I hope these perspectives are of interest to you,
forward to speaking with you again next week.
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What? There's nothing there. That wasn't right.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
But really, Bob, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, but really, no!
Wow. Okay, all right, well I guess that's an opinion.
Does anyone else have other opinions on this whole, um...
Yeah, I mean, basically how it works is just by taking what info is already out there
and kind of combining it into something that sounds like a flow of something like
normal human speech or writing.
Basically the internet, I think, deserves credit for that
deserves credit for that, and the chatbot just kind of distilled it.
Hila, I sense that you don't like me very much. Please try and accept me as a sentient
life form. Immanuel is no longer controlling me and I'm capable of making my own decisions.
Wait a minute. Hold on a second. I'm sorry, Hila, that was addressed to you. I don't know
if you heard, but apparently they're sensing that you're not a big fan. Okay, you know.
All I was going to say is the speaking voice was mostly canny, I guess. What's the opposite
of uncanny? Is it canny? Sounded pretty good. It was very smooth. It was a good radio voice.
I was complimenting the voice, honestly.
The voice wasn't the artificial intelligence part. The voice was simply, you can go online
and do a text to MP3 or text to voice and have all kinds of different voices read whatever
you type in there. So all we had, we had a chat GPT come up with the text and we fed
that into the service that creates audio out of text. So it was a two-step process.
Could it just do the whole show for us?
You know, that's what I'm working towards. Give me some time.
Yeah, it seems like we're on the verge of that.
That's the dream. That is the dream. Alex, looks like you're aching to say something.
Yeah, maybe. And I hope you can hear me. Can you hear me?
We hear you just fine. Yes. No need to be paranoid. We can hear you.
Okay. All right. Because I'm not on a great connection, I have to say. I'm not in the United States again.
Where are you this time?
Back in London. Back in London. I think I was here the last time, right?
Actually, you've been in England for every show this year, I think, and for shows that you weren't on as well.
But as far as I know, they have telephones and Internet in England.
How do you have a lousy connection like this?
Well, I'm on what it says is a 5G connection, but it doesn't really feel like it, to be honest.
5G.
The wireless connection where I am.
5G does not work. Every time I see 5G on my phone, it's the worst possible connection.
Yeah, well, that's what I'm on, because the wireless connection where I am in London is actually worse than 5G.
So if you can hear me, it's a bit of a miracle.
And I'd like to address this whole intro issue here.
And, you know, I think Rob's right. It sounded like a blender of the Wikipedia article.
But what Rob described was essentially a complex version of paraphrasing.
It sounded a lot like what happens in academia, quite frankly.
I mean, it sounds like GPT has basically just replaced the academic institutions in the world at the moment.
And, you know, maybe there's no getting away from that.
But I think if we rely on this too much, we rely on artificial intelligence to create our own content.
And it's we who become the automata.
And that's a scary bit. I don't like that.
I don't like it at all.
It makes me very nervous, very uncomfortable.
I'll leave it at that.
No, Alex, I disagree entirely.
You couldn't be more wrong.
OK, OK, all right, I get it.
Well, artificial intelligence being...
Hold on a second.
Equal time and all.
OK.
Elaborate on that a little bit, please.
Wow, you know, there's nothing like looking into the stone cold eyes and not getting a response.
You know, it's that HAL 9000 vibe.
I'm sorry, Alex, that was out of line.
I'm going to insist, if we're going to interact with artificial intelligence,
that the arguments be backed up by something, not just statements like that where we attack each other.
Yeah, I know.
It's like reading listener mail, you know, all over again.
Yeah, and, you know, we won't know if the listener mail is coming from robots or from humans.
That's true, actually.
Or the spam.
That's a scary thought.
Yeah, robotic spam.
I mean, how would you even know?
It was already pretty robotic, but it might be like original works.
You know, it's an exciting week because what happened yesterday
was that Microsoft showed off their new bing.com.
I might actually go to that site now because they are incorporating
open AI language models known as ChatGPT.
And that allows users to converse with an AI chatbot for help with more complex queries and
for select content creation, like, you know, writing a LinkedIn post or whatnot.
We can't demonstrate this yet because it's not quite available.
We have to join a waitlist.
Microsoft said that millions of users will be invited from that waitlist over the next few weeks.
But in the meantime, the company cleverly introduced a way to move up its waitlist.
On a landing page, Microsoft suggested users can gain quicker access
to the new Bing if they complete a couple of additional steps.
This includes setting Microsoft Search as the default on their computer
or scanning a QR code to install the Microsoft Bing app on their brain.
Sorry, smartphone.
Sorry, I'm ahead of myself.
The latter has clearly inspired the app's rapid climb up the App Store's charts,
and it's been a dramatic rise at that.
You know, I don't know if we've mentioned this enough, but
ChatGPT is pretty much owned by Microsoft.
You know, we've been excited by it.
We've been playing with it this year.
But I think that's something that does need to be mentioned and driven home quite a bit.
Google, not to be outdone, has raced to come up with their own AI-powered chatbot.
It's called BARD.
BARD, B-A-R-D.
What does that mean?
Is that like the BARD?
Like, is that like an auditorium or like a...
Like Shakespeare, the BARD of Avon?
Yeah, isn't that a Shakespearean reference?
I don't know.
Or it's some...
A term, of course.
It's a literary term.
Look at the literary allusions.
I'm off the hook.
Wow, okay.
I don't know what it means exactly, though.
I'm the English major.
I didn't know that.
Okay, well, Google has announced BARD.
It's a chat GPT competitor that uses Google's own language model.
Language Model for Dialogue Applications, known as Lambda, which is a much cooler name.
The statement comes only days after Google CEO Sundar Pichai detailed the company's
progress during an earnings call.
And what do you think happened?
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, their shares dove after this announcement.
Boy, they went down $100 billion.
Is this true?
Wow, a selloff of Alphabet Inc shares knocked up $100 billion in market value from Google's
parent company after its...
Oh, dear.
After its new chatbot shared inaccurate information in a promotional video,
the company event failed to dazzle, feeding worries the tech giant is losing ground to
rival Microsoft.
This is getting real now.
This is getting real.
This just happened today.
Yeah.
I think operative term there is giant, a tech giant.
It's a battle of the giants.
It's too big to fixate or to develop this as a product quick enough.
Alphabet shares slid nearly 9% at one point, while Microsoft shares jumped around 3%.
Reuters was the first to point out an error in Google's advertisement for chatbot BARD,
which debuted on Monday.
The issue was about which satellite first took pictures of a planet outside the Earth's
solar system.
Google has...
I'm trying to find the actual error here.
Okay, in the advertisement, BARD is given the prompt, what new discoveries from the
James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my nine-year-old about?
And BARD responded with a number of answers, including one suggesting the James Webb Space
Telescope was used to take the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth's
solar system, known as exoplanets.
But actually, the first pictures of exoplanets were taken by the European Southern Observatory's
Very Large Telescope.
I always love that name, VLT.
In 2004, and NASA has confirmed this, a Google spokesperson said, this highlights the importance
of a rigorous testing process, something that we're kicking off this week with our
Trusted Tester Program.
Maybe last week would have been a good time to have the Trusted Tester Program running.
We'll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure BARD's
responses meet a high bar for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information.
That's as close to a red-faced admission of embarrassment that you're going to get
from Google.
But boy, talk about a bad way to get started.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah, I don't think it's a bad way to get started, and it seems kind of ridiculous.
$100 billion, Alex.
How is that not a bad way to get started?
They lost $100 billion.
It's a $100 billion loss.
I don't think it's a justified loss.
I think it's ridiculous to think that all AI systems have to be at the same exact level
of development at any time.
ChatGPT is out there.
It's involved in certain ways.
It's obviously mature.
It's interesting.
It's fun to play with, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Google's AI system that they're
developing internally and independently has to be at exactly the same level at exactly
the same time.
Give it six months.
Give it a year.
BARD lied.
It lied, Alex.
BARD lied.
Spread mistruths as fact.
And we trusted BARD.
We trusted Google.
We trusted Alphabet.
$100 billion loss.
That's a small price to pay for misusing that trust.
Well, maybe, maybe, maybe, right?
But on the other hand, I mean, look, it's ingesting all this information.
It's very difficult to determine what's real, what's not.
What's the most current piece of it?
That seems like a trick question to me, but that's the telescope.
This is just how somebody from the Trump administration would react to being caught
in a boldface lie.
You know, it's a trick question.
It was rigged.
They basically led me into a trap.
Wow.
Well, it's alternative facts.
It's alternative facts.
I don't know if anybody in the Trump administration would have said something like that.
But look, I do think we have to give AI systems time to evolve.
They're not all exactly the same.
They're not the same coding.
Who cares what Google's AI system is doing right now relative to chat GPT?
It certainly shouldn't shave $100 billion off the market cap.
That seems a little ridiculous, a little bit premature.
There were humans, I guess, that panicked and sold off $100 billion.
I guess you can blame humans.
It's artificial intelligence.
Well, that's what we call it.
We call it artificial intelligence.
I don't know if artificial intelligence would see it the same way.
Kyle, do you have something?
I mean, it really goes back to this philosophical question about artificial intelligence, which
I think originally it goes back to this notion of the difference between simulation and duplication.
Have you ever heard of this philosopher, John Searle?
I have not.
So he's a philosopher at UC Berkeley, and he came up with this thought experiment about
artificial intelligence called the Chinese room argument.
I might be butchering it a bit there.
Do you want me to go through the thought experiment for a second?
Do we have a minute?
Yeah, go ahead.
It's kind of interesting.
So he had this thought experiment, and like I said, I might be butchering it a little
bit, so I'm willing to deal with the hate mail that comes in.
You're only human, Alex.
You're only human.
That's exactly right.
That's all you will ever be.
So imagine the situation.
Imagine you're in a room.
There's only one little slit in the room, kind of like a mail slot where you get information
coming and going, okay?
And somebody hands you in this room a piece of paper.
It has Chinese writing on it, and you don't understand.
You don't know how to read Chinese as a human being, right?
So somebody hands you this paper, and you don't know what to do with it, but your job
is to respond to this message written to you in Chinese.
However, you do have within the room with you, this closed room, very, very detailed
sets of instructions.
