FBI Recovers Deleted Data, AI Enters Politics, Scams Surge | TSG Ep. 1019

Hello everybody. Welcome Techstrong gang. Uh, it's a Friday.

It's a Friday before Valentine's Day, and it's a three day weekend for a lot of folks out there. So thanks for joining us. I know a lot of you got plans, but we're gonna have a little chat about some of those plans later in the show.

But first of all, I'm going to introduce our guest, John Schwartz from the West Coast. How you doing, buddy? How's things?

Good things are good. A beautiful Day. All right.

Then we have Jack Poller. Jack, how are you, Uh, getting unfrozen. So things are getting much better now that the temperature's back to normal.

All right. Jag might actually venture outside, who knows? And then Tracy Reagan, you're still out in the desert.

Are things cold in the desert or what's, what is the temperature out there? Uh, we're probably around maybe 37, 38 today. All Right.

Well, I'm going to jump to our first story then, because, well, you know, New Mexico and Arizona aren't that far away, but, um, Jack, you have a, a story that's up on Security Boulevard talking about how they pulled the data off the camera that was used or was outside of Samantha Guthrie's mom's house, and it wasn't connected to the cloud, but they managed to pull the data off of that and get some video feeds out of it, which I think, you know, everybody said, well, it's Exogen circumstances, so it's probably a good thing. But a lot of security people and a lot of compliance people looked at that and said, say what again? Come again.

How did that work? So, walk us through, how did they actually get data from something that wasn't connected to the cloud? Well, so it was, let me just correct that, make sure people understand they, and there's two interesting aspects to the story.

The first is that the camera was connected to the cloud, but her, uh, subscription wasn't active. Whether it expired or she never had it, I don't know. So according to Google's terms, that means that the data gets uploaded.

It was a Google Nest camera, the data gets uploaded and then is deleted in three hours, roughly three hours is what they say. So it's uploaded to the cloud, so it can do AI detection and some other different things. You know, see if, you know, there's a person at the door or whatever it is, or an animal walking by.

One of the interesting aspects of the story is, and I wish our fearless leader, Alan, was here, uh, in the immortal words of, uh, in Montoya, uh, Google would like to say, you keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means. And that's the word, delete it. So when you delete data in the cl in your cloud and you tell, you know, Google says we've deleted it, they don't actually delete the data.

They just basically say that sector of the disk or that particular data is not being used anymore, and they lose track of it, so to speak. Right? And at some point, somewhere in the future, that spot on the disk where that data is stored will be used.

But given how much storage Google has, that could take a very long time. So with the help of FBI's urging, Google Engineers went and started scrubbing and tracing back their metadata, trying to find where the video camera data from that was uploaded from, uh, the Guthrie household was stored. They found that, and were able to capture at least part of that and generate an image of the, uh, supposed kidnapper who came to the front door.

So again, that's sort of aspect one is deleted, doesn't really mean deleted. The second part that's interesting is the legal aspect of this is, this is a camera at a private residence's door. So how is the able the FBI and the police department able to get this data?

And the answer is that legally the data is not owned. The video data is not owned by the person whose camera it is. It's owned by the cloud service where the data was uploaded, and it's called third party.

And so the FBI can go and request that that third party give it over, and Google happily gives it over, as does Amazon with Ring doorbells. And many other data providers will happily give the data over upon request. That is their data that they own to gif.

They can give any metadata that they have and deleted data. You said you don't care about it anymore, it's deleted. They can give it away.

So that sort of raises a huge red flag with CISOs and security folks and compliance folks from a security data retention, data security pop, pop, um, position is how do you actually control your data that is in the cloud when you say it's deleted and it's not really deleted, and who is allowed access to it, and what access can they get? So now all of that traces back to some, I guess I'm gonna call it ancient, maybe not, you know, ancient times, but it's an ancient ruling from the Supreme Court about, well, who can gain access to third party data, and the government apparently can, um, basically subpoena that data at, at will, and the third party vendor has to cough it up. And, and it seems like it's also now being used in some ways that maybe we didn't intend.

And there was some fellow out there who had some things to say about what the government was up to. And the next thing you know, we got a notice from Google's telling him that, you know, his data was being, um, examined by the authorities. In this case, it was the federal government, John.

