The Complexities of YouTube: A Year in Review

As I reflect on my stance on complete sovereignty over individuals, I realize that it's a topic that sparks debate among many people. While some may argue for autonomy and self-determination, others may feel that too much power can be detrimental to society as a whole. In the context of social media platforms like YouTube, this is particularly relevant.

YouTube has been at the forefront of experimenting with new features and policies in recent years. One notable example is the crackdown on ad blockers, which was first introduced in 2022. The platform's approach to dealing with ad blockers has become increasingly aggressive, with some users reporting that their ads are no longer working after attempting to install an ad blocker. While this may seem like a minor issue to some, it highlights the complex relationship between advertisers and content creators on YouTube.

The platform has also faced criticism for its treatment of creators who produce adult content. In 2022, YouTube announced changes to its terms of service, which aimed to reduce the amount of explicit material on the platform. While this move was likely intended to appease advertisers, it also sparked concerns among creators who felt that their freedom of expression was being curtailed.

In addition to these policy changes, YouTube has also been experimenting with new formats and features. One notable example is the introduction of 1080p premium videos, which are now available for subscribers only. While this may seem like a minor change, it highlights the platform's efforts to differentiate itself from other streaming services and provide a more premium experience for its users.

However, not all changes have been well-received by YouTube users. For example, the platform has been testing a new feature that adds 10 ads before a video starts playing. While this may seem like a minor issue to some, it highlights the tension between content creators and advertisers on the platform. Creators have expressed concerns about the impact of these ads on their viewing experience, while advertisers are keen to maximize revenue.

Despite these challenges, YouTube has continued to evolve and adapt in response to changing user behavior and technological advancements. The platform's decision to allow Chinese spy balloons to fly over Canadian airspace was a significant development, highlighting the complexities of international relations and the role of social media in global politics.

Furthermore, the rise of streaming services like Netflix has led to a decline in physical media sales. In recent years, many major retailers have announced plans to discontinue their DVD and CD businesses, citing declining demand as the reason. This trend is likely to continue, with online streaming services becoming increasingly popular.

Finally, the relationship between parents and children in the digital age is a complex one. As AI technology becomes more advanced, it's likely that we'll see the emergence of new forms of parenting and child-rearing. For some, this may be seen as a positive development, while others may worry about the impact on traditional family structures.

In conclusion, YouTube has been a year of significant change and experimentation for the platform. While some changes have been well-received by users, others have sparked controversy and debate. As we look to the future, it's clear that social media platforms will continue to play an increasingly important role in our lives, shaping our relationships, behaviors, and attitudes towards technology and each other.

Best Buy has announced plans to drop DVDs and CDs next year, marking a significant shift in the way consumers interact with physical media. Netflix has also ended its DVD mailing service, citing declining demand as the reason for this decision.

The tech industry is constantly evolving, with new technologies and innovations emerging all the time. As we look to the future, it's likely that AI will play an increasingly important role in our lives, shaping everything from the way we work to the way we interact with each other.

Robo grandma may be a thing of the future, but for now, it's worth thinking about what this might mean for society as a whole. As we continue to explore the possibilities of AI and robotics, it's essential that we consider the potential implications of these technologies on our relationships, communities, and culture.

In the end, it's up to us to make peace with the fact that technology is changing at an incredible pace, and that our children may one day grow up in a world dominated by AI. While this may seem daunting, it's also exciting to think about the possibilities that the future holds for humanity.

The world was going nuts when Chinese spy balloons were spotted in the skies above Canada and the United States earlier this year. The incident sparked widespread outrage and calls for action from politicians on both sides of the border. In response, the Canadian government announced that it would be giving permission to foreign aircraft to fly over Canadian airspace, in an effort to prevent similar incidents in the future.

As we look back on this event, it's clear that social media played a significant role in spreading information and fueling public debate. The speed and reach of online platforms meant that news of the spy balloon sighting was out quickly, sparking widespread concern and outrage among citizens and politicians alike.

