Stubbornly Young
Stubbornly Young
Tech Insider Shares What to Know
Rule 1 of Stubbornly Young is to Embrace and Appreciate the Changing World (blog post). I'm a fascinated listener of Rich DeMuro who hosts the "Rich on Tech" podcast and radio show. It's almost unbelievable to me that he can stay up on so much consumer tech innovation. He generously offered to come on Stubbornly Young to share his ideas about artificial intelligence, apps he uses that substantially improve his life, and how to manage data security. These are subjects that the Stubbornly Young need to stay abreast of to stay relevant and this episode is a great tool to do that. It's a fast-paced episode that I'm sure you'll enjoy!
Top Takeaways:
- Advancements in AI and its impact on computing
- Limitations of traditional voice assistants and the emergence of new AI systems
- Use of AI in life-enhancing consumer apps
- Importance of cross-platform apps and recommendations for iOS and Android users
- Challenges and strategies for data security in the modern age
- Importance of protecting personal data in the wake of corporate-level data breaches
- Strategies for safeguarding personal information, including the use of secondary email addresses and password managers
- Challenges and complexities of recovering from identity theft
- Evolving landscape of cyber threats, including the use of AI for spear phishing and targeted scams
- Optimistic outlook on technology, including advancements in automation, robotics, and electric vehicles
Ponder and Share:
“The system is always learning from every single decision that it makes in every single output that it performs. And so I think that the big difference is that these systems are always getting better.” –Rich DeMuro
“I'm not a fan of single party apps because I think the tech should be inclusive, and tech to me is a platform that should be available to everyone.” –Rich DeMuro
“You have to do the best you can to protect your data.” –Rich DeMuro
Connect with Rich DeMuro!
About Rich DeMuro:
Rich DeMuro, popularly referred to as "Rich on Tech," works as a tech reporter for Los Angeles' KTLA-TV Channel 5. He delivers tech news, advice, and gadget reviews in his segments, which air on the highly regarded KTLA 5 Morning News and several other Nexstar TV stations nationwide.
Additionally, Rich hosts the nationally syndicated "Rich on Tech" radio program, which airs on over 350 stations nationwide, including Los Angeles' KFI AM 640. He answers questions and shares news about consumer electronics on the show.
Rich covers important technological events and was honored with a Los Angeles Area Emmy Award for his coverage of technology-related social concerns. He has made multiple network and national TV appearances.
Read my Blog called Rules For Being Stubbornly Young and let me know what you think!
Email your thoughts at dave@stubbornlyyoung.com
Check out where it’s all happening on the Stubbornly Young website
Thanks and looking forward to hearing how you’re remaining stubbornly young!
[INTRODUCTION]
Rich DeMuro (00:00:02) - A natural language computing that we have never seen before as humans, and something we've quite honestly always dreamed of. You just always dreamed of asking your computer to do something, and it does it. And that is the reality we're at. This app will transcribe what you say with an accuracy that I have never seen before, and then email it to yourself. My advice is to sign up with two secondary items. So have a secondary email address. And you know, when it comes to the phone number, maybe get a Google Voice number and, you know, use that to to give away to, you know, the sweepstakes that you're signing up for. And I will give you one more tip. Those questions that they ask you. You know, mother's maiden name, pet's first name, whatever. Don't answer those with actual answers.
[INTERVIEW]
Dave Tabor (00:01:04) - Welcome to the Stubbornly Young podcast. For people in their 50s, 60s and beyond who are engaged in the world and relevant to the younger people in their lives.
Dave Tabor (00:01:13) - I'm Dave Tabor. This episode is going to be so fun, because rule one of Stubbornly Young is to embrace and appreciate the changing world, and that almost always includes technology. So in this episode, we'll dance in and around all kinds of tech with Rich DeMuro, who hosts a show I listen to called Rich on Tech. Rich shares tech news, gadget reviews, tech tips and is a past senior editor at CNet. I don't know how Rich does it, but somehow he keeps up way more than I can on tech. By the way, you can find Rich on tech.TV anytime you want, and right now on Stubbornly Young to talk about tech that's on my mind, including AI, life enhancing apps and data security and anything else Rich wants to take us through. So Rich, glad you're joining me and us on Stubbornly Young.