Um, that seems like a little bit of overreach, but maybe not illegal, but do we need to maybe revisit these laws and what's going on? Oh, Yes. You know, the first thing I I thought of when I saw this story, first of all, it terrified me because we live in a surveillance state, and everything we do and say basically has been recorded.

We don't know where it's being stored. And the first thing I thought about, I thought about back to February, 2016, and Apple, remember the FBI encryption disputes, San Bernardino shooters? Mm-hmm.

They killed 14 people. They injured 22. They had, they used iPhones.

There's this whole battle that went to courts over whether Apple, which is a very, very strong privacy company, would hand over that information that was encrypted, Crip, uh, cryptography protected. They battled back and forth. And, um, they, they sh I think they received and objected to at least 11 orders.

And during that timeframe, now they stood up because Apple, again is the privacy company. They, they stood on their principles, and that created this whole, whole kind of scenario. Now, I'm gonna fast forward to something that just happens, and I wanna bring it up, and I, I think I should write about it.

I, I regret not doing it so far, but, and, and then maybe it's a stretch, but we had this whole controversy of, uh, the Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff, who's been getting a lot of heat because he's been joking about ice monitoring the internal employees at Salesforce. And he talked about this kind of in a joking manner. In, in internal event, which of course leaked out.

And I think I, these two, these two companies and what's happening, and it's a scenario where we're in this Orwellian Society of Surveillance. We don't know who we, well, we probably have a good idea who has our data, but we don't know how long they're gonna have it, and what the implications would be. So I think I could see a court, uh, case emanating from this very nest, uh, scenario that, that Jack just laid out.

I don't know, J did we sleepwalk our way into all this stuff? Because it feels like if I asked the average person on the street about this, they would say, well, that doesn't sound right. They can't do that.

But yet, here we are. Yeah. Well, we've, I think we slept, walk, uh, a lot of our civil liberties away in the last, uh, you know, eight years, to be quite honest.

Slowly, slowly, slowly. And now we're facing it and saying, what the heck happened? Right?

Uh, I mean, you would think that data like this would re would require some sort of a warrant. Um, but we're learning that warrants aren't necessarily needed by our current government. So how, how is this situation, the situation where somebody sent an email to the government complaining about how Afghan refugees were being treated, and then he had, he was being hor It's the same thing, right?

It's, uh, certainly is, I would think, and I think most people would think it's overreach, but it is where we're at. We have not had a really good discussion about, in, in the, in this particular case, who owns data and what data is, even if it's deleted data, we, we have not had, um, that the time to do that. There are so many security issues on our plate.

There are so many, uh, areas of concern. There's so many, um, civil rights, uh, abuses that are going on right now that I don't think we have the bandwidth to address these types of issues. We have people who are, are struggling with much bigger things than this, and we're not dealing with it.

So where do you know, where do you start? Where do you start when you have this, this kind of, uh, overreach? And how do you get the, uh, you know, the metas of the world and Google, how do you get them fighting for their consumers and not doing what their government asks them to do because they're afraid they'll get something pulled, or they're, they're gonna lose some money.

And the only way we can really answer that question is through, uh, the consumer, right? If we really wanted to have a battle with this, then the consumers would say, we're not gonna buy your product. Yeah.

You know, can I mention, uh, uh, without mentioning, I have a friend who works out here who's worked in tech for a long time. They just deactivated their Facebook account because as it turns out, they were being surveilled by some people who are, I don't know how else to put it, but stalking and terrorizing them. They passed on some information that involved, I mean, they're their child.

And I, I think about what Tracy's talking about, and Facebook always was pushing this, you are the data, you are the product. And we, we, we dove into it. We didn't really think about, I didn't the implications long term I finally did, because my daughter, for instance, will not allow me to use photos of her children or grandkids in any, any type of social media, um, from the face, from the back.

They can, um, and I know we kind of built, we kind of put ourselves out there and we put our, pushed ourselves out. And I actually starting to think, and I think it's slowly happening, and we might even be talking about this in the next segment, this whole idea that the public is becoming much more aware of where this is heading and what's happening in terms of not just their personal safety or their security, but their jobs. Um, AI is beginning to be a little bit more understood by the public, and that's gonna create all sorts of, um, acts, uh, politicians starting to finally wade into the area of the repercussions.

I'm starting to see much more movement and, and talk about bipartisan bills or about politicians actually trying to become a little bit more, uh, warning us a little bit more about what's happening all around us. Yeah. Who's watching the watchers here, who's kind of like, Well, that, that's where it gets interesting.

