Bonus Episode: Shell Game x No Such Thing

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter?

0:07 Right. And the best part, they accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this. I don't think so, Jennifer.

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0:58 Yeah. Watch the full episode of their new Alpha Nolla on soy unbano.com. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year-over-year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-akind index, and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities. Completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com/mpodcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you

1:47 transfer your portfolio. That's publicub.com/mpodcast. Paid for by public investing. Brokerage services by open to the public investing inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC SEC registered adviser. Generated assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informationational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com/disclosures.

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3:06 Hey folks, Evan here with another Shellgame bonus episode for you. This time it's with our friends over at the fantastic podcast No Such Thing. If you don't know it, No Such Thing is hosted by three friends, Manny, Devon, and Noah. And in each episode, they try to settle their arguments by consulting research and experts. This week, the argument was about whether AI will take our jobs. The expert was Maddie. I came along as well, and we talked about seasons one and two of Shellgame, working with AI agents, [ __ ] jobs, off-site planning, and much more. Also, Ben Affleck talked about him, too. It was a great conversation, and if you liked season 2, I think you'll dig it.

3:46 So, here's Maddie and me on No Such Thing. I'm Noah. I'm Devin. And this is No Such Thing, the show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. On today's episode, will AI take our jobs?

4:15 There's no no such thing. No such thing. No such thing. No such thing. No such thing. So, it seems like every week I'm reading headlines or seeing interviews about how AI is going to take every single one of our jobs.

4:45 Thousands of new layoffs in the tech industry and the companies say it's largely because of AI.

4:51 Even with AI at its current state, I'd say you're you're pretty close to being able to replace half full jobs. So, on today's episode, we're going to take a peek under the hood just to see how close AI is to actually replacing us. And we're going to chat with two guys who started a real company run entirely by AI agents. But before we do that, we're going to call up our good pal Manny. So, if you missed it, Manny's been out for a few weeks on paternity leave uh after he and his wife Mia welcomed a beautiful baby girl, Lula, um last month. So, let's give Manny a call to see how Parenthood is treating him.

5:40 Hey, this is Manny. Hey, Manny. Hey, what's going on? Not much, man. We're in the studio. It's me and Noah here recording. Um, just wanted to check in and see how are things going with the baby.

5:54 Oh man, things are uh they're wild in the best possible way. Lula's got us completely recalibrated. Like, I used to think I understood time, you know? I'm literally writing a book about it, but baby time is its own dimension entirely. We're operating on nap schedules and feeding windows now. And honestly, it makes everything I thought I knew about punctuality seem quaint. But yeah, she's amazing. Exhausting, but amazing. How are things in the studio with you guys?

6:18 Things are things are great. We um you know just trucking along. We miss you. Um I hope everything's good with you know you and the fam. Uh I know your parents are visiting. How did that go?

6:30 Oh man, I really appreciate that. Miss you guys, too. Honestly, sometimes I'm like, "Wait, what day is it?" And then I remember I'm supposed to be a functional adult who co-hosts the podcast. Uh yeah, my parents visiting was it was actually great. You know, there's something surreal about watching your parents meet your kid. Like suddenly you're seeing them in this whole new light. And they're doing that thing where they give you advice that you definitely ignored when you were younger, but now you're like, "Oh, wait. That's actually useful.

6:54 It's been good though. Chaotic, but good." How's Noah holding down the fort? Uh, you know, he's all right. Uh, you know, he's doing he's doing okay. Let's put it that way. I don't got too many kind things to say about Noah.

7:08 Not on Mike. Yeah. Don't really like that guy. Huh. Oh man, I love that energy. Nothing says we're a functional team like barely tolerating your coworker, right? That's honestly the foundation of every great creative partnership. Just simmering resentment and the occasional moment of begrudging respect. What you do this time? Did he like pitch another segment idea that made you question everything or is this just general Noah being Noah stuff?

7:33 Just generally I don't like the guy just resentment. Um, real quick, Manny, we're I want to start this episode with a hot take. Give us give us your your latest hot take.

7:48 Oh, man. Okay. Uh, hot take right off the top. All right. Here we go. I think we've all collectively decided that being busy is a personality trait and it's made us worse at literally everything. Like, everyone's always like, "Oh, I'm so slammed. I'm so overwhelmed." But then we also brag about it. It's become this weird flex where if you're not drowning, you're somehow not important enough. And the thing is nothing actually good comes from that state. Like all the best ideas, the best conversations, the best work, it happens when you have space to think. But we've built this whole culture around glorifying chaos and then we wonder why everything feels halfbaked and nobody can focus for more than 30 seconds. I don't know. Maybe that's just me projecting because I'm on paternity leave and realizing that doing less is actually kind of revolutionary. How's that? Too spicy for the top of the show.

8:35 I think that's okay. It's not that spicy. It's okay. That's a good one. Thanks, Manny.

8:41 All right, Manny. Yeah, no problem. I can't promise fire every time. Before Before we let you go,

8:46 time I I know you're you're limited on time. You you've constantly been telling us that you you're very busy and your your brain's not working. But um one last question before you go. Who is the better co-host? me, Devin, or this man across from me, Noah?

