Ep 136: 1) Briefing on OpenAI and Google's AI announcements 2) Feelings on creativity and scarcity

[00:01] Welcome to the Feelings Check-In, a feelings first look at the news of the week. Takes no one asked for on topics everyone's talking about. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is Boys Club. Wait, is it just Boys Club? It's just Boys Club. The Boys Club podcast? No. [00:19] Just boy stuff. [00:21] - Hi. - Hey. [00:23] Welcome to Boys Club. Here we are. [00:25] Here we are. This is a podcast where we do two things. We have a feelings first look at the [00:32] emerging tech news from the week. Mm-hmm. [00:36] And then we talk about our feelings from the week, our lives, this business, lots of other stuff. We love to overshare. [00:44] So buckle up. Thank you for joining us. I love being here with you, Dina, in your hometown. [00:55] Natasha's here in Nashville. Yeah, we're your hosts. We never do this. We're your hosts. [01:00] My name is Dina. [01:01] And that is Natasha. [01:06] We work in tech and we're interested in tech and also can't think about tech without thinking about our feelings. So that's kind of how this podcast came to be. Today, we're going to be talking about the AI news from the week. [01:21] OpenAI and Google had some big announcements and big ramifications in terms of what they're releasing. And then we talk about feelings of just around like creativity and scarcity.

[01:36] Give it a listen. Thanks. [01:39] Thanks. [01:40] Hey, Natasha. So a question we get asked a lot is, what do you look for in a crypto platform? So let's talk about it. Well, Dina, I look for a secure, no fuss platform that I can dive into right away. That's why I love today's sponsor, Kraken. If you're waiting for the right time to get into crypto, Kraken makes it super easy and intuitive to get started. Plus, if you get stuck, they have an award-winning client support team that's available 24-7, along with a bunch of educational guides, articles, and videos to help you along the way. If you're ready to check out [02:09] kraken.com backslash boys club and see what crypto can be not investment advice crypto trading involves risk of loss cryptocurrency services are provided to us and us territory customers by payward ventures incorporated pvi dba kraken view pvi's disclosure at kraken.com backslash legal backslash disclosures okay talk to me tell me tell me the tea [02:33] Big AI week. [02:35] Okay. Have you heard? It's AI week at the Great British Bake Off. [02:39] have you how how have you heard the news [02:45] I have been hearing the news from the memes. The memes have been dictating the news for me. The her meme. [02:53] The her meme, there's a lot of companionship memes. So that seems to be there. That's a very VC way. [03:02] to put what's happening online i'm just trying to be pro pro tech you know people are lonely they got to find their way who am i to say um mira marati is a dream girl that's my other take her just speaking italian i was like oh my gosh this woman is perfect mira if you're hearing this call us i saw the translation stuff and then i saw the google like memes about the guy the dj guy so

[03:32] Okay, really skimming the top of the surface there. I would be honored to fill you in on the rest of it. You're largely right, though, that it does kind of sum up what happened this week. Two really big stories. One, OpenAI had a huge update that they announced. And then basically the next day, Google had their developers conference and [03:52] had a bunch of AI announcements as well. So I want to talk through what happened with both of those different organizations and sort of give you a little bit more meat on the bone there for you. I don't know. My kind of feeling this week, getting such an onslaught of AI news, one of my biggest feelings about it was like, oh, we've been kind of in an... I personally have been in like a little bit of an AI... [04:15] Rot. [04:16] where it's like okay november 2022 chat gpt comes out and it's like everyone's freaking out for the next six to nine months about ai and it's ai ai it's like that meme where they're just like and then everyone is using chat gpt and then i don't know about anyone else but like my experience of chat gpt especially over the last like six months has been i just use it as to spell and grammar check the news me too i i've been trying to craft a tweet actually for a while that's like [04:46] I am so fucking stupid because all I ever do is write, is this grammatically correct? Me too. That's all I do. So I think a lot of, I don't know if that matches other people's experience. I did see a stat that they said this week that 100 million people use it weekly. So surely there are people that are finding more value out of it than we are. But it's incredible how quickly you get bored with new technology when you can't figure out ways to make it work for you. Totally. It gets stale. It gets stale. Yeah.

