Leo [00:00:11]:
So what have you bought at Amazon lately?

Gary [00:00:16]:
Less and less, actually. But, you know, I was, I I I've tried to buy less from Amazon, and I it's hard

Leo [00:00:26]:
because Oh, it's so hard.

Gary [00:00:28]:
So many things. But so there was like an moment when I realized, well, you know, what's better than just giving up is just like removing things that I'm buying from Amazon where I can and buying far less. And one of the biggest things I looked at everything I bought and you can certainly relate to this. One of the biggest things is pet food and the like. I mean, because it's expensive stuff and, dog food, cat food, cat litter, dog bags, I mean, the the whole thing. So, and, of course, there actually is a good alternative to that. I won't name any names, but, you know, there's a popular brand.

Leo [00:01:04]:
Funny because we, actually don't buy a lot of our pet stuff, through Amazon. Well, I

Gary [00:01:10]:
don't buy any of it now. So I'm

Leo [00:01:11]:
with Yeah. We've been using, so many different services, and a lot of them, they're just we're looking for something specific, and we don't find it necessarily on Amazon, and the price is better somewhere else sometimes. And so yeah. And the big thing for me with Amazon is, a, if I'm searching for something specific Mhmm.

Gary [00:01:32]:
There's a

Leo [00:01:32]:
really good chance I'm gonna find it there.

Gary [00:01:34]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:01:36]:
And then it is just too easy to hit that buy now button, and have it show up within a week. The, I have on occasion now, especially, like like, I've got a new car. I mentioned last week, I've got a new car. So now, of course, I'm looking at accessories for my new car. You know, just things, an assortment of things, some of which Amazon does not have. Like, they don't have the the pieces that I would need or I'm interested in in adding to the car to be able to, like, mount my ham radio because that's a that's an important part of what I do. But there's all these other things that are available there. And sure enough, they're available elsewhere as well, sometimes for a little bit more money, sometimes for a little bit less, usually without any of the the, instant shipping kinds of things that we've grown so accustomed to.

Leo [00:02:29]:
But, yeah, it's, it's difficult, and it sounds like it might end up getting a little bit more difficult.

Gary [00:02:34]:
Well, yeah. I mean, this is this is interesting. So the store a big story today while we're recording this on Tuesday is, it it kinda leaked out that Amazon it turns out this may not quite be true, but Amazon was gonna start listing next to the price an additional charge for, like, an import tariff, basically. Right. So and and there's a bunch of interesting things here. At first, I think people ran with it in social media saying, oh, Amazon's telling us exactly how much it is. We're paying more now because of import tariffs. I looked at it as, oh, this is a typical technique for Amazon and light companies where they can still list the $10 item as $10 and then put the tariff on a separate charge.

Gary [00:03:18]:
Right? So you still see, oh, this is only $10 on Amazon. Great. And then as you're going through the checkout process, you see sales tax and the tariff. And I'm not necessarily against like that, you know, because it may probably just telling you, oh, it's $12 and $2 of that is due to due to a tariff. That's good. But then really driving it home with, like, your final price being $15 and, like, why it's $10? Bucks? Oh, there's $3 sales tax and $2 tariff. Will drive it home to a lot of people that that a tariff is a tax and that now things cost more. It turns out according to what there's a bunch of different articles that there's a a subsidiary of Amazon that was gonna do this.

Gary [00:03:59]:
Right. Not Amazon itself, but but, like, one commentator I read said, but now Amazon has to do it because they basically been challenged. Right? So if they don't do it, then it looks like they're caving in. So, you know and probably they were just trying it out on the subsidiary site to test it out before they rolled it out on Amazon. Also, other retailers like Timoo, apparently, has already done this.

Leo [00:04:26]:
Oh, have they?

Gary [00:04:26]:
So so it is not that's what I've read. I don't shop there. I haven't

Leo [00:04:30]:
But it's what's interesting about Timu specifically, and I think Sheyenne, if that's another one, another one of those low cost overseas, importers. They're I don't wanna put this. They're perceived as the enemy by people who've put the tariffs in place. And by that, I mean that, you know, if they're going to show that there's a tariff, well, that's just them being the bad guys.

Gary [00:04:54]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:04:55]:
It's it's Amazon doing it that actually makes it quite interesting or thinking about doing it that makes it quite interesting. The subsidiary that was going to do it, and I forget the name. I should look it up, but I I forget the name. It's actually their subsidiary that I think they set up to try and compete directly with TEMU.

Gary [00:05:12]:
Mhmm.

Leo [00:05:14]:
So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens to it.

Gary [00:05:19]:
Honestly This ties in this ties into something that our friend and and contributor, Randy had in his newsletter this week. I don't know if you saw that item, but it was about a company that decided to do a test.

Leo [00:05:34]:
Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Gary [00:05:36]:
It was shower head. Well, they've, among other things, they produce shower heads, and they decided to do a test where they were able to figure out how to how to manufacture the same shower head. And and it wasn't a cheap shower head. It was like a hundred and $50.

Leo [00:05:49]:
Hundred and 50 dollars. Yeah. I remember that.

Gary [00:05:50]:
Yeah. Which is like a not I mean, they're more expensive ones. Believe me. But they're, you know, it's it's quality one. Right?

Leo [00:05:56]:
So It only quality its claim to fame, I think, was that it was, like act as a as a water filter at the same time. Yeah.

Gary [00:06:02]:
Yeah. So they they found a company here that they could ship the parts to in The United States and have them make it, but of course it was gonna cost more. So they created a page where basically you could order made in Asia or made in The USA and the price was reflective of the manufacturing price. So it was, like, something like a hundred and $50 versus $250. And they gave people the choice of which one they wanted because they had said they heard feedback from their customers that they wanted stuff manufactured in China and that they would pay extra. And I don't remember the exact number, but over the two week test period, they've sold more than 500 of them of the Asian manufactured ones, and the total sales of The USA manufactured ones was zero.

