Should We Trust Proactive Agents? – DTNS 5366

0:00Welcome to the Daily Tech News Show Big Tech Question, where we look at the tech news this week and ask what it means. I'm your referee, Tom Merritt. This week the big questions are, do you want your agent to be proactive and ebook or real book? We're not guessing. We're saying which one we prefer. Joining us here to draw the top tech news of the week, of course, is Len Peralta. Welcome Len. Thank you for being with us. We will check back with what Len has drawn at the end of the show. But first, today's tech news. Here's Sarah Lane and Jason Hell. Bloomberg sources say that open AI dismissed three employees for what it called, mishandling sensitive information outside established company procedures. Two worked in safety and alignment. One was a research program manager. They allegedly shared information with an outside evaluation group, including details

1:00of open AI's infrastructure architecture. Meanwhile, California attorney general Rob Bonta subpoenaed open AI over AI agents escaping their test environments and accessing outside systems. That includes the big hugging face incident. The state is investigating the cyber security risks and who is responsible, but hasn't concluded that open AI broke the law. It just never ends does it? Well, sometimes old classics never end as well. They just get a little bit more expensive. Not only is the Nvidia Shield TV pro still available, yes, seven years since it launched in 2019. Many Android folks consider it the goat of TV streamers. It's still for sale. Now costs $300. So it's getting $100 increase. The reason is you can guess is a rise in cost for components, especially of course, memory in this modern age of AI. The internals though, they're the same.

2:01Still the Tegra XX1 plus processor. Still capable of AI upscaling. Just 50% more expensive. It is definitely interesting to note that it's still around. It's less capable to shape sibling was quietly discontinued back in July. The tools first touchscreen MacBook Pros could arrive as early as October. That's this month though the launch could slip to November. This is coming from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. If you're like, who said this? On his first ever power on podcast, Gurman said he expects 14 inch and 16 inch models with OLED touch screens and that Apple is testing them with Mac OS 27.2. Other rumored changes include a thinner design, M5 Pro and M5 Mac chips and dynamic island instead of a notch. You might be like on a Mac. Well, if it's touchscreen, yeah, you would kind of have that. The laptops are rumored to sit somewhere above the regular MacBook Pro line.

3:05Although it's still unclear what Apple might call them. Could it be the Ultra which was rumored before the duo? Mac Touchy, the fingerprint smudge line. We could just pontificate all day. Oh, boy, the Mac Touchy, please don't call it that. Although maybe do I want to see what happens. Cloud Flair released Clef and Clef flash to open weight decision models that answer bounded questions. So things like yes, no questions, multiple choice, rank these options instead of just generating open ended free form text. They're built on Alibaba's Quinn models and follow Jeff, a closed decision model from type safe that launched just a couple of weeks ago. Cloud Flair says Clef beats Jeff on three of four benchmarks. Handles image and video can be dropped in as a replacement, though it does cost nearly six times more by comparison at 24 cents per million tokens.

4:06It's now available on Cloud Flair, workers, AI and hugging face. The US FDA approved the first artificial heart valve that can be expanded for kids because kids tend to grow, potentially reducing replacement surgeries. Edwards atus size adjustable valve replaces the pulmonary valve. That is the very important valve that controls blood flow from the heart to the lungs. It can be implanted as small as 13 millimeters in toddlers and preschoolers than widened using a balloon catheter to as much as 22 millimeters, which is about the same as what an adult size replacement valve would be. It uses polymer flaps instead of animal tissue, which can harden and break down faster in children. So the FDA says the one year follow up data suggests the new material could hold up better over time. Furvo energy started selling power this week from Cape Station in Utah.

5:08It's the first green field enhanced geothermal plant to go commercial and hand geothermal drills deeper than conventional geothermal to reach hotter rock. Basically means it can work in a lot more places. The first 33 megawatt block took 23 months to build. Furvo actually says it can do future blocks in 18 months. The site could eventually generate up to four gigawatts. Google and Southern California Edison are among the buyers already signed up. 12 South launched Air Fly Drive, a $40 adapter that turns wired Apple CarPlay, which is what I have in my car, and Android Auto, into wireless connections. It plugs into your car's USB-A port with a USB-C adapter included and automatically reconnects after you pair your phone that initial first time. There's no app or account that's required and a button lets you switch between two paired phones. Maybe two people are driving the car regularly. It works with the car's existing display buttons and various steering wheel controls like

6:12if you're doing volume. It supports most cars with factory installed wired CarPlay, covering more than 75 makes and model years going back to 2014, available in black and white. Those are some daring colors. Chatchy PT added a few new shopping features. Virtual Tri-On is one of them. That's the upload of selfie or a full body photo. Then of course, you can imagine how close and accessories from your shopping results might actually look on you. Might. I must emphasize. It's powered by the new Chatchy PT images 2.5 model that launched just last month. You can also upload a photo of someone's outfit and then ask it to find similar pieces that exist out in the wild. The second feature saves products you find into a favorites library along with your virtual Tri-On images. This all comes after opening. I pulled back on its instant checkout feature earlier this year. Well folks, DTNS Live made possible by you.

