Category General: Will A.I. Replace Us? Millennial Video Game Nostalgia Bracket

Kevin and Michael Lake catchup with longtime friends Byron, Derek and Fil. They discuss the state of artificial intelligence in life and the workplace. How is A.I. being used in the music industry, schools and in corporate America? Then, they pivot to a lighthearted 90s/2000s video game bracket. 

Guest Recommendations: 

Byron: Attend an NFL Draft or Seize the Day  
Derek: Baldur's Gate 3
Michael: The Pitt
Kevin: Claude AI and Wispr Flow

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:05

I like you watching.

SPEAKER_06 0:32

All right, welcome back to another episode of the Lakeview Podcast. I am Kevin Lake, joined by, as always, by my co-host Michael Lake. How's it going? Great. Hello there. And we also we have one guest for right now. We will at some point have two guests, but for right now, our one guest is the lovely Byron. How's it going? Pretty good. How are you guys doing? Doing great. It's Friday night. We're hanging out.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 0:58

Gonna have a good time. So um yeah, I mean, we've got a whole whole list of random questions today. Um, for those that are listening, uh, you probably see somewhere in the title that we're doing a category general. So we're just gonna bounce around and and see where the conversation takes us. Maybe there will be something in the title that alludes to what we're gonna do. But um yeah, we we I don't I'll just like Phil Phil just just joined us momentarily, but we'll see if he's able to speak or not. Um if he is, that's great. If he just wants to listen, then that's great as well. Um we'll just start it here with uh I think what is like a slightly appropriate question. Maybe it's getting a little too deep right off the bat, but I thought it was timely because um as as we all know, the Artemis 2 just launched, and pretty soon humans are gonna go farther than any human has gone before. Um and on top of that, Project Hail Mary is like the hit movie in theaters right now. So there's a lot of like space stuff going on. And so my first question, we're we're going deep right off the bat. Uh actually, no, I'll start off with one that's a little bit more of a softball. So, first question is if you could go to space, but there was a 10% chance that you didn't come back, would you go?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Uh I'll leave that to anyone. Right now, no. If I was like 80, sure. Yeah, yeah, that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

I think young kids would be much higher.

SPEAKER_06 2:35

I feel like having young kids is like that if you could if you said yes to that, I might question your judgment.

SPEAKER_03 2:40

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I I I would say absolutely not. Yeah, definitely 100%. No. 10% is too high for you.

SPEAKER_06 2:51

So I was I I was thinking about saying 5% in the moment because I have 10% written down and I thought it was a little high. Would that would 5% change your mind, either of your minds?

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Or maybe it was just today's technology, like you got offered a chance to go up and come back. So whatever that's fair. I don't need to lower than 10%, but yeah, yeah. And no, to answer your question, I'd maybe like in a hundred years from now when it's like taking a bus somewhere, but definitely not regularly.

SPEAKER_06 3:20

Well, like Katy Perry went to space. I it can't have been too crazy, I imagine.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Like she probably just trapped into some whatever, and like she was kissing the ground when she got back, so it must have been must have been pretty scary business.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

I'm not really a thrill seeker, so I just I know it would be cool and surreal, so it's easy for me to say shoot it down, but I'm I'm good with staying on earth, I think.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

I feel like it'd be one of those things where like it'd be so cool that I'd always want to talk about it, but then I'd be like too self-conscious to talk about it because I didn't want to be like the guy, oh space, here he goes talking about space virus. Like, I feel like I'd be like underwhelmed because like I'd I'd be so interesting and cool, but then I'd never I don't know, bring it up.

SPEAKER_06 4:09

Well, I feel like to be fair, I mean maybe you would never bring it up, but if I was ever like somewhere with you and there's like some new person there, I'd be like, Byron's been in space. So I don't I don't know how often you would have to bring it up, but maybe.

SPEAKER_04 4:24

I I wonder if uh the answer changes if there's money involved. Or you know what I'm saying? Like you get paid a certain amount of money. Would you do it if it was that five percent?

SPEAKER_06 4:34

Yeah, I guess you need to scale it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:37

Like like for example, like if it was what 1%, like would you do it for like a million dollars or something, you know?

SPEAKER_06 4:45

Yeah, I guess it's yeah, it definitely varies a lot by person. Like there's some people who would like give anything to go to space. That's true. So there's yeah, there's a wide spectrum. I feel like it depends. Yeah, I feel like for me, I would probably need to be I would be on the you might need to pay me right now side as well, which I think that seems like the it's funny considering you were a pilot that you have no interest in going to space. Yeah, I think it's just like it's a little too exotic for me at this point in in the life. Like I think enough people have been on a plane, it's not that exotic, but I don't know, space is a little a little crazy.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Is that the part that would scare you the most? Just that the ship could blow up or something and you could die.

SPEAKER_06 5:31

No, honestly, you know, I was watching Interstellar. I don't know what it is. Like, I don't know if I have like some like secret anxiety about all this stuff, but I was watching Interstellar like two days ago after watching Project Hail Mary. I want I watched them like back to back. And I've seen Interstellar before, but I don't want not as it's not really a spoiler, but like there's a part Interstellar where he's like super far away. And actually, maybe this is more like relevant to Project Hail Mary, which I don't want to talk about, but uh being like really far away and being like the only human there, like that just like freaks me out. Like, even though you're like breathing oxygen and you're fine and you're like you know sitting in a chair and like eating and complete isolation. Just like I feel like I would get into a mental iterative loop and just like break down like psychotically.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

There's a there's a word for that for like the o people that get freaked out freaked out by the vastness of the ocean. I think it's like vacilophobia or the or something like that. Okay, that's fair.

SPEAKER_06 6:40

Yeah, I think space is definitely yeah, a lot more vast. So that would be a reasonable thing.

SPEAKER_05 6:47

Yeah, that's that's one question that is like posed a lot that I hear is like what's scarier to you, like the depths of the ocean that haven't been discovered, or like outer space. And I don't know, it it's obvious. Maybe it's not as obvious, but like to me, it's clearly outer space. Like just for the fact that like if it's uh if you're underwater, like that's on Earth, like you know what I'm saying? Like, it's gonna be some kind of creature that that can live on Earth as opposed to being out of this planet that we're on, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Like, yeah, like would you rather go visit the Titanic or visit the moon?

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Yeah, I'm out of the way.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

If there's monsters, then we know they're on Earth.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

There's a lot of monsters in the ocean. It's filled with monsters. Have you ever seen what an octopus looks like? They're horrifying. It's like the Kraken.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, I think there's gotta be some giant squid, like you know, like the you can't tell me there is not a 100-foot-long giant squid thing down there that could pick out a ship if it wanted to. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 7:56

All right, that's so that was kind of a start off. And so this is sort of the secondary question is do you think that in our lifetimes we're all like like almost exactly the same age? So I feel like it's we're all we're talking about the same stretch of time, more or less, that we will discover evidence of alien life, and and then if we do, is that exciting for you or is that scary for you? Whoever has an opinion can start off.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

When you say alien life, do you mean like just anything living not DS?

SPEAKER_06 8:27

Anything like living green men? No, yeah, yeah. Just like living organism. I mean, it could be like it could be like a green alien, but like just yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Victor Romanyama.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

I um I would be freaked out no matter the the type of life. I I actually there's something I read earlier, I think it was after like Obama said the thing about how like, oh yeah, there's life out there, and people start freaking out on social media. Like, oh, the president doesn't know something we don't know, and he's like, uh no. Like, I just meant like the vastness of the universe means uh odds are there is life somewhere. But anyway, um I think related to that, I had read something like there's like the I forget what it's called.

SPEAKER_06 9:19

Um but basically family paradox is the what is that?

SPEAKER_01 9:24

I don't know. I'll describe it and you can tell me the name of it if there is a name for it. But basically, that if there is other like advanced civilized life, you'll never find it because they would be like advanced enough to know that it'd be like a major threat to reveal themselves to other forms of life, so that everyone's just gonna be like chilling.

SPEAKER_06 9:44

Yeah, that's not not exactly what I was thinking of. The firm paradox is like the contradiction between the fact that it's uh highly statistically probable that there is life. It's kind of like what Obama was saying. It's like there probably like there's something out there, it's like that idea, but like there's the paradox that there's there's no evidence of it at all, which just like we we're at least not observing it, whether it's because it doesn't want to be z observed or we just haven't figured out how to observe it.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Well that's kind of where we're at right now. Like it's Schrdinger's cat right now. Like we don't know if they exist or not, but if we were informed of it, that's just confirming it. But I don't know, as of as far as I'm concerned, I feel like there probably is, and I just don't care either way. Like I shouldn't I don't know. I'm not explaining this well.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Doesn't affect you, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

I don't know. I'm busy in my day-to-day life that it like it if it's already there and I'm just finding out about it, then what difference does it make if it's already been there the whole time? Like looking back, like it's just me stressing about now that something else to know about. You look back.

SPEAKER_06 10:54

What if there was oh me? No, I'm uh no no, I was just thinking, like I understand what you're saying. I guess I'm curious. Maybe would you still feel that way if the light other life was sentient? Or what if it was like amoebas? You would you would be like, you don't care?

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Yeah, I guess that's fair. If if it was sentient, I would probably be pretty disturbed. Yeah, but again, that means they were there the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

And if I'm just finding out about it, maybe it's not as bad as the freakiest thing for me would be if we found other life and it was at like humans just somewhere else. Could you imagine? Like we found humans. I'm like, oh, I thought we got rid of you guys. You were the rejects, and we send your ash the ash word. Was supposed to go in the sun and you hit oh my god, that would be some Rick and Morty shit for real.

SPEAKER_06 11:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 11:48

For me, I think it's like um if if it's like that, if it's like us, but like more like other humans, but like except more involved, uh more evolved and smarter, and like has the same like instincts as humans in terms of like like you know, the potential of being evil or something, you know what I'm saying? But like like that in that sense, I think that's the only way that I would be concerned. But generally speaking, like if they are expensive uh like aliens out there, um it's not I don't I'm not too concerned about it because I don't know. I just feel like they are so uh so much more evolved than we are that they're like they're not even like violence or conflict is not even something that they resonate with. Like it I don't know, like like especially with us, someone like as in my mind who would be like so insignificant compared to them if they're you know as advanced as we think they are, you know? Like I don't think they would be at war with us. I think that's just like it's not necessarily like just a human instinct or human equality, like, but like I just think they would be above that doing like a conflict with us.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

If they're that far advanced over us, like how we don't get involved in like the disputes between like raccoons, we just kind of watch them do their stuff.

SPEAKER_04 13:08

Exactly, exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

And that's how we get the jump on them, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 13:15

Yeah, if there's also some other like explainer video or something or theory about how like if there is life, the odds that it's on the same timeline as us is like basically infinitesimal. So like I think Mike was alluding to this, like the idea that they're either so advanced it's like hilarious, and they just like you know, they just let us be because we're like ants, basically, or they're like still amoebas, and like we're the the ver the extremely advanced version of what they will be in the future. Um, but like based on the timeline of the universe, the odds that we'd be similarly evolved are really low.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

So yeah, that we're living while the discovery happens. It's more likely that it's already happened and it just information's released to us, something like that. But at the same time, if there is life, it could just be that I don't know, they don't have they haven't left their planet or anything, so there's just no way of like maybe they're not more evolved, or they'd probably just be completely different, too.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

What if they what if they explored Earth while we're like dinosaurs still not us as in humans, but just like the planet was just like dinosaurs and stuff, and they got nothing going on here, really. And then they just left.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

And if they observe it from really far away, they see like thousands of years back, so they're still just seeing dinosaurs be like, oh nothing changed.

SPEAKER_06 14:40

The whole crazy like Gibbet, I don't know how to say like Gebetli Tepi and like Stonehenge and stuff, it's like you know that would that would allude to like Byron's idea, like they were here, they played around a little bit and then they left, and then it's like how do we have all this crazy stuff? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Um, I have a follow-up question. If if you if if aliens like contacted you, what like you know how like if you're like having a guest over, you kind of like maybe like you know, show them things that you're proud of, like especially if it's like an exchange student, or like you know, like, or just like you know, it's actually funny you say that.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

I think I have a person from Japan staying at my house on Easter. Really? Yeah, it might be your house, right? What do you mean? Okay, sorry, my parents' house.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Yeah, my old house. I was gonna say, I think I think there's a Japanese man living at my house tomorrow, but I'm not sure. I have breaking news, actually. Surprise guests.

SPEAKER_07 15:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Oh um, but no, yeah, like what would you like? No, you you have like a foreign person in America, like, oh yeah, like here's like you know, Philadelphia, we have the Liberty Bell. Like, what would you show aliens to be like, this is what we're proud of, and like this is what makes humanity like worthwhile?

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Like if you found an ET, like what would I show it?

SPEAKER_06 16:12

Well, I would definitely I would definitely start off with food if they could eat our food. I'd be so curious to like see like what they because I feel like you know an iPhone would be cool, but it's like yeah, they'd be like, eh, I don't know. Like, I don't know what any of this even means. Like, what are you even showing me? But I feel like food is so sensory that it'd be fun to see like if if they could even eat it and then like if they would like it. Food cool, yeah. Yeah, I don't know what I would start with, but I'm obviously a cheeseburger.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah, like I feel like we're jumping steps.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

I we have to communicate with them first and build trust. I'm not just gonna walk around. Well, I don't need to communicate with them.

SPEAKER_06 16:52

I could just be like, I could just be like cheeseburger and then like rub belly.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

Yeah, good, good, good. Fair. Treat it like it's a baby or a dog or something.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

They might not even have a belly though. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

True. They'd be like, why are you eating all the other species on this planet? What the hell's wrong with this?

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Uh yeah, I don't know. Any other ideas? I think uh I'm not a super like uh musical person. I think music would be neat because like I think music can be a bit of a universal language, um, even if it doesn't have words, you know, there's like there's a lot of like mathy stuff behind music that I don't fully understand. Like with like I don't know, there's probably some music theory Phil you might know, but um um I think there could be like maybe potentially interesting similarities. Um, or it could just and if it's not some I feel like it'll be cool because if they have music, we oh we have that cool, that's that's awesome. Then we'd talk about alien music and human music. But if they didn't have music, then like ah-huh, like this is what humans can do. This is pretty neat, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

I think I'm big on Debbie Downer. I just keep feeling like what are the chances they have eardrums that can receive the vibrations in a way? I mean, maybe they could feel it. I feel like we're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_06 18:22

No, I'm not. Okay. I will not say anything, but about Rocky? It would be yeah, like the whole conversation would be different if we could talk about that movie. But I will not allude to it. It you should definitely see it if you're interested in this idea.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

That's where I would go. I would just try and communicate it and let it know I'm not like looking to attack it, but also I would be weary that it's gonna attack me or do something weird, so I might not want to touch it. But I maybe I would offer it stuff, like you said, like food and see what happens if it absorbs it or eats it and has a mouth. I'd definitely try and like learn from it, but I'd definitely be freaked out and keep it away from Declan.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

That seemed very reasonable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

And keep it away from my wife too. He's not living with us.

SPEAKER_06 19:15

Alright. Um, let's see. Do we do we have any other like alien universe ideas we want to explore here? Or we want to move on to some some other kind of topic. Any any feelings? Good moving on. All right, move on. I'm good. Alright. Um, so the next one, next topic's a little bit more about like technology, I would say. So um I don't I'm thinking I know maybe know the answer to this, but unless I've missed any of your travels, uh the two of you, but have you been in an uh in a driverless car yet? No, I have not, no. Does it like a train count? No, no, not like a Waymo or like okay. Um I so the questions related to that, I will say it's hard. Maybe it's like hard to project, but if you had to guess, like how many years into the future do you think that you will be like basically not driving your own car anymore? To like you know how like most of the time you get an Uber sometimes, but like mostly you drive around. Like if you had to project how many years in the future, assuming that the answer is any number, where you will no longer be like driving yourself around, do you have a projection for how many years that will be?

SPEAKER_02 20:39

I don't know, 30, 40 years. Where like nobody is anymore, like it's like an anti to like drive yourself.

