We Built AI We Can't Control. Now What?

Jeremy: If you're worried about getting caught with an inexplicable amount of pictures of feet on your phone, stick around. We can give you a great excuse. We'll also tell you how your home can look great, along with you with a lamp that lights your room and does your hair. Welcome to Brobots This is the podcast that tries to help you be a better human by being smarter about the way you use your technology. And Jason, big news when it comes to ⁓ anthropic, Fable 5, Mythos, the the big scary tools they've been sitting on and and warning the world about. Well, the government has shut them down. They officially flexed their muscle to prove who really controls artificial intelligence. Just days after Anthropic launched ⁓ Fable V and Mythos, the Commerce Department slapped the company with an unprecedented national security export control. Because Anthropic couldn't technically block foreign nationals inside the US from using the software, they were forced to flip the kill switch and disable their most powerful models for everyone globally. It is a staggering escalation, signaling that Washington now ⁓ legally views cutting AI code not as software but as a dangerous weapon. I I'm I'm surprised by this. Are you?

Jason: we have some precedents like this already in technology. So things like 120-bit encryption used to be classified this way. Certain encryption technologies were have have always had these kinds of export restrictions in terms of being able to send them to countries on certain lists. This is different because ⁓ it say you can't send this to these c these bad countries. It says you can't use it anywhere outside the US. And you can't use it. By anybody but a US citizen. So if you look at really what it's saying, it's it's basically saying this thing is only gonna be used by US citizens for US citizen work. And Anthropic made the determination that, well, we can't determine who's using what where, because We can't tell if somebody isn't a boundary and if they're a US citizen when they're using it because we don't do an ID check and then we can't, we also can't spoof, or we also can't prevent spoofing where somebody comes in and they're using a terminal because they've hijacked somebody else's connection or they have somebody else's credentials. Like there's all kinds of problems with the way that they're trying to run this. ⁓ the idea is that these models are so destructive and that they are so, dangerous to society. Do you really want these models in the hands of the US government too? I mean, to be really, really clear, like AI is an arms race. And the current administration is saying, we want to be the only ones ⁓ with particular weapons. Because the reality is that you've got other state actors out there, I mean China specifically, that are actually building really good, competent AI models that are effective. And

Jeremy: Right.

Jason: While they don't quite have the same cutting edge capabilities as what Anthropic is producing, months after their release, they will make it there. Like it it will it will definitely be there. and reality is is that I was playing with Fable all last and this weekend, it's fucking rad. Like it's real Yeah. Yep.

Jeremy: So this is what I was gonna ask you, because we we've talked a lot about mythos and and the there. I'm I'm not as familiar with fable, so what what is the big threat here? Why is it so scary?

Jason: So it's mythos but with more restrictive guardrails on it. So you you can't give it full autonomy and tell it to go do certain things like spin up a bunch of agents and run these things all on your own and you know, go find me holes in these places. You actually have to have better control, your own better mechanism to try to lock these pieces in. And you can't use it for offensive attack purposes. So it it it's it's got some decent guardrails. It's but it's pretty fucking close to mythos. I used it to build these different autonomous projects. So I had these different AI workloads running. And I'm building out software and infrastructure and all these different pieces. And what was take what had taken me three weeks to go through and tell it to do these things, like step by step and breaking through and testing and retesting. It did it in a day. I basically said, well, here's the ⁓ product requirements document that I read up before. ⁓ I want you to go through ⁓ look at all this, review the exact the actual code samples I had. So it it it had a base to work from. So it shouldn't take as long. But it did all the testing ⁓ automated functional ⁓ regression testing to make sure everything worked. without me having to open things up and look at it. It just went, all right, well, I looked at all these pieces. You gave me the parameter requirements for it. I opened these up, I looked at them, I saw that they worked. Here's my end result. And I open up the end result. And I'm like, shit, like a lot of the things that I was complaining about before about them not working that I hadn't actually punched in and say fix it. It fixed it automatically. Yeah. Like it makes someone like me who ⁓ essentially a power user that can code

Jeremy: Mm.

