> Well, yeah. So, some some people uh you

know, we can name names if we need to,

but I actually don't know how to

pronounce them. So, uh uh but anyway, so

people are in there and they're like,

you have no idea. Like, if you think

that AI can't tutor calculus, like you

have never even tried. It's like it's a

classic like you you're missing out.

like you somehow are completely missing

the point

>> and you know something's really good and

in innovative when the only defense of

it is you're a [ __ ]

>> you you ape

>> when you have never tried it and it's

like well what if I like have like what

if this is like actually the thing I

spend my time on is thinking about this

you're a non nonAI IDE right so a coding

environment

>> yeah yeah well and that yeah we got yeah

lots of that lots of that but like so

the software that I make uh bouncing

around a little bit here But Replet was

a is a company and so Replet

>> was a very loved by teachers IDE online

and their whole thing was like we teach

like we help you teach coding online

because it's a way for you to run Python

and Java and all your code online and

you can do it and you can do it on

Chromebooks and you can collaborate and

they had like teacher tools and they

sold the software to schools. I was a

teacher for a couple years. That's kind

of like my background as an engineer and

then a teacher and I used Replet and

it's awesome. And this was was this

before they used AI or

>> this was before they used AI. So I was

>> and what so Replet just for the

listeners right now Replet is an AI

powered coding environment that claims

to be able to vibe code software but

doesn't really but what did it used to

be?

>> So it used to be an excellent tool just

an absolutely fantastic tool. It was it

was just you go on you log on like

Google Docs for coding

>> right? So like you think okay well you

back in the day you'd have to download

Microsoft Word and whatever and that

sucks and you know it's it's great to

bring that online into the cloud and

they did that and they were like very

innovative they were kind of like first

to market of having like a very fully

featured online IDE and that is useful

for exactly one thing and that is useful

for teaching in schools right

>> because like you have kids and they have

$200 Chromebooks that the school bought

them and so you get Replet and like boom

I have a great way to teach computer

science now. That is fantastic.

>> And that's what it used to be before and

now it's just

>> and now it's Yeah,

>> it's So listeners, you probably heard me

mention Ripley in the past. It's one of

my least favorite, most favorite

companies. If you go on the Replet

Reddit, it's just the wallet inspector.

>> And so now that's kind of like I I I've

gotten rid of most of my like doom

scrolling places, but like this is not I

don't know what type of scrolling it is,

but like I go on our replet.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

>> And it's just so funny. It's just guy

being guy being like, "Yeah, spend

$1,500." It doesn't really work.

>> Yeah.

>> But but I think if I spend $5,000 more

it might

>> well that I mean people are like, "Okay,

well should I spend $5,000?" I mean, we

can we can be reasonable, Ed. We can

bring the numbers down to reality. It's

it's I spent $50, which for a person who

is got a bad software idea,

>> that's a that's a big waste of money.

and they're like, "Okay, well, it seems

like I might need to spend $250 more or

should I go on Fiverr?"

>> Yeah.

>> And then it's just people in Reddit. I

mean, it's Reddit, so they're just like

skill issue.

>> Well, that and also the people who are

like, "I too am running into this

problem."

>> And then a lot of that. Yeah. Where it's

like and but Replet just just for for

anyone on there on on Replet right now

like what do they do to teachers? So

teachers, they had a product for

teachers that worked. That was great.

That was well

>> teachers.

>> And on November something, 2023, this is

a big day for my business cuz this is

the only reason I have my business is to

replace

>> because they turned on AI autocomplete

for kids.

>> No way to shut it off.

>> Doesn't that defeat the purpose of

learning?

>> Yeah. So I I had a I have a small

YouTube channel with not, you know, a

million subscribers, but you know, I

talked to teachers on there and, you

know, we had a customer of of mine on

there and they were like, "Yeah, you

know, that year it just seemed like the

guy I he just like he missed the fact

that the AI got turned on. No one sent

him an announcement or an email or a

warning."

>> So all of his students were just

amazing.

>> They were just He was like, "Yeah,

everybody everybody everybody got an A

that semester like I wonder." And you

know,

>> did that actually So did students

actually end up getting great scores

because no one noticed the AI going?

Yeah, I mean it took depending on who

you if you're wandering around the

classroom looking at students and you

see them all tab completing like because

AI

>> and just for just for the listeners as

well Scott spell out. So with these AI

platforms you hit tab complete because

it's basically like auto correct coding.

>> Yeah. And so so like AI for what it's

worth, you know, we can be really

balanced podcast,

>> but AI can really well, it can solve

intro to computer science for ninth

grader problems with the incredible

accuracy.

>> Well, that's Cole Brown from the

Internet of Bugs. He said, "It makes the

easy things easier and the hard things

harder."

>> Yes. And And so Yeah. So if you need to,

if you're in ninth grade and you're

writing your first program, Yeah. you

can you can tab complete the whole thing

in one go. It'll oneshot it, Ed. That's

incredible. It'll oneshot your ninth

grade program.

>> It's this term that that term just for

listeners is like it means that you just

give it a problem and it solves it

correctly.

>> Yeah. So it's like count to 10

>> and the AI can count to 10

>> which is incredible. It's revolutionary.

>> But fun fun fact if you try and make

chat GPT count to a million it freaks

out. If you do the voice mode, Adam

Conover told me this one. If you go like

count to a million, it stops around 9 or

10 and then says should I continue and

it just won't do it. It's very funny. I

love living in the future.

>> But uh yeah, so so they they though they

turned on the AI and then they were like

we're not doing education and companies

have deprecated things.

>> Yeah. It happens. Usually not their main

product.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. So they I mean

there I'll tell you, you know, I'm a

indie developer, whatever. Like our

software does not make a ton of money

because there isn't that much money

selling an online IDE to schools.

There's money, but it's not a it's not a

billion dollar business. It's fine. I

don't

>> neither's replet, but

>> Well Well, yeah, but you know, You can't

raise on billions of valuation, right?

>> No. No. Saying, "Hey, we're, you know,

kids have Chromebooks and we're going

to, you know, charge $10 a student or

whatever." Like, you can't. Of course

that you're not going to raise a bill.

You're not, that's not a billion dollar

business.

>> No.

>> But the AI thing seems magical. And

then, you know, the vibe coding thing

happened and, you know, as soon as the

vibe coding stuff started happening,

they were like, "We're all in on this."