Rich DeMuro (00:02:03) - Hey Dave, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Dave Tabor (00:02:05) - Yeah, I'm glad we could connect finally. It's been tough because your schedule is difficult but it's worth it because, look, nothing is bigger right now than AI. So that's where I want to jump in. And to set, kind of level set a little bit, how would you define the difference between AI and just really powerful computing?
Rich DeMuro (00:02:22) - Well, I mean you can have a powerful computer but no AI on that computer. And so the way I define it is a powerful computer has really good specs, right? Back in the day, it'd be all about the chip that you had in your computer, the amount of memory you had, the hard drive, the processor, you know, the graphics card. So that is a powerful computer. And obviously there are computers for, you know, your home use and big corporate use as well. But that's just a computer. It's just processing data. It's processing raw information. But when it comes to AI, it's how is that computer using that information? How is it learning from the data that you're feeding into it? And also how is the output? So I think we saw in the past year a really big shift in the way that we use our computers, because something like a ChatGPT now allows us to tap into, a natural language computing that we have never seen before as humans and something we've quite honestly always dreamed of.
Rich DeMuro (00:03:25) - You just always dreamed of asking your computer to do something, and it does it. And that is the reality we're at. And I think it's pretty incredible. And especially, by the way, when you compare it to something like voice assistants, we've had this series of the world, we've had the Alexas of the world. I probably just activated everyone's and the Google assistants, which I always thought was really good until now. Now those seem pale in comparison to what we are able to do with these new AI systems.
Dave Tabor (00:03:55) - Yeah, because I've played around with ChatGPT when it first came out a year ago and, you know, and it was just a year ago and it was super cool and it was kind of fun and, you know, but now what we're seeing is massive innovation around AI to where it really in essentially just one year, we've gone from to your point being able to ask a computer, hey, tell me these answers or formulate these sentences or create an essay on this or that to I mean, I was looking just this morning in the Wall Street Journal, there's an ad. This is a great and interesting ad. It says, put AI to work with this company called ServiceNow. And part of what they say is what I was going to ask you, which is I'm taking an excerpt from it says, endless gen AI solutions in quotes keep popping up like whack a moles. There's AI for this, AI for that. There's even AI for creating AI. And you can't throw a rock without hitting some other company promising the future big players, little players, blue chip startups, unicorns, and companies you've never heard of. And then there's this another full page ad in the Wall Street by IBM. Same thing. So what are some examples that you've seen, Rich, that like say this really illustrates well how AI is being used now beyond ChatGPT?
Rich DeMuro (00:05:12) - Well, I think that number one, AI has been used in to some extent by large companies for a long time. And I think, you know, companies like Google have been working on this for a long time.
Rich DeMuro (00:05:24) - And quite honestly, I think the, reason why we didn't see AI in such a big way from a company like Google or a company like Microsoft, especially Google, is that the way that we use search today is not what, let's just put it this way, if Google was to put their AI search into place a couple of years ago, that radically changes the way that we find information on the internet. Right now, Google is set up to give us links and to really make us click those top three links that are sponsored.
Dave Tabor (00:06:00) - Essentially refer us, refer us to information that we're asking about.
Rich DeMuro (00:06:04) - So I think we would have seen AI in a bigger way from a company like Google first a couple of years ago. If they weren't so scared of the implication of this technology on their business. And I think that's really what it came down to. We needed a company like ChatGPT to break through while the company is OpenAI that runs ChatGPT. But we needed a startup like that to really shake up the industry, because they came out with this technology that really none of us mere mortals had had access to before.