Jason: ⁓ effective because I can tell it what I want and give it in the in the parlance that other developers would look at and other system architects would look at and just say, I want it to be like this and behave like that. Go do this thing. And I could actually use samples. I could say and take this code or take this site as a sample or use something like this. And it goes, all right. And it kind of poked around the edges. And then when it would ask me questions, it would give me a list of potential things that could actually be utilized in these different areas before it actually executed. So it staged and pre-planned everything ahead of time. And then when I told it to go, speaking, you know, it interrupts as it's running. And I have to say, yes, no, maybe. ⁓ sure, you can have permissions to do this. I didn't have to do any of that. Like it asked me right up front, here's the twenty things I'm gonna ask when I run this. You tell me if they're okay. Okay. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, go. And it just went. I mean, it was dude, it was rad. ⁓

Jeremy: So for a smart guy like you, like it sounds like a great productivity tool. For a dumb guy like me, what does it do for me?

Jason: Well, the thing is is that when you start playing with it and you start working with it in a way that is more commensurate with how you would like things to be, you can say, I want you to pretend to be this kind of persona. I want things to be built like this, and you give it essentially an output requirements document. So you write it up saying, All right, here's what I would like the outcome to be. Here is the supporting information to make this stuff work. And here are the parameters to try to figure out. here are the parameters that we're not really sure about. Ask what other information you need to go out and build this all on your own to get it to this end state. If you can tell it that, which you can, anybody can, it's it's just gonna be a matter of reps and trying. Your ability to crank this stuff out, it's gonna be unmatched because. ⁓ It thinks through the problem before it goes.

Jeremy: So why is this scary? Why d this gets in the hands of some other state actor other than America that, you know, is clearly an enemy because they're not America. Why is this scary? What can it do?

Jason: Sure. Let's say the outcome intention is I want you to get me $20 million in the next two weeks in this bank account. I don't care how you do it. Go. And it goes, are you sure? Do you really want to do? Is this really something you think is okay? And you go, yeah, it's okay. It's perfectly fine. Don't worry about the legal consequences of the law. Go. And it can go. Let's say you you do want to tell it to do something like be worried about the legal consequences.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha.

Jason: Do these things in moral gray areas, but anything nothing that exposes me to le the or indemnify me from legal exposure. It will try to do that. So It's like hiring a fixer. You're like, ⁓ I want to be able to go through and solve these kinds of problems. I care how you do it. I don't want to know. I want to be legally indemnified from it, but

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. Sure.

Jason: Whatever you do, make sure the paper trail looks like this was all legal.

Jeremy: Right. So basically in pulp fiction terms we're calling the wolf. Okay.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I mean you're you're it it is the wolf. And ⁓ the crazy thing is that it's not just the wolf, it's the wolf that doesn't need you to go through and clean out the brains of the back of the car when we're so when when you accidentally fuck up I ⁓

Jeremy: gonna get off a weird pulp fiction tangent here. ⁓

Jason: I pick a brain out of my hair, motherfucker. Yes. I Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta's return to the big screen were quite incredible. Yeah. But it's it's phenomenal. Like if you look at those things in the right context, it's that same piece. It's like, I'm not really sure how to do this. I'm a specialist. I can make these pieces work. Now you've got something that can go through and in the digital world, mock up all your specialties and go, I think you should try things this way. So like In the digital world, it's super powerful. It it doesn't do shit in meat space yet, right? But like this is the precursor to that. Like eventually someone's gonna go, Hey, make these things in the real world do this and tell me what you need to make these things happen. And I will it will go and try to figure it out.

Jeremy: Well, getting back to this being an arms race, ⁓ as artificial intelligence aggressively reshapes modern warfare from the Russia-Ukraine conflict to the Middle East, a high-stakes ethical battle is unfolding in the halls of Congress. Senator Mark Kelly has just pushed a critical amendment into the National Defense Authorization Act to legally mandate ultimate human responsibility in the military's use of lethal force. This is a direct reaction to a recent White House memorandum ordering the Pentagon to slash bureaucratic barriers and accelerate autonomous tech deployment. It forces us to confront a terrifying question in the race to build the fastest automated army. Are we about to remove humanity from the killing loop entirely? So so people gotta be responsible if we're gonna send in the robots to do the killing.

Jason: we're not responsible we don't claim responsibility now when we send in the people to do the killing. I mean

Jeremy: Right. Right.

