Is it me or does Burnie come alive in a different way with Blaine? I freaking love him and Ashley, but Blaine week is so fun. I hope it’s an annual thing.

I think the original of Roko's Basilisk is a bit different but basically the first supposition that the artificial super-intelligence would either be benevolent or malicious seems problematic. It could be neutral or anywhere in the spectrum, or since it is a super-intelligence, it could be just as, if not more, complex than human and every decision could fall under different places in the moral spectrum and thus fluid.

It also states that it could target people who were against its development but will that discussion be even relevant by the time the existence of super-intelligence comes online? To my point, this thought experiment itself is 16 years old! How far will it go back and will any of us who are actively having the discussion be alive? I think it's a short view of such development and even its existence is a simple distant possibility at the moment. We are just good at packaging fast word calculators as "AI".

Burnie and Blaine discuss swapping roles, Amazing Race, Drag Race, Austin Food spots, Doomsday trailer, and the terrible conundrum of Roko's Basilisk.

Resident former weed grower here. Blaine mentioned today that Delta 8 is synthetic THC. Delta 8 & THC-A is a hemp derivative, which is made in a similar extraction to recreational cannabis, it is not synthesized.

There is synthetic THC, known as Dronabinol, that is available as a prescription.

I'm not actually going to talk about the Basilisk, but I am a software engineer with over a decade of experience and use LLMs pretty heavily to augment my work.

I understand and respect Blain saying he has not and won't use AI, but I think there is a fundamental problem where people don't actually know what the current tools we use that are called AI are. All of them are Machine Learning algorithms, the next "evolution" of "The Algorithm" but each one can be trained on different data. most times you use a captcha that asks you to identify a stop sign, you are actually helping train image recognition ML models (That way Google Maps can automate many processes).

Claude, CoPilot, and ChatGPT are models called Large Language Models. that is they are trained on massive data sets of natural language and refined to know how to weight different inputs. This training is then locked and the model is shipped. that means if some information was not in the training data, it either has to have a tool to search online for it, or hallucinate. All this means that for known things, LLMs can give the correct answers, but for Novel, creative, or nice items, they can not. Great at writing boilerplate code for a generic app, very poor at writing new stories.

Often when you hear things like Pharmaceutical companies using "AI" they are not using an LLM, they will have custom models they have built in house for specific jobs.

Machine Learning based tools are so far off from real AI. But they are the information age universal power tool. They can enable hobbyists to get tasks done that they might not have been able to alone, they enable professionals to unlock more potential. But you can't give a random person on the street a nail gun and circular saw and ask them to frame a house, but given to a carpenter, they will go much faster than with hand tools.

Since Creative endeavors are usually (at least the ones that are worth while are) mostly or completely novel, LLMs and other image and video generating ML models are not going to replace people in their current form. Based on what i have seen we are approaching the plateau for the accelerated growth that AI has been going through, models are now getting marginal gains each year instead of exponential gains. They will enable more work to get done, but won't replace actual experience.

I'll put a real example in the comments of the difference between a hobbyist and a professional using tools.

I hope this gets dropped as a cold open one episode 😁 (if this has been shared before I apologize - fairly new listener)

In today's podcast, Blaine talked about watching bad movies at his Bachelor Party and mentioned Roddy Piper. For the rest of the segment I could only think about Piper's movie "Hell Comes to Frogtown,” which is not bad but it is also very 80's.

What are some other bad movies that you find yourself watching?

Anyone else feel that cigarettes are at least part of the reason why people both look “more fit” and look older in pictures from the 70s? As they were talking about it, I thought either Burnie or Blaine would bring this up.

Burnie and Blaine discuss wedding cuts, running, growing older, World Cup farewell, Burnie's Futball Journey, Fallout goes into development, AI bashing, fall of arcades, collectibles, regulations good and bad, alcohol following cigarettes, and millenial youthfulness.

The Collector's Edition for Halo: Campaign Evolved is one of the better ones out there. Not as good as Halo: Reach or the Witcher III, but still pretty dang good!

I didn't know that it came with a Cortana chip that lights up or a small guidebook! I think I was most excited for the guide. That was a blast from the past!

Not pictured are three concept art prints which are also really cool! I'm a sucker for concept art so that was a nice surprise too!

Besides Burnie and Blaine has anyone else had to drive themselves to the hospital in 10/10 pain?

When I was in highschool I left early because my stomach felt terrible. It got bad at my pediatricains office and they informed me that I was having an appendicitis. The drive to the emergency room was the most painful experience of my life. I drove a 96 Saturn manual and every gear shift was like a baseball bat to the ribs

Burnie and Blaine discuss God of War injury recasting, hauntings, Blaine's bicep injury, the difficulty of casting, Blaine's live show, Answer For It, and the Stinky Dragon Podcast.

I've heard Burnie talk about this term a few times, and he normally comes down to something along the lines of not really understanding it as surely every act has money spent on them for promotion.