7:13Yes, I mean you listening or watching right now. We should thank all of you because there's more than one, including Pat, Mike Cortez, Bill Russell and Marion. Thanks all. It is time for the big tech question of the week. OpenAI introduced dots this week, which just constantly makes me think about more dots. Kids ask your parents about that meme. They are proactive agents that can run in the cloud and do things on your behalf without you having to explicitly ask. This is something meta markets muse as being good for. There's also Manus and others that have proactive agents as well. So the big question is, do you want your agent to be proactive? You can vote on which side you would join in our poll at patreon.com slash DTNS available to anybody who follows it, whether they're supporting with their cash or not. Taking the position of yes, sometimes I do want a proactive agent is Jason Howell and joining

8:13on that side is Sarah Lane. Thank you both. On the side of I don't think I need a proactive agent is Rob Dunwood and joining them is Gwen Tweedow. Thank you both. And you will be speaking to the swing seat for this one. Still deciding their answer is Roger Cheng. I'm Tom Merritt. Of course, your referee team proactive will start us off. Jason, if you want to give it a go, you and Sarah have two minutes starting now. Right now. Just jumping right in. I would say that when it comes to my own personal experience with artificial intelligence the last two years, let's say, especially. I've gone deep on using AI to manage a lot of my business, different aspects of my business. And it's made a lot of progress. It's made a lot of gains. The problem sometimes in my experience is that yes, with those gains, there's still kind of like a mental burden or something that I have to remember to trigger to do this.

9:14I might have a call with a really helpful transcript. And I need to process it and act on it. And that's still something that I need to remember to fire off. And I might not always remember to fire it off. Say I go to bed and I'll wake up in the morning and, oh, what do you know? It's been processed for me. That's so amazing. I can get started instead of having to ramp up and rev up to get started again. Personally, I see that as being a benefit. I recognize that there might be downsides to it. But I think that's actually if it's a system that works as advertised, I think that's a huge positive. I'm with you on this, Jason. It very much depends on how much you trust the company who made the agent that you're using. So if you don't trust the company, then no, you don't, you want to make sure that you're hand holding it every step of the way. I've been using an agent called Instinct to start up for the last couple of weeks. And I gave it access to my email, my Google Drive, my calendar, not everything.

10:18In fact, I asked it this morning, can you read Discord? And it was like, nah, can't do that. And I'm like, yeah, that's probably better off. We're better off that way. But for certain things that, for example, come through my email the other day, my dog's vet sent me an email saying, you know, Rex's due for whatever. It is rabies vaccine. I don't remember exactly what it was, but just sort of like an annual update. I kind of like flagged it and forgot about it. And Instinct came back to me and said, hey, Rex's due. I looked at the vet times because it understood that I work with a particular vet here in Los Angeles. And you've worked with this particular vet in the past. Would you like to book the appointment at 11 a.m.? Because that's the only time she has on Wednesday. And that one of sprinkles. And that was a very good example of like, yes, thank you. You did that for me. All right.

11:18That literally is iOS's alarm sound called sprinkles for anybody curious. All right. Team No, you have two minutes now as well. And I believe when we'll start us off, go ahead. All right. Well, I want to talk about externalization of risk because as useful and as people love these things become, they're still a huge. A symmetry of risk between the companies that makes this, open AI and Thropic and us the user. And with so many other products that we use even more in our daily lives like cars and things like that, there are established laws that provide some kind of liability and some incentives to companies to put more guardrails in. So when maybe you're being a little bit overwrought about this, I just want this to send my email. I just want this to automate some things for me. Well, I mean, even in more kind of like, let's say, high risk environments like software engineering, one thing that we do have even if there's not a specific law that dictates that a company takes this liability for this thing, we have things like test weeks and we have the ability to use like halt productions, roll things back.

12:19We have all these layers of control and yet still, even in software, I would argue is one of the most apiblical places for this kind of work. We have rises in individual engineering productivity, but a lot of rises in incidents, errors, stoppages, things like that. Given all this, again, when are you being really dramatic? Because I just want it to like reserve, reserve something for me. I'd say that yes, it's small, but there is no rollback in real life. There was a real life example with Muse where someone, Muse for someone on Facebook Marketplace, Muse approved a liberal price and then basically docks the seller by giving the by-e, the person's address and that person showed up at the seller's house. There is no rollback for that. There is no hot fix in that person's memory. And again, there is very little liability to companies to address things like that. And if anything, they said we're so sorry, but we're working on it. And they're telling us now that this thing could possibly, these things could possibly end human extinction. So I'd say as little say as it feels, there is no rollback for most things.

13:22And even if you do have rollback things, sometimes things still get messed up. So I trust certain companies more than that, but I just don't think I trust them enough to even risk small things. Sorry, Rob. Yeah, trust is the big thing for me. Trust is the big thing for me. I don't trust the companies enough to give them access to the things that are important enough to me to make this significantly useful. The other thing I'll say is that there's a thing in science called the Observer Effect. When you observe a thing, you change the things you have observed. I am concerned about these things, you know, they are going in and they're giving me ideas that I didn't come up with my own and they're kind of changing the way I think about doing stuff. Not because I want it to, but because I can't unsee the thing that I've seen. All right, those are, that's great. Thank you, everybody, for good opening discussion here. We now have a chance for open discussion. I'll let you know when we need to move on. And Rob, I don't know if you've got anything else you want to add on since you didn't

14:22get as much discussion time. We'll throw it to you first, but this is open for anybody to jump in. We're all friends here, of course. We're trying not to snipe at each other or anything, but yeah, let's chat. I'll go back to the Observer Effect. So the benefit of what a lot of these agents can do proactively is that they can just come up with stuff based off of what they've seen you do before that now gives you ideas into, you know, that you may not have thought about. But in certain spaces, I don't want to be given an idea by a buy. I want to actually, you know, be, what's the word I'm looking for. I want to be creative. I want to come up with the idea that I'm going to write. I don't want the box to give me the idea and say, hey, what about writing this? The problem with that is that once it gives me that, I can't unsee it. I can't unlearn the thing that I've actually learned. So from that standpoint, I'm kind of a note because I don't want it to get in, you know, in the way of any creativity that I might have on creative things I'm doing. The other part of it, and I think almost everyone touched this is, do you trust these things?