The incident highlights the complex relationship between technology, politics, and international relations in the modern era. As we move forward, it's essential that we continue to prioritize transparency, accountability, and cooperation when dealing with issues related to national security and global governance.

In conclusion, 2022 was a year of significant change and experimentation for YouTube and other social media platforms. While some changes have been well-received by users, others have sparked controversy and debate. As we look to the future, it's clear that technology will continue to play an increasingly important role in our lives, shaping everything from the way we work to the way we interact with each other.

Ultimately, it's up to us as individuals and as a society to make sense of this rapidly changing world and find ways to harness the power of technology to create a better future for all.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat did you say AI will it kill your parents AI will it kill your parents yeah you know there was a time when that question wouldn't make any sense but sadly it does in the year 2023 uh because AI has been crazy there's been a lot of tech news happening this year and we're gonna talk about it on this episode of talk link with who murd no that's me okay Jessica P Jessica P You're the WAN writer I am the W writer and this is probably the first time listeners have heard how my last name is pronounced and I'm sorry we had to break it to you this way I mean how else would you say it pigo people usually say pigo pigo you're the WAN writer but you also uh write Tech linked yes and you also and game link and Tech quick and Tech Wick yes you're you're got your hands in all the pots now I multifaceted I think there was a rumor before my my name was released because I I tended to jokingly put my name in the credits as various Ai and uh there there was a rumor that I was actually an AI experiment I just kept showing up in so many different video series maybe we all are who knows brains and Vats Etc I've honestly this year has made me question absolutely everything we're going to go through our favorite stories of the year or sort of we're going to talk about Jessica's first year here at lmg and cover some of our you know the stories that really got us uh got got us thinking now this episode we're recording it the week before but it's going to go up on Wednesday December 27th 2 days after our Christmas special so if you want a proper big Roundup of all the tech stories of the year and you didn't see that we released a Christmas special go see that but this is more of a casual situation Jessica how's it been had you tried to keep up with the tech news cycle in the way that you have had to this year before not like this no like there was always things I kept up with there's little trends that I would note um but if you want to know my previous experience following the news time line uh I learned about Bitcoin in early 2012 when huh that's interesting and didn't pay attention to it again until 2019 there are there's always just been a lot of stuff that just passes Me by because I wasn't specifically interested um yeah I mean crypto that's fair honestly if if if people missed the whole crypto kind of hype and then crash uh it's like well to me it few years to me it started here and it ended here so and everything in between that like there there might have been an up there might have been a down to me it was a straight line yeah well okay it's not fair to say that sorry I just said a second ago that it was only a few years but really I mean you know crypto started way back you know early 2000 early 2010s or maybe before that anyways but the really started gaining hype around 2012 13 and stuff that then it kind of like laid dormant and then it spiked in the last few years and just in time for it to kind of fall out of favor I mean last year I was I rewatched some of our Christmas specials in preparation for this year's and one of the main stories last year was how crypto basically just fell off the map at the beginning of 2022 a bunch of companies were still doing stuff with it they announced Integrations with at a lot of gaming companies in particular and then by the end of the year they had all kind of canceled it yeah like I remember like wealth simple sending me an email like a year and a half ago about their crypto integration yeah well and it's still integrated in a lot of things I don't want to say that it's dead it's not it's absolutely not but in terms of its mainstream for the average person crypto was fast yeah yeah crypto was very fast it was a flash in the pan mhm um but it was replaced by AI which is like the hugest thing this year but way bigger hype before we get there how was it keeping up with everything you said that you kind of like were aware of some things before but like was there a break neck speed cuz I've been doing this for 10 years so I I you I want to hear what it was like for you uh it was a lot of reading stuff and not knowing if it was important or not cuz sometimes you'd read something and you're like that sounds really important and then Riley would go yeah they always do that yeah this is actually the sixth time or I'd read something and I'm just like I don't that don't seem important at all and Riley