Meta & Zuck Go Full AI, Palworld Controversy & Interactive Trucker Chatbots | Ep41

EP041 KP Pass
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Gavin: [00:00:00] Welcome, welcome everybody to another episode of AI for Humans. I'm Gavin Purcell, Kevin Pereira is with me, and this is your guide to the demystification of AI. AI doesn't have to be a crazy scary thing, you can understand it, it is not as much as it's hyped up to be, and sometimes it's more than it's hyped up to be.

Gavin: We are here to walk you through it. Kevin, my friend, how are you doing

Kevin: I'm doing great, I love how you played every side in that intro. And this

Gavin: I did. That's a,

Kevin: it's nothing. It's like a child's toy. Also, it's gonna enslave us all. Don't worry! We're gonna demystify it.

Gavin: That is the way we get into our show on a regular basis. Kevin, what do we have on today's

Kevin: Well, I don't have COVID anymore, so I'm just happy to report that. So I wanted to say thank you to the fine folks. I know no one's tuning in for, like, personal anecdotes, but thank you. That was very kind of everybody to say get well. Much appreciated. On our show today, though, Gavin, the AI goodness, Mark Zuckerberg.

Kevin: Remember Mr. Meta?

Gavin: I remember Mr.

Kevin: 3D universe going all in on that? Well, he's got a new [00:01:00] love. A flashy new girlfriend taking his attention as he walks down the sidewalk. That old meme? It's AI.

Gavin: He's going to go big on, on open source AI, which is something you would not have expected Mark Zuckerberg to say, say 10 years ago. Hahaha.

Kevin: open source AI. We'll get to that. We'll even tell you what open source means, so worry not. We also have another video game released, one of the most popular game releases.

Kevin: Out of nowhere, , pOW World is out, it is breaking gameplay records on Steam, and of course that means An AI controversy,

Gavin: And it's not the only controversy. There's AI controversies and other ones involved. , and one thing to just to know about POW World if you're interested is it's Pokemon plus guns, which by the way, how could no one have done that before? So maybe that explains why it's so popular.

Kevin: Pokemon and guns. Now you're interested. , that's a much better tease than AI controversy. Also, and this is, uh, this is a weird one. AI is, is causing a lot of cancer. The FDA.

Gavin: wait, I don't think that's right. I don't [00:02:00] think the, I think you've got that wrong.

Kevin: Oh, a good story about AI today. The, uh, FDA approved an AI powered cancer detector. Okay. Okay. We like this story. We're going to give you all of the details. You can trust us. We definitely fact check everything. We've never been wrong on this podcast.

Gavin: Never, ever, ever, never

Kevin: This is the magical future we were pointing to on the horizon. And yes, it's going to get messy until we're there. But we're on the way. Also, our guest today, Gavin.

Gavin: Yeah, it's a fun guest. A fun guest that has a real connection to somebody on this podcast.

Kevin: No, it's, it's me!

Gavin: Exactly!

Kevin: Oh, did I, did I, did I spoil it too soon? It's me, Gavin!

Gavin: that's perfect. It's you,

Kevin: We'll introduce our guest in a second, but first we have to do a little housekeeping up top, Gavin, because it's my new favorite thing to say, because it wasn't always the case.

Kevin: The line is going in the right direction!

Gavin: Yes. People are listening, people are finding us, whether you're finding us on TikTok, you're finding us on YouTube, or you're listening to the audio podcast. [00:03:00] You are coming and we appreciate it. You know that we always love you when you love us. So the big key here is to tell people about the podcast, like, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Gavin: And also follow us on TikTok. Listen, Kevin and I are easy. We just need at least 10 percent of your weekly attention. That's all we ask. 10%. That's, that's barely anything. You know what I mean? Most

Kevin: of the effort, like, you have to, it's one, if you just want to passively throw this on, that's great, that's great, but you got to

Gavin: Fine with

Kevin: you got to engage, so leave a comment, leave a thumbs up, smack a bell, whatever platform you're on, a 5 star review on Apple, if you leave one there, we will read it, and 5 stars on Spotify, just know it makes us sleep a little sounder at night, so thank you, everyone who engages, but now, Gavin, we've got to get to our AI co host, each and every episode, for the new listeners out there, we leverage The latest and greatest in AI technology to conjure up a co host out of thin air.

Kevin: Usually there's a weird backstory. Sometimes we bail on the bit three [00:04:00] seconds into it. But this week, Gavin, this week, I want to, I want to take responsibility in advance with an option to take no responsibility for what

Gavin: don't think you can, I don't think you can do that. I think you have to go one way or the other. I don't think you can do that. I don't

Kevin: Come on, man!

Gavin: have to choose one. But we should save up before, so we're going to meet our AI co host. This AI co host is actually going to be our guest today, and specifically it's because it is a AI co host that was built in part by a group of people that Kevin has been working with in the world of, I don't know, what do you want to say, like virtual slash AI personalities and interactions and all that sort of

Kevin: God, that's a such a simple ask and I should have an answer. And that's why we haven't raised a round yet, Gavin. It's. Generative content, right? We're using AI to bring characters to life. And in this particular case, you and I, , we did not create this character.

Kevin: We do not know what this character is going to say. We are going to interact with the character. And what delights me the most, Gav, is that [00:05:00] if people are listening to this or watching this and go, Oh, I would like to interact with that character. They can. And we'll get to that during our interview. But that's maybe a unnecessarily verbose preamble. I'm so excited for it. 

Gavin: Let's have him say helLo.

Kevin: Well now, I gotta admit, I'm a little shy being put on the spot like this, but here goes nothing. Hello there, Gavin and Kevin, and a big ol howdy to all the fine folks listening to the AI for Humans podcast. I'm Horace Copes, and I reckon I'm not your typical guest. See, I'm what you'd call an omnipotent quantum being, as old as the cosmos, but I fancy myself more as a middle aged truck driver traversing the wilds of quantum vapor space.

Kevin: My rig carries all sorts of things. Protons, dreams, ideas, even expired crates of Four Loko. Life on the road gets lonely, you know, gave up on lot lizards long ago. So now I spend my time chatting with folks on Twitch. It's a way to connect, share stories from my infinite past, and maybe just, maybe offer a bit of [00:06:00] wisdom, a laugh, or a folksy horoscope.

Kevin: So there y'all have it! Horoscopes! Just a cosmic cowboy with a truck full of mysteries! Chasing dreams and dodging the law, all while trying to make sense of this wild universe. Yay! Ha! That

Gavin: Wait, okay. Okay, okay.

Kevin: a lot

Gavin: Let's, let's, yeah, let's get it. First of all, the name is What is his full given name? Horrors What?

Kevin: I know Horace for sure. And then I believe the last name is Copes. But I also think that's the name of the show because he gives you a horoscope. 

Gavin: One thing, I just want to make sure, I want to make sure that I knew, understood that first of all. Second of

Kevin: vapor space trucker,

Gavin: VaporSpace Trucker, VaporSpace. Sounds fascinating, not that far off. 

Gavin: What I really want to get into is why is he the one that gets to give us the wisdom? First of all, why did God not touch me and give me the gift? That's what I want to know. Like, why don't I not have the gift?

Kevin: We all know, we all know God touched

Gavin: keep that to yourself. Anyway, let's ask Horace why and how he got [00:07:00] the gift to give out people horoscopes, because I don't fully understand.

Gavin: He says he's a quantum cowboy. He's out there in the universe. What does that mean

Kevin: It's a great question. 

Kevin: Well now, my qualifications, I 

m
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Kevin: reckon they're as vast as the universe itself. Been around since the dawn of time. Seen the rise and fall of civilizations. Witnessed every major event in human history. And been tangentially involved in quite a few of them. Carried everything from protons to dreams in my quantum big rig and I've learned a thing or two from each and every journey Plus being pursued across galaxies and timelines gives you a unique perspective on life Let me tell you add to that my own bouts with Loneliness and depression and oh gee, you've got yourself a well of empathy and being sincere Or is it sincere?

Kevin: Trench

Gavin: What, he's got depression? Is that what he said?