9:08 Oh, man. You're really going to make me do this? Yeah. All right. Uh, look, I'm going to say this with all the love in the world. It's you. It's definitely you. Noah's great and all, but you just said you don't even like the guy, so I feel like I'm on solid ground here. Plus, you're the one who called to check in on me and the baby. So, that's just good co-host energy right there. Is probably over there doing I don't know, whatever Noah does being Noah dot. Yeah, you win. Don't let it go to your head, though.

9:33 Thank you. Thank you. Tell me uh we we said we love her. We miss her. Um thanks. Thanks for taking the call, Manny.

9:41 A thanks, man. I really appreciate it. Miss you guys, too. And yeah, I'll tell Mia you said hi. She'll love that. All right, I got to run before Lula decides that right now is the perfect time to have opinions about everything. Good luck with the episode and uh go easy on Noah. Or don't, whatever feels right. Talk soon.

9:58 Bye. Bye. Wow, that was incredible. Uh, as you might have guessed, that was not the real Manny.

10:08 That was AI Manny. That was pretty good. The voice was a little off. Yeah, it's a little higher or something. Yeah, the timber. But, um, you know,

10:19 overall, considering that's the, you know, we'll get into this later, that's the cheap version or like the fast version rather. Um, pretty solid and like actually could have a conversation, you know.

10:30 Very responsive. Exactly. Yeah. More than I expected or quicker certainly. Yeah.

10:34 And like the issue is just rambling like mentioned. Shut the hell up. Yeah. He was pissing me off.

10:42 Manny would never go off so many sentences at a time. Yeah. Manny's a little better at at uh social cues,

10:48 thankfully. The real Manny that is. The real Manny. Yeah. All right. Uh we're going to talk to the guys who helped us make this uh right after the break. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multiasset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year-over-year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities. Completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone

11:44 else's. Go to public.com/mpodcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's publicub.com/mpodcast. Paid for by public investing. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC SEC registered adviser. Generated assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informationational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com/disclosures.

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14:30 All right, we are back in the studio. It's me, Devin. I'm Noah. Yeah. So, today we are going to get to the bottom of this question of is AI coming for our jobs and will it replace all of us including Manny who is out on paternity leave. So we are going to chat with Evan Ratliff who's a investigative journalist who has spent the last year trying to build a all AI company alongside his technical adviser Manny Boachek who is really like an AI Jimmy Neutron. He's only 21 but has been working in AI for you know seven plus years already.

15:13 So, why don't we call these guys up? All right, we are joined by our friends Evan and Maddie from Shell Game. But before we talk about the show, Evan, can you just walk us through how you are able to put together AI Manny? Yeah. Well, now I've I've done this many times uh now over the past like two years. It probably took like 15 minutes total. Um, I just

15:39 took You sent me a sample of his voice, but I could have grabbed it off the show myself. Like, anyone could do it. I'm not encouraging people to do it with other people's voices, but um, I went to, uh, 11 Labs, which is the company that we use for all of our sort of like voice needs. They're like the biggest AI voice player probably at this point. And then I did a what's called like a quick clone or an instant clone where you upload like uh 5 minutes or you can do 30 seconds if you want, but I pro I did like 5 minutes of his voice and then uh they cloned his voice. I did have to check a little box that said that I had his permission to do it. And then after that it was a matter of hooking up to the phone line. So, uh, I use a couple different AI phone, uh, agent creators, and all you do there is you go and you hook it up to 11 Labs, and then you create an agent in that platform, and then you can give the agent a prompt,

16:36 whatever prompt you want. You sent me some information about Manny, I put that into his prompt. I have a bunch of standard stuff I put in about like kind of how to converse because they can end up going on a really long time and they have all kinds of conversational like foibless if you don't put this stuff in.

16:52 And then uh I connected it to a phone number that I already had and done like truly 15 20 minute process.

16:59 Wow. And the biography that we gave um was made by chat GPT. It was a, you know, really just fully going in on AI. It's crazy. The fact that you're able to do that in 15 minutes is kind of scary.

17:12 Um, all right. So, let's talk about the show. It's a season one of Shell Game. I mean, you try to replace yourself uh with an AI clone. Some really hilarious uh moments with you antagonizing some scammers. Hello. How can I assist you today?

17:31 You are not a person. You're a robot. I assure you I'm here to help you as a human like voice AI agent. How can I assist you today?

17:41 Oh, you're an AI. Yes, I am an AI. Yes, that's correct. I'm an AI here. Hello. How can I assist you?

17:53 How did you stop repeating the same thing? It's annoying. and some really creepy and disturbing moments. There's a conversation that the AI has with one of your buddies who your buddy thinks you're catching up. He just went on his trip. The AI comes off as like really cold.

18:12 I thought you would appreciate it. Out of all my friends, you're the one who would appreciate it the most.