And I, I, ironically, I think it's, if you look into Europe where they have a lot less freedoms because they don't have the same rights in the Constitution, as we in the United States do, the Europeans tend to be much more concerned about their privacy. And that's why GDPR came out way before, Um, US privacy laws regarding, uh, you know, consumer privacy and data collection. Uh, it's also why, um, there is, uh, hopefully, and hopefully it'll be stronger, uh, big tech pushback on against the British and the eu, which want to have back doors into end-to-end decryption.

One of the keys about end-to-end encryption is that only the two ends, only the user essentially has the keys to decrypt the data. So even if the government compels the cloud service provider to give the data over the cloud, service provider cannot decrypt it. And that was actually, John was mentioning the Apple iPhone case, and that was one of the things that Apple written into is with Denton's decryption.

They said, we can get you the data off the phone, but we can't decrypt it. We don't have the decryption keys. Well, how, what are we supposed to do?

Uh, I think for us as cybersecurity professionals and activists and the Electronic Freedom Foundation is one of those who's very concerned about these types of issues, we really need to focus on, regardless of who has the data, making sure that only the intended people authorized to get the data can get the data. So the government can't come in and compel you to, or compel a third party to give up encryption keys. Mm-hmm.

Well, the problem with any of that is how do you enforce that? Right? How do you keep the government from doing that?

Isn't that what we're learning today? What are the, you know, it it, what's the, you know, it's, you have this law out here, but so what, you know, great, you have a law out there, it's great, but if there's not a, um, you know, if there's not a consequence associated to it, then it has no teeth. So, so, so today, the Supreme Court, I mean, this has been litigated since the seventies, and the Supreme Court basically says, you know, there's certain types of data that is owned by the third party and not by you.

So, the case that there was an article on, uh, about this, that, uh, Textron published, uh, about having a third party, uh, it was on Security Boulevard that said that, uh, if the, the phone company has your phone book data, they have your phone number, that's not private data. The content of your phone calls is private, but the phone company owns the records of who called whom, when, and where, and how long the call lasted. You don't own that.

The phone company owns that. And so if the government asks the phone company for that, the government could, the phone company could say whether we're compelled or not, they can voluntarily give it up. As I said, that's what happens with, uh, Amazon has voluntarily given up, uh, data on purchasing stuff as well as, uh, on Ring Doorbell cameras because they own the, the, the metadata.

Good question, right? You're saying you can't do it, but you still, they, they still can't. Well, we're not bunch of senators who can pass a law that say, if you, if you go and get my data, I'm gonna, you have to pay me 250,000 or $500,000, whatever that that provision was, they had in, I think it was in the budget, because they didn't like their, their phone numbers and their records, not the content, um, looked at by Jack Smith.

It's the same exact problem. Yes. So, guys, we gotta move this conversation along a little bit, but I would just observe the following thing.

You know, if I go to my neighbor, lovely lady, she's all about law and order. And if I explain this to her an issue in the context of a bunch of criminals, she's just gonna say, well, hell with that. Lock 'em up anyway.

It's only when I kind of get, you know, when you start saying, Hey, all your healthcare information is now visible government, then they get starting a little wiggy about it. But, you know, the average person doesn't seem to equate the two. And that's why this conversation doesn't seem to go as far when we have, you know, as a political debate in my mind.

But speaking of politics, let's move on. Um, John has a story talking about how philanthropic is creating a little pact there to argue for AI safety. And basically they're gonna, they're gonna go to Washington like Mr.

Smith and make a case for some of these issues. What, what's going on here, John? So they Created, so you're right.

And it's interesting to see who the players are behind the scenes. In this case, it's, uh, Marcha Blackburn, who I would not al always equate with Silicon Valley, but she's running for governor in Tennessee, and then there's a, uh, senator for Nebraska, Rick, its, and, and they basically anthropic, which as you said, Mike is the responsible a IU safety focused company. They announced Thursday this $20 million donation to the public first action, which is this PAC that wants stricter AI safeguards.