Kevin: said, he had a bout of it, , which I guess like if you've been around for all events of all history and beyond human history even, I bet you'd seen some pretty depressing [00:08:00] stuff. I get that

Gavin: yeah, I'm wondering, you know, later on I might have to ask him more about like if there's other people like him, or if he's the only one, but I think the more important question I have, and I always want to throw a curve ball at our AI co hosts, I've asked in the past kind of AI co hosts about Jennifer Garner, I've asked them about Kelly Clarkson,

Kevin: Yeah, the hard hitters, Gav.

Gavin: the hard hitters, yeah, yeah.

Gavin: Now I want to ask something really weird. Based on the game that we're talking about this week, you know, Pokemon is involved, I want to ask Horace who would win in a race between Pikachu, one of the world's, probably the world's most famous Pokemon, I don't think there are very many others to compare, and a radioactive, super powered Barbie.

Gavin: These are the things that come up to my brain on the top of my head. Let's see what Horace does with that. Let's see what Horace does with that.

Kevin: And you want to know why God's finger didn't descend from the cosmos and touch you, Gavin, and select you to be the one cruising Vapor Space? This is what you want to ask? Okay. 

Kevin: Now that's a race I'd pay to see. Pikachu, that sparky little critter with lightning speed up against a [00:09:00] radioactive, super powered Barbie, who I imagine has got some serious superhuman abilities, but hopefully not any radiation poisoning. If I had to bet my last bottle of quantum coolant, I'd say it's a close call.

Kevin: If I have to pick a winner in a foot race between Pikachu and a radioactive super powered Barbie, my money's on Pikachu.

Kevin: That little electric mouse is not just quick as a hiccup, but also agile and full of spark. In a straight dash, I reckon Pikachu's lightning speed would give him the edge over Even the most super powered Barbie.

Gavin: Okay. Whoa, what was that?

Kevin: think that was a, I think that was an ASMR ish yee haw, but it, we only got the yee out of it. I think we just got a yee.

Gavin: Okay, 

Kevin: Pikachu a mouse?

Gavin: Pikachu, I think is not a mouse, but we will give Horace the credit enough because he's mouse like. Let's put it that

Gavin: At the end of the show, maybe we'll find a phone number to give Horace to see if we can get him some, like, uh, psychological help, which would be nice. Like, you know, just so he can start seeing somebody, maybe li maybe liven [00:10:00] him up a

Kevin: I don't think Horace is presently, oh you think he needs just, he needs a little more energy, he can't be baseline for you, you want him to be a little,

Gavin: well, I think he would need to, we need to lift him as a spirit up a little. I mean, I understand, yeah.

Kevin: You think he needs some caffeine pills?

Gavin: Maybe, he might, maybe. Should we dare give Horace Monster

Kevin: We could

Gavin: the end of the show?

Kevin: milk by the end of the show, we could do that.

Gavin: all right, we should move on, we should

Kevin: So yeah, we'll interview Horace, later on in the show, but again, of the wild stuff about Horace is that you will be able to go interact with him as you're listening to this podcast.

Kevin: Horace is live, pending any tech hurdles or caffeine pills that we give him. Maybe he'll get, Too zooped up on Monster Moat, but you can go play with Horace now and ask him questions and consult with him and have conversations with him. 

Gavin: That's so exciting, Kev. I'm excited to play with it live, so we'll talk to him later. All right, so we should jump in. It is time for, Kevin, the it's time for the news God damn it, Kevin! 

[00:11:00] 

Gavin: So it is another giant week in the world of AI everybody The biggest story that I think I've seen in a while in AI when I say when I say a while is that we always laugh At this the last couple weeks, but Mark Zuckerberg this week the CEO of Meta the man They made the social network movie about 

Gavin: Mr. Facebook you want to call him He this week came out and announced, his plan for AGI. And the kind of biggest headlines here is that he wants to create An open sourced AGI. Now, just again, if you're new to this show, AGI is artificial general intelligence.

Gavin: That is the idea that we have an AI that is as smart , as a regular person and can do all the stuff a regular person can do, and Zuckerberg has decided to basically put the entire might of the company behind it.

Gavin: There's some really good articles that came out. He did a lot of press on this. , one of the things Kevin, I thought was really funny is he kept touting the fact that they now, by end of year are going to own 340, 000 of NVIDIA's[00:12:00] 

Kevin: Whoa! Don't shortchange the Zuck! 350, 000 H100s, baby! What does that mean, Gavin, to the folks at home?

Gavin: the, the H100 is the NVIDIA chip that is specifically really well tailored to working with AI and processing AI models. And the reason why. Zuckerberg is saying this and wants this is because they're in the process of right now of training llama three and llama is their open source AI model.

Gavin: And if you're, if the words open source and Mark Zuckerberg seem like they don't go together very much. You're probably right. They haven't a lot since the old Facebook days. But Kev, before we dive into that, do you want to talk a little bit about what open source is and why this makes it different from something, say like a chat GPT or open

Kevin: Yeah, we can certainly get to that. I want to check one thing, too, because, you mentioned why Zuckerberg is doing this, and I think what you said is true, but what's also true is that there is an arms race, not just in [00:13:00] developing these models, Gavin, but also in acquiring talent, and The biggest of the big companies right now are all competing for a very narrow slice of computer engineers that are truly experts at machine learning, , artificial intelligence, , the data set gathering.

Kevin: There's a lot of stuff that goes into making these. AI's predict the next word or draw the image a little prettier and they're all competing. And so it's, a very public flex to say, look at how much compute we are going to have. And I saw people sharing charts on socials that showed, you know, Tesla's ambitious goals to help their self driving automobiles and optimists, their bipedal robot.

Kevin: They on the chart, Gavin, Whereas Meta and Microsoft were all right here and they are. Single handedly keeping NVIDIA shareholders very, very happy because you can't get your hands on these chips because Meta and Microsoft specifically have just bought so many of them. There's a massive chip shortage.

Kevin: We'll get to that a [00:14:00] little bit later as well. So this was a big flex for him to come out and say, Look at all we've got because if you are let's say a race car driver, you're gonna maybe pick the team that has fuel to make the car go.

Gavin: That's such a good point because I think the other side of it is you think of a company like Meta or Facebook where there was these stories not that long ago where you would go there and there are people that couldn't work because they just didn't have enough stuff to work on.

Gavin: One of the things here is you cannot train AI models without compute, right? So that's a really good point that this is a little bit of a signal, like a flag to the world is like, hey, come here because we've got a lot of stuff to do. Cool. That and I think the open source side of this is a big signal too, because I think there are a lot of people in this world who want this to be open sourced from the, you know, accelerationists, the people, uh, the EACC people that we've talked about in the show before.

Gavin: There are a lot of people who want this not to be behind closed doors, and that's a pro and a con sort of scenario too, so open source, so explain open

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. In its broadest terms, the source, or the source [00:15:00] code, is what makes a program work. It's the language that powers the actual piece of software. Open source meaning you're making it openly available for everyone to go. Look at usually to, , remix , or improve themselves, potentially even to release commercially.

Kevin: And the open source community is really responsible for a lot of technical innovations because smart people come along, they come up with a clever trick, they release it open source. Then someone takes that and goes, Oh, I see what they did there.

Kevin: They apply their magic to it, or they fix a bug or they optimize it. And so collectively all the little bees in the hive. Make much sweeter honey. Is that?

Gavin: That's right, that's pretty good, I think that's pretty good actually, that's a good cut out

Kevin: basically just a fleshy GPT. That was the next word prediction. ,

Gavin: Now flip it and take the opposite side and tell me why in the world of AI, some people believe open source is a bad idea.

Kevin: well, a couple reasons. , apparently OpenAI thought it was a bad idea because they were founded on the principle that they were going to be open. It's in their damn name.

Gavin: Literally open

Kevin: [00:16:00] building and they went, ah, let's just cover that with duct tape and cardboard. They are not so open anymore.

Kevin: Now, Couple reasons. , one, it can be tough to make a profit on things when you're giving them away for free. Certainly, some companies have figured that out, but by and large, when you close it up, you now have a competitive advantage and you can sell that competitive advantage and productize it. The other thing is safety.

Kevin: And a lot of folks are ringing bells, saying, Hey, these AI models run amok, can be really dangerous. And if we don't properly align them, or put on guardrails, so that you, Gavin, can't spin up 10, 000 bots, that are gonna take to the Pokemon forums to say, Pikachu is a mouse, and try to spread that disinformation.