[05:16] basically every week, but I'm not... It's not, like, really... [05:20] bringing newness to my work. So I think because of that, I've kind of fallen off the AI news train a little bit, but I will say this week felt totally different and things have been revitalized in the AI world. I would say my experience of AI recently over the past few months has been, I was writing the AI newsletter, which meant every week I was having to brief myself on like what was going on. And yeah, [05:41] honestly all that the news had was funding updates it was just like this person raised this amount of the chips the guys the things and it was just like that's all it was over and over and over totally and so it was really uninteresting obviously we've moved that newsletter to two online which is a way more fun um and much more up my alley but because of that i felt very much out of the loop but even [06:05] Basically, just to reiterate what you're saying, it just felt like everybody was raising money. And in terms of like the technological development, it was kind of boring. [06:12] Yeah, agree. Well, we have some technological development this week. So we'll start with OpenAI. They did their spring update and a few big headlines. The first one is spring summer by OpenAI. The first one is this new model called GPT-40. The big thing there, first of all, Miramirati. [06:30] did the announcement of this again dream girl call us dream girl what a what a what a woman [06:37] and basically gpt4 zero or a little o i don't actually know i think it's o4o it it understands speech and was trained on speech so it's not like taking your speech and converting it to text and

[06:53] give you your answer, it knows speech. [06:56] Okay. And it was trained on speech. So it's a totally new model with totally new training. And the result of that is that it, [07:03] It's very conversational, naturally conversational. And like you saw, there was live translation that they're going to be rolling out. All of this isn't live yet, by the way, but it's coming. Okay, that was a big question I had. Yeah, it's not ready yet. [07:16] Or rather, it's not live yet, but it's like this... [07:19] very conversational AI friend that they've now been able to create. So that's where all the her stuff is coming in. If you haven't seen the movie, would recommend seeing the movie. I've actually never seen the movie. You've never seen the movie? I know. Maybe we should watch it this week. Yeah. I would say watch it. That's what all the references are referencing. No, I understand the reference. I totally know you. I totally know you understand. This is for the listener who doesn't maybe understand the references. And it's a movie about this guy who [07:49] girlfriend, basically. And I'd say the really striking thing about all the demos and stuff that OpenAI was doing this week was that it was not only a conversational, like able to reply and have a rhythm that mirrors that of a human conversation. It had emotion in it. So like, it was like giggly and the war. It was, I know people were taking it to weird places, but it was very human coded. I'm going to, I'm going to use the word understood. It didn't understand, but when it was interrupted, it stopped talking and like kind of seemed to get it. [08:19] And then would like start talking again. And it picked up the conversation in a really natural way. It was very fast and it felt kind of emotionally aware. Intelligent. Yeah. I saw one clip that was like, now speak to me sarcastically. Like there was a sarcasm thing. And then she...

[08:36] the AI then was dripping with sarcasm. [08:40] And, you know, [08:41] I don't know. I couldn't watch the video because it felt I was, I don't know, it kind of felt like it was a kink. I'm watching someone like, I was like, I don't want to watch this. Did you have that feeling? I watched a really vanilla one, which was a dad and his son talking about their prompt was basically like, we want to get to know each other better. Can you help us ask each other questions that facilitate us getting to know each other better? And it was, it was what? [09:06] That's kind of sad. I mean. These examples are just really sad. I guess there is something kind of sad and dark about it. But dad's like, I don't know how to talk to my son. Can you help me? But like. What? But I'm not going to. It was for the purpose of a demo. But also like if that's what people need and they're able to find some. Okay. Okay. That's generous. That's generous. [09:25] In that, who am I to judge? So I guess... [09:28] To your point though, [09:30] First of all, the voice is feminine coded. [09:34] And yeah, their approach is very markedly different to Google's, which has like, [09:39] a much more corporate sort of workplace. They're, they're plugging it into their existing suite of tools, the Google approach, and I'm gonna talk about basically their updates in a second, but it's much more [09:50] corporate versus [09:51] OpenAI is like creating a net new... [09:55] personal assistant. [09:57] everything app. [09:58] Yeah. That is this person and or this operating system, this app, this large language model. And they've