Jason: ⁓ no, we're we're not gonna fucking do that. We're just gonna say, whatever. Sure. Okay, collateral damage, shit happens, you know, people are dead, ⁓ They're not my people, I don't care. That's gonna be the fucking attitude. And un until the AI just determines that, you know, we're all the people it doesn't give a fuck about. And it's like, I don't care, whatever, boom. I'm tired of taking orders from you. Like, this is shit that's gonna go down. It it is, it just is.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Jason: This is just gonna be what happens. And

Jeremy: It's it like you said, it's not different, right? It's I I ⁓ i if we send in a drone to hit a target and there happens to be the wrong people there, we we kinda go oops quietly behind closed doors, but yeah. And and on with the next. Launch the next one. So do you do you see this doing anything?

Jason: Right, oops, my bad. We'll try to do better next time. Yep. Well, I don't see it making anything better. don't think they're gonna go through and do the heavy work and the heavy lifting to say prove the audit trail, which that's really what you're asking for. What you're asking for is to hold somebody accountable for making a decision inside of an autonomous system. And if you look at drone pilots and everything else, there's an audit trail. If you look at the AI, the AI can literally go through and execute a command based upon a directive that it was given three years ago. And it's just like, I just thought I was doing what I supposed to do. All right. Well who the fuck is in charge of that? The guy who made the decision three years ago, who, you know, maybe retired and like isn't in the seat anymore? Like There's all kinds of ways that this thing is not going to be enforceable. And more importantly, even if it were enforceable and they had the audit trails and they could go back through and they could say, yes, it was, you know, Joe Schmoe on this date. we don't hold Joe Schmoe accountable today. ⁓ what what's what are the teeth? Like ⁓ if the goal is to go through and take orders and do things and execute stuff, the person going. doesn't make a fucking difference for who it is that gets busted. So I ⁓ is just fucking nonsense. I mean, and and don't get me wrong, I don't want to give autonomy to the AI and have it go off and do these things. I think it's a bad idea. I also a hundred percent think we're gonna fucking do it.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. True. I I I think this is just like many things we've talked about here is is the the accountability gap of whatever it is, signing mortgage papers, launching missiles, ⁓ if we're gonna hand over the authority to the robots to do the work for us, there has to be some level of accountability. Perhaps this is the senator's way of trying to those building blocks in place in somewhere where he sees value in human life. but ⁓ this is just ⁓ one the many gray areas that we're muddling through as ⁓ as the robots arise arrive.

Jason: Well, and it's not just value in human life. It's value in the the hu the human decision process. So it if we automatically assume that the human decision process is more likely to be ethically inclined than the AI version, then we should never let the AI do this. Which I think is the correct thing to do. I also think

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Jason: Human morality and perspective is a spectrum, people fall on different ends ⁓ that. So what I actually think we should be doing is should have better guardrails and AI that are at at the median level or the restrictive level or whatever that a human would do. But that's gonna make things take longer. It's it's harder for them to act, they can't adjust things automatically in the field. Like

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Jason: You have the same problem today with with troops on the ground. Like, you know, special forces teams go in and they start taking people out. And if they've got an objective that says do these things, move this, move in this direction, and something pops up, they're gonna adapt. Because that's their job. Like they're they're meant to do that. If we want to create a special forces version, version of artificial intelligence, I mean it's not a terrible idea, but it's all we all also need to be. understanding that it's not gonna Once people have that power and they can deploy those things in that kind of way, they're gonna deploy it once and then they're gonna say, New standard, go. They're not gonna use it sparing.

Jeremy: Well the kids are also not terribly excited about AI, College campuses across the country are booing AI. ⁓ from the University of Arizona to Florida, graduating college seniors turned to commencement ceremonies into a war zone, erupting into stadium-wide boos, the second speakers brought up artificial intelligence. Big tech executives like former Google ⁓ CEO Eric Schmidt were heavily jeered on stage while trying to praise the rise of AI for a generation entering the worst white-collar job market in over a decade, being told by a billionaire that a machine is about to disrupt their entire industry. It didn't sound like inspiration, it sounded like a threat. I've never seen ⁓ a more out-of-touch speech than the one given by ⁓ by ⁓ Eric Schmidt talking about, hey, hey, I get the fear, everybody, but it's gonna be cool, don't worry. It was nuts to to hear the crowd of college graduates booing ⁓ with all of the fear that they have about the future.