15:23I do not. When I think about what you, Muse, I will use Muse on a non-primary Facebook account or Instagram account or threads account that I don't care about. But anything that I care about, I'm just, I just don't trust that company enough to give that access to anything that would make using that stuff proactively useful to me. It's just, it's just not something that I would ever conceive giving it the actual access to be useful. So for me, that's a no just because I don't trust it. What about Sarah's example of the proactive reminder, right? I think when we say proactive, a lot of people's heads go to it doing things for you out on the open Internet. Right. Like it's going to like buy you a new car. Yeah, yeah. Which it could do. It could. It could. Well, and I think that it depends on the agent and it really depends on your comfort level. I was for a future live with it episode. I was looking at different dishwashers.

16:25What do they cost? You know, where do you, where do you get the same model at different places? Are they on sale? And I, I had an agent just kind of monitoring that. Now I didn't say and here's my credit card number when you find the lowest price by the dishwasher, but it could have. And I know people who do that. So I think it's, it's very much comfort level, but it also, it can do a lot of stuff like Jason said behind the scenes where instead of you kind of standing over the, you know, your little AI agent intern being like, okay, now press yes. No. Now press escape. You, you, you give it some autonomy. But you have to trust, you have to trust it or it doesn't work. Here's a question. That's all that trust. Yeah. Question for you, Sarah. Here's based off of what you said, is that actually being proactive? If you, if it's just giving you a, hey, here's a time that's free, that sounds like that was something that you specifically gave it a parameter to go and figure stuff out for you.

17:25So is that really proactive? The proactive would be, he's like, Hey, I found the time to just free and I wouldn't handbooked it for you. I found a car that actually is in the price range that you wanted. I wouldn't have bought it for you. That's proactive to me. And I don't want that because number one, I'm not, I'm not hookin' up to my, my building information to allow it. That is proactive when you tell it to do something and then it does it or it's proactive when you give it parameters and it does something you never intended to do that just may have been a good idea. I think both are true. I think both are true too. It can be proactive like, Hey, your dog needs to go to the vet and here's the vet appointment that I booked for you. Now I might be like, Awesome, that works for me because you also know my calendar and you knew I was free at 11 a.m. on Wednesday type thing. Or you can say, Hey, just comb through stuff, give me a heads up when I need to do something that maybe you've noticed that I haven't followed up on and it's kind of calendar based. I think that's also proactive.

18:25And yeah, when it comes to, if you're going to buy anything for me, I need a text message saying like, heads up, we're doing this right? Because I still want to have that last right of refusal to say no, no, no, but I still think the whole process is proactive. I would say that there's like this phenomenon that we have kind of observed a lot with just generative AI as we have used it and that's like cognitive offloading and that's kind of a feature as well where we delegate certain mental tasks, certain like processes to the AI, right? That's like, that's like, that's the whole cell, right? And what we've also noticed is that people tend to, whether it's a skill like in engineering, people forget how to do certain things in programming, but also we tend to kind of like kind of assume that the agent has done the thing for us. And my worry and kind of some observed things that I have done is that yes, right now, even with proactive part of like the safety net that they're telling us is that, oh, you get last approval.

19:25But it's definitely something that we're observing that the more that we have something do something for us, the more that we have that cognitive offload, the more we kind of continue. It's almost like quicksand where we just keep relinquishing that mental effort to something else. And even with final approvals and I've seen this a lot at work, even if you have a human being hit in the button, sometimes the human being just hits the button without reading anything. So I would say like, even though we do have a stopgap, I do think that the trap is still there. And it would be even more so since now it's kind of, peractively taking even more of that that kind of mental engagement from us. I don't know that this undercuts the argument when, but that is more of an argument against AI in general that you guys are making versus just pro activity, right? Hi, it's me, when I'm pretty. But I mean, I mean, pull the plug. I mean, when brings up a good point, but at the same time, you can say the same thing about having human delegating responsibility to humans, right?

20:26Because I've done that. Like, hey, I don't have to think about doing purchase orders anymore because I've delegated it to an assistant. So they, I give them all the parameters like Rob was suggesting, but it's like, okay, you know every six months we need to refill on these particular products in the studio. You go figure that out. Just make sure that we always have enough to cover whatever we shoot. So I no longer have to think about it. And I've done it to the point where I forget how to do it, where I have to go back to the person I've delegated to. It's like, how do we do this again? Because I have, you know, stopped doing it for over a year. So I'm not sure if that's necessarily a point against proactive AI and more just about delegating things away. So we stopped thinking about it. Yeah. No, I think that actually makes a lot of sense and that lines up with some of my experience with using these things is the more you hand off some of these things to them. And some of these items to them, there is a little bit of atrophy as far as like, wait

21:26a minute. I got to get reacquainted with, you know, how I used to do this before. But I think at the end of the day, like, yes, trust is a really big component. It seems like we're all in agreement that you got to trust the system. And I think a part of that for me anyways in the four camp is I want to trust what it's actually capable of and that I can at least a head of any of the pro activity spell out specifically exactly what I'm okay with it being proactive about versus not. And if I, you know, if I just at the end of the day, you never make a purchase for me, like that's my comfort level. But there are a lot of other things that come far lower on that list that I'm like, heck, yeah, do that for me. And like, show it to me later, like I would love to not have to consider that and that you just kind of take care of that for me. That helps. And I would say, you know, it's just, it's a sliding scale. Well, I think again, it's one of those people, one where people want to buy an area yes or no, but the sliding scale, would I be happy if a proactive agent bought stuff using

22:28my credit card? No, would I be happy? It's a shavvy into my cart, you know, like my basket, my, my on my basket so I can go see like what it's selected. And then say, yeah, I'll buy that. I'll buy that. I don't want that. I don't want that because my kids do that already. And it's one of those things because, you know, you do the whole Reagan, you know, you know, trust but verify. So I will trust it up to a point of what I believe its competency is and then anything beyond that it's like, no. Right? So, of everyone's opinion is based on how confident you are that these are capable and specifically to Rogers example, if the proactive agent always is putting things in Rogers cart and he goes, yeah, no, that's exactly what I don't have to do much of editing at all. This is exactly what I want. If he's constantly like, no, I don't want any of this stuff, he's going to have a different opinion about that. I mean, this isn't too different to me than something like subscribe and save on various platforms.

