Six Bizarre Tech Stories You Might Have Missed

Quick Overview

The hosts of the Hard Fork podcast discuss several bizarre tech stories, including Ring canceling a partnership with Flock Safety due to surveillance backlash, an activist investor pressuring Japan's largest toilet maker to invest more in semiconductor AI, and a Meta patent for an AI that could simulate deceased persons online, concluding that these developments paint a picture of a potentially worrying future.

Key Points: Ring canceled its partnership with controversial law-enforcement technology company Flock Safety following public backlash, which included a questionable Super Bowl ad (00:25). An activist investor is pressuring Japan's largest toilet maker, Toto, to become a major player in the global semiconductor supply chain by increasing AI and advanced ceramics use in chip production (2:33-3:07). Meta patented AI technology that could allow large language models to replicate a deceased person's online behavior, which the hosts find terrifying (3:28-3:50). An Australian Uber driver caused outrage by charging a passenger $5 to turn on the air conditioning during a 35-degree Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) heatwave (6:17-6:46). Reece Rogers tried the gig work website RentAHuman, finding it filled with bots hired to hype AI startups rather than offering legitimate work opportunities (10:15-10:24). The hosts agree that the Meta patent for digital resurrection is an economic mess and potentially the worst Super Bowl ad ever created, contrasting it with the positive, but still creepy, Ring 'lost dog' ad (1:51-2:25, 3:44). The podcast segment ends with the hosts jokingly lamenting that they might all become outsourced AI agents or that the future will involve people being paid to do mundane tasks for AI (9:05-9:14).

Context: Kevin Roose and Casey Newton, co-hosts of The New York Times' 'Hard Fork' podcast, discuss several unusual technology news stories during their segment, which they playfully frame around a train theme, wearing conductor hats. The discussion centers on corporate responsibility, privacy concerns related to surveillance tech, and the growing, sometimes absurd, applications of Artificial Intelligence in everyday life and business.