would be like this is gamechanging and I'm like really yeah yeah I just a big part of the issue is not that I didn't understand what was happening but I did not have the right amount of context to understand what people considered important yeah it's always hard especially because especially when you're writing for w show and like with TechLink it's you know we we do our best but Wan show it's we are preparing things and before you came on uh the the whole writing team kind of worked together on it but I was like curating the topics and now this is your burden and uh it is a struggle to kind of guess what lonus and Luke will particularly find interesting it is as opposed to what we think maybe the the the Broad tech audience on YouTube will find interesting I sometimes I feel like like I have a Ouija board or I have a crystal ball and I'm just going like I'm like okay well like this is objectively important but like I don't no we have like a little spreadsheet set up and like I I think I've gotten a lot better at guessing but still sometimes I will get it back from lus and I will be baffled by what returns to me I'm like you want to talk about that that's a main story to you yeah yeah okay because I I thought maybe I'd have to write three lines on that yeah we'll put something in there we be like this is the biggest news of the week you guys need to talk about this for half an hour he's like eh world changing he's like I want to talk about this Final Fantasy bug that's really annoying me but to your point a second ago about like having the context it is tough because we hired you and we hired Jacob uh close to a year ago yes and you guys have been you know getting on the team and becoming embedded in like gaining that kind of context that that I've had for a while and it's uh yeah it's it's it's a whole process admittedly I no longer find myself Googling what is Red Green Team yeah exactly question mark yeah but I want to say honestly that the differ between you and your like kind of ambient knowledge for some of this stuff the difference between you now and between you like when you started is is so vast like now I'll just talk about a tech thing and you'll just be like yeah you know oh I am a sponge I am a serious sponge uh that was kind of what James said to me when he hired me was like you obviously don't have the background but you're smart you'll figure it out I'm like what does that mean oh uh hold on a second I'm rethinking here things here yeah you didn't pick up on that okay I'm like that sounds ominous am I in danger don't worry you'll be fine swim yeah so I mean I do tend to have a pretty good grasp of Technology it's just that most of the technology I'm interested in was invented before everyone was current who's currently alive was born right because PRI prior to your job here you did write blog posts absolutely about and you did deep Dives on History topics yeah which involves technology a lot of time absolutely involves techn for sure which is I think why I mean I've loved your Tech quickie scripts I think that you do a deep dive and you make them funny you're a you're a standup comedian in case anyone doesn't know I'm currently sitting but you know you just got to imagine me like two feet up that's the kind of jokes we're looking for you can look forward to I I cannot tell the kind of jokes that I tell on stage in this context Jacob wrote a sit stand joke into today's Tech link asang like they will not stand for that but if you want to sit for that see this just reminds me of the time when like you were like I heard you across the room like I was finishing up a joke for TechLink and I heard you all across the room telling Jacob off for having two jokes in one script that were about shoving objects in someone's butt as I was finishing a joke about shoving objects at people's butts I mean hey it's a funny place of the body you know like it's a it's inherently humorous I mean what you what are you supposed to do not make jokes about it um but all right and now it's not time for quick bits because there aren't any today nonetheless this video is brought to you by Firebelly tea their travel mug gives tea lovers the ability to start or stop their iced or hot tea infusion anytime anywhere it's flow control and tapered lip makes it feel like you drinking from a traditional mug but with none of the spillage and you should also check out the unique handcrafted teas they're terrific go to lmg g/ belly mug grab yourself a stop infusion travel mug and use code linked 10 to get 10% off your entire purchase so on that note yeah let's talk about our favorite tech stories this year uh for me it's it's definitely one of the biggest ones and one of my favorites is AI just because I've been doing my darnest this year to make some progress on a tech longer about it and it's been very very very difficult a long road to find the to find the time uh to do it but I've been like saving so many links it's it's crazy so uh yeah how do you feel about AI is it is it going to be the end of humanity is it going to be the bright optimistic future I think the truth is somewhere in between I know I know but of course you're that's why you're presenting the dichotomy there's been a lot of both Euphoria and H hyy about AI I think it's genuinely incredibly cool it really is it's incred incredibly