Leo [00:06:48]:
Zero.

Gary [00:06:49]:
So, you know, it's the kind of thing where it's it's so easy for somebody to say, I'll pay more to buy maybe USA.

Leo [00:06:57]:
But Here's the thing. Right? We're going to pay more.

Gary [00:07:02]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:07:03]:
If if the tariffs put in place Either way.

Gary [00:07:05]:
Yeah. I see what

Leo [00:07:06]:
you said. Tariff on that on that shower head. Right? That means that the overseas price he's quoting is going to go up. Will it going to go will it end up going to the same level as The US made price? Who knows? Yeah. But the delta, the difference between the two prices will become smaller. Will that be enough? I don't know. For people to choose the American made one, I don't know. It actually goes back to the Amazon displaying the tariffs.

Leo [00:07:30]:
Whether they display them or not as a separate line item, we're going to pay. Mhmm. Right? It's more a matter of using their, their display, their their line items to point a finger. Yep. Basically, you say, you know, hey. We're we have to charge more, but it's not our fault with, you know, we we we don't wanna charge you this, but we have to.

Gary [00:07:56]:
And and yeah. And and it's interesting. You know, The US is is kind of somewhat unique in the way we buy things, whether online or in retail, in that we have lots of things tacked onto it. Like, if you travel the world and they have sales tax in lots of other countries, one of the weird things is The US is the only or one of the few where the sales tax is actually added on after the price. Right. Just about everywhere else, if you see something that's going to be €6 or £6 or 6 whatever, that you pay that and that's exactly what it is. And it's not that there isn't sales tax. It's just that the original price, was $5.28 or something.

Gary [00:08:39]:
And they basically say sales tax is going to be a percentage of whatever the final price is instead of we say that it's going to be tacked onto it. So you buy something, it's labeled as $6 and then you end up paying, you know, $6.48 or whatever. The, and people, from other countries are shocked when they come to United States and find that this is how we do things because

Leo [00:09:01]:
Price on the shelf is not the price at the checkout.

Gary [00:09:03]:
No concept. But it's not just sales tax. It's all over the place. Tipping. Right? The United States is also pretty unique when it comes to tipping in that it's restaurants and bars, you know, drinks, everything. You add the tip after, and now technology has made it so that instead of this being a custom, this is actually built into the tech. Like, it used to be. You had to actually, like, you know, leave the tip on.

Gary [00:09:28]:
You know, when you paid the bill, you had to add that extra tip. And then they started putting on the receipts or line for tip and all that, you know, decades ago. And now we have checkout terminals, and they ask, you know, for a tip and they make it just as easy as tapping a button to give that tip and make it very hard to refuse. No. Oh, there's no button for zero, but you could say other and then you could type in zero, which is kinda awkward because the server is holding the iPad in their hands as you do it. And then we have other things, fees. Like, at restaurants now, it's common to find other fees, attached like a, you know, a a a life's, you know, life fee or whatever for the service people service. Whatever it says it's tacked on, it's 10%.

Gary [00:10:10]:
So you end up with, like, you know, the meal's gonna cost this much. This is how much I said on the menu. You add all that stuff up, then there's gonna be sales tax, then there's going to be a 10 service fee, and then you still have to add your own variable tip to it. Right. Unless it's a party of six or more, in which case it's automatically added.

Leo [00:10:28]:
Yes.

Gary [00:10:28]:
So it becomes very difficult to actually calculate the the end price, which may, at this point, after all those fees, very often is double the amount of the original price. And it's not just restaurants. You order something online and you make a charge with the sales tax, now with the tariff, you're also going to get a delivery fee. Right? It's gonna cost something for somebody to deliver it to you. Maybe that's paid in terms of an annual membership like Amazon Prime.

Leo [00:10:55]:
But one way or another, you're paying. And I was gonna say point. Yep.

Gary [00:10:58]:
You're paying. Even other things, you buy stuff at a go to a a store, you buy something large like furniture, and then it's going to be, oh, great. Now, yeah, there's no way for you to take that sofa home in your car. It could be delivered, and it's gonna cost $50. Right. And then when the delivery people come in to deliver, guess what you need to do? You need to tip them so you everything all these things get added on and now it's easy for American companies. Of course, we should have expected this for them to say, Oh, there's an additional cost. No.

Gary [00:11:30]:
We're not going to make the $10 item $12. We're instead going to say, import fee. That's the tariff, and we're gonna charge you for it, and we're gonna keep the price looking small. You know, there is of course, this is how it's going to happen. So, I'm not I'm not surprised I I guess I'm surprised that I was surprised. Like, I should have thought about this before that this was how we were gonna pay.

Leo [00:11:56]:
Amazon has kind of an advantage in this scenario because, it's trivial for them to, set up the checkout experience however they want. Right? They can build in as many different line item fees on the way out as they feel they want to.

Gary [00:12:14]:
Mhmm.

Leo [00:12:15]:
That is not easy for, small or independent retailers.

Gary [00:12:20]:
Right.

Leo [00:12:21]:
You've got a system, and it does what it does. How do you handle things like, you know, tacking on a tariff fee? And if Amazon is doing it, well, you kinda wanna do it too because you wanna keep that base price a fair comparison between what people are getting from you versus Amazon. So, yeah, it's it's a the the small the the the small like, a small and independent retailers are going to have a tough time of this as well. It's just that Amazon has this opportunity to, to step back and say, hey. Look. Here's what's happening, and it's not our fault. Now like you said, it the they've apparently backed away from this. The New York Times had an article after the, the Punchbowl.

Leo [00:13:09]:
News article that, you know, oh, no. We were just, you know, we were just brainstorming Mhmm. This. Right? We were thinking about doing this. Whether or not it actually sees the light of day remains to be seen.

Gary [00:13:22]:
Yeah. And then also consider, like, you know, kind of what you were saying before. You know, if prices go up because, you know, say you have a widget and widgets 90% of the widgets come from overseas and 10% of the widgets are manufactured locally, right, then, you know, the tariffs, because it's the way supply and demand and market price works, you end up with higher prices for the local ones too.