SPEAKER_06 20:47

Yeah, yeah, kind of. Like that's sort of the idea. Yeah, where it's like more of a like maybe they have like separate roads where you can drive, but like for the most part, it's like iRobot.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Yeah, you can like manually take over if you have to. But yeah, I I could see within the next 50 years for sure, like no one's really driving in the same way, and it's just all the cars kind of talking to each other, and it's a more better traffic volume efficiency thing where everything can communicate, and then there's less accidents, all that stuff. And I feel like it doesn't seem like it's that far off. So I think it's in our lifetime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Byron.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

I think there's a uh a George Carlin joke where he's he says, uh, think about how bad the average driver is, and then consider that half of the drivers are worse than that. So um the bar is pretty low in um, you know, I I I think like Mike said, the technology's probably pretty much there. It's just about making it cheap enough that people can afford it.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Like to be like and I guess road infrastructure and stuff, maybe just like sensor wise. Like you have to put a little bit into that, but yeah, I think like that could be done pretty quickly if it if they really decide to phase something like this in.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

It'd be interesting because I feel like from like a political standpoint, there'd be a lot of it'd probably ruffle a lot of different groups of people's feathers, like like people like obviously like companies that do with like Uber and transportation probably like try and like you know sabotage it somehow, and then there'd be people that don't trust it.

SPEAKER_06 22:33

They're gonna have they're they're licensing like driverless cars right now. Like they're actively Uber and Lyft are like laying the infrastructure for having driverless cars to like control. That's true. So like it would really be like if there's the any of these companies that they're that aren't contributing to like the driverless car ecosystem that currently have a like a large business. Like I don't know if every car company is going to be like providing the chassis and like all that stuff. If they're still gonna be a part of the the market, then they maybe won't care, they'll just adapt. But definitely like right now, the taxi driver economy and like the Uber driver and Lyft driver economy would just like go to nothing, basically.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

We saw taxis almost go away completely in our lifetime, and that was a thing for forever. So I feel like it's just gonna be the same thing, it's gonna go from taxis with a person driving to taxis without.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

There's a lot of unions that probably like the teamsters and stuff would probably like well.

SPEAKER_06 23:35

I'll I'll I will say in San Francisco, like because I was there and so I got to kind of see the epicenter of it, and like every intersection you go to, like one of the corners has a Waymo at the stoplight. They're like everywhere, and like and they there's no driver in them, and it's like it's just like Philly, where like you know, you're in this or New York, you're like in the city, and like people are driving around like crazy, people are like walking out on the street, and these cars don't have drivers in them, there's people in them, and they're driving around like with everybody else, and it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

You used I can't remember if you answered whether you used it.

SPEAKER_06 24:10

I did, yeah, I did. What was it like? It was insane. I like it was one of those, it was just like the first couple times I used Chat GPT where I was like, oh my god, like the world is gonna be different now. Like, that's how I I mean I know Waymo's aren't like super new, they're just not everywhere. And I was like, this is insane. You could just like I got into a car and I started driving down the street and there was no one in the front of it, like on the road with other people driving like maniacs.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Like, is there anything that you can do to like make it stop if it's like doing something wrong?

SPEAKER_06 24:42

I don't I I mean, not that I saw. I I was like just trying it out with a friend, and uh it was like yeah, it's not just a novel. Yeah, like I mean, it was it's it's like they're everywhere. Um, it's very much a thing in San Francisco, and they're starting to drive around Philly with drivers in them just to like train the models. Um so they're gonna come to Philly soon. But it's like and the like how prevalent they're in San Francisco. It's like there's I don't think they're gonna get it's gonna get smaller, it's just gonna get cheaper and more prevalent. Um but it's completely insane. Like the whole experience is interesting because you get in and like there's no driver, so like you set the AC yourself, you put on whatever music you want.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

The way you're reacting to it though, like 50 years from now, that's how kids are gonna react. Like, holy shit, you guys used to have a driver in there, like a random person you didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

They could have just, yeah, they could have just taken the review shop.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Like, what if they got into an accident? Like, what if they were on drugs? Like, well, that just doesn't exist now.

SPEAKER_06 25:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's yeah, I that I I totally feel that way. Like the idea, yeah. I mean, and the the other little anecdote that I have, which you know, at this point maybe it's not interesting anymore, but uh so I was like walking to class one day while I was there, and I got to an intersection and I was waiting for the the light to turn red so I could cross the street, and a Waymo went up. And you know, when you turn left, you kind of like pull a little, you don't like wait at the at the stop bar, you like pull up a little further. Yeah, so the Waymo did that, and I was it was like blocking the crosswalk, and the light was like turning yellow, and then it turned red, and the Waymo was like sitting right in the crosswalk. And you know how annoying that is when you're in a city and you like walk around the car? The instant, the instant the light turned red, like snap your fingers, the light turned red. The Waymo like backed right up, right behind the line. Wow, like in an in an instant, because there was it knew because that's no one was around it, yeah. And so it just like instantly took the behavior that was like least disruptive to like the driving ecosystem. And I'm sure that there's countless things that it like I only drove in it once and saw them a few times, but I'm sure there's countless things like that that you take for granted that a human does not have the ability to react like that quickly with like that level of awareness and execution. And there's probably so many things like that that you know that vehicle is capable of that we as humans aren't, that just like make everything more amenable for everyone in the ecosystem. So it's just like very eye-opening experience. And I know like be living in the East Coast, uh like a little late to the party there. I know I think they're in like Atlanta and some other bigger cities, but um, it's definitely was one of those like eye-opening experiences, and it made me really think about this whole thing. It's like, you know, like are my like if I have a kid and then they're like 16, are they gonna be getting a driver's license? And I was like, I don't know, which is crazy. The idea of like not teaching your kid how to drive because it's not relevant anymore.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

I think our current kids still will, but I don't know how much longer after that'll be a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

I mean, it'll start gonna go away 16 years from now, like for or 15 years for my example, but my dad's excited for this stuff because like like our parents are probably like you know, getting close to like around their 70s and stuff, and like he remembers when his parents were like 80, 90, and like couldn't really like safely drive anywhere, and they're just kind of like trapped at home a lot. He's like hoping this is like around for his, you know.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Yeah, take them to appointments, all the everything. Grandkids, grandkids can come see them.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Yeah, it'd be really super helpful. Hopefully, it's ready at least for when we're old.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

Yeah, yeah. I'm not worried about your dad, but I'm worried about us.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Yeah, he can figure it out himself.

SPEAKER_06 28:41

Um okay. Yeah, I mean, I guess like now, I don't know. I don't know if I want to take this any further. Yeah, I guess like that it's probably like exhausted this idea a little bit, but um I think our generation's much more open to this though.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Like the boomer and Gen X generation, I think this is still a little more abstract. I know like your you mentioned your dad is, but I feel like your dad's probably a little more techy and yeah, forward-winded.

SPEAKER_06 29:18

All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna like kind of carry this question forward a little bit and keep on like the tech automation stuff. So um they're like the whole robot thing, like humanoid robots are like kind of I feel like they're not there yet, but I feel like they're kind of coming close. Maybe in the next like three to five years, we'll start seeing them maybe in like hospitals or like factories, like doing you know, picking Amazon stuff out of factories or whatever. Um do you like let in a world where in the next 15 to 20 years you have a robot like doing all the chores in your house and like cooking for you and shit like that? What do you think that you would do with your time instead? With all the time that like think about all the time you cook and do laundry and clean and like mow the lawn and whatever. Like, how do you think you would spend your time if you didn't have to do any of that stuff?

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Have more time to like go to the gym and like that kind of stuff, do like hobbies, things that um you know kind of get put on the back burner a lot now. Um yeah, I I probably that kind of stuff, or at least that's what I tell myself, and then I'd probably just end up watching I'll watch, I'll watch more Sixers games, or yeah, we're just all gonna become the people from Wally. Yeah, probably yeah, exactly. That'd that'd be me.

SPEAKER_02 30:52

Yeah, the more comfortable we become, and the easier everything becomes just gonna push us in that direction. Uh, I don't know what I would do if I had more time like that. I mean I again would like to think I'm gonna be productive with my time and get some work done or spend it with my family or doing something fun, but who knows? I I really haven't been watching a ton of TVs, so maybe yeah, catch more games or do something like that, just more kind of leisure time would be nice. Something like that.

SPEAKER_06 31:21

Yeah, that's fair. Is there anything that like you think even if there was something that a robot could do like even better than you, you would still want to do that people might think of as like manual labor or house tour-y things?

SPEAKER_02 31:35

Maybe like a couple times a year, I'd like mow the lawn or something, just because it just gives you that feeling of summer and satisfaction and stuff, like the like ASMR type thing. Where just I don't know. But that being said, like I don't necessarily want to do it every single week when it's 90 degrees, and like I had work all day, and this is my only chance to do it because I'm gonna be away this weekend, like that type of stuff would be like all right. Well, I don't really want to pay someone to do this, but if my robot wants to do it for me, like an outdoor Roomba, and I think that actually already exists, but still, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

There's a there's a house that I drive by that has a robo mower. Um seems like it does a pretty good job. Uh I don't, yeah, I I I would probably mow the lawn my own, maybe not when it's 100 degrees, like you said. Um but it's just nice to get outside, kind of like fresh air. Um maybe I'd spend more time outside if I had more free time to sometimes like cooking too, like just doing a new recipe is kind of fun. Um, but at the same time, a lot of days we're really busy getting home from work and then like trying to get tailored a basketball or or like a music class or whatever, and it'd be nice to have a robot, just have like a hot meal ready with a little robo apron on and back basically. Sounds like we're trying to make like a 1950s housewife out of these things.

SPEAKER_06 33:06

Well, I mean, yeah, I feel like uh yeah, the I guess on the along maybe on the flip side of that question, what is the thing you like are most excited to be automated so you never have to do again in your life?

SPEAKER_02 33:21

Uh my laundry and put it away.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Oh yeah, I don't like that either.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

I hate doing that. Seems like a waste of time.

SPEAKER_06 33:28

Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Yeah, I think cleaning of any degree would be mine. Like, like any like bathroom gunk, like any of that. I'd never want to touch that ever again in my life if I could. Um probably be top of the list, I think.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

Weeding, that's a big one. I don't like weeding. Like mowing lawns, okay, but weeding, it just you get it like hurts. It's just like your back hurts at the end of it, and you just I don't know, it's not great. It's nice being outside and spending some time plants and stuff like that, but it's it's just such a chore.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Yeah, and it feels like it feels so like hopeless, like you know, like they're just gonna come back.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

Yeah, it's really harder than battle.

SPEAKER_06 34:12

It's like a cosmetic change. I think what I'm most terrified by is that when I do have more free time because of robots, I like the algorithm will be so dialed in that I will just have this like endless, perfectly outstanding like selection of entertainment at my at my fingertips, and I will be like lured in like Wally style.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

Um but I don't know, hopefully we'll be able to fight that that's like the harpy song just pulling you in over and over again, but you still have to do things that you don't want to do because it's important. You still have to do hard things in life. I guess like working out and stuff like that is some alternative to that. Like it's a I don't know, stressful thing on your body and putting yourself through something. So if you can keep up with that, or like you said, difficult hobbies, maybe getting better at something, like Kev, I knew taking a language, like more time to do stuff like that.

SPEAKER_06 35:08

That would definitely be the ideal.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Hopefully, hopefully that's you know you're far more disciplined, Kev, than most people are.

SPEAKER_06 35:15

I think most people become horrific people very quickly. Yeah, the algorithm is very good these days.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Um I get worried about jobs a lot. Like, like what like how many people like realistically could have their job replaced by AI or or robots with some kind of automation, you know, like like in theory, every truck driver could be out of a job in 30 years. In theory, like every you know, janitor could be out of a job in whatever years, or like so I don't like a lot of times the people that would lose these are like the most vulnerable that like probably don't have like super specialized skills, like even like as a teacher, not to say that I'm like super specialized, but it's like there's a lot of nuance to it that I don't know if like a robot could do like do the job super effectively. Um, you know, like nursing and stuff. Like, I think there's a very human element to it. It's like I don't know about like those jobs, but those like require at least the four-year degree, probably more for nursing. But like I don't know, like a carpenter, like I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

It would certainly widen like the class gap between rich people and poor people because rich people could basically just enslave robots to and like use all their resources to get so much money and so much stuff done without actually really employing anyone or having like operating expenses aside from just like running their software, all that type of stuff. So, like like you said, there's just less jobs for regular people. So, like even though America's GDP might go up, like the common man all of a sudden just kind of has no purpose and how's their way to make money and systems built on capitalism, then they're just kind of a flaw to that system. So gotta like you said, figure that out.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

I mean, I guess new jobs get created out of it, like instead of truck drivers to be like robot repair man or whatever, you know, but definitely be some growing pains.

SPEAKER_06 37:22

Yeah, I mean like the yeah, I think about that stuff all the time. I th I think definitely a shift to the creative and kind of like the things we would like to think are our hobbies and just like really leaning into that. I think of just as a small microcosm of that, thinking about like I don't know, uh people that like streaming, like video game streaming. Like the idea that so many people could have their full-time job be like streaming video game playing to like a somebody like to us as a kid when we were like 12 years old, hilarious. Yeah, our parents would like yell at us and say good study or something if we said that. Yeah. So like it it really, I I don't think any normal person could have said that was gonna be real and any of us would have believed it. So I do think that there's some version of that that will exist, even in an AI world where it's like, you know, I I don't I almost can't think of what it is. Like, I'm sure to some degree, uh, you know, being like an artist or a singer will like still be interesting because it's so human and like bar like caveman-esque that like sitting in a room with a person on a chair with a guitar is like still gonna be appealing to us um as just like human beings, and so I think that will still be a thing. And then there's gonna be just like countless variants of that, but I mean, yeah, it's definitely interesting. Like, I think sports is another one where it's just like sports are so uniquely human that like there's excellence, there's failure, there's like horrendous mistakes, there's like victories that are by the you know the the smallest of margins and uh by the odds and that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. I feel like that will be still a a thing. I don't think like watching you know simulated robot games is gonna be interesting at all. So I definitely think that will still exist. But yeah, a lot of things things can certainly change. Um yeah, I mean I was gonna talk a little bit about that. I know I was gonna see if uh if Derek was gonna join us because I was actually curious because we we talked about this a little bit a while ago. But are is is like the current state of AI influencing your job as a teacher right now, Byron? The administrators are like you have to use this to lesson plan, or you can't lose it to lesson plan, or why don't you ask?

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Um so yes, our our district is very like like open to AI, and like a lot of like every day we have profession every day that we do professional development, there's usually at least one session on like how to utilize AI to like be more efficient in your job. And they have um, you know, don't really fear us towards Chat GPT. Um our school's big on Google products, so they they push us towards Gemini and like different like uh like gems, I guess they're called, that they have geared towards education. Um, and then there's a couple other platforms that are specific for education. Magic school is a big one, and um what's the other brisk? It's like with brisk, I'll can take a Google Doc and like convert it into a Google Form quiz like instantaneously, which is amazing. Like I it it saves me so much time where I take like old vocab assignments that I've had forever, and then um I can turn them into like a digital multiple choice quiz that gets instantly graded. And like I you still double check to make sure that everything's correct. They call it like the 80-20 rule, like you let AI do 80% of the work, and then you spend the rest like making sure that it's done properly or improving it and letting them just do the grunt work. Um, so that's really big. But in one of my classes, um, just a couple weeks ago, I had my students um had like a full-on AI uprising. They were like very upset with uh a way that I had used it. Um and it led to some really good conversations, but at the time it was a little frustrating because I was creating like a game that we would play in class to teach foreign policy that was similar to risk, and it was like kind of evolved. So, and I'm not like an artistic individual, so I used well, I used AI to create a map for the game. And there are like a bunch of artists in this class that got like really upset. Just I like I understand their concern because like in in some ways, like like I see it like on billboards occasionally, like companies will like use an AI thing that probably used to be a graphic designer's job to make some billboard or something, and like oh, like they they like literally wouldn't do the assignment. Like we it turned into like a 15-minute discussion about like AI and like when to use it and when not and how it's appropriate. And like for me, um, and I'd like to think I was right. Um, I was like, look, like there's inappropriate times and appropriate times to use AI. This saves me literally hours of work because I'm not a graphic designer. I wouldn't be able to make a map from scratch. I could do it by hand, but then it wouldn't be digital. I wouldn't be able to edit the image or upload it into like our platforms or anything like that. So like it just made sense to me. And then people were like, well, but like, you know, AI generating the image creates uses this much electricity and water and stuff, so then it became like an environmental thing. I'm like, oh my god, I was the geez. It is eight o'clock. This is eight o'clock in the morning, and I'm like, I was just trying to do something fun and we couldn't do it because and I was like, you know, the good thing was that it's a civics and gov class, so like this is all very topical. So it sometimes that happens. You stumble into things that like meaningfully impact students in some way, and they're actually passionate about it. So I should just be grateful that they are aware of something enough and care about something enough to have an opinion, which doesn't happen often with teenagers, but it it surprised me because none of my other classes said a single thing about it, and then this class was just like very like you know, leading the charge of like anti uh anti AI or whatever it's called. And um that's so interesting. What age are they? Uh 16, 17.