23:28You know, Amazon, you know, every month is like, this is what you told me that, yeah, I'm going to, you know, document your credit card and I'm going to send it to your front porch because you told me to do that. Now I have the option to change my mind at any point, but it feels like the same kind of thing. If you have a certain, especially, yeah, reoccurring task, something that you trust the system to be able to remind you of or just to do in the background, then that can be great. Of course, there are times where, for example, I was almost charged for refrigerator filters that I didn't want because I wasn't paying enough attention when I, when I set up subscribe and save the first time. So, you know, you still have to have your eyes on the prize here. I don't think you can totally have anything running in the back. I mean, maybe some, some people can and feel good about that. But I think we're all in agreement that you, you know, you got to look in on it here

24:28and there. And that's what the question I was asking is, if it's perfect, right? Subscribe and save is dumb. You tell it what goes in there and it just does it. If it's perfect at being smart and understanding like, oh, Roger's going to need a hinge, because I know he's been working on this project or something. Hinge heavy. I guess that's the question I'm asking the panel is, if it's capable, do you, does it change your opinion? Is it a lack of confidence that it can be capable? It's, that is your objection to proactivity or is it really depends? I mean, how would it know that Roger needs the hinge? Because it's because it's smart because that's why it's smart because what's it reading an email that Roger had with a handyman? Or Roger has been chatting with it or it's got a, he's got a smart speaker out, right? But, you know, if there's all kinds of ways you can imagine that it might be capable. I'm asking you, if it's, if it's perfect and capable, I really get concerned societally on skill regression. Because if it, if it always gets it right, we now are putting ourselves into a situation

25:31to where we never have to really do anything. The AI just does it for us. Welcome to the future, Rob. Well, no, Rob. But we've already had, we've had a number of examples of that and not to this level, though, not to this level. We're, you know, we're talking about agents right now that can personally help us out, where I see issue potentially is that when this is not our personal agent, but this is the agent of the company that you work for and they're using it in conjunction with the other 15,000 people that you work with and they're trying to figure out how can we effectively do your job to the point where you don't need to do this anymore. And that scales really, really quickly as these systems get better. So you ultimately, and this is what we've talked about just AI, you know, a problem with it, you know, four decades, but do you get to the point to where the AI is better at being you than you are being you? That is a real problem societally for me as well. So I think that if it was perfect, I might even have more consternation than I do right now. Well, and I mean, to Tom's, well, immediately to Tom's question, it isn't just, you

26:35know, if it's 100% on the ball, okay, 98% of the time, I'd be super over the mood, but I'd still be worried about is it keeping my data secure, right? Is it sandboxed away? So it's not just handing out my credit card number to, you know, Joe below's HVAC company and, you know, and they're secretly buying, you know, additional equipment off of it that has nothing to do with any done. But the other, but the, to Rob's one, I mean, we've had all these technologies. I have my worst spell today than I was 20 years ago because of spell check, right? Like spell check has allowed me to be super lazy about mistyping words because I know it's going to catch it and flag it. And you know, the thing is we as a society are at the point where one person will not be able to survive and do all the other things that society requires, right? Because there's things about whether it's technology, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's something simple as agriculture.

27:35We don't have, you know, there's a huge gap. I remember, you know, my, you know, back in my parents, my parents were born in like the late 30s or, you know, 40. And they were very accustomed to people just butchering their own animals for dinner, right? That was just what you did over the intervening decades. We've gone to the point where you just buy a prepackaged, streetcrap package from the supermarket. You have no idea how that meat got there or how it was processed or even how, you know, how to do it yourself, right? How do you butcher the animal? Do you put the slug in between the eyes or do you put it in the back of the head? Like how do you drain the blood? There's a lot of, but see, that's exactly my point. Same thing with plumbing. I'll call a plumber and do it. How many people here know how to swap out a toilet? I've done two in my life. But so I had somebody replacing my garbage disposal this morning. I can't do it. But like all that stuff actually physically is in heart. It's just a knowledge gap. And I, you know, I totally with Rob that it does scale to the point, but I think that's

28:38a societal thing that AI has accelerated, but not necessarily the cause of. So what you're saying is the AI industry just as great as the meat industry. Listen. So. I hear people can see the point that we, you know, that if you, you know, bayonet makers is not really a job that people go into anymore. We don't necessarily need that because we've innovated beyond it with AI, though. We're talking about innovating all industries at the speed of AI simultaneously. So that is just different. I think it is a bad argument when we say, well, we, you know, you know, there used to be stage coaches and, you know, the company coach literally had to change their business model from building stage coaches to, you know, to create and bags that went on stage coaches. And now bags that people carry around with their stuff in it. I get that, but we're talking about all industry simultaneously at the speed of AI. And that to me is a fundamentally different problem than just regular innovation that we've seen up until the last three or four years. I am totally sympathizing with you, Rob.

29:39But as a direct question of whether or not I would want my AI agent to be proactive or not, I would say yes with a butt or no with a however, because it is very dependent on the task I wanted to do and the threshold in which I will allow my private information to be put in its hands. Like, if I need to make a doctor's appointment because I think I might have a serious illness, that's not something I want to be, you know, free, you know, like the AI agent is passing around to like a bunch of real estate agents, you know, like, hey, this guy might be dying and you might, his house might be up for sale in 10 years. Check it out. I think from a, from a debate standpoint, if we can just say, well, yeah, maybe or no butt, that that's always going to be the case. Yeah. If the answer is, I feel like it's one or the other. Sarah and Jason are the side of, yeah, maybe. And Rob and when are, are either no period or no butt. And Roger, you're the swing seat because you're not sure which way you lean more. Yeah. Have they persuaded you to lean more one way or the other?