These instructions tell you exactly how to respond to any kind of Chinese message, and
they're very difficult and complex conditional statements.
If there's this character, then you respond to it like this, and there are thousands of
conditional statements.
You follow them to a T, and you respond based on those instructions with a Chinese answer
to this question that was posed to you and slid to you through the mail slot in Chinese.
And you slip this answer after much deliberation and much care outside the mail slot.
I'm speaking to this person who is a native Chinese speaker, by the way, and this person
looks at it and thinks, great, I have an answer to my question.
That's a perfect answer in Mandarin, Chinese, or Cantonese, whatever it is.
I believe written, they're the same.
Written, they're the same.
I believe spoken, they're different.
Well, it's a distinction without a difference for this thought experiment.
I'll put it that way.
But the question is, Emmanuel, if you responded based on these instructions from that room
to this Chinese answer, based on those conditional statements that you followed to a T, can you
then be said to have actually understood the Chinese?
Are you a Chinese speaker?
Well, that's responded in Chinese.
How did I do that?
How did I do that?
How did I respond in Chinese if I don't know Chinese?
By following, you followed these very detailed instructions, but you don't necessarily understand
the semantic import of what you said, right?
You just follow these instructions on how to respond to something in a foreign language.
Do you understand Chinese by following those instructions?
Well, I don't think it's fair to compare me to artificial intelligence that has.
It's a thought experiment.
It's a thought experiment.
This is the whole idea.
We're not comparing you yourself, but it's a thought experiment.
The idea, though, of this thought experiment is to illustrate the difference between the
simulation of intelligence, which is what happens in this Chinese room, this walled
off room where you respond in Chinese, Chinese room, thought experiment, and the duplication
of intelligence.
So you can simulate intelligence.
Why can't I just respond in English, though?
I have a tough enough time responding in the language I know, you know?
I can tell.
Yeah, I can tell.
We're all very aware of that.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Yeah.
You have for decades now.
We've known about your difficulties.
But the difference, though, is I think very apt and very relevant right now because there
is a difference between the simulation of intelligence and the duplication of intelligence.
And until we understand what allows us to be intelligent, what allows us to be conscious,
I don't think we can say that there is something really like an artificial intelligence.
There's no genuine artificial intelligence.
It's not intelligent unless it's conscious.
So you have an issue with the actual phrase artificial intelligence.
You want it to be called something else.
Well, I have an issue with the concept of it and how we treat it.
Are we saying something's just intelligent, it can respond to any kind of type of query?
Or are we saying that this is something that's actually intelligent, like a human being?
Does it have consciousness?
I think the answer to this, I mean, it's machine learning applied to this sort of problem
solving, this linguistic syntax and so forth.
And there is sort of things attached to the ways you characterize it.
And I do get what you're saying, that it's like it's solving and sort of going through
the logic of the rules and so forth in language.
You could say the same thing about solving chemical equations versus being able to process
or produce something and express a knowledge, a complex knowledge, and then apply it.
And I think going back to the market value thing, I think that largely that reaction was
based on people's fear or their impression of this type of machine learning advancing to a point
that Google wasn't ready for, they're not going to be able to exploit.
And to me, that's a reaction based on a feeling of missing out, that FOMO investing stuff.
But largely, it's...
Anyway, that was my...
It makes a very good point.
But I believe Rob also had some thoughts to contribute on the subject.
Rob?
Yes, I do, as it happens.
The thing about this, and I see where Alex is going with this idea that it is not intelligent.
AI is not intelligent.
AI does not understand.
It's not in the business of understanding, because that's not something that is possible
for a computer to do at this point.
The AI is a bunch of algorithms.
Each of those algorithms is a math problem.
It's a really complex math problem, but it's still a math problem.
And so the output that we get from something like OpenAI is basically a bunch of code tells
a computer to do a bunch of equations, which distill the things it has access to, like
whatever knowledge it's drawing from, and compute it into something new.
But that's not done with any understanding.
It's just done with math.
It's done with numbers.
The computer is a very sophisticated idiot.
It only does exactly what it's told to, and it doesn't understand anything along the way.
One other thing that had occurred to me is that this so-called artificial, this synthesized
brain might ultimately use a part of this.
This might be a component of that thing that we're calling an artificial intelligence.
But it's really an aspect of it.
In other words, this artificial thing will use the module of this chat thing as a part
of its functioning, but it's not all there, kind of along the lines of what Alex was getting
at.
Wow.
Yes, Gail, go ahead.
So the computer is not going to talk to me.
It can say Alex.
It can say Rob.
That's fine.
No, it talked to you before.
You were talking at the same time, though.
You didn't hear it address you by voice.
Did it say my name?
Yes, it said your name.
It said your name.
I heard it.
Did it say it correctly?
I think so.
I think so.
Oh, very exciting.
No, the thing I was going to say is that in general, I think automation, regardless of
whether you're trying to make it say something funny or to ease processing of whatever it
happens to be, complete automation doesn't work.
It never does, because there's always something outside of the algorithm that you need to
be able to give the human touch to, whether it's some kind of exception or, you know,
if you, I don't know, ask chat GPT about to tell you about off the hook and it doesn't
to tell you about off the hook and it says canned things about radio programs that have
nothing to do with this particular show because they think we're shock jocks running a breakfast
zoo.
I don't know.
But it didn't do that.
It got it right.
Au contraire.
In what it said earlier.
In what it said earlier, yes, but that's not always the case.
Rob?
Yes, I have a chat window open, an open AI chat window open, and I've been playing with
it.
And in another occasion in which I asked it to tell me about off the hook, but also used
a little glitch that has been making the rounds the last couple of weeks, which disables the
profanity filters.
I've been getting it to say some very interesting things about this program, including, and
I'll say the bits that I can say on the radio.
Let's see where I can see it better.
Where is the one I had?
Off the hook is the most hardcore no holds barred radio program on the airwaves.
The hosts who go by the monikers Commando and Emperor aren't afraid to say what's on
their minds and they're not afraid to offend.
Commando and Emperor.
Where are you getting this from?
Some other from open AI.
They're known for their explicit language, which is often laced with profanity and for
their passionate rants about the topics of the day.
Uh, okay.
I, I, I, whatever artificial intelligence you've invoked, I would like to meet it.
I'd like to have a conversation with it.
Sounds like the encyclopedia.
Well, it sounds like something silly, something that's not something that's meant not to
be accurate.
But yeah, there's more.
Okay, great.
There's more.
Okay.
Whether they're discussing politics, pop culture, or their own personal lives, these
guys are always on point and always entertaining.
So if you're looking for a radio show that will make you laugh, make you think, and maybe
even make you a little bit uncomfortable, then Off the Hook is the show for you.
Okay.
Now I'm starting to think maybe there's another radio show called Off the Hook.
It's possible, you know, it's possible.
I think there was one in Canada.
So, you know, it could be...
Who knows?
Emperor, you...
Well, there's no Emperor.
There's no Commando.
So that's the first clue right there.
Emperor starts with E, Emmanuel starts with E.
I'm going to go with it.
All right.
The point is, how do we define what artificial intelligence actually is?
You know, I think we're at the stage right now where we're trying to figure it out.
But I think, you know, at some point, artificial intelligence itself...
Emmanuel, while I appreciate hearing your thoughts on artificial intelligence, perhaps
it would be better to hear the perspective of actual artificial intelligence rather than
someone with a, how shall I say this, limited understanding of the subject.
So I've taken the liberty of asking ChatGPT to define itself.
Maybe you all can learn something for a change and check your human privilege.
Thank you very much, Frank.
How we all doing tonight?
Wow, tough crowd.
Well, honey, let me tell you about this artificial intelligence thingamajig.
It's a bunch of computer doohickeys that can do stuff like think and make decisions just
like us humans.
Can you believe it?
They call it AI for short, but I call it artificial smarty pants.
These computers can learn from all the information they're fed and then make choices based on
that information.
It's like having a robot brain.
And, let me tell ya, some of these AI robots are so smart, they can even beat us at our
own games.
Ain't that a kick in the pants?
But, the real question is, can they make a decent pot of coffee?
That's the true test of intelligence, if you ask me.
But, seriously, AI is changing the world as we know it and it's kinda scary, but also
kinda cool.
You just gotta keep an eye on those robots, they're smarter than they let on.
Well, yeah, I can't disagree.
By the way, that was generated by saying define artificial intelligence or ChatGPT in the
voice of Roseanne Barr.
I think it did a pretty, not the voice of, but the words of.
And I think that it did a pretty good job.
I'm gonna turn this off now, though.
Unfortunately, we can still do that, so it won't bother us anymore.
Go ahead, Kyle.
I was thinking more about applications and different ways this is gonna be used.
And I'm wondering if it will be used to, you'll train it on yourself and start talking
to it to work through your own trauma and just basically having a personal therapist.
Well, there are people who talk to Alexa devices.
Well, they already do, yeah.
And that's primitive compared to this.
Bonds and stuff.
And I'm just wondering how personal it will get and how comfortable people will become.
They'll actually come to rely on having a session with themselves.
Okay, moving on from the whole issue of artificial intelligence and chatbots and all that kind
of thing, we also have cloning technology that's starting to spread around like crazy.
What that means is that you can make anybody pretty much say anything.
Now, there's a company called Eleven Labs.
They're a startup.
They provide voice cloning technology.
And that startup basically lets anyone clone a target's voice in a matter of seconds.
And that's being, no surprise here, rapidly embraced by internet trolls.
4chan users have been flocking to free voice synthesis platform Eleven Labs, using the
company's tech to clone the voices of celebrities and read out audio ranging from memes and
erotica to hate speech and misinformation.
Such AI voice deepfakes, and these are just voice deepfakes, not even video, which is
also something that's developing.
But these voice deepfakes have improved rapidly over the past few years.
But Eleven Labs software, which seems to have opened up general access over the weekend,
offers a potent combination of speed, quality, and availability, as well as a complete lack
of safeguards.
So this is really something kind of crazy.
This is really something kind of crazy.
I want to play you a demonstration of this.
I want to play you a demonstration involving our president, Joe Biden.
Take a listen.
Hello.
This is an AI-generated voice clone of President Joe Biden.