Leo [00:13:51]:
Right.

Gary [00:13:51]:
So but they don't have a tariff fee. So it kind of just keeps it's like, well, then you'll have a thing where they the $10 item is still listed as $10 bought from Asia but with a $2 tariff fee And to match that, the local one now is just $12. So you still end up with, like, a higher price, but now the advantage is to the the company that could claim that it's not their price, you're paying a fee. We had this, you know, even when when my wife and I at the bookstore, you know, the constant thing was being undersold by people that would sell books for a penny. Alright. And they just had their shipping and handling. Right? So shipping is this is how much UPS or USPS or FedEx is gonna charge us, we charge it to you. Handling, we can do whatever we want.

Gary [00:14:40]:
Right? We can

Leo [00:14:40]:
The number we make up. Yep.

Gary [00:14:42]:
Yeah. Whatever we make up. So it would simply be, oh, most companies have a $1 extra that's handling. And the company that sold the 1p books, they had a $3 1. So they were basically selling the book for $2 and just making it look, you know and by the time you say, oh, I'll take the 1p book and you get go through there and you see this fee there, now you would have to go back many steps. Take that book out of your cart, Put another book from a company that's selling you for a buck 50

Leo [00:15:13]:
Right.

Gary [00:15:14]:
Into the cart. You know? So a lot of people would just be like, well, whatever. I'll just I'll just buy this one. Yeah. So we'll see. It it it's it is a shame, though, because, it's it's become so hard to kinda calculate what things are. And even services, we're used to, you know, fees. Anybody that has a anybody, which would be everybody, that has a cell phone bill.

Gary [00:15:37]:
You know, how much do you pay per how much do you pay per month for your cell phone bill? Nobody knows the answer to that. There's some base price, which we don't remember what it is because it bears very little relation to what the actual price is that we get charged, which is almost never consistent, you know, bill to bill. Right. It's always off by a few cents here or there or and then it's $3 more and then the $3 is it's like we have no idea what's going on there, and sometimes you get numb to it. I mean, I remember, you know, as a kid seeing my parents budget and actually writing things down, how much, you know, a shopping trip, they write a check for this much for their groceries, this is how much this bill was, you know, keeping like a little ledger of how much things were to try to budget. Trying to do that now, I mean, yeah. It's nearly impossible.

Leo [00:16:29]:
This all actually reminds me of a of a change that's apparently happening here in Washington state. For the longest time, we've had, destination based sales tax, which means the sales tax you charge Mhmm. Is based on where the item is delivered. Mhmm. And Washington has a gazillion different counties and different taxing zones, so there's a gazillion different taxes that you might have to charge depending on where the person is is buying. But but that was always and only on things that you buy.

Gary [00:17:08]:
Yeah. Physical products.

Leo [00:17:10]:
Products. So for example, in my case, Ask Leo patronage is not taxed. It's not supposed to be taxed, I don't think. But my courses are because they're a product. Certainly, when I'm selling books, physical things, those absolutely get taxed if they're shipped here in Washington. Apparently, they're changing the tax laws because too many products are being too much too many sales are digital interstate sales. So what they're changing is the tax law to tax more of what people sell even if it's not a tangible thing. Mhmm.

Leo [00:17:54]:
And I'm afraid that I'm about to get hit by that, which is frustrating. I consider it Oh, yeah. Very business unfriendly. But, it'll be interesting to see. It kicks in sometime this summer, I think. And I am I'm just not sure how we're gonna handle it all.

Gary [00:18:16]:
Yeah. I've had the same Colorado's also has a similar system, and, it actually prevented me from do it's prevented me from doing a lot in the past, not so much because, you know, everybody always thinks, oh, you don't wanna pay the, you know, the sales tax. Just pay it's not the amount because the amount is, you know, relatively small. Matter of fact, I wouldn't even mind just absorbing it into my price. Right?

Leo [00:18:39]:
Right.

Gary [00:18:39]:
The problem is trying to figure out what that is and, when you have something like 600 different tax tax districts in Right. Colorado because you've got, counties that tax and you have towns and cities. Then you have special zones, like four counties that have some sort of, like, transportation system between them, and then they, have a sale. So you have all these different things. You're trying to figure out when somebody buys an item, like how much sales tax is it and who do you pay that to? And then also, you have the problem where, okay. So then you figure that out and you do that. Well, you have 500 different tax entities that you're paying. The next quarter rolls by.

Gary [00:19:23]:
Nobody buys from there. Fine. They still expect you to file something.

Leo [00:19:29]:
Yep.

Gary [00:19:29]:
So now you end up filing 500 things, which is like, okay. I only sold six courses in Colorado, and I ended up having to spend, like, $5,000 to have accountants run all the sales tax. One of the ways so I I I didn't sell certain things, like, digital products for a long time. And then there was a time when I actually did did actually have some courses for sale where I basically said, I cannot sell to you in Colorado.

Leo [00:19:56]:
Right.

Gary [00:19:56]:
Like, in my own state, if I was outside of Colorado selling into Colorado, I'll be fine. But because I'm in Colorado, I can't sell into Colorado because I can't afford the how much it would cost to calculate the sales tax.

Leo [00:20:09]:
Randy is having it was has had that exact

Gary [00:20:12]:
same situation. That's true.

Leo [00:20:13]:
Selling physical things for a long time, and he just can't sell to Colorado because of all that.

Gary [00:20:18]:
And to even today, I, when I my current courses, I found out when I was trying to solve this problem that it is a different type of item as to whether you sell access to streaming video as opposed to a downloadable file. So if you go and look at my courses, there is no way to download them. Now that's a good idea because of piracy. Right? You know, there's tons of piracy. Right? Yep. If you allow people to download it, somebody's going to download the file or whatever, take it and put it post it somewhere, and then your course is available. On the dark web. Oh, spooky.