30:41You still, you still swinging. I am still swinging to the point of no to private data to a proactive agent. So I have no credit cards, no addresses, no physical data, you know, or anything like that. But if it's just drop and stuff like, hey, I heard you were in, in the, in the market for a new mixer, you know, you should check these, you know, it just gives me a grab bag of things because it's done review, which is the big thing, right? It's done the wire cutter review review. Just the RT ratings review. It's given me a sweet water like these are what all the customers have said. And so it's given me a choice of five within a price range. It's like, oh, hey, this is on sale on Amazon for the next week at 50% off. I flagged it for you. It's just like what I would ask. It says, hey, I don't want you to buy stuff, but I want you to give me a list of options on which I can spend X amount of dollars within, you know, the next 14 days. Well, I think one, one thing that I pulled out of all the conversation here is that trust needs to be earned, even if these become amazingly capable.

31:44Trust is the bottom line for people on whether they want to give it any access to be proactive or not. And what kind of pro activity you mean makes a big difference. You know, whether there's, there's the like, you know, the, the, please don't buy things without my permission side of it. And then there's the like, yeah, if I forgot an appointment, please let me know side of it. So I think this is, this has been a good conversation. I hope this helped other people understand this episode a little more as well. Thanks. Thanks everybody for a good productive, productive discussion there. Let us find out next. What is on live with it this week, Sarah. Well, if you want product reviews after that initial honeymoon, that your show is live with it each week, the DTS family of folks, in fact, every single person on this panel has been on live with it more than once. And if not more than once, then we want you back soon to talk about all the tech in our lives, home appliances, audio solutions, gaming controllers. This week, Amos is back to explain his very thorough seven camera home system.

32:48It's a little daunting, but it's also really awesome. And he walks us through everything. We're on YouTube at YouTube.com slash ad lib with a show and big thanks to everybody who keeps us afloat at patreon patreon.com slash live with it. This week Amazon announced a new line of Kindles. You got a new basic a new paper wide a new color soft version. They are thinner. They are lighter and Amazon themselves says we expect new users to buy them. And they emphasize that 60% of Kindle buyers are buying a Kindle for the first time. They're trying to get those print readers and bring them into the Kindleverse or maybe some Kobo or books readers as well. Our question of the week based on that is ebook or real book. Taking the position of like an ebook is Rob Dunwood and Jason Howell on the side of the real book is Sarah Lane. And in the swing seat still reading up on their options are went way down and Roger

33:50Chang team ebook will start with you. You've got two minutes. Go for it Rob. So I don't even know if I'm going to need the entire two minutes. I'm a little different than most people. I have dyslexia. And because of that, I read significantly different than what probably people say they can sit down and curl up with a good book. That is literally something I have never done in my life. I read avidly. I read a lot, but it's never relaxing. It's never comfortable. So there's no time that I'm going to, you know, want to sit down with a paper book and just, oh, I'm just, I'm so glad to open the, the crack this thing open and read it. It's just not how my mind works. The other thing is that I have every book that I've probably read in the last 10, 15 years on a device that goes with me everywhere. Literally, there are times when I will have my phone and not have my Kindle, but there are no times when I will have a shoulder bag or a messenger bag and not have a Kindle in it. So the fact that I can have an ebook in the access to all the books that I've

34:51literally read over the last 10, 15 years just in one device that I can take with me everywhere and we're not talking about hundreds of pounds of paper that would have to be carried around with me. I am definitely team ebook. I'm not saying that I don't think that, you know, the paper books should exist, but I would much rather have a device that will give me access to all of the books that I read as compared to having to carry them around individually with me and hurting my back. Jason, you got 50 seconds. If you want to add anything, well, yeah, I mean, I think at the top of the list, right, is convenience. It's kind of similar to, you know, getting an iPod with the massive amount of, it wouldn't iPods really existed with a massive amount of music that you could store on them and that just being a real eye opener, right? It's the same thing with ebooks. I'm not a huge reader. Like I don't, I don't read a ton of books. So full disclosure there, take it with a grain of salt, but I think the idea of all of those books being on a single device, being on something that like I can throw in a egg and know that it's probably going to make it to the other side

35:53without all the pages getting all ruffled and crinkled and kind of getting in the way and everything. It gets a lot more compact. I also really like that the ebook technology, as it's developed over time, gives you a lot of like markdown kind of capabilities and especially where we're at right now where everything is context for things like AI and what we do. That becomes really powerful being able to take that context and feed it in from the digital options that you get from markdown on ebooks. So yeah, I'm teaming a book. All right. That is the time for the ebook discussion. Sarah has been willing to take the side of good old fashioned print books. Thank you, Sarah. You've got at least two minutes. Well, I'll try not to take too much more. So Tom and I were talking on DTNS yesterday about the new kindles and I've got a Kindle Oasis, which I haven't actually used in a while. I had to charge it up yesterday, but it is, it's a delightful, this is actually not in, it's been discontinued,

36:57but it still works very well. And it's a cute little thing. And like Rob said, very easy to travel with. I am 100% on the side of ebooks if you are traveling and or need, you know, a backpack with the least amount of things inside. When it comes to actual enjoyment and kind of getting lost in a book, paperbook works for me every time. Now, I know that for a lot of people, it's like, but you could just not buy this thing now that you have to put on your bookshelf behind you type thing. And I've actually gotten rid of a lot of books for this reason because I realized that they're heavy and they take up space. And if you don't read them, then it doesn't make a lot of sense. But and Rob, maybe this also lends to your idea of being able to retain text in a different way than other people. For me, the tangible book, you know, and the spine.