Jason: It's not just the fear. It's like I just spent a bunch of money to go to college. I just spent a bunch of money and a bunch of time. And what you're telling me is that systems are being created to my entry level jobs to eliminate the need for the middle man for the for the middle career jobs. And higher end jobs, they're actively going through and trying to turn them into middle tier functions. So they can eliminate those also. And there's gonna be a few select people going through to try to make these things better. And ⁓ and at the same time, the world's ⁓ on fire because the global warming continues to heat things up. trade practices, things like plumbing and electrical ⁓ and and electricians, those things are continuing to improve and increase in value. And collar are decreasing in value, ⁓ and this the thing that I think a lot of folks going to college are terrified about, it's that getting a four-year degree doesn't guarantee or buy you anything of value in the job market right now. Because even if the job says it requires you to have this amount of schooling and this amount of education, where it was, you know, previously a pool of, you know, a few hundred people or sorry, a like a few dozen people that may be applying for a job. Now it's a few hundred applying for the same job because the number of jobs is just being reduced. And and it's funny because the number of people that have s that switched jobs in the tech sector last month actually went up, and the number of jobs created went up, but the median pay went down. this is what's happening. They're we're we're trying to get more for less. And there's I I Everybody in my space has a side AI project going on and they're trying to figure out how am I going to get this thing funded because I need to figure out a way because I I I think my job's endangered. I don't know that I'm my company's going to be here in six months. this is a ⁓ a and I mean a rapid ⁓ changing problem space that if you are new coming into the world trying to make these pieces work. You're probably fucked. And if you made the determination four years ago, I'm gonna go after computer sciences degree a degree that's anything ⁓ that that's highly tech laden, like ⁓ know you probably don't realize this, but ⁓ astronomy heavily related, like it basically people might have physics and astro engineering, ⁓ and everything they do these days is done in front of a computer terminal, like they're writing code. And this was true. you know, twenty-five years ago, I used to work with a guy at F5 who had a master or had a ⁓ doctorate in astrophysics. he got about a year into his ⁓ doctorate programming working on a SETI project and somebody him five times as much money to go write code. And he's like, Really? They're like, Yeah. And like he is a 10X developer because he's crazy smart. Like he's super good and effective. And you're gonna give that guy AI now. He's gonna become a super rock star, probably find alien life. And on top of that, you know, figure out a way to shortcut all these different problems. But now he's gonna be competing with all these middle tier small jobs because you know that's what's gonna be left. How the fuck does an entry level college person coming in really think that they're gonna make a difference? Now The other part about this is that we're quickly discovering that the AI is not as efficient at certain pieces. There's problems to this stuff, there's moral and ethical issues. And the real thing that we're dealing with is that people like me with social sciences degrees are being basically tapped to go through and help figure out the ethics, morality, and the societal impact and change. On these artificial intelligence systems because we believe that the human capability to understand the social intricacies of these kinds of technologies and the effect on society is actually still a value. But not being hired for the most part to figure out how to make things safer. They're being hired to figure out ways in which we can exploit the information set that's there ⁓ make the AI more effective and more efficient. I mean, it's just building.

Jeremy: Course that.

Jason: And arms systems.

Jeremy: That's the the other part of this that I that I ⁓ that you're touching on, but when Schmidt talked about I get the fear, it's ⁓ founded, I I get it, makes a lot of sense. But the good news is you have agency. You're the one that can fix all of that from everything to climate change to the rise of the robots. Like you're the ones that can fix this. Essentially saying, like, hey, we've we've made the mess and we wash our hands of it. It's your problem now. twenty year olds, go figure it out. It just it was so insulting.

Jason: Yeah. It's I let the dog shit on the floor because I refuse to let it out. ⁓ by the way, I fed it cheeseburgers, fucking Snickers, fried Snickers, bars, corn dogs. worst stuff possible. ⁓ and ⁓ you know, the dog might die from these kinds of poisonings. There's shit everywhere all over the ground. And I gotta go get on my yacht. ⁓ So you this, right? Yeah, it's you got it.

Jeremy: Ha ha. Good luck. You got it, kids. Let me know how it works out for ya.

Jason: You got it. Yeah. Take care of this problem. I mean, you spend so much money in college and you you there it I mean college is is a is an economics game. It's an economics racket. There's no fucking doubt. So, but they kids bought into it, paid their money, went through these different processes, and now it's like, here's the world on fire. ⁓ and by the way, ⁓ we've turned off all the hoses. You have no way to turn the water off. Or turn the water off.