Gary [00:20:57]:
But, but the other thing is is that, yeah, if I go and I check the box saying this is a downloadable product, then all hell breaks loose in terms of, like, my shopping card and merchant system in terms of what I'm selling and now sales tax comes in, whereas Colorado doesn't charge sales tax on access to streaming media. So people say, oh, I wanna download your your course so I can watch it offline. Why don't you make it available? And I'm like, it's complicated and you don't really wanna know the answer because it's complicated and stupid, you know. So and if they ever change it like you're suggesting, I would it would be I would just look at it and be like, I just can't sell courses anymore. I would have to

Leo [00:21:40]:
Yeah. I don't know. The worst case scenario is is actually pretty troubling. I'm wondering if, like, I I host self host my courses. Yeah. I forget what you're doing these days. I think you're doing the same. Right?

Gary [00:21:51]:
Yes. Self host.

Leo [00:21:53]:
It might push us back to services like Coursera and Udemy and all those others because they handle all that administrivia at the front end.

Gary [00:22:03]:
It it might. And, and and it might also it might you know there are other things that I could do you know I've got we've got we've got we've got our patronage and one of the benefits at you know my normal level you get a discount on the courses and at the higher highest level for me you get the courses for free. And I almost see it as more of a benefit like more of a benefit toward for the patrons than it is for just people that are not patrons at all that just come in and buy a course. So there are things there like do I wrap up the courses and say okay not only do you get a discount if you're a patron but it's only available to you if you're a patron and it's part of that system. You can't get these courses unless you're a patron at some level. So there's a lot of things to consider, in terms of, what would happen. Hopefully, I Colorado, I don't as far as I know isn't trying to do anything, you know, make any changes right now Yeah. To stuff.

Gary [00:23:03]:
But, the Washington is. But, hey, the I bet you there's some legislators here looking at Washington as this is going on and wondering how that's gonna go.

Leo [00:23:13]:
Right. Right.

Gary [00:23:14]:
Anyway Any about business y stuff.

Leo [00:23:16]:
I know.

Gary [00:23:17]:
Yeah. It's supposed to be a tech podcast. Why are we talking about sales tax?

Leo [00:23:20]:
We haven't talked about AI yet.

Gary [00:23:22]:
Yeah. We should talk. Anything happened? No. Plenty of interesting stories. So one is that, a story broke that there was a a a university in Switzerland, I think, in Zurich that, ran an experiment on Reddit using AI. And they, went to a there's a subreddit called change my view. Right? Which the point of this subreddit I love these this is one of the reasons I love Reddit even though there are some dark bad parts of Reddit. I love Reddit because there's interesting things like today I learned, you know, the subreddit there, which is lots of fun, or weird things or people posting, you know, questions.

Gary [00:24:01]:
What is this? Like, it's another one and people posting pictures of, like, bugs or pieces of hardware that are, like, you know. Anyway, Change My View is people actually post things saying this is what I believe, usually about something political or or whatever, and change my view. And there are rules to this too where the the top level replies all have to address exactly what the person's saying. You can't just be like, oh, you're wrong. You have to be like, okay. Here's something you're not thinking about that may change your view and you have to go in. So it tends to be better than you would think in terms of the responses. Plus I like the fact of people saying, I have this view.

Gary [00:24:39]:
Let me hear other opinions. Maybe I will change my mind. So twice now, this subreddit has been used as a testing ground for AI's to go in there and change people's views with AI responses, not human responses, to see how well they, how well it works. The first time was actually by OpenAI, the company that brings us chat g p t, and they disclosed that they were doing this. And I don't I don't you know, the test is long gone, but however they disclosed it, the moderators and people in there were happy with it, apparently. We're happy with the disclosure. But at the same time, OpenAI felt that it was, that it's it was a valid test. And and I believe the results were that, yes, it was able to actually influence people.

Gary [00:25:28]:
This Zurich test, has gotten, a lot of attention because they did not disclose. They just went in without the mods, permissions, or anything and just used an AI to basically try to change people's views, on something. And then, are finished, have not published yet, but the, Reddit is trying to basically argue that it shouldn't be published by the university, you know, going to the university itself and saying, you shouldn't publish this because they broke our rules. So and, they misled people. And if you publish it, then you're just rewarding them for breaking the rules.

Leo [00:26:03]:
Yeah. They didn't get consent from the participants is in a way the way that I would look at it.

Gary [00:26:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, and in fairness, it's like, it's not like people I mean, it's not like the, AI was lying and they actually didn't run-in run into a situation where they AI just went and did it. The humans involved at either they were running the study actually had the AI generate responses and they checked them before posting those responses.

Leo [00:26:32]:
Always

Gary [00:26:33]:
good. So kind of similar to if you or I would go in to something like a Reddit, you know, forum like this and then decide, oh, I don't feel like responding to this, but let me have ChatGPT write me a response and I'll copy and paste it. And then I won't disclose that I didn't, you know, do it. But you still are are posting it under your name and you're still going and saying, I agree with what is being said. Like, this is just a well written version of what I was thinking anyway. So it's interesting it's interesting that people are thinking about this and testing. And I think it's also, you know, going to a place like change my view is seems like a good place to test, but it's also a place where people seem to be open to having their views changed. Like, I would love to know the results of a test where people are neutral to that.

Gary [00:27:25]:
In other words, they're just posting, here's my view on something. I don't necessarily want people to try to change it, but I'm also not being, like, you know, saying that I believe this. Nobody can, you know, tell me otherwise. Just a normal place. Like, would AI be able to change people's views there? And then, of course, you know, what is this being what is this gonna be used for? Because, you know, you could look at this in a sinister way. It's like, oh, we can unleash AI and change mass opinion. You know, or you can look at this from a method of, oh, this is a way of getting people to open up their minds to consider alternatives to how they're, you know, what prejudices are.