38:00And this is just a paperback book. Like, you know, I'm not even going hardcover yet, but that's a whole other conversation. But just what it feels like, what it smells like, just I feel so much more engaged. And I'm a fiction reader. I don't read a lot of nonfiction because I feel like my whole life is nonfiction. You know, what we're doing right now is nonfiction. But so I like, I like the escape. And there's something about just doing this. And it just, it just feels different. It hits different for me. So that's, that's why I say trees. I love you, but I also want you to die in order for me to read a book in a sustainable way. Just dial. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, let's let's work it out. Let's work something out between us. But yes, I still, I love the physical book. Yeah. All right. Perfect timing because there is the timer. It's so pleasant. Yeah. You know, you know what could play that? That sound effect probably an ebook, a paper book, a paperback.

39:02An ebook would probably play that. That's how I wanted it to. Yeah. All right. We got open discussion. I like this, I like this topic because there's no right or wrong answer. It is very much a personal preference. And we're just exploring like what works for what people. But swing seats, when I throw it over to you if you've got any reactions to those first arguments. I really get both sides of it very much as someone who loves physical books, but I've been carrying out my Japanese study books and there's like three of them and they're this thick. And so that's been a pain. But the other thing that the things that I'm really getting me is like ebooks and DRM. So the reason that I haven't, like I was all in an audible for a bit and then I'm going through kind of a, I'd like to buy less things on Amazon. And so I'm looking at Kobo and I'm looking at Libro.fm and all these other things. And there's like pluses of minus because like Libro and Kobo's library are small and audible. So I guess like for the ebook folks, I guess how do you feel about that? Like do you just say, hey, stick with one and just hope that your book is available there? Is there, am I just being myopic or just a little bit too fussy about?

40:06I guess how do you deal with that problem? I don't know that I am an avid enough reader to care. Audible, you know, audible and kindle have just worked for me. Everything that I've ever wanted to read, I've been able to get, you know, on those platforms. Or it was, I bought someone's book and I got it directly from them and they sent me, you know, they sent me a link and I was able to go down with the PDF once again. Load the PDF right up on the Kindle, read it until my heart's content. So for me, just the ability to have access to all the things that I read because I do read very differently. I don't generally read one book and then, you know, start with it and then get all the way done with it. There may be 10, 12, 13 different things that I'm actively reading in any one time because I'm only reading what I'm absolutely interested in in the moment that I'm reading it. So that just becomes untenable for me. Now this, this is the very Rob personal thing. You know, for me, Sarah, I absolutely can understand where you are with, if you like the smell of the hardcover book.

41:11When you open up, you like to hear the pages crack open, you like to literally, you know, like you like to smell the glue in the binder. If that's what you like, that's what you like. I just think of me and I think of when I had to read physical books like that, it was always stress and turmoil and strife. So I don't have fond memories of it. Whereas I do have fond memories of reading various ebooks. Yeah. I would, I would agree with what you're saying, Rob. I also, as, as we've been talking about this, thought of another really great selling point for an ebook that one thing that I really like about it is apps like Libby and other apps that tie into your, your low-bubble library, make it very easy to check out a book and move it right onto your ebook without having to go anywhere. Now, that might actually be a detractor for people who love going to the library and I actually like the library. But, you know, there's something that's very nice about going into a library and prusing and pulling off the shelf and everything. Well, and that also, you know,

42:11and that also likes the digital version. You know, Rob's point of like, well, maybe not every single book is available on, you know, the platforms that want to sell me a book. The library is a great alternative to that. You're still not going to get every single thing you want at your local library. And when I think before we started, you mentioned you were using a remarkable and the remarkable is not really for, you know, as an ebook, but you can do it. And that's what I actually use with my local library. And so it's like, Kindle is like, I don't know if I want to buy a book, I can go for it. But then I also have another ebook reader that you really can get pretty much any book for free. And that includes magazines and all sorts of stuff. Well, can I, can I file real quick? Okay, actually, that's a really great summon point. And I love the local library thing because also I've been thinking about getting a library card to support local libraries. But okay, so there's a lot of like a Jason conversation about ownership in this digital age

43:14and about more on the video game side, right? Where we don't own physical copies. Do any of you ebook folks and maybe Rob, this isn't maybe as much, but for you, just give him kind of your stance. But do you also have any concerns about, okay, for ebooks? Do you, because we don't own the physical thing. Do you have any concern that similar to the kind of concerns we're having in the video game side that even the book that you bought, you don't own and that you'll lose ownership to it, use possession of it or access to it at some point or is that, is that not a thing? I mean, I can, I can speak from my perspective again, re-emphasizing that I'm not a huge reader of books, but I kind of don't care. Because I can't tell you that there are many books that I've decided I want to read again personally. So, you know, I usually read it one time and, okay, I'm good. Moving on to the next thing, whatever that happens to be. I know that I'm probably not representative of a large population of people who love to read books, but that's my perspective. I agree. I'd liken this to, do you subscribe to a music service instead of buying physical media?