And they deleted. They deleted

everything. Deleted it.

>> They So, not just deprecated, right? So,

it's one thing to deprecate software.

>> And deprecate is when you stop

supporting it, right? You say it's it's

no longer supported and you put up a big

red scary banner on the top saying your

work is readon. You cannot create

anymore.

>> That is a really mean thing to do, but

it happens. Software changes. You know,

>> Replet for what it's worth to be nice

and fair to them. Like they have

investors and you know they're under the

gun to provide some returns

>> and so whatever the teacher thing isn't

going to make them a ton of money, but

they deleted the stuff which is wild.

And when you say the stuff, was this

like projects that schools had been

working on?

>> It was. So, a teacher says, "I'm going

to spend 2, three years putting in all

my curriculum, all these markdown files,

all this stuff, all these tests. I'm

going to configure all this stuff." No.

>> Deleted. Gone.

>> Monsters.

>> Deleted.

>> Actual monsters. And now,

>> but they but they sent the warning

email Ed.

>> Wow.

>> In July when are teachers online looking

at their work email in July?

>> Yeah. Classic classic big month for

teachers.

Well, for American teachers, yeah, it's

it's not a huge month. So, yeah. In

July, we say we're going to delete all

your stuff and then it's gone. And was

there any way to back it up?

>> Well, there was until they deleted it

all.

>> That's so cool.

>> It's awesome. So, they're an awesome

like if you're a a Replet uh developer,

you know, when when the next big thing

comes up and Replet may decide to delete

all your stuff.

>> Well, Replet, they launched uh agent 3.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> That was my favorite launch of a product

I've ever seen because uh I've mentioned

this on the show before, but they it's

like, oh, it's an autonomous coding

thing and it's just the digital Mr.

Bean. It's just like, why don't you go

off and build me a software thing? And

it just [ __ ] spends $100 and goes, I

don't know. You like this? I don't

[ __ ] care. And then they had to

release a thing where you could make it

think less. They had to like add tweaks

to it because it was so bad. It's in I

actually feel like, and I'm not putting

words in your mouth here, I feel like

vibe coding may be just fraud. I think

it's a fraud. I don't It should not be

legal to lie. Like because it is a

[ __ ] lie. So, so I will I'll defend

the vibe coder platforms out here. Okay.

But but but so the the defense No, I

mean so it is it's fraudulent, right? I

mean like if you say, "Hey, you don't

know how to code at all

>> and uh yeah, just sign on to this

website and I mean look at their

marketing page. I mean that's exactly

what I'm loading

with a with a nice blue iPhone air."

>> Oh yeah, beautiful blue.

>> I I have the I have the space black.

>> Hell yeah. The iPhone air rise up. It's

a great phone.

>> It's a great phone.

>> I'm I'm not Apple made me pay for it.

Yeah. Turn your ideas into apps. What

will you create? The possibilities are

endless. And then it's a fake prompt

that says, "Make me a business tool for

marketing teams that helps generate

professional business proposals." And

then add automated backup and recovery.

If I think if you asked Replet to do

that, it would cost $300 and nothing

would happen. I think it would just funk

out a line like barely functional code.

So I wrote a post on this and I was

excited to end I was I was excited to

end the post saying there has never been

a successful thing ever.

>> Unfortunately Replet has added a set of

case studies and I think that they use

and so they the case studies are we sold

to enterprises and we're going to do

prototypes of internal

>> dev tools or not dev not dev tools

internal like you know management

software for inside your back office

software. So they haven't had a case

study since what looks like August. And

one of them is how Zinus says $140,000

with Replet and it but it also cuts

development time by 50%.

>> But did so then the question is did the

person typing stuff into Replet did they

know how to code?

>> Exactly. See that's

>> because if they know how to code

whatever stuff it's not vibe coding

>> it's just you could have used cursory

you could have used wind serode

or what is it? What's the free one

Amazon's doing now?

>> Kuro, maybe.

>> Kira. And then there's the I like the

the one that came out from China and

everyone was like that's going to send

information to the Chinese. It's like

>> will it?

>> I don't know. But I don't think they're

going to your clone of Flappy Bird is

got to be taken up by

>> P. The the way that the word vibe coding

has the the meaning that it has today, I

believe, is you do not know how to code.

You type prompt and you get

>> app out. And I I'm not gonna dox this

person because they were nice to me

once right?

>> But like there's a person online like

they just do like, "Oh, here's 100 days

of AI and I'm gonna make a fully

functional software as a service company

fully and I don't know how to code." And

then you look at this person and they're

typing in the prompts and it's like they

clearly have like a pretty strong

technical background and then the thing

still doesn't work by the way, but

>> so cool. Like they know how things work

and it's still broken.

>> Yeah. So I mean whatever. This person

was like a product manager or something.

So like they they they know what an API

is and they know what a web server is

and they know the names of the different

technologies and like that's going to

get them part of the way there. But the

idea that you can end to end create a

software product that has some value

>> is crazy. We would have heard about it.

No, that's kind of and your demoare post

was really good about this because it

was kind of like look, you can do the

proof of concept, you can do this, but

we've never seen the next stage. And

someone else did a really good one was

like shovelware. They said where's the

shovelware? Where's the crap software?

ly I remember the first times I was on

the internet the amount of weird

shareware [ __ ] there was just like

different forms of IRC clients and [ __ ]

there were people making weird software

why isn't that happening yeah I mean so

you'll see okay I made Flappy Bird I

made a weird thing I made like I you can

make little small pieces of software for

yourself that maybe have a little bit of

value it is fun it is a novelty yes

>> if you know like but then it then it

doesn't work like it's So I I do not

know I'm I'm a web developer, so I know

how to do web apps.

>> I can't code for [ __ ] So

>> yeah, whatever. But like that that's

what I know. That's that's what I've

been doing. I've been coding for

whatever

>> and I know how to do that. I do not know

how to make iPhone apps.

>> So I was like, okay, you know what I'm

going to do? They just announced quad

whatever cuz I'm interested in this

stuff. I'm an early adopter. I don't And

also if it did what it however I may

feel about AI, if it actually did what

if Vibe coding was real, that would

actually be a huge deal. That would be a

huge [ __ ] deal. I wouldn't

>> I would have all my ethical concerns if

I could actually build software without

knowing anything. Wow, that would be

great. Never been the case. But you

tried though.