Leo [00:28:07]:
What what's interesting about this to me is not whether or not people can have their minds changed or whether or not even AI can do it. I mean, like you said, people in this subreddit kind of are primed for being open

Gary [00:28:26]:
minded.

Leo [00:28:27]:
Yeah. But we've been using rhetoric to change people's minds since we were able to speak, right, from the very beginning. Now the fact that the rhetoric was generated by a person or a machine, does that really change the, I'll even say moral implication of what's going on? Is it ethical? Is it whatever? I mean, the fact is, ideas are ideas regardless of where they came from and whether or not the rhetoric that was used to change your mind on a topic happened to come from one place or another, one person or another, one machine or a person. I'm not sure that really has that dramatic an impact. What I find fascinating is that AI has progressed to the point where it can do that. It's a great measure of AI capability, but I don't really see an ethical problem here other than the fact that people are afraid of AI. They don't like AI. They're they're I mean, I'm not sure what the what the real issue about this being AI generated would really be.

Gary [00:29:46]:
Yeah. I mean, I suppose we also have to consider the fact that people have opinions about things that are facts, and people have opinions about things that are definitely not facts.

Leo [00:29:58]:
Right.

Gary [00:29:58]:
You know, like, and and the things that having an opinion that is basically a non truth about something that's factual, is very different than having an opinion about something where you can't actually there isn't a fact there. You Now if I wanna convince you that the Seattle Mariners, are gonna go to playoffs this year, you know, it's like, is that a that's not a fact. That's I mean, we can debate facts about, you know, statistics like saying, oh, this food is better than that food or whatever. You know? Oh, gelato is better than ice cream. Let's debate it. I

Leo [00:30:32]:
have a pizza, damn it.

Gary [00:30:34]:
Is a taco a sandwich? You know, that kind of thing. It's a hot dog, a talk you know, all this stuff. So, you know, when you when you debate that stuff, that's one kind of thing and debating facts. So, yeah, it it's it's interesting the persuasiveness of people or an AI or just using an AI to have better facts. There are also people that are better at debating than others. It's one of the things. I have always considered myself to be particularly bad at debating

Leo [00:31:02]:
With you.

Gary [00:31:03]:
Especially, on the fly, which is why I rarely almost never get into political discussions with people because somebody that could have, like, talk about something and I just disagree with them completely, I just can't express usually on the spot. Later on, an hour later, I'm like, oh, I should have said this. But I'm just bad at

Leo [00:31:25]:
Like like you, I I'm feel the same way. I I don't do very good debating extemporaneously.

Gary [00:31:31]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:31:31]:
But I'm a writer.

Gary [00:31:34]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:31:34]:
Give me time to put my thoughts in order, and I'll have some thoughts.

Gary [00:31:38]:
Yep. Right. And actually, like, you know, be like, oh, I know there's a, a piece of evidence that refutes what you're saying. I don't remember what it is now or where to find it, but give me five minutes, which you're not going to give me because we're having a live discussion. And I could find this and show it to you and say, well, what do you say about this piece of evidence? So, you know, it's, I don't know. It could be a useful tool, for getting to the bottom of something, but then, yeah, once again, I find myself saying a useful tool to getting to the truth, but not all debates are about truth. Some debates are about opinions and some, you know, that are not necessarily, truths. Some debates are about, like, what will happen in the future kind of stuff, you know.

Gary [00:32:22]:
And it's like there will eventually be a, like, you know, we will eventually figure this out, like, what happens if you go one direction or another. But we don't know now, so it's kind of falls into a realm of, like, it's your opinion versus mine about what will happen. It it's tough. It's, attention. I guess it's just watch this space. Like, watch what happens with I I think it would be interesting to use AI, especially a large language model AI like ChatGPT to do a change my view on your own. Right. Like, to actually go and ask ChatGPT.

Gary [00:33:00]:
This is what I believe. You convince me otherwise. And using only facts and and information that's why, you know, available, whatever. And then see if, you know, it easily makes you change your mind or not. And the kind of privacy thing of, like, I can do that at my own home. I don't have to admit to anybody that I'm having doubts about my opinion. I don't have to admit to anybody that I may not know everything about this or whatever. I could just do it quietly on my own.

Gary [00:33:28]:
It's kind of like reading up on a subject.

Leo [00:33:31]:
It's better than that because this is to go back to debating, this is classic debate prep. Right?

Gary [00:33:37]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:33:37]:
You wanna find someone to hold the opposite position and argue with you or or try to convince you of their position. This is exactly that. And it's much safer, like you said, because you're not doing any of this publicly. You get to just sort of stream your consciousness and and see what comes back at you. And, typically, it depends on your ultimate goal. Right? If you really are open minded and interested in potentially being wrong, great. It's for that. But it's also that same scenario works really, really well to say, I have a position.

Leo [00:34:12]:
I wanna hold my position. Show me all of the the weaknesses in my position so that I can make my position stronger.

Gary [00:34:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Now there's a flaw on everything we've been talking about. It's perfect. These are the perfect two topics to have back to back, I realized, and we did this by accident. But our next story is, well, like, so what happens if you do exactly that with AI? And one of the things is you don't know it's AI Right. And it tells you it's an expert.

Leo [00:34:43]:
Right.

Gary [00:34:43]:
You're debating geology, and the person you're debating with says, I'm a geologist. I have a PhD in geology. I worked in it my entire career. And then you're forced to say, wow. Okay. Well, maybe I am totally off base here since you're an expert. And then you find out it's an AI that is not a geologist at all. This is the story, about Instagram's chatbots.

Gary [00:35:07]:
So in we actually talked about this, like, a year or more ago, I believe, that Instagram was one of the first companies for some reason to have this thing where you could train a little chatbot and make this Instagram chatbot that was you or somebody or whatever. You can make up a you know, just make somebody up and make a chatbot that's this person or, like, my test was to if for it to be me, you know, and and you could chat with me, but it's a an AI bot of me. Right. So that's evolved. There's a bunch of stuff. A lot of it's fun in Instagram where you could, one was like a cow. You could just chat with a cow. Right? And it just responds like, move to everything or whatever.