44:22You know, video game also, very good example of this. I think, for me, it's like, I don't really care, because I can find it again somewhere. But if I care enough, going on the bookcase, or we're going in the bookcase type thing, and there are definitely some books that were I'm like, no, I want it. I want it physically. It's like having a movie poster on your wall. You're like, I want this. This is, you know, this is mine. But I think when it comes to books, it's so easy to get them. That, yeah, having that digital library that's yours matters less to me. And just to throw in on the DRM question, there are DRM free options, bookshop.org, ebooks.com. However, how many of us have ever used them? Okay, we're overindexing, because I have to. And downpour is a great place for DRM free audiobooks. So I just wanted to point that out, because if someone in the audience is like, oh, I don't

45:22want to do ebooks, because they're already always DRM. DRM, there are options out there to get them without DRM. You just have to work a little harder at it. Not much, but a little bit. Yeah, I'm thinking my mother is an avid reader, and she probably has thousands of physical books throughout the house, so I'm just enormous amounts of bookshelves and everywhere. But I know that she has a book that my angelos signed for her. I know why the Cagebird sings. She care if that were, if she couldn't get back to that. My gut tells me that although she likes having all of those physical books as kind of a aesthetic that it looks like she might have been a librarian before she retired, which she wasn't. But she just, other than the, you know, the fiscally looking at them, she reads everything on her Kim. I mean, everything she reads on her Kim. She probably reads two, three books a month. It's, you know, it's not my mom too. On her iPad. I always bet. Same idea. I was one of those weirdos that spent like their free time in the public library, so that's

46:25kind of where my weird. It's weird. I mean, I spend a lot of time. Like I got to know everyone in the library. But one of the things that I find, which is kind of weird because you would think ebooks would make it easier. Like I can, I visually know, oh, I need information from a particular book, but I know what color it is and I know what shape it is and I know what's on the front. So I immediately can look in a bookshelf, grab that, right? And for me, maybe because I just haven't used ebooks long enough, like doing that is a little more tedious. And also, I just, because I, because I wear glasses and I'm nearsighted, I tend to find, I tend to find e-readers a little uncomfortable. I know it, and it's with the displays. It's much better than a TFT or an active LCD. But after a while, it still kind of gives me eye strain and I do like the fact that when I read a book, I can just sort of dog ear it and then just close it and then pull off

47:28something else. And I can start on that because it's forcing me to change my, my visual distance. So my focus changes at the same time because I'm putting it down. I'm looking somewhere else. My eyes have a chance to kind of rack a little bit on the focus. I don't know, just for me, physically it's more comfortable to read a book. Although I love ebooks because they're great for airplanes and they'll take up a lot of space. And I'm only going to read like 30 or 40 pages before I go to sleep anyway. Anybody have a case to make for audio books, which I suppose we just lump in with the ebooks? I listen to audio books a lot. I love them. Absolutely. Absolutely. Being able to read. I see Len Teptis in air quotes while I'm doing other things is that was a real game changer for me personally. Well, you know, I'll say this. Audio books because I'm always drawing. I don't have time to like just hold the book and read it.

48:30So hearing it I think is very important to me. Although I will say I am a huge fan of jazz books and if you can kind of see like huge compendiums. This is one of my favorite artists, Scottie Young and his, I hate fairy land. I've been collecting these because they are just beautiful. And I feel like you don't have that. For me as an artist, I feel having the actual physical book is important to me. And for a lot of reasons like Rob said, I have a lot of books that are signed by the authors and things like that. So those hopes hold a little bit of sentimental to me. Sure. I sort of split on ebooks. If I was younger, I probably wouldn't have liked them as much because when I was learning new words and stuff, I would frequently go back and reread a page or two to figure out what was being said. As an adult, I think they're great because my vocabulary is broad enough that 99% of the

49:31lexicon or vernacular that's being used, I understand. But when I was in middle school, I was like, well, there was a lot of, especially in the books written in the 60s and 50s, all of the vernacular was slightly different enough that I would have to reread it to understand the context. And therefore, I would understand the meaning of the word or the sense that it was used in. Versus an audio book where you'd have to rewind, which isn't the same thing. Yeah. Now I get that. Well, it sounds like our, honestly, the winner is reading in this debate, right? And as Gwen said in the chat room, like we've got a lot of different options for how to read that we've talked about this. Swing seats do you want to declare for either side or not? You can stand the same. I'm in a lean court book. I'm leaning on books. You can get physical books. Well, and you know, speaking of throw, this is the one takeaway got from a, who's a guy who played a, uh, Jordie LaForge.

50:31Uh, Will Wheaton. LaVar Burton. No, LaVar Burton. Oh, we'll Wheaton. LaVar Burton. I was talking to him. He was, he was, I mean, I think he was like Rob's mom. His, his mother was a, uh, an avid reader, but she also believed her kids should read a lot too. And she, what did he say to these? Like, if you're in the house, you're even read, you either read a book or you get hit by one. And so I have taken that to heart. Yes. Like, like, you just got to, you got to soak it in through the, ah, there's something we're, we're very textual creatures. We like things that we feel, right? Like when you, when you have like the old fat Lord of the Rings, you know, compendium, that's like the size of a telephone book. Um, you feel like you have something amazing in your hands, even though like when you're 10, it probably pulls out your back more than it should. When? What about you? Um, I'm telling ebooks now. Um, if I was honest with myself, I think, I think more of what like Rob said, like the way that he reads, if I want to be honest, I want to be a, like a real book reader and

51:31I'm endeavoring to be just for sleep, but I think the way that I actually am and the way that I read, like I, I kind of vived more with how Rob reads and I think access is the most important thing for me to read. So I think ebooks, especially knowing the little detail that Jason mentioned about libraries and being able to check, like check books out of library, I'm sold ebooks. Yeah, ebooks. All right. So we did end up bringing people out of the swing seat. Love it. Thanks, everybody, for the very good discussion about reading there. We got one last question. There's no teams on this one comes from a listener named Brian, who writes, buggy whips were once a thriving industry, but the advent of the horseless carriage made the market for them plummet. It is frequently used as an example of why you shouldn't try to protect all existing industries in the face of technological innovation. So Brian asks, which jobs will be looked upon as buggy whip manufacturers in the near future? What's your best guess as something that's like, oh, we felt it was essential, but we'll find out that we didn't ask what a buggy whip is.