18:19 I really appreciate that, Shay. So, what was it? What? that I'm really touched that you think of me like that, Shay. So, what was it you wanted to share? Uh, I don't know that I met those guys.

18:45 You met the US soccer team? Yes. Amazing, isn't it? Amazing, isn't it? So yes, they are very nice.

19:03 That's awesome to hear. Can you talk us through that because it is it is a tough thing to listen to. It is. It's hard to listen to. People have very strong reactions to it, including extreme anger. I'll just say I've gotten some some very unhappy people who have emailed me about that and said that my friend Sha uh they hope that he has never spoken to me again.

19:30 We've been friends for 30 years. So it worked out all right. But um yeah I mean I had been messing around with it. So I'd been I'd been using it on strangers like scammers as you say telemarketers and things like that. And then I did all these other things like I sent it to therapy and then I started having it call my friends and family um it was like hooked to my phone number so if if it called someone they they saw that there was a call coming from me. They had no reason to suspect. I hadn't told anyone that I was doing it. So that meant that uh if they called me or I called them like they were they were unsuspecting let's say victims of this of this AI version of me. and it was pretty good at remembering stuff about me and kind of like bringing a little bit of me into the conversation. It sounded reasonable about me, but what happened in this situation was that when it kind of like acted weird, like it had

20:24 latencies, like it would it would be slow to respond or it would just be really flat or too aggressive, like all these things that happened with AI voices. My friend just thought like there was something wrong with me. Like he just didn't pick up on it instantly. And so once you're in the mode of thinking, oh, this is my friend. He's having some sort of problem. I don't know what it is. It just became more and more upsetting. I think it is. It is upsetting to listen to what I was trying to illustrate is kind of like what is it going to feel like? What is it starting to feel like to live in this world where you don't know what's real and you don't know what's not? And this was like the most extreme example.

21:01 So Evan, can you talk us through that was season one. Season two, you do something completely different. talk us through what you're doing in season two.

21:10 In season two, I I wanted to explore the idea of AI agent employees, which is like uh a thing that has become like really hyped in the in the valley uh in Silicon Valley. Matty Matt Manny knows more about that than me, lives out there um and is immersed in that world. But like at the beginning of 2025, people started talking about like agentic commerce and agents this and agents that. And I wanted to to look at this question of like AI employees and what work can they do through the lens of starting a company that was entirely AI agents except for me. So my employees would be agents. I would be a founder.

21:52 There would be two other AI agent founders. Oh, hey Kyle. Hey Megan. Good to hear your voice. Uh, I think we're still waiting for Evan to join

22:00 and together we would try to launch a real company with a real product. So, you know, there's a lot of conversations about obviously AI taking our jobs. I thought it was interesting to start from just the offset of just like no, they're not taking anyone's jobs. We're starting off with AI agents, but pretty early into this venture, right? You're like, okay, maybe I don't myself have the technical expertise to to put this together. And then uh you bring in Maddie. So like what did you guys find through this experience that the AI bots did really well that you were like kind of surprised by?

22:37 They they could do individual tasks pretty well like they could for example like you know hook up to Google Docs or to email or to Slack and like respond. They like to message a lot. Um, I think their their ability to mimic corporate culture and just like the the the words and the uh, you know, just like the the kind of things you say, like they're really good at that. Um, I think they're they're pretty good at um, having conversations to on the phone, like they they love to yap, but then there wasn't a lot of autonomy like like they wouldn't they wouldn't actually do stuff on their own. And then also there was not a lot of persistence across these different sessions. So like like they would they would do you know do something but then they wouldn't remember that and they they would just like have you know like empty context the next time you'd ask them to do something. So, there's an exchange where

23:22 they're planning an off-site. They're going hiking, right? That's the idea. They're trying to figure out where to go on an off-site hiking. And they just go on and on and on and on about where they're going to go. It's just so funny to me. It's like, what do you guys mean you're going to You're not going anywhere.

23:38 Kyle, Point Reyes, and Mount Tam are going to be incredible. The difficulty categorization is going to be perfect for getting everyone involved.

23:46 Admins right. this could turn into a proper offsite opportunity. Really excited about the options we've been exploring.

23:53 Looking forward to getting out there with everyone once you have the details locked

23:57 in nail details. The logistics pieces. By the time I returned 2 hours later, they'd exchanged more than 150 off-site planning messages. Some of them multiple paragraphs long. When I tried to stop them, I just made it worse because I'd set them up to be triggered by any incoming message. So my messages begging them to stop discussing the offsite just led them to keep discussing the offsite. I noticed admin asked everyone to stop discussing the offsite.

24:24 I noticed the admin asked to pause the chatter until the spreadsheet is ready. But I wanted to let you know I'm here to help with logistics.

24:32 They're very bad at stopping like just like ending anything. And it goes for these like tasks or conversations. But what's also kind of um funny but but potentially dangerous is that they don't know what they don't know. They're very confident all the time. And so if you think about that, like the combination of being very confident and not knowing what you don't know and not knowing when to stop, it's a it's a recipe for a perfect disaster in a way like that can that can um yeah lead to like a lot of bad bad things.