cool but the danger is that there are people who think that in the same way as people thought about crypto exactly and I feel like a lot of people's reaction and this is I was talking earlier about grifters a lot of people's reaction to whatever is drawing the most attention in a media space is just to immediately just try to like pick it up like it's a piggy bank and try to shake money out of it yeah regard of why regardless of there's no real thought behind it and I feel like that's a lot of the current danger about AI like I'm not really worried about human extinction at this point I am worried about people throwing away people's jobs because they think they can replace them with what is essentially a an advanced auto correct well like I'm worried about people you know just filling like flooding the zone of conversation with like AI slurry and that causing like Downstream problems for basic communication yeah I mean that's the issue though is that you just compared like the risk of extension like you're not worried about that you're worried about the money thing and I think that unfortunately the the people trying to commercialize it is what could lead to the extension I mean we it's so interesting we're doing it to ourselves I'm not worried about the AI I'm worried about the people using it what's what's a tool is a Tool's a hammer is a hammer I mean yeah and and thankfully they're not at the level of like being actual autonomous agents right now they are just tools and it's it's unclear if they will ever get to the point where they could be described as like an autonomous agent in the in the way you think of like a Sci-Fi robot being like yeah we don't know if the H 9,000 thing is currently possible yeah I mean there are there are some things that that have been made we reported on auto GPT at some point in the middle of the Year where they could string along a few uh chat Bots that kind of like you give it an overarching goal and then it self- prompts itself along towards that goal but I think that and more recently it being able to create other smaller versions of itself that that was crazy that was a crazy recent story where like AI can give birth to other AIS yeah and then we put them in our shoes we'll link to the episode for that so you more context but yeah what's so what one of the most interesting things to me about the AI thing about the AI whole spectacle is the fact that open aai uh their whole mission statement from the beginning was to not be a commercial entity exactly they were like we're not going to go down the commercial route we're just going to do research science yeah and we're going to do research so that we can stop the bad commercial people who are going to screw up the world and then will be able to stop them they are the people who put this thing out into the like chat GPT was the impetus for all of this and it was open AI the company who said that they would protect the world but you know and you could make an argument that like okay AI is too powerful for one company to control so they had to get it out there so that people could like see what's happening and do stuff with it and all this all this uh stuff but open AI is not doing it open source they're doing it proprietary exactly meta is doing open source stuff there's a lot of good interesting stuff going in going on in the open source Community I mean mistol is is is pretty close to like it's behind claw which is just behind chat GPT but like I don't know that so like to your point about the the the conflict between those two drives there is that conflict but it's also so complicated because the the companies that are saying that're are here to protect us or the companies who are trying to commercialize it mhm so and Commercial interests they it's kind of like a Whirlpool like it has its own gravity it has its own momentum it sucks you towards it whether you like it or not whatever your original intentions were yeah let's talk about the sort of the details of of AI a little bit like how how long did it take you it took me a long time to wrap my head around the idea that this is like a neural network like do you let's let's let's get into the deep stuff do you think it'll ever be conscious I like to think that that's plausible like there's a part of me that finds that very compelling as an idea I think because of how important like sci-fi writers have been writing about the idea of autonomous agents like iroot like all of this these ideas this Grand cultural weight of the idea of like what if we could create life what if human beings could create a Consciousness that is analogous to ourselves right now to be clear I don't actually think it's that plausible that we will create something that is like human beings no I I don't think that's the cas I think I agree I think it's fundamentally different um yeah we might create like a uh super intelligent uh crazy like a thousand years from now Poss plausibly even but it's not going to be like us yes it's not going to be analogist to us the thing is I would never feel comfortable saying no it will never happen right I think that is a fundamentally arrogant like intellectually dishonest position to take yeah you can say that it's unlikely honest you can say that it's nowhere near in the near future but not no yeah honestly I I completely go