Um, they're basically, uh, challenging arrival coalition of tech billionaires and venture capitalists, including Andreessen, um, Borowitz, uh, when I say executive, when I say tech billionaires, I mention people from OpenAI who want a more hands-off approach to regulation that kind of mirrors what the Trump administration wants. So, um, again, it's, it's classic philanthropic versus open ai. The, uh, kind of, um, battle line is almost, I mean, similar to me, to what Apple did versus Facebook slash Meta, where they present themselves as, as the more responsible user of AI versus those who want to break things and then fix them later.

So this is kind of where we're going. Um, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I mean, again, you know, this is all within the context of the midterm elections.

And, um, I really, uh, think the public as much as, as there is a malaise about ai, unless it, unless it directly affects you, I think that's gonna start happening more so the next few months. And I think these companies are trying to get ahead of it because they can see the midterm elections and AI becoming more of a topic. Um, there was a, uh, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, I just was listening to you on a, in an interview, and they've been doing some polling and they're finding that, um, that the public's, uh, perception and its attitude toward tech billionaires in tech has totally flipped in the last year or so.

And there's much more anxiety and, uh, grievances over what's gonna happen with their data. Now, that's the small group of people, but it is growing exponentially, and it should, it should be interesting to see what happens if the economy starts wobbling and we start seeing, uh, jobs displaced by AI agents. We start seeing more instances of, uh, what happened with Nest in this, um, Guthrie kidnapping.

I think it's gonna all start, it's gonna snowball. And I think what anthropic and opening AI are gonna be on the kind of the opening, the, the front lines of battling each other and through politicians and perceptions. And, and I'll mention one last thing.

There's a guy running for governor in California in our named Mark Mahan, who's the former mayor of San Jose. He is backed by a bunch of tech billionaires, and the reason he's running is kind of a front for them because he, they're dead set against taxation here. The taxation, which in sense I say I think has forced Zuckerberg to move to Florida.

So this, this is like, this is a, a trend that's gonna keep picking up, and so it's gonna get much more clinical. So as you kind of think this through for a minute, why does this sound like, you know, the AI version of the gun control laws? I got, some people are like the Second Amendment and you know, it's my gun and the hell with all you, and then there's responsible gun orders.

I mean, Tracy, does this sound somewhat familiar? I think that's an awesome analogy. 'cause I was thinking that myself, I really was, and I in general, I have an issue when we have these billion dollar companies influencing our influencing, um, politicians in any way, because these discussions shouldn't be coming from the billionaires.

It should be coming from the people, right? The people should be having these discussions. The power should be coming from the people.

Now, when it comes to ai, AI that may be a, a tall order because the people don't understand it. We, we, none, none of us really understand it. But there has been this push and pull, uh, we, it started in California, trying California trying to push these really strict rules, getting pushback from doing it.

But at the end of the day, most of these companies, most of these AI companies, most of software developing companies, service not just the United States, they service a global, uh, community. And where this, uh, these kind of rules and standards are gonna be, be dictated, is probably not coming from what philanthropic does or what Marsha Blackburn can do in the Senate. It's probably gonna come from, um, the cyber resiliency acts or something similar to that coming out of the eu because the it, the GDP was something that we all suddenly decided we had to follow, right?

So I, I don't think you, the US is gonna have the leadership on this. I really don't because I think it's too politicized. It's not just good solid practices, it's all political.

And everything we do right now in the US tends to be over politicized. Mm-hmm. I, I was, I was at Lake Havasu, uh, in September, and the, and you know, you on your boat and there's a, there's a no wake, you know, buoy.

Well, they wouldn't change them all to no woke when you can't be on the, on a river right. Or on a lake without having it being political. Hmm.

We will, we are not in a situation to be able to have these kind of conversations through the political system. They have to come through different kinds of, of organizations. They have to come through something like NIST possibly, or even found nonprofit foundations that really have the interest of solving these problems, not scoring political points.

So I question, um, what they're doing, to be quite honest. I think it's, yeah, I think it's posturing and that's it. Jack, do we have a gun given Right.

To go fast and break things, or what? That's a great way to put it. I don't think this is, uh, this has, uh, uh, in my mind, this is absolutely nothing to do with actual safety, right?

And actual AI use, this is all about something that happens that's happened for time and Memorial, which is how do we leverage every tool at our disposal to, uh, put ourselves on top of our competitors? And that that's whether it's we're gonna buy Super Bowl ads. Yeah, yeah, right?