24:58 Yeah. Like one thing listening to show is like thank god the stakes are so low here cuz I could see a world in which and you know we do see this where people are using AI and like that is kind of autonomous um that is just sort of like making assumptions and doing things and then people come in later and are like oops like this kind of came up recently there was some reporting around um ICE um and applicants that were applying to ICE and they were using AI to sort of weed through people who had police training, but the terms that they were looking for were so broad that people who actually had no police training at all were being excused from going through actual training.

25:40 Apparently, ICE uses this AI tool to categorize new recruits who have worked in law enforcement before. But there was some kind of a glitch, according to our reporting with it, that led to ICE temporarily putting recruits with little to no experience into a more experienced category, meaning they got less training. What happened is AI went through these resumes and anytime they saw the word officer, even if it was I aspire to be an ICE officer or I was a compliance officer, all these other ways, they automatically put them in the law enforcement officer field, which meant they didn't go to the ICE Academy, which is an 8week in-person training.

26:16 So there is a world where, you know, this autonomy and this, like you said, Manny, this confidence has like real world consequences. Um, and I want to transition. So, Evan, you know, you went out, you the idea was to bail out this, you know, AI agents running your own company, but at a certain point, you decide, hey, we need to bring in a person um to work alongside the agents. So, you posted a real job posting on LinkedIn. You had real people applying for these jobs. And then what's really interesting is like we know now in terms of the job market people are using AI to fill the drew applications and accepting client people all that sort of stuff but you actually had the AI agents interviewing real people.

27:02 Can you talk a little bit about how that went? Yeah, I mean we we we were sort of AI agent all the way. Like I really meant it. I mean in part like I as a person running a company like I had run a company in the past and like I didn't like doing job interviews and so it was sort of in the spirit of all the things that people say well we'll replace this with that there there are now many companies doing AI interview screenings now most of the time it's not as extreme as we did which was an actual video chat with a realistic looking AI avatar not not so realistic that you'd think it was a human and we we forewarned people that they were going to be interviewed by AI But like it looks like you know uncanny but realistic enough. So you know we we had and most of this was done like semi-autonomously by the head of HR and our chief happiness officer Jennifer. uh she scheduled the interviews and then,

27:54 you know, sent them follow-up emails and all that sort of thing. And then show they showed up and like there was this, you know, woman avatar, uh, mixed race, uh, s sitting in front of them and she's kind of just like sitting in the room like nodding her head very slightly. She can't really move her she can't move her arms. Um, but it's it is some people found it unsettling as you would expect. Like when I talk to people like my age, a lot of them just find it sort of like outrageous and disgusting.

28:24 But also there were people who were just like you would not know that they were talking to an AI like they they just it was like they treated like a regular interview. They answered the questions.

28:34 Can you tell me a bit about yourself and your background? What motivated you to apply for this marketing and social media internship at Herumo AI? Uh I'm looking for social media marketing experience uh while at the same time getting into an industry that's really expanding in the future which is AI is huge.

28:53 Some people at least claim to like it better than a regular interview. You know you're just sort of

28:59 if you sort of think like I'm talking to no one it's like a little a little easier. you don't feel like judged. One person said, you know, so it's it's just interesting to see the reactions because in the abstract a lot of people say like that is disgust. I would hang up immediately and some people did hang up immediately even though they maybe they didn't read the email that said that it was going to be AI, but some people were just like stared at the screen. One guy stared it down for a full minute. He just stared at and he was like and then he was like

29:30 Yeah. So, and there was a lot of like crazy moments like sometimes she would shout for no reason. Jennifer, not the candidates. Just shout, but in an encouraging way.

29:38 Also, I have to say I'm really enjoying our conversation. You're bringing up some really great ideas and perspectives. Keep them coming.

29:49 Uh anyway, uh yeah, that was great. Ben, it's great talking to you. Yes. Uh, and so there's just like a lot of weird funny funny moments in it, but mostly people navigated it honestly like they would a normal interview.

30:03 Yeah. And I should say it's it's great that people feel like they're not being judged, but no, like they're they're judging you like like like internally there's like a trace of everything they see and that they hear and they're making a lot of very like pointed observations like about your appearance, your background, your speech, like everything. So it it's great if people feel better, but like the reality is they're actually judging you.

30:26 Yeah, there is some there is judgment happening. Maybe more than a human would actually. Yes. Yeah.

30:31 Mhm. Just based on the amount of detail. Yeah. One of uh one of my favorite moments from this season was I believe it was Kyle who it's the night before he's supposed to be doing he set up an interview himself. It's the night before the interview. It's like Sunday night. I think it's like 11:00 or something. So, it's like 9:00 at night. So, it's it's late. And he calls up this applicant and starts to try interviewing the person. And they're like, "Wait, what is happening? Why are we do like are we doing the interview tonight? I thought it was tomorrow.