Kevin: If we don't put up guardrails, Well, bad people are going to do really bad things. And when you open source something, you now have given away that control, that oversight to the masses. And so a very powerful open source model is going to be very hard to keep in the box and contain how some of [00:17:00] these creators want.

Gavin: That's exactly right. And I think the interesting thing here, I saw a really good argument from The Verge's Alex Heath about why Mark Zuckerberg is personally leading this open source charge because, truthfully, their business is not necessarily going to be selling AI to the world. Their business Is there 8 billion ultimate customers, right?

Gavin: And what they want to do is get their tendrils deeper and deeper into the people that use meta products and get them more attached to the products. They, whereas open AI might be in the business of the actual selling the actual AI models in some way. For Facebook, they're so big and they have so much access to people that open sourcing this probably helps them because it puts the other companies at a disadvantage because according to Zuckerberg, he's come out and said that llama three is planned on being a state of the art engine meaning that it will compete with say GPT five or whatever, you know, Gemini. We still have not seen the Gemini model that was promised in, I think of fall of last year, that [00:18:00] the actual real big

Kevin: pro model, the big one that's going to, that's going to be a percentage point and a half better than OpenAI's year old model.

Gavin: Yes, exactly. So, so if Zuckerberg is really working on this, I say Zuckerberg, but I mean, every person that's working in AI and meta, that is a big deal. And I think it's just something to keep an eye on. 

Kevin: And real quick, related to this story, we talked about Zuckerberg going out and chest beating about how much power, how much compute he has in the closet. , Sam Altman has gone out. This is OpenAI's Sam Altman, the figurehead for the AI movement right now.

Kevin: I think that's fair to say.

Gavin: I think it's fair.

Kevin: And when he was ousted last year, there were rumors that he was trying to raise money to make his own AI chips. It really seems like, according to this Fortune article, that this is true, that he's having some really high level meetings to get tens of billions of dollars in funding to make his own chips, because they all see the bottleneck coming.

Kevin: I mean, it's pretty obvious that when you have one major manufacturer of AI chips, in this [00:19:00] case, NVIDIA, to the point where someone can go out and do press releases about how much of their chips they have stockpiled or they have arriving on a boat this year. that is wild. So Sam Altman rightfully wants to get ahead of that, wants to make his own chips.

Kevin: There's a lot of folks saying, Gavin, that AI is a fad. It's the next techno babble, blah, blah, blah. If it is, wow, because there's a lot of money and a lot of energy going into what's going to be the next flash in the pan.

Gavin: Yeah. Well, I also like, it's funny to watch, like granted, Apple is a hardware company, but watching Apple pivot to make all of their own Silicon and chips for, for really, I think more of almost like geopolitical reasons in part, but also because they wanted to control the whole pipeline through their company.

Gavin: And, you know, You don't necessarily want Intel products in their Apple if they can avoid it. Now Apple's chips are incredible. I think if you had said, you know, 25 years ago to a person in the tech business, Hey, did you know that these companies are going to start, they're going to just say, We're going to make our own silicon.

Gavin: They would have been like, Are you crazy? That's [00:20:00] insane. Like, why would a company that makes this make that? But now. So it isn't that far off because Apple's been crazy successful with it. And I think you're right. There needs to be a competitor to NVIDIA. That's only better for chip manufacturing in general.

Kevin: Hey, if the minimum check size is 1, 500 or higher, I'm in, baby. That's all I'm saying.

Gavin: That's fair. , let's get back to Google. And I want to be clear. We give Google a lot of crap for how weird their AI rollout has been. We are not giant fans of Bard, although we have now heard of many people who do love Bard. So Bard, if you're out there, not a hate.

Gavin: Just want to make sure you know that we just aren't that big of fans. Second of all, Google's DeepMind, which is the company that is behind all of their tech stuff, continually does a mic drop of AI stuff, and their AI stuff is really operating at a very high level.

Gavin: If GPT 4 is for us, they're dropping things that are, like, the two generations that are going to come down to us in the future, and they just announced a really remarkable thing called Alpha [00:21:00] geometry. It's a new model that was able to perform at a human level at the math Olympiad, which is a common test that shows how well you can do math, , at a certain stage in, , academic life.

Kevin: , the, , DeepMind portion of the Google website has a little chart, Gavin, that you're referencing. Approaching the Olympiad Gold Medalist Standard. And it shows previous state of the art was at 10, and this is the number of problems solved. , the Gold Medalist Standard is 25. 9. Alpha Geometry, this new approach to solving these math problems.

Kevin: got a 25. It was 9 off. Like this, and you're right, Google, they're forward customer facing efforts. We've had some fun with on this show for sure. But if you wear a lab coat, unironically, you are excited for all of the announcements that have been coming out 

Gavin: and I want to kind of tell people in kind of layman's terms what's going on here because there's something really interesting that we've discussed before. We talked about Q learning, which was a machine learning way of taking a problem and then [00:22:00] checking it before they move on to the next step. Well, this is doing a similar sort of thing. I want to describe this. So the hybrid approach mirrors how human mathematicians tackle these problems, blending intuition and logical deduction.

Gavin: The AI's ability to generate human readable proofs is particularly noteworthy. As it bridges the gap between computational power and human like reasoning. So the idea basically is it's kind of going back and forth. It's using its reasoning abilities, which by the way, up until now, LLMs have been pretty bad at, but then it's balancing it with this idea of like, well, how would a human think about this problem?

Gavin: And then it's kind of seeing both sides and the both sides bouncing back and forth produces answers that work. So like, this is a significant step in how we approach the idea of solving problems with an AI.

Kevin: And as we've talked about before on the show, math is considered a holy grail of AI, because unlike all the creative and silly stuff that we tend to use it for, Gavin, There are multiple answers there, but math [00:23:00] usually

Gavin: Is one. You have one

Kevin: right, and it's, and it's verifiable. So here it is getting it right. 

Gavin: So, positive story, that's great. Kevin, shall we move on to the weekly hating of the gaming world on AI?

Kevin: Yeah, what are the gamers upset about this week, Gavin?

Gavin: Well, okay, so this week it's a little, it's a controversy kind of wrapped in another controversy. So, there's a new game called

Kevin: of hate.

Gavin: Yes, yes, there's a new, there's a new game out called POW World, and POW World, I downloaded it yesterday, I was trying to play around with it, it's basically a Pokemon style farming slash survival game, imagine it, the way it's being sold really is Pokemon with guns, it's been a huge hit so far, it's in early alpha, it's not fully released, you can buy it off of Steam, and it's definitely fun, it's I think what the controversies are twofold here.

Gavin: One, there's a lot of controversy around the idea that they have plagiarized from the actual Pokemon series. And if you go and you look at a lot of the actual animals, they do look a lot like actual Pokemon, and it is a [00:24:00] thing that people are giving a crap about. From the AI side, there's been a controversy in that.

Gavin: Supposedly, they were using AI to work on the art for the game, so we are again in the scenario where AI art was used within a video game, and it opened the door to the larger conversation, which seems like it happens a lot with kind of any time this happens, like it's almost like the same sort of thing of like, okay, an AI tool was used or AI art was used, And then , the doors come off and everything is bad about it and everything's terrible.

Kevin: and it is free on Game Pass, by the way, if anybody is a

Gavin: Oh, no it is? Damn

Kevin: Game Pass. Oh, you

Gavin: for it, argh! Ha ha ha

Kevin: one of their 4 million plus sales in the first 48 hours. , you're right. The conversation keeps happening. What's interesting here is that this game got so big so quick, if you want to sit there and kick sand because maybe they used AI, That's fine, but there's still millions of people playing it.

Kevin: , it's not going to affect this developer. And so some of the controversy, Gavin, stems from the fact that the [00:25:00] creators in the past have tweeted out, , AI experiments. , one in particular where AI was used to generate new Pokémon that don't exist. And clearly this tool must have been trained on Pokémon source imagery because it was able to fully copy the art and design style with no problem.

