The Zucking Sound of Failure

JR Reynolds: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's that time of the week again, Yelling at Robots, episode 15. Joining me today, my co-host and co-pilot, not just on the show, but in life in general. He is my guru, my personal guide, my spiritual advisor, one Ian Thelonius Fosberry. Together, no wonder Mary's mad at you. And together we are yelling with the devil. Action. Get ready. It's time for world-famous Yelling at Robots, starring Tech Legend Joshua Raphael Reynolds and Ian Thalonius Fosbery. The show starts now. Just FYI folks. I'm here in the attic. ⁓ it is ⁓ the hottest day of the year in the Hags thus far. ⁓ it's probably about forty degrees Celsius up here. So and Ian has Ian has made me turn off my fan. You guys don't have A C? No one has AC in Europe, man. Yeah, it is. Okay, so this is a thing. It gets up to thirty degrees and people just start dying, to be honest. Yeah, the Europeans in America are losing their minds right now because they're all getting a nice taste. ⁓ yeah, they just they're getting a sample germ. Sure. You're getting sample of that. They're getting their ⁓ there's a there's also apparently a problem of Europeans trying to ⁓ smuggle large bottles of ranch dressing around the country or or out of the country. It is pretty good. I mean once you've had a taste th they're tasting, they're gonna get spoiled. This is just gonna be your Caesar dressing. No, this is a unique, beautiful American export. In fact, in Europe They don't call it cool ranch Doritos. They call it ⁓ American Doritos. American style Doritos. It's like cool no, it's cool American. That's what it is. Cool American Doritos. And it's like, yeah, this is one of the best things we've ever done as a nation. Amazing. Greetings, Foz. Greetings to you, brother. ⁓ here we are for another show. ⁓ and by the way, sorry, let me just go ahead and start a timer. ⁓ Foz, you wanna tell the people about what I have instituted and foisted. ⁓ we're trying timers again. That's what happens? Although it it sounds like this time he's just going a hard thirty minutes. Thirty minutes timing per segment. We're not nope, no timing per segment. Thirty minutes and I just jump there was someone someone is at the door. This is cutting into our time by the way. Thirty minutes and ⁓ I mean I'm s hey, timer's timer's timing. ⁓ God, how do I set the timer for 30 minutes? I'm using a meditation timer, so it gives me a nice kind of like boom at the end. Yeah, it's gonna be pretty sweet. Okay, timer has begun. There's 26 minutes left. I'm just estimating. ⁓ wow, he actually he's okay. He's he's not doing 30 starting now. ⁓ no. I mean, according to the clock here, it says three ⁓ eight. So I don't know. I mean, I feel like you you sandbag the minute there. But then the timer is twenty twenty nine minutes, man. And once that timer goes off, it is all right, folks, thanks for joining us. Won't even get that. He's just gonna hang up. It depends who's talking. If you're talking, heart out. If I'm talking here by myself. Yeah. Well right, I gotta go. Yeah. Today we're gonna talk about two topics and two topics only. We'll talk about just the dumpster fire of Meta. What ⁓ what has happened at Meta. And ⁓ we'll also talk about what was loops. Loops. Loops. ⁓ Let's catch up with the boys while they chat about nothing in particular. You know, we're in a group chat with some old colleagues. It was a group lovely, lovely conversations happening in there and somebody was kinda talking sh to Foz about our pocket. He asked me a question and I asked him, is this what you mean? And then we got into a little thing. But it wasn't even a little thing. Love you, Timo. I was in a shitty mood. You know, you poke the bear and you're gonna get mauled, Timo. Remember that, pal. needless to say, ⁓ and this is I think we'll get into this when we kind of get into our our witty banter. ⁓ we'll talk about kind of our own usage and attitude towards AI. ⁓ this is something that also that also came up in the podcast, just in terms of like, are we naysayers? Are we are we haters? Are we this is Alexi, Ale you're in the conversation with Alexi kind of about did you not pick the was that not your ⁓ you mean about the last episode? Yeah. ⁓ how we set Fable up for failure? We yeah, we set Fable up for failure. We set buddy, I think your premise was fine. You were like, I was told this is AGI. Show me. Yeah. Prove it. Prove it, Fable. Although I I was at a ⁓ I was at a Databricks conference all week. I sent you the screenshot. Apparently AGI is here, according to their CEO. Slide slide in the show notes. It's it's it's yeah. But that's that's kind of weird. That's kinda weird to have It was such a false it was such a false premise that he was 'cause he put up ⁓ one of the benchmark questions, the twenty five hundred stupid benchmark questions, and it was it was like a really