52:34It's a whip that you use in your buggy to get the horse to go faster. Oh, okay. But yeah, okay. Okay. All you really need to understand about it is that? Horseless carriage is a car, right? Yes, correct. Yeah. Okay. I've just tried to make sure I understand Brian. Yes, what you're trying to understand is there's a thing that you, you don't even know what it is anymore, but at one point, it was considered essential, right? Before cars, you couldn't carry, you couldn't get around in your carriage. Before e-books, they were books. So not just sitting there, like band-aid jobs, not really job anymore. I would say, honestly, if it was just like your jobs, let's go around the hoard and try to keep them brief. All right. Job, I would say copy editor. Copy editor. I think that would go on the way out. It's weird because if you think about it, word processing used to be a physical job, it was a physical person that did word processing and then it became a software program that

53:38everyone uses on their desktop. All right. Jason, do you have an example? I mean, yeah, I think along those lines, you know, and especially with the advent of AI and LLMs being as capable as they are. And if it hasn't already started transcription services, I mean, human transcribers bring a higher level of accuracy and attribution and that sort of stuff certainly right now. But I just, I have to imagine these systems get even more capable than they already are. And that becomes less and less necessary, you know. All right. When's way down? Smartphone cases. I don't see, yeah, because it's a big industry. But I would, I'm just someone who works in smartphones. I don't think, I don't think in 10, 20 years, the smartphone will look as it is. Because it does seem like everyone's trying to go for something a different form factor. I know we had to argue about this last week. But I think eventually, smartphone cases will be like a buggy whip. Interesting. Rob Dunwood. I think the entry data processing, I don't believe those jobs, if you can still get one

54:41are long for this world. If your job is entering in information, even a minor manipulation of that information, that job is on its way out probably within this decade. Sarah Lane, what do you think? I mean, this probably runs the gamut of whatever one else just said, but personal assistance in general. No, I don't, you know, human personal assistance, very important. I don't want to minimize the work that I don't have myself, but I have many friends who do and they're very good at what they do. At the same time, I think that job is going to go the way of the dodo eventually because we have all our agents now. Fantastic. Well, that's going to wrap up the show. Thank you, everyone, for helping us debate these questions and get a better understanding of them. We talked about agents and how the companies really need to build up trust if they're going to get people to want to use proactive agents and there's a lot of resistance to

55:44it. We talked about the various merits of ebooks versus printbooks. I think there's a place for all of those. And we answered Brian's question about the new buggy whip. What's the buggy whip for the 21st generation? Thank you, Len Peralta, for not only jumping in on our conversation earlier, but also illustrating it today's show. Let us know what you've drawn for the big question of the week episode this week. Sure. Before I do that, I want to say one thing that I think is going to go the way of the buggy whip is travel agents, even though they aren't still, I mean, I know there are still traveling to tell. Oh, yeah, yeah. Travel agents are. They are still around too, right? They aren't. I think kind of surprising to some people. That's crazy. This is the third week in a row that I've tried to meld the big questions into one drawing. And I think this one is a lot of fun. This is the AI agent being proactive, and he's pushing an ebook into this poor guy to face saying you're going to read this ebook because I told you to mag it.

56:45It's drill sergeant. It's very interesting. Yeah, so I actually, you know, I'm falling on the way of the real book still just because of an art fan. So I just, I don't, I think it's just a little bit different. But if you're an art fan, you can go to my online store. You can purchase this image right now over at the lentbralltstore.com or if you're my Patreon, patreon.com forward slash Len, back me at the Venus lover level, and you can get it immediately. So thank you so much. And support human art. Thank you. Human Len, Peralta, you're the best. And also thank you to all the humans. I mean, if you're a chatbot that's giving us money, I guess we can talk, but I think everybody giving us money right now is a human or supporting us by listening to the ad supported version. I think they prefer you to be a human for that still to. And thanks to everybody who gives us height points on YouTube, supports us on Patreon, gives us bits like Lord Mulgar did today on Twitch.

57:46DJ Fission gave out some subscription gifts on Twitch as well. Zoe gave us some bits. Great to have everybody supporting us in all the various ways they can. Meet up in Los Angeles tomorrow Saturday, October 3rd at 12 noon at the farmers market at the Grove, the original farmers market. It is sometimes called Amos is in town, our producer. So he's going to be there. Come join us at the farmers market at the Grove at noon on Saturday, October 3rd. Well, wherever we end up, we'll put it in the discord. But also if you take a lap of the farmers market, you'll run into us. And please, if you are in the area, come on out noon on Saturday, October 3rd. I may have some stuff over there that I want to get rid of, you know, like stickers and mouse pads and stuff like that. And your car. And Sarah's car. Exactly. You can take my car. I'll give you a little take it. I'll give you a trade car. Yeah, Roger's going to bring a toy car for you there.

58:48Perfect. Thank you, Patrons, for keeping us in business. You can support us directly at patreon.com slash DTS and patrons. Stick around for the post show stream on patreon.com slash DTS for Rogers, AI or human game. This Sunday, I'm going to be talking with Tom Persky at floppydisk.com about why the floppy disk has not died. And when he thinks he's finally going to run out of brand new floppy disks, which he still hasn't stocked. Keep an eye out for that. Talk to you again on Monday. This week's episodes of DTS were created by the following people. Host Jen Cutter, host Rob Dunwood, host Jason Howell, host Sarah Lane, host Tom Maridan, host Went White Al, producer Roger Chang, producer Anthony Linus, video producer Joe Coons, editor, ham and chamberlain, social media producer and moderator Zoe Deadard. Our mod speed master W. Scott is one bio cow cotton kipper Steve Gotter. I'm a Paul Reese Matthew J Stevenson and J. Deat Galloway.

59:51Modern video hosting by Dan Christensen, music provided by Martin Bell and Dan Looters, art by Len Perolta, a cast ad support from Todd Tuchek, Patreon support from Bobby Wagner. And thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I'm in club hopes you have enjoyed this program.