[10:06] given it humanness in how it's expressed. And people are going to do weird stuff with that, for sure. In all the demos, was it just a woman's voice or was there also... [10:15] Okay. Yeah. I doubt that that's its final form, but that was what I saw. The clip that I saw around... [10:23] Language translation? [10:25] was incredible. Yeah. Really incredible. I was like, wow, this is transformative in terms of what is possible and didn't feel like there was weirdness with it. Yeah. So instant translation. And then you said the Duolingo stock fell. [10:39] The Duolingo stock fell dramatically. I wonder if it's back up, but I think that is so funny. I love the market will regulate itself, you know, the invisible hand of the market. Okay, just one other note on the open AI update was that [10:51] with the new update. [10:53] The model is also able to interpret images much better. And then also it can store more memory about a user specifically. [11:00] So you can like over time, it can create a more personalized experience. So kind of cool stuff coming out of OpenAI. One other note on OpenAI is that Ilya... [11:08] suits cover. [11:10] the chief scientist and co-founder. I'm sure I got his last name wrong, but he is out. He is resigned. I saw. Yeah. He resigned. He resigned and he is very much known as [11:23] the safety guy. [11:24] Well, he was the one who blew up the board and got Sam fired. He was involved in that. Yeah. Where's he going? What's he up to next? I don't know what he's up to. Do not know what he's up to. Just jogging in Golden Gate Park. He's hitting the LinkedIn jobs board. He has the little open to work thing on LinkedIn. Okay. So quickly Google, much less fun, honestly. It's not nearly as sexy for better or for worse. Who's to say? But they had a big developer conference the very next day.

[11:54] you saw the [11:56] DJ clip. I saw the DJ clip. Which was rage bait. Honestly, they were just trying to get people to talk about them and it worked. Totally. It totally worked. So annoying. In the Google developer conference, first of all, I want to give a shout out to Riley Beans who summed it up in our Discord and a lot of this insight is from her work. So thank you, Riley. It was a big developer conference. They did a lot of other updates. They were talking about Google Maps. They were talking about Android apps. But AI was mentioned 120 times and they did like a little counter. Google did the [12:24] Yeah. [12:25] I respect that kind of. Yeah. So less sexy, uh, [12:29] less human, really much more corporate, I would say that's probably intentional. Google is seems to be positioning themselves as like the safer shepherd of AI than than opening. But basically, their thing is that they've they're creating these little AI agents that plug into their existing products. So there was updates and like things that plugged into search, there was things that plugged into email. It's like you're already spending time on our apps. [12:53] we're going to make them a little bit better by adding ai elements and agents there was this one thing called chip [13:00] which is an AI agent teammate that they have like this workspace app. And it's clippy. It's clippy. It's clippy. And then another thing was they announced this thing called Project Astra, which is their own company. [13:16] version of basically what OpenAI announced, which is like a multimodal assistant, personal assistant. Multimodal just means it can work in text, it can work in images, it can work in video, many modes. And so they created one of these. And I think my big takeaway is like, there's a complexity in how they're creating their products around AI that is like,

[13:37] a little impenetrable. There was, yeah, [13:39] Astra, there's Bard, there's Gemini, there's all these things. And like opening eyes to one thing. Yeah. You know, and I think that [13:47] Just from a branding perspective, it's a lot easier for you to get your head around. I'd say the general take on Twitter is that... [13:55] OpenAI is going, I saw this tweet that said, OpenAI is going personal assistant. Google's going Star Trek computer. Motherboard. Motherboard. OpenAI is starting fresh with like new language, new experiences. Like they're going from zero to one and Google's kind of like backfilling it into our existing lives, which two different approaches. Okay. The final thing I want to say about all of this is that, [14:18] Another big AI story hit this week, which was that Chuck Schumer announced something called the AI roadmap this week. Okay. Okay. And what did you roll your eyes and neck about? I just, I don't know. Just all across the world, all across the industries, these men and their plans. These men and their plans. Yeah. Well, we have some men with some plans in Washington. It's a bipartisan effort. [14:46] this AI roadmap. It took them a year to do. They went on a year-long listening tour [14:51] And, you know, [14:52] It's Chuck Schumer, Democrat from New York, and then Mike Rounds, South Dakota Republican, Todd Young, Indiana Republican, and then another Democrat, Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. [15:02] they're they're like poster children like if you're picturing for white

[15:09] Politicians. Politicians, senators. Totally. That's them in this room in their suits in with like the heavy drapery and all of that. That was like the press photo that they sent. Anyway, part of the AI roadmap was they are recommending $32 billion of emergency spending by 2026 to boost U.S. investments in artificial intelligence, including new research and development and new testing standards. This they're saying is non-defense spending. So [15:39] exactly what that means if someone's listening and they do know let us know it would be awesome if that was going towards like education that'd be so cool um i don't think it's going towards education [15:49] What do you think it's going towards? Like R&D. But I don't know why they... [15:54] should be sending it. [15:55] I don't know. Okay. I was imagining them like firing up some... [15:59] like program around ai and education for our public schools but that's oh like a training program maybe perhaps okay it's not really the vibe i got but okay um vibe check vibe check is not education based [16:13] And then the second big thing that came out this week around the story was that everyone's been waiting for this AI report. They knew they were doing this work and meeting with a bunch of people there and everyone was kind of expecting at the end of it. It'd be some recommendations for legislation and policy around things like job loss and bias and all these issues that AI has. And they kind of were like, it's too difficult. [16:37] We're not going to do that. Too soon to tell. Too soon to tell. They're like, who's to say? Who's to say? Literally you.