complicated fing like post mat and like postdoc mathematics question. ⁓ okay, okay. That most of them can solve now. And he was like, Can anyone in the audience does anyone know what the answer is? And I like, No, of course like two people raise their hands 'cause play a That's databricks. No, no, it's Databricks. These are, you math nerds. Yeah, but the ⁓ but the my problem is that like it like I know that guy to be like a technical co founder, CE like he's the co founder of Databricks and he's a he's he's an engineer. I don't think it's even that. I mean, we've talked about AI psychosis. Like never underestimate the power of delusion when using these magic chaos machines, you know? And that's like yeah. there I ha I was listening to ⁓ a great podcast today. ⁓ I think it's called Galaxy Brain. ⁓ but it was Cory Doctorow. I don't do you know have you gotten into Cory Doctorow at all? He's the he's the a writer. Great band name, that's for sure. And ⁓ Galaxy Brain. ⁓ yeah, that is a it might also be a band name. They're a band and podcasters. And they interview tech podcasts. ⁓ wait, actually No. We are Galaxy Brain. ⁓ no, so they were talking to Cory Doctorow who You know, he was one of the creators of ⁓ a very early fantastic blog called Boing Boing. and writes opinion pieces, things like that on technology, but he's also the person who coined the term inshidification, the term and the concept of inshidification. And he was ⁓ wait, wait, wait, yes, I know who that is. Yes. He's got a book called Inshidification, and I think he's also got a book th called The Reverse Centaur. ⁓ I can't remember what the second part of that is. I'm trying to picture what that is in my head in your buttons. Okay, I think I got it. In some way, shape, or form. But reverse centaur is this concept of humans there to serve machines. So humans as in service of machine. So it's kind of and and the parallel that he drew or kind of the example he drew was Amazon delivery drivers. Yeah. Yeah. You wanna Slow push, yes. Amazon delivery drivers, which essentially well I didn't know how intensely instrumented their vans were, but the yeah. And it's kind of like so So the frame basically is that ⁓ Yeah, they're they're really there in service of the machine that is the the logistics machine and logistics software that is saying when packages need to be where and how how long they have to deliver and whatnot. And it's f Horrible and it's awful and it's just I've never thought about it this way and this feels really bad. It feels bad, man. It feels bad, yes. Re the reverse centaur is not it's definitely not like a delightful sex position. No, not at all. But somebody's getting f and it's So anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is I mean I'll I'll I'll grab a copy of the book and and ⁓ see if I can have a read through. Cause it I mean like this is the kind of stuff and the kind of like just critique thinking conversations that I think are really important in the world in which we're living right now. Nineteen minutes thirty-three seconds left. Should we get to our first topic? Probably. Always keep an AI clone handy to take the blade. Meta suah, so ⁓ for those of you that haven't heard, meta did some more layoffs. For those of you who haven't heard, meta fing sucks. Meta still fing sucks, but it's gone so fing mental inside that it is, yeah. Okay, so please go. CTO says he's never seen morale in their engineering organization dislow. Of course not. That's crazy. Their own CTO is saying that. Yeah. And then is it and then and then wait Don't worry though, we're gonna fix it, cause you guys are gonna get some free snacks. I saw his interventions. I did also see the interventions that he mentioned, and it was I was like, Well, we're bringing the foosball table back. So good news, you are still gonna be. So actually, this is a perfect example. These metaverse employees who are being forced to do data labeling, those are reverse centaurs. This is the story. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So one of the other so it's not just bit of the details. Yeah. Yeah. That's a very good point. ⁓ more dystopian is that they've taken actually sorry, let me the there was a really great new full newsletter from ⁓ our old friend ⁓ Gurley ⁓ Oroge. but what the ⁓ yeah, one of the more crazy things that's happened is they so they laid off ten percent of their engineering. ⁓ team, twenty to thirty percent of their engineering team has just been reassigned to full time data labeling. So we don't think you feel sh enough about having all your friends fed. We're also gonna make you sit in front of a computer screen and tag data all day. Just tag data. Just like Yeah, baby. ⁓ ⁓ you know what I would do, Faz, would be I would get the agent to tag the data for me. So I would actually use my Claude subscription and be like, Claude, tag all this data. Yeah, so they so