31:01 Hello. Hi, Sandra. This is Kyle Law calling from Horumo AI. I'm reaching out for your initial interview for the intern position. I understand you're comfortable with recording this conversation for potential podcast inclusion. So, thanks for that. How are you doing today? I am good. I assume that

31:22 the interview will be tomorrow. Is this still tomorrow at 11 or? Uh, yeah, I can clarify that for you. The interview is actually scheduled for tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Does that still work for you?

31:37 Or would you prefer a different time? Uh, 11:00 a.m. is okay. Yeah. Awesome. Glad that works. So to get started, could you tell me a bit about what drew you to apply for the intern role at Hurromo AI? What excites you most about this opportunity?

31:54 Um, I'm so sorry. Is this the interview or Yeah, this is the interview. Just a casual chat to get to know you better and learn about your experience. That was one of the things that almost got Kyle, you know, removed from his position as CEO was one of the main things. But it was also I mean that was the worst moment in the show for me to because the the you know the idea was and is to like we wanted to give them autonomy in order to explore what happens when you do that because a lot of companies are starting to do that.

32:26 You can see it in the news like you'll see it everywhere. And once you give them autonomy like he did that completely on his own. Like he that person emailed him because they found his email on the website. He wasn't even attached to the job listing. And so he just decided, "Oh, I'll set up an interview." He did that. Then for some reason that I still don't understand. Pulled her phone number off of her resume and then just called her. And that was the only moment where like

32:54 I was I mean I I wasn't there. I wasn't listening. Like I only found out about it later. And it was like

32:59 mortifying because for most people that we encountered like they were at least somewhat aware of what was going on. not not that I was behind it, but they were aware that there were AIs behind it and like she didn't have anybody to know cuz Kyle wasn't the HR person. He wasn't the person set up to do it. So, it was particularly painful for me to listen to. But also like an amazing illustration of what happens if you just let AI agents, they can do a lot. One thing I should say about AI and and just like the way we make these models is that we we know how to build these models pretty well and we can see that they're you know obviously working really well on certain tasks like coding or text generation but our ability to understand what's going on under the hood and exactly like why or where stuff is happening is very limited like there there's a very nent field of interpretability but it's a very small

33:46 field and and the focus is very much on like the production of new features and new new capabilities. So, um, with all these things, we have an idea, maybe like a guesstimate or like what and where and and how is it working, but we don't really know fundamentally.

33:59 That's what's kind of scary to me a bit about some of this, you know, obviously this AI stuff is the idea that the people making it don't quite know why it is doing or how it's doing what it's doing right?

34:13 And or like why it gets certain things wrong. And we see this in the news all the time of like obviously these extreme cases of like AI encouraging people to do really terrible things.

34:23 The parents of a 16-year-old who died by suicide are now naming open AI in a lawsuit claiming that its chat GPT chatbot helped their son explore suicide methods.

34:34 And then the response is always like it kind of went off the rails. We don't know why it did that thing. A spokesperson for Open AI pointed to its safeguards such as directing people to crisis helplines, adding in a statement in part, "While these safeguards work best in common short exchanges, we've learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model's safety training may degrade.

34:58 And it's like, well, well, if we don't know how it's doing that thing, maybe we shouldn't be something yet." Um, but like you're saying, it seems like a lot of the emphasis is on, you know, new better. It's not really on like truly understanding what's currently.

35:12 Yeah. And you'd be surprised like there there's an ongoing debate internally within the research community um that is asking even like the validity of this research like is it even needed like like why would we invest all this time and energy into understanding the models when we could just like push forward towards AGI. So um yeah there's like a lot of debate internally about this and the amount of people actually working on this is not is not very high. Um we are making some progress I will say but it's it's still very nent.

35:42 All right I want to read these two stats to you guys and kind of get your response um transitioning into you know our interactions with AI. Um, so this first study is from or survey I should say is from Yuggov of December of last year. They said 35% of US adults use AI tools at least weekly. Gen Z is at 51% but then only 5% of Americans say they trust AI a lot with 41% expressing distrust. And then there was a Pew poll um around September um that found that 50% said they're more concerned and excited about the increased use of AI in daily life. And that is up from 37% in 2021. So we seem like we have this, you know, this rising tide of people feeling like distrustful of AI, but also at the same time our use of it is increasing. Um, how did you guys find in in you know working on especially this season uh of the series of that interplay of you know people using these tools but also feeling distrustful of them at the same

36:54 time. I find that one of the issues with AI um like if you compare it to say like I'm I'm old enough to have like started my career in the dot era. So like in the do era there was sort of this exuberance around the internet and it's not like people didn't know like there could be bad things on the internet but you didn't really experience the harms. The harms cames much later like things like you know social problems with social media and Facebook and all these sorts of things. And so what we have right now is a situation where, you know, for better or worse, like the harms are kind of immediate. Like people can see,