[16:46] But I am sort of sympathetic. I don't know. The wheels of bureaucracy turn so slowly. Agonizingly slowly. That there's part of me that's like, why create some plan? [16:55] I can understand rolling out some plan. That's a five-year plan when like six months ago, we didn't even have this model. And so it's kind of silly for them to, you know, [17:07] try to roll out some regulation around AI at this point when [17:12] in a lot of ways, there's like a lot of nascent behavior still going on with the industry. [17:17] That's what they're saying. They're saying they don't want to rush it. So Chuck Schumer with a little EAC in his bio. Yeah, I can. That sounds like a hard job, certainly above my pay grade. But at some point, someone's going to have to do something. [17:31] Make a move. Truly in my heart of hearts, it doesn't feel like it's these four guys that are going to solve it. But that's what our elected politicians are for now. [17:40] Honestly, this whole thing kind of is radicalizing me against. I know you're like a libertarian all of a sudden. I'm just like, these guys are going to determine the fate of this humanity, potentially humanity changing technology. That's the Mike Rounds from South Dakota. [17:55] I'm sorry. I just like, it's hard to see and, and, and believe, you know? Yeah, I totally get it. And whenever people are like, regulators need to do something. I'm like, you've never met a regulator. You've never met one, but like at the same time, you've never tried to do anything with your senator. There's very, very, very, very legitimate safety [18:15] concerns and issues that sam altman's kind of thinking about but i don't think he

[18:19] He's not incentivized in the same way that... No, he's incentivized. He's in an opposite direction. In the opposite direction. So I don't know, again, above my pay grade, but it's... Someone should think about it. Someone should think about it. Also, no shade on South Dakota. South Dakota seems like... [18:34] a wonderful beautiful mike probably is a great guy badlands are beautiful i think okay thank you so much for your briefing no what's there lots there [18:43] It's time for a more open, inclusive, and transparent financial system. A system that serves nearly everyone, everywhere, all the time. That's why we love today's sponsor, Kraken. Kraken is a crypto platform that provides a super simple on-ramp to the world of crypto with a 24-7 support team. Crypto transcends physical and imaginary borders. No matter where you are, you can send funds easily and quickly to almost any part of the world. Plus, forget about waiting times and waiting lines. You can send, receive, and trade crypto anywhere near instantly. [19:12] be at kraken.com backslash boys club non-investment advice crypto trading involves risk of loss transfers to a third party are not available on kraken cryptocurrency services are provided to us and us territory customers by payward ventures inc pvi dba kraken view pvi's disclosures at kraken.com backslash legal backslash disclosures [19:33] Okay. Some feelings? Yeah. You have feelings today. I have feelings today. I'm showing up with some feelings. I'm showing up with some baggage. We did some content brainstorming this week with the team around our different channels, our different podcasts, all of the content that we are putting out every week and thinking about just what makes sense, what doesn't, what has a big tam, what has

[20:03] And one of the things that... [20:06] Happen today that. [20:08] set me off was there is a new podcast coming out on a different network on like with these two women who are very cool who I follow who I think are super smart who I'm huge fans of like I'm fans of theirs and they're coming out with a new podcast and the podcast description it ends with saying these two best friends are chronically online so you don't have to be and if any of you follow [20:34] our podcast to online. We have been saying that for six months. I don't think these people, I have no belief that these people like stole our idea. I'm not coming in with that. I don't, I genuinely like fundamentally in my heart and body, like, [20:49] believe that ideas are in the air. They're in the zeitgeist. They're in the culture. They're in conversation. It's like happens. Things pick up steam and energy. And like, I'm not saying that these people ripped us off. And like two similar ideas can form at the same time and in disparate ways. Exactly. Yeah, I believe. And I also think boys club, we're always looking for like the very edge. And so that means we'll always be early. Hopefully, if we're doing it right, [21:19] And [21:20] that means other people... [21:22] we'll be right there doing it too. And that's the way of our world and the way of [21:30] the work that we do. But it feels really bad. It feels really, really bad. And to be