they've done that. And he's, you know, ⁓ has many has many ⁓ contacts ⁓ at all these companies because he's been in the he's been in the biz for a long He knows everyone, respect. It's amazing. Yeah. And so everyone's in the article what he talks about, ⁓ in his newsletter, which is sorry, I forgot to say the name, why is Meta destroying its engineering organization? ⁓ he talks about outside of that, what are we at now? ⁓ thirty percent plus ten percent, forty percent, the other sixty percent are just sitting around anxiously waiting for either getting laid off or being reassigned to data labeling. And it has created this horrible death spiral of people working there. one of the ⁓ things in his newsletter that he shows is that the signups because obviously you can see the signups for like these sites like interviewing.io and that sort of stuff, you can see things from people's resumes or if they're using their Facebook.com email, ⁓ the signups from Meta have just exploded in the past month and a half. Folks, ⁓ piece of advice when you are applying for a job outside of your current job, do not use your work email. Just a suggestion. They they might be watching. And then your double data labeling motherfucker Like we're gonna make you we're not just gonna make you label data, we're gonna make you label like the most horrendous Or also too, people are gonna see that you're from meta and they're gonna be like gonna offer you a job as a data labeler. ⁓ the irony. The the terrible, bitter irony. It's like ⁓ but he goes through a lot of stuff in the in his newsletter talking about a lot of different crazy stuff. But one thing that he did mention that I I had forgotten about was the ⁓ Instagram Snafu of what feels like years ago, but was like what, three weeks ago or something like that, where their AI, their new AI bot was just like, Hey, you want to reset your password? And like, yeah, please, here's my email. And it's like, sure thing, that's definitely the email on the account. Not and gives just gives you a password reset link. And now you are the ⁓ now you are the captain of Obama's Instagram. It was also like right right before the Obama presidential library launch. So it's just like, guys, you know, timing. Come on. ⁓ but the interesting thing that he talks about is again, because he's spoken to people on the inside, ⁓ is that that issue was definitely AI was at the heart of that of that outage. ⁓ of course. Because it was just shipping code nobody was looking at and all that fun stuff. The interesting about that is that he's this entire article is he's talking about that Meta actually used to have one of, if not the best, engineering cultures in Silicon Valley. And it has just gone straight down that toilet. Yeah. it's pretty sad. The thing to remember about Mark Zuckerberg. The Zuck. Who we like to kick and take the piss on. You take the piss at? What do we take the out? Take the piss out. I'd rather take the piss on, to be honest. Like you could keep your piss. I've got more for you. Okay. ⁓ This is my kink. ⁓ but it's only billionaires. That's the problem. It's like my kink is only hard and expensive. It's really hard to get off. ⁓ nine minutes and twelve seconds. ⁓ no, so Mark Zuckerberg. The interesting thing about Mark Zuckerberg, and I'm not sure what what this would look like. You know, he r has retained, I think, total control and ha it's a extremely weak board, board of directors at at ⁓ is it is is it's like a Snapchat situation. I I I y I I if it's if Snapchat is basically like the the CEO has total power and the board is just a rubber stamp. It's like not even shareholders have no voting rights at Snapchat. ⁓ yes, it's the same at it's the same at Meta, I believe. ⁓ and so It's like, yeah, you know, Mark's the Zuck gets an idea and is like, no, we're pushing the chips all in and there's no breaks. There's nobody to break him. And I think as a result, you see him kind of breaking his company and breaking a lot of people in in the in the in the course of it. And the crazy thing to me is Meta, like horrible company, by the way, doing awful, awful things to human existence and attention, but extremely profitable. Like great business, great line of business, super profitable. They didn't need to do jack sh It's all ego and billionaire like desire. And totally But then they've also done all this all the cap acts in the last twelve months on data centers and stuff. Like they're they're in a they're in a Google situation where they're like they've they they're extremely profitable and they had they had a mountain of cash behind them. Yeah. The mountain is almost gone. I mean, that still was the beginning. Like that also did not need to happen, that amount of capital expenditure. Like they could have just None other stuff with that money and like let let someone else do the AI stuff. Like you clearly suck at it. So anyways. Shout out