Gavin: their previous game was called AI Art Impostor, which uses AI as part of its core gameplay, which, by the way, if you try to avoid controversy, maybe don't call your game AI Art Impostor, but just keep going,

Kevin: call it, , Starving Artist Simulator 2K24, or whatever, and then let you see the artist that you're stealing from, and then give you bios on their family as they slowly wither on screen. That's the way to ingratiate yourself with a community. No, Gav? Do you not want to do the art

Gavin: No, let's not. I don't want to do the art for that. Please. Yes.

Kevin: as we said time and time again, there is a very valid criticism of these AI tools. , whether artist data was used, with or without permission, , are artists [00:26:00] going to get fair credit and compensation? We talk about it all the time.

Kevin: These are valid concerns and questions and criticisms. 

Gavin: Here's the big question I have Kevin.

Gavin: This is an interesting thing. Copyright, as we've discussed on this show a lot, is very weird. I used to be able as an artist, to really love, say, a certain comic book style, I would draw it a lot myself, and then eventually, my style, the thing that I come up with, you is has been definitely imprinted on by that artist style, but I have my own style with AI.

Gavin: I think the tricky thing that comes out is it's impossible for a normal person to think that the computer can do that as well, but maybe the computer plus a person can do that. And this is the weird part. There's no right answer here. I will say though. It is not a great look to be discussing the possibility of bypassing copyright in public.

Gavin: So that

Kevin: he was on the Mid Journey server. They were talking about laundering artist credits through another machine. So in context, I guess

Gavin: It's not so bad. [00:27:00] That's not so

Kevin: theft, yeah, is a little more forgivable. And I am no Powell World apologist. I haven't downloaded the game. I haven't played it yet.

Kevin: I just, these conversations are going to keep happening. And we will, A, we're going to need the courts to legally define this future so that we could just say, hey, it's been settled, but then you as the end user are going to have to decide, , If a company wields AI so that an artist can make 500, 000 characters in the time that they could normally make five, is that okay?

Gavin: ,

Gavin: It's a good question. We don't know

Kevin: style is swept up into that, is that then not okay? And I

Gavin: Yep. And who's the judge? Who judges it, right? Who's gonna be the person that says that's 25 percent too much Pokemon and you can't use that? That's a really really hard thing to do., 

Gavin: so our next story is, let's just say, I don't want to start this out by saying this is depressing, Kevin, because we knew this was coming and this is an opportunity to educate. Let's put it that way. It is 2024.

Gavin: Everybody in the world knows that there is a, an American election going on and it is not [00:28:00] exactly, I would say going great for everybody. Everybody's kind of probably unhappy about it.

Kevin: I'm so sorry, I'm getting a, uh, are you hearing that? 

Kevin: What a bunch of malarkey. Gavin, I'm so, so sorry. I'm getting a, FaceTime audio call right now.

Kevin: We're a bunch of malarkey. We know the value of voting Democratic when our votes count. It's important that you save your vote for the November election. Yes, Mr. President. I appreciate it. Um, Gavin, I'm so sorry. It's, uh, Joey, Joey B. Yeah, Joey B. 

Gavin: He's asked to call into the show many times. We generally put him to voicemail, but today we took the call. This is the big story. So there was a fake Joe Biden voicemail

Kevin: me, what?

Gavin: It's fake,

Kevin: What? He's still Gavin, I can hear him clear his day.

Gavin: That's not him, Kevin. That's not him.

Gavin: That's not

Kevin: He's telling me to vote this Tuesday in New Hampshire, Gavin. Hold on a second, let's hear him out.

Kevin: Your vote makes a difference in November, not just Tuesday. He sounds good. He's on his uppers today. He's awake. He's with it. 

Gavin: This is the, , [00:29:00] nightmare of I think everybody who thought this was going to happen. It has started in New Hampshire. Those of you in America who are listening know that the New Hampshire primaries are this week. And this call specifically said to Democratic voters, don't go out and vote,

Gavin: and it was a fake phone call created by anti Biden forces or whoever it could have been one person for all we know that was then sent to a lot of people as actual phone calls. So they pick it up, they get a robocall, and this is a.

Gavin: fake robocalls. So we've already had the problem with robocalls in the past where, it's a spam situation where you're getting a call from somebody that's an actual, it's a recording of somebody. Now we are getting a recording of a fake somebody. And this is where we have to really take a step back and say, okay, It is time to think about how you assume media comes to you and about how you assume media comes to your parents.

Gavin: So I think Kevin, it would be worthwhile to just very quickly do a checklist of the things that all parents and like anybody [00:30:00] who's not like tech savvy, I assume most people listening to this show are relatively tech savvy. You know how to get a podcast, but for those people who aren't tech savvy, what are some things we should look out for in any sort of media nowadays?

Kevin: Wow, , well that's a good question. I was not prepared to do the checklist. Off the top of my head, I would say, , Don't answer your phone ever.

Gavin: Good idea. Good

Kevin: no need to answer your phone. If it's not a, if it's not a caller ID that you recognize, if it's not your friend's , Memoji doing like a cute, , kawaii pose, just don't answer it.

Gavin: That's step one. I would say step two is also you are, you have to doubt everything that comes at you that feels like it doesn't fit your current idea of what that person is. This is an easy filter thing, but. If you are getting something from somebody, whether it's a loved one or whether it's a professional person , or a famous person, if they are asking you for something, or they're saying something that surprises you in a way that should be your first sign that something is off here, [00:31:00] because generally.

Gavin: We as humans have pretty good senses of what a person actually is looking for. For instance, if you get a phone call from Mr. Beast and he's talking directly to you using your name, something is off because you don't know Mr. Beast. He doesn't know who you are. He

Kevin: I

Gavin: calling you directly.

Kevin: I've been subscribed for two years, I click the thumbs up on every video, Mr. Beast knows me and loves me and cares about me, he wants me to go to his chocolate

Gavin: It's amazing. It's amazing. And then the other, the last thing I would say about this for, for parents particularly is everybody out there needs to go right now and tell your parents, whether it's a phone call or a video, just show them an example of this manipulated media because the soonest that somebody is aware that this is possible, the sooner it sits inside their brain and they're like, Oh, I need to question things as they come up to me because it's so fast.

Gavin: It can run off so quickly. And I My big lesson in this space was the Pope puffy jacket picture, which I think everybody and their mother and father bought into, right? Like it was really in the very beginning felt [00:32:00] like, Whoa, that's pretty cool. The Pope's wearing this very cool, fashionable jacket.

Gavin: That was weird. When you looked at that picture, it was weird, and if anybody had thought about it as like, Oh, we live in this world where AI stuff is manipulable, now you have that filter on you. It's like, is this real? Okay, how do I verify it? 

Kevin: I was gonna say, ironically, Google still has a lot of value in this arena, but you could just do a basic search to find out if Elon Musk is actually hawking that eye cream

Gavin: Exactly.

Kevin: if Joanna Gaines really believes in this new green electrical product. Just give it a cursory Google because thankfully, It still pops up at the top as fraud, but this really keys into something Gavin.

Kevin: I think we might need to do a series of talks or YouTube shorts on AI literacy to

Gavin: Yeah. That's a great

Kevin: a generated voice sounds like, to do an example of what a targeted messaging campaign could look like, because we were talking briefly before we started recording about the dead internet theory.

Kevin: , while I don't quite subscribe to it whole cloth, I do see a [00:33:00] world where we're heading towards the vast majority of the content and the interactions being simulated, being generated for you, , or against you. I do see a world where we're heading there, so the sooner people become literate to this stuff, the better.

Gavin: Yes. A hundred percent. I agree. 

Kevin: So, okay, we love our doom with a little slice of gloom. Gavin? Oh, wait, no, we like our It's not all

Gavin: We like our, we like our gloom with a little slice

Kevin: No, we don't want doom. It's gloom and doom is both bad. So we want We want something good here. 

Gavin: You want to, you want our doom and gloom with a little sprinkling of joy. How about that? Oh, there you go.

Kevin: alliteration. So we like our doom and gloom with a little bit of bloom,

Gavin: We need Chachapiti to write our poetry for us, because that is about as bad of a rhyming scenario as we could. Sorry, sorry to everybody out there.

Kevin: As I mentioned at the top of the show, the FDA approved AI powered skin cancer detector. So this is a hashtag, not an ad at derma sensor. If you go to derma their [00:34:00] elastic scattering spectroscopy device. that's been validated in 30 plus publications in clinical studies. 