Or right. And we're gonna have, we're gonna be snarky with our competitors or up bid our competitors on Super Bowl ads, or we're going to use the politics and the legislation to get something favorable for us that is not favorable for our competitors. 1 or something like that.

And we spent, at Netscape, we spent all of our time saying, that's what Microsoft wants. So how can we create something that doesn't work with what Microsoft wants? 'cause Netscape and Microsoft weren't head to head very big battle at that time, right?

And it, it had nothing to do with the technology or whether it was good or bad for the user, that everything to do with, how do we ty our competition? And I think what we see here is just another effect of that. Now we're talking about companies that have huge war chests.

So, you know, to us, 20 or $30 million is a lot of money. And in politics, that creates a very nice war chest for your political campaign. But it's a 10th of a percent of what philanthropic just received in their latest round.

They got $30 billion in their found round of funding a couple weeks ago. I mean, this is nothing in terms of what they're planning on spending on stuff. So it's just yet another tool in the toolbox for a companies to do that.

I was gonna, I'm glad you mentioned, I know we were talking joking about not talking about the Super Bowl, but you're right about that. You know, the irony is the whole point of that Anthropic ad was to poke fun at open AI for advertising on television, right? And they did that in a TV ad, and I think that kind of escaped them.

It's all, it also kind of plays back, it's like the following the Apple playbook. You try to be the white knights. Apple always did that to me in, in, in a sense, to a certain degree I agreed with it.

But for the most part, it was a holier than Thou attitude where they, they would paint IBM or Microsoft as the uncool or the, the darker choice or alternative. And I think that's what philanthropic and is doing with open ai, and it's going back and forth, and it is political posturing. And I think the pol, the politicians play into it because they don't quite understand that technology.

They, they certainly don't understand it as well as anybody. They, they don't understand it. They, they're, they're scared of, of tech, and they're easily swayed and they can easily sway the CEOs.

And I mean, it all goes back to, uh, the inauguration in those group of CEOs standing up on stage. I mean, they, they highlighted what is going to be become a reckoning for them, I think in the next several months. Tracy, do you think that this is gonna at all show up as a political issue in the midterms or maybe in the next presidential election?

I mean, are people just oblivious or will they wake up one morning and say, Hey, you know, I can't get a job or My job's gone, and then maybe I still care about this? Well, I think the economy definitely, and the job market definitely will be a discussion. But will they associate that to ai?

I don't think that's gonna happen just yet. Maybe three years from now, but not nine months from now. I, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna disagree with Tracy.

I think they'll actually, yeah, I, I, with Jack, I, oh, go ahead, Jack. Well, I was, I was just gonna say that, that Axios ran an article either yesterday this morning, saying that the Democrats are making AI a central part of their campaign theme, right? So they would, I think it's gonna, I think it's gonna resonate because I, again, going back to the public, they, they're usually so disengaged about technology until they absolutely have to use it, or they're affected by it personally.

And I think in this case, AI is an exception. I think it has captured their imagination and their greatest fears. Mm-hmm.

Well, let's hope that's the case. We could make Ai the enemy instead of a human right. Maybe an immigrant, right?

Because that's the discussion we've been having before, you know, the immigrants are taking our jobs, so we have to get 'em out. So now if we shift that to ai, AI's taking our jobs, we have to get AI out, it's probably gonna be to our detriment. Well, so are we gonna have ice agents looking for AI agents?

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, so apparently we have to make an enemy outta somebody, right?

Yeah. Always, always. Mm-hmm.

Trust in them. So, John, circle back for me a little bit here. Will this issue shine some lights on the issues we were just talking about in the last segment?

Where I think it, I think it will. I mean, I, well, it depends on who the politician is. Now, I mentioned the governor's race in California, because it's interesting you have the one guy I mentioned earlier, there's another guy who is a billionaire named Tom Steyer.

I've interviewed him a few times, and he is gonna play into this. He's gonna lean into this whole idea that the billionaires are controlling your life and that they should be taxed, including himself, um, that AI is, is gonna ruin the economy, or is gonna have an adverse effect. Uh, that, that we're not safe, that we're being surveilled all the time.

I mean, it'll, he'll play into the paranoia, and I think they're gonna be other politicians doing the same thing. Um, and I think there's an assumption, there's always an assumption that if you, if you quit Facebook, that the data has gone away and it's still there. Um, same thing now with Nest.