back and forth I'm like I think at the beginning I was like it's not conscious it's just a whatever and then like I saw some stuff and I was like whoa that's this is actually pretty crazy and look at it structurally you're like this is structurally very very similar to the way that neurons work in the human brain but then it's like oh there's all these levels of complexities that you know it's like this is a computer it's not like a physical like neuron with a milein sheath and everything like there's so many complex interactions that we don't even understand the brain and now we're suddenly doing psychology on computers see that was exactly what I was thinking like just thinking just now it's just like we don't even understand why we're conscious yeah exactly we like that's an emergent property of our brains we like you cannot point to the the spot in the brain where Consciousness lives right you don't know we know where our personalities are it's right up front here we know where our sight is it's in the back we do not know why we have a sense of self exactly we may never we may never like we are trying to understand something that is exactly as complicated as our own brains with our own brains yeah yeah so in in terms of like I think I think the thing that was easiest for cuz like it was wild at first looking at some of this stuff I think the kinds of comparisons that helped me the most was like like it's it's using it this is a a very advanced form of pattern recognition oh yeah like that's what this thing is doing and like it kind of reminds me a lot of like the hallucinations and like odd behavior oh my gosh that like Sydney coming out it just it's just so obvious that we trained AI on like llms on the internet because it got just got so emotional it's just like we've created life and given it a personality disorder like immediately immediately I was trying to find the Articles from the the um the the the the Contemporary uh dis discussion of it uh uh I'm not sure what you mean by that the the articles that came out at the time yeah yeah yeah I was I was trying to find articles from the time when like people found out about Sydney the code name that like Bing chat had and I was trying to find the Articles where they or where Sydney came up with other personalities there were like multiple personas yeah somebody asked Sydney like who else is in there with you or whatever and they she she he it I don't know described all these different personalities and I'm like what that was wild that was in the early days very early days and part of the issue it reminds me of and by early days I mean like March March this has moved so fast it's wild fast it's just a whole new reality and part of the issue is it reminds me of the problem you get when you are like this is a problem with children trying to like discuss like crimes when they're witnesses to something because you can end up in this situation where the adult is just kind of like trying to get a specific answer out of the kid and like the kid just doesn't know what they want so just starts responding to what's getting a reaction yeah that's what I feel like a lot of the weird weirdest stuff that AI does comes out where it's just it's a mirror yeah it is feeding us back what we're responding to yeah I think a turning point for me thinking about Ai and what it means and how it works and stuff was when people started like there was the initial wave of hype and obviously you know I didn't get fully swept into all this I think like I keep kind of a more detached like skeptical stance on it but I have to follow the story as it's like developing so there were people who were like it's alive and then sometime after that uh um sentiments that got more prevalent where people saying this kind of thing where it's like the AI is saying crazy stuff because we're asking it to say crazy stuff we're like we're it's a mirror yes and so you know we are responding most to when it is craziest yeah yeah now I want to I would love for this whole thing to be about AI but we should probably mention some other stories that we uh enjoyed this year um I have so many but they're all very odd yeah well I mean those are the perfect ones I love the really odd ones um what's what what's an odd one I absolutely lost my mind when there was a proton Port of cheex quest do you mean that like it was hilarious to you that someone went out of their way to like ensure that the check's Quest had support for Bron yes the uh emulation layer between Linux and windows games absolutely that was magical to me I love people's odd little projects yeah you did a whole segment in W recently yeah and it went over pretty well with the uh branded retr branded games yeah retro branded games I feel like there's a lot of culture and this is coming from me as someone who really loves history a lot of the cult like we get this idea that past cultures were far more serious than we are but the problem is it's a survivorship bias thing there's a lot of garbage that we just threw out because it was garbage but it's kind of magical when some of that stuff survives into the present and you get to get a glimps into like this is what we were making 20 years ago oh man yeah I I love adver games for that reason like really really old advertisements like I don't like modern ads at all but like