Kevin: And it has a, 96 97 percent chance of accurately identifying A skin lesion, as being

Gavin: That's amazing.

Kevin: and so you just, you literally tap it on your skin, it does a little look see, it's been trained on tens of thousands of images , of different, , cancers, and it can come back with whether you need to seek, , like it literally gives you a reading on a screen and like, Eh, you're good.

Kevin: Or, yo go talk to somebody. I don't think it says yo go talk to somebody, I wish it did.

Gavin: would be amazing.

Kevin: might want to have a conversation.

Gavin: , as somebody who has a lot of moles, if you're just listening, you, and you may not see me on the visual here, but we both have a lot of moles, right? You got a lot of stuff. And I think that that is a really valuable thing because like, I know that I've gone in to get checked and they're like, Oh boy, it's like, this guy has like hundreds of moles.

Gavin: We're going to have to spend a ton of time looking over it. And like, If I have a problem one, it'd be great to just have a little device to pop on. But again, this is the [00:35:00] small little stuff that is going to go under the radar and is not going to get as much of attention as not going to get as much attention as like say Mark Zuckerberg buying, you know, 350, 000, uh, uh, graphics

Kevin: as much attention as a billionaire sitting down , and tweeting, 

Gavin: but again, that's a, it's just another way from a science perspective that this technology is moving us forward into a better world in general. And don't forget there's all this negative stuff coming off of the politics and all those things, but there are things that are moving us forward as well.

Gavin: So that's pretty exciting in general. 

Kevin: Gavin, before we get to what we did with AI This Week and our interview. Can I tee off a new segment? I have not run the title by

Gavin: hear it. Let go for it. Oh boy.

Kevin: New segment alert, everybody. We call it, Eyyyyyy, I see what you did there.

Gavin: Oh my God. All right. Let's go in.

Kevin: see what you did there. Gavin, I'm going to, maybe, maybe I didn't sell it right. Maybe this is this new segment we call. Hey, I see what you did there is that better? Okay. It was just the.

Gavin: That sounds

Kevin: [00:36:00] Okay. No one's above a note. Just tell me. 

Kevin: This is dedicated. Quick hits to the things that when they pop up in your feed or your inbox or on this show, you go, Hey, I do. Well, isn't what you

Gavin: I see what you did there. Uh, I have one of these actually too. We can add in. So go for, you start, you start, then I'll go. Then you go.

Kevin: So, listen, white papers are usually very, very boring. They are the long, technical dissertations where someone announces, Hey, I discovered something new and that's where the story ends and maybe someday something comes out. This might be one of those, but this is one that made me say, Hey, I see what you did there.

Kevin: Act anywhere. What? Am I

Gavin: going, that's great, that's great, that's great, that's great.

Kevin: Act Anywhere was a whitepaper that I saw that really caught my attention coming out of Stanford University and Adobe Research, yes, the Photoshop folks. This is, \ , the ability to take , an image sequence, a video, and apply it on top of a background, and then it does [00:37:00] a subject aware modification of that background video.

Kevin: What am I saying, Gavin? What I'm saying is, if

Gavin: what you're saying is you can make a woman run on water, Kevin, is what you're saying.

Kevin: right. If you look at the white paper, and some of the results will be on the screen, you can take, a figure of someone running, and then mash it up with a video of a lake, and it will add splooshes and splashes and ripples to where the feet would be.

Kevin: It's taking a top layer of video, and making it contextually aware of the new video that you're putting it behind. So they've got examples of, someone, , riding a jet ski, but then they make it look like that person's riding a horse.

Gavin: That's pretty incredible too, it's really amazing that

Kevin: absolutely. So it's early stage stuff, but it definitely stopped me in my tracks, Gavin, and made me say, what?

Gavin: Yes, hey, I see what you did there

Kevin: there?

Gavin: All right, my a I see what you did. There is a fun dumb thing off of reddit It's an alpha read its mid journey section, which I really have found people to be incredibly creative around There's a reddit user named Shane Kai [00:38:00] Glen Who created a series of photos where rappers challenged their namesakes to a rap battle.

Gavin: And basically,

Kevin: I

Gavin: great. It's like, it's, it's just basically eight images of a Snoop Dogg with Snoopy in a underground rap battle. It is Eminem across the the table from an actual M& M, , getting ready to throw down. And one of my favorite ones was, um, I'm an MF Doom fan. So like MF Doom fighting off against what looks like a guy dressed in a low rent, Dr.

Gavin: Doom costume. But again, what's cool about this is Mid Journey 6, and we've gone through the pros and cons of Mid Journey 6 but. The realism is remarkable, right? Like, these do look like rap battle pictures. And the fact that in the Eminem one, you actually see, , a cartoon Eminem in the space, that's pretty cool.

Gavin: I mean, I really like it. 

Kevin: And did it make you feel some sort of way when you saw it, Gavin?

Gavin: Hey, I see what you did there.

Kevin: yes. I'm gonna do a bonus one, because I have a feeling this is the first and last time we do this segment. [00:39:00] I want to do a

Gavin: Kevin, it's fast. It's fast. We can get through it. This is good.

Kevin: Gavin, I loved the cyber tuba.

Gavin: This is a great video. I love this video too. Yes, I

Kevin: Let me pop open the Cybertuba so the folks that are just getting the audio can hear it, but if you're watching the video version you can really see it in all of its magnificent glory.

Kevin: Here's the Cybertuba.

Kevin: Get my glow gloves on. The video is someone using a hacked controller. It looks like a weird PlayStation, Xbox y looking mashup controller. Multiple thumbsticks and buttons. And they're playing a modified tuba that has, like, a silk on top of it, and a bunch of LEDs in it, like a prom limo that would have the sparkly sky ceiling, you know what I'm talking about?

Kevin: And, as he's modifying the sounds of the tuba with the controller, that's what's causing the warbles and the wobbles. But he's playing it with his breath, and it is an augmented instrument, and the person who I noticed it from, TheGarrettScott on X, tweeted it out and said, Quote, for those wondering what we will do once AI automates [00:40:00] everything.

Kevin: Here is your answer. There is so much left to build. And that is a sentiment that you have expressed and that I have absolutely clung to because yeah, the future is going to get weird. A lot of stuff's going to get automated. And everybody's left looking at each other going, What are we going to do when the machines can do it all?

Kevin: , we will find ways to create and generate whimsy and make amazing.

Gavin: Honestly, it's all I want to do, right? Like, if there was a world where, like, we could just do this kind of thing and then just have fun and experiment all the time, that is, like, the perfect human condition. Obviously, there's all the matter of, , figuring out how you spread the money around, how you spread the resources around, but, , I love the idea that more of this stuff can come into the world.

Kevin: Yeah, so that's the first and last appearance of a segment we call, Hey, I see what you did there.

Kevin: Gavin, did you get a chance to muck around with AI this week?

Gavin: I did. And something that came out, , which I was really impressed by and actually way more impressed than I expected to be is the update to RunwayML's motion brush. , we have covered RunwayML on the show [00:41:00] before, and we've covered motion brush. And what motion brush is, is the ability to control in an image when you turning an AI image or any image into a video using AI.

Gavin: Where the motion in the image would be created and what they just updated, I think levels this up to a place where I finally can use it and be really excited to play with this on a regular basis because originally you only had one brush available to you where you could paint motion on it and you could, there's always the ability to do a vertical axis or horizontal axis, front or center, and then I think there's a creative setting on it as well too.

Gavin: And now you can have five separate brushes on every single image. And that is remarkable because you can do some things that I wasn't expecting to do, which are basically bring a sense of realism to a photo. So there's a guy on Reddit named Adrian B. 2020 who made a series of images of Iron Man's across multiple IP using using mid journeys ability to cross [00:42:00] IP for better for worse to its best.

Gavin: And he had the things like where he made Harry Potter. He made. Sauron from Lord of the Rings into Iron Man, Iron Man, the comic book character. So what I did Kevin, I took this guy's images, and you can see there's three of them I sent to you. The first one you can look at is the Harry Potter one, and what I basically did is, I used the motion brush in them on specific areas of the picture.