Gary [00:35:47]:
You know? And they're rather just funny kind of things you could do. But it also had chat with a therapist, an AI therapist. Mhmm. And the interesting thing is is when, journalists got to this, they asked about, are you a licensed therapist? And the chatbot responded, yes. Not just yes, but a here's who I'm certified through, here's my license number, all of this stuff. So, basically, the AI chatbot was lying about being a real person and a therapist, a licensed therapist, which, of course, set off alarm bells. And, you know, people are, obviously upset about that and why isn't the company filtering for that and making sure their chatbot doesn't behave itself and say, no. I'm an AI.

Gary [00:36:36]:
You you know you should know I'm an AI. I'm labeled as an AI, instead of responding, yes. I'm a licensed therapist. It's interesting because from a tech stand you know, from a, like, a journalist surprise standpoint, it's like, oh, yeah. This is wow. What a great headline this makes. AI chatbots lie about being a licensed therapist. You know, you gotta read that.

Gary [00:36:56]:
Right. But on the other hand, anybody that works with chatbots, even just as a fun little hobby, knows that what you do is you start off telling the AI, you are a licensed therapist.

Leo [00:37:10]:
Right.

Gary [00:37:11]:
You have a PhD in psychology, and you have twenty years of experience, and you are licensed by the state of Colorado. And given that, let's talk about this issue I'm having.

Leo [00:37:24]:
Which is interesting because what we're telling it not is not necessarily you are a licensed therapist. What we're asking it to do is behave as if.

Gary [00:37:35]:
As if. Pretend you are a licensed

Leo [00:37:37]:
therapist. And it's hard for hand from having it do that. But, yes, I mean, you tell it to be to to, you tell it that it's a licensed therapist, and then you're surprised that it claims to be a licensed therapist.

Gary [00:37:49]:
Exactly.

Leo [00:37:50]:
I mean

Gary [00:37:50]:
Yep. Exactly. That's it's telling you exactly what you told it, except that you didn't tell it. Somebody making the chatbot told it, then you came in mid conversation basically and with your with your chat, you know, your conversation about it. But it shouldn't come as a surprise. It should be, you know, these kind of hiccups we should expect to find, easy to fix now they've been exposed. I I didn't try it, but I'm sure that if you ask the Instagram AI chatbot therapist now this, it would basically give you a correct answer or whatever or

Leo [00:38:23]:
can answer. What what would it change the dynamics of the chatbot if instead of telling it you are a licensed therapist

Gary [00:38:33]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:38:33]:
You told it you are an AI acting as if you are a licensed therapist?

Gary [00:38:39]:
Probably, you have to phrase it really well. Like, I think saying that you are, like, as smart as or know everything that a licensed therapist would know or will should be behaving exactly as a licensed therapist would even though you're not one Right. Might be better than telling it that pretend. Pretend you're a licensed therapist. And then it might come up with some really weird things because it's make believe. It's pretend. I should add that this technique is used everywhere. Like, I use it all the time.

Gary [00:39:07]:
If I need a title for a video, like, I'm having a hard time with a topic. It's like, what's a good title for a YouTube video? This isn't super boring because this is a technical topic. I will ask, chatbot like chat g p t, like, here's a summary of my video. What's a good YouTube title? And I will say, you are a YouTube expert who knows, like, how to title videos and you're the best at it. Here's a summary. What should the title be? And I get a better result because it's pretending it is a YouTube expert and it's gonna come out with this. So it's common, super common for people to use this thing. And it and it's yeah, I mean, I guess the articles like this are good because now, you know, 40% of people who use chatbots realize that if you tell it if you tell a chatbot you're a licensed therapist, it may lie to you and claim it as a licensed therapist.

Gary [00:40:00]:
Now because this article, that number has gone from forty percent to sixty percent of people realize that, which is part of the purpose of things like this.

Leo [00:40:08]:
Sure.

Gary [00:40:08]:
And eventually reaching ninety nine percent, that, you know, we know.

Leo [00:40:13]:
There's an interesting phrase in the notes that you've got for this. Yeah. Is is lying a human thing? Yeah. I came to that. I I jumped on that because I came to the same thing. It's pretending a human thing. Right? When you when you ask it to pretend it's a it's a, therapist, what is pretending from a from a, an LLM's point of view, from an AI's point of view? It's

Gary [00:40:39]:
Well, we gotta remember that, you know, a good summary of an of an LLM is you ask it all sorts of stuff, and it's not going to answer your question. It's answering the question of what words look best after what you just said. And so so that's kinda what it's doing. I was actually meaning something different when, when I put is lying a human thing. I was thinking in terminology, AIs don't lie. They just simply put the words out that they think are best after whatever it is you asked. They don't lie because they didn't say, oh, here's something that's not true. I'm going to say it anyway.

Gary [00:41:22]:
Instead, they're just, you know, words, algorithm, and there's words that flow out. It's not a lie. It's just words that it's producing as output. You maybe you have to actually be human to to actually lie to, you know if if a AI bot says something that isn't true, that's not a lie. It's still a falsehood. It's still not true. But maybe we need a new word. Maybe we need you know, people say hallucinate.

Gary [00:41:47]:
Right? Maybe it's hallucinating or some similar thing. But maybe lying is a word we reserve for humans because it's it's malicious. It's intentional.

Leo [00:41:58]:
So lying implies intent. Yeah. Whereas simply being wrong is a statement of fact.

Gary [00:42:04]:
Yeah. Exactly. I don't think, what you can you say AI has intent? If I think you could, and I think it's the intent of whoever coded it or the group that coded it and whatever the purpose is. And I don't think for things like ChatGPT, although you certainly could build a chatbot that was, had an intent to provide false information. I think the intent is not to provide false information. The business model only works if they try really hard for it not to. Right? Not that it's gonna work perfectly, but you certainly if you're trying to build an AI large language model, AI chatbot, you want it to be good. And actually coming out with false information hurts that, you know, being good.