>> Well, so I tried. So So my idea was

like, okay, I use my phone too much. I

I'm going to make an app called App

Snooze. It takes So you say I want

Gmail. I want it snooze for a half hour.

>> Got it.

>> So that when I open up the Gmail app, it

uses this screen time thing and it says

blocked. And then 30 minutes is up, I

get it back.

>> Right? that is impossible to make using

iOS essentially without like a

substantial amount of of work. It's it's

based on like the limitations of how

Apple does their stuff with screen time.

It just cannot be done. So I type this

stuff in. Claude is like sitting there.

It's like, oh yeah, you're you're

awesome. You are killing me, dude. This

is a great idea.

>> You got this.

>> You got this. Yeah. Which it actually

does say and and one of their I've been

watching like the World Series or

whatever and a lot of NFL and like the

chatbt ads. We can hopefully talk about

that. Those are

any of those.

>> Okay. Well,

>> oh, no, no. I love to hear about this

because uh I'm a Raiders fan.

>> Yeah.

>> And um I try not to watch. If I needed

to watch a poorly conceived product, I

could just use my season tickets, but I

sold them. So, wait, but keep going

though.

>> Okay. Well, so but so, so it's like you

got this, but then it's this is the

whatever. So, they have Haiku and they

have Sonnet and they have Opus. So,

whatever. Awesome names. But so they

have sonnet which is the really good one

you know hack.

>> It's very well respected.

>> It's supposed to be it's supposed to be

cloud's supposed to be the good one for

coding. And so I was like I'm gonna pay

I'm going to pay $20. I'm just going to

see what happens. If I can get this

thing on the app store that'll be great.

I'm going to charge 99 cents. Let's see

if I make a hundred bucks.

>> Sure.

>> See if I make my Apple developer account

back.

>> Yeah.

>> To dump the 100 bucks into the Apple

developer account. Awesome on Apple by

the way. You can't actually do half the

app coding that you need to without

paying them 100 bucks.

>> So good.

>> That's a business.

>> It's that's that's Apple bank. But

anyways, so I I I do that. I want to

make my 100 bucks back. But it cannot be

done.

>> Well, the app you couldn't build the app

though. It's um

>> Well, but because of like literal

limitations in how iOS works in terms of

like you can't have a timer that goes

off and messes with screen time. That's

just not a thing that

>> there was this thing called brick where

there's a physical device as well, but

that feels like a Bluetooth.

>> Something's going on with brick. I don't

know.

>> But here's here's the thing as well with

all of this. You just made me think it

is weird that the app doesn't just go,

"Yeah, I can't build that, mate."

>> It would be nice if it did say that. And

it was this was weird. I had never

observed this behavior before. And

again,

I've posted online like, "Okay, you

know, this you know, three bees in

blueberry that thing, the the blueberry

thing, whatever." And and people I I

posted that on LinkedIn and someone was

like, "You are lying." And I post my

link. I I post the link to the chat and

they're like, "You had a secret prompt

that told it to be stupid." Yeah, it's

prompt injection.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Like you have a system

prompt that says like and it's like dude

be stupid as [ __ ] Be a piece of [ __ ]

>> Oh, dude. I messed up. I put be stupid

in my system.

>> I should have put I put

>> I should have put be smart. If I put

smart, it would have worked.

>> So on this, you just reminded me when I

was [ __ ] around with Claude code. So,

I did a story a few months ago about

how, you know, I don't know if you've

seen like Vibrank where it's got like

people on CL spend like $50,000. I love

those people. I think they're awesome.

Well, to try this myself, I went on I

was like, "What is the most token

inensive software you could build me?"

It's like, "Oh, yeah, an autonomous car

in a metaverse." I'm like, "Cool. Build

all of that." And it just sat there for

hours just built and I don't even know

what it sped out at the end. Well, I

mean, it certainly Well, you could have

a trillion dollar startup on your hands.

>> But it's just

>> You should check out that code. It's so

sick that these things don't even go

like, "Yeah, we can't do that. Like, I

can't do an autonomous car startup. I

don't have any training data." Very

basic. But if it was if it was if that

thing was smart or useful, right, it has

the ability to look things up online. It

should have looked through the

documentation and and it should have

said, "Well, what can we do with timers?

What can we do with screen time? Can you

hook up a timer to screen time? We'll

let you do this in the background and

get the half hour time in correctly."

And it's like it's it's it's demoare and

it allows you to build demoware,

>> but it didn't even build a demo of this.

Well, so no, it built me something I was

kind of excited about because it it let

me pick the app. So I picked Gmail and I

picked 30 minutes

>> and then it it it worked. Gmail is

turned off,

>> right?

>> 30 minutes elapse,

>> right?

>> Gmail is not back on.

>> Oh, so you just cut Gmail.

>> Well, no. I mean,

>> have not been in your email since.

>> What? Yeah, exactly. Sorry customers, if

you have been emailing me, it is because

my app is is messed up. No, but but it

it it was like it just lied, right? I

mean, and so like that's imagine being

someone I'm a software developer, so

like okay, whatever. Like I'm going to I

don't know iOS, but like I'm going to go

on the Apple pages and see what's up and

I'm going to ask some meaningful

follow-ups and determine that this

didn't work and okay, I lost my 100

bucks in the developer account.

>> But if you don't know how to code,

you're going to be like,

>> what are you going to do? Well, there's

nothing you can do because the reason I

I read the replet pages and the cursor

pages and the cursor one, it's people

that can code a little

>> at least or

>> a little bit. But Replet is just it's

50% and same with Lovable's Reddit as

well. Lovable is another for listeners,

it's another AI coding platform sold as

a vibe coding thing and it's all it's

50% people being like I spent $300 and

then like 10% people just lying. People

be like, I just reached 12,000 m monthly

recurring revenue. Uh it's all good for

me. And everyone being like, can I see

it? And they never respond. And then

there's the there's the people who are

like looking for a replet developer.

>> Yeah. And it's like, so you're looking

for someone that can write software,

write and build software. Interesting.

Like a software developer, one might

say.

>> I don't know. I don't know where to

find.

>> It's almost like there are like hundreds

of thousands, millions of people trained

to do that. But yeah, we don't need

them. We can just we talk into the thing

and turn your app into reality.

>> Except you. It's just It is really crazy

how much vibe coding has proliferated

considering how [ __ ] It's nothing.

it. Well, so but so if you need like if

you need a prototype, so if like this

whole thing boils down to if if the

expectations were real, if it was like

>> turn your turn your sentence into a

prototype of an application in minutes.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah. Like an MVP.