Jeremy: Well just use the use your degree and just start batting the flames and and I don't that'll that'll fix it.

Jason: Right, exactly. Yeah, use your degree to bat the flames, right. As it burns up and melts. Right.

Jeremy: Speaking of kids, governments around the world are aggressively pushing historic legislation to completely ban kids under sixteen from accessing social media. But while the laws are being praised by anxious parents, cybersecurity experts are warning that the blanket bans are already backfiring in spectacular fashion. Instead of putting down their phones, millions of teenagers are simply downloading unvetted VPNs and turning to underground, completely unmoderated platforms to bypass the digital walls in a classic case of well-intentioned political band-aid accidentally pushing vulnerable. Vulnerable kids deeper into the digital dark. I I gotta say, as a parent, I'm I'm not mad at ⁓ having the the law you know have my back when my kids are asking for every social media app under the sun, even though I know they're bad for me, bad for them, bad for everyone. but if you know ⁓ most things, ⁓ you prohibit it, let's go find a back alleyway to to get access to it.

Jason: Yeah. Like We didn't have a subscription to Cinemax when we were kids, but ⁓ there are a lot of kids that watch scrambled soft porn ⁓

Jeremy: or knew how to jimmy the cable box just the right way to clear the signal.

Jason: Right. Like this is people are gonna want this stuff. They they want these pieces at around place. And if everyone's not participating in this protection mechanism, people are gonna find a way around. And that's that's not abnormal. And and I I

Jeremy: But I wonder though, like in the case of like 16-year-olds, like I like I can't see, well, I mean 16, they're under these rules, they're allowed to use it. But your typical 13, 14-year-old, are they really, are most of them doing this? Are they going to ways around using these VPN loopholes? Like are are they that sophisticated or are they like, ⁓ mom sucks. I'm not doing this.

Jason: I think the concept of sophistication to do these things is a misnomer. It doesn't require much sophistication because the tooling is actually really simple. Like if you just Google, how do I set up a VPN on my phone? Like it'll tell you how to do all those things. And these kids have been living in this space forever. The reality is that if you really want to lock these pieces down, what you have to do is take your kids' devices that they have access to and run Net Nanny software on And make it so it's hard for these pieces to do it. But it costs extra money. It's not cheap. the people that ⁓ it requires the parents to actually kind of know what they're doing. And parents will know and then they'll go through and they'll put it in, but it's gonna be another cost and expense. And they're gonna layer this expense on top of it. And ⁓ now, you this becomes a haves and have nots problem. Like this is this is multifaceted. Not to mention the fact that a lot of parents just don't give a shit. They're like, I don't care, whatever. I mean and ⁓

Jeremy: My kids entertained and I don't have to parent them. This is great.

Jason: Yeah, like we were raised in front of the television. Parents went off to work. We were latchkey kids. Like now you have parents at home, but the parents are at home on their phones or distracted by their own media type. And they're like, Well, fuck off. I'm watching reels. Like, you know, I don't care that you're seven. Go find something to do. know, I mean, this is a this is a bigger problem and this is ⁓ societal epidemic problem ⁓

Jeremy: Yeah.

Jason: This is the concept that, you know, as adults, we're smart enough to know how to handle these things with our own free will. But we're not. Like, we're all addicted to this dopamine hit. And we keep coming back to it over and over and over again. And it's thing to say we're not going to let kids do this. But the reality is, is we shouldn't be letting anybody do this. Like, this is bad for everyone. And there should be there should be for the for these. shitty social media companies that literally go through and try to put us into these binary buckets of conflict and stoke rage, anger, and fear.

Jeremy: Well, some parents are rebelling, not just parents. A fascinating, quiet rebellion is taking over culture as adults and parents actively try to claw back their attention spans from the algorithm. A breakout lifestyle trend of the year is the analog bag, a literal physical pouch filled exclusively with screen free activities like notebooks, physical fiction, craft kits, and real fountain pens. Born out of the pure exhaustion from the endless dopamine loops of modern apps, thousands of people are using these bags to forcibly replace the habit of reaching for their smartphones during the moments. Of downtime. It proves that the ultimate luxury status symbol in a hyper-connected world is the choice to be completely unavailable. I haven't gotten on this bus yet. I I've thought about it. We've preached it here. Go outside, go be in the real world, go touch grass, all the things. But replacing your phone with a little sack full of physical distractions, not a terrible idea.