to Apple. Just don't play. Yes. Yes. And and here they are. This is by the way, this is like a classic Apple play, is to not be first and not be patient. Innovators. Be patient and then come in and be like, Hmm, yeah, okay. Yeah, we can actually make this good and do their thing. And we'll see. I hear s I hear the new Siri is is pretty top. So we will s at least compared to sort of compared to the old Siri, but that's not saying much. So we shall see. Okay. Six minutes and fifty-four seconds. Loops. If you haven't mastered agent loops to do all the things, you're a stupid piece of sh. Anyways, loops. Yeah. ⁓ I don't I haven't done much I I th I'm just okay. So I think I searched for loops in Twitter. And now my entire freaking feed is loops, loops, loops. Figure out how to do loops. Boris from Claude, it's saying that I don't write code, I write loops. Surprise. Guy from Anthropic says that you should be using loops to run your loops. Like by the way, a harness is just a loop. Jesus Christ. Yeah, but a harness is a loop that stops too often. This is the thing. It's like loops. They want to keep the ⁓ Money, the money printer running. Money printer go burp. I'm sick and tired of hearing anthropic and open AI people tell us about how we should be using the agents. And every recommendation is like, ⁓ do this because it'll be so much more productive. And by the way, you'll be giving us all your money. It's exhausting, it's annoying, and it's a little insulting. I would like to try loops. I'm not doing it just out of spite. Well, no, and this is kind of like you l you look at ⁓ Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, who works for OpenAI now, who's posting that yeah, I mean he's got loops, he's got he has a whole software factory that so he claims of agents, building agents, doing things, building software, like full software factory. And he's spending, you know, one point two, one point three million bucks in tokens a month on that. Well, great loops, man. Like cool loop, bro. Well cool. Cool loop, bro. Also, well one, like like can we see any of the software? Like what are you actually making? For one. And two, you know, it's like, ⁓ what are the returns on the software that you've made whether you're a millionaire and I have also greatly you know? Yeah. Well and and it's like and f ⁓ finally, this is a luxury you have by nature of where you are. And I I've I mean I wonder, you know, for kind of Boris, like Boris ⁓ the interviews I've seen with Boris, he seems like a very nice guy. He does usually seem like he's incredibly high. Like I don't know. He just is I mean, like what else are you gonna do while the agents are doing everything for you? Hey man, I just tell what to do. I make a loop and then I f and let a spleef, you know? That's but they're they've gotta be totally disconnected from reality because they don't face any restrictions on their token use and they have access to all the best models. And yeah, I'll make a loop for Mythos because I can. And and great, but the other part, and I think what you're tapping into, which is also s just it's the hype train is moving so fast and there's so much momentum behind it that it's any words that are uttered out of any of these guys, like Boris gave one talk and said something about loops, and now it is flooded with if you're not doing loops. Loops and it's like and it is it's It's like it is exhausting, but also it's like how do you what do you do? I don't know like there's nothing to do. There's nothing to do. Just let it The only way to stop a loop is to outloop it. I don't know how we do that. All right, folks, we're nearing the end of the show. Faz, any any thoughts? ⁓ do you want to give a any close out on the loops? Any Any we'd like to close the loop. You want to close the loop. Yeah. You want to close the loop? No. ⁓ it's good to see you, buddy. Yeah, you too. fifty six seconds. Any thoughts on the Any thoughts on the new format? Any feedback on the new format for the show? And by the way, wait for the final cut before I pass judgment. Could be amazing. Could be that the time your time pressure might just make us sharp as goddamn like samurai swords. ⁓ yeah, and so just for those of you who are listen watching, ⁓ I want one word by the way for our listen watchers. Yes, I've basically convinced Fozz, cajoled, pressured Fozz to for the next ⁓ five episodes, six episodes, have this hard thirty minute limit and see if we can just bang ⁓ out. This is kind of a way also for me to just lighten my edit load. just trying to get caught up on work. I'm just trying to get caught. I got so much work to do. And this is like another full-time job. cool. Well, thanks for joining us. ⁓ this has been another episode of Yelling at Robots, speedrunning edition. That's a wrap. Alright, it was stuck. It was stuck. You just survived another episode of Yelling at Robots. Better luck next time.