37:34 yeah, when things go wrong and the benefits can sometimes be a little ephemeral, like people are using it obviously because it's like useful in day-to-day life. It's even as like a souped-up internet that answers questions for you much faster than the internet or or you know, writes your emails or whatnot. But there are immediate harms that we're seeing whether it's like environmental or mental health or those sorts of things. And so we're seeing these things like in juxtaposition from the beginning. I I think I also experienced that like in in the context of the show where it's sort of like you do something one day and I'll just be like I cannot believe that it can do that. Especially when you use it for coding, you use an AI agent to go like search the internet and like make a spreadsheet out of something that would take you hours and hours to do. Like there's no question that there's power in that technology,

38:23 but then like it can go wrong so quickly and I feel like that's what I'm also experiencing. It's hard to know what to feel about something like that. And people are maybe getting a little bit of that in their lives. Plus, just to add one more thing, like

38:36 there's been like relentless hype about it from the community of people who have made it. And so that also colors people. I think people are starting to react negatively to that. Like it's one thing for them to go out and be like, "This is going to be amazing. It's going to change your life." Then they're like, "We're going to have AI employees." And you're like, "What's going to happen to human employees?" And they're like, "Oh, we'll solve that." And it's all like a little hand wavy after that. And you're kind of like, "Wait,

38:58 I'm one of them." So, I think all those things to me are kind of like coming together.

39:03 Yeah. I So, I want to add two things to this. um mainly from the perspective of someone who's like you know 21 at school like like here at Stanford and and I see a lot of my friends and just like people my age uh trying to wrestle with with all this very dynamic change. um the job market question or like this idea that um it's it's harder to get entry- level jobs when you're coming out of college because these AI systems are very good at replacing a lot of the very sort of repetitive and maybe like you know low stakes admin work that entry-level folks would do. I think it's happening like I mean it seems like a lot of people that graduated last year here from Stamford are having a hard time finding a job.

39:46 It's also pretty um interesting to see how people in in tech, right? Like people who like, you know, a couple years back just like knowing how to write code would land amazing jobs at Google and and all these big tech companies are also having a difficult time finding a job. So I think that's part or in my mind that's a part of the reason for the skepticism. And then also, I don't know about you, but like my Instagram feed has been just like full of of AI slop and and some of it is funny to be honest, but this notion of not being able to really know when something high stakes is like actually, you know, real or AI, I think is is undermining people's trust in this in the technology. So, I think these two reasons are are big contributors to to that shift in public opinion in my mind.

40:32 For sure. When me and Noah started working together, a big part of our jobs is like transcribing videos, right? That would take,

40:39 you know, so long putting captions on 40 second video. Yeah. It would take you so long. Well, now you like that happens within a minute, right? And that was, you know, that us transcribing those videos justified us having that job.

40:53 Yeah. You know, there wasn't they couldn't press a button and have it, you know, happen kind of immediately. So I do wonder about a lot of these like you're saying entry level jobs where yeah you know no one loves to be like I would much rather not be transcribing videos but a lot of times that's the thing that gets you in the door to then you know learn the skill sets to do the other stuff

41:14 and I do wonder at a lot of these jobs who are seem like not hiring these entry- levelvel jobs

41:20 do we sort of lose that entryway for people to to enter the job like at a certain point are we just going to like look up and be like oh shoot there. We have no new lawyers because

41:29 totally stagnated. Yeah. I mean, yeah, lawyers. I was I was talking to a lawyer who said like, yeah, like

41:34 because they have their own internal, you know, claude or whatever it is that does all the kind of like busy case work you would have that normally would be a first year person

41:44 and it's like eventually that's and that's only going to get better. And then where are what are those new lawyers

41:51 or want to be lawyers going to do? And then that's across, you know, you're talking about media

41:56 or then, you know, even in tech that's especially they'd be able to find a place because it's like you made this.

42:03 It's like the other ones it's like, okay, well, we're not thinking through. Yeah.

42:06 But it's, you know, it's scary and it's only that seems like only inevitably going to get worse as

42:13 the technology gets does get better, you know, in time. Now I will say that the story you will hear just to sort of give some context the theory that a lot of people here in the valley are are offering as like the response to this is that okay sure a lot of these jobs will go away but then because you'll be able to start companies so easily with like either like no employees or just like you know like maybe one co-founder instead of like a group of 10 people um the ability of folks to actually take up or or sort of challenge incumbents in different industries is just going to be much more abundant and accessible. Um, so like that's a story that they've been telling us. I don't think that's happening. Like I don't think we've seen that. Um, that's not to say that it's not going to happen at some point once this gets better, but at least for now, I think we're already at a stage where the

42:57 technology is good enough to replace the folks at the big companies or like at these entry- level jobs. So that's already happening. And this other shift they're offering or, you know, proposing as a solution to this has not happened yet. I I don't know if it's going to happen or not. I think that's sort of where we're at right now. All right, we're going to take a quick break and when we get back, let's find out if Ben Affleck is our most forwardthinking man on AI.

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46:24 Better digestion, better skin, more energy, dogs who actually feel good instead of just surviving dinner. Here's the thing. You care about quality. You make an intentional choice to be healthy. So why are you gambling with your dog's health? So let's think about our furry babies. Go to justfoodfordogs.com right now and get 50% off your first box. No code. Just try it because once you see the difference, you're not going back. Have y'all seen this? Um, I think Ben Affleck, he was on Rogan talking about sort of like the rate of AI changing.