Rich DeMuro (00:06:34) - So maybe if you were inside an IBM, inside of Google, inside of Microsoft, you may have had similar tools available to you. But now that the average masses have them, it has opened up our eyes to the possibilities. And so, to your, you know, to your question of where are we seeing this in use? It's in use everywhere now. I mean, from consumer applications. Every story I do at this point has to do with AI. There is some aspect of AI to a business, and whether that business is McDonald's with their drive thru or whether it is Tesla with the self-driving car technology, or whether it is, an AT&T that is using AI to figure out how to how to maybe prioritize customer phone calls or where things, you know, where the, you know, sales projections. I mean, there's ways that these companies are using this stuff that we are just now understanding.
Dave Tabor (00:07:29) - Yeah, let's get more granular then. How is, you mentioned at a drive thru or you mentioned it prioritizing customer calls. So talk exactly about an example of where AI would be applied versus some other method of computing which just uses like decision trees.
Rich DeMuro (00:07:48) - Well, you have to think about AI in the aspect of learning and understanding different sort of perspectives. So we're talking time, we're talking the customer. We're talking what people are ordering. So for instance, for a menu board at McDonald's, when you pull up, it looks the same for everyone right now. But in the near future when you pull up, it may use Bluetooth to see a beacon from your smartphone to understand who you are. Have you been there before, what you particularly ordered in the past? And that may show that on the screen. Now, if it doesn't find that, maybe it says, okay, it's 11 a.m. on a Thursday and these are the trending items that people are ordering, you know, across the nation, because we've done this big ad buy for the McRib sandwich. And maybe it shows that or, you know, something local to your area. That's just one example.
Dave Tabor (00:08:39) - Yeah. But the difference would be that before AI, McDonald's would need to do that analysis and then program the decision tree so that it would behave in a certain way with AI, the system can, you could say, optimize, you just optimize it, and the system can look for variables and then program itself.
Rich DeMuro (00:09:02) - Yeah, I mean, the system is always learning from every single decision that it makes in every single output that it performs. And so I think that the big difference is that these systems are always getting better. And you can even see that yourself in something like a ChatGPT if you don't get the answer that you want, you can ask again and you can refine that answer. And that's something that, again, is kind of new to all of us because it used to be very much, you know, binary, you know, it's like you put in something, you get something out and that's it, end of output, and you have to start all over again.
Dave Tabor (00:09:38) - And then as you learn, you put in more specific data that it can respond to in the future. In the case of AI, there's no need to do that anymore because it will continue to learn based on parameters that you've asked.
Rich DeMuro (00:09:51) - Yeah, theoretically. And it's not perfect.
Dave Tabor (00:09:52) - Theoretically.
Rich DeMuro (00:09:53) - Yeah. Totally.
Dave Tabor (00:09:55) - Yeah. But there are a million companies now that have started up with AI driven solutions. Can you think of examples that I might be able to understand about a company that's delivering AI-driven solutions that maybe couldn't have existed a year ago without it?
Rich DeMuro (00:10:09) - Oh, gosh. I mean, so many. I mean, I think when it comes to sales in particular, I think, you know, crunching sales data and, and extracting information and trends and also things that maybe a human might not pick up on. I think that's probably one of the biggest opportunities for, you know, a B2B kind of thing. Now, to be quite honest, I cover consumer technology, so I'm not particularly interested in all these B2B applications.
Rich DeMuro (00:10:38) - I think they're interesting. But when it comes to the worlds of, you know, Salesforce and Oracle and all that stuff, that is stuff that I think is amazing for someone that's using that. But for me, I am most interested in my radio show and my TV spots focus on consumers, and that's really what I am most interested in. I've seen, you know, consumers using this as well. And I think that's, you know, to me is the average person, I think that's the more interesting thing is how people are using this in their everyday lives to tweak pictures to get those recommendations on Netflix and all these. I mean, there's an app called Real Good that, you know, it looks at the movies that you have watched before and you can ask this little kind of ChatGPT version of yourself, hey, would I like this movie? And it will look at what you've looked at and rated in the past and say, oh yeah, based on the fact that you like these types of movies with these kinds of plot twists, here's what our little GPT thinks. And I think that stuff is just fascinating.