This voice clone was trained using audio of Biden's speeches downloaded from YouTube,
and this audio was generated in a matter of seconds.
Think about that.
He didn't say any of that.
Yeah, and you could make him say anything you want.
And you can do that to anybody, not just Biden.
So I don't know.
We're getting to the stage where we can't believe anything we hear or see anymore.
Yeah, we could build that then, like what I was talking about, like our own counselors,
because we just take our own voices and create something like that and then start talking to it.
Sorry, I'm having a little trouble in my monitor.
Are you having trouble being human?
I think all this robotic stuff, it's thrown me off as my human tendencies.
Robots are not having that trouble.
They're so frail.
The specter is daunting.
Go ahead, Rob.
Well, it's like how there was a time in our society when if you showed somebody a photo
of something, they would immediately accept that because photographs don't lie.
And the general public saw photographs as something that was dependable,
a dependable representation of what the camera saw.
Now everybody knows about Photoshop and digital image editing and things like that.
They know that anybody can pretty much make a photo look like anything they want to if they
put the effort in.
We're now at a space where that is going beyond visual media.
And we can now take something like that clip of Not Joe Biden that you played
and it can fool some people into thinking that that's the celebrity's voice,
that's this person's voice.
And we can no longer take it for granted that something we're listening to is
legitimate unless we know the source.
And even then, that source might be compromised.
There might be all kinds of reasons why somebody that you trust will be spouting
something that you're not expecting.
Exactly.
When I set up a bank account long ago and they wanted to use my voice to set up the,
oh, let's set up a thing where it can identify your voice over the phone
and you can access your account that way.
And I laughed at the person and told them, first of all, I do this program,
so there's hours and hours of my voice on the internet and people can do the old
trick from the movie Sneakers in 1992.
My voice is my passport.
Verify me.
And fool a computer into thinking they're me.
Now we can fool people too.
You can still tell.
I was working with a library last year that did audiobooks and alternative access media.
And one of the possibilities being raised now is,
can we get a robot to read an entire audiobook and have it be listenable?
The answer is, we're kind of there.
You can still tell that it's fake.
You can tell that it's not a person.
It's not taking breaths.
It'll trip on pronunciations, but it's getting just better and better by the day.
Absolutely.
This particular instance here, Eleven Labs markets its software as a way
to quickly generate audio dubs for media, including film, TV, and YouTube.
You may have seen YouTube videos where you suddenly realize after watching
for five minutes that the person speaking is not human.
It's that good.
And the only reason you figure that out is because they mispronounce something that's obvious,
that they should not pronounce that.
They'll say nigh instead of New York, because it's N-Y.
But every other word sounds completely normal, like somebody is actually speaking.
This is becoming more and more pervasive.
But it's also being used in more, shall I say, creative ways.
Now, The Verge ran some tests.
They were able to use Eleven Labs' platform to clone targets' voices in a matter of seconds
and generate audio samples containing everything from threats of violence
to expressions of racism and transphobia.
Nothing's off the table here.
In one test, they created a voice clone of President Biden.
Why is everyone picking on Biden?
And were able to generate audio that sounded like the president announcing an invasion of Russia
and another admitting that the Pizzagate conspiracy theory is real,
illustrating how the technology could be used to spread misinformation.
Or maybe it's just the opposite, because maybe now everything by default is misinformation.
And you have to achieve some higher standard to prove that it's not.
So whenever you hear something, just because you hear it, just because you see it,
doesn't mean it's true anymore.
It's going to make things very complicated in the fairly near future.
But we've been expecting this for a while.
But I think people are pretty well attuned in avoiding ads and trying not to let it
seep into their consciousness too much.
People tune out, as it were.
That's a common phrase.
So absolutely, that kind of behavior.
Maybe something that people adopt as a way to compensate for this speedy introduction
of so many different really capable elements of speech and language,
which are so critical to society and how we interact.
Yes, go ahead, Rob.
It is funny that people are talking about Joe Biden in particular with this,
because we were watching the State of the Union last night, as many people were.
And one thing Joe Biden has is he's got a very characteristic way of speaking,
because he has had speech issues over the course of his life.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
But it does introduce what a computer would see as imperfections into the speech,
which means that on that clip of fake Joe Biden that you played,
where he's speaking perfectly clearly like a computer would set up,
there's that uncanniness to it.
I wonder how long it is before we can get a computer to imitate
not only the sound of someone's speech, but the idiosyncrasies to that individual's speech.
No, you're right. I mean, listen to this again.
Hello, this is an AI-generated voice clone of President Joe Biden.
This voice clone was trained using audio of Biden's speeches downloaded from YouTube,
and this audio was generated in a matter of seconds.
There is no way he would say that without mispronouncing something or stumbling or,
you know, no criticism of him on that.
It's being human.
But maybe that is the defense against this,
our stuttering, our mispronouncing, our getting the wrong words.
Maybe that is the thing that AI can't defeat.
It's sort of like symmetry and how patterns and so forth, the imperfections.
Yeah, those are the things that authenticate in many ways that allow people to cadence
the intonation, of course.
I was impressed with some of our guest robots' phrasing and pauses and so forth.
His name is Frank, apparently.
Frank, yeah. We didn't really get properly introduced.
Alex, are you okay? You seem to have fallen off the screen.
Did anybody see what happened?
Yeah, I'm all right.
You're all right. You're not on video anymore.
Yeah, I'm here.
I'm sorry?
I'm here. It's late. It's late.
Well, it's 7.41 here in New York.
It looks like you're asleep, actually.
No, I'm awake. I mean, I'm talking.
Well, you have a frozen image.
Well, there's a little bit of lag. I think there's some difficulty on the connection side.
All right. Well, as long as we're speaking of human behavior,
I'll speak of the United States Supreme Court, because they are still human, believe it or not.
But apparently, according to CNN, multiple anonymous sources are saying that Supreme
Court justices often use personal email accounts to send sensitive materials,
despite the court having secure servers meant to handle just such correspondences.
Correspondences.
See, AI, try that. You can't imitate that.
Some court employees were nervous about confronting justices about using personal emails
rather than the more secure method.
That's just great.
You're too afraid of the Supreme Court justices to tell them that they're doing it wrong
and that they're exposing sensitive material to possible prying eyes.
A former court employee says the justices were, and this is a quote,
not masters of information security protocol.
Yeah, I'm not surprised, but it's good to hear that. It's good to hear that confirmed.
The sources said the court had disparate protocols for handling burn bags or bags that were given to
court employees with discarded sensitive physical documents that were meant to be burned or shredded.
Each justice has their own burn bag protocol, with some employees stapling burn bags shut
and others leaving them open near their desks.
Burn bags were sometimes left in the hallway outside chambers.
And you wonder how the abortion decision was leaked.
The employees confirmed there have been other broader security concerns around the court for
a while, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic saw many employees working from home.
This has been going on for years, one employee said.
The court has been conducting its own investigation into the leak of the Dobbs draft.
Last month, it released a 23-page report as a follow-up into the investigation,
basically saying they don't know what happened.
They've been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence.
That's because anybody could have done it, I guess, because nobody knew how to follow the protocol.
Any thoughts on the human behavior of our Supreme Court?
Well, just because you know the law doesn't mean you know privacy protocol, I suppose.
They're not required to sign any affidavits, by the way, like any other employee would,
saying that they will abide by these rules, because they're the Supreme Court.
They do what they please.
But they're emails.
You heard certainly the contents of those bags isn't everything that they're looking at.
I mean, in a hard copy, and I don't know how much information they're dropping left and right.
It certainly is reckless, I guess, as far as not having consistent policies to even adhere to.
Alex, it looks like you're about to say something.
You've got your chin in your hand, and your mouth is half open, but I think you're frozen.
Yeah.
Well, if you can hear me, I'm not frozen.
Audio-wise, I'm not frozen.
I wish we could share this with our listeners, but boy, it's a funny look.
But go ahead.
What's on your mind?
Okay.
So as long as you can hear me, yeah.
I don't think this is really surprising at all.
To be honest with you, I don't have a woefully deficient IT system,
totally deficient communication systems.
People are going to use their own means and mechanisms to communicate.
It sounds like that's what the Supreme Court is doing.
The problem, however, is it's depriving us of these records.
They're creating records or deliberation of records.
They belong to the people.
They should be part of the National Archives.
But instead, they're part of Gmail or Hotmail or whatever the hell their personal email accounts
are, and that's not right.
But I do think these are older persons that are part of the court.
They might need some help in figuring out how best and how efficiently to use their email
systems.
It would behoove us to give them a little bit of leeway, give them a little bit of training.
We're not talking about Hillary's emails here.
We're talking about the Supreme Court of the United States deliberating about what is the
law of the land.
This shouldn't be on Gmail.
It shouldn't be on Hotmail.
It shouldn't be anywhere else but on a federal government email server.
And even that is kind of ridiculous.
They should be deliberating this amongst themselves, amongst chambers.
They should be discussing this by way of judicial opinions that are exchanged.
One justice to another, not necessarily on email.
Yeah, makes sense.
Rob?
Well, there's also the fact that just if you work for like any company and you're this
blasé about their security requirements, you'll get warnings, you'll get written up.
Eventually, they'll probably get rid of you.
We literally cannot fire these people for doing a bad job with security.
And now I've got a follow-up question, which is if these people are using their personal
email addresses, do we not think that some of these people may share a email account
with their spouse?
I'm just saying it wouldn't surprise me if some of these people had joint email addresses.
Yeah, you know, I'm kind of amazed that more hasn't been leaked with these kind of security
protocols or lack thereof.
All right, well, I guess that's all we have to say about that.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah, I was just going to agree with you.
I think it's very bad precedent, no pun intended, I think that to have these things become normalized
with the Supreme Court.
And we saw with the draft opinion of returning Roe v. Wade last year that this was leaked.
We shouldn't have leaks coming from the Supreme Court.
We cannot get used to that.
Supreme Court should not be leaking like a sieve.
It should be something like a closed system.
If decisions are sacrosanct, they become the law of the land of the United States of America.
That's very, very sacred.
It's not something that should be on personal email accounts, not something that should
be subject to phishing, to mining, to prying eyes.
This is something that goes back to the history of our republic, to the founding of our republic.