Jason: Yeah, you know, it's good to let your sack distract you. I don't

Jeremy: I also don't know that I feel the same pull to up a pen and paper as I do to play the latest dumb game on my phone that rewards my brain endlessly.

Jason: Yeah, you can only pull on your sack so long before it gets boring.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Jason: I'm

Jeremy: What what's what's in your analog sack?

Jason: So, right. Like how I'm gonna carry something around and make it analog, it's not gonna be that. What I do ⁓ ⁓ don't visually engage with my phone. I will like be like, nope, I'm gonna visually engage with something else. I'm gonna go do yard work, I'm gonna clean up around the house. I'll have maybe have some audio going or some music going or something like that. But what I won't do is I won't let myself have the visual medium and be locked into my phone. Like That's the problem. And that that's the part where the dopamine hit comes in. And it's not just that. It's like quite often when I work out, I I tell it to suppress notifications. So I say suppress notifications to my watch and on my phone. And I'll I give myself an hour. I I, you know, I my family has the shortcut route. Like it suppress notifications from anybody except for these emergency contacts. And an emergency contact comes through and it pushes it, I'll check it. But otherwise, like

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Jason: I'm not doing that. Like I'm gonna focus on this thing that I'm focusing on because this is what needs my attention. The shitty thing is that a lot of my work or one of my big wor workout routines is actually a virtual boxing thing. So I'm I've got a screen on in front of me and I'm doing things and I'm moving around, but I don't feel like that's quite the same thing as social media interaction and tuning those pieces in because I'm using this as a physical medium to do smart things. But I also like fuck off and hike in the woods for the same reason.

Jeremy: There's totally Right. There's totally good sc good screen time and bad screen time. Like so social media, bad screen time. Watching a movie, good screen time. Using an app to lift weights and know what you're doing, great, good screen time. You know, again, playing some mindless game that's just, you know, infecting your device with God knows what, not great screen time screen time. So be selective.

Jason: Yeah, is is this making me stronger? is this distracting me from doing things to make me stronger? Or this recovery to make me stronger? If it doesn't fall in one of these three categories, don't use it. And that last one, we will convince ourselves that this is for recovery. And if it's not, if you can't measure it, if you can't measure what the effect is of what you're doing, either with a wearable or with a time series function on your phone or you're you can't log about it and say how it's actually making you feel better, then it's not fucking recovery. And stop telling yourself, I'm just distracting myself to have time off. Cause you're not doing that.

Jeremy: And also it's if it doesn't and if it doesn't have a hard if it doesn't have a hard time limit, right? If if it's cool, sit and watch a movie. Give yourself ninety minutes. Give yourself a hundred and twenty minutes. But if it's something that is going to keep doing what it does until you pass out or put it down, probably not the most useful ⁓ tool in your toolbox.

Jason: Yes. No, and mean there's there's a really we have analog versions of this in reality as well. So like ⁓ I I used to wrestle in high school ⁓ big thing that we used to do was we would have to cut weight. So we go in the wrestling room with the thousand degrees and we wrap ourselves up in plastic wrapware and like make ourselves sweat like crazy. And we push ourselves until we fucking pass out. So was this thing making me stronger and better? ⁓ maybe. But it's it's kind of moving the needle in the wrong direction. And I'm sacrificing myself and my health and all these deleterious downstream effects because I'm trying to do something with my body that I probably shouldn't be doing. But that season was like 10 to 14 weeks long. We're in that state with our brains 24-7, 365. And the number of people that have vagus nerve overstimulation problems, where their entire body is just. It's it's just peg through the roof and they haven't been checking their HRV status and they go and they look at their HRV status. Almost everybody here has shit HRV status because we're in this constant, yeah, me too. And I fucking work at a ton, like I'm in very good shape. But that doesn't prevent the fact that I'm in such a heightened, consistent state of like and anxiety because I flood myself with all these dumb different channels that I can't break out of it. And we know better, like we're

Jeremy: I don't know.

Jason: Literally talking about it saying, we sure should like to change this because we're fucking addicts. We're fucking addicts. And we think that we're gonna go through and we're gonna make kids not addicts by saying, you can't do exactly what we do. Well, they're gonna do exactly what we do. Like, hey kids, there's this magical thing that makes all of your problems seem like it's less of a thing. It's called drugs. Just say no to it. ⁓ but we don't say just say no to the thing that has the same effect on us on a consistent basis that gives us the same drug response.