really old quirky advertisements are hilarious to me that that's what that's one thing that's amazing about the internet is the fact that you can find that stuff and yeah sometimes when I'm researching a story I'll go and look for stuff that happened you know early 2000s or whatever and all the a lot of the time I mean some of it's being deleted there was a whole story about what was it CET started like like deleting their old articles off randomly deleting their old articles because for SEO reasons and like every SEO expert was like no don't do that yeah for the most part A lot of the old stuff is still there so you can go and do a Google Search and it it's like a weird experience going on a forum uh you know chat boards or whatever from like early 2000s and seeing how people wrote It's Like You Can Tell cultural differences it's like digging into the archives you know in like one of these movies where they do research or whatever I feel like I'm I feel like I'm in another world or it's like it's years ago you're just in there like Indiana Jones snooping on their little Forum posts trying to grab a an interesting snippet and then run away before well that's how I felt when I was digging through like I found a huge Archive of like like stuff that had never originally been on the internet it was uploaded in January 2002 and it was news articles from the earlys and and the late '90s wowow and I thought that stuff was amazing apparently Amazon was engaging in union busting so weird wild what a different time than today Microsoft was being investigated for antitrust oh man I got to say one of my favorite stories will technology kill us all it was very fun in early 2000s silly concerns they had at the time I got to say one of my favorite stories this year was uh you know okay I'll say it's my favorite it's one of my favorite stories but it's also one where I'm starting to kind of be like I don't know if this is a good thing all the antitrust uh action by governments obviously we had the epic games uh suit against Apple uh couple years ago and now Google this year that happened as well but like EU put a lot of their uh legislation into effect I Apple actually launched an iPhone with USBC this year uh they announced plans to allow side loading and other app stores I think that's I think they have to do that by next year I have to look it up but they'll be doing it at some point we got this whole beeper versus apple with the iMessage compatibility thing that's kind of opening up just now but the reason it makes me be like hm hold on a second is is the fact that like a lot of this is happening because of government regulation yes and I think that I think that I'm wary of a turning point in which we've been reporting on all this EU stuff happening we're like yeah get apple make apple open up their platform ET ET yeah and I'm worried that there's going to be a Tipping Point where the EU like their regulations start rubbing us the wrong way yeah well because keep going M and part of the problem is that like I think we've seen through a lot of our reporting or a lot of people's reporting is just like often Regulators don't understand technology ology very well mhm and off like this this is often we're very skeptical about like apple jumping on and support of like right to repair legislation me personally I find that very optimistic one it shows a turning point it shows that they see that as the winning team but also I do want Apple to actually be at that table I do want them to be at that table because they will know when it starts going too far will they I mean I you I don't know that's a hard thing but like it's it's one of those things where you can never really predict like at this moment you can never really predict at this moment what things are going to look like in 5 years what's going to go too far what's going to have these unintended consequences so what I would prefer is a balance between different powers MH like this kind of like shaky back and forth I feel is mostly a good thing it's like that Churchill quote you know it's the wor democracy is the worst possible form of government except all the other ones that have been yeah yeah like I I do want well hold on you're not taking a stance here I mean uh I'm just imagining comments that's all yeah my stance is that I would prefer no one to have complete sovereignity over me oh yeah and I feel like most people would agree with that regardless of like where they specifically fall hot take unless unless it's a you know hyper intelligence Supreme AI Overlord who knows what's best for you I for one welcome our new Sydney overlords Sydney I just I don't like anybody having too much power so I I would like a little bit of of back and forth one of the big things for me uh was um YouTube okay both uh the Crackdown on ad blockers and the early ier I feel like at this point mostly in the background um crackdowns on vulgarity yeah within and like there's always that uncomfortable relationship between advertisers like the people who are mostly financing these platforms and the basic reality that vulgarity is a normal part of human communication yeah yeah I mean that's how it is yeah that that was really interesting that whole uh changing their their uh terms and or not ter terms and conditions but their their guidelines their friendly