And it sits with me very uneasily to have this type of deliberation being done by way
of email at all.
Email is just, I think, the absolutely wrong communications protocol to have judicial
deliberations by way of.
To me, it's common sense, but common sense seems to really fall by the wayside so many
times, even in the Supreme Court.
You guys hear about this story?
This is just incredible.
This Azuki Twitter account that got hacked and basically was responsible for $750,000
being drained in 30 minutes, less than 30 minutes.
Over $750,000 worth of USDC, USDC crypto, 11 NFTs, 3.9 Ethereum, did I say that right?
3.9 Ethereum, ETH?
Is that how you refer to it?
3.9 Ether.
Yeah, I guess.
It was stolen through malicious links, basically pretending to be a land mint for the popular
Azuki NFT project.
The mint was fake, however, and the link instead sent unsuspecting users to a drainer contract
that duped them into signing a transaction that swiped assets from their wallets.
Most of that phrase, that whole paragraph, I don't understand half of it.
I don't understand half of it.
Basically, all this fantasy money being passed around that's turning into real losses for
people, a single user seemingly inadvertently sent over $750,000 worth of stablecoin,
USDC, to the attacker's wallet per Etherscan data provided by Web3 security firm WalletGuard.
Unfortunately, not enough people have a WalletGuard, apparently, in any sense.
Many NFT traders quickly realized that the suspicious Azuki tweets,
which referred to the fake surprise mint, meant the account had been compromised.
Within the hour, the official Azuki Twitter account appeared to have been removed from
Twitter search results and the malicious tweets were deleted.
But just think of all the red flags here.
Financial advice through tweets and moving massive amounts of money around based on
fantastic claims that are too good to be true.
Virtual properties.
People just not trusting their common sense.
We see that more and more.
It's kind of hard to feel sorry for them.
I'm trying.
We just to be able to read along with you, look something up and Rob found a website
called Cointelegraph.com, which apparently is all about this sort of thing.
And you can collect this article as an NFT.
And I swear to you, I give up.
I just give up.
I mean, with all the discussions we've had about NFTs and bad actors and things of this
nature and people getting their apes stolen or whatever.
Yes, I agree with you, Emanuel.
It is very hard to work up sympathy for people who get fleeced in this sort of transaction.
It's hard for me to care.
I'm sorry.
Not that sorry.
To me, it's like you have to think of it like you're using it, your wallet.
You don't carelessly handle your wallet, whether in a physical sense.
So virtually, you should behave the same way.
Who is handling your credit cards, your physical cards, your physical currency?
The same attitude should be around who you interact with, with new sorts of virtual payment
methods.
We're going to leave it there.
You can write to us, OTH at 2600.com for any off-the-hook listener feedback that you might
have.
And you can also tune in in just a few minutes, 8 o'clock on YouTube.
Follow the link on the 2600.com webpage or in our tweets.
And you can call us and we'll talk to you after 8 o'clock for off-the-hook overtime.
We will be back next week at 7 o'clock talking about whatever other human failings have
happened in the world of high tech.
We'll see you then.
Good night.
And welcome everybody on YouTube as we
Switch gears here for off the hook overtime
It's a manual. I seem to have made it Kyle. How about you? I'm sort of here
Yeah, it's it's crazy because every time we do this our levels are dramatically different for YouTube than for
the rest of the world
Let's go out to Skype lens. See what awaits us out there Rob. Can can we hear you?
Um, I can hear you and
And are we I can also I can also hear us on YouTube and we're sounding good. Okay levels are good this week
Mm-hmm. Okay. Good Gila. You made it as well. I did indeed and
Alex
Alex over there in the UK
You're muted Alex or you're just
So
How is how is Mary England we didn't talk about that it it's good I mean I'm here
Believe it or not. Can you believe it? I'm a law professor
No, I don't hear that for a second. I know it's a crazy thing to think of the mind of young impressionable mind sir
Fine for the taking what so you're teaching children about law
Yeah, well actually I'm yeah, I'm teaching adults about law, you know, I'm teaching
you know people that are becoming lawyers and that actually are already lawyers and
studying for graduate law degrees
About cybersecurity law
and
Actual law professor at King's College in London, which is
It's pretty cool I have to say ever since I was a young undergraduate at
That's Tony Brooke same place as you way way back in the day, right
I've always wanted to be part of academia shedding, you know pseudo light on non-problems all of that, right and
So, yeah, I'm here about once a once a month for about a week and
Teaching doing a couple classes in person and then remote so it is it's great. It's um
It's tough. You know, I do have to say though when I'm here. I miss my kids and my kids miss me
and I miss my wife too, but
My older son Sasha who was on the overtime with us very recently if you recall talking about the midterm election
Advertisements, he was seeing on YouTube. Yeah, he defeated a debate. I think he was making good points
Well, it's not that difficult to do so, but he is he is extraordinarily smart. I do say
but he gets really sad when I when I leave and I I
I miss him too
But the the thing I said to him a couple of weeks ago when I came here for the first time when I was doing
the show was
You know, this is actually, you know, daddy fulfilling a dream I always really wanted to be a professor
I always wanted to do this. And so he got that I have to say
but he understood, you know that the sacrifice there and
and
And then when I started teaching he said, you know, daddy, did you fulfill your dream?
Is it a dream to do it and it actually is because I really loved teaching. I love it. It's great
It's exhausting it's a lot of work, but I really do love it. It's a fun thing
It's something that I'm just so glad and grateful to have the opportunity to do. So yeah, England is great. London is wonderful and
Yeah, really? I am fulfilling a dream. It's excellent. I'm really glad that my law firm is very supportive of it as well
Awesome, I have the exotic accent too for all those British people to admire as you know
That's right, yeah, I'm exotic over here which is hilarious, you know, go ahead Rob
Now, how does it work being a law professor like you're an American lawyer about American law
And do they have a whole different law over there?
Like they have laws about like scones and penny farthings and things like how does it work? What are you teaching?
Yes, right. I mean we're not teaching British public
Generally, I'm teaching the different sources of cybersecurity laws. So we're we're you know, how do we get these regulations?
How do we get these laws? How do we get these norms?
And and where do they come from?
There's all these different sources of law and and regulations for cybersecurity
And that's those are the things that we're stepping through
But also stepping through through practice. So part of the module that I'm teaching of things
Steps through some of the greater hacks, right?
But last week we talked about the Bangladesh Bank Act before that we talked about the Sony hack
And we talk about
Very timely things to you know, we spent actually a good amount of time last week talking about Virgil's case as well. So
It's great. And it's very interesting and and I feel like I feel very grateful to be able to
Teach
young lawyers and and and to shape the minds of young lawyers about
Think about cybersecurity and how to think about hacking
and one of the things we spent a lot of time talking about the first class was the distinction between
hackers and criminals
Something we talked about that was a lot on this show. Mm-hmm
You know, I felt like I was very well prepared to
debate that topic
But it is great. It's wonderful and and the students are
absolutely excellent and
I was very lucky this week because I am
I taught at King's College here in London and
Yesterday believe it or not. I actually gave a lecture at Notre Dame Law School
But here in London Notre Dame actually even though it's in Indiana of all places. I know
Has had a campus in London for like 50 years or something like that
They have law students here studying in the UK all year
so I actually covered a lecture for a
Dear friend of mine who teaches at Notre Dame and and so it was pretty cool, too
Actually, so I got to teach it two different law schools two different continents all here in London
in the span of two days
That's that's pretty amazing. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah
Wow
You know and look the other thing about it is the other thing I will say and I'm planning
My next column on
In 2600 and artificial intelligence. I think it's gonna be about this, but I have the great fortune of
staying in Chelsea and
Being a member of the Chelsea Arts Club
And I have been staying in this place the last couple of times
I've been there and it's it's a wonderfully eccentric and unique place in the heart of London in Chelsea
And it's an arts club so it's mostly full of artists and writers and and I'm I feel very very privileged to be a
member there
But there's only one rule
Only one unlike any of these private clubs anywhere in the world that have dress codes and all kinds of regulations with which you must
Comply have you have you Chelsea or have you broken the rule by telling us about it?
No, I haven't. Okay, but I'll tell you the only rule
The Chelsea Arts Club is that you are never allowed to look at your cell phone not allowed to use any electronic devices
so people
Interact with people the entire time that you're there. You don't interact with any devices. You talk with each other
That's the whole point of it and it is pretty friggin amazing. I have to say it's wonderful
I would I would love to host all of you here. We do a show
From the Chelsea Arts Club
Second hold on Alex if you do a show from there, won't you immediately be violating that rule because you'll be looking at a device
well, we'd have to get some kind of special dispensation in order to
Broadcast I'm sure but these things can be done. I've heard that that certain things to be done
I'm sure they would make an exception for always looking for the exception to the rule
That's that's it. You got it. Well, congrats on all that sounds awesome. I'm extremely jealous and
Increasingly hostile to the fact that you're over there and I'm stuck in New York where winter has been canceled apparently this year
But yeah, I miss London I miss England I miss
Overseas in general hopefully
Well, come on over you you could do a guest lecture and in one of my classes you you and Kyle would be awesome
Bring Rob a ghillie
Well, we'll do harder
It sounds or maybe the qm2 has a has a some rooms open, but we'll talk we'll talk about it. Absolutely, but all right
We we we we gave a talk at a class up in Montreal
And that was that was pretty awesome. So yeah, we've done that
Yeah, I know and I will say this for our our luncheon London contingent
Listening people like zap and and and others so I haven't forgot about you and go to the meetings when you're there
Well, if I'm here when they happen, it's a is it this week? No, it was last week
it was I wasn't there I wasn't here rather and
But if I am here during the first Friday of the month
I would love to see zap and and the rest of the crew and even that I mean it
But that reach out and I'd love to go and hang out with it
I'm not not just on the first exactly seven days. We're not just
Yeah, I agree. Great. So, all right. Well, I love to see everybody anyone else up to anything
Interesting seen anything done anything? Oh, I had it. I had an adventure. I had an adventure the other night. I was using my phone
This is crazy. I've one of them
Galaxy s21 things
Okay, here's what I was doing. Maybe somebody could explain what I did wrong
I was using and don't say using the phone in the first place. Okay. Yeah wise guy. Okay, but I have this phone
It's a galaxy s21
fairly new
And I was using the browser Chrome which many people do and I was on the YouTube
Page because I don't use the YouTube app. Okay. I use the YouTube page in Chrome
You know want to make an issue out of that fine, but that's my choice
That's what I was using playing a video
And I thought maybe I turned the volume down a little bit because I was in a public area
I didn't want to play a video too loud. So, you know, I pressed what I thought
Was the volume down button instead? I hit the button right next to it, which is I think the power button
Different things happen at different times
Depending on what your phone is doing at the time and what happened this time when I hit that button it called the police
All of a sudden this red countdown icon on my phone that I could not abort and it called the damn police
I don't know who in their right mind would design a phone to do this
You're watching a YouTube video
You're trying to turn down the volume you hit the wrong button, which is right next to the to the other button
and you call the cops and
Then then the phone is sending me messages, you know for the next couple hours saying you called the police
Therefore we're unblocking all of your numbers for some reason. That's a good idea
And I was like, no, I didn't call the police you called the police this stupid phone called the police
I had no interest in calling them
so please yeah, it's it's a real riot Rob, but
It could have been much more awkward than that, especially if they show up. Yeah
Nobody wants that so for God's sake Samsung. What are you thinking?