SPEAKER_06 43:57

Okay, it's so interesting that like they would have. Such a hard stance, like they're not making a living off of this, or like I I guess I don't know, they're hearing from their parents or well, a lot of them are artists, and then there's a lot of people too who feel like with some of these data centers.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

And I don't know, like I've seen so like when this happened, I went and like read about like more about like how much energy get and like it's kind of difficult to pin down how much like water and electricity the data centers actually use. Because like so, like I feel like there's a lot of stuff on like social media that I saw this one thing says it like uses one water bottle, like uh uh 500 milliliters worth of water to make one AI generated image. And I was like, that can't be true. That literally cannot be true. Like that would be it, it just can't. That's too much. And like they these data centers use closed, we're we're going down a bit a little bit of a rabbit hole, but they use like they don't they use water to cool, but they don't just like drink it. It it goes through like you know, some kind of like tubes and stuff to cool the the stuff, and then it goes somewhere else in the machine.

SPEAKER_06 45:08

I don't know, but yeah, yeah, no, I I don't understand that stuff well enough to comment because I always hear like the water usage thing, and I also get confused by that because it's like does that mean the water is like just I guess it's just gone and uh like the heat, I guess, evaporate? I I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

Apparently, I don't know, and again, like I'm not a I'm not like an expert on this stuff, but like think about like a regular computer, like a desktop computer, and you can have ones that are water cooled where they will run water through like tubes in the computer that cool down the thing because as it like thinks and does things uh more intense and rigorous, it generates heat, and somehow through science that I don't understand, it cools it. And the water doesn't just disappear, like it gets trapped in in the system in some way, and I think there's like it would eventually maybe evaporate, but they condense it again somehow, but that that's not entirely energy efficient, is like the main drive of it. But anyway, it was I thought it was an interesting conversation, and I think um I don't know, made me think about like you know when's the best time and when's the the like not appropriate time to use it.

SPEAKER_06 46:22

Oh I feel like uh yeah, that's tough because like I feel like you have to figure out how to use it, and like you're being a better teacher by like and figuring out creative ways to use it, and it's just like if you don't use it, you're not being the best teacher that you could be given like the time that you have at your disposal.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

So it's like that's exactly what I said. So I don't know. I I think it's like there's a maybe a difference between like, oh like I just made like this silly Christmas card of me, like you know, and stay in a sleigh. We're about to see an example of that. Well, some of my students would be appalled.

SPEAKER_06 47:00

I wouldn't really care. Don't tell them about what we're about to engage in because I'm gonna tell you. Definitely use a few water bottles.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

I don't know. Like, I I think the the main thing too that I said is that it's no different than anything else. Like it requires moderation. Like, think about how much you know, think about how much stuff that you buy from overseas. Like, if you're gonna really like break everything down, like the impact on just like the number of humans there are and that that and what we have in the environment, no matter what you do, you're gonna do something that when seven billion other people do it every day is a problematic. Like, if you're not a vegetarian, you're probably really honestly like eating eating meat is probably worse for the environment, especially beef than AI is, but there's not like a lot of hamburglers out there trying to take that away.

SPEAKER_06 47:58

That's why I never have like anything to say about any of that stuff because it's like the most hypocritical thing ever. There's like the odds, yeah, the odds that like if you were to like publicly argue against something because of environmental reasons, like the odds that you are like net zero as a human are like infinitesimal. So it's just like don't you own an iPhone? Yeah, yeah, it's made for yeah. So I mean, but as a teacher, I know you can't say that. That's not obviously that's not that would not be good. You hypocrites, you dare I would be so tempted though. I would be so tempted. I would be like the craggly old person that's like like trying to think of examples to just like get them to stop. But that's good at engaged and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

I think it's good to like just have in the back of your mind. Like, I'm I'm not like a I don't think I'm like someone who takes anything to extremes, but like I'll still use plastic stuff, but in my lunch, like a few years ago, I was like, it seems kind of wasteful to use Ziploc bags every day in my lunch. So now I just have like a Tupperware container that I put my chips in instead, and it's cheaper and probably better for the environment. It's like I feel like decisions that you make like that in your daily life um are probably more important than that.

SPEAKER_06 49:19

I think it's good when you do that. If you do that, but the example would be that doesn't mean that you're going around to people that use plastic bags and telling them that they're a bad person.

unknown 49:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:31

If you can keep both those things in harmony, then you're like doing exactly what a human should be doing. It's like just making little decisions, but not like calling out others for making because maybe they drive, like you know, they're maybe they ride their bike to school or like ride their bike to work, and then it's like you would drive a car.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

Like, if you're gonna sit here and like complain, like there's probably like four four people in this like school that like drive with zero mission, and like not that I like mostly it's for the money for me. Like, I'm not like trying to be a hero or anything, but it's um yeah, like you said, like that. That'd be sick.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

Yeah, that would that'd be that would be aura farming, as the kids say, it would be, but you live not to give your position away, but in an area that it wouldn't be uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

Or Costco or Lowe's, yeah. They have horse tiles, they got their oats and stuff they can give them.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Oh that's adorable. Instead of a pup cup, they just give horse oats and sugar cubes.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

Yeah. Or they probably just beat them because they don't treat the animals very nicely. That's fair. Derek, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 50:49

I drove an electric car all day today. Seems irrelevant to what you guys are talking about.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

You're permitted to use the AI for one hour now.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

Nice. Is that the topic of conversation right now? Is how we use AI in our lives?

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Yeah, we went down a little bit of a rabbit hole, and I I apologize.

SPEAKER_06 51:08

Okay, that was interesting. That was very interesting to hear that 16-year-olds are like anti-AI because of the that's a broad stroke.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

I'd say it's like a vocal minority in one.

SPEAKER_06 51:19

Yeah, that's fair. No, I I honestly, even that's interesting to me, that even a vocal minority would would like publicly voice their concern in protest of that.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

But I mean, I'm the opposite. I feel like I have to use it or else I'll be left behind in my career. As if I just refuse to use it for the entirety over the rest of my career, I'll just be that stodgy old folk who goes back in the old tomes of regular books when you might be able to just use AI to get the same answer in five seconds that it would take you three hours to find in a book. So I think it's a necessity, number one, that if I don't use it, I'll be left behind. And number two, I mean, just using it generally does make my life a lot easier. It's I never use it as the end-all be-all end result of anything that I'll give to the court or a client or anything, but it's an amazing jumping-off point of like, all right, well, what's the abstract question that I have? I'll type it into AI and it'll give me an answer of, okay, well, AI cited this general statute. Now I'll go look at that statute myself. So that saved me 15 minutes of how else I would have figured that out otherwise. So it's really good, but it's certainly flawed because there's sometimes I'll say, like, hey, well, all right, what's the answer to this particular question? And it'll say, all right, well, what it's this, and I'll say, okay, give me the citation, and it'll give me a citation. Then I'll look up the actual citation, it's completely wrong, just fabricated, and I'll tell them this is wrong, that that statute you cited doesn't exist, and all it says is, oh, sorry about that, and then nothing else.

SPEAKER_06 53:00

Yeah, no, that definitely. The sorry. Oh, this is my mistake. You're totally right. And then it's bad.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

Yeah, so you got to be careful. I mean, there's been scenarios that I've been told 10 million times now of like attorneys who have told AI to write an entire brief, and the AI does it and it provides case citations that look legitimate. But then opposing counsel looked it up or tried to look it up and said, wait a minute, like this case doesn't exist. So they brought it to the court's attention, and the court, like the judge, said, All right, attorney who wrote this AI brief, like you need to prove that what you were telling me was correct. And these people just like doubled down. It was like, no, no, no, I swear it's real, and they just kept doubling down, doubling down, and then it came to pass that they were just lying the whole time and that AI made up these cases, so they got in a lot of trouble for it, which that's just like a whole nother level of stupid if you're just willing to double down on something that you know isn't true in the first place, but belies the point that AI will just confidently give you an answer that sometimes doesn't actually have any legitimate backing to it.

SPEAKER_06 54:06

So that's where you're allowed to use it or is your not work not allow it? Like, or you can you guess your I thought you asked Phil. Yeah, no, no, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 54:16

Yeah, we use it quite a bit. We have a paid version of Chat GPT where we can use like secure data so we can upload data and uh use it for uh looking at like different uh crew over time type of stuff. Uh you can have it look at financials, you can have it do quite a bit. Right? Yeah, so we're using it a lot. It's been I mean it's all pretty recent, but it's definitely like a just helpful tool. It's like having a little assistant. So, like like you said, Derek, if you're not using it, you're falling behind and you kind of have to use it. And so whether or not you're for it, if you're in a professional career that is has it available when you get very busy, it's a nice tool.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

I'm sure you have the same like considerations of like I have attorney client privilege things I need to worry about, but it's like I'm not so stupid, I'm gonna like input an email directly from a client to me and be like, what do you think of this AI? But some people do that. So I'm sure you have a similar thing of like certain privacy concerns that you can't put into AI, but other things that are appropriate to put into it.

SPEAKER_02 55:28

Yeah, we definitely have policies and all that type of stuff. But like I said, we have like our own secure version that's you they want us to use it as much as possible because it's gonna build on itself.

SPEAKER_06 55:41

So um Yeah, like it would be a I I guess maybe it's different like in the laws for attorney client privilege, but like I feel like general private company information, like these enterprise models, it would be like illegal and like open AI and anthropic would be sued for like millions and millions of dollars if it was ever discovered that their model trained on the data that like went into Conrail's enterprise model or whatever. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:11

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's all about like your particular licensing deal, but yeah, just from like a a more broad sense, like Amy's firm is pretty like with the times, and I think like the managing partner has sent like a firm-wide email. Like, if you use a open AI with client information, you will be fired immediately. So they force them to use like the internal for firm AI, which is restricted solely to them. Because like the idea is like open AI is like you're just putting that information out onto the general web.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

Right, but that's not the version that we have. We have our own internal version.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

Yeah. So it's nice to know that like even already they've developed certain models that keep it private.

SPEAKER_06 56:57

Technically, this is actually good. This is actually a good like alpha for anybody that has a paid version because you don't like unless you hear somebody tell you this, you don't necessarily know to do it because I know I didn't. But if you pay for any version, any AI, you can go into the settings and they're all in different places, but you can check a block that says don't train on my data. If you use the free version, you don't you that's you don't have that ability. But even the like$20 a month version, there's a setting in each model's like settings page where you can say like like allow the allow open AI or allow anthropic to train on my prompts and my data, and it it'll it'll default to being on and you have to turn it off. Um, so I would recommend anybody who has the pay versions to do that.

SPEAKER_02 57:44

Kev, what's good what's the Ivy League and your consulting life teaching you about AI?

SPEAKER_06 57:52

Uh I mean yeah, I don't I don't know like exactly how they're using it at work. I know they have like their own model like enterprise kind of stuff that they do, sounds like what you guys have. Um, but definitely like as much as you can possibly use it. Yeah. Basically, it's like the same idea, like lean into it. Like the and like I am taking like classes on it and stuff, and it's like yeah, I mean it it moves so fast that like I'm like a student and I'm like paying attention to it, and there's like new shit coming out all the time that I can't even keep up with, and I don't even have a job right now. So I feel like it's like kind of overwhelming to like try and actually keep up with it. Um, unless maybe you're like a software engineer and then you're like you almost have to use it, otherwise you're almost obsolete at this point. It's very good for writing code. Yeah, so like it might be easier to keep up with it there because your work is like so heavily levered, like you're able to leverage the tools so effectively that even spending like three hours figuring out the new tool might save you like 20, but it might not save like a normal person 20. So um, but yeah, so I guess on that note though, kind of talking about that, we'll dive into because we I I actually can't stay up too much later.

SPEAKER_02 59:08

Um I made a little didn't talk yet. Sorry, yeah, yeah. Well, I wasn't sure if Phil, yeah. Yeah, sometimes I'm in, sometimes I'm out.

SPEAKER_05 59:16

Yeah, I'm poking my head in, focusing my head out. Yeah, I just want to just just a little touch on uh how AI is is prevalent in in my workspace. Um and it's it's a it's a it's a huge, it's a very interesting like dilemma.

SPEAKER_02 59:29

But um you're in the entertainment world in the music industry, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 59:32

In the music, in the music industry, yeah. So my first ever experience of w of of seeing AI being used is uh I was I just finished a session and I was just like I walked to the lobby of the studio that I work at and then I overheard these uh I overheard someone singing in the other studio and the the door was open and it sounded like Chris Brown. So it literally sounded like Chris Brown. But like I knew like I knew that the the definitely Chris Brown wasn't there. Like I would I would have known that that would have been like you know what I'm saying, I would have known he could be there. So the engineer came out and he and I was like, yo, what's what's going on in there? And he's like, yo, like it's actually a singer-songwriter in there, he's recording a song, and they're like transmuting it through this software like live and converting it into Chris Brown's vocals so they can make reference tracks for him, so they can send it to him and he can choose which songs he likes, and he can actually record them for real.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:28

Yeah, so he can hear it in his own voice and be like, I like the voice. Yeah, exactly. Kind of weird and dystopian.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:36

I I know, right? Imagine, imagine hearing your own song back of something like your own voice, but it's not you, and you gotta choose between which is which your favorite is like it's crazy. So so that was the oh go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:48

I was gonna say it's like, is this the death of art? If it's just like we're being pre-programmed now, because does this take away from people coming up with stuff and it's just us plugging things in?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:59

And like Phil, for you so curiously, do you think that there will become a time, maybe not even that far in the future, where producers will find some up-and-comer with a great voice, and they'll say, Well, we don't want to sign you to a record deal where you get to write the songs and you sing, then you perform them, and we pay you all this money for it. What we're gonna do instead is pay you one-tenth of that to just come into the studio, record a couple voice snippets so that we have enough range to then convert it to AI, and then once we have the AI stock of your voice, then we'll write your songs. We will then use the samples that we have to develop those entire songs, and we'll create an album off of that. So, therefore, they'll like pay the artist far less just because instead the contract is let's just take a couple samples of your voice, we'll do all the rest.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:50

Yeah, uh uh the it's actually been taking uh taken a step further than that, actually. And it's already and it's already happening. It's not it's not even involving the human to begin with. They actually have like AI artists that have like signed to a label behold. Like yeah, and and and like for example, for some who profits off of that?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:10

Just the label?

SPEAKER_05 1:02:11

Like who's whoever whoever is the originator of it, like whoever like is is you know, there's there's label wars going on right now between what's legal and what's not, and then there's like it's it it's literally it it's being disputed right now, like the wild west. Yeah, and and it's crazy because like so many you know famous people, like so many artists are like some are pro, some are anti, like and I'm like shocked to to see that Timberland. I'm sure you guys are familiar with Timbaland. He he he is like very pro like uh pro AI. And he's like he like he he's one of the people who created his own artists and like try to find like and is like signing them and like making music through that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:55

And and it has no it has no pen name as an artist or something, like but different at the same time. Like it's just a they created like an entity that doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:06

Yeah, no, so it's it's kind of crazy. Um on on the on another in another example, uh I've actually used it for the first time in one of my sessions just a couple weeks ago. And uh what it was was I was recording this girl, she was a singer, and uh I after she was done, I took her vocals and I airdropped the vocals to a producer who was also in the room. I sent it to him, he he took it to Suno. You guys are familiar with Suno?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:35

Okay, it's like music GPT type of thing. Basically, yeah, and it's like damn near perfected it. So he he took the her vocals, um, put it through Suno and also added a little bit of percussion around it, and then sent it back to me, and then I put it back into the session. And her voice, like it literally the Suno basically provided the same exact everything, like her voice, like her tone, everything sounded like her, except it was like perfect, like perfection. Like no weakness in the singing, no, no out-of-tune, no out of pitch, like it was complete perfection, and it sounded just like her voice. So that's cool.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:16

I mean it's cool as but also.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:18

But if every artist is if every artist is striving to perfection, like I feel like that takes away from general creativity.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:26

Well, I don't think it's the talent, it's the it's the personality and like the the aura, so to speak, as the kids would say of the artist more than like one raw talent.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:36

But like, does an album is that fair game to just be totally AI? Because people don't want to show up to a concert just to have a laptop play AI music. They want to actually see a person perform, but well, DJs don't perform. I yeah, that's yeah, then I've always wondered about that. But is is that the future then of just uh well we'll have this AI artist who does great music on an album and then Yeah, do we just have some random dude just click play on a laptop and that's our concert anymore?

