podcasts - CybAI news

21 Nov

Is Silicon Valley Actually Libertarian?

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelspodcasts, politics, silicon valley, Technology, uncanny valley podcast

Lauren Goode: It sounds like you're a little bit aligned with the successful tech entrepreneurs who were surveyed by the junior college in Palo Alto in terms of being a liberaltarian.Michael Calore: No, I go further left than that, I would say.Zoë Schiffer: He sounds like maybe he's Yang Gang.Lauren Goode: Oh, the Yang Gang. I interviewed Andrew Yang once.Michael Calore: Andrew Yang, he was one of the first big vocal proponents of universal basic income in the political sphere, wasn't he?Lauren Goode: Yes, he was indeed.Michael Calore: Well, I don't know anything else about him, so I can't say…

14 Nov

How to Not Die in Silicon Valley

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsdeath, longevity, podcasts, silicon valley, Technology, uncanny valley podcast

Lauren Goode: Zoë, you had vegan pizza the other night. You said it was pretty good.Zoë Schiffer: I did. I did, and I read a really, really scary article written by Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic about dairy farming, and it radicalized me for at least 24 hours. I was on oat milk. Thank you. I don't want a prize.Lauren Goode: Mike, how long have you been vegan for now?Michael Calore: I don't know. 800 years.Lauren Goode: Nice. Our resident long-living man on this show.Michael Calore: I've been fully vegan for about five years, and I've been vegetarian ever since…

31 Oct

Introducing WIRED’s Flagship Podcast, ‘Uncanny Valley’

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelspodcasts, silicon valley, Technology, uncanny valley podcast

Silicon Valley has been an epicenter of global innovation for decades. But the Valley, and its associated personalities, companies, and trends, has never been home to more undiluted power than it is today.Think about it: Elon Musk, among the world’s richest people, is essentially underwriting US presidential candidates while subsidiaries of his interstellar-centric company SpaceX snap up more orbital real estate with every satellite launch; despite Facebook’s decline as a habitual platform for many Americans, Meta’s user base worldwide continues to grow, ticking ever-closer to the stunning 4 billion mark; and in the past two years, Silicon Valley startups and…

17 Oct

Google’s NotebookLM Now Lets You Customize Its AI Podcasts

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, google, podcasts, research

Google just added a new customization tool for the viral AI podcasts in its NotebookLM software. I got early access and tested it out using Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as the source material, spending a few hours generating podcasts about the seminal novella—some of them more unhinged than others.Released by Google Labs in 2023 as an experimental, AI-focused writing tool, NotebookLM has been enjoying a resurgence in user interest since early September, when the developers added an option to generate podcast-like conversations between two AI voices—one male-sounding and one female-sounding—from uploaded documents. While these audio “deep dives” can be used…

17 Oct

All of Our Gadgets Just Keep Talking

stp2y0 CommentsGenAIartificial intelligence, chatbots, gadget lab podcast, podcasts

Everybody wants to talk to their pet. Or to try to get them to listen, anyway. So it’s no wonder that some startups think the way to break through the communication barrier between you and your pooch is with a nice big helping of technology. Welcome to a world with AI-enabled dog and cat collars that try to interpret a pet’s needs and then share those wishes with their human. The only problem with these devices is that the pet won’t actually be a part of the conversation, as the collar is just guessing at what the pet is thinking—but…

10 Oct

How Should We Feel About Ring?

stp2y0 CommentsGenAIamazon, artificial intelligence, gadget lab podcast, podcasts, privacy, security, smart home

Ring cameras have come a long way. Since the security camera brand launched 11 years ago, its video doorbells and cams have become vigilant, constant surveyors of patios, porches, and vestibules everywhere. Amazon now owns the company, and has ushered it through controversies over privacy concerns, security breaches, incidents of vigilantism, and the company’s cozy relationship with law enforcement. The drama has not slowed growth; over 10 million Rings have been installed, and the cameras currently blanket our urban and suburban landscape, filming the movements of you, your family, and any strangers who wander near your door.That makes for a…

02 Oct

How to Generate an AI Podcast Using Google’s NotebookLM

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsartificial intelligence, google, podcasts

Two podcasts hosts banter back and forth during the final episode of their series, audibly anxious to share some distressing news with listeners. “We were, uh, informed by the show's producers that we’re not human,” a male-sounding voice stammers out, mid-existential crisis. The conversation between the bot and his female-sounding cohost only gets more uncomfortable after that—an engaging, albeit misleading, example of Google’s NotebookLM tool, and its experimental AI podcasts.Audio of the conversation went viral on Reddit over the weekend. The original poster admits in the comments section that they fed the NotebookLM software directions for the AI voices to…

27 Sep

Chat Podcasts Rule the Market—and Always Will

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, audio, dial up, podcasts, youtube

Nearly every survey of the podcast industry in 2024 agrees on one point: Chat podcasts are king. As video rises in popularity (33 percent of US podcast listeners prefer to consume this way), ad spending increases (estimated to top $4 billion worldwide), and listenership steadily grows (8 percent year-over-year), it is the chat format—in its combative, enlightening, and sometimes quite unserious splendor—that continually draws people in.The ecosystem is profuse and unpredictable. There are the mainstays that have become fixtures of culture: The Joe Rogan Experience, Armchair Expert, and The Read. Newer fare like I’ve Had It and ShxtsnGigs (more on…

26 Sep

Is AI More Sustainable if You Generate it Underwater?

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, climate change, energy, environment, gadget lab podcast, podcasts

AI data centers are so hot right now. Each time generative AI services churn through their large language models to make a chatbot answer one of your questions, it takes a great deal of processing power to sift through all that data. Doing so can use massive amounts of energy, which means the proliferation of AI is raising questions about how sustainable this tech actually is and how it affects the ecosystems around it. Some companies think they have a solution: running those data centers underwater, where they can use the surrounding seawater to cool and better control the temperature…

26 Sep

Soon After the Deadly Hezbollah Pager Explosions, This AI-Generated Podcast Went Up

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, digital culture, podcasts

While the idea of a quick-turnaround, generously AI-generated podcast might sound terrifying to some fans and creators, other players in the industry see it as an inevitability. Oskar Serrander, who describes his AI-meets-podcasting studio Wondercraft as “Canva for audio,” says that he views AI as a way to help creatives “produce at the speed of culture.” While he admits there are limits to AI, like the way the technology typically draws from past ideas rather than creating new concepts, he admires the way it might lower the barrier to entry for some brands or creators.Serrander notes there are fewer podcast…