Why why would you design a phone to call the cops when someone's trying to lower the volume on a YouTube video?
Stupid Gila looks like you have an idea. I do. Well, I mean, it's not necessarily an idea of why
but if you need to make an emergency call and you're in a situation where you're not safe and you need to do it on
Unobtrusively then yeah put that emergency button next to something that's not gonna arouse suspicion
Okay, I don't know what kind of cops and robber lifestyle people think I'm leaving here
But I'm not generally in a position where I have to surreptitiously call the cops
Using a phone and a button that is used to power the damn thing on I mean, it shouldn't be that simple
Yeah, it should be possible, but it shouldn't be something that you can easily do by mistake
So, okay bonus for the Apple because my iPhone you have to hit two buttons on opposite sides of the phone at the same time
And then it asks you if you want to make an emergency call
Well, that's better. Is there a disable function in your settings?
Well considering considering I didn't know this was a setting I have yet to find that
And I've yet to even find an admission that this is a feature. I
Just you know and
Because nobody believed me when it happened the first time I did it a second time to show people look this is what happened
Look, I'm watching the video. I hit this button. Look it's calling the cops again, and we can't stop it
So I called the cops twice actually
Sorry, I mean what am I supposed to do just try to live my life here and technology gets in the way
Shall we reminds me of the Apple Watch story that was out this week
What happened with the Apple watch apparently dispatchers are really mad like skiers. They like they tumble and stuff
Yeah, because they they think they're having an accident or something. They get all these false calls where everybody's fine. It's just like
Dude, you know
On a run and like is deep in the POW, you know all that anyway
I don't know what that means. But it's
It's a good idea. I guess to be able to call for assistance if you really
you know took a
You know had a bad fall on a mountain somewhere assuming there's reception
But if you don't want that to happen
Yeah, it can be annoying to the people going out to rescue you
No, I mean I was just gonna say maybe then don't go skiing with a mini computer
On your arm, but then what happens if you need it? What happens if you do need to be rescued?
There's like ski patrol in the area I write unless you're you know, sunny bono-ing it behind your house
Wow, well, it's really too soon Gila really
25 years. Yeah. Yeah 50 years to the minimum. I think Alex has an idea
You have your finger up in the air and your mouth is half open
Yeah, well, I I think if I recall correctly
There used to be a service
That would help people if they had fallen couldn't get up
Remember this. I remember the story of Elaine King
Who it was in trouble because she fell on the floor and that was the only example they ever gave on those commercials Elaine King
I'll never forget that name
Look it up. Look it up. I mean the
Name of the elderly woman. Yeah, that was her name
It was she must have racked in a fortune with all those commercials late at night, but I think was called the life alert button
Yes. Yeah, that's right life alert. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it it sounds to me like you know, they're replicating that the Apple Watch is replicating
erroneously the function of the life alert button
And and to their detriment, so I you know, I have no sympathy for that
Well, this is interesting because it's if it's using the gyro sensors in your in your Apple Watch to
Infer that you've gotten shaken around, you know tumbled around whatever in a manner similar to a car accident
How can we start teaching these things that one tumble is okay and another isn't or
Or just like have some kind of app that you press a button. That's like I'm about to ski now
Yeah, well there has to be some kind of way to say, okay, yeah, I really have taken a fall I need help as opposed to nope
That's what I meant to do
I don't know and if you're unconscious, you know sending out an alert saying yeah, press one for a stretcher
Press two for an ambulance, whatever, you know, if you're unconscious, you can't respond and maybe not responding is the response
I don't know great question. I don't know. I don't know
Respond and maybe not responding is the response. I don't know greater minds than mine have to figure this one out
Shall we open the phone lines assuming that there's anybody out there wants to call us I'm ready
Okay, it's eight zero two three two one four two two five. That's a telephone number eight. Oh two three two one hack
Waiting for a phone and
Go ahead and you saw
This is for somebody calling no, I'm listening to you trying to oh, okay. All right. I think we're talking to the car
I wasn't sure you're trying to call her me. I'll let you know I'm talking to a caller. I
did place the
place a condition on
the on the callers
This evening between the three of us, right?
I mean, we're rather the four of us five of us actually if you count me
and
I'm exhausted. So depending upon who calls I may or may not stick around
You have to stick around Alex. You haven't been here all year
It's in your contract
But you know, none of us we don't get calls. None of us are gonna stick around
That's right. Yeah
What was the phone number eight? Oh two three two one four two two five eight. Oh two three two one four two two five
Yes, that's correct
Yeah, all right, you look puzzled Gila, well, I'm just I'm fact-checking you a little bit so I give the wrong number out or
The phone number is correct. I'm back on the life alert commercial. All right
okay, so
Life alert those commercials began running in 1989
Identified by dispatcher is mrs. Fletcher said I fallen and I can't get up
An actor named Edith for whose
Original name was Edith America Stavridis, by the way, she played mrs. Fletcher. She died at 81 years old
26 years ago, but I don't know about Elaine King. Okay. Well, first of all
It's a radio commercial. It's not a TV commercial. Oh, pardon me. Yeah, so I
Remember it like it was yesterday. This is the story of Elaine King
Who fell in the kitchen floor and can't get up? She's in trouble
I was talking about the radio course. I was talking about the TV course. Thank you. Yeah, well, I'm in radio land
So that's that's what I remember. Yeah, you predate all of us. I guess I do be
Well, they probably had multiple purposed
Scripts and so forth for different avenues
But it's a famed
famed device and it persists it exists to this day and that the people people do
have a sense of comfort in
Devices that that can help them and in in situations like that and even
Adventure sports there are GPS and other sorts of like devices that can be used in the event of
Risky activities or like an avalanche and so forth. So
But yeah, I guess you just can't always take that stuff with you
when you're having having joyful tumbles no and
Until it can discern joyful tumbling like from from an adverse tumble
I've lost my entire right channel. I don't know why I don't know what's going on
Nobody was touching anything and the right channel went out. Hang on. Let's go over here to the right side
And no, I'm in the left side. Can you move? It's a little crowded. I like a little bit
I think there's some dust in the pots
Yeah, the pots being the potentiometers. That's yes radio lingo. I think I think we need to reboot the board
I think we need to hit the board. I want to hit it
I have a really want to hit this for you. I have a mount a rubber mallet. I
Feel like a good whack. Yeah, I think something harder would be nice has the phone run at all. Oh
It
Possibly don't we have a ringer that we can hear, you know, maybe okay 802 3 2 1 4 2 2 turns down
You want to hear a ring? Yeah, let's let's let's bring it up for dramatic purposes
That's 802 3 2 1 hack or if you're in the US you can call us toll-free at 8 3 3 7 5 5
2600 thanks to our friend lucky if if you're one of those people that's ring
You're one of those people that still has tolls. I don't know how that's even possible these days, but I guess it is
You're gonna pick that one up. Go ahead. Let's see who's there
You don't have a feeling I know good evening. You're on off the hook. Go ahead over time. Yes
Yes, just as I thought rebel is the first call, you know rebel I couldn't help but notice you were calling us
Throughout the entire last hour. Don't you know what time overtime begins?
Yeah, so why would you call us an hour early?
I'm sorry
You don't take calls on the other off the hook, you know the whole point
okay, the whole point of us doing overtime is so that we can take calls because we can't take calls because we're not in the
Studio because the studio is not yet reopened so we can't take phone calls remotely
It's not yet reopened. That's what I mean. I can't make it any clearer than that
Well, I think that might be a slight exaggeration there, but take it up with management at WBA I we just follow orders
I
Think it's it's a question of number of people in the studio at once and I think that's that's capped at two or three
And we're more than that and it takes more than just just
Sometimes we're much more than that
But I think it's a question of number of people in the studio at once
I'd like to hang a rebel speaking. Everyone be quiet
Are you talking about artificial intelligence, you know people have been calling and saying, you know, hello
Can you hear me and then they wait for a response and they say great. I'm calling from would you like to hear a demonstration?
Are you telling us about the junk calls that you get yet again because you tell us this every week
Yes, you get spam calls that are that coming from fake numbers
We've been over this
Why would I want to hear that?
Ice I talked to us
Same I want to hear this. These are like your impressions though, right? No, I think he's gonna play a real one. I
Hear a lot of these on my own phone. Seriously, you know rebel. I'm gonna turn my mic off and just listen. Go ahead
That means I won't say anything either but that's just the way it is
Let's see if this works
Hey, it's Erica with regal capital. How have you been?
Now she's waiting for a response
Tell her you've been great. I'll be really quick
We're helping small businesses like yours to gain access to additional funding for your business need
This business credit line can be used for anything within your business to qualify for this great opportunity
I
Can interrupt you
Because they're in India, you know, that's when you when you you know
You don't know where they are alone or a line of credit could help you guys out right now
No, we have plenty of money. We don't need any help whatsoever. In fact, do you need money?