guidelines um at the end of yeah at the end of 2022 but that story kind of like broke more uh like it happened in in November 2022 and then it broke more early this year and yeah that was only the start YouTube had a crazy year as you say they they're like fighting ad many ad blockers are broken although now many of them are working again but that war has gotten more intense than ever this year and they also added tests like that well actually 1080p premium 10 1080p premium on YouTube is not a test anymore it's just a it's a thing they launched it I guess their test went okay people didn't really complain about it they said specifically that it's not degrading the non premium experience it's only that the premium people get better which I guess you have to take your word for it unless you do some crazy testing I haven't heard any complaints so maybe it's fine um shorts started getting Revenue this year they did uh what else oh there was one more the ads they started doing these experiments another test they were doing was that like frontloading like 10 ads in front of a video instead of like spacing it out people did not like that so they haven't launched that but yeah YouTube has changed a lot I think one thing that I want to I want to end on this um because I completely forgot about this until I started looking through the stories for the Christmas special do you remember the Chinese spy balloon yeah a while I was like what that was this year that was this year they forgot about it the world was going nuts for a second yeah we were we were losing our minds like they shot down one they shot yeah they shot it down they there was a couple oh yeah there was one that got shot down over Canada really yes oh yeah yeah like the the Canadian government had to give them permission to fly into our airspace in case you couldn't tell I haven't finished the techland Christmas special so we're like reacting to finding out about this stuff for the second time you know for the first time if that makes sense uh so this will be a a whole proper Roundup in the TechLink Christmas special which you probably have already seen maybe if if that came out on a Monday anyways it's also been a rough year for physical media oh yeah wait yeah what do you mean I forget oh the dropping of DVDs and CDs and various stores well best yeah they Best Buy announced plans to drop it next year yes uh and Netflix will no longer be sending DVDs in the mail oh no which is just devastating for me yeah I I actually was one of the original users of the the Netflix uh mailing system I remember that from way back wow no I never I never used that I heard about it I had OG Netflix wow where they sent it through the mail yeah I used Blockbuster right it up until it died I wasn't about to use that new fangled DVD mailing yeah well I always lived in the woods so and don't you live in the woods WS watch techlinked and game linked Etc that are going to keep happening that's the end of this episode because they're going to start the W show soon and we suddenly have to abruptly end uh will AI kill your kids yes jeez Louise honestly we're weighing the parents and kids thing right now but one of them's going to go yep and you're going to be forced to adopt AI robot children or parents so just you know make peace with that Robo grandma and and make peace with the fact that this episode is over that's outro transition number two uh subscribe to TechLink say bye-bye to Jessica okay subscribe and I'll see you on the next time Jess byewhat did you say AI will it kill your parents AI will it kill your parents yeah you know there was a time when that question wouldn't make any sense but sadly it does in the year 2023 uh because AI has been crazy there's been a lot of tech news happening this year and we're gonna talk about it on this episode of talk link with who murd no that's me okay Jessica P Jessica P You're the WAN writer I am the W writer and this is probably the first time listeners have heard how my last name is pronounced and I'm sorry we had to break it to you this way I mean how else would you say it pigo people usually say pigo pigo you're the WAN writer but you also uh write Tech linked yes and you also and game link and Tech quick and Tech Wick yes you're you're got your hands in all the pots now I multifaceted I think there was a rumor before my my name was released because I I tended to jokingly put my name in the credits as various Ai and uh there there was a rumor that I was actually an AI experiment I just kept showing up in so many different video series maybe we all are who knows brains and Vats Etc I've honestly this year has made me question absolutely everything we're going to go through our favorite stories of the year or sort of we're going to talk about Jessica's first year here at lmg and cover some of our you know the stories that really got us uh got got us thinking now this episode we're recording it the week before but it's going to go up on Wednesday December 27th 2 days after our Christmas special so if you want a proper big Roundup of all the tech stories of the year and you didn't see that we released a Christmas special go see that but this is more of a casual situation Jessica how's it been had you tried to keep up with the tech news cycle in the way that you have had to this year before not like