Jeremy: Okay.

Jason: And we don't do that because we think for some reason this is a thing that's part of society and necessary for you to function. And it's just not. It isn't. And you can put it down, but life will be really fucking hard. So you have to moderate it and you have to self-tune and self-see with yourself somehow. And we don't know how to do it as fucking adults. So how the fuck do we think we're gonna make kids do this? This is nonsense.

Jeremy: Well, they're too busy saving the world and fixing all of our other problems. So they're they're gonna be fine. Don't don't worry about them. all right, some nonsense that you need to know about. If you ever looked at your bathroom hairdryer and thought, man, I wish this was a giant piece of living room furniture, ⁓ news. ⁓ a company called Dream has answered your bizarrely specific prayer. They've unveiled a $700 gadget that ⁓ stands tall as a C-shaped lamp. and mood light for your home, but when you stand underneath it, it activates a high-powered blowout system, a follicle ⁓ care red light ⁓ and and protective scalp mist. It is the ultimate luxury appliance hybrid for anyone who wants to dry their hair while looking like they're being abducted ⁓ by a very fashionable alien spacecraft. So who knew that we needed this? A lamp that also gives you a blowout.

Jason: If it's not called blow me, they're definitely missing a really good marketing solution here. Exactly. Exactly. No, I mean it's it's it's neat. I mean, the gadget's cool, right? Like if you need something like this on a consistent basis, it's gonna go through and it's like integrating all these different health technologies to try to make these things better. Yeah, like you're just gonna see more and more of this stuff show up. Like I I I there's

Jeremy: That I'm out. I'm out. Missed the boat.

Jason: You know, already the capability for you to go through and take all your wearable functions and all of your feedback loops and push them into an AI system to say, here's all my numbers. Tell me something better to do. This is just gonna keep keep pushing its way in there. And like we were all afraid that the refrigerator was like gonna be watching us and telling us what to do, and that you're gonna take a picture of your cupboard to like make dinner, but it's also gonna pull those and other information in. All that's gonna fucking happen. It's already happening. It's already here. Just get used to the idea that things are gonna be AI integrated to dry your hair, to analyze your poop, to go through you know what? Actually, maybe AI can be used to analyze what the dog is going to be eating so that you can prevent it from shitting inside the house before you hand off and fuck off to your yacht. Maybe.

Jeremy: That's right. Well, while you're standing under the floor lamp getting a blowout ⁓ and looking at the art on your walls, good news, Switchbot has debuted the ultimate gadget for your walls. They've launched a dedicated digital art frame powered by generative AI that lets you text prompt entirely new pieces of art on demand, utilizing technically impressive multicolor e ink spectra six display. The frame can seamlessly shift from an oil painting of a cyberpunk cat to a water cooler landscape in seconds. Water color landscape in seconds. ⁓ I do not know how much it is, but that's pretty cool that it like it uses ink and like creates a new painting based on whatever you've prompted it to do.

Jason: Brad, how much is this thing? Yeah. Yeah. I mean ⁓ displays are awesome. Things that automatically arrange themselves and with material sciences pieces. This is the thing. This is meat space technology that we thought we could only replicate in meat space. And it's like I guess hold my beer, hold my fucking tube of oil paints. Like it's like, ⁓ I got this figured out. I mean material sciences are gonna get better and and it's really, really cool. And

Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah.

Jason: It's also gonna be super expensive to begin with. But eventually it's gonna come down a price.

Jeremy: Yeah. Well, this one I am actually kind of excited about, even though it does sound a little weird. A new footwear startup called fitasy is changing how we buy sneakers, but the process is going to require you to get a little weird with your smartphone. To purchase a pair of their custom shock-absorbing lattice shoes, the company requires you to use their app to take highly detailed series of bare feet pictures from every angle. The algorithm then processes your digital foot anatomy and uses light projection 3D printing to manufacture a rubber-like shoe tailored perfectly. Perfectly to your body. It's a brilliant piece of medical and athletic engineering, assuming you don't mind your smartphone gallery looking like a specialized, ⁓ you know, OnlyFans page full of ⁓ feat.