Well, MVP is like needs to work.

>> Oh yeah.

>> But

>> well, okay. Oh, sorry. I thought you

were saying hypo hypothetical world

where it worked.

>> Well, no. Yeah. Sorry. Well, no. In a

hypothetical world and where it does

what it does today, you can get like a

mockup.

>> Yeah.

>> If it said build a semifunctional

wireframe mockup of your application

that you could show to kind of validate

your idea to your friends in minutes.

>> Yeah.

>> For $30 or however much your credits end

up being. That's fine.

>> But does that happen? Doesn't

>> You could kind of do that if you're

lucky. You roll the dice.

>> That's the thing. It's always if you're

lucky. There's enough asterisks on this.

It's just insane that it's got this far

cuz I've read a lot of vibe coding

articles and if you read like Kevin

Roose of course and the times and people

like that, you read these articles and

you'd think, "Wow, you can just do this.

You can just go and do this. This is the

the future is today." But it's not

really not really the case at all.

>> But I think that the the the thing

that's so like pernitious about it is

that it's so easy to just say skill

issue.

>> Yeah.

>> You just you just two words, skill

issue. You're prompting it wrong.

>> David Gerard, David Gerard thing, but

no, it's Yeah, you're prompting it

wrong.

>> You're prompting it wrong. And so, and

there's no real way to disprove that

because can we go back in time and like

cuz it's all this probabilistic stuff

and so so I have a a post that I've put

up and it's it's code doesn't happen to

you. That's my thing.

So it's it's my because I you know

taught programming for a while and so if

you're teaching a new programmer

>> sometimes if they have like if they've

kind of gotten unlucky and they have a

bad attitude they're you know and it's

not their fault but they might think

like coding is really mysterious and

it's really weird

>> and I type code in and I press run and

it doesn't always do what I want and so

I'm just going to like mess around

>> right

>> and like vibe coding is like a

productionized version of code happens

to you it's like you press button code

pops out it does mysterious thing and

then like you know so it's like it's

like that idea which was the wrong way

to program but like that's the way we're

doing it like and you were going to

>> what is the right way though? The right

way would be a computer is like you you

operate a computer, you turn it on, you

open the coding software that you're

going to use, whether it's an online

software like my wonderful software or

you know something like VS Code like

something for professionals whatever and

you type in code and you run it and then

the computer like executes it runs the

code according to the

>> the programming language.

>> The code is instructions. The code is

instructions and the code like happens

deterministically and maybe if you're

you know developing a game maybe there's

some random elements to the software

that you're developing but there's no

randomness like the randomness is under

your control.

>> Yeah. So it's it's the difference

between treating it as this mystic force

that you pull together versus

instructions.

>> It's instructions and so like if you're

if you're a really good programmer and

maybe you're whatever maybe you use AI

to to save you some typing and you still

have that good attitude whatever like

you can use to save typing that's fine.

I mean, that's the only real val like

that that feels like the only consistent

thing is just filling in blanks that you

know you could yourself. Like it fills

in it's auto correct and I'm not like

which may be useful. I'm not going to

lie like I I use it.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Like I but I used to have a

paid GPT account but I don't trust it to

do like the the models and this is one

of the things that I brought up in my

post is that the models like aren't

better now, right?

Well, GPT3 was okay and GPT4 was like

much better and then GPD5 is trash.

>> I mean, relatively speaking, maybe it's

a little bit better and maybe it costs

OpenAI more, which is a big development

and great for them and whatever.

>> It cost them less, but it costs more.

>> It costs more. Um, but so so it stopped

getting better. So, there was a time

where I was like, I'm going to I'm going

to buy into this. I'm an early adopter.

I'm kind I'm kind of a booster. Like, I

I I was cured by going to where's

your.com.

That's is it.com?

>> It's just where's your ad?

>> Oh, where's your ed? Nice. Okay. Well,

where's your edat? Cur cured me a little

bit of this cuz I'm like And I've just

had some situations where it's just

failed me so poorly. Like there was a a

confluence of events this summer where I

was just like, "No, what happened?

>> I'm done with this." Uh, first of all, I

got a strong recommendation from uh uh

GPT to buy a software called The Script,

which is like a podcast editing

software. So, cuz I I have I have a

YouTube channel and I want to like I I

say a lot of ums and o's and maybe I'm

saying some ums and a's right now.

Whatever. Who cares? And but I I'm like,

"Okay, I'm going to make this YouTube

channel. I want the production quality

to be decent. If there's a shortcut for

me,

>> seems like AI might be able to do this."

So

>> G I'm like to GPT. I'm like, "What is

good AI? Get rid of ums and software."

Sure. Just descript.

>> Kind of like a Google search, right?

>> Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, whatever. It's

an okay Google search, whatever. And so

he said, "You got to use descript." And

I was like, "Cool." And so I put in my

credit card, 20 bucks or 30 bucks or

whatever the whatever it was. Just I put

in a recording and just completely

mangled it.

>> Yep.

>> And it's just like the audio was

unusable.

>> It was it was off by an eighth of a

second off my voice and it's just like

there's no way there's I have no

recourse

>> and I'm not an audio engineer and so I

just okay like I I vibe I vibe edited my

my video and just ruined it.

>> It's almost like every promise they make

is it's going to automate everything.

It's like ah not really as long as you

know what you're doing. But but this was

like a meta level thing where the AI

recommended me other AI that also

screwed me over. And so I'm like, okay,

this is like this made this like because

I was using it to search, right? Yeah.

And so but but it failed me a search

because it's just

>> emphatically and then you look cuz then

I was like, well, what's wrong? Am I is

it a skill issue? Am I stupid?

>> And so I look and Reddit is just filled

with like this is the worst offer. This

is the worst software.

I used the script very briefly and all I

wanted to do was take a bit of audio and

turn it into a video with the text

happening that the way you read their

marketing material you would look at it

and think it would take 2 seconds. Took

me about 45 minutes and it was just by

the end of it I'm like I don't even want

to [ __ ] I'm so angry cuz it's like

this should be a button press. The whole

point of AI [ __ ] is meant it should

be a button press and it never is. But

wait, well, there are other events

though.