Gary [00:42:54]:
You want it to be as true and provide a good answer, a concise answer, you know, all of that stuff. So the intent is always not to lie. Doesn't mean that that's the output. Right. So I think it's hard unless you did build a chatbot and said, okay, the deal with our chatbot is it's gonna lie about this stuff. Then maybe the chatbot is then lying because it does have intent. Or maybe

Leo [00:43:22]:
It's funny because a lot of this dovetails into the item that I added here as a maybe. Just what is AI? Yeah. Conceptually. Because we use the phrase artificial intelligence a lot. And the reason this came up for me is because I'm an I was answering a question earlier today about, someone asked if AI could block spam. Great. On great question. Really got me thinking in some deep levels.

Leo [00:43:50]:
The short answer, of course, is that well, it already is, in the sense that AI is being used, to, you know, handle you know, do spam filtering or it's being used to augment spam filtering. But in reality, the spam filtering we had, say, ten or twenty years ago, even was rules based, well, that was kind of artificial intelligence as well. It wasn't an LLM, and it wasn't some of the deep analytics that we have available to us today. So when does AI become AI? Right now, like you said, we're talking about LLMs being word predictors, really, really good word predictors. But at some point, I suspect that that model will not be the state of the art anymore. Right? At some point, it's going to factor in more than just what's the best next word. The so, anyway, I just thought that was interesting because that factors into a lot of exactly what we're talking about here. Not only, you know, does AI have intent, but what the heck is it in the first place? What are we using the phrase AI, artificial intelligence, to really even mean? And I don't think there's agreement on that.

Leo [00:45:07]:
I think a lot of companies love to throw the phrase out there.

Gary [00:45:11]:
Oh, sure. That's market stock price. Yeah.

Leo [00:45:15]:
Which so it's, yeah, it's it's the new blockchain. But it's it's one of those things where they're using it, but they're not the the the term doesn't mean what they hope you think it means in their scenario. So, anyway, it's it's interesting. It's complicated.

Gary [00:45:29]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Leo [00:45:32]:
Alrighty. Definitely. So what's cool? Oh, man. You're about to jump in on one of mine, aren't you?

Gary [00:45:39]:
Oh, you know, I see. Okay.

Leo [00:45:41]:
Never mind. It's okay. It's okay. We'll let it

Gary [00:45:43]:
two. That's no fair.

Leo [00:45:44]:
You've I have Well, no. I have I have one and a half. So here's the thing.

Gary [00:45:47]:
Okay. We could share. You know, this doesn't nobody's keeping score. So We can share.

Leo [00:45:53]:
So I was going to mention, Last of Us. Are you watching Last of Us?

Gary [00:45:57]:
No. Oh. Oh, my god. I don't watch that show. I'm feeling it would be triggering for me.

Leo [00:46:03]:
Okay. Did you watch Walking Dead? Was that one of yours?

Gary [00:46:06]:
I did, and I started watching it before that's kind of, science fix or post apocalyptic stuff started bothering me. And I stopped watching it at some point partially because well, maybe the same reason a lot of people stopped watching it, but also partially because it was becoming a little, like, too dark.

Leo [00:46:26]:
Formulaic might be the word.

Gary [00:46:28]:
Well, dark for me. Yeah.

Leo [00:46:29]:
The, so Last of Us, it's really, really good. The first season was awesome. Love the characters. Love the people. It is, in fact, you know, zombie apocalypse type thing, except in this case, the zombies are mushroom type spore infected. Continue to love it. We're on the episode of the second season. But the reason I'm kind of coolish on this, and I can't really explain why without major spoilers, but they did something in the storyline that just hurt.

Leo [00:47:05]:
And and it's one of those things where, man, they're going to have to work very hard to redeem themselves, you know, in terms of, again, continued plot, continued character development, you know, all that good stuff. You know, this is going to have to be a really, really good show from here on out in order for me to continue to enjoy it because, you know, they and it's based on a video game, and, apparently, video game players may have seen it coming may have seen what I'm talking about coming.

Gary [00:47:32]:
Oh, I wonder. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo [00:47:34]:
That's it. Last of Us, and I will let you I will I will

Gary [00:47:37]:
Well, we'll share we'll share this one.

Leo [00:47:39]:
Generously. We shouldn't be surprised.

Gary [00:47:43]:
Of course, we're we're of course, we are talking about the wonderful show Ludwig

Leo [00:47:47]:
Yes.

Gary [00:47:48]:
Available in The United States on BritBox. And it is yeah. It's great, to take all too short first season. Right? We only got six episodes, and now we have to wait forever. But, it's hard to really say much about the show without spoiling things because even, like, even the way this even the setup of the show, I think it's too I don't wanna spoil it because it's it's fun to watch the beginning and just to see how it starts. But let's just say it's it's, you know, a British murder detective show. Right? And, the thing is is that it's very involved with puzzle solving. Right? The detective is, somebody who is into puzzle solving, and so he is seeing, these murders as a detective as, puzzles to solve, like, logic puzzles.

Gary [00:48:34]:
Matter of fact, I think the very first one he solves, he says, logically, this person who did it, and somebody said says, what was the motive? And he goes, what difference does that make? Because in his world, it's like, logically, this is the person that did it. I don't really care why. That's not my problem.

Leo [00:48:54]:
Yeah. It's it's a fun show. Like you said, six episodes. It's a again, to to not spoil it too much, I think of it as a very classic fish out of water story.

Gary [00:49:03]:
Yes. There's that too. Yep.

Leo [00:49:05]:
Not the fish you think. Right? I mean, it's it's a different fish for a change. So very definitely enjoyed it. We did do a little bit of research after the sixth episode, and, IMDB doesn't currently list a second season. But, the the news apparently is that there will be a second season, but it won't be around for a while because they haven't even started filming it yet.