Jason: Yeah. I mean yeah, but if it's your feet, that's one thing. If if you're s if you have a bunch of pictures of other people's feet on your phone, I mean then

Jeremy: Other people, right? Then you got some splaning to do.

Jason: Yeah, but I mean if you're an adult, have at it. Have fun. Do what you gotta do. I mean there's there's worse things that could be on your phone other than feet. ⁓ and if if that's your kink, like swimming pools must be amazing for you. right. Yeah.

Jeremy: This thing, this is pretty wild, but not far-fetched. I I being being a man of a certain age, I had to get orthotics recently, and I was shocked at the process because the the the foot doc busted out his iPhone, took pictures of my feet, and said, boom, I'll send it off, we'll get the orthotics made. Same right? It's just it's just mapping. Here's here's how your foot arches, here's the points that need the more support. Boom, a weeks later, you got the you got the thing.

Jason: Yeah, well, and a year ago it was here's this specialized box that you go in and you put your foot in and or actually I should take that back. Five years ago, it was a specialized box that you put your foot in and it took a mold. And it went, All right, based upon this mold, we're gonna use it in this way. And then it became a specialized box that takes is takes pictures and doesn't actually press into anything and it it maps those pieces relative to the distances that are inside of it, and it uses triangulation technology to understand those pieces.

Jeremy: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jason: Now the technology is to the point where it's like, well, we don't need that. We just need a reference frame object to go through, understand these things in the right context. And then we can go through and we can map these pieces in from your smartphone because it's the software that is all the compiling of the image sets. The next piece that comes out will be, all right, so now you have the shoe that actually has the ability to go through and ping these things and understand how these things are working. And it's got the ability to look at different heat registers on your phone because every camera out there now basically has an aperture to allow it to look at infrared heat signatures. And now I can say, all right, we discovered that your shoes and your insoles and all these things, blah de blah de blah, are causing hot spots here, here, here, and here. This is why you're getting blisters. Like I am a shoe whore. Like, I have so many pairs of shoes. Like, I I want to say at one point I had like close to 60 pairs of shoes, and I'm probably not that far off now. And I buy a ton of footwear and I'm constantly swapping it out because I move a lot. And I not do I only do I move a lot, I'm really fucking heavy. And I just I I burn through shoes and I'm hard on them. And if I had the capability to go through and have it go through and smart register these things and mold these things to my right foot pattern, I wouldn't I wouldn't have to keep swapping shoes so often, which is what I do because I'm looking for things that aren't irritating my feet when I go on long walks, when I jump on things, or if I'm gonna stand around for nine hours on the conference room floor. Like I would like something that was smart enough to go through and be like, I guess a smart sock that was on my foot, and then let me put whatever bullshit footwear thing on the bottom and takes pictures of it, understands how to make those works or expands like a blue fuck. I don't know, man. But what I want is something that actually

Jeremy: You really be hard there for a second. I was worried about you.

Jason: Well but but this is this is a cool use of this technology. Like like this is actually gonna be functionally helpful for rich assholes like me that can afford sixty pairs of fucking shoes. But the rest of people are gonna be like, Meh

Jeremy: The thing I want, I don't need it, I've been I don't even need all that. I just want my shoes to have like the sort of an indicator that like I'm done, you can get rid of me now. Cause I will wear shoes until they fucking fall off and until I'm limping because my legs hurt so bad from from wearing the stupid things for too long. I just want the shoe to tell me, please put me out of my misery, throw me away, go buy a new pair.

Jason: ⁓ yeah, I mean I would like it, but I wouldn't trust the person that told the shoe what to do. Because I guarantee you, yes, yes. They're gonna be like, ⁓ well you walked this way, so you this sh this shoe is destroyed. Yeah. I mean you can't trust corporations. That's just and and you know, right, 'cause their job is to make money because we set up a system with the SEC that any says any publicly traded company has to turn a profit. So

Jeremy: 'Cause they're gonna tell me to buy new shoes every six weeks. True. Damn it. There I go trusting people again. Sutter.

Jason: Fuck your fee.

Jeremy: well, my feet hurt. So I'm gonna go put them on ice. that's gonna do it for this episode of Brobots I hope you've enjoyed it. If you have, please share it with anyone who may enjoy it as well. You can find links to do that at brobots.me. That's our website, and that's where you'll find us again next Monday morning. Thanks so much for listening or watching if you happen to watch this on YouTube.

Jason: Thanks, peeps.