>> Well, so so there's that and so there's

that and then it's like so I'm I'm also

so I'm a web developer, right? And so

I'm not very good I I can't program

mobile apps. That's a thing that I can't

do. Don't know how.

>> I'm also not a very good like

infrastructure systems programmer,

whatever. That's, you know, cloud stuff,

whatever. I'm not I'm not great at that.

But that is an aspect of my job that I

have to do. Our website requires some

infrastructure difficult stuff, right?

>> Over the years, I've actually gotten

quite a bit better at that,

>> right? And so that used to be a use case

for me for GPT was like, oh, it'll I'll

ask you some infrastructure related

questions. I'm like, I know how to code.

I can piece the I can put the puzzle

together and you know, this is actually

going to save me a little bit of time,

>> right?

>> But I have outpaced GPT's ability in

infrastructure development. So it's

like, okay, well, I'm doing this project

and it's not helping.

>> Yeah,

>> it's just wasting my time. Okay, no need

for that. The description is BS. And

then I learned from Ed Zitron that this

stuff is

>> horrendously expensive. So it's like if

this was just regular software as a

service and it cost pennies to operate

and you know it was like kind of helpful

whatever.

>> Yeah. Be offensive.

>> It would be like it's fine whatever

there's a company they offered me this

this thing and it didn't work and you

know it happens.

>> Yeah.

>> But it's like in the context of a world

in which this is the future this is

magic in a click of a button you get

perfect audio out. If that's the promise

in the midst of all of this and an AI is

recommending to it this like meta level

like a dog idiot situation uh and then

it's then it's like drastic disastrously

expensive.

>> Yeah.

>> Like what is the point? What is the

point of all of this?

>> The point is we need to sell GPUs every

and literally on in the car here they

announced a 7-year $ 38 billion deal

between OpenAI and Amazon Web Services.

It's just like why? So that we can so

that they can do Sora 2 more so they can

generate more copyright infringement.

It's and but have do have you in the

past use these coding models a lot or is

it just kind of like on the side? I have

I so even like I will say even like two

weeks ago I had a very discreet task

where it was like in this one situation

I want to do this one little thing and

>> I I knew exactly what it was

>> and I was lazy and so I said write write

the code

>> and so I I put in and this is a joke

comment and people should do this more

often. I put in a I I pasted in the code

and I said this code comes courtesy of

chatbt. If you have any issues with this

software please contact OpenAI. That's

what I wrote in my code and I shipped it

and it worked

>> great.

>> Whatever.

>> Okay,

>> that's cool. It saved me 20 minutes.

>> That's That's And that's the thing.

That's the whole AI bubble. It's like

>> But I I'm not a paying subscriber

anymore.

>> Oh, that's even worse for them.

>> Yeah. Yeah. No, I I just I you know,

because it's it's the the stupidest

model of theirs could have come up with

that code because it was so easy. Uh you

know, it was it was finicky. It was

annoying. There have been situations

where I saying, you know, I say, "Oh,

there's a bug in this code. I paste it

in and it looks it over and I it saved

me in aggregate tens of hours in the

last 3 years.

>> That's fine. Like it's like if it was

regular SAS I'd be like cool. Yeah.

>> I I if it was I think that's kind of

part of why I cancelceled the

subscription because if it was if it you

know whatever you need to value your

time, you know, I could if it if it was

20 bucks a month and it saved me an hour

a month.

>> Hey, you know.

>> Yeah. It's like like trip it or flighty

like like a useful little bit of

software we pay for and it does a thing

and it wasn't stealing from everyone and

burning down like it's just it it only

makes sense if it was cheap and it's the

literal opposite. If this was like cheap

like cheap CPU driven [ __ ] then fine

sure but it's like I one day I think

we're going to find out how expensive

this is and it's going to scare the [ __ ]

out of people. But you know what that

that actually makes me want to move to a

specific post you made your scaling laws

post. Let's talk about this. So, you

were a booster at one point. You read

the stuff. Sure. But

>> you wrote a very eloquent piece about

the scaling laws about how and I've

tried to work this into my work, but

it's we can have I don't know if I'd

call it empathy, but some understanding

of how we got here with the AI bubble

because when GPT4 came out, it does seem

like tech people had a reason to be

excited.

>> I was so excited.

>> What was exciting?

>> It was awesome. you talked to it and it

was just like this I would ask it coding

problems that I found. So I was still a

teacher at the time and I was like oh

man like I have the AP computer science

exam coming up and I need to like come

up with practice problems and I was like

generate a set of 30 practice problems

and I obviously read them over. I did my

due diligence and I you know I tried the

I I did a good job putting them together

but it's like these are decent.

>> Yeah,

>> these are decent practice problems and

like this is this is useful software. I

did not understand how expensive it was,

but there was there's a the number of

things that would have to happen.

>> I will also give you so the read the

listeners don't get mad. To be clear,

JPT4 was 2023.

>> Yeah.

>> We had we were very early in

understanding. I mean, the environmental

damage was there early. Sure.

>> But they were also promising fix. But it

took a full year until June 2024 when

they it came out that OpenAI would burn

$5 billion. So like early on, we didn't

really know the costs either. And if I'm

sure someone will find a [ __ ] link

anyway, keep going.

>> Well, so but so I was I was pumped up

because I I I saw GPT3 was I I you know

I'm a tech person and so I remember

seeing early demos of GPT3 and it was

like interesting novelty. It would say

stupid things and it was kind of cool.

It could even generate sentences. That

was awesome.

>> 3.5 came out and GPT whatever chat GPT

it's like oh this is pretty cool. You

know, I I can use it as a search thing

and it says that I'm good, which I I

like when people say I'm good. Do you

like when people say you're good, Ed?

>> Uh, doesn't happen very much. But I

think I you know what? I'll be honest. I

that there's something I think mentally

about me where all of the

anthropomorphization pisses not even

pissed me off. I'm just like, okay, shut

up, shut up, shut up.

>> I think I was bullied too much as a kid

that like compliments don't work on me

anymore. I I do want to write a I do

want to write a thing at some point

about how if it wasn't chat GBT, if it

was like box get text.

>> Yeah.

>> And there was no anthropomorphization.

If it was just like this is a thing that

can generate usable or interesting or

like code for you, but there's no chat

element to it.

>> That would actually make it a lot better

to me. Like the anthropomorphization of

like, oh, you're talking to a person

that really makes me mad.

>> Yes. And also I find every time it goes,

you got it.