Dave Tabor (00:11:40) - Well, that's pretty cool. And is this an app that you buy or pay for in any way, or is this another free? In fact, that's transitioning us because I wanted to first, as you know, from the outline that we discussed, I wanted to first talk about AI, and then I wanted to talk about consumer apps. So it sounds like I mean, you've already moved us in that direction, but some of the life changing, life enhancing consumer apps are AI powered.
Rich DeMuro (00:12:03) - Yeah. I mean, you know, I, I've been using an app this year called Flyfin AI, which uses AI to, it's for freelancers. So if you are a freelancer and you're collecting your transactions for tax time and you're trying to categorize those, and if you've ever tried to do that manually, you never know, oh, does this go in this category? Does this go in that category or what is even a transaction look like that might be deductible? Sometimes if you don't have that information in your head, you may not even be able to identify these things.
Rich DeMuro (00:12:33) - So this app will use AI. And you know, you can also think of AI as the wisdom of the crowds. So the more people that are categorizing a transaction from a particular retailer into a particular category, that then feeds into what it evidence or, you know, figures out for you. And so that app has been incredible. And it's a, it was an early use of AI, beginning of the year, I think it was, February of, of the year that it came out. And it just kept getting better and better. And so that's just one, one solution that, you know, I did my taxes that way last year. I mean, it really was incredible. So that's one example.
Dave Tabor (00:13:11) - And that's a quality of an AI app. And that it just keeps getting better and better.
Rich DeMuro (00:13:15) - Well, and that's what's so neat about it is that it learns. Now I will say it's not perfect because, you know, there are certain transactions that I have categorized. But when you compare it to something like a mint.com, you know, which I use to categorize transactions for the past, you know, ten years, there was no sense of AI whatsoever built into that.
Rich DeMuro (00:13:34) - So if you had a transaction from a particular retailer, the only way that you can make other or later transactions in that same category was to say, hey Mint, this, you know, re-categorize all of these and it was basically just a search and replace, you know, it wasn't any sort of smarts built into that. I wrote down some of my favorite apps. So I'm going to, this is another one that's just incredible. If you're on iOS, this app has been life changing. It's called Whisper Memos. And this is an app that uses AI to transcribe what you're saying and then to email it to yourself. And so I have this installed on my Apple Watch. And of course, there's been voice memos forever. But those voice memos were kind of dumb. They would live on your phone or on your computer as an audio file. Whoever looks at an audio file after they record it, nobody. So this app will transcribe what you say with an accuracy that I have never seen before.
Rich DeMuro (00:14:36) - And then email it to yourself. And it's using OpenAI's. I think OpenAI's voice to text system is called Whisper, so they're using that on the back end to actually transcribe what you're saying, but it's really good.
Dave Tabor (00:14:52) - Oh, I'm an Android user, darn it, so I can't. Well, I'll have to look for it. Maybe it'll come out that way.
Rich DeMuro (00:14:56) - I mean, on Android you have I mean on the Pixel. They have Google's Recorder app, which is just incredible. And, you know, that is one of my favorites as well. And they just added on board summarizing to the Pixel phones, the latest ones, I think they call it Pixie. And it's a, it's a small, language model that they've built onto the, onto the phone itself. And so when you record one of your meetings at work with this, you know, Google Recorder, it will then summarize everything in there. And so, you know, again, it's one of these things that the recorder app has been on the Pixel for many years now. But it's never been this smart.
Dave Tabor (00:15:37) - Yeah. And that's where AI is applied because I mean, 15 years ago, 20 years ago Dragon had, naturally speaking, a dictating software. Right. But it didn't. I mean, it could learn based on your voice and the corrections that you had to manually apply. Right? So, but they’re so much more powerful now. And that's where AI drives those improvements.
Rich DeMuro (00:15:56) - And also I'm not sure that it was learning from everyone else that was using it.