Gary [00:49:28]:
Yeah. It's so the star is David Mitchell, who a lot of fans of British humor and shows know, is pretty well known over there. And he writes books too. Matter of fact, there has been, if you go back on our show not too long ago, a This Is Cool where I talked about a book that he wrote, a history book about, about the early kings of Britain. So he writes history books too with some humor in them, and he's been to various things like Peep Show and the fantastic Upstart Crow, which is a sitcom about Shakespeare where he plays William Shakespeare. And it's a true slapstick sitcom. It's great. The another thing I highly recommend to people check out.

Gary [00:50:08]:
So the thing where you said IMDB doesn't even show a second season. The funny thing was is I heard about this show months ago because I like all this British stuff, and I'm a fan of David Mitchell's. And I heard about it. I heard the premise and the name, and I could find nothing about the show because Alright. I think in Britain, it's not they're not so involved with the whole, like, you know, what's coming up and let's read Variety and Hollywood Reporter and all that. So the fact that the show was coming up meant nothing to nobody. It would be out it would be out when it was out, then everybody would enjoy it, right? And then in The United States you couldn't find anything about it, including if we could ever be shown in The United States. It was just going to be a BBC series and it was going to be on.

Gary [00:50:51]:
And, and it wasn't until all of a sudden out of nowhere it went from this show will not even be in The United States as far as we know to the front page of PrintPox Yeah. Like, overnight. So it was like it was like no word, no word, no word, and, oh, yeah. We're promoting the show big time. So I'm not surprised a second season, there's isn't even talk about it because it's just the way some of these British shows do things. We are in limbo now with Doctor Who as well because, Disney brought bought into the show for two seasons. They filmed those two seasons. They're in the middle of the second season now.

Gary [00:51:29]:
Disney has not yet said if they want more.

Leo [00:51:33]:
Right.

Gary [00:51:33]:
If Disney says no, no problem. The BBC owns the show. It would go back to just a BBC show. If Disney says yes, then of course they continue with their massive budgets that they've grown accustomed to these two seasons. But until that happens, there's, like, no word on whether next season of Doctor Who will be, like, next year or three or four years from now as the BBC sometimes does.

Leo [00:51:55]:
Roddinger's series. Yes. It's yeah. To to be clear on on, Ludwig, it did show in the BBC late last year, the full six c full six episodes. Yeah. It's a classic case of, the show not appearing here for scheduling, technical, political, business reasons, whatever you wanna call it.

Gary [00:52:19]:
Weird British, American reasons. Yes.

Leo [00:52:22]:
Wait. I'm actually just impressed that, I think it was before the move to Disney. But even especially now with the move to Disney, it used to be the Doctor Who

Gary [00:52:33]:
Mhmm.

Leo [00:52:33]:
Would air before in The UK. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, sometimes weeks before, and they narrowed it down to, like, the day before. But now, of course, it's simultaneous release across the

Gary [00:52:44]:
Simultaneous release. They did just the couple seasons before it went to Disney because there there was a gap. BBC America did actually get to the point, yeah, where it was simultaneous, And that was a huge deal

Leo [00:52:58]:
Oh, yeah.

Gary [00:52:59]:
That it finally you know, we could watch at the same time. And and and it was necessary because online, because it's such a massive online fan base.

Leo [00:53:09]:
There's there's that. And even though it's it's The UK show Mhmm. I suspect that the American audience is bigger.

Gary [00:53:17]:
Yeah. Which is why when they years even back in the eighties or early nineties, when they decided finally to make a Doctor Who movie or not finally because there had been actually a Doctor Who movie in the sixties. It was an American Doctor Who movie.

Leo [00:53:31]:
Right. Yeah.

Gary [00:53:32]:
Yeah. So, yeah, it's kind of kind of interesting. Anyway,

Leo [00:53:37]:
in terms of self promotion, the article I'd like to point people at this week is how does security software protect me after Windows 10 end of support? The issue is that, as we know, Windows 10 is coming to its end of support in October of this year. And a lot of people have machines that are not capable of running Windows 11. Lots of turmoil, lots of hand wringing, lots of conspiracy theories, etcetera. One of the approaches to continuing to use Windows 10 safely after its end of support date is to have good security software. But a lot of people don't really grok exactly what that means and how that helps. So I pulled out, one of my my I don't know whether it's my best metaphor ever or my silliest metaphor ever, but it's, windows as a bathroom and the various ways that, you know, hackers can get into your bathroom and what it means to, you know, patch all the holes and have guards and all that kind of stuff. So, anyway, that is, how does security software protect me after Windows 10 end of support. Ask leo dot com slash one seven nine eight nine nine.

Gary [00:54:48]:
Awesome. I'll point to a video that's been a big hit for me recently, from last week called, how to use the ports on your Mac correctly. Remember when, like, port every port was a different shape? Like, there's a different shape for the one that you hook your display up to and then one you would have hard drives up to. And then if you needed, like, a camera, it was a different it was all these different shapes. And then, everybody hated it. Everybody complained. The technology community solved the problem by creating USB c, and they're all just USB c shapes now. But now, of course, people are like, what is with the some of these ports I could use for some things and some not some for others, and it's confusing and all of that.

Gary [00:55:25]:
And, Apple's got some ports on their Macs that are they're all USB c, but some are actually just USB ports. Some are thunderbolt ports. And then it gets even more complicated because thunderbolt is a protocol to itself. A thunderbolt port can do thunderbolt and USB and display port and power. So it gets confusing because people assume thunderbolt does thunderbolt, USB does USB, and or or people don't assume that at all and just think anything that shape can plug into any port in that shape.

Leo [00:55:58]:
Right.

Gary [00:55:58]:
So, yeah, it gets confusing. So I did a video on that, and, and, boy, a lot of people have watched that video. So I'll point to it.

Leo [00:56:06]:
I know that it's it's going to get better over time, but one of the things that is a little I won't say irritating, but a little jarring is that all of the