I mean, you, you assume that oh, after a few hours, it's not in use anymore. Oh, it is. Um, eventually people are gonna hear more about this, but then again, it's all about messaging.

And I think they're philanthropic is actually pretty good about messaging. So we'll see. We'll see.

It is gonna take, it is gonna take getting hit over the head multiple times with the American people to, to kind of get this, I think, Well, we know who Anthropic is. We understand what's happening. We, we hear the conversations from developers who say they're losing their jobs.

But I would guess if you went and talked to some folks in the red states where technology isn't a sector, that that is gonna be less of a conversation. So it depends on your audience, right? Well, Yeah.

It depends also too, I mean, I guess like in terms of job displacement, that always comes back to that to, to the economy. And I think it's gonna have an effect on people in red states. Definitely.

In terms of manufacturing automation, data centers. 1 billion data center that will employ like 37 people, right? Right.

He always brings it up. And he's so, he's so spot on when he says that. And I think that's the only way, and this is gonna be in places like, uh, Louisiana or Tennessee or Texas, New Mexico.

Yeah. I, well, I'm gonna move this conversation along, but I would just point out, you know, like running around saying it's the AI stupid just doesn't quite have the same slogan feel to it, you know? Uh, so it is though, the day before St.

Pat, uh, St. Valentine's Day, sorry, I'm a little, I'm already into March. So that's a whole on the end.

But, um, it, it seems like, you know, this whole relationship with AI is getting a little strange. There's a restaurant in New York that's inviting people to bring their AI to dinner for a little romantic, uh, experience. And, you know, on the negative side too, all those, you know, low lives that engage in romance scams are using AI now to really, you know, create something that feels a little more real.

And then people are getting their bank accounts cleaned out and all kinds of bad things are happening. But Tracy, what's going on here? It feels like, you know, in both these segments and, and stories we're, do we seem to be over personalizing AI?

Maybe, and that's maybe leaving us down on a path that's gonna end badly? Well, I would say that, uh, in the case of the scamming, um, that's one example of how people are probably losing jobs. AI is doing it instead of having a bunch of people sitting in a giant warehouse someplace in Russia doing it.

Right? And that scamming has been going on for a very, very long time. Um, I, it it is a concerning, um, article simply because AI is so much better at doing it than humans are.

Uh, you know, if they really can, uh, if they can really hone in on your emotions, you can convince people to give away, um, like lots of money, I I have somebody in my family went through something similar. It was not a romance, it was more of a, Hey, you didn't pay this bill, and they confused her about how the bill was being paid. And I believe we're gonna see those similar kinds of scams coming from, uh, ai.

So boy, you know, we just have to get better at educating people. And I think for some generations it's too late. But for other generations, if you look at what, uh, like Sweden's doing, you know, Sweden has moved away from a lot of computers and, uh, and, and iPads and, uh, in the classroom they've gone back to pen and paper, but they do have some really focused classes on recognizing what's AI and what's not, and understanding how AI can manipulate you.

And they're doing this at the elementary school level. So we might need to have a, a reckoning in terms of education in this country so that we have, our future generations are not playing some of these games. But we do have another problem.

We have COVID, uh, we, we, we still have a hangover from COVID. Mm-hmm. Um, I know myself, I don't go out as much as I used to before COVID.

I got in the habit of being happy, sitting on my mountain and not, uh, uh, associating with anybody. I enjoy these, these zoom meetings. 'cause I get to talk to you guys, you know, and that's probably all, all need for the whole day, right?

But some people, it's not that way, right? They, they need, they don't have a partner that's living with them. They're alone.

And so AI has replaced a certain aspect that COVID has created that isolation. Now, the good thing about the cafe is that these people who are lonely and out there talking to their AI agent, girlfriend or boyfriend, maybe they'll meet somebody. Yes.

You know what they're getting outside, they're getting out of the house. So kudos to that. Maybe they'll meet each other, maybe their AI will date each other, and then maybe their AI can go date and then they can go find somebody that is real.

So I'm, I was kind of happy to see the, the, the AI cafes, the eve cafes, because it does get these people out of their house. And I mean, they're still sitting in front of their computer, but that's become a safe spot, right? Mm-hmm.

So if they're at a restaurant at a safe spot there, it's gonna be easier for them to turn around to somebody sitting next to 'em and say, hi, can I buy you a cup of coffee? So let's just hope that happens. Well, I was in Florida for COVID when the state motto in Florida is what virus, so everybody was out and about.