Dave Tabor (00:16:00) - Oh I don't think so. Yeah.
Rich DeMuro (00:16:02) - So it may have learned locally on your system if you set a word and and corrected it and you know. But that's right. All those things have not been very good historically. I mean, even, you know, voice to text has been kind of hit or miss, but now it's gotten to the point where maybe minus a proper name, you know, someone's last name, it gets almost everything right, including the names of buildings, the name of landmarks, you know, capitalize.
Dave Tabor (00:16:29) - Wow. yeah.
Rich DeMuro (00:16:30) - You know, it's really gotten to a place, especially with this whisper because it's using so much knowledge behind just the transcription. So when you say something, it kind of pings its knowledge base to say, oh, he said Big Ben. Oh, he must mean that should be capitalized, because that's the landmark.
Dave Tabor (00:16:47) - That's cool. Now I cut you off, you were going to share a couple of other life changing, life enhancing apps. What are those?
Rich DeMuro (00:16:53) - Oh, I mean, look, when it comes to editing, I love an app called Splice. And, I don't know if there's any AI built into this app. There might be for the audio transcription, but that's a great app for editing. You know, if you're editing stuff on your phone that works on iOS and Android. And I know, Dave, you said you're an Android user. So I really, truly try to find apps that are cross-platform. I know that in the iPhone centric world that we live in, or at least the US, it is very easy to fall into the trap of using all of Apple's apps on your iPhone without downloading anything else, because they're they're, they're built in, they go to iCloud.
Rich DeMuro (00:17:31) - And that's great. If you're, if you don't mind, if you never think you're going to switch platforms, that's fine. But I am appealing to an audience that is somewhat on Android, somewhat on iOS. And personally, I'm not a fan of single party apps because I think the tech should be inclusive, and tech to me is a platform that should be available to everyone. And so just because you're on Android does not mean you shouldn't have access to the same type of app that I have on iPhone. And so when I'm finding apps that I like, I truly look for apps that work on both platforms. Because I think that those are the best apps. If you, let's just say something changes. You're an iPhone user and something changes overnight and you want to switch to Android, and all of your stuff is locked up in a proprietary app that only works on the iPhone. That's not the way technology should be. Technology should be everywhere all at once. And I think that Google has really led a nice charge on that.
Rich DeMuro (00:18:30) - I think with their Pixel, they're veering off a little bit into more of a corner with like the features that they offer on that, compared to Android at large. But that's my thoughts.
Dave Tabor (00:18:39) - What are a couple of other apps that you talk about?
Rich DeMuro (00:18:43) - Another app that I really like is called well, simple app, Touch Retouch. So we've seen this idea of Magic Eraser on the iPhone where you can erase an object from a photo. Well, this app called Touch Retouch has been doing that on iPhone and Android, and it's great if you have a picture you take of your kid and there's a toy on the ground that you don't want in the final picture, you literally open up this app, circle the little toy, or just tap your thumb to it and it will disappear. And it's really, really good. and I've used that for little blemishes and things. You know, you have a shirt with a little stain on it or something, and you want to use that for your headshot. You know, just just tap it. It will go away. That that app is pretty, pretty impressive and it works really well. The other app that I really like for organizing recipes, and I know this is silly, but it's just a very simple app. But I discovered it and it's made life a lot easier. It's called Recipe Keeper. And this app is, the magic of this app is that you take a URL and I don't know if, Dave, if you’ve ever gone to a recipe website, you have to scroll through an hour's worth of prose to get to the actual recipe. And so with this app, all you do is you take a URL, you pop it into the app, and it parses the information. So the headline, the ingredients, the directions, and it puts it in an easy to follow format in like kind of a recipe card on your phone. And, I love that app as well.
Dave Tabor (00:20:12) - Well that's cool. So you're a cook?
Rich DeMuro (00:20:14) - I do cook, yes, a lot. So I mean, I'm not like a fancy cook, but I do. I am the primary chef in my home.