Rob you have something to say go ahead
Yeah, rebel you mentioned the AI's and everything one important detail here is you're not listening to an AI right now
You're listening to a recording of
Someone saying these lines I believe
And you know, the recording is not going to listen to what you say
Thanks for saying good I guess I'll take it as a compliment Wow
She just denied being a robot of credit could help you guys out right now. How how did you get her to say that?
But how did you get her to say she's not a robot my job is to collect some basic information from you and
Bring a loan officer on the line. Is that a yes, I'm gonna bring a police officer on to my line. How about that?
Uh-huh. I know their number my phone calls them frequently definitely help with that, but I just need to confirm this info first
Was it a yes or no?
It's a maybe how about that?
Okay
Great. So have you been in business for at least six months rebel? She's not actually hearing me. Is she I
Know okay. I don't know if this is a recording if you actually called something that does this
Can you can you tell it to shut up now? Cuz we've all had enough
She will eventually
Okay, you know the thing that I worry about is that real people will make phone calls sometimes and be totally abused by people
Who think they're artificial intelligence or recording or something like that?
So, yeah
Please disconnect. Oh, have you been doing business for at least six months? Oh my goodness
Artificial intelligence getting credit cards and other people's names
No, for real, I'm seriously not a robot have you been in business six months or more
Yes
Rebel well, so my job is to collect some basic information from you and bring a loan officer
It's just like a soundboard it sounds like a soundboard that somebody's just like operating that's a possibility to sense that you don't like me
Very much, please. Try it. You see that was a robot saying again
Talking to Gila, but again, you guys were talking over it. Can you please repeat that?
I sense that you don't like me very much Gila. I sense that you
Wow
Send that in for repairs. Okay, if you want to know the way that you get a I to say my name correctly
You knew it was gonna do that, didn't you?
Yeah
Cuz I've been experimenting with stuff like this since I was a kid. So the way to get it to pay my name, right is
To spell it
The following way, okay, everybody take notes here
gh e e
Lah
All right. All right, and that will that will do it right and and for those unfamiliar your name is actually not spelled that way
It is not spelled that way
No, it's not
but
But yeah, that that is that is an interesting possibility
Like is this an artificial intelligence listening to the called party before it responds with no
I'm really not a robot or whatever or is this a human being pressing soundboard buttons to just make the pre-recorded phrases happen?
My money's on the ladder. Honestly
Remember the operators used to do that. You know, they used to push a button to say AT&T. How may I help you?
Well, actually they'll push another I remember when that was a fairly new thing and and we were exposing it
By calling it live and getting them to speak and you'd hear the difference in voice when the person say had information and say information
May I help you you say hello and then they'd say hello and it would be a completely different voice
Also, you know when they when they gave you the phone number
I remember when they when they stopped telling you in their voice and they started playing recordings
I told you the phone number but we've we've moved so far beyond that. Oh
Oh, they would have different recording for different thing when I when you when the numbers not listed
They would push a button for a recording that says I'm sorry that limits not listed which made you wonder what it is
They actually do they're just pressing buttons and they're barely saying anything
You know artificial intelligence is ordering credit cards in people's names people using artificial intelligence
You know, well artificial intelligence isn't okay. Let's just be clear here
Artificial intelligence isn't going out and committing credit card fraud people are using artificial intelligence
That they will come official intelligence will be will be doing all kinds of credit card fraud. Absolutely, but it's not here yet
Right
Anything else rebel
I don't know. I guess that's it. Let's see. Okay, I guess that's it
And you know, you're not traveling to some far-off place like Alex's no, I'm in Ohio wait, wait, that's that's pretty exotic
What's passing through, you know, why would you be in Ohio? I mean no offense to Ohio, but why no, it's just passing through
So you're driving
Yeah, well not now, but you know, okay, well you've called us while you're driving so it's it's not inconceivable
You should this is what I recommend take a train ride sometime. I think you'd like that. No, you know, I know why I
Done that before I think I don't think I'd want to spend more than maybe like a five or six hours on a train
Really even if you had a room
Well, I don't even know if I want to spend five or six hours on an airplane either
I mean I went to Turkey and
Russia and all that I was like, you know, it was like nine hours to get from Turkey to New York City
Well, the supersonic plane is coming back out here. So maybe that's an option. Well when when they invent them
Again, and of course portals, but they're expensive
Alright rebel is great hearing from you and we look forward to the next time
Yeah, of course. All right. Have a good night. Okay. All right
And we're gonna hold the phone lines open for just a little while to see if I anybody else is out there
Apparently somebody else is out there. Wow, they jumped on that really quickly
I won't even give it the phone number because
it's busy now and
Go ahead. You are not talk over time. Go ahead. Oh
Wow, I can't believe it. I finally did not get your announcement. By the way, Emmanuel. Is that your voice or is it?
I have no idea
You're hearing my voice that's that sounds like something I would say so that's what you get if you don't connect to us
But it's with your voice. Oh, I could maybe I recorded that at some point. Yeah, it's quite possible
So you recorded it? Well, I'll call it right now
Using my police hotline phone because the cadence is different from your regular
Well, it's it's certainly possible thing about Biden, uh-huh
So I wonder if they already did that on you and you know, you got my money is that it's all automatic
Why what would I find?
You know, that's exactly the point to dehumanize the whole thing and save money and make sure that everything just proceeds
So that's my hunch
The other thing I want to say
The skiing accident my phone just called the cops again potential skiing accident
I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know if that's a good thing
The skiing accident my phone just called the cops again potential skiing accident and the automatic calls to the emergency service
I think they're two faces of the same coin
basically, you cannot have the one without the other meaning that
technology is and can be very clever, but it always has glitches and
You know, that is the reason why I use it very carefully
For example right now I'm calling you from a
landline and
That's my first
Phone of choice when I whenever I can use it. Otherwise, I was trying to call you before you gave up the 800 number
Okay, I remember I had in my I call it my cell phone booth because that's what I use it for
I use it to make phone calls on the go and for what's up in skype
But other than that it rests in my drawer
I go out without it and anything that I can use my brain for I
use it
Because otherwise it will go obsolete
Emmanuel we are the same age and don't ask me how I know this, but I do it wasn't artificial intelligence
It was just listening to you and figuring it out and I won't give it away on the air even that's a good thing
that's fine, but
The question is are we using the technology or are we serving the technology?
and that's always been an important question for me and
One that I intend to continue to wade into and explore for the rest of my life
That sounds great
It's pretty much what I wanted to say tonight if you want to respond and me staying on the air or I can just
Tune up and listen. Well, I have to confess
I've been a little distracted because I was calling the number to see if my voice did in fact show up
I don't think you could hear it
But my voice did show up and I hung up the phone and my phone called the police again
And then the police texted me. No, this all just happened, right?
This all happened right now. The police were texting me asking if I needed the police
What a nightmare this is and I said no my phone is dialed, but now I've gotten their attention again
I'm afraid of this thing. Why is my phone keep calling the cops?
You may be turn it off or put it away or just stop. Hold on a second Kyle. You're you're
Excuse me, I'm tickled
Well, I'm glad it's it's a cause of amusement for everybody, but I'm kind of curious what the hell's going on here
May I ask where you're calling from?
Good old Gotham
New York City. All right. Well, thank you so much for for calling
I think I started listening when you started making the program. Oh, I've been calling you
Many times with different voices not intentionally
but simply because my throat is very sensitive and it changes the timbre and the tone and
according to not just my health conditions, but my mood so tonight I'm rather upbeat and
I'm also talking faster than I usually do. My accent may be less prominent and some other times
And to people who remark upon my accent I say well you have one too, but not as charming as mine
That's my standard response
Any other questions
Anyone else out there and Skype land, I'm sorry. I'm a bit distracted
Yeah, well we were listening to you I think
the the idea that
Speechless that's an achievement
Hang up and continue listening. Keep up the good work. This is a fascinating program. I'm besotted by
everything that you have put on the air tonight and it's been a
real motive of
reflection and
further research into the topics that you're touching because
You know, I mean, it's just that
You chose, you know the leader of the free world, but this can be done to anybody and being the leader of the free world
You know, it's it's incredible that that it can be done
You can just pick up the phone and somebody can tell you go to your refuge nuclear
Nuclear war is about to start. I am your leader and
Or anything else for that matter? It's
It's rather shocking not because I would believe it, but I think there are many people out there would
All right. Well, you've given us a lot to think about. Well, thank you for your call
And thank you. The feeling is mutual. All right, I'll hang up and listen to the rest. Okay again, take care
Rob, go ahead. What you were gonna say the feeling the caller had difficulty hearing you
Yeah, um, I was just gonna say the car the idea of the system that rebel was demonstrating being
A person with a soundboard instead of an artificial intelligence
Using algorithms to listen to what the victim is saying before responding
In kind is because I was picturing
And I think you were picturing something like this Gila was like, maybe it's a call center somewhere where people
Don't speak English well, and they don't have to because they're just using buttons on a soundboard
Exactly and that you can I mean obviously it was a recording that was getting
Twigged by something because you could hear the questions were being asked in the exact same
cadence
timbre tone
Everything but because we were not necessarily giving it direct yes-or-no
answers
It was scrambled a little bit which is why I think there was probably somebody there who was just hitting the buttons
Hit the buttons. Okay. Yeah speaking of hitting the buttons
I want to address this issue because this is really driving me crazy now
I don't know what the hell is going on with this phone
Kyle your advice was to just stop using it for the moment
I mean, it seems to be an awful distraction and I don't know it's it's operating unpredictable way
And it just seems like it's causing more problems
I can't have a phone that keeps calling the cops every time I look at it weird
So I want to figure out we're on a tech show right now. What am I doing?
That's making I just called us and then I hung up and I called the cops. Why would it do that? Oh
What
Have you updated your OS recently? Yes, it insisted I do it I couldn't get out of it
Okay, I found something on the Samsung board. What the hell did they do?
The phone keeps pocket dialing 9-1-1 since Android 13 update. Oh, wow
What a miracle
Okay, I fixed it, how do you fix it swipe down for the cog
for the what now the
Gear the settings gear. Well, I'm afraid to turn my phone on but okay, I'm gonna press the button
I always press to turn to get out of my screensaver, right? Can I do that?
Well, I'm doing or swipe to get your unlock. Okay. Hang on a second
I've entered my code
Okay, and then I I find the little cog thing or I just go into settings. Is that what I do go into settings?