SPEAKER_06 1:05:08

I feel like the DJs are definitely like a gateway drug to this because I feel like with all the visuals that you can and a lot of these concerts, I'm sure I don't know them because I haven't been to them, but like some of the visuals at some of these concerts are insane. And so you combine that with music and it kind of becomes like just a giant like party, and I feel like people are down for that kind of I guess. I don't know that everyone is, but I think a lot of people are.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:35

Yeah, I guess it begs the question of do people go to concerts for the performer themselves or do they go for the experience? Because you're right, if it's just AI music, but they can also put on a light show and on giant big screens and all the people attending, they find it more compelling to just dance with the people who are also there in attendance versus looking at some superstar up on stage. Is that Satisfactory to them.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:01

But I think you can also add the element of holograms because that's a real thing, too. Like that, like you can have the AI become like a physical thing. There have been concerts with like a Tupac hologram before.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:17

Wouldn't that be wild, man? It's like AI artists and then an AI avatar, too. Of course, you can make them perfect as you want them to be because it's AI.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:26

It's kind of creating new genres, though, because I don't think old music would go away because people still love listening to like a live band. So I don't think it's gonna just take away from that. But now there's just a new type of like you could go to the sphere, like Kev said, and all of a sudden you don't even have a person performing, it's just the sphere itself is basically the show and the music, and like it's just someone uploading some all AI generated stuff, and like also Phil, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this. There's a lot of like with music GPT and Sona and stuff, like you can just cover songs now and change like the genre. Like around St. Patrick's Day, I was pretty into Irish covers of songs that people are just making on stuff like that. The Avril Levine one was so good. Yeah, that was good. There's there's a lot of really good ones. The tipsy song was that was electric. It was a great drinking song.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:21

Honestly, I'm glad you brought this up.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:24

Me too.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:26

Because I feel like above like more than anything else, I think this can be something that like can be beneficial to everybody involved. For example, let me give you an example, right? So 50 cents posted uh an Instagram clip of uh like a soulful like 6070s version of one of his songs, and it was like absolute complete flame, like fire, like super crazy, undeniable, like smash. And like it just made it had me thinking like excuse the noise, um it had me thinking like imagine if Vicky F put out a full album of an album that he already put out in the past, and it's just like a soulful sample version of the same thing, so that everyone involved of that original album, all the songwriters, all the producers, all the artists, every everyone involved, everyone who got paid for it is gonna get paid for that as well. You know what I'm saying? So I I feel like in that case, the AI is not creating anything new, you know what I'm saying? It's not it's not like taking a life of its own, it's it's recreating something in a different like format.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:50

Putting like a skin over it.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:52

Yeah, or like a mod in video games or something, and everyone still gets paid, every everything is still fairly done. Like, I think I think that could be that's one of like the most um ethical ways to use AI music, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:06

Because I feel like everybody wins, like a royalty based on the work that was already done.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:15

You can cover any song, but you get royalty based off of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:19

Yeah, that definitely works for like remixes of existing material. Right. I worry about production of new material though. Like, at what point are these like soulless corporations who are like a moral, all they worry about is the bottom line. They're like, oh well, we don't have to pay ex-artist anymore because we created this artist, so we'll give whatever we've contracted with the AI company to give them their cut, which is going to be less than what we would pay the artist. Which I guess leads to the deeper problem of like, to what extent have you guys worried when, if ever, will AI take over my job? Because I can fully admit there's been shit that like has legitimately spooked me. Like, put like a 40-page contract into Chat GPT and just say summarize this for me and give me like the most problematic areas, and it is flawless. Like it is in like 10 minutes, it'll like give me back like what would take me three hours to go through this giant document, tooth and nail, fine news cone to identify everything that might be wrong with it, and AI just does that quickly. It's like, oh my god, like that's a little bit concerning.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:30

Yeah, I I think that that is gonna happen to like a lot of jobs. I feel like the thing that will still be most relevant then is gonna be like the people part of it. So like you're the you're still gonna be the decision maker. So if you have the judgment, if you have the communication skills, if you have the ability to influence humans and like understand human behavior and like biases and like all that psychological business and be able to essentially it's kind of like the how to win friends and influence people kind of ideas of like Dale Carnegie and all that stuff of like interacting with humans. I feel like that's still gonna be important. So if you're good at that and you can manipulate all the technical tools of AI, I think you'll still you'll be like one of the last men standing, so to speak. I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:19

I agree with that, and that's basically how I do it now of like I can use this tool to give me a jump start on the research or the review, knowing that I have to double check everything, cross-check it against the relevant statutes, whatever. But the main point that I'm concerned about, and this is happening to someone in real time that we all know and care about. I'm not going to name them here, but like it could happen to me too, because I'm mostly billable hours. Like you bill the client based on how much time you had to spend on their particular project. Something that 10 years ago or even two years ago would take, let's just call it five hours. So five hours time of your hourly rate, that's what you charge the client. But if now you're using AI, five hours turns to half an hour. You get the job done completely fine. Like AI summarized it for you, you double check it, you do all your due diligence to make sure that they didn't fabricate any statutes, whatever, all of their work was good. You're still making a tenth of what you would have made otherwise. But can you just not use AI? Because if you don't, then maybe you're left behind because then they just go to a competitor. But if you do use it, there goes 10 times or 90% of what you would have made otherwise. So the person that I referenced, and again, I don't want to name them in case they're not comfortable with me sharing this, but the necessity to use AI has brought down their income because their own billable hours have been reduced. And now they are worried as a company overall of we are not bringing in as much money because we are not billing as many hours because we are using AI, but we can't just not use AI because if we don't, we'll be left behind. So it's a legit, legitimate concern for me, and it's an ethical one as well, because if there is a tool available that lets you do the job better for your client in a more efficient manner, you can't just not use it, but at the same time, you're hurting yourself by doing it because then you're just bringing in less money because you're forced to use a tool that makes you and forces you to be more efficient.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:32

Yeah, I feel like I just think about like businesses of the like internet era and the social media era, and it's like if you're in the situation where it's like and I know this probably just is not the perfect correlation, but it's the best thing I can think of off the top of my head. It's like, oh, we don't need a website, like nobody's gonna buy our product online, and like I don't want to waste all of my time doing that, and then it's like we we know where that went, you get left behind, and like, oh, social media, like what is this? I don't need this, I don't need to like make an Instagram page and like put all my stuff on Instagram, like this is silly, and then you're left behind. And I feel like it's really just about figuring out how to adapt the business model to the technology, which is way easier said than done. Um, and and it's also maybe like this is so existential that it's like maybe now being a lawyer is your part-time job because there's just not enough work. I mean, if you could scale if you could make me feel much better. Well, what I'm thinking is like, so there's two avenues here. Either one avenue is you just do more work if there is more work out there. It's like if you had three more hours a day to do work, would that work be there for you? Um, and what would that work be? Like, could you do back office stuff? Could you is there other things that you would be able to do at that time? Or is there more work out there for you? And if the like you go through that full process, then at the end of the day, the answer is like, no, this is as much as I could do. Like it maybe the answer is like, now I can figure out how to get more work, and I can use this tool to help me get more work, and then I use that tool to do that work. Um, but if you like basically go through that iteration, reach its ending point, and you still feel like I'm still not filling a work day, then maybe then you're like, oh shoot, like maybe I should start a side gig where I like use this tool to do some other thing that I enjoy doing uh to like fill the income. But yeah, I mean that's like a whole long exercise of like thinking about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:42

Well, you think finding ways to make income is gonna become harder?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:46

Yeah, I mean, Kevin, you raise a great point. Like, as of sitting here right today, like there's more work that I have than I can get done in a day. So it's not at crisis point yet, but I don't think it's gonna take long at all for me to optimize AI to get stuff done to the point you were saying where I'm sitting there at 3 p.m. and I got all my work done, and there's only so many people who need legal work, and then there's only so many competitors that we can win out over everybody else. So I don't I legitimately don't think it would take very long to get to that point of everybody's doing it, everybody's getting the work done. If we're not using it, then we're taking 10 times what a competitor would take. So everybody else is obviously going to go to the competitor because they're gonna think, well, I can get it done for one-tenth of the price because they're using this cutting-edge technology. And then to Mike's point, okay, so we reach crisis point where there's just not enough work coming in because it all gets done so quickly because of AI. All that we really do then is double check it, make sure it's legitimate, bless it. There you go. And we're making a tenth of what we did otherwise. What is the new venture? Like, I fear it's too much of an abstract concept to rely upon for sending my kids to school or even buying food. Like, what does the future hold then? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:13

This this reminds me a lot of um like a obviously, if you think back to just like basic social studies, like you had the part of what fueled the industrial revolution was all these like changes in in agriculture and farming, where it's like, yes, like we can make farms so much more efficient now. And I'm not saying we shouldn't have like invented tractors or anything, but it just changed everything because it used to be that you needed a bunch of like small family farms to feed everyone, and then like you got like modern fertilizer, modern farming equipment, and then all of a sudden, with like machine power instead of animal and human power, you could produce like 10 times as much food, which meant that all the farmers were out of jobs and ended up moving to the cities and working in factories, and it just completely changed the labor market. And I think you know, there was obviously good things and bad things that came out of that. Um but you could see a similar kind of like trend, and it doesn't have to necessarily be like a dystopian thing or like a negative thing, and I think it's also interesting too because this type of technological development usually the things that get hurt are like um you know blue-collar jobs that can get replaced by like automation things, but it's unusual to have something that changes more professional careers the way that this type of AI is. So that like I don't know, like like Derek says, like I don't know what the alternative is. Like I don't think people want to go to college for eight years and then work in a factory. Um but you know, I'm sure I'm sure there's you know it's it's impossible to predict the future and know how markets and labor markets and things will adapt to the the changing times. But I think um for me like AI is like you just said, like it's like it's here now and there's nothing you can really do about it. And if you don't use it, you'll get left behind. Just like if you're a farm, like not always gonna be John Henry the steel driving man and and you know, break through mountains and dig through mountains faster than a machine, but I think kind of like what Phil was saying, like when you have AI being used in a way that like enhances what humans are already doing rather than replacing it, like nobody loses there. And like I don't know. I I I really worry about like what you know, like a significant portion of the country will do if their jobs are replaced with AI or or even just significantly altered. Because I don't I don't think like unless the government decides to do something people are just gonna make, oh well, you know, we feel bad, so here's like a different job we can give you where you can still make the same amount of money.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:14

Yeah, I mean Yeah, I mean I'm not trying to get into like this conversation, but like, is it gonna lead towards some like universal basic income type shit? Because like I struggle to imagine in 15 years any job that couldn't be done better with AI. Like law, consulting, teaching. It's like manual labor. Like Byron, like, could don't you envision some future where there's like a screen at the front of the classroom where there's just some AI teacher who just implements exactly what the school district's curriculum is with no hologram flaw. And like and you they just expect the kids to just get it. And it's like, well, we can pay this AI company X amount for all of our classrooms when if we look at what we pay all of the teachers in the entire school district, it's no question the AI is totally less, so that's just what we're gonna do. Or in the law, it's like there's certain things I think that like litigation stuff that can never be replaced, but there's uh plenty of other stuff that could easily be replaced. And then it's just well, why would I ever pay a person to do this if the AI can do it that much more quickly? Or like accounting. It's okay, well, AI with we've proven that it's 100% flawless in this particular situation. So that that now takes the job. I look forward to that day when I can have all my tasks done for me. Or consulting of like, okay, this is my company, this is my problem, this is what I need to optimize. The AI is now developed 20 years from now, optimize totally that it gives out a perfect answer that 10 times quicker than a human being would do. Like, that's what I fear is that right now it's like a fun tool that makes our lives easier on a day-to-day basis. But uh I mean, realistically, the c the country is kind of controlled by corporations who are constantly trying to cut costs, maximize efficiency, profits to the shareholders, to the extent they can cut labor and cost to employees in lieu of AI, they're going to do it. There's no question. So then what happens at that point when the vast majority of people who've worked their whole lives to be professional, sought education, gained experience, they're just suddenly outgained by AI.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:33

Then what I mean every corporation is just AI at this point, like Yeah, like that I think that the the timeline for like something truly where like we're all like just sitting around, you know, like with our hands in our pants. Like, I I think that's like kind of kind of truly pretty far away. But I think that the beautiful thing is like the until that day, the people that will like remain in the hierarchy are the people that like understand this stuff the best and use it the most effectively and all of that stuff. So I feel like in the short term, like you could think about it existentially, but in the short term, as you're like making your decisions like from day to day, like there's no question that like the best decision is how do I use this to the best of my abilities to like maximize my effectiveness as an individual and or as it's as a as a leader, if you have like people working for you. Um because like that becomes harder and harder to replace as like when there's less people, those people are gonna need to be the more effective than they are now. So like if you're not getting to that level where you're that future more productive person or more effective person, then you will not be that person. So like that's kind of how I think about it. And it's like it won't be won't go from like day one to day two of like like if day two is no humans and day one is like where we are now, all humans, like there's gonna be a very gradual transition. But yes, for the people that like do fall by the wayside, I think that those are the people that are gonna have jobs that we can't predict right now or whatever, but and maybe there is some kind of UBI, but I think that there are gonna be like some hard we were talking about this earlier, Derek, but just like hard to predict like niches of the world that like develop, kind of like we were talking about like video game streamer that exists right now. Like we would have been like laughing at that when we were 10 years old. Like, what somebody makes like as much as an athlete and all they do is play video games on TV for everyone, that's insane. That cannot possibly be true. Um, and I just feel like there's gonna be stuff like that that and that's just one small example. There's many more examples we can think of right now that are like that for like if you told our 12-year-old self we would think it's insane.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:03

Um, so I mean I appreciate that optimism because I guess realistically, when you look at a long lens of there's always been technological advancements that I'm sure people at that point.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:13

Yeah, I think the computer in general, like everyone questioned themselves, like what's gonna happen, and that definitely did push probably more towards entertainment and other industries, or even like the engine or the plow, like literally like the field plow is like, oh well.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:30

But yeah, I mean, like any number of things, like that's how I tr like to think about it is like while everyone adapts always, it's not like there's just gonna be like vast droves of people starving to death because they don't have work, but nonetheless, I mean, without knowing with any certainty what those vague future occupations will be, it's a little bit unnerving to think like, well, shit, like, all right, well, maybe if the timeline's slow, like I'll make it to the end of my life without having to just be like totally useless. But like, then what do my kids do? What do I teach them? Like, we were always grow we always grew up being told by our teachers, like, you're not always gonna have a calculator on you, you need to learn how to do math. Like, what were they wrong? Wrong. Yeah, wrong.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:17

Idiots.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:19

So, like, what do we say? Like, well, you are always going to have a supercomputer in your pocket that can give you the answer to any question immediately.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:28

It was hard to predict that.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:30

90% accuracy.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:32

No, I'm not faulting them for that, but like No, I I I completely agree with Derek, and I don't have any kids right now, but like the the whole like the concept of and I'm not I mean, like, I don't know, you guys have more thoughts on this because you're more closer to it being a reality, but like when I have you know a young kid and they're going to school and like the world that we live in right now, today, like how am I thinking about how they're being educated and like what's useful and what's not? Because I do think it's a little bit more relevant. I relevant as you get a little bit older. Because I I really think that it's hard to argue that you should be learning English and like grammar, and like that's language is still going to exist, definitely and like basic math, so you can like sanity check like everything you're seeing. Um, but when you get to like slightly more advanced topics of like later secondary education, it's like how what are we what should we actually be learning given like how quickly everything's changing. I don't know. I mean, yeah, Byron, you probably think about this a lot, like in the teaching environment, being at that stage.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:38