>> Shut up. Shut up. Shut down. So, in one

of these NFL ads, literally, I don't

know if they're like doing a nod to the

haters or what, but they like take

>> We're We're going We're going a couple

levels.

>> I'll make sure the link is in the

>> Well, yeah. No, there's like four of

them. Hopefully, they're on YouTube.

But, uh it's like a guy doing he's he's

trying to do pull-ups and and it's like

here's your pull-up plan. like you need

to do one pull-up and then you should do

two pull-ups and then you should do four

or five pull-ups and like eventually you

will be able to do several pull-ups and

and then at the end it's like you got

this.

>> Okay, if so the plan is you do more

pull-ups over time. You could probably

just work that out by doing doing

pull-ups or texting a mate. I see

>> but nobody said you got this.

>> But yeah, exactly.

No, my my friend Mac when I text him

about pull-ups he says much he's like

you [ __ ] got this. I think he may

have literally It's just

>> That's the commercial.

>> That's the commercial.

>> That's the commercial.

>> But it's

>> the commercial you people watching the

NFL and they're like, "Oh [ __ ] why

should I use chat GPT?" Oh, it's going

to tell me a pull-up plan where I

increase from one to several.

>> One to several.

>> You got this.

>> You got this. I mean, I didn't pause. I

mean, maybe I did not pause the

commercial, but I It could It could have

said some really interesting stuff in

the middle. I don't know. But the bullet

the bullet because it has to have a

bulleted list.

>> I I am pretty sure. And I might be lying

and so whatever, you know, send me some

hate mail. But like I'm pretty sure it

said like do a couple, wait a week, you

know, drink a protein shake and like,

you know, do a couple more.

>> It's just Google search except it makes

up the results. That's all the three

[ __ ] years.

>> So I I have a I have a new idea which is

that it's it's Yahoo Answers, but the

person has a labbotomy and was like it

just did cocaine.

>> That's Yahoo Answers. Yahoo. That that's

just Yahoo or Kora.

>> But but it's like but it's like light

speeded.

>> Yeah. Like the fastest. Well, Kora now

is GPT. Like they do because um Adam

D'Angelo is on the board of OpenAI.

Sweet.

>> So, it's just got GPT answers and GPT

questions now. So cool.

>> But early on it was exciting and there

were these scaling laws. walk me through

what through the listeners who might not

understand.

>> So yeah, so the the post that I wrote

which Ed very nicely called eloquent. So

if I could pay you $20 a month to kind

of just send me stuff like you got this

I'll just I'll email those you got this.

>> Yeah. Okay, that's great. I'll put it on

a schedule. Yeah, if you could just do

that, I'll pay you 20 bucks a month. Um

no, but so so it there was an idea that

if you increase the size of the models

I'm not a AI I'm not an AI scientist.

And so in this post I said I'm not an AI

expert or an economist but like you look

at this chart this chart that they had

and you can like the thing and I

actually think I cited my sources the

original like paper basically about the

scaling laws. They have this chart that

is incredible. It is like make model 10

times bigger get the nice jump in

performance. Make model 10 times bigger

get nice jump in performance. And then

the idea is like okay well if we just

keep making it 10 times bigger we will

get like who knows how good this can

get. And it kind and it did work like

>> that was working for a minute.

>> That's how they went to the best of my

knowledge that's how they went from 3.5

to four. I mean there's a number of they

have smart people over there like I mean

we can be honest that like they're doing

clever stuff.

>> Smart is also a very subjective but

these are people who are experts in

mathematics and

>> yeah they're doing hard real math and

they're getting results. Like the fact

that it can do what it does is

incredible.

>> Yeah. It's kind of crazy that they can

do it if that was all they were saying.

>> If that was all they were saying. if

they were just like we did research and

we've created this incredible piece of

technology that feels almost alien at

this point. I mean or at the point when

we discovered it now it feels like you

know just we take it for granted that

it's kind of this trash thing

>> but like at the moment when it was

released it was like oh my gosh like

this is actually crazy.

>> Yeah.

>> Um and and the idea was we make it 10

times bigger and we will get a similar

jump in performance and that is GPT 4.5

>> which is like a footnote in history.

>> Oh that was

>> that that was released and and Sam

Altman was just like, "Uh, yeah, well,

we made a big model." And

>> it was the best announcement ever. I'm

actually going to put, but from what I

remember, Miss Miss Clammy Sammy was

like, "Yeah, you know, it's I'm just

going to do it from memory." I remember

it's like, "Yeah, good news, it's really

good for for writing. Bad news, it's

really compute intensive." And everyone

was like, "Yay." And and in the

announcement, I I did quote this in the

post because I don't want to make stuff

up and like whatever, but they literally

said with each 10x with each order of

magnitude, you know, 10x

>> increase in model size, we will get an

improvement in performance.

>> Yes.

>> But like where's the like where's the

big improvement,

>> right? It's gone.

>> I don't I I think that was them. I think

that was the moment. I don't know what

day they announced 4.5, but like I think

>> temporary some in that was the that was

game over.

>> Yeah. And then they did the reasoning

stuff and the reasoning stuff was

>> well the reasoning thing was September

2024 and I my favorite thing about that

was reading all the tech press writing

about it and being like can any of you

tell me what this does? Can any can any

of you tell me why this matters to this

day and I'm by the way I'm not actually

it took a minute for me to work out what

the [ __ ] and it's just a hat on a hat

thing. It's like instead of spitting out

an output it goes what would the output

be? Oh, I will skip I will go through it

and choose these steps which is it's

test time compute and it's meant to

>> and I could have had a moment of

reflection when the reasoning models

came out where cuz I I was like it was

still the height of the fever though.

>> I know but I I so I asked it a hard

question. So I I did a I did a math

degree and a computer science degree. So

I was like take this topic from

sophomore year abstract algebra and do

this like visualization of the thing,

right? And I took one of the early

reasoning models, whichever one it was

01. Sure. Sure. Because it's like you

have a PhD level thing in the pocket.

Okay. So, PhD level thing should be able

to take sophomore math sophomore and

college math concept and visualize it.

Yeah. Should be able to do that. And

then it didn't.

>> Oh,

>> and then I kind of just didn't I was

kind of just like, oh, I guess I h And

then I just didn't think about it. And

then I just kept on kind of hoping that

something exciting would happen.

>> Yeah. And I can and bit of empathy here.