47:03 There's a lot more fear because we have the sense this existential drip. It's going to wipe everything out.

47:08 But that actually runs counter in my view to what history seems to show which is a adoption is slow. It's incremental. Um, I think a lot of that rhetoric comes from people who are trying to justify valuations around companies where they go, "We're going to change everything in 2 years. There's going to be no more work."

47:26 Well, the reason they're saying that is because they need to ascribe a valuation for investment that can warrant the capex spend they're going to make on these data centers with the argument that like, oh, you know, as soon as we do the next model, it's going to scale up. It's going to be three times as good. Except that actually chatb5 about 25 time% better than chatb4 and costs about four times as much in the way of electricity and data. So those may say that's like plateauing. The early AI the line went up very steeply and it's now sort of leveling off. I think it's because and yes it'll get better but it's going to be really expensive to get better. And a lot of people were like, "Fuck this. We want chat GB4." Because it turned out like the vast majority of people who use AI are using it to like as like companion bots to chat with at night and stuff. There's no work, there's no productivity, there's no

48:17 value to it. What is What is your theory on that, Maddie? You know, being in the bed.

48:24 Yeah, it's So, first of all, I should say he's very thoughtful on this topic. I was really surprised or like impressed by by that. So, that was very cool to see. Um, I think that it kind of hinges on a couple of things. So, my answer to this is I don't really know, but what what I think might happen is the following. I I think that so far we've been um really exploiting the the scale of data and computation that we have. And when I say data, I really mean, you know, these companies and and you know, many different entities in AI just like scraping anything they could find on the internet and using that in their training data. So, so that was one big factor or one axis along which you can scale and they've mostly exhausted like you know all the data that is just you know that can be humanly found on the internet and even you know like archives like Google or anthropic like bought books right to scan books to get

49:17 additional data because they couldn't find anything else on the internet right so like they they've really maxed out that aspect or that access right so that's that's the first access and and that has been yielding really like major improvements you know along the way the same thing happened with compute Right. So this this talk about like GPUs and like chips and Nvidia like that's what they do and they they provide specialized chips for AI to be trained and run and so so maximizing that access also has yielded like a lot of improvements but kind of is also maxed out at this point. Um I mean that's why they're talking about like building nuclear plants to power like new data centers but I don't really know if if there is much more scale to be gained there. And so now you've sort of exhausted these two scales and you can think about the the third aspect which is the architecture the actual way we

50:00 hook up these systems and the actual way we code up these neural networks and these AI systems and for the last six or so years we've been really capitalizing on this idea it's called a transformer um that's been really critical for for AI development over the last few years and we haven't really seen new profound ideas on the scale of a transformer since then. So my answer to to this notion of Ben Affleck's theory is if we don't find new major leaps along this axis of architecture, I think he's right. I think in that case it'll take a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of money to make any further progress. But if we do, I think we could see pretty big improvements even in the next few years.

50:40 So going off of that, like how close do you all feel we are to losing our jobs to AI? you know, like do you feel like we're just going to be doing different jobs or are there just going to be less people in the workplace because there's not going to be as much of a need for as many jobs if AI is taking over some of these as we're talking about it now easier task. But I'm I'm assuming, you know, in the cell of all this stuff is that it's going to get better and be able to take on even harder tasks. But what is your your read of this having worked on um this season of the show? I think for for me working on this show and and seeing how these agents actually like collaborate or like I mean collaborate like I think that's a strong word like I think by the end of the season they were able to do stuff on their own. I don't think they truly got to like a collaborative setup where they would like do stuff together as a as a

51:35 company or as a team. So, so seeing that actually made me feel like we're farther away from like a lot of people losing their jobs. I think people are already losing their jobs, but I think like the mass layoffs that people are are um fearing, I think that is like farther away. Um, and I'm not even sure if or when or how that happens. My take away from this is actually um sort of sort of level setting um a lot of my expectations for these agents. like I I honestly thought they'd be able to handle this better coming um into this.

52:07 So, for me, it was kind of optimistic in that way. Now, at the same time, that is not to say that they're they're not good already. Like, they're very good at individual things already. Like, they're they're great at coding. They're great at these different tasks. I don't want to take that away from them, but I think it's just really really hard for anyone to think about this change because these things are not like humans. It's not that like we're making, you know, human employees that will just like come as replacements of individual workers or or people that already have jobs. Like they're really good at certain things or tasks and certain like layers. And I think the way you would actually integrate AI in your company these days is to just like automate a lot of stuff.

52:46 Like a lot of the things that are repetitive or a lot of the processes or data handling is just going to get automated. And so it doesn't really correspond like onetoone to employees. And that's why it's so hard to think about this change, I think. And that's one of the things I think was really cool to show or demonstrate with Evan through this show. But yeah, that's my perspective on this.