Yeah, we get that that question a lot. And I know like a lot of veteran teachers went through the same thing like when the internet became very mainstream, because then a lot of people like, why don't what what am I gonna teach now? Like, you know, they can just look up any answer, they don't need to know anything, and um you know, they adjusted and it said, Okay, well. Now education has to be less about just knowledge and knowing facts that you can easily look up, and more about like skills and critical thinking and that kind of stuff. And now with with AI, it's changing kind of again because some of these skills can just be done by AI, like Eric said, better than any of us, um, with oversight and things like that. So I think it's um you know, probably gonna shift in some way, um, yet again.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:34

I feel like the sweet medium is the critical thinking though, because that's still useful with AI. So as long as they've made that shift, I'm I'm happy because I always hated that when we were in school and it was all right, memorize, memorize this date on when this event happened, and just memorize this, that this, that, the other thing. It's like that doesn't make a smart person to just memorize something to just then forget it. Like the critical thinking is what's important. I feel like that's what's useful with AI too. Like AI might just give you a bullshit answer. Like, I'll say it's like 90 10 that AI gives me a good answer, but every so often it's like a bullshit answer. It's like, okay, well, like what is this? I've used my own brain to assess that AI's result was imperfect and I can't just trust it without question. So maybe that's the answer. It's just like, and if that's the answer, then that's a net positive of moving away from just memorization teaching to teaching critical thinking, because maybe that's how you become more synergistic with the AI that's inevitably going to become a major part of everyone's lives, is acknowledging it's not perfect, it is just a robot, it doesn't understand emotions. Maybe the answer it gave wasn't pr appropriate for this particular scenario.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:54

Uh schools, um a lot of school curriculums now implement something called SEL, which is um social emotional learning. And because there's like a major deficit in like soft skills. Um can't really explain why, but like it's just like in the current generation, they don't understand just like basic things like like saying hello to other people and like hey, how are you doing? Like just basic conversation, like those like things that carry value and like understanding other people's viewpoints and understanding your own emotions and social dynamics and those things, they get incorporated in the school more and more because they don't happen at home. Um, especially at like the elementary level, like Krista's always talking about how she has to do like these read some book about like you know, this or that, and it's like a big deal. Um, and you see the same thing in like kids like programming, right? If you're watching like shows with your kids, like a lot of the shows back in the day, like Elmo and like Sesame Shrubi focused on like math, alphabet, and that kind of stuff, but now there's like a lot more of like you know, this person is overwhelmed in stress, and how do you cope with stress and those things? So um, yeah, I don't know. I think just to tie it to AI, I think anything that you have um that is uh has a human element is gonna be kind of safer, you know. I think education, like Derek said, like could you envision a screen teaching everyone that kind of happened to some degree during COVID and everyone hated it? I think there like the personal connection of like an educator is important for a lot of people, maybe not everyone, and maybe there are people that will go to like some online virtual academy and just do that and it'll be good enough for them. Um I think you know, like nursing and and those things with like compassion will matter. I think certain things with business and and closing deals and and relationship type stuff will will probably matter. But yeah, I I worry about the 20% of jobs that are made expendable by AI.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:17

Yeah, like data entry jobs or whatever. It's like it's sad.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:23

Yeah, but I would say I that my counter to that, which is an open-ended counter, is that arguably that's just good for everyone because does anyone did anyone ever want to do that job? And maybe now there's a new job that's like more self-actualizing. And I don't know what that is yet necessarily, but um I feel like there it could end up being a good thing. Like there's plenty of jobs that I think right now are like not self-actualizing. Like if you're on an assembly line and you just like put a cap on a bottle, and that's what you do literally every all day long. Like there are definitely like countless people in the world right now that are doing something like that, and that can be done by a robot, and maybe it's not a seamless transition to you then going into another vocation. But if like if we can figure that out, I think that's probably better for everyone. But the hardest part is like figuring out that transition.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:22

Yeah, I mean that's a big if of okay, where do you send all these people? Because if if they there was any possibility of them having a better job to begin with, people aren't going to spend 40 years in an assembly line. At some point, they're gonna seek out that better job. And I think most people don't want to be miserable in their everyday lives, so they will have sought that out. And the reason they don't move out of that miserable job is because there is no alternative. So I mean, like, is there some reality where it's okay, well now America is going to reinvest in its infrastructure and we're gonna build all these new highways and repair the old ones, and that's gonna create all these miracle jobs that have to be physical labor, and that's where those people will go. Well, then that would be amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:07

But I think that's what would have to happen. Kevin's talking about all administrative stuff would just go away. So human stuff would have to go more towards like manual labor, like fixing the physical world.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:21

Yeah, and I I mean, and the it's just like such a major revolution in how the world works. If like, okay, well, how much do those people make then? And that that point, it's more like everybody has a government job set by some salary board somewhere. There's no like capitalism anymore at some point.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:43

Like you can't well, there's so like entertainment, but yeah, I don't know. Outs outside of that, it's just I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:51

Yeah, and I what a crazy concept. Like if everybody's on the same level of income because so many people have to do manual labor jobs, then I don't know. It just like upends a lot of stuff, which I mean that's just the nature of the world, everything changes, but crazy that we live in times where I think we can foresee that things are gonna be a lot different in 40 years than they are right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:18

I have to say, this is the most profound general discussion uh podcast I think we've had.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:24

Yeah, I don't I don't I didn't expect it to go here. Kevin's the host. Yeah, doesn't have 11 of a usual category.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:31

This is this is some like deep, intense, thought-provoking stuff. Existential. It's not like what animal would you want to fight, or like what team of animals or fart jokes and poop. Those are fun too, but those aren't no. This is this is fun. Like, this is I mean, this is literally my job.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:49

Like, this is the more engaging. This is like there was no version of this like eight years ago that we could have talked about. There just wasn't. Yeah, like this is like a this is like best we had was like Siri on our iPhones. When we're like 49 years old, we're gonna be like, remember when we were like 28 and Chat GPT came out?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:11

Yeah, just figuring out yeah, we have episodes of this podcast reading chat GT chat GPT stories.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:20

I like the day the day that I discovered Chat GPT, we recorded a podcast that night with Mike and his roommates, and I like forget exactly what happened, but I was like reading or oh, I was pitching a business idea that I said I all pitched called.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:38

Yeah, yeah. If you look back at that episode, we all came in with business ideas, and chat GPT was a yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:44

Yeah, I like made my pitch with Chat GPT about like fantasy football, like managing your team for you. And I was like, I didn't write any of that, and it was like, what? And then I was like, Yeah, I used this thing called ChatGPT, and it's like like that's a that's immortalized now on a podcast, and I just like love that that you know, I can like go. I haven't listened to it since we made it, but I'm kind of curious to go back and listen to it and just like hear everyone's thoughts because it's like I don't think we could have ever predicted even where we are now, which like isn't that crazy? Like, we all still have jobs, and like yeah, it's like just mind blowing, but but yeah, no, I I I could talk about this stuff forever. But do you guys want to go to something that has more levity?

SPEAKER_01 1:37:25

I'll just say on that note, we should redo that episode where you we all come in with a business pitch, but then we have AI judge the pitch and decide who, like a shark tank, AI shark tank.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:38

You know how it is, though, they'll always be super nice.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:42

I think everybody's the I would recommend this. Yeah. If you make them rank them, they'll rank them, that's for sure. I do that all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:49

You know what might be fun too is like we each write a pitch and then we let AI write a similar pitch and then we argue to be better than the AI pitch. Maybe that would be existential, like can we do it better than AI? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:04

One of my professors has done studies on that on his class.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:08

And like, can the human element make it better than AI?

SPEAKER_06 1:38:12

Yeah, like the basically like the gist of it is there were studies done on like um, you know, whatever. Like, I forget if it was business ideas or just some like basic idea of no, it might have been like writing a creative story, actually. It was based on creativity. It was like write a short story, you have like two hours to do it, and the one there was one group that had it write it by themselves. There was one group that just gave one prompt to ChatGPT and said write this, and then there was another group that was able to like iterate, and so they like used ChatGPT, they had it write it, and then they said, like, no, I don't like that, change that to this, and like kind of that thing. And they basically like scored all the creativity and and like strength elements of each. And the best by like a good margin was like the human that was able to like work more collaboratively with the AI. The AI was actually only was actually, I think it was the one that was AI alone was like marginally better than the one that was human alone on average, and then the one that was able to like work iteratively with the human was like more like substantially better output as like in terms of like creative short story writing.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:25

So yeah, definitely human in the loop is the so my last point on that is okay, so us sitting here right now having grown up with major human interactions all the time, we understand that. But somebody mentioned earlier today the youngest generation just doesn't understand basic human concepts like saying hello when you pass each other in a hallway or whatever. So our humans headed to a point where they're less socialized, so then these human interactions that are important to us sitting here right now, those are obsolete. So now these younger generations who grow up without those things, those are no longer valuable to them, so they are more willing to just accept bland AI answer without any human synergy.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:12

Two concerning trends in in high schools are um it's actually it's pretty sad, but um AI girlfriends and AI counselors because they like don't feel like they can connect with Google, so they have like fake AI girlfriends or whatever. And it's like a um I wouldn't say it's like a significant number in like a large percentage, but significant in the sense that like it actually happens and it's it's a little alarming. That is alarming, and it's not and that's not necessarily like AI bad thing, as much as like how disconnected people are these days, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:53

Like, I don't blame AI for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:55

I mean that that's just a an outlet for a bigger symptom of something.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:00

Yes, exactly. Wow. This is a good panel. We have a lot of good different points of view.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:06

Yeah, the esteemed panel, I might say.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:11

Do you guys want to do my silly thing?

SPEAKER_01 1:41:14

Yeah, yeah, I want to do something silly.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:17

Okay, cool. Um, so in the past, I don't know, I'm sure Derek has been on at least episodes, probably. We've done two bracket challenges on our category generals. We did one bracket that was nostalgic snacks from our childhood, and we did like March Madness style, and then we did one that was nostalgic TV shows. Um, so I thought the next topic would be nostalgic video games. So I've made a bracket of video games for us to go through and arrive at a champion. Um, I will share my screen and you guys will be able to see once Mike grants me the request what we're looking at here for the bracket. Uh, and I will try to vocalize so that those listening can follow along at home, is the is the plan. Um so let me know if you guys can see my screen. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:13

Okay, cool. Take a screenshot of this so we can tweet it. Follow us on Twitter or uh X, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:23

So I already see what you're going for. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:29

Oh yeah, I see some good ones here.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:31

This is yeah, so so I made uh a childhood game bracket, video game bracket. Um I spent about an hour and a half on this morning in the morning from start to finish. I made this entirely myself. It's a standalone HTML. I could send this to you guys, but I use Claude to make it. So came help me come up with help me come up with all the ideas for the video games and uh put them in the right brackets. I named all the brackets, so I'll go through the bracket real quick for everyone before uh we start actually going through everything. So we've got 16 different games. We've got four regions. The first region is the blow on it region. Um, and that is uh you can probably maybe guess why it's Byron's doing his bicep curls right now, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:20

I just want to know that um hi Maria. There she is. Happy birthday. Happy birthday.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:31

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:33

Did you have a good birthday, Maria?

SPEAKER_02 1:43:35

Yeah, yes, if you have a good birthday.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:37

I did have a good birthday.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:38

Yeah, yes, very good. Nice, good nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:44

This is a solid category general group.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:47

Yeah, it's fun. It was very grim until just now. Very grim until just now.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:53

Very grim.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:54

Yeah, yeah, talking about AI and how it's gonna make everyone.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:58

Childhood game bracket?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:59

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:00

Fine.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:01

Yeah, we changed topics now. So we're branching off, but um, so you have the blow on it region. Uh that's gonna be Super Smash Bros. Crash Bandicoot. So we got the one seed of Super Smash Bros.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:15

The Blow on It region.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:16

Wow, that's adorable. Crash Bandicoot. Uh the two seed is Pokemon Red or Blue, whatever. Um the three seed is Mario Kart 64, and then our next region on the that same side of the bracket is called the Mixtape, and that's just because it's like kind of more of a hodgepodge of games. So we've got Madden. I just picked 04 because like I feel like that's a good that's a good one for that era. Yeah. The Michael Vick one, yeah. So that's that's the one seed. Then the four seed is Guitar Hero 3, the two seed is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, the three seed is Need for Speed Underground. I don't know if I picked these games not knowing if all of the participants would have played them, but hopefully we can work through it anyway. Uh on the other side of the bracket, we have the split screen region, and so that's gonna be Halo, Halo 1 as the one seed, the four seeds GTA San Andreas, the two seed is Star Wars Star Wars Battlefront 2, the three seed is Goldeneye 007, and then for the dial up region, we have Roller Coaster Tycoon as the one seed, four seeds runescape. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I I didn't wasn't sure how to make this this bracket. All these games are so good. It's like curated towards me in some way.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:36

Oh no, age of empires.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:37

Oh no, the two seed is backyard baseball and the three seed is Age of Empires 2. So all right, all right.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:43

This is like a pick between my children.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:45

This is why have you done this? This is gonna be fun. Yeah, all right, cool. So unfortunately, we have an even number of us. So if we do need a tiebreaker, we're gonna need a celebrity tiebreaker somehow. Yeah, Maria will have to come back, think of something else to do to break the tie. But I imagine we won't have like a ton of ties, but we will probably have some. Uh all right, so starting off, we'll go to the blow on it region and we'll we'll say Super Smash Bros. versus Crash Bandicoot. If you've if you've not played a game or like barely played it, you can mention that. But it's fine if you don't vote for something because you haven't played it, because who cares? Like if you've just played the other game a lot more, then that's fine. Um, so I just tried my best here because I knew it was 16 might be a lot for everyone to play all of them. So, anyone want to start off with your vote?

SPEAKER_01 1:46:38

I'll say Smash Bros easy money, locked in. Yeah, I love Smash Bros. Smash Bros. melee is like the first the the original uh Smash Bros. 64 is like a fun game, but when it got to melee, that's when it got like just much more optimized and then became like big on the competitive.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:57

Yeah, dude. Like my brother and his friends always wanted to play 64. I couldn't because it was just so janky and like delayed. It's like they had just figured out like the controller delay, and like I couldn't stand that shit. It's like it wasn't how good a game it was, it was just how well you learned the flaws of the game.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:13

Yeah, I'm gonna go Smash Bros without a doubt, but I'm gonna do it. Me too.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:17

I I also vote Smash Bros. I never played Crash Bandicoot, I never had a PlayStation.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:23

I did play both, and they were both fun, but I'm gonna go Smash Bros just because it was probably a better game, and it had multiplayer, which was fun, but I do appreciate Crash Bandicoot being in here.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:37

Alright, so next we will we'll get we'll just go in order, we'll go region by region. So next is gonna be like Pokemon Red Blue, like pick whatever you want, that kind of era, versus Mario Kart 64. And again, it's gonna be open floor. Anyone who wants to jump in first for with their vote, you can feel free. I'm gonna go Pokemon. Okay. I think I'm gonna go Pokemon as well, so that's two.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:04

Um I'd say Pokemon for sure. I I like I mean Mario Kart obviously iconic game, but Pokemon my Pokemon is like humongous. I remember when Pokemon Yellow came out, my dad like stood in line. Like, and that's another crazy thing. Kids kids these days don't like remember like standing in line to get a game when it first came out. Like that doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:31

Talking to a human. Yeah, video games just like meant more than like Mario Kart 64 was good, but that's another one where it was like old and janky, and it's like agreed. Oh great, I get to play with my brother and his friends, and they all would just kick my fucking ass because they learned how to play this game. Yeah, they know the shortcuts on the maps. Yeah, when there's nothing else like the GameCube or the Wii version, I would win. It's just like, oh, but y'all just like mastered this game. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:58

Pokemon's other racing games, but nothing, nothing like Pokemon.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:03

Yeah, with Pokemon 2, that was like foundational for me. Like formative years, like six years old. It's like my brother already had blue with Blastoise, and it's like I I always wanted blue, blue is my favorite color, but then I got red with Charizard, which is also cool. Yeah, he was a dragon, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:21

Did you have the link? Did you guys have the link cable?