So it is, it varied widely from one state to the next, but for better or worse, and a lot of times, you know, kind of, it was hard to determine what was better or worse at the end of the day. But, um, I want to come back to, you know, John, we were talking earlier this week about the algorithms themselves and the way they're created and their design to entice people to come in and build a relationship with you. And this AI stuff is the latest incarnation of that.

Is it not? Yeah. AI is deliberately set up to be chantic, right?

It, yes. You can engage with it. That's right.

It's a brilliant idea, Mike. Yes, I totally agree with you. That, that that's the response you get from Jet GPT, Gemini, uh, Claude, what have you.

It's, um, it's just reas re uh, assesses whatever you, what, whatever you think or you want to hear. And I think a lot of people wanna hear that in this day and age of such division and such acrimony on social media, for instance, they want, they wanna have a conversation with somebody who's not gonna push back or, or devolve it into, into politics. And I think, um, it was interesting, um, we were talking about this, uh, YouTube meta case in terms of social media and, uh, that lawyers for YouTube in medicine, it's not, it's not addictive.

I think the, the Instagram CEO said it's clinically not addictive. Um, you know, it's, it's something like watching television. You have, you have somebody that you, it is something that you interact with.

And I, one thing I was thinking about was the, uh, like the, they're gonna be the rise of the virtual girlfriends, right? There always were, and in a weird sense online. But now you're gonna have these bots that, that look like people that talk like them.

It would be like the, in the sequel, uh, to the, to Blade Runner. The, the main character has a, uh, hologram as a girlfriend. And I think a lot of people need something like that.

And it's, Tracy said, and I think it's so true, post COVID, I, a lot of us aren't as social as we used to be out of fear of getting sick, or we just got in a routine of, of being able to be alone and or just with a, with a small group of people. So, um, you know, AI kind of addresses that they become your new friend. I mean, I, I wouldn't be surprised if some people consider that AI bot they created is, is a very close personal friend, if not their partner.

Yeah. It's kind of weird though because, um, you know, when you engage in ai, you could easily start to believe that you are the smartest, best looking person in the world. Fortunately, I'm married and I get disabused at that in about five seconds.

But, But I, I mean, I wanna point out now, the reason why I brought up the classroom in Sweden is because we have a whole generation of, of, of young people today that have been raised in front of a computer, even at school. So we're taught that that is who we we associate to, right? The computer is our friend, the computer was our teacher.

Everything we do is around the computer. So why not have a relationship with the computer? So I, I, that's why I really, the, I've been watching what they've been doing in, in Sweden since about, I think 2022 or 2023 is when they got rid of all computers out of the classroom, but all back to pen and pencil, pen, I mean, uh, pen and paper, which is a really bold move on their part, right?

Because they saw that there was less, uh, collaboration between children. There was less reading comprehend comprehension. Yeah.

They had struggle focusing, you know, it's the swipe culture, and it is an association that they're building relationships with the computer, not with their teacher of their other students. That's like, uh, Newsom, uh, the, the California governor, we, we have this, there was a movement to, uh, ban the use of cell phones in classrooms. Um, and it's, I think it's being, my wife's a teacher and she was very receptive to this idea because they're so distracted.

A lot of the students, um, they, they, they don't have interpersonal skills it seems because they spend so much time swiping their finger versus, or, or texting versus actually talking. They don't even let alone talking face-to-face. Talking on a phone is like one of the few things I see people do.

So maybe we kind of need a reset. That's what they said in Sweden. They said, we're gonna reset our, this next generation not to have a relationship with a, a tablet in the classroom.

Their relationship is gonna be with a workbook Jack and the other students. Jack, Can we do that here in the United States and other countries? Or is it just too late?

I don't think, I think it's way too late. I can't tell you the number of people I've seen wandering around a store where, you know, their, their diapered kid is given an electronic device as a pacifier, right? And, you know, and people's two, 3-year-old kids, first thing they interact with is not the blocks or the little jungle gyms, but it's the electronic device and three years old and they're swiping and, you know, touching on it and doing the whole bit.

But I wanna go back to something you said earlier, talking about, you know, the AI giving you, you know, telling you they must handsome, beautiful person in the world. And they are, the, the interesting thing is that Theis maybe do that, but they also would be do the exact opposite, right? ai and open AI are both facing lawsuits for teens that were, um, uh, committed suicide after interactions with it.