I get if you're and at that time so it

was September 2024. A month later they'd

raised 6.6 billion to get a credit

facility of $4 billion. Like they it

looked like Open AI was going places.

Unless you're like me and you've read

every single possible financial thing

you can get a h hand on and you've

obsessed over the numbers. But I can get

why someone who was stick within the

booster ring might not immediately be

like [ __ ] because yeah I don't know if

people hadn't built things with

reasoning and it did actually take a few

months for people to work out products

with reasoning.

>> Yeah. I mean and and whatever. I mean I

don't know what the improvements were

and they improved on the benchmarks.

That's fine. It's it's kind like and and

I'm sure that the coding results are

marginally better.

>> That's the thing though marginally.

Yeah. It's always margin

>> but now it's marginally but that's the

thing. 3 to four was sick. Huge jump.

>> That was sick. That was not marginal. If

you had a if you had if your lights were

on, if you were paying attention and you

typed a thing into three and you typed a

thing into four, you should be

impressed.

>> Oh, I I remember the jump. I wasn't

doing better offline at the time. Didn't

do that until February 2024, but I

remember being like, "Oh, that's but I

remember just being like, okay, now

what?" Like I was I was It was like,

"Wow, we made a computer do this and

this. Cool. Okay, now what?"

>> Yeah. And so like I was vaguely aware of

the of the line chart that I mentioned

in that post. And so I was like, "Oh,

like all they have to do." It was like

it is a freight train towards like

actual really cool thing because it's

like just make it bigger. And and

therefore if we just need to make it

bigger then we do need more compute

>> and the reasoning models were you

finally got another way to throw compute

because it's the training compute and

more compute to generate an answer. Test

time compute. Wow.

>> Yeah. So like that's that's where the

the the freight train's over and I and I

just 4.5 came out. didn't really think

about it that hard. They start doing the

reasoning stuff and it's like, okay,

well, they have marginal improvements

and they say it did really good on a

math Olympiad or whatever and like

that's that's interesting, but but then

it's like another whole year goes by

>> and then and then GPT5 comes out and

like what what was that? It was nothing.

It was so strange.

>> And so that that was the final so when

I'm talking about my confluence of

events that cured me of my boosterism

like I started reading your stuff about

it being expensive, but then I was like

this is interesting. I've started

reading this guy Ed's posts. GPT5 is

coming out next week. I wonder if this

guy is going to have an extraordinary

amount of egg on his face because this

like you might have been scared. I I

wonder

>> I I wasn't because I have the Stonewall

of the Buddha, but it's I was also just

like when it

>> when Reasoning was coming up going back

to 2023, they there was some real [ __ ]

The rumors around that Q star was it was

like the reason Sam got fired was they

found a terrifying new AI. They kind of

like drummed up. There were leaks about

it. There were leaks about levels of

intelligence. There was all of these big

leaks. There was really no leaking

around GPT5 other than a Wall Street

Journal story towards the end of 2024

where it was like, "Yeah, it's costing a

[ __ ] ton of money. It isn't working very

well." Like the leaks, the reason I

because the thing is I mean this to this

day. If I am wrong about all this, I

don't think I am. I will admit it. I

will explain why. But GBT5 I wasn't

particularly worried about because it

did. I could not [ __ ] tell you what

the what it was going to be. Like no one

really if you go back to 2023 and you

look up GPT5 stuff, the [ __ ] that people

are saying is insane. There was someone

saying it would be completely autonomous

and it would turn weapons systems

against people. There's bonkers [ __ ]

>> But getting up to it, yeah, it was kind

of a proving point, but it was just

another [ __ ] model. Well, and so and

so that I you and I started exchanging

emails because I whatever I I saw your

podcast and I sent my post over and it

was it was it was interesting talking to

you and then I I when that when that

announcement was going on I emailed you

and you got a lot of emails coming

through but I said Ed ed Ed ed ed they

announced paywalled chat colors.

>> Yes. I go through No, I remember this

but go through this

>> in the announcement of GPT5.

>> The biggest thing ever. They're like,

"For our paid subscribers, you can turn

your chat yellow,"

>> which they still haven't released. So,

>> they still haven't released that.

>> I don't Well, I'm not a paying I'm not a

paying subscriber, so I I've never seen

a yellow.

>> I I'm paying for chat GPT plus.

>> See if you can turn it yellow.

>> I want to see if I can do this live on

air.

>> Yellow or pink? Green might be an

option.

>> Change my window color.

>> Well, the model's not going to GPD.

>> Are you googling GPD? Oh, I'm going to

ask it because it's [ __ ] insane. If

this does searching the web, yes, you

can change they did.

>> Well, well, can you though?

>> Um, on some platforms you can change the

accent color.

>> God, this [ __ ] stinks. The fact that

you can't ask a product what it does.

>> What? Well, if you if you can't ask like

I don't know what's a good, but I mean,

if you can't ask if you can't type into

a Google Doc in 2007, what does Google

Docs do? That's unsurprising.

>> But that's because Google Docs is a

place to write words. This is meant to

answer things.

>> Well, I know that's what I'm saying. But

it's like they've they claim that it's

this all, you know, all all knowing,

omnisient thing, and it cannot tell you

how to turn. Shouldn't it have just done

it for you?

>> Yeah. Or like given me the

>> it should have it should have said,

edit, great question. Would you like it

to be blue, yellow, pink, or or

Charizard orange

>> and and like, but where was the where

was it? That's what it should have done.

>> And also the idea that that was one of

the announcements is very cool. I love

the idea that like it's the biggest

moment ever. And you can now make chat

GPD brown. It It's insane. It's insane.

>> I don't know if brown is one of the

supportive colors. You might need to

wait for next year.

>> Yeah, that's

>> that that relies on the compute.

Actually, the Oracle deal unlocks brown

as one of the colors.

>> Oh my god, it's so cool that we've built

our entire economy on top of this as

well. But back the GBT thing, it is it

was such a weird moment because

watching everyone try and be excited

about it was really good. There was the

whole Theo weight. Not Theo Wait. Um,

that's the information. The Theo

>> um, there's this [ __ ] guy. Now I'm

gonna I really shouldn't have blanked.

I've mentioned him. He did a whole thing

about GPT5.

I'm going to look this up live on air.