SPEAKER_02 1:49:24

Yeah, we did. My neighbor did, and I I remember I played against him and it was fun. I think he had the yellow version. How they bring you brought that up earlier.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:33

Yeah, where you Pikachu's too good to go into Pokeball. Yeah, he just follows your own. Or evolved.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:39

You could you'd like to try and give him the the Thunderstone and he like wouldn't consent. He would just be like, No. He would just like pompous ass.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:49

Like, where do you get off? You're just a Pikachu. Like, I don't want to evolve. I don't want to go into Pokeball. I'm better than every other Pokemon ever. I don't have to do those things.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:59

All right. So we got the two advancing from Blow on It. So Smash Bros and Pokemon. We'll go to the next region. We'll come back around to the Elite Eight after we uh finish up the first round. So next we go to the mixtape region. We've got Madden 04 versus Guitar Hero 3. I just thought I picked three, just kind of I feel like that's the best version, probably, but through the fire in the flames and all that. A little older for us, but um I'm going Madden because like it's Madden, but I figured I mean Madden 04 was my first Mad game I ever had.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:34

And that was also foundational, like just doing everything you could do, like the training camp stuff with like the music that I still remember to this day from Madden 04. Just in seared in your memory, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:45

Yeah, that's also the reason why this reason I will say part of the reason it's called the mixtape is because all these games have pretty outstanding soundtracks, and I just wanted to point that out.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:55

Oh, yeah, yeah. I um I'd also vote Madden. Mad I my first Madden was Madden 03 with Marshall Faulk on it. I remember I remember I remember all the songs that I have a playlist that I still listen to that is an exact playlist of Madden 03. I listened to it this week. It's it's a great soundtrack. And I love this. I didn't know any of this. Yeah, no, it's it's it's excellent. Very good. I I know the soundtrack, but I didn't know that you know keep up with it. I still listen to it, and then um I I had to do some serious digging to find the songs, but I was able to find them all. And I also vividly remember, and uh Mike, you'll appreciate this. That I think this must have been like when we were in like third or fourth grade, so I made a custom team that was like had all players of um like my friends and family, and I think and and we're all 99 everything. So I think you were the quarterback because you'd always play because you'd always play QB when we were like playing in the backyard and stuff. Oh so touch. Um, yeah, so yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:02

Nice. Yeah, uh, I figured that one like, but yeah, definitely. Um all right, so moving on to the next matchup, we got Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and Need for Speed Underground. I played both these games a good bit, actually. I wasn't sure if everyone would have, but um if anybody wants to chime in, feel free.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:21

I'm gonna pretend this is just all Tony Hawks. I never I don't know if I played Skater 2, but I played Tony Hawk Underground 2, I think. And that game was awesome. It was basically like GTA, but with a skateboard. And so I'm going that over I played Underground at your house, and that was cool. But I was never as into racing games, so like I already voted for Pokemon over uh Mario Kart. So yeah, I'm definitely going Tony Hawk.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:49

Okay. That's one.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:52

Anybody else? I'm gonna vote for Tony Hawk. I never played Need for Speed.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:57

Okay. I didn't own either. Um I think I played Need for Speed at friends' houses more, but I was like, I think I would have been more excited to play Tony Tony Hawk and because I don't really like racing games that much.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:15

Yeah, I mean I played a lot of original Tony Hawk and that shit was the bomb too, like finding the secret tapes and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:22

Like I I vividly remember watching people play Tony Hawk, and that was like that only happened like a few times, whereas I think uh there's more opportunities to watch other people play or play Need for Speed, and I don't really didn't really like stand out to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:40

I've never really been big on racing games aside from Mario Kart anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:45

I don't really like realistic quote unquote racing games anyway.

SPEAKER_06 1:53:50

I'm gonna vote for Need for Speed, but I still lose. But that's just because I played it a ton, and like checking out your cars was like the sickest thing ever. So it was cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:00

And like you said, the music was good in that game too.

SPEAKER_06 1:54:03

Yeah, yeah. The actual racing, I actually some of it like the drifting races were sometimes pretty fun, and like getting the score up through like drifting and doing whatever. Um, but yeah, like the actual racing, I didn't actually find that enjoyable, but like tricking your car out when you get all the points was sick, but uh that is fine. I I accept that loss because I also am a Tony Hawk fan as well. Um, all right, we're going to the other side of the bracket now. We're over to split screen region. Starting off, we have the one seed of Halo, and we're we're just doing OG Halo because I feel like Halo 3 were playing like high school, and so that's like almost not even like child true childhood anymore. Uh, and then GTA San Andreas. Uh I was on the fence between Vice City and San Andreas. I feel like they're both pretty similar-ish, like timeline, more or less. So um, yeah, that's the matchup. Anyone? Any any thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 1:55:01

I haven't played either, so I'm just gonna treat it as Halo franchise versus GTA franchise, in which case I get GPA.

unknown 1:55:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:10

It's like I've never loved GTA because like I've just never loved being the criminal, like shooting cops and shit. Like, it always just stop at red lights if you want. You kind of have to be in the game, and it always just has like a degree of mindless. Yeah, it's mindless, and it's like a severe degree of like ick to me of like I don't like any of this shit that I'm doing. Like, as like ridiculous as it is for a video game that's not real and to whatever value he can get from that, but um, it still just was like for whatever reason more enjoyable. Like, I never really liked Halo as a first-person shooter game. Like, I didn't like the idea of like having to get down their shields and then shoot him. Like, I was never good at it.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:54

That was more the multiplayer, though.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:56

If if you would have played, I didn't know I think two's campaign I loved a lot. Was that where you go on the scarab?

SPEAKER_02 1:56:05

Yeah, yeah, it's where they introduced the scarab.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:08

I didn't know that campaign.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:10

The first one I feel like it started off almost as horror because you're just like on a ship and then it gets like boarded by aliens, and you just have to like fight your way out, and then you just land on this halo planet thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:20

So that was cool, but there's also some like equally strong nostalgia from GTA 3 because my brother had it when we were like we had like a family computer, like no consoles or anything, and he would just play it on that, and I would be like mind-blown seeing the shit you could do in that game, and you could like insert your own like music playlist into the game and stuff. So, what are you going with?

SPEAKER_02 1:56:43

You're going with GTA?

SPEAKER_00 1:56:46

I yeah, I think I still go on GTA just because of that nostalgia of GTA 3. Byron.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:53

I think I'm gonna go Halo. Um, I didn't own either game, but um my brother had some friends that would have bring over their Xbox and play Halo, and I thought it was really cool watching them play, and then like as I got a little older, um, I'd go to like people's houses and they'd have Halo. Um and I remember you know it was a multiplayer game, so it was something we could all like play together. So I don't know if I'm not sure if I knew anyone that I went to often that had GTA.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:28

So those were the bad kids, yeah. And Kevin. Um I used to play Vice City at Kevin's house.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:36

Yeah, I played Vice City when I was like 10 years old and I broke my leg. I played Vice City for like hours every single day. Somehow I didn't turn into a murderer. Yeah, I mean I played a lot of Vice City as like a 10-year-old. Like cutting people with katanas, like yeah, like cutting their heads off on the beach.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:54

Yeah, it's a good release. Just get the aggression out in the game.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:58

There you go. Yeah, you don't go Halo. I think I'm also gonna go Halo, but this is a tough matchup.

SPEAKER_06 1:58:05

Yeah, I actually it was originally when I made it, I was thinking Halo, but I thought like I'm I think that it's fair, like the games are so close iteratively that like I didn't play San Andreas very much at all, but I played Vice City a lot because of that summer, one summer, and so like I'm kind of looping that in. And it is very tough for me because like the the open, like just the the nature of like being I never did the campaigns and like anything, so I think the open world nature of GTA and like being able to just like walk around and like see what was going on, and like you just see somebody and you're like, I don't like the way you look, and you just like beat them up. Like, I don't know, that's whatever you like. Yeah, it's just uh so that's tough for me because yeah, I don't know. All right, so right now we have Byron going Halo, Derek going GTA. Mike, do you do you have a decision? I'm going Halo as well. I assumed you would.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:01

Yeah, it's hard. I like GTA a lot, but but Evo Halo guy I didn't own either.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:07

I I wouldn't be able to do that. Well, no, no. That's my no, no, no. I think that's you can disenfranchise me.

SPEAKER_06 1:59:13

I will be I'm so close, I think I'm just gonna go Halo so we don't have to find a tiebreaker, but I'm also like being a little bit skewed by Halo 3, but I think that that's only fair. Like you have to kind of go up and down the franchise in order to like evaluate it properly, probably. So uh so I'm gonna go Halo here. But all right, next up we've got Star Wars Star Wars Battlefront, and I said two again, we're just kind of like picking whatever, uh, and then goldeneye 007. So that's the matchup.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:42

I'm gonna treat this the same way as I've been treating kind of everything. So I never owned Goldeneye itself, and I've actually don't think I've ever played it, but I played a lot of Nightfire, which I think Byron, you introduced me to. And that game was incredible, and then we got our aunt to buy a GameCube, and then Kevin and I and my aunt would all play it together. So I have a lot of formative years with uh Nightfire. But that being said, Star Wars Battlefront 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, so I definitely have to know that.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:16

Fair. Anyone else? I mean, for me, it's GoldenEye is like top two in nostalgia of all time, along with Ocarina of Time Zelda. Because those were the games that we were playing when I was like six, seven years old. And back then Drop Dark. It's very relevant. Yeah. Yeah, back then it was like 1999. It was like we didn't have anything that we have today in terms of entertainment, and like it was a 3D video game, like it was mind-blowing as like a six-year-old in 1999. So it was very formative. We played a lot of it, and I'll never forget those days. Like the proximity mines, like people always putting them like in the bathroom vents, so like when you spawn up there, you can't even get out without getting blown up by a proximity mine, like that type of shit. Like the uh all the guns in it, too. The tank uh rolling over the guns. Yes, I I was just gonna say that. You beat me to it. Yeah, the hor horrendous noise that caused me nightmares when the tank ran over a person. Literally caused me nightmares about people getting run over by tanks and just squished. But really, like, is there any worse way to die than getting crushed? Uh it freaks me out to this day. Like 25 years later.

SPEAKER_06 2:01:45

Alright. I'm gonna I'll I'll just throw in, I don't have much to add on on top of what Mike said, but I'm going to Star Wars Battlefront. It was also I I'm saying same same experience as Mike. It's like I played a lot of Nightfire. It was outstanding, but yeah, Battlefront is just you know it's just a little different for us, I think. Um, but so no pressure, Byron. You feel free to vote for Goldeneye. We will figure out a way to do a tiebreaker.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:12

I I'm really 50-50 on this. Um I think I think Goldeneye is like a more iconic game and more groundbreaking, like Derek said. Um, but in terms of like my own nostalgia, I played Battlefront a lot more. Um when Goldeneye came out, kind of like Mario Kart, it was it was great, it was like the best that there was at the time, but it was kind of janky. And there's another Bond game that came out called uh Die Another Day. And uh I think that's what it was Die Another Day or I don't know, it was a blue cartridge. I remember I actually have it down here. Um I can get a second one. But um it was um it was the first game that had bots, so it was a bot, it was like it was like Goldeneye, but it had bots, and um that was cool because the world is not enough. Yes, yes, the world's not enough, and it had um yeah. Um I played that one.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:17

I loved the multiplayer with bots in that game. That was fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:20

It was because well, for me, playing Goldeneye, I mean it was probably the same for you, Derek. Playing Goldeneye against your brother 1v1, who's probably what like five years older than you, as well as mine was is kind of yeah. Yeah, I guess I'll do the bottom again, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:42

Sure, why not? Maybe getting one kill in.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:45

Yeah, so there's a lot of that going on with Goldeneye. Um uh so I'm gonna go battlefront because it's it was it was a great game, it was super fun, played that a lot more, and I had the space battles, that was cool.

SPEAKER_06 2:04:00

All right, so moving on to the dial-up region. First up, we got Roll Coaster Tycoon versus RuneScape.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:08

Oh what oh my god. I'm playing RuneScape right now.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:12

Nice, like RuneScape 3 or like they say right now, do you mean like as were recorded?

SPEAKER_01 2:04:20

Yeah, I just it's just like yeah, gemstone crab. You just hit it for seven minutes free gem cutting. Yeah, I'll trim your armor if you guys if you want.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:33

It's free front. Roller coaster tycoon was pretty excellent. Also, I like the comment you made in a group chat earlier about the charging for bathrooms that I'd hit home. That was funny.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:44

Yeah, when times are tough, 10 cents a flush. That's true. I didn't that the game taught me about loans. I didn't know how loans worked, and like my brother just like off-handedly showed me like I'd start like a new park and I'd want to make this like crazy roller coaster right off the bat and blow all my money on it and be like, damn, like I I don't have enough money to fish my roller coasters here. Take out all these loans, then I'd be like broke and then ask my dad for help. And he'd like look at my like my financial pages, and he'd like to his credit, he'd like sit there and try and like fix everything and get me out of this like financial burden I put on myself.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:27

He probably could have just cheated. It's like leafly lake.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:30

I love that rather than just being like Brian, this is why you don't take out terrible events.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:36

Yeah. Oh, but RuneScape, man, RuneScape's Yeah, I I have to go with RuneScape.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:43

I think that was just the eye-opening for what video games can be with like uh all these people playing at once and like a fantasy game where you're walking around RPG type thing, or MMO, whatever it's called.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:57

It was the first online MMO. I remember I vividly remember the day my brother told me about it. He's like trying to explain to me what you do. And I like couldn't like even wrap my he's like, you can make your own armor, you can be like an armor maker. I'm like, what does that even mean? Like it was like it was so mind-blowing. Um, but uh roller coaster. I I um give me a pass for a minute. I still have to think this is tough. I will come back to you.

SPEAKER_06 2:06:23

Well, I only watched Mike play RuneScape, so I'm just gonna a roller coaster tycoon by default, but I hope that's not like poorly skewing the results.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:32

I'm glad all of my cousins have memories of just watching me play video games. Yeah, we know.

SPEAKER_06 2:06:38

I mean, I will say I will say the amount of time that I spent watching you was was minimal, but it was the only experience I have with the game at all.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:46

So probably just me chopping down trees, and you're sitting next to me, like this is cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:51

Yeah, you got a new moon pickaxe.

SPEAKER_06 2:06:54

I didn't they're working with cell phones back then, so like it's like what are you doing except looking at the screen and just watching watch it nowadays? Like, there's no such thing as like watching. Well, I guess there is. It's yeah, you just watch Twitch streamers. Yeah. Um, so yeah, that all that's all I'll say. I mean, obviously, Roller Coaster Chick-ends, outstanding, iconic. Zoo Tycoon gets a shout-out too.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:18

I loved Roller Coaster Tycoon. I I think what I loved even more was Zoo Tycoon. Like, for whatever reason, that's just like what was in my house. Like, I think one of my parents just got a zoo tycoon for my birthday or something instead of roller coaster. And it was like, that was a lot of fun too. Like having whatever animals, and like you gotta give them like the proper trees and a certain amount of water in their habitat and shit like that. Like, that was fun too. But RuneScape is my vote. I played so much, and there was it was like the phenomenon in sixth grade. We're always talking about it, and like I had never been with like the trend at that point in my life before, and then like everyone was talking about it, and then like to my complete shock, my mom was like, Oh, everyone else is doing it. Sure, you can play this game on our family computer. So then I played it, and it was just my sixth grade.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:18

You were in the same school as Kevin's wife, right? Was she playing it? Was she part of this trend?

SPEAKER_00 2:08:23

I was in the same school as Kevin's wife in sixth grade, but I don't know if she was playing or not. She never gave me anything.

SPEAKER_06 2:08:30

She probably wasn't, but she probably was playing Call of Duty. She did play video games. Nice, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:36

But we would get online and like there's certain friends, like Ryan O'Reilly was on, Ian Grote was on.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:42

I didn't know you guys yet, but I used to I remember messaging Byron's brother just saying, tell Byron to go on. Like, is Byron on? Tell Byron to go on. And he would just ignore them, he would never respond.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:57

Probably blocked you like the minute you tried to bother.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:00

Yeah, that's fair. I think your brother was disturbed by me, but that's a separate discussion.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:06

I think you tried to give him a lot of warm fuzzies that were unsolicited.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:12

Yeah, that shit was the bomb, though. Like the music, I would still like hear it to this day and be brought back. Back when life is so simple. Doing like the shield of a Rav quest with your friends because you always needed a partner for that quest. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:27

I used to play with Harry's trouser sometimes and he'd help me get through.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:31

Yeah. And eventually you make it to the champion guild and uh be able to do the dragon slayer quest.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:38

Alright, Byron, you need to pick. What are we? Uh well, I don't remember what we're at, so um it's just as well.