Dave Tabor (00:20:22) - That's cool. Nice. So, you know, I've always found that, you know, things like tech, for example. I mean, you're never done. You're never done learning. You're never done watching. But, like, I make pies and I make them, and there's such a sense of gratification. Like when you pull it out, it's like done. There's a moment of my life where something is done and I, you know, so I kind of relate to that, actually.
Rich DeMuro (00:20:46) - Well, that's what I love about being on TV because every single day that I do a story, you can see the work that I've done for that day. It's a product that I make and it's complete. Now, as soon as I'm done with that story, I'm moving on to my next one. So that part is a little bit, you know, stressful. But what you're talking about when you make something at a job, I do think there is a satisfaction in that.
Rich DeMuro (00:21:11) - And I think that's why people have hobbies in their personal life where they're gardening or they're working on the car, where they're painting, because when you produce something, there is something really special about that. You can see the fruits of your labor.
Dave Tabor (00:21:27) - Yeah. For sure. So I got to sidetrack a little bit. I'm going to go to our, my third category, which is data security. And I got to start with this Comcast breach that just happened that affects 35 million people. And it's getting to where it seems it's just impossible to protect our data, our identities I don't know, is it hopeless? I mean what is your, what's your take?
Rich DeMuro (00:21:50) - Well I think in the aspect of a data breach like this, that is really tricky because I can tell you to use a strong password. I can tell you to turn on two-factor authentication. But when you are getting hacked at the corporate level and they are stealing things like card numbers, they are stealing dates of birth. In this instance, it was everything.
Rich DeMuro (00:22:12) - I mean, it was passwords, it was usernames, it was dates of birth, last four of your social, answers to security questions. So the answer I have to this is that number one, you have to do the best you can to protect your data. And I think that that is, a couple of levels. So that is not giving your data out to anyone who asks. That's the number one thing. You go to a doctor's office, first thing they do is they present you that clipboard asking for every single
Dave Tabor (00:22:44) - Social security number.
Rich DeMuro (00:22:46) - Yeah. Like, why do they need that? You know, they don't, I mean, I know why they want it. They want it because if you don't pay your bill, they want to be able to come after you and place a, you know, a collection on your, on your credit report. But you don't need to give that to them. And in, you know, the 20 years of going to the doctor, I have almost rarely given that maybe if they push and I and they say they have a reason for it, but I just don't even put it on there.
Rich DeMuro (00:23:12) - And they don't, they don't ask for it if you don't put it on there, I mean, you could ask anyone for anything. I could walk up to someone on the street and say, hey, what's your social and date of birth? If they want to tell me, they could tell me. But, you don't have to tell people this stuff. So I think that's one aspect of it is not giving your information out to everyone, and that includes your email address, your phone number. So those two pieces of information, which used to seem very benign, right? You give them to anyone who would ask. Now those are key to our online identity. We get our two factor authentication codes through our phone number. Our email address is basically our online identity. So my advice is to sign up with, to have two secondary items. So have a secondary email address that's mostly for spam. DuckDuckGo offers a nice free email address that you can use for that. It removes the trackers and you can get rid of things easily.
Rich DeMuro (00:24:08) - And, you know, when it comes to the phone number, maybe get a Google Voice number and, you know, use that to, to give away to, you know, the, the sweepstakes that you're signing up for or any of the random things that don't really require your phone number, but most of the time ask. And then when it comes to your, you know, your passwords, 99% of people I talked to are not using a password manager, and they are not using strong passwords, and it's going to bite you when you're using the same password over and over. It's just a matter of time before that password gets exposed on the dark web and is now tried at you know, various websites against you.
Dave Tabor (00:24:47) - Yeah, I've been using one password and really like that app, although occasionally glitches. But I really like it. Super cool.