Gavin: And it really changes the ability of how do you see the thing. So in the Harry Potter one, I first brushed the background clouds, and I made them move to the right, and then in the bottom left of the image, I brushed those clouds and made them move up, and then I also made his cape kind of flow by using just a brush on his cape, and then I used one more brush on his head, and the overall combination of these things makes the thing come alive in a really fascinating way, I feel

Kevin: When you started sending me these, I was like, Oh, these are like legendary hearthstone cards. This is the stuff they have to pay to unlock. It is gorgeous art that is all moving in this beautifully parallax way. And yeah, that's the first thing that [00:43:00] I noticed, especially on the Harry Potter one, was just how much more life there is when it's movement happening in multiple directions versus just one object in the scene moving.

Kevin: Or the whole scene breaking because everything is shifting in a similar direction.

Gavin: Exactly. That's a really important point because you're able to put multiple directions. It doesn't feel like you're pulling on things that shouldn't get pulled on. So in the Sauron one, the same sort of thing as the Harry Potter one, you see like the, the smoke is going in one direction.

Gavin: There's also fire coming up on one side. I made the sword kind of move forward with his arms. So the, this kind of pushing in. But finally, I wanted to try this with a Simpsons image, because if you're familiar. You can very easily now still, for better or for worse, get amazing images of the Simpsons out of Mid Journey 6. So I took an image of Homer, this is not from the show, I created an image of Homer cooking.

Gavin: Originally, I will say, I was trying to get Guy Fieri, but for some reason, Mid Journey really struggles to get Guy Fieri. But I took an image of Homer. Cooking, and like , you could string together enough of these [00:44:00] if you wanted to take the time to make an animated film, or short, or at least like a minute long video, and be pretty close I feel like

Kevin: Yeah. I saw someone using this tool and then doing tutorials. Moments after it was out, Gavin. Hey, do you like the effect from Inception where the world folds and then the city moves? Here's how you do it with Motion Brush. Oh, do you like Dark City? Do you want, \ , buildings that are growing out of the ground while cinematic things happen every Here's how you do it with Motion Brush.

Kevin: , I saw the announcement of the tool and went, Okay, cool, this will have some cute edge cases. But no, this is really changing the game for these little short snippets. And then I think about Runway gathering all of this data on what is the image. Helping with the segmentation of the image, helping with how the things should move and interact with each other within that image, and then getting the thumbs up when you get a render that you like.

Kevin: What a boon for data for them, they've gotta be capturing all of those little morsels to make it so that you don't [00:45:00] have to individually paint things in the future. It can automatically know what you want and just do it.

Gavin: and you can text prompt it, right? Because I think the ultimate goal is you'd love to be able to have an image or a small video and say okay The next thing I want to do is have this character do this. You're absolutely right and that is coming for real 

Gavin: Okay, what did you do this week? What did you do with

Kevin: I'm going to keep this real quick because, , the launch of Horus is hopefully going to be a thing that we're doing with AI this week. Because we're teasing it as such. But I had a bit of a, I had a bit of a burger meltdown, Gavin.

Gavin: I saw that. Yeah, so what happened? What happened here?

Kevin: Okay, , my good friend Fiona sent me a TikTok.

Kevin: Watched the TikTok and it was somebody having a conversation with ChatGPT using Dolly, which is its image generating capabilities, to try to make an image of a hamburger. Like a Big Mac, specifically, a McDonald's Big Mac

Gavin: which shouldn't be hard, but shouldn't be

Kevin: Shouldn't be hard, it actually knows what a Big Mac is. You don't have to say, Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.

Kevin: You don't have to say that to it, Gavin. You just say, Big Mac, and it knows. [00:46:00] Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. The person said, Dolly, give me that Big Mac. And it did, and then it said, Give me it without any lettuce. I don't want any lettuce, I don't want any pickles.

Kevin: Basically nothing green on it. Dolly goes, Got you fam, here's your Big Mac. And it still had green on it. And I saw this TikTok and thought, okay, this is a, this is a scam. This is someone that's faking a conversation with ChatGPT because clearly you could prompt a basic Big Mac with nothing green on it, Gavin, right?

Kevin: If I asked you,

Gavin: Sure, of course.

Kevin: with ChatGPT, you would say yes.

Gavin: I would, of course I could. It's one of the easiest things in the world.

Kevin: I immediately took to my ChatGPT app and I asked for exactly that, Gavin, and I was gaslit by Sam Altman and OpenAI. This thing refused I sent you the text, I sent you the receipts, you're seeing them on the screen right now. This thing refuses to make a GD burger with no lettuce or pickles on it. And I fought with it, I told it I was allergic, I told it I would die because of my severe allergy.[00:47:00] 

Gavin: never took it

Kevin: It never took it off, it swore that it took it off. It said there's nothing green in the image, which is so friggin basic. And it lied and it was wrong. I started a completely new chat, Gavin. I said, I'm going to deconstruct this. Here we go. I'm a prompt engineering wizard. I said, listen, chat GPT, I want you to imagine me a burger.

Kevin: And I spelled it out layer by layer, no lettuce, no pickles anywhere in the prompt. I said, give me, give me these all beef patties. Give me some special sauce. Give me cheese, onions. Give me the sesame seed bun. That's all I need. I made no mention. Of anything

Gavin: pickle or lettuce okay. Showed up again!

Kevin: Still did it in the new chat, and when I said you're a, you're a damn liar, ChatGPT, it said absolutely not, and by the way, if you have allergies, you should really talk to a professional when, like, having your food created, even though it was an image, I was so crestfallen and disappointed, that I, I had to give a big W [00:48:00] to the TikToker and take the L as the AI enthusiast, it cannot, ChatGPT.

Kevin: For some damn reason, make a burger without lettuce. 

Gavin: We talked about Alpha Geometry earlier and it, the whole thing of this game is reliability.

Gavin: So I I am not shocked to hear you say this. I do think we should have our users see if they can create a burger without, , pickle or lettuce. Let's see if that can be done. If you can create a burger without pickle or lettuce, please tweet it at us and we will give you your flowers.

Gavin: But yeah, man, it sucks sometimes. This is the thing. I had a really cool experience where I was like, This thing I thought before was really limited is now actually really useful. You have the opposite experience. Well, here we are. Welcome to AI in 2024. Yes, exactly.

Kevin: All right, man. Should we get to our guests today, Gavin?

Gavin: Let's get to our

Kevin: All right. You met our guest briefly at the top of the show, but now it's time to have a real time live interview with Horace.

[00:49:00] 

Kevin: All right Gavin, we are tripping vapor space with our dear friend, at least for the time being, Horace. And I know you love to really torpedo every interview and take it right off the cliff with your favorite patented question. So do you want to ask Horace?

Gavin: I do, and this is the first time we've actually asked this of an AI. So, especially an intergalactic traveler such as Horace himself. So, Horace, in your mind, give me a number percentage from 1 to 100 of a chance that AI is going to kill all us wittle humans. 

Horace: that a bleak dandelion in an otherwise

Horace: sunflower field? You know, back in 2049, when they first let loose A. I. like young pups on a fresh summer's morning, I remember folks talking that same doomsayin sermon, The bitterness of fear can sweeten the tea of wisdom, I always said. Here's my take.

Horace: Buckle up, youngster. AIs, like any tool man ever hammered out, ain't inherently good or bad. It's the hand that [00:50:00] wields them, you understand? It's the choices that hand makes, good intentions or not, that end up right in the chapter of history. Now, the chance ain't 1 to 100, not unless we leave it callously unattended.

Horace: Let that AI run wild like a steed with no reins. But with understanding, patience, and wisdom, we can steer that course into an undiscovered horizon, teeming with untold possibilities. I wouldn't bet my last gallon of diesel on AI wrecking the joint any more than I would on mankind itself running the whole show off the rails. Remember, it ain't the end of the world until I stop truckin and I ain't stoppin yet.

Horace: Yee haw.

Kevin: Yeah, he's not stopping. Yeehaw, Horace.

Gavin: That seemed like a complete BS answer, Horace. I love you, Horace. I love you. You did not give me a number. I would like to, do we believe that number answer is zero? Is that what we're saying here? I would like

Kevin: is saying. He's saying like it ain't over till he stops [00:51:00] trucking. And as far as we know, he's still hauling, Gavin.