SPEAKER_06 2:09:47

He's trying to divert us again. We can figure out a tiebreaker. We well eventually we will need a tiebreaker, so we might as well figure it out early. Yeah. If you're gonna vote, you if you want this, vote with your heart, and then we'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:01

My heart is torn in two.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:03

Um think about the music of RuneScape and all the good times had with friends.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:12

Oh man. So like we'd like to talk about it. And like I remember I thought it was cool that like my dad thought that roller coaster tycoon was cool. So there's like some of that going on.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:31

Oh man, I'm gonna lose.

SPEAKER_06 2:10:34

Alright. You gotta pick three, two, one. What does your find tell you? Uh roller coaster tycoon. Okay, all right. So does anybody have a potential tiebreaker? Otherwise, I propose that I wasn't it three to one?

SPEAKER_02 2:10:50

No, two, two. I I picked RuneScape. You picked RuneScape, okay.

SPEAKER_06 2:10:54

If anybody has a video game playing person that they know of that will answer immediately if we ask them then, ask ChatGPT which game is better. That's no, that's what I was that was gonna be my second idea. It'll be the thing. Leave it to a human. I'm all I'm gonna say in my chat GPT in a new chat is what which game is better. And I'm not gonna turn on uh like internet searching or whatever. I'm just gonna like whatever it's trained on, it's just gonna it's just gonna answer in the quickest way possible. I try actually I'm using Claude because I can use haiku the haiku model, which is like the dumbest one, it just answers immediately. Which game is better? Roller coaster tycoon. If it it has to give me an answer too. If it if it tries to like speculate about like, well, better is relative.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:49

I don't think it's gonna do that, but while you're buying time, I remember Byron helped me to remember how to spell the name RuneScape in the URL was. Run escape. Yeah, see? We both remembered. Yeah. I've never forgotten that. I still smell RuneScape because of you. I'm not a great speller.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:10

I'm glad we had a positive impact on your life.

SPEAKER_06 2:12:14

So Derek was right. When I asked it which game is better, it was like, well, that really depends what you're looking for. And then I said, all I said was you have to pick. And then it said, okay, gun to my head, RuneScape. So Derek wins. I hope he's happy. I'm not a happy to hear that.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:33

Can you read his reasoning? I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:35

Yeah, like yeah, please ask his reasoning. Okay, so it says here's why.

SPEAKER_06 2:12:41

Cite resources. Yeah. You guys can I forgot you guys can see my screen. Uh so I don't, but I'll read it for the audience. So Roller Coaster Tycoon is a brilliant, elegant game, but it has a ceiling. You optimize your park, solve the puzzles, and then you're kind of done. It's perfect for what it does, but the experience is finite. RuneScape, even with all its grindy parts, has depth. The quest design actually tells stories. There's a sense of world building progression that keeps pulling you forward. The community element matters too, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:11

I'm sold.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:12

Um that's true. I mean, it is multiplayer, so I feel like multiplayer is an ultimate. I'm I'm not upset with that.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:18

Yeah, and there is a lot more depth to it. Like roller coaster tycoon's great for what it is, but it is funny.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:24

I'm glad that I made it a tie though, so that roller coaster tycoon guys. It's better for it's better for the derepresentation.

SPEAKER_06 2:13:30

Yeah. Um, all right, next up we have backyard baseball versus age of empires. Oh and I will start off because I never really played Age of Empires and I watched Mike play. Actually, that's true. No, I definitely played. I I actually I have played a little bit, but I was like terrible at it and I didn't know what I was doing.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:51

So in hindsight, I'm also terrible at it, which I've recently learned from Byron. So you've seen a really bad person. I just build the coolest things, and that's not what you're supposed to do.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:03

Yeah, I got roasted just because I want to not do anything or tech anyone until I build a massive army.

SPEAKER_06 2:14:09

Yeah, so I'm voting backyard baseball. I'll comment on it more if we need to, but I just wanted to start the vote off because we we gotta get moving here.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:17

I vote Age of Empires, it's totally nostalgic for me. I never played the other game, so yeah. I I played Age of Empires too back in like the when it first came out.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:29

I played a lot of both. Yeah, I'm I'm gonna have to go Age of Empires. Backyard Baseball is a great game. So I appreciate it being on here. Pablo Sanchez.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:42

Yeah, there he is. Yeah, I remember his at bat song.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:46

Yeah, I mean, like there's just like everything. Like I was literally just like quoting Age of Empires earlier today, like, not even like anything, but like I just found myself making the noise of like which is the noise what happens when like a villager is created out of the town center.

unknown 2:15:04

Shh.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:05

You just make the in in life, Derek.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:08

Yeah, I mean, like it just pops into my brain. I don't know why that did today, but it did. Like the the sound that a villager makes when they're born in the town center.

SPEAKER_06 2:15:19

I think the only memory. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:22

There's uh some sounds that I used to make to make Connor laugh when he was younger, just like some of like the dying animation sounds. Um, so yeah, I I can I can appreciate that.

SPEAKER_06 2:15:35

So are is it is it all three of you are going to Age of Empires, I assume?

SPEAKER_01 2:15:39

Yeah, I mean, I don't think I'd be a social studies teacher for that Age of Empires. That's like what got me interested in history. So I feel like I'm obligated to pick that.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:49

All right, could be going far in this bracket then.

SPEAKER_06 2:15:51

I was gonna say the only thing, my only memory of Age of Empires is that's where I learned what Byzantium was. Or whatever. Yeah, the Byzant the Byzantines. Yeah, the Byzantine Robin Empire. Um all right, we're going all the way back to blow on it. Uh so now we have our second round matchup. We're in the Elite Eight. We've got Super Smash Bros. and Pokemon Red Blue, and you have to pick. You just have to pick. I'm telling you, I'm saying this to everyone. You can't like go like oh for like 10 minutes. We can't do that. Otherwise, we're never gonna finish.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:29

So you just don't make them don't pick such such uh good choices, though.

SPEAKER_00 2:16:34

Yeah, right. You're the we're gonna present you with an impossible choice, but don't think about it.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:41

Um, I'll I'll I'll go out guns a blazing here and I'll say Pokemon. Um, I don't know though. No.

SPEAKER_06 2:16:51

Once you say it, you're stuck. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:55

Um I'm going Pokemon.

SPEAKER_00 2:16:59

I'm gonna say I'm gonna say Smash because one time I threw up because I had Motion Sickness playing Pokemon in the card. That's enough to die for me.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:08

Good answer. Good answer.

SPEAKER_06 2:17:11

Uh yeah, I'm going Pokemon though. All right. I this is actually pretty close for me. Neither of these games are like all timer for me, but they're both like very close. I I will say because I also wasn't very good at either of them, so that kind of helped. I wasn't very good at any video games, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 2:17:28

But uh I'm gonna go with Pokemon because if you didn't feel strongly either way, you may as well not make a deadlock.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:37

I think it's definitely the bigger like injury is like that.

SPEAKER_06 2:17:41

I'm just like I wasn't playing against other people in Pokemon, so I could at least pretend like I was okay, but I always would get crushed and smashed. So like I was like, oh, this is fun, but like also I'm terrible. Yeah. Um, cool. Alright. So moving on to the mixtape, we have Madden versus Tony Hawk, and well, you can strip the the years, but you know, 04 is glorious. And I'm going Madden easily.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:18:13

Okay. Derek? Um I'll go Madden if we can switch the years, because superstar mode when it was first available was big for me.

SPEAKER_06 2:18:24

Okay, yeah, we can switch the ears. I'm going Madden as well, so that's a sweep. I had a feeling that one would do well in this crowd. Uh alright, we're moving right in to split screen. We've got Halo versus Star Wars Battlefront 2. If you want to be specific.

SPEAKER_00 2:18:39

Give me Battlefront.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:42

Same. I didn't have Halo. Um it's nostalgic to me, so if it's nostalgic to me, then I gotta go Battlefront there.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:51

Halo's probably a better game, but for the two games listed, I think I'm gonna go Battlefront.

SPEAKER_06 2:18:58

Yeah, are you thinking like if I had told you Halo, if I gave you Halo 3, would you pick would you change your mind?

SPEAKER_02 2:19:05

Probably, but Star Wars Battlefront 2 is just so excellent. Like if they remade that game, it'd be and added a melee. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:19:15

Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of in the same boat as Mike, not surprisingly, because we played these both a lot together at the same time. And it was Halo 3 on Matt Donahue and Dan Donahue and Rob Donahue, I guess, too. Yeah. Yeah, like their back porch, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:36

That's where they had their enclosed porch. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:19:40

Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I wasn't sure if you had seen it before.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:44

That always like saw us inside. Yeah, that always struck me as interesting too that you guys referred to it as a porch, but it was like, but it's enclosed as part of the house.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:53

People call that a sunroom, at least they were a three-season room.

SPEAKER_06 2:19:57

Yeah, it's like a bat I guess it's like I don't know. Yeah, what do we call it a for?

SPEAKER_00 2:20:02

Like I always considered a porch to be exposed, and that was always threw me off.

SPEAKER_06 2:20:08

Yeah. Yeah, I don't I don't know what it should be called. Maybe uh sunroom. I think sunroom, yeah. Yeah, okay. Anyways, I'm gonna go battlefront 2 as well. Um yeah, just yeah. Alright. So now we're going RuneScape. Uh, this is gonna be a lot harder for you guys. I'm yeah, this is a really hard one.

SPEAKER_02 2:20:29

Yeah, this is the ultimate matchup. This is like Lord of the Rings versus Game of Thrones.

SPEAKER_06 2:20:33

Yeah, I'll basically defer, and if two uh the so because like truthfully, I have no opinion on this. Um, so I'll let you guys kind of duke it out for whoever if it's 2v1 or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 2:20:46

But oh, this is really hard.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:48

Oh man, I'll go first and say Age of Empires. Um I I played it so much. Um you're currently playing RuneScape. So yeah, I am well. I mean, if you call it playing, I'm literally just like whacking a tree, just plucking every like I mean, I call that playing, and that's what RuneScape is. Yeah, sounds it sounds excellent. It is. I am you you don't understand. I am currently having a good time. I'm 4,000 experience away from 70 strength, which will get me to the next, it'll it'll get me things that you don't care about, but yeah, it's abilities to start new quests. Yeah, I can do the um uh I'm I'm an adult now, so I'm a member. My parents would never let me be a member.

SPEAKER_00 2:21:34

Yeah, same. Um I was allowed to be a member for one summer and it was an amazing summer.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:39

Wow, that that sounds that does sound amazing.

SPEAKER_00 2:21:42

Um it was five dollars a month back then, too.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:45

So yeah, it's 13 when I looked at that.

SPEAKER_00 2:21:48

It wasn't that much of a fucking dollars race. Thirteen now, that's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:54

It's cheaper if you do like a whole year, which I'm like not gonna commit to because I'd I would absolutely commit to that, but thirteen a month, that's insulting.

SPEAKER_00 2:22:05

You could chop a lot of trees in a year, though.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:08

That was also like 20 years ago that we played it, so you gotta figure there's some inflation.

SPEAKER_00 2:22:13

A ton, but like come on,$13 a month. Yeah, no, I thought the same thing. Even if the market rate is not unreasonable, it still upsets me that it used to be five and now it's 13.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:24

I agree. Maybe they want to like pay their employees their of living wage or something.

SPEAKER_00 2:22:29

I doubt it, but if that's true, then it would make me feel a little better at least.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:35

Um but yeah, I'll pick uh I'll pick Age of Empires. Um I like I Age of Empires stuck with me longer than RuneScape, so that's my main reason there. I RuneScape would kind of like come and go. Um but Age of Empires, I played that for like a long time.

SPEAKER_00 2:22:55

I think I have to agree with that rationale of it stuck with me longer. Like I loved RuneScape, and like there's times where I want to listen to RuneScape music, but I've played Age of Empires more recently for a reason.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:08

I sent you the playlist, by the way. I saw that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:23:12

Right. And like I said, I was literally making Age of Empires references earlier today, like without having any knowledge. This would be discussed tonight. So I'm going Age of Empires as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:23

It is tough, but I got scanned once, and I've never forgotten about that in RuneScape.

SPEAKER_06 2:23:30

Alright, there we go. I wasn't expecting a sweep. Yeah, we have our final four. We've got Pokemon, Madden, Battlefront, and Age of Empires. So in our first matchup, we've got Pokemon versus Madden. Anybody wants to start us off here? Oh it's becoming difficult.

SPEAKER_00 2:23:52

It's been difficult. Yeah, I know, but it's more so I'll vote Pokemon. Like I feel like the best games have to like all of these games are fantastic, so you have to define them like the level of joy you got from them. And I feel like you have the most fun when you're playing with other people. Agreed. I never really played Madden with other people that much. I'm the opposite.

SPEAKER_02 2:24:19

I never I didn't really play Pokemon with other people much, but I played Madden a lot with other people. So I'm going Madden. Yeah. I'm going Pokemon.

SPEAKER_01 2:24:28

Because I think it was kind of out in the more formative years. Like I I remember playing Pokemon in a black and white Game Boy.

SPEAKER_02 2:24:37

Um first Game Boy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:24:40

Yeah. It was it was like yeah, it was like one of my earliest memories, probably. Um well, maybe the earliest, but it was definitely I I as a kid, like I remember my brother would always like tell me stuff because like he'd be like, he'd be he'd be like trying to explain to me before Christmas. Like if we get Pokemon, like you don't even know what's about like gonna happen to your life. Like this is what it is. And he's like, he would try and explain to me like how cool it is, and I would have like no way of like having any way of conceptualizing it. So I'd like to have this like childlike awe of all these things, and it was always just like the coolest. And Madden, like if I was Madden 03, we would have been what like 10. So like it to me, um, again, it was still really cool and a cool uh cool memory, but like it wasn't like the same way that like a five-year-old would be so enamored with a game that was just like as as cool as uh Pokemon.

SPEAKER_06 2:25:40

Yeah. Well, I'm sorry to break you guys, but I'm also going Madden. Um it's a two-choo tie. Um, so I'm going to, unless somebody again has a better idea. I mean you guys can I forgot you can see my screen, so I'm gonna I'm gonna ask it like this. It's the most unbiased party. I think we have to.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:00

Explain to a bunch of explain to a bunch of simpletons why this is the better.

SPEAKER_00 2:26:05

Yeah, who voted who voted what for this? I voted for Madden and so Mike.

SPEAKER_06 2:26:11

Okay. Uh wait, what are we? I'm just gonna put both because I don't think it matters. Alright. Everyone, we're you we have to pick. Don't I'm gonna say, yeah, you which game is better, Madden 04 or Pokemon Red, red blue. You have to pick, don't pick for me specifically, because I think it kind of did that last time. Oh pick the game in a vacuum. And don't I don't think it's gonna take this literally. Well, don't go into a vacuum. All right, whatever. All right, we're going with haiku, Claude. Oh, brutal. No question. Pokemon Red Blue.

SPEAKER_00 2:26:54

Yeah, wow, no question. Damn. All right, quite a dissertation wrote despite saying no question.

SPEAKER_06 2:27:00

Oh, all right. Pokemon Red Blue is foundational. Very well, that's fair. I'll give it that. Yeah, I will too. I'll concede. Alright. So moving on, uh, Pokemon has made it to the championship and it's gonna face off against the winner of Star Wars Battlefront versus Age of Empires. Two of each of those, sure, if you if you care.

SPEAKER_00 2:27:21

Yeah, it's Age of Empires for me, no doubt.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:25

Same and for the same reason as my last pick. Age of Empires came out when I was like five or six. I remember the day we got it at Walmart. There was a dude that literally came up to my dad when my brother was like trying to convince him to buy the game. And the dude like told my dad, don't buy this game. Like, when my kid got this game, I have to like unplug his computer to get him to stop. And it was like it was like a guardian angel or something. It's very like prophetic. I'm pretty sure that ended up happening at some point.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:56

Yeah, he's still having it. He's right.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:59

So, yeah, more nostalgic, more formative years for me for Age of Empires. But you know, Battlefront's a great game, it was definitely more multiplayer at the time, which is you know fun. I remember playing it with you a lot, Mike, and and others.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:14

I'm gonna go Battlefront for just the sake of like putting us back in when we used to play it, because for that reason, it was more multiplayer. I used to play it with you guys, uh the Alt Myers as well, and we just had some of the best times. Uh Age of Empires for me back then was just like I would play by myself and it was great, but I can't beat some of those memories, so I'm going with that.