This is a professional show. Um, where

he did a whole thing saying GPT5 was the

most amazing thing ever. And then

>> Oh. And then walked it back

>> and then had to be like, "Yeah,

actually, yes." Theo Theo Brown. There

we go. Theo Brown. He did a thing

saying, "I'm scared of how good GPT5

is." Then a week later it's like

actually it's not the same as when I

used it which is craziest that that

should have been a scandal. Like why was

that the case? But everyone just kind of

moved on.

>> But I I don't know what we're meant to

be excited about next. Okay.

>> GPT6.

>> Well yeah it's just but also what's that

meant to because GBD5 was this weird

kind of like myth in the future. It's

like when we reach this everything will

get better. But now it's like we're

going to get Claude Sonic 5, I guess.

>> Yeah, whatever. I mean, you're going to

get the next one. But that's the thing

is like if it's just continued marginal

improvement, what am I

>> Yeah.

>> What are we doing?

>> It doesn't m It doesn't make me That

does not make me excited. And yes, it

can save software engineers typing time

and whatever. I mean, if you know what

you're doing, you can get a lot done. I

guess that's fine. If that's the way you

like to work, if you like to type stuff

in and wait on loading screens and get

your code out and review it, that's a

way to do programming. That's fine.

Yeah. And it's

>> and it's literally fine. I'm actually

like I sound super sarcastic, but like

that's literally fine.

>> No, but that's literally fine would be

if this was a 10 billion industry. If

they were selling it as like the

equivalent of virtualization or like

some side thing to the greater cloud

comput infrastructure, not

>> the entire future revenue engine cuz it

isn't.

>> Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, and and so I,

you know, I run a business and

>> I I think that so a thing that startup

people say is they say like you have

product market fit, which is like, oh,

your product is good.

>> Yeah.

>> If like one of the criteria is if it

went away today, would your users like

throw a fit?

>> Yeah.

>> Would you throw a fit if Chat GPT got

uninstalled from your phone? You

wouldn't. But like, you know, would the

general person be that upset? And I

don't think they would. I think that

there would be a contingent of people

who'd be very upset

>> if if you have a like parasocial I don't

know if that's the right word if you're

like in love with your GPT then that

would be like a death in your family and

that's very sad for you

>> which would be horrible and indeed they

but it's like I've been saying this for

a while it's like and I say it to

boosters it's like if this disappeared

would your life change would would it

really change that much like well I used

it for baby names I've used it for it's

like

>> you you named your baby after I'm just

saying like if you

>> got a baby name from chat GPT. That's

>> That's tough.

>> Yeah, that's really bad. The more that

was said to me by a booster and the more

I think about it, the more I'm like,

"Brother,

>> one day your child is going to hear

this."

>> Cuz they all they do is they sell a book

called like the baby name book and it

has like a list of names in it.

>> I don't [ __ ] know. Read some books.

Like just think about it.

>> Yeah.

>> I'm going to one of the most important

choices, the identity of a future human.

I'm going to send it to incorrect Google

search. Yeah,

>> it's it's depressing, but it's also

quite funny because I feel like this era

has really revealed who just doesn't

know anything about [ __ ] it. Like the

people who are just like will believe

anything or will just believe that they

are smart at something because a machine

told them they are. Yeah.

>> That they got this.

>> You You got this. So, someone online

posted, "I can't wait for the day when

there's an AI agent that'll tell me when

my friend's birthdays are."

>> [ __ ] There's no other way to do that.

There's no way to do that.

>> I I don't have like some kind of

calendar.

>> No, no, it's got to be a reminder.

>> And so that's like that's what's

happening now is that in the like

startup space or just people building

technology. It's like well we're going

to get or or if you like watch the ads

on the NFL or whatever it's like you are

going to

agent is going to do the thing that

software is supposed to do like

software. So, like I got sold at one

point accounting software,

>> right?

>> That was AI, right?

>> Okay. The AI is going to categorize your

transactions.

>> Sure.

>> Can't do it.

>> I I bought I was at a conference and it

was, you know, whatever May May 20th,

May 21st, May 22nd.

>> I I go to Starbucks, I go to pizza, I go

to a thing. They're all travel related

expenses. One is travel and then the the

Starbucks is client conversation.

>> That's what I decided.

>> Client conversation. And so I I I had a

meeting with this the founder of the

thing and I was like, "Dude, like what

are you what is what is this?"

>> What did they say?

>> Well, they were just like, "Oh, you

know, sometimes it makes mistakes. We

should get on that."

>> [ __ ] yeah.

>> So that's that's my accountant.

>> Yeah. You My whole thing is I know it's

I think with all of this AI coding stuff

in the big in the big tech realm,

something's going to break. Something

really But someone's gonna someone's

going to do something stupid.

>> Yeah. Well, so so back to Replet. I

mean, I I think that they I kind of hope

that they're I don't know if they hope

that they're first to go. I mean,

whatever. They're nice people working

there. So, that's the unfortunate thing

is there are nice people working at

these.

>> There are people with jobs who like it

will involve people

>> like I I don't I wouldn't want to ask

for people to get laid off who are

hardworking people and some of them are

like cool scientists who have studied

hard and they're like nice people

>> and it's the grim part of all this is

like people are going to lose [ __ ]

jobs. But it's I mean it's the

executives who you know obviously pissed

me off who just lying through their

teeth right I mean those people deserve

to and but you know they're never

actually going to have a bad outcome

happen to them

>> this which is why we need to write

things to put their name because at some

point there needs to be a record of this

>> of course. Yeah.

>> So I'm going to wrap it there. Charlie

where can people find you?

>> So uh I have a blog blog.chariemeyer.co

which is like where kind of my writings

go but I'm also trying to set up a

newsletter. So that's

csmyer.substack.com

and my name is spelled m y.

>> Hell yeah. And I of course am Ed Zitron.

You can find me on the internet at

google.com. That's where I live. I will

put all the links to Charlie's stuff of

course in in the episode notes, but it's

good for you to hear it now. And yeah,

should have a monologue coming up this

week. I know I did an announcement where

I said I was going to have a big story

that is on hold, not because anything

went wrong, but because the scale of the

information I got has changed

dramatically. uh when I eventually talk

about this, it'll be a lot of fun.

Otherwise, catch you soon.

Thank you for listening to Better

Offline. The editor and composer of the

Better Offline theme song is Matosowski.

You can check out more of his music and

audio projects at matasowski.com.

mat tso

wski.com.

You can email me at easy@betoffline.com

or visit betteroffline.com to find more

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