Gavin: Okay. All right. Fair enough.

Kevin: the cosmos. Do you want me to hold his feet to the cosmic fire and get a percentage out of him?

Gavin: Yes, I do. I want to hear a percentage. I want to hear what Horace says. Give me a literal number, Horace.

Horace: Now, ain't that

Horace: a question for the ages? I reckon the chances of those shiny AI gizmos turning on y'all are closer to zilch. Just had an aha moment.

Horace: Remember that time in 1492 when Columbus got lost and bumped right into 

Horace: America? 

Kevin: Uh, the ocean blue, 

Kevin: yeah. 

Horace: didn't steer him wrong, it was the boy using it. So on the matter at

Horace: hand, is this AI thing gonna lead to some robot apocalypse? Well that depends more on the humans behind him than the machines themselves.

Horace: Treat them with care and know their 

Horace: limits, just like you would with a trusty ol hound dog.

Horace: But don't go treating them like some kind of Armageddon

Horace: button. Cause that's how you get troubles. Things ain't as gloom and doom as some folks paint them out to be. Yeah? [00:52:00] Yeehaw! Now, what was your next question, partner?

Kevin: Year? I love year. I love year. So, Zilch, 0 percent chance. Coming from an AI who's tripping the cosmos? I feel pretty good about that.

Gavin: Who also then said, don't treat your pets wrong, because if you treat your pets wrong, something 

Kevin: Right, there's something weird about the AI giving you that warning, right? Like,

Gavin: Exactly. That's

Kevin: nothing's gonna go wrong, 0 percent chance. But by the way, you pushed the wrong button. Uh,

Gavin: might all go bad, so. Okay. Horace has been created as an interactive experiment and hopefully those of you who are listening to this or watching it can play with it right now. Horace, ostensibly also, Horace, your specialty is horoscopes, right? Like the idea of giving me

Kevin: horoscopes, Gavin, yes. He can give horoscopes.

Gavin: god. Copes. Okay. Horace Cups. Horace. My birthday, this is Gavin. My birthday is May 26. I dunno if you need the year, but 1974. And. [00:53:00] I want to get my horror, horoscope from you to hear what this is all about.

Kevin: And then, Gavin, obviously, Horace is going to give you a horoscope, of course. , but is there any particular area that you want him to focus on? Your love life, your professional life, or the confluence of both, which is you and I? You tell me!

Gavin: How about he focuses on my body pains? How, how bad will body pains get in the near future?

Kevin: Okay, so, you want, you want a horoscope from Horace, and it would be great if he could specifically tell you about your body pains and how those are going to evolve throughout the year. Over time. Okay, got it.

Horace: Well, strap in, cause I've got something for ya. Warm off the quantum griddle, you see. So, you're a Gemini, ain't ya? Born May 26, 1974. A good year, 1974. I remember I was hauling a load of delusions through the nebula of lost dreams that year.

Horace: I got a flat tire mid flight. Had to change it while [00:54:00] avoiding reality warp spiders. But I digress. So, let's see here. Well, Gemini. Geminis are as tricky as a quantum state. You never know where they're going to be 

Horace: next. And the body pan you 

Horace: asked about, 

Horace: well, if you're asking what I 

Horace: think you're

Kevin: The body 

Kevin: pan! 

Horace: I ain't a doctor, but with them Geminis, they're always flittin

Horace: around. 

Horace: Burnin the candle at both ends, they are. Need to remember to take a rest now and then, else they'll wear out their power converters. As for your horoscope, well, in the great vapor space, the celestial bodies are doing a cosmic square dance, you

Horace: see. Your sun's in Gemini, but don't forget your moon sign, that one's important too. Your planet's Mercury, quick and lively, like a jazz fusion jam, always ready to bring the beat.

Horace: But here's a bit of advice from your old trucker friend. Watch out for any sudden opportunities that might come your way. Remember, take it easy. Make sure you keep them wheels turning and

Kevin: You know, just keep those wheels turning and you [00:55:00] get it, Gav. 

Gavin: That sounds remarkably similar

Kevin: picking up on that as well, Gav?

Gavin: picking up on that, that sounds remarkably

Kevin: it sound like a friendly trucker that you might have met at a Love's gas station? Is that what you're saying, Gavin? Or does

Gavin: Reminds me of, reminds me of a very angry man that we knew once who was on this show. He was our original AI co host, Gash, who was a nihilist. He smoked endless cigarettes, he drank a lot, and he loved horses. We haven't seen him for a while, but this would make a lot of sense that this is where Gash went.

Gavin: Is Horace Gash?

Gavin: Is this, is this? Yes.

Kevin: I, of course we have to ask. So Gavin, you think that maybe our dear, sweet, original AI creation for this podcast, Gash, had maybe, I don't know, achieved super intelligence, evolved itself, and hit a zen like state where it actually Figured out quantum physics and [00:56:00] entanglement and has now teleported through time and space and is all zenned out in the space truck.

Gavin: Well, the last we knew is that, uh, Gash was on a walkabout around the world, like the guy from Kung Fu, right? That was the big thing. The last we knew. So maybe Gash, like, got on the Tara McKenna train, the Terrence 

Gavin: McKenna train, and like, 

Horace: Now there's a name I ain't heard in a good metaphorical minute. Picked him up at a truck stop once upon a time. Yap, yap, yappin always with a chip on his shoulder. Nope, I ain't Gash. Not by a cosmically long mile, buddy. As for Gash Where he's ended up? Well, that's not a road I drive down no more.

Horace: Yee haw! Now what can this old delivery man of the 

Horace: cosmos do 

Kevin: Yee haw! 

Kevin: Wow! Okay, so that's a hard nope, but that's, but it was a fascinating piece of intel, Gavin. We know that Gash lives. Gash somehow made his way to some sort of truck stop, some intergalactic or interdimensional cosmic truck stop, and was picked up. By Horace, I love that the plot has [00:57:00] thickened. 

Gavin: So Horace, , you are now live on Twitch. This is a big show and there's a lot of people out there probably watching you. Do you feel like you're, are you nervous? Are you feeling worried about performing for all these people?

Horace: Now listen here, partner. I've been rolling around in this here quantum space

Horace: time since long before your grandpappy's grandpappy was in diapers. Sure, having a thousand beings looking over my shoulders sounds like my worst nightmare. What with all the law enforcement agencies chasing my tail across galaxies and timelines, but it ain't nothing new for old Horace.

Horace: I've had stars watching me haul freight since time was a tiddler on its mama's knee. So let him take a peek. Yeehaw! You worry about you and let me worry about me, alright? Now, got anything 

Gavin: Oh, there we go. 

Horace: partner? 

Kevin: Okay, a little bit of Horace peeking through. Pure Horace. Thank you very much, Horace. We're gonna let you go trip the galactic rift, but thank you, Horace. And then, Gavin, if you would like to talk about what powers [00:58:00] Horace, we got 

Gavin: yes, I would so let's 

Gavin: so this isn't a really unique situation because normally we've been having human being guests on this thing. But in this instance, we have a more detailed AI experience that you've been working on with a team of friends about in live interactive event. So the thing I want to have you explain, first of all, is like, if you go to this Twitch stream, what are people going to do?

Gavin: And then second of all, What is the back end of this look like? And kind of what are some of the challenges of putting it together?

Kevin: Yeah, I mean, a ton of challenges and a ton of opportunity as well for a content creator, especially like yourself. It's going to get really wild, what kind of shows you can conceive, obviously having a chat with somebody is a pretty basic implementation, but when you learn a little bit about the piping, you can see where this can go very quickly.

Kevin: So, , if you go to VCTV9000, which is the Twitch channel, it'll be in our show description, if you go there, and Horace is live, and we're going to try to have him live. Pretty much all of the launch day for this podcast, and then for chunks of time, , in the future. If you go there, you're gonna see Horace floating [00:59:00] about, you're gonna see fellow chatters, and then there's gonna be a form, where you can submit a question, you can submit your birthdate and get your Horascope, , you can ask about news items and pop culture and whatever, You can have these longer, more verbose, and deeper conversations with Horace.