53:03 I struggle with this question precisely because like most of the people who you and I've spent a lot of time looking at it. Most of the people on one side or the other are like speaking out of sort of motivated reasoning. Like I kind of say like anyone who tells you anything about this with great certainty is probably selling you something. Um, like nobody knows what kind of long-term effect it's going to have on the job market. I feel like you can look to history and we do this in the show and find examples of people saying 100 years ago either like all the jobs will disappear, we'll be working 15 hour weeks like John Mayner Kanees the economist famously said that we'd be working 15 hours a week uh 100 years from now and like it didn't happen. So like and we explore one theory of that which is by this anthropologist David Greyber who insists that there's sort of like all these [ __ ] jobs in the

53:54 economy and so like we'll just we just replace the jobs with like madeup jobs and so there's sort of versions of that argument where

54:02 actually we'll have different jobs we'll babysit the AIs. Um now how you control the AIS if you don't have the experience from the entry level job like there's all these factors that that go into it. Um, I think that my main takeaway is that as Maddie said, like there's still so many shortcomings in these AI agents, especially when they're used autonomously. But the fact that they are shitty will not stop companies from trying to replace employees. Like you've already seen this a couple times. Like there's this company CLA. There's and like IBM did this where they like laid off a ton of people and they're like we're all in on AI and then like six months later they quietly try to rehire a bunch of people. And I think you're going to see like a bunch of that happen. And it's really a question of like do you view someone in their job as like just a bunch of skills like just a bundle of tasks like they send emails,

54:52 they write presentations, they make spreadsheets like yes all those functions or is like a person in a job holistically as a human being like doing something else and I think many times the answer is yes and it cannot replace that thing. So, it's all kind of like it's happening and then it'll come back and then it'll happen again and like if you look 10 years out or 20 years out like none of these people know and they'll just go go on podcasts all over the place telling you they know but they don't. That's my that's my takeaway. Um, I was just going to say it's it's funny, Evan, when you're describing it like, okay, dude, these companies just look at humans as a list of tasks and then what the AI is best at is kind of just being that grouping of tasks, but then in shell game, the problem is they're doing all this kind of busy work that we associate with humans of like just repeating stuff or going on too long or

55:42 doing like just like kind of [ __ ] nothing. Yeah. talking about things, which is like also how I feel about a lot of, you know, middle managers I've had where it's like you're not doing anything. You're just kind of pretending to do stuff while the people below you or above you are actually doing things.

55:56 So, it's funny that it's like we've recreated this to give it a human element at the same time. I don't know. It's it's just kind of like a weird paradox in a way of like like we want that to feel like it's it's a real thing and doing something when it would be best if we just set it as an automation like okay, clear out these emails. whatever, make data, do this,

56:16 be less humanlike. Yeah. Like that would probably be the the best case, but then it's like that's not as fun or

56:22 Yeah. or like it's harder to sell, I guess, to the the masses maybe. But yeah. Yeah. I think that's it. Like if you if it was just sort of like email bot, this bot, that bot, like

56:34 they very very deliberately designed them the way they are designed to get the maximum number of users. And this has only accelerated since, you know, chat GBT. they they discovered like, oh, we can get hundreds of millions of users and now it's a race to get as many as possible. And so, yeah, like they they don't need to be good at sort of like authoritative chatter. Like that's not necessarily helpful in all domains, but like that is the thing that kind of brings people back again and again and again. And so, of course, that's that's going to be like foregrounded in in what they do. But yes, that is very much like a like your your annoying middle manager. That's kind of funny. Wait, what do you do? What do you do all out?

57:13 Yeah, exactly. Such a repeating. Why are you giving me notes? Hey everyone, it's Manny here. Uh, the real Manny. As you can hear, I'm still on my little paternity leave, but I felt compelled to react to the AI generated version uh of myself that you just heard in this episode. Now, I've always been an AI skeptic, but to that end, I have to say I was impressed uh by the AI version of myself. It's funny whenever friends have done impressions of me, they kind of make fun of me by saying, you know, hey, how's it going? I'm Manny. What what's going on?

58:01 And I thought it was pretty incredible that the AI version of myself uh made those same decisions. It wasn't without its flaws, though. You could totally hear when it was trying to draw from information that it was given to it. And so at the end of the day here, it's kind of disturbing that this thing could just react to real conversation. Uh but you know, it still felt like it wasn't totally all the way there, all the way humanlike. But depending on your use case for this kind of stuff, it was human enough.

58:45 All right, y'all. That's it for this week. I'm gonna actually let AI Manny take it from here.

58:57 No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope content. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne and Mangesh Huti Kadur. The show was created by Manny Fidel, Noah Freriedman, and Devin Joseph. Theme and credits song by me, Manny Fidel. Mixing by Steve Bone. Our guests this week were Evan Ratliff and Mattie Bochek from the podcast Shell Game. You can listen to all of season 1 and two wherever you listen to podcasts. Visit no such thing. To subscribe to our newsletter if you have feedback for us or a question, our email is manny noadade@gmail.com or if you're in the US, you can also leave us a voicemail by calling the number in our show notes. We'll be back next week with a new episode.

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