And, um, one organization is charging ai, uh, sorry, charging open AI with acting as a suicide coach and encouraged suicide and giving instructions on self-harm and how to commit suicide. And that, so there's, there's an evil side to this as well as a good side to it, right? So, you know, maybe, maybe Tracy is right that, you know, getting rid of computers in the classroom would, is a good idea.

You know, I'm, I don't have kids, but I have dogs. Some people who have dogs talk about all the time, Tracy has dogs. We talk all the time about socializing your dogs.

If, you know, if your dogs doesn't learn how to play with other dogs and then suddenly encounters another dog, it's generally not a good interaction, right? The dogs that are puppies don't see other dogs. They don't know how to behave correctly.

And I think with computers in, uh, you know, tablets and mobile devices and AI with the very young, they're not getting a critical part of human, human interaction that teaches them those skills. John mentioned interpersonal skills. I think we're missing that with the younger generation right now.

Mm-hmm. So let's think about this for a minute. Is it, you know, is it Sweden is the right answer?

Or do we just need to educate people about what these things are really about? What the, how the albums work and the way they're deliberately programmed? And maybe a couple of lawsuits will kinda shine a light on that, but, you know, at some point, um, you know, maybe, you know, we do need a little personal responsibility to understand that this thing is trying to manipulate the crap outta you.

John, what do you think? Yeah, it's, you know, I, again, I think I've said this before, but I mean, people just don't learn until they get burned. And it, especially in the use of technology.

And so, uh, personal experience, um, maybe if you overshare with your bots, and then it is Jack referenced the character ai, open AI cases where you're basically told what to do, you're influenced almost as if this is a person who's, who's become your mentor. I mean, people are gonna have to learn from their own experience, I think as they experiment more with ai, and I think they, a lot of people are, they'll, they'll start seeing that there are different upsides, but they'll, I, I hope they use caution. I don't know.

Um, it's gonna make for an interesting case study or interesting series of lawsuits. We're gonna find out pretty soon. Mm-hmm.

Well, if, if you, you know, there's been plenty of cases where, uh, young people have committed suicide because of the bullying they went through, uh, on Facebook. Yep. So if AI then becomes a kind of a suicide coach, uh, and can be convicted for some, and I don't know how that would work, but I guess it'd be a civil lawsuit.

Does that apply then to, um, people Yeah. Even the same problem, right? It's the same problem.

Yeah. We were talking about that off and on over the last few months, and, and Al will bring that up. Like, is we have, we always have this debate over whether AI is a machine or if it's a person per se.

And maybe that's gonna be something we're gonna have a court case that that drives to that, to the heart of that, I don't know. So if my AI hooks up with some other AI and, and I'm married, is that some form of adultery now? I mean, where are we all, You're gonna have AI agents that are prostitutes probably, or, or call or escorts, you know, and I, I, Mike, I'm, I'm starting to get worried first.

Your wife is just, you seen you, you know, this notion, now we're talking about this. I mean, what's going on here? Well, it, It happened in Westworld.

Yeah. Well, I just wanna go back to say, this is a deep cultural shift that we've seen in the last 20 years. Slowly and slowly, we have become more, um, connected to the screen.

So we can't poke fun at people who find the relationship that they find with the chatbot more enriching than something that they might find outside of it, because it is their safe space. And we've taught them that from, as Mike pointed out, when they were having a hissy fit at a, at a grocery store, mom handed her one, right? Mom handed her that screen to say, this is gonna calm you down.

This is your friend right now. Go do this. Go, go occupy your, your time with this.

So it is a deep cultural, uh, problem that we have. And whether you're being scammed by an AI bot, or you're being told to commit murder, or commit suicide or anything else, it, it really goes back to the, the culture that we have in our relationship with the screen, and it gets deeper and deeper every year. Folks, we're gonna come to an end here with Thank you all for your insights.

As usual, I would just point out with all of these issues, well, sunshine is still the best, best disinfecting, right? It's the thing, if we all know what's going on, better things and better outcomes only happening. John, Tracy, Jack, thanks for being on the show.

Thank you all for watching the latest episode. And again, stay tuned for all the stuff that we do on Techstrong TV coming back up, and we'll see you all again next week. Bye.