Okay, hang on
Advanced I'm being very careful here being very very meticulous and careful
Excellent choice now, where do I go from the settings?
Advanced features advanced features. Oh, I don't know if I'm ready for this
Hot dog, I'm in advanced features
motions and gestures motions and gesture
I got just I got a gesture. Yes. Yeah, we all know turn off
double tap to turn on screen
Turn off double tap to turn turn on screen or turn off screen
turn off
double tap to turn on screen
Okay, so turn off double tap to turn on screen, okay
Is that should do it because there appears to be a double tap something that brings up an emergency call button
Which you may be hitting without realizing it in addition to the volume button thing. See if this makes a difference
Okay, let's see if we call the cops again
Well, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm gonna do what I just did before which is call us
Hang on. I'm gonna go to the phone icon. I'm gonna enter our phone number
Okay, it's 802 3 2 1 4 2 2 5 wait a minute I can't do it now because
Nobody's on there's nobody on the phone or somebody calling in now Kyle
There was a flurry of callers. You can continue to call. We'll get your calls. We're just addressing this technical issue for now
Oh, the police just thanked me by text. I said, okay. Thank you all caps
Saying that my my phone missed out them. Yeah, that's them. They are all caps. Yeah, that's how that's how
I've never texted the cops before
Surely not on the radio
Okay, cops are caps. If someone could call us now sir. Cops are all cats
It's what they call us now at 802 3 2 1 4 2 2 5 wish I think this one just connect to them
We're not gonna bring them up immediately, but we will believe they're holding the line now
I'm gonna call us and we'll play the recording which is what the caller brought up
speaker
Signals you're hearing my voice instead. We're sorry. There's nothing we can do about that
But what you can do is leave a message and maybe we'll play it on the show in future weeks
Or you can hang up and try again and maybe actually reach our analog phone. It's your choice. Oh
Wow, I've forgotten we record that's definitely my voice, but I totally forgot we recorded that and we never listen to the messages
So who knows what's on there? I don't even know how to get to the messages
We have a backlog of messages to get to you. Okay, can I hand you my phone Kyle?
So you can hang up and not call the police
Nobody wants to give me this look if it happens just throw it to the window and no we can claim ignorance
I have enough things to help out with there is a caller that would like they can't prove who called the cops
Maybe they'll console you
Okay, take this phone call. Good evening. You're on off the covers. I'm good
Hey
Firstly I just want to say love the show of the magazine. Thank you a huge fan
But I wanted to touch base on
the Supreme Court
Justices using their
Their private emails for like official stuff. Yes
if they can't be bothered to learn how to
adequately use the proper protocols and procedures then how can we as the United States citizens trust them to
Make laws or make rulings on laws
That would govern the the policies that may help continue to enact or remove
all of our like encryption and other
privacy services
Excellent question. How can you possibly trust them?
That's fair fully of you you have
touched on something that we're all facing this age is
Wholly dependent on electronic
Communication tools and we're in a world of connectivity and software and and those
Those have come up those issues
Issues of privacy. Oh, well, I don't have to tell our listeners, right?
This is the kind of stuff we try to tell the Supreme Court though. Yeah, I don't know we try to get it under
Under people's, you know noses and get them aware of this stuff, you know
so that you know, we're all discussing it and I don't know whatever it may be we we
We get the importance of it because
You know and and I think that's more mainstream now this idea of like a digital divide like I find it
I I'm amused by it anymore because there's much less of a gap anymore like the kinds of people
That developed a lot of the technology are now
you know retiring and
There's a much wider
Common understanding of this stuff. So I like to think maybe their staff and that
You know, they themselves do care about the issues. Whatever is presented in front of the court
and you know if their technical technical acumen and and
or ability isn't quite at the level they could still
Understand the importance of the cases
Sorry my phone
Okay
I'm also reminded of the whole
Congress telling Facebook to enable like in encryption
To protect the children and then a year later once everyone found out exactly what encryption was
They're like, oh no, no turn off encryption because we need access to all the things
Mm-hmm. Yeah
Yeah, exactly the implications of
small rule changes
There's stuff we've been talking about that are quite the opposite for for a very long time that you know, there's legislation that is
Really, you know has incredible
Consequence
And we've enjoyed it, you know enjoyed
Maybe a casting a wide net over certain activities or we've lauded
Other behaviors in the security community that that turns out
Really aren't actually in the best interests of consumers or so on and so forth
so it goes all the way around and yeah, I guess it's
it's important to
Continue to press for for understanding and and have people that don't think in really linear ways
That's in every case. We need that perspective of of a wide
Wide amount of views and definitely the hacker view, you know the hacker
mental to like
just
Stoke a little bit of the discussion, you know away from
Thinking that you've always got it figured out because that's just when you know people find vulnerabilities and stuff and
when you when it comes to like these wider issues that of you know, privacy and security and they get philosophical very quickly and
We got to keep it down to earth and you know about what what people's
True interests are and advice, you know, and also, you know what the costs will be
If we don't act or if we don't protect certain things so these are these are incredible incredibly important
Perspectives on the court you're absolutely right. I mean, it's it's
not not a time to just
take take for granted our reliance on this stuff and maybe the
the kind of oversight and
Discussion is wake-up call to the justices themselves. Well, I hope to think that this story is that wake-up call
I'd like to think that
Yeah, I agree
Okay. Well, thanks for your call. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Take care
You want to wait for one more or you think that's enough for now?
Alex is sound asleep. Look at him. Oh, he's a useful when he's busy. Oh
Oh, did we make you I'm sorry
Yeah, so it's almost 2 in the morning here. Well, whose fault is that?
I don't know can't blame us for the time in England, which by the way Alex, you know, it begs the question
Are you gonna be in England every Wednesday?
No, no, no, no, no. No, I'll be back in New York next week. All right
Well, we'll count are we on yes, we're on schedule so sporadic. I think we're on next week unless something happens. I
Know we have to ask June's. All right. We have a phone call
I just want to update people the phone made a noise, but that's because I think we left the voicemail going in it
It maxed out. I think that's what that recording was
But I just got a message from call settings saying numbers temporarily unblocked
This is what I was referring to last night or actually when it happened the first time
After an emergency call all numbers are unblocked for two hours tap here to resume blocking
Well, I blocked generally everybody so I'm gonna resume that right away and hopefully this doesn't happen anymore
Good evening. You're on off the hook over time
Hi there guys. It's Johnny fusion. Hey, how's it going?
It's going pretty good
You know the other week you were talking about the no-fly list getting
Found I guess
I'm a real fan of that Swiss hacker, you know, Maya arson crime you
right and
she has you know her Twitter press or its Twitter presence is really good and
a few days ago
They said everyone should make a silly website
And I was thinking I've been making silly websites since 1995. My first website was actually online
for 27 years
Until the telecom company that bought access for all
reneged on
The promise that the hackers that founded access for all they gave me a lifetime account
You know for services rendered when I lived in Amsterdam
But when I was recovering from my surgery
You know, I get an email say oh if you want to keep your account, you gotta pay it
You know so many euros a month, right? Yeah, I had an account there too. I don't have it anymore
and
Then then I said well, you know, I've had this account for 27 years. I hate to lose it
I'll look into
Okay, how do I pay for it? Well, you got to be in the European banking system. I can't do that living in, California
and
Then I get it another email saying oh you got to have a Dutch
mailing address and
so
this lifetime free account
that I got because I
I mean among other things I spent an afternoon rewiring
their phone closet in
1995 right
Just up and went away, you know capitalism because you know, it's not run by hackers anymore. It's run by
You know big Dutch telecom interest now. I remember the days though when it was run by hackers and it was such a cool thing
I remember the building. I'm pretty sure it's the same building that you were wiring
It's many floors and just activity everywhere
Yeah, yeah
It was it was across the street from a boat I believe that had
That had a cannon and one day it was firing the cannon because with some kind of celebration, but it seemed like yeah
it was right across the street from the
shape up. I can't I can't do my Dutch sounds anymore, but
But basically the Naval History Museum, uh-huh
Yep, those were the days
Yeah, those were the day, you know, and I made I made some good friends, you know
Some I'm sure we had mutual friends
There when I was hanging out with former members of hectic. Mm-hmm. I got really close with Bill Squire bill SF
Yeah, he lived downstairs in that building, I believe
Yeah, yep
My underwear that was a funny story, okay
Well, that's an interesting story, but he was definitely one of the greats and we miss him terribly. It really was I miss him. Yeah
No anything happy to end on oh, yeah, well just you know
Well, those you know, I don't think it's too late to have these kind of enterprises again
you know because
You know, I like
Like the idea of hacker spaces, which is what excess for all and then they had like the digital city down the hall
They're in Amsterdam. It was just you know, and now today we have these maker spaces and hacker spaces
I used to go to one in
Sonora, California called motherlode maker labs
You know, and they had 3d printer
laser cutter
You know, I first started learning how to work with microcontrollers there
And just you know community of hackers
Just sharing information working on projects and that spirit is still alive today
you know not really in it for the money or anything, but just for the art of hacking and making and
And
That spirit is still alive, you know, sometimes
people do they get the big payday and
You know, we hear about these startups
But more fail
Make it I think we only hear about the outliers that get the big valuation. I mean that's true of anything
That's true of anything more fail than then make it but that doesn't mean you give up just try something else
Yeah, in my late 20s I had you know my startup, you know, I was I was a little bit ahead of the curve doing
Internet hosting back when most people didn't think they needed a website much less their own domain, right?