[21:34] putting your creative life force into something that... [21:39] feels so easily replicated. And I'm sure it will be different. And I'm sure that [21:44] They have a very distinct voice and like I wish them well. I don't know them personally, but I'm fans of theirs online. And so it's just really hard when you – it comes back to something we've talked about on this podcast before where it's like other people winning doesn't mean you're losing. But when you're putting something out into the world that you really want to be distinct and creative and original and then it feels like anybody can do that too – [22:08] It just kind of sends you off in a spiral around what am I doing? And why am I firing up this microphone to talk about the internet every week? And also these people have a much larger audience than me. They're way more... [22:23] well suited to have a successful podcast than I am. And I think it's hard to see that. And it [22:34] I don't want to be putting out things into the world that don't matter. [22:37] And that's what it comes down to is like, oh, this doesn't matter if anybody can do this. And so I don't know. That's the feeling. Do you get any fulfillment or fun? [22:48] in the act of creation in the moment? [22:51] I do. I really do. Another feeling originally, what I was going to talk about on this podcast in the feelings check-in today was like, I'm in Nashville. [23:00] with you and [23:02] The work is so fun. We spent all day yesterday laughing and like,

[23:06] That's so special. And I am so grateful for that. So many people hate their jobs. And I don't feel that way at all. And I feel so lucky to get to do this job. And I'm [23:18] I get a ton of [23:19] fulfillment from that. But I'm also incredibly ambitious and [23:24] very motivated by money. [23:27] And I'm not the type of person who that fulfillment of it in the moment is enough. Like it needs to be something or it's not worth it to me. And I think there's some people where it is enough. They have a creative outlet. It's not something that needs to be a part of a bigger plan or monetized or expand or grow or whatever. And I'm so jealous of those types of people. That is not me. Couldn't be me. So I think that's where the rubber meets the road for me around it. But I'm curious what you think. Did it upset you? [23:57] don't want to say no and then be somehow superior to you and say no. Oh, no, that's fine. I think it's great that it didn't upset you. I think there's things that upset you that don't upset me at all. Okay. It didn't upset me. I kind of feel like the creativity around like cultural commentary is shared IP. [24:14] Like there's something about it that's like, [24:18] it's the current of society, society and like life. And like, we're all sitting there and looking at it and in the sort of churning of it. And there are, I think, good cultural commentary, like [24:31] speaks and speaks into a space that's shared. And so there are people that have a platform and there are people that are good at putting language to it and like finding some fresh insight to it. But like it's most true when it's shared. And so I don't feel like ownership over the takes or the approach or even really the humor around it. And so I think that's kind of why it doesn't upset me. Yeah. I don't know if that's right or not.

[24:57] I think that's a good way of looking at it. I think we're all contributing. If I was an artist and I was like making... [25:04] a visual artist, like creating a painting. [25:07] Mm-hmm. [25:07] And it's like totally a new... [25:11] Net new. [25:12] creation of creation and someone ripped that off. I think I'd probably have. Yeah. I think it actually, that makes a lot of sense because it does come back to a conversation we've been having around like all of our content right now is analysis or commentary. It's not an original show. And yeah, [25:28] I, and a question we've been asking is like, do we want to do that? Is that right? Yeah. Is that right for us to think about like actual original content, not commentary content? [25:38] and the space around commentary. [25:41] Just feels really crowded. It's really crowded. It's really crowded. And there's so many like cool girl, New York City, media babes that like are doing that thing. [25:51] And it's bad to feel a sense of scarcity. [25:55] And that's, I think, what it is. That's the feeling. Instead of having like this abundance mindset around what's possible for Boys Club and all the things that we're doing, it gets really small all of a sudden. [26:05] And it's like, okay, it's all these players and we're all like trying to do this thing. And like, we all have like our little corner that's distinct to us. And I, one, don't have the spirit of wanting to be in competition with those other players. [26:19] where I'm like, rising tide, [26:21] We're all trying to do fun, interesting, cool stuff. And it just feels like when the content gets really, really similar,

[26:28] It just amplifies how much... [26:31] it's a small space and, [26:32] a small, like just a crowded space. And I don't want to operate on a day to day in the work [26:39] in like a scarcity mindset. So, and I think it all comes down to execution. And like, I think it all comes down to your own voice and like the things that [26:47] resonate with you and your audience. There's a lot of things around it that feel unique to Boys Club and it's all going to be okay. I'm a girl who's just going to [26:55] be okay. I'm not mean. So anyway, it's fine. [27:00] It's all good. It's all good. But that's the feeling. I hear your feeling. [27:05] And I have space for your phone. All right. Thanks for listening.