Rich DeMuro (00:24:56) - Yeah. Well. That's the problem is that occasionally it glitches and it's not easy to use on a mobile phone. It could be tricky on your desktop. It could be tricky when it tries to fill stuff in that's wrong or for the wrong website, or it just doesn't do it automatically. So yes, there is a bit of friction with using a password manager, but it's probably a good thing because you slow down and you're not logging in, you know quickly and you're not using the same password over and over. So I get it. It's not that easy to use one of these things, but at the same time it is way more secure. And I will give you one more tip. those questions that they ask you, you know, mother's maiden name, pet's first name, whatever. Don't answer those with actual answers. Use the password generator to generate a code and paste that in, and then you can save those questions in the notes field of your password manager.
Dave Tabor (00:25:50) - That's a good tip. That's a good tip.
Rich DeMuro (00:25:54) - That's a little trickier. And I can't take credit for that tip. I interviewed a security specialist at one of the big, one of the big password managers, and that was their tip to me because I said, you know, really, what can we do? And I thought that was a pretty good one.
Rich DeMuro (00:26:06) - And so I've been doing that as well. Now, if you ever have a, you ever have a circumstance, where you lose your data? You are going to have a heck of a time getting access to your accounts because, when they ask you your mother's maiden name, you are not going to be able to, roll that off the tip of your tongue.
Dave Tabor (00:26:22) - Yeah. Now, I've also thought, you know, like, I read something where I was like, you know, if if the mother's maiden name is Smith and you just know that you're made up, answer is going to be Johnson, you can use that. And it doesn't tie back to, you know, your actual data, you know. So.
Rich DeMuro (00:26:37) - Yeah. I think that's a good, a good way to go is to really, just the less exposure you can have to your personal data, the better. But again, when it comes to these big data breaches, a lot of them, they're getting bigger and bigger with the T-Mobile's of the world the Targets of the world, you know, credit card numbers I don't really care about.
Rich DeMuro (00:26:55) - Like, okay, yeah, that's not really on me. It's going to be a pain. It's going to be a headache, but it's not really going to ruin your life. Bank account, debit card numbers. Yeah, those are more of a problem.
Dave Tabor (00:27:05) - Yep, yep. Somebody stole my identity for an open to Verizon account. I don't have a Verizon account, but they made me, in order to clean it up, they made me provide my social security number. I'm like, what the hell guys? Like, no, I don't want to do this. And they’re, well, if you don't want us to open more accounts, then you got to give us this stuff. I'm like, wow, that's like this circle of hell.
Rich DeMuro (00:27:27) - Yeah. I think, anyone that I've spoken to that has been hacked in any sort of way, even simple ways like Instagram, Facebook, you have to give up a lot of your personal information to get that account back. And I've seen the process. You basically have to hold up like an ID card in front of your webcam and take a picture and their system scan it and will assess it. And it's a lot of personal data that's being passed in those circumstances.
Dave Tabor (00:27:57) - And now you got to hope that they don't get hacked next, because now they have everything. Is it hopeless? I mean, how do you think about it? You do it. I mean, do you just expect your?
Rich DeMuro (00:28:07) - I like to take a, I like to take a, a positive, kind of, optimistic approach to technology. And I will be honest, I think that 99.9% of the so-called hacks that I see with the average person are based on their habits, and it's not necessarily hackers that are targeting you specifically. You may be caught up in a net where they are, you know, just getting a lot of people. But most of the time, from what I've gotten in my emails, most people are either, you know, they're answering someone that is that is messaging them and clicking a link and handing over their, their, user ID and password, or they are not using two-factor authentication and they log in to a rogue website and they can't, you know, once that's done, or in the case of Zelle and all these other scams, people are sending money to someone in hopes of getting money back.
Rich DeMuro (00:29:03) - There is some human greed and human nature, with some of these hacks. So I think, you know, is it hopeless? No. Is it really tough? Yes. I think that for the average person, it is, we're up against the law, like a real law, especially with AI, because we haven't even seen that come into play with better grammar and better tools.