SPEAKER_06 2:28:38

I will say, even having not played Age of Empires, I think even if I had played it a lot, I would still pick Battlefront because I just loved that game. It was excellent.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:48

I love how Victory Screech.

SPEAKER_00 2:28:51

I'm definitely Age of Vampires because it's like peak nostalgia. Like somehow back in like 2001, my brother figured out how to like take like the sound files out of the game, and then like we would then do like recordings of like me and my cousins of just like random shit, like comedy sketch type things, and like insert Age of Empires like music clips into it too. That's fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:16

I don't know that my brother did that with Stronghold.

SPEAKER_00 2:29:20

Yeah, so that's like super peak nostalgia times for when I was like six, seven years old of like mind blown of like whoa, there's this game with like semi historically accurate like music representations of all these civilizations. We're just gonna like play around with them and like make our own like make-believe videos with these sound bites. It was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:45

I'll say too, with Age of Empires, um we we played LAN. My brother and I would play LAN together sometimes, so there was a small multiplayer element, but well, that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:58

Yeah, yeah. That's playing with someone, yeah. Like Battlefront, I didn't play online. I think you might have been able to do that, but all right, Kevin.

SPEAKER_06 2:30:07

I did a little bit. Alright, so it's a tie again. I think it's probably not a coincidence that Mike and I have voted together so much because it's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:30:17

Uh we're holding together the resistance viring. Yeah, all right.

SPEAKER_06 2:30:22

So we'll see. I'm a little scared here, honestly. I I don't I don't know. All right, so I said the same exact prompt in the Claude. Which game is better, Star Wars Battlefront 2 or Age of Empires 2. You have to pick. Don't pick for me specifically, pick the game in a vacuum, and it should respond instantly. Boom. Go.

SPEAKER_03 2:30:40

Oh, yeah, right again. Wow, another Light again. L for the likes.

SPEAKER_06 2:30:46

Yeah, wow. Toby stand for all right. I'll give a little bit of a reason here because I think this one's maybe a little less obvious. So it says Star Wars Battlefront 2 is a solid fun shooter with good presentation and Star Wars flavor. Um, yada yada. It was great then, but it hasn't aged particularly well. Disagree with that. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:05

No, I've I tried to go back and play it, and it feels so weird.

SPEAKER_06 2:31:10

All right, all right, very well. Uh, Age of Empires 2 is a masterclass in RTS design. The unit, wow, this is way out of my league here. The unit balance, the tech trees, the map variety, the civilizations with actual asymmetric gameplay. It's mechanically sophisticated in ways that hold up. Uh, yada yada yada. Fundamentals are timeless. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:31

Real time strategy. That means uh the maps are different, and you can pick any civilization, and it's not necessarily better than other ones.

SPEAKER_06 2:31:42

Okay. All right. Well, we've made it to the championship. We've got Pokemon versus Age of Empires.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:51

Um that's a good championship. I feel like this kind of holds up for like probably objectively for listeners. Oh man. This is good. Anyone want to go first? You guys got anything?

SPEAKER_00 2:32:05

I think I vote Age of Empires. And I do so because I have played Age of Empires so much more recently than I've played Pokemon Red or Blue. Like the game holds up so well 25 years later. More than that, like 27 years later. Granted, it's been updated, but it's still the same game. And Pokemon was fun, but it was frustrating in a way. It's like top-down, 2D. Oh, well, you have to cross this path where you have to fight trainer with their two Clefairies or whatever the fuck that you're just gonna destroy in a second. It was always a little annoying to like have to just like more linear. Yeah, very linear. Had to like walk this way, alright, fight this trainer who has no chance, walk two more steps, fight another trainer who has no chance. It got a little frustrating and tedious at times. But Age of Empires, I don't know. I I just loved like the variety of it, like the different landscapes you could do, the different civilizations you could pick. I know I had my preferences, but it's fun to be able to switch and like the architecture looks different. And the attention to detail with like the different sieves you pick, and like when you tell villagers to do things, they say different things in different languages. It was all very cool. So Age of Empires for me.

SPEAKER_06 2:33:37

I feel like I will say I didn't include it because it was incredibly niche and it would not have made any sense to include it here. But Heroes like knows where I'm going with this. Yeah. I feel like if Heroes is kind of because I haven't played Age of Empires, so like to not even to have a throwaway about in the championship feels cheap. If I were to able to like replace Age of Empires, which I think is somewhat similar to Heroes, I would have a harder time with this a lot. by a lot. Yeah. Um, and so uh yeah, Heroes 3 is specifically what what I'm referring to. Um that game would have like swept through just like Age of Vampires did for you all. So in a way I feel like maybe they're j generically John Wow I don't know how I don't know what the the adverbial version of genre is, but uh well I guess there wouldn't be an adverb, but it would be like an adjective genre adjacent. Sure, yeah yeah I like that uh so yeah the that would be a lot tougher but I just wanted to mention that because that game is excellent and I couldn't go through this whole bracket without at least giving it an honorable mention acknowledgement.

SPEAKER_01 2:34:47

Yeah I'm glad you brought that up I think I've I I have a very hard time imagining not playing either game but if if like I I guess what I was thinking when you asked like if I had to like imagine not have having had one of these games I think I would have missed out more not having Pokemon than Age of Empires because there's no other game like Pokemon. There were other games like Age of Empires that I played that I didn't I don't think were as good or um weren't I didn't like them as much but like there's there's nothing else like Pokemon and um a game that like everybody else played that you could talk about like you could sort of maybe play together if you had the game link or whatever. But with Age of Empires like there's the Civilization games I liked or the Dune RTF games that I liked or stronghold later. So but I can't think of another game like Pokemon um except maybe Lord of the Rings uh third age nice yeah that was a good one Pokemon.

SPEAKER_06 2:36:05

Yeah that helps by me a little bit uh yeah yeah go okay you guys are good I might go age of empires that I I do like your Pokemon's definitely formative and a lot of people still play it but age of empires I think I just I don't know it was just like the coolest game to me back in the day I'm having a little bit of a hard time with this in the sense if I were to throw heroes in this I think it would be a no-brainer for me but that's not really fair I would pick heroes um but I will say that in honor of this whole episode I feel like it's it's uh how do I say this it's poetic for us to leave the decision to AI so I think that I'm just because it it it picked both of these and so I'm curious if we match them against each other what it will pick. So I'm gonna go Pokemon and that makes it a a 2-2 tie.

SPEAKER_01 2:37:07

There's a hit for sure for the record I like age of empires better than Pokemon but I just think there's I don't think there's another game that would scratch the itch like Pokemon did.

SPEAKER_02 2:37:18

So we gotta play that in the car on a game boy it was pretty cool too.

SPEAKER_01 2:37:23

Yeah that's true that's a good point actually back in that time we did that a lot because we would we'd drive around to like visit family pretty far away all right mono truth boom done oh this one's actually close it says wow it's a little condescending about it thanks for not wasting my time on this one idiot right anyways didn't even notice how it created a genre Pokemon Age of Empires is the winner so Age of Empires 2 has won the bracket I'll say a little bit so yeah Pokemon Red Blue is revolutionary and foundational created a genre and has cultural weight that's hard to overstate but Age of Empires is deeper the asymmetrical civilizations the economic management the unit counters tech trees and map strategy there are more systems interacting at a higher complexity very well that's all that's all I agree though I think age of empires is a like fundamentally better game like better quality sort of a board game in a way the champion yeah it makes it like you said it's it is a good like technically speaking game like it's a strategy game all right well that I hope I hope everyone had a swell time yeah yeah it was fun there we go all right that's kind of that was kind of like I mean I probably need to go to bed soon anyway but um glad we got through that and I had a good time yeah it's fun to hear it's fun to oh yeah I feel like I I feel like I obviously like know you guys well but I don't think this is something that like I has come in conversation for me a lot so I didn't realize the weight of some of these games with other people I feel like I have like my own silo of like the people I grew up with and it's interesting hearing like it was very console independent um like what consoles were you exposed to most and I feel like that really like sets your childhood differently in a way that uh was like kind of unique and I remember that being a thing it's like oh this is like a PlayStation household really oh this is like yeah no uh and it was just I didn't think about that you're you're right like there there was computer games PlayStation games Xbox games like there was no crossover really yeah if yeah if you asked your parents though every every game was like uh was a Nintendo or whatever yeah in the Xbox five and a bit oh you play a Nintendo there son your kids playing your television games again yeah all right uh I mean uh like you if you guys want to keep going I've tapped out of like four consecutive podcasts early but otherwise we can move on to Rex and close it out I'm good with Rex all right yes good all right does anybody have one to start off with I know uh Byron you've been researching yeah yes um I wrote down two things um so the first um I don't I don't know if this is really fair to recommend or if it's really council recommendation but I'm going to the NFL draft in April it's in Pittsburgh and I'm going with my cousin who's uh can you guys still hear me I think my airpods might have died. Yeah okay okay that I guess that means they're low. But anyway um going to the NFL draft in April um gonna be a lot of fun and I recommend if it's ever um in an accessible location to you you go because I'm excited for it and like we do uh dynasty fantasy football all of us so it's kind of like a nice like added layer for the draft because like you'd usually follow the draft for your own NFL team and then you also kind of like research some of the players for the dynasty draft so it's it'll make it kind of like exciting on top of it being in in your team city. So I'm excited for that.

SPEAKER_02 2:41:28

The NFL draft is one of my favorite things in life and I have been to a draft before I went to it when it was in Philadelphia so I regretted not going um so um I decided to go this time so if the NFL draft recommendation doesn't apply to you I'll just say um don't live a life of regrets go out and seize the day and go to the NFL draft when it's in failure or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 2:41:53

That's my recommendation.

SPEAKER_00 2:41:54

Alright heck yeah anybody else got one Derek go guess first yeah that's that's good I don't know if I recommended before but Baldur's Gate 3 it's just such a magical game like I haven't felt this way about a video game in a long time of just thinking about it different ways that you can make yourself better like how the story is affecting you. It's just magical so it kind of has that nostalgia video game feel to it.

SPEAKER_02 2:42:25

Yeah in like a modern video game way and you can play with your friends so like you can play like a hundred hour campaign as it's literally just a DD map basically where you design a player and then you play together.

SPEAKER_00 2:42:40

It's cool and your friends can just like totally succeed or like fail like major plot events and then just depending on what they do it's just oh well this thing about the plot is just completely different now. That's like the most amazing thing about the game is there's so many different variables of how everything can go like I don't know like all with all the different like chat options based on like your class or whatever like the magnitude of the different ways the game could turn out like if you choose a different option at every point ever like how many different variations there are of the game it's like astronomically high about yeah that's my rank Mike oh no you went to me first you've got something oh no I can't couldn't possibly recommend anything I'm gonna recommend I guess the pit I'm not super into medical shows I may have recommended this before but it is a really well done show uh Maria and I watched it together so it's a good like you can watch with your spouse.

SPEAKER_02 2:43:57

It is somewhat gory at times so if you're not super into shows like that it might not be for you but it's a good like modern version and it comes out with a new season every year of like 12 episodes which is nice it seems pretty rare but yeah it's just like a well executed well produced show yeah I second that it gives you a wonderful appreciation for the healthcare vocation um because like it's hard to I feel like many doctors and nurses would agree that it's like relatively realistic.

SPEAKER_06 2:44:31

Like all the verbiage that they use in the show is like I've heard that real and so like if you ever were curious like you know if you're ever in an ER you're you're probably like really stressed out and like not thinking about like what the amazing things that they're all doing in there.

SPEAKER_02 2:44:48

But just getting like sit on your couch and like eat popcorn while you watch like what kind of is like a somewhat accurate simulation of what an ER is like even though it's like dramatized and all that stuff but it's still pretty cool and like gives you a really amazing appreciation for that it's much less about like the drama it it's basically all from the perspective of like the emergency room like there's no like oh is this person going to sleep with this person outside of the show like there it's just all strictly hospital stuff.

SPEAKER_06 2:45:18

Yeah one season is one day in the ER. Like every episode is like a 12 hour shift so 12 episodes for one episode yeah yeah so that's good cool concept my recommendation is gonna be related to AI because why would it not be um so I made zips his skin and is uh I the the bracket that we went through I just like made by like telling Claude what I wanted and then it like made a website and it like filled everything in and like I was clicking through the bracket and it had all the like art for the video games like I could hover over the games and it would show the games and like all that shit I did nothing. I just like told it what I wanted and then it made it uh as like an HTML so like I could have sent that to all of you as like an HTML you could just load it into Chrome and it would have come up uh so like I I just say that because these are the little things like for me I don't like own a business and I don't you know none of that stuff so there's only so many like truly practical things I could try these AI tools out on because I don't need to like build out my marketing copy for my whatever gadget gizmo. That's just like not a good use of my time. So like whenever I find little opportunities like this to like play around with the tools I try to do it. So I feel like if you can apply that to your own life like I've thrown in like you know uh like a 30 page Google doc I had and just said like turn this into a slideshow. And it's like I didn't need the slideshow but just like to see what would happen and it was incredible like mind-bogglingly incredible. Especially Claude like there's some other good ones too but like Claude is right now is in my opinion with building like truly useful uh things and tools and that kind of stuff like Claude is is winning right now without question in my opinion. And so I would recommend checking it out. You can try it for free and then you can pay for a month for 20 bucks and if you don't like it then you can cancel it. But I think it's at least worth seeing what's possible out there if you can just think of a couple ideas. And you can always Google a couple ideas and if you're really interested in like getting better at it there's a YouTube channel I watch from a guy named Elliot Prince. And so if you want to like just get some of the basics just watch a few of his videos and you'll be able to figure out a lot of like how to use it in like a user friendly way. And then my conjunction recommendation I'm counting this as one is there's an application and some of you guys might have heard this it's called Whisperflow. It's spelled W I S P R flow and it's an app that you can basically get on your computer. You can get on your phone too but it's definitely useful on your computer um it I'll just say the cost. So it costs$15 a month or$144 for the year. There is a free two week trial though. But basically you know how like if you've used ChatGPT on your computer there's that button that where the it has dictation and the dictation if you've played around with it ever is like really good. You can actually it's not like Siri where it like it doesn't understand anything you're saying. Like it pretty much gets almost every word unless the word is weird. Well whisperflow is like that good if not better but you it applies anywhere in your computer so like you could be writing an email you could be in the in a prompt window on Chat GPT or Claude you could be writing a Microsoft Word document. All you do is hit one key and hold it down and it will dictate in like amazing fashion everything you're saying with like commas and periods and all that stuff. And so basically I almost like don't type anymore because I just like hit the hit the button on my keyboard and if I'm sending an email I just like talk it out or if I'm writing a prompt on whatever thing anywhere I just write it out or I just talk it out. So unless I'm like in class where I can't be like talking over the professor then I'll be typing like if I'm like doing some exercise or something. But like it is mind-boggling like because I'm not a very good typer I know some people are but I mean you can speak so much faster than you can type. And with yeah with like compounding whisper flow on top of using Claude is just like and I'm I wouldn't consider myself like a technically advanced person but just like playing around with that I can do shit so much faster. So like uh anytime you're trying to do something productive the combination of those two things is like honestly like eye popping. So definitely recommend that. But that is those are those are my conjunction recommendations. And you like I said you can try out whisper flow for two weeks for free and just like play with it and then you'll there the reason they do that is not without reason it's because after two weeks you'll be like I can't not have this anymore. So yeah that's that's that all right cool all right well that was fun um it's been a good chat thank you all for coming on um I guess I'll do the normal like close out thing where we say it's been a hot minute since I've done this follow us you know on X at the LakeviewPot and I don't even I haven't looked at the email in like six months but we do have an email thelakeviewpodcast at gmail.com feel free to email us there. More importantly give us five stars on wherever you listen uh and feel free to you know subscribe turn on notifications for our episodes which don't come out incredibly frequently or regularly but when they do come out they are bangers so keep keep uh listening and we appreciate you all who are still here uh it's been fun thank that Derek Byron thank you for coming on as guests I know this was hectic but I think it came together well for sure very talk provoking and fun as well hell yeah all right that does it for us today