That's not my understanding of what the term means. I think everyone knows bands are promoted and record labels pay for them to be on shows etc....

The way I've always seen the term used is when an artist or a band are presented as having "worked their way up" starting off as childhood friends who decided to start a band or as having some sort of grassroots movement that's finally paying off for them, but that's not actually the case, they're actually a "band" put together by a label or manager and the backstory is fabricated to make them seem more "authentic".

It tends to happen a lot when an artist or band comes out of nowhere, one day no one's heard of them and the next they're playing at major festivals etc... as if they've been around for ages.

I guess it's seen as buying your way to success rather than earning it, similar to being a "Nepo baby" except it's not your parents reputation and money getting you in the door, it's a manager or record label trying to cash in on a current trend.

Sometimes people don't seem to care too much, if the person/band is liked, or if they acknowledge the leg up and help they've been given to get where they are, but other times people can get pretty worked up if the band/person are seen as taking the place of others that they think are more deserving because they worked their way up and put in the time and effort with enough talent for their popularity to grow organically or because the "industry plant" isn't actually very talented and doesn't write their own songs/music, play their own instruments or sound that good without studio help, instead they just look the "right" way, style over substance kind of thing.

Who knows, maybe I'm completely wrong, but that's always been my understanding of the term rather than it being any sort of envious term etc....

Finishing up yesterday’s podcast while working from home today, and now this quote will forever be memorialized in my brain and journal. Among all the Tucker quotes, Jason’s closing remarks on the podcast about his latest album has to be my favorite.

I work at an assembly bench so I listen to podcasts all day long and I regularly go through old RT podcast as my comfort listen. Multiple times I have listened to the mornings newest episode where Burnie talks about something and after I immediately go to the RT podcast for my next episode and he’s talking about the same things 12 years ago in his present. Today Burnie mentioned going camping in a zero light pollution campground with his sons and then I went into episode 282 to continue my binge and it’s Blaine’s first episode. Burnie mentions literally just taking his sons to that exact camping experience in 2014 that he cited today 12 years after the fact. I’m convinced I’m in a simulation, this keeps happening 😂

I'm sure they've spoken of the show on the podcast, but i can't remember if they've mentioned if they're still watching/up to date with it?

I will say, if any of you stopped watching, as i seem to remember series two got kind of boring, i highly recommend you give it another shot, series three has, imho, been great so far.

I don't know if maybe A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms just reinvigorated me for more GoT, or if the third series is just better than the second, but i've been really enjoying it and actively looking forward to the new episode next week.

I will say i still have the problem i've always had with every GoT show, not having a fucking clue what anyone's name is and not being able to remember who's related to who/how. It doesn't help that so many of them seem to have really similar names to other characters both in their show and in the other shows or that so many of the names are properly weird "fantasy" type names, which i understand makes sense, would be weird if they were all Dave, Sarah and Bob, but it makes it really hard for me to remember them!

Every time Burnie retells his bet with Matt about how he thinks the Avatar sequels won't be made by James Cameron, I naturally think "he means Cameron will hand off the directing duties, but stay heavily involved as the Executive Producer like how TV shows are structured right?" I'm always baffled that he means someone will use AI to generate their own Avatar sequel. Can't people do that now? I don't believe he meant Cameron will use AI because if that's what he meant, Cameron hasn't made any of the Avatar movies because he only directed it, not animated it. I think the bet was more rooted in how long it was taking to make the sequels and not a hypothetical analogy that AI will overtake and replace human filmmakers at the highest level.

But Burnie was almost willing to take the win because someone put out an entirely AI version of The Odyssey? Is that because him ending up being right is basically inevitable or that in his mind the stipulations have been met? If he meant he believes he can see where the industry is likely headed, he still hasn't won yet and if he meant some person will AI generate some slop and title it "Avatar 4", he can take an early victory lap because that's such a room temperature take. What are the criteria's he has in mind? Does it have to be regarded as an official sequel by the studio or Cameron? Does he mean someone will AI generate a sequel and will be so good that it could fool people? That the "CGI" will be on par with what Cameron could achieve with a block-buster budget?

Burnie and Becca discuss screw worm, Ebola, Alamo Drafthouse, deer populations, conservation efforts, Zelle, America's antiquated payment systems, and cool projects.

Listening to the discussion about dental xrays this morning with my partner (dentist) and she started laughing. It's not trapping the radiation, the radiation bounces off everything in the room, so the vest doesn't do anything. Her practice still uses the vest to avoid dealing with people who are overly stressed freaking out about not getting it.

I just realized I’ve never seen RvB which to my knowledge is the big thing Jason’s been on and I know that to say I’m a huge RT fan and not have watched RvB is blasphemy but it just made me realize do y’all have any big shows from Rooster Teeth that y’all never watched because to me it’s definitely RvB, curious what y’all’s are

In honor of our resident of the UK and our beloved Musician friend