Dave Tabor (00:29:26) - Yeah because now instead of these emails that we get from a prince in wherever, there's going to be emails that are spear phishing that were AI has researched us, sent us something that tantalizes us based on our own personality and our own life. And they're going to shoot me an email. It talks about the Stubbornly Young podcast and blah blah blah, and they're interested in my feedback. And then I'm going to click it and bang, they're going to get me.
Rich DeMuro (00:29:51) - They're already doing that. I mean, the podcast I don't know if you you're referring to this scam that's happening right now, but, podcasters and YouTubers and Instagrammers, they're being targeted specifically saying, hey, do you want to be a guest on my show? And what they make you do is give them admin access to your account so that you can link up with them. And once you do that they take over your account. And I mean, it's just, people have fallen for it. And I've gotten the emails and I was trying, I actually texted a group of, you know, podcasting friends and it's like, hey, what's the scam here? Because I'm not about to go down this rabbit hole to see what it is. But it's some sort of scam. But I always like to know what the end game is.
Dave Tabor (00:30:38) - Yeah, I, I think, you know, my approach is be cynical of anything I don't expect and suspicious. Really suspicious. And you know, you can always pick up the phone and validate. And I've done that a couple of times and you get nothing back. So, you know that that was the attempt. Hey, before we wrap up, anything we haven't talked about that you are super excited about, Rich?
Rich DeMuro (00:30:58) - I mean, I see a lot of, you know, I do the radio show, but in my TV work, I see a lot of new technology and a lot of the technology that I've seen over the past couple of years besides AI has to do with automation and robots and electric cars and electric flying items like taxis and things. So I, personally, living in Los Angeles, I'm very excited for the idea of a taxi that will automatically take off and land like a drone basically. Vertical, vertical takeoff and landing and that will take you to certain places around the city. Like they'll have these kind of jump off points where you can go from one area to another, and it's all sort of automated. And I know that sounds pretty wild.
Dave Tabor (00:31:46) - No, actually. I think I made a bet that I'm going to lose, a ten year bet that I made like eight years ago with a friend that by this ex date that a remote taxi, an autonomous taxi would pick us up at our house, take us to a show, to dinner and bring us home. And I live in Denver and I thought for sure that was going to happen. But the friction in our society around this uncertainty that one might run somebody over, it makes me feel like your, your concept of the, the of an air taxi is probably easier to accept than a car where there,
right?
Rich DeMuro (00:32:24) - That might be. But I am excited for the car. I've been in the self-driving Waymo and it was incredible. And, you know, I was in Uber when they first started and I thought that was incredible. But you know, you've got humans at the wheel. And so, you know, when it comes to Waymo, the self-driving stuff is fascinating to me because I, you know, I know that people as humans and society, we are fighting that because we feel like humans are better. But let's be honest here, humans drink and drive. Humans make bad choices. Humans are angry. Humans text and drive. Humans are distracted. So the stuff I see on a daily basis on the streets, a lot of that would be fixed by a computer that doesn't necessarily make a lot of mistakes.
Dave Tabor (00:33:07) - Yeah, I think statistically they're already way safer than humans. But it's this emotional quagmire that we find ourselves in that are anecdotally driven, drives me nuts, and I'm going to lose my bet because of it. All right. So, Rich, thanks. I think we should wrap up, and maybe we'll do this again down the road. I'm your host, Dave Tabor. Today on Stubbornly Young podcast you've been listening to my conversation with Rich DeMuro, known for Rich on Tech. You can find Rich at RichontechTV and, Rich, glad you joined me. It was a fun conversation.
Rich DeMuro (00:33:40) - Thanks for having me. Appreciate it Dave.
Dave Tabor (00:33:42) - You're welcome. Listeners, this has been episode 12 of the Stubbornly Young Podcast for those in their 50s, 60s and beyond, remaining engaged in the world and relevant to the younger people in their lives. Hey, do me a favor please, and help the podcast spread by submitting a review and sharing with your friends your stubbornly young friends. In particular, I want to thank my friends at VEA Technologies for hosting Stubbornly Young. Catch you next time on Stubbornly Young.
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