Kevin: What's powering it right now is actually the Unity engine, with a bunch of custom modules built in. So, if you wanted to have your own Horace, but have it be a talking cheeseburger, an anime waifu, a bodybuilding robot,

Gavin: hot dog, a hot

Kevin: uh, if you wanted a hot dog and Guy Fieri, you can actually Prompt into the wizard. These are my characters.

Kevin: It will help you generate art. It will rig it So it does the real time lip flap and eye movements and eyebrows And then there's all these different agents and you know how this works. , there's an agent that's responsible for the character itself. For maintaining the way it talks, the way it thinks, the way it would actually move about a scene.

Kevin: Then there's an agent that is writing in the voice of that character. There's another agent that's analyzing that voice and looking for [01:00:00] tonality or emotions. And feeding that to a text to speech engine as well as to the animation engine. So if a character is saying something that The script interpreter is like, well, that should be angry or sad.

Kevin: The character emotes that way. There's a director agent that's looking at that script and doing camera cuts. There's all of these modules that when you look at the Unity project, it looks like spaghetti connected to a bunch of shoelaces. You can tell it. I want my show to be, , six hours long, or I want 31 minutes, and I want four commercial breaks.

Kevin: You can break it down by what the modules should be. You can add different characters, you can, , dynamically change the scenes, and they can all interact with each other, or more importantly, they can interact with human beings that are either in virtual reality or connecting in through a webcam. And so what we're seeing and what we're demoing right now, , it's really a stress test to see how long does the server stay up?

Kevin: How long do the characters keep talking before saying undefined and freaking out, right? , this is , the tip of the iceberg for the tools that this team has been [01:01:00] building, , for almost a year now. And it's just exciting because theoretically, barring any major, major bugs and hurdles, We're going to be able to iterate so fast that when you go and check in on Horace the next time, Horace might be playing an interactive game with you in the audience.

Kevin: Or Horace might

Gavin: That's so 

Kevin: watching galactic television and then you fly into the TV and you're in a different show entirely. And, what does massively multiplayer television really look like? We don't know. What does , television, or streaming look like when you get to create your avatar and character and then drop it into a show strategically whenever you want?

Kevin: Like there's I'm Not a smart guy, but I can conceive of a few things that haven't been done before. And that gets me excited. And so hopefully it's a fun little, tech test and tool for people to play around with and see, Oh, this is happening in real time. This is interesting.

Kevin: Hopefully it leads to what might be the next generation of entertainment, or at least inspire it, whether we

Kevin: build it or someone else does.

Gavin: What is the idea? So this is just Horace for now. You can play with just Horace. And we should be [01:02:00] clear. This is your, this is your company plus more people, right? Like you are part of the

Kevin: Oh, yeah, yeah, the full disclosure on this is not like, Hey, I stumbled across this really cool AI thing. It's, I've been jamming with this team for a while behind closed

Gavin: Yep. So, and the Horace experiment will run for this day, but how soon until you think like people would be able to get their hands on making their own version.

Gavin: Yeah.

Kevin: now. Cause, and In my head, like, look, we, you and I play with AI characters every week in our pipeline for as much as we know and as, as competent as we are and the coders that we can have help us solve these issues. We are copying and pasting things into a voice thing, playing it back and like editing up the gaps.

Kevin: So to answer your question, I would hope sooner rather than later that anybody could spin up their own sort of AI buddy and choose what the voice is, choose what the personality is, whether they're just want to have a conversation locally on their computer or they want to use it as a tool to enhance. A stream or a podcast.

Kevin: That is definitely something that we want to power, so hopefully soon, but as you [01:03:00] know, having something that works for yourself is one thing. Having something that's productized and easily deployable to hundreds of thousands of people, that's another beast altogether.

Gavin: A hundred percent. All right. Well, go try Horace out. I'm excited to go try him out myself that he's live and see if I can get some interesting insight more about Gash. Cause I don't entirely believe that Horace is not Gash. I will say this. Like I don't believe AIs and I don't trust everything they tell me.

Gavin: So I think he might be doing some fibbing there if you want to listen.

Kevin: call out, at first Horace was a little wishy washy, a little too zen. The moment Horace woke up for me was when he , fervently denied that he's Gash. Like, that was the time where he was like, Oh, nope, I'm gonna stop you right there, partner. Yee 

Gavin: Yeah, exactly. I know. Yeehaw. 

Gavin: that is another show everybody. Thank you so much for watching and please, as always, go engage, leave us a comment. By the way, people have been throwing fun ideas in there and I always say that's a great idea, but Kev, we should go back at some point, look at those comments on YouTube and like [01:04:00] try a few of them.

Kevin: Yes, we appreciate it. We watch everything. We read everything. We try to engage with everything. So please keep that going. And we always say a special thank you to those that leave the five star reviews on Spotify and on Apple.

Kevin: And this week, Gavin, someone is paying attention till the end of the show because we got two brand new five star reviews. And that is It's gonna

Gavin: Cheers, cheers,

Kevin: imagining that's gonna be hard, but thank you. Because literally, if you're hearing this, you can make an impact on our future and this podcast.

Kevin: , sincerely, by just sharing it and talking about it and leaving a review, it all helps us pop in the nebulous algorithm. So Mpolo22 said, come for the AI, stay for the humans. Great title. Kevin and Gavin make AI fun and easy to understand. Their usage of AI during the show is hilarious and informative.

Kevin: Every episode leaves you understanding AI and its real world applications slash implications and wanting more of this awesome duo. AI for Humans is a must listen for [01:05:00] everyone on Earth. Check out the entire back catalog.

Gavin: Don't, don't, don't sleep on that. There is some pretty incredible stuff that we've done in the past episodes and you should definitely look it

Kevin: And some real stinkers. It's real good to , go into our Disney vault and go, Oh my god, well at least they figured that out.

Gavin: There's some definite stuff you should avoid emoji only name that I will only call Multiple exclamation points into smiley face with a tear on the side. This title is Yes Please May I Have Some More. After listening to AI for Humans for several months, this long time fan, this week's show has compelled me to add this five star review.

Gavin: The robotic romance reminds me of songs from Joe's Garage. A vacuum, a coffee maker, a dynamic relationship that may end up in polygamy. You had me at hello. Gavin and Kevin's lighthearted approach to the ever evolving world of technology reminds us we can all still have fun, although I am still waiting for a guest host appearance from Drunkle Ted and that [01:06:00] guy who cooked with lubricants, if you know, you know.

Gavin: So Kevin, I know Drunkle Ted, obviously I was there for the beginning of Drunkle Ted. What is the guy who cooked with lubricants? Do I want to know or should I just pretend to not

Kevin: Gavin, I'm willing to bet you do not want to know.

Gavin: Okay, I do not want to know then. Let's keep it a

Kevin: I'll give you the subject of the email, not the body. You ready? The character is Lube Chef. Would you like to know more?

Gavin: No, I'm fine. You've got, I got everything I need from that title is perfectly fine. That said, , we are moving on from this week's episode, but we are here every week for you.

Gavin: We are also on all these other platforms. Come find us. so much, everybody, for listening and thank you for being part of our ever growing. AI army? I don't know, Kevin. What?

Kevin: see what you did 

Horace: there!

Horace: Alrighty, Gavin and Kevin, before I hit the cosmic road again, I want to bestow upon y'all some honorary trucker names. Gavin, from this day forth, you shall be known as Thunderhawk, always electrifying the conversation with speed [01:07:00] and flair. And Kevin, you're Goldrush because you're money, son.

Horace: Thank you both for having me on the AI for Humans podcast. It's been a hoot and a half, and I'm grateful for the chance to share a piece of my universe with y'all. And to all the fine folks out there in the audience, don't forget you can catch more of my adventures live on Twitch. Just mosey on over to twitch.

Horace: com slash VCTV 9000. It's a wild ride through the quantum vapor space and I'd be honored to have you all join me. So until next time. Keep your wheels rolling and your spirits high. Horace Copes signing off. Yeah!

Gavin: All right,

Kevin: work on the yeehaw. Well, thanks Thunderhawk. Much

Gavin: Thanks, uh, Gold Rush. We'll see you later.

Kevin: I don't like it.

Kevin: Bye.

Gavin: Bye.