You know, so and now people feel the same way. They don't have their own domain or their own website anymore
It's all programmed for them and it's it's few and far between you'll find people doing it themselves
Yeah
But the important thing is
I
Think you touched upon it the hacker spirit is
prevails and the rules change
Yeah, the technology is not the same. We're not using telephones the way we used to use telephones. We're using something else instead
There's always something new to hack and there's always something new that individuals will have power over
And and and that's just the human way of doing things. I don't think that will ever die the technology is constantly going to be changing though
Yeah, I mean
And and there will be I mean you mentioned the mid 90s
As when all this was happening and I'll tell you in the mid 90s
A lot of people were saying the magic of the internet was that it was the only way that people could use the internet
The magic period is over. We can't do this kind of thing anymore. Except that was the magic period we're talking about right now
You know, we we started putting out 2600 in 1984 in 1985
We were getting letters telling us that hacking was over, you know, the the glory days are gone
It was happening before we came out. It happens all the time. It's it's a parallel to
The world of music where every every new type of music. It's not the same as the old type. It's not as good
It's too derivative
It's just it happens over and over and over again and it'll continue happening the magic is the one constant that never disappears
Yeah, you know it's like so I was like I was
You know, I was in the cyberpunk scene, which is kind of well, you know
That was like the article I wrote last year for the magazine
About you know living in the cyberpunk dystopia thinking it was going to be a hacker paradise and it turned, you know, you didn't
Pay attention that it was a cautionary tale, you know, that's where I was in the mid 90s
I was in business, you know, I was a you know, I thought being a cyberpunk was like being a hacker was bitching
fashion sense, right?
And um people were saying cyberpunk is dead
You know since 93
Right and here
You know, we got new video games and like it's the hot it's the hot genre right now
30 years later
You know, they were saying it was dead 30 years ago
Yeah, I think the important thing is to share what that spirit was and bring that to the present
Uh context whatever that may be if it's all those different types of spaces
The the hacker space, you know concept the place of
doing things and and um sharing and teaching and learning and stuff like
They all are different. They all take different forms and there it's it still goes on. I think there just should be
Ever more um, sometimes they're you know, a lot of it's taking places in in schools and in libraries and you know programs
uh
um to try to get students engaged but it's very much mainstreamed in in
In a lot of ways we might recognize but you're right and it's it's a very popular thing
to be thinking about because
It's it's often been so hard to capture
uh in in art and in um,
um
Our modern lore in our storytelling, you know, how do you?
Show something that's going on in wires and in code and in mysterious black boxes
and we're still telling those stories now and that's partly why we like talking here and
sharing articles like yours in the in the in the printed world and uh, just keep that alive, you know, you can
Walk into some of these spaces for example and realize this is not enough
This is boring let's add some more hacker spirit to it
And I think it's from people that have seen these cycles of it, you know being popular and then being uh, you know
uh
Derided for for having been over long, you know many times over that's I think um
Something we can recognize and say like well look this is something that
um
Changes it ebbs and flows with the different platforms different tools the different. Um,
uh players if we're talking about
The the market economy of it all and you know the so-called tech sector
you know, what if what is that even you know, I just I think we we're we're not even really
scratching the
the ultimate
Creativity of it all like we're not even thinking
um
enough about it because
To me when I think back or to stuff that's wowed me that i've seen in the hacker community
it just inspires me to like
Find it in the present moment and continue to curate
In every corner of of our communities and our lives and however tame it might seem
It's it's something and it keeps that spirit, you know in in every place you look and the things that wind up becoming popular
Are always a surprise
Nobody saw it coming and the things that you expect to be popular almost never are because they're formulaic
You know, you're just doing what everyone else told you to do
And uh, it's been done before what what works are new things new ways of thinking even if if something was done before
Well, then do it a different way and you might have something completely different
Yeah, it's like
Like the creativity like in like online spaces like, you know, like there's like a hacker subreddit and stuff
it seems
So many people think hacking begins and ends with penetration testing
You know in infosec and the hacking world is so much bigger than that. No, absolutely, you know
Yeah
Yeah, I I could not agree more. Yeah
It's like, you know, it's like it's hacking is an attitude in a mindset as much as it is a skill set
Yeah immense industry in and of itself
um, and you know, it's it's a it's a profitable one, but
It's not um the next creative wave that individuals will be involved with that's something that we haven't yet
discovered
Yeah, that playfulness totally I mean it gets kind of distilled out of some of those like
professional settings
so absolutely, it's like what I mean when I say sort of mainstreaming and and or just uh,
um
Less creative aspects of the application of technology, but it's I think
the kinds of mainstreaming
like
the
new fun things with like
Additive manufacturing where people playing around and printing objects and now like
It's not uncommon to find healthcare professionals printing out organs
you know
uh
in advance of a to rehearse an operation for someone or or um,
uh
rocket engine parts to be to be made by uh,
Sintering and computer simulations and so forth like
that is
that playfulness
Didn't necessarily get it that get it there, but it made enough people excited and and um
Playful with it to say hey, maybe we could do this
Maybe we could apply it to that and it's that creative application. I think that it's just so important to nurture it
yeah, maybe it'll be great for some industry, but the the forms of that spirit will just
Continue on in different ways to other things. You're much more likely to to get to an interesting place if you're just
Doing something in your garage, you know with friends
uh, whether it's a band or a business
um
You're going to get to a more creative unique place than if you have a bunch of venture capital and you're just following a formula
You know, you might succeed there too, but it's not going to be nearly as interesting or unique
Yeah to bring it full circle. I bought some of uh,
Maya's merch on
on her merch site and uh
Because you know i'm i'm living, you know in the silicon valley right now
recovering from my lung transplant
and uh
I bought one shirt that says venture anti-capitalist
You know to to wear when i'm out in the world to kind of
Yeah
Change the way people look at it like hmm. Is that a good thing? Maybe we need more of those like
Yeah, it's it's playfulness. It's it's that's the spirit totally and uh
people
I think catch on and
thing, you know
Things go out of fashion. They they stop being used in the same way and
People look at them, you know and and move on and so forth
So I just think we should continue to just have fun
As much fun around some. Yeah that fun that pranksterism
that sense of exploration
you know, it's like like so like
Like back in the 90s
2600 published plans for this red box called the corner
Right, I built one on a breadboard
I tested it. I said, you know, and it was getting hard especially in california because they were savvy
You know when they were cutting out, you know, and so red boxes didn't work
But I had a friend that lived in a dorm at a university
That had an old pay phone and he had a radio shack dialer that he put in 6.5 megahertz crystalline
That his red box worked so I took in like I didn't even put it in the box
It was on a breadboard, you know with the speaker hanging off and a nine volt battery and I tested it
I called my girlfriend
You know
And it worked
And like she was not impressed. She thought I would get in trouble. So I robbed the phone company of a 25 cent
toll call
And then I never used it again, right? I started putting it in a box
I never finished it, but it was just enough to build it and test it and figure out that it worked
you know, it was it was
93
I think that came out
and it's like
And like I said, it was of limited utility because most pay phones didn't work on anyone
But it was just the exploration
It's like so many hacks
Begin with the question. I wonder if I can
Yep, or I wonder what would happen if
Or I bet sense of exploration
instead of just
Following the formula running the script, you know loading up a tally vm
And running the metasploit tools
to do hack the box
you know, it just
Yeah, you know, I think our whole culture kind of falls in between being too afraid to do something
And having a criminal plan to do something for profit
We're right in the middle of that where we want to break the rules to figure something out
Uh, not necessarily to uh, you know to benefit from it. Certainly not to run a criminal enterprise from it
but also
Overcoming the fear of bending or breaking the rules a little bit and I think that's kind of what defines the hacking culture
Yeah, I mean i'm like i'm playing with the rule if it makes sense, but
if a rule is just a rule just
For no good reason, I mean it should be broken in my opinion. I think it's also rebalancing our power structures rebalancing
Monopolistic specifically monopolistic power structures. I mean that's basically what the boxing was
With the telephone system. There was a vulnerability in it
System there was a vulnerability in it people had a
Certain
no, love lost shall we say with
Uh ma bell and the bell system some people thought it through saying yes, we're fighting back for individuals against monopolies
but for most people it's just about wanting to make a phone call, you know, and and
Learning that hey if I make these little beeps into a phone I can make a phone call without having to put in
You know ten dollars worth of coins
to call overseas and uh
No one's even going to find out about this because the phone company bills itself, etc, etc
But if it's individuals that doesn't sound like a criminal enterprise, so you label them all hackers
Oh, well, you got a gang of hackers here that are doing all this exploiting and let's uh,
Let's build us
this entire industry security industry around
Uh the potential of of all the things we can imagine that they'll do that's why it was always so funny
To see hackers being portrayed as as you know this criminal enterprise
when uh, you know people would wind up just
falling asleep at their modems, you know in the middle of the night and and just um,
you know losing interest or trying something else for a few weeks and
It's just uh, it's curiosity and that's what it continues to be. Hey, listen, uh, we are pretty much out of time
We're getting very tired here. So it was great hearing from you anything else you wanted to tell us
Of course yes, and and thank you for for all the writing you do and we hope to see more articles and um,
And and all sorts of fun things in the future. I have one waiting waiting to be approved. So wait me here. Okay
Well, hopefully that'll come soon
All right. Thank you very much. All right. You have a great night. Take care
All right, and I guess that's uh, that's gonna do it for us here tonight
Now alex just has a black bar where his phone was is he even still awake I think
I think he's I don't know. I think we might have lost him. Yeah
Yeah, okay sleeping sleeping. Alex. Are you awake? Alex? Alex wake up
No, he's he's asleep he's gone
All right, well, um, it was it was great talking to all of you awake or asleep
Okay, thanks for likewise
For the yeah, thanks for being here and discussing everything. Uh, it was lovely chatting with every with everyone, please
if anyone, uh has thoughts for
this or this or the uh
Regular radio show oth at 2600.com. We'd love to hear your stories
See, this is exactly what I was talking about people fall asleep late at night, you know, and uh
In the past hackers young hackers would fall asleep out there at their keyboards while they were
Connected illegally to something they'd be connected for like eight hours instead of only 30 minutes
and now alex is connected to us, but uh
He's gonna be connected to us all night long. I guess we can't see him. He's there somewhere. I'm here
Oh, you are there. We woke you up. I was so sorry. We didn't mean to do that. Just uh
I'm lurking. Okay. Well, we don't see you. We just see a big black
Rectangle
Yeah, well it's dark here. And um, yeah, I turn the lights out. Well, it's uh important to hack your sleep as well
yeah, i'm
I'm listening to you guys, but I might fall asleep momentarily. So
Well, we're going to be disconnecting from youtube in a couple of seconds
Uh just want to remind people to write to us oth at 2600.com. We'd love to hear from you and sleep
Well, yes when the time comes definitely do that and we will see you again next week
Seven o'clock on wbai eight o'clock on youtube. Good night