this no like there was always things I kept up with there's little trends that I would note um but if you want to know my previous experience following the news time line uh I learned about Bitcoin in early 2012 when huh that's interesting and didn't pay attention to it again until 2019 there are there's always just been a lot of stuff that just passes Me by because I wasn't specifically interested um yeah I mean crypto that's fair honestly if if if people missed the whole crypto kind of hype and then crash uh it's like well to me it few years to me it started here and it ended here so and everything in between that like there there might have been an up there might have been a down to me it was a straight line yeah well okay it's not fair to say that sorry I just said a second ago that it was only a few years but really I mean you know crypto started way back you know early 2000 early 2010s or maybe before that anyways but the really started gaining hype around 2012 13 and stuff that then it kind of like laid dormant and then it spiked in the last few years and just in time for it to kind of fall out of favor I mean last year I was I rewatched some of our Christmas specials in preparation for this year's and one of the main stories last year was how crypto basically just fell off the map at the beginning of 2022 a bunch of companies were still doing stuff with it they announced Integrations with at a lot of gaming companies in particular and then by the end of the year they had all kind of canceled it yeah like I remember like wealth simple sending me an email like a year and a half ago about their crypto integration yeah well and it's still integrated in a lot of things I don't want to say that it's dead it's not it's absolutely not but in terms of its mainstream for the average person crypto was fast yeah yeah crypto was very fast it was a flash in the pan mhm um but it was replaced by AI which is like the hugest thing this year but way bigger hype before we get there how was it keeping up with everything you said that you kind of like were aware of some things before but like was there a break neck speed cuz I've been doing this for 10 years so I I you I want to hear what it was like for you uh it was a lot of reading stuff and not knowing if it was important or not cuz sometimes you'd read something and you're like that sounds really important and then Riley would go yeah they always do that yeah this is actually the sixth time or I'd read something and I'm just like I don't that don't seem important at all and Riley would be like this is gamechanging and I'm like really yeah yeah I just a big part of the issue is not that I didn't understand what was happening but I did not have the right amount of context to understand what people considered important yeah it's always hard especially because especially when you're writing for w show and like with TechLink it's you know we we do our best but Wan show it's we are preparing things and before you came on uh the the whole writing team kind of worked together on it but I was like curating the topics and now this is your burden and uh it is a struggle to kind of guess what lonus and Luke will particularly find interesting it is as opposed to what we think maybe the the the Broad tech audience on YouTube will find interesting I sometimes I feel like like I have a Ouija board or I have a crystal ball and I'm just going like I'm like okay well like this is objectively important but like I don't no we have like a little spreadsheet set up and like I I think I've gotten a lot better at guessing but still sometimes I will get it back from lus and I will be baffled by what returns to me I'm like you want to talk about that that's a main story to you yeah yeah okay because I I thought maybe I'd have to write three lines on that yeah we'll put something in there we be like this is the biggest news of the week you guys need to talk about this for half an hour he's like eh world changing he's like I want to talk about this Final Fantasy bug that's really annoying me but to your point a second ago about like having the context it is tough because we hired you and we hired Jacob uh close to a year ago yes and you guys have been you know getting on the team and becoming embedded in like gaining that kind of context that that I've had for a while and it's uh yeah it's it's it's a whole process admittedly I no longer find myself Googling what is Red Green Team yeah exactly question mark yeah but I want to say honestly that the differ between you and your like kind of ambient knowledge for some of this stuff the difference between you now and between you like when you started is is so vast like now I'll just talk about a tech thing and you'll just be like yeah you know oh I am a sponge I am a serious sponge uh that was kind of what James said to me when he hired me was like you obviously don't have the background but you're smart you'll figure it out I'm like what does that mean oh uh hold on a second I'm rethinking here things here yeah you didn't pick up on that okay I'm like that sounds ominous am I in danger don't worry you'll be fine swim yeah so I mean I do tend to have a pretty good grasp of Technology it's just that most of the technology I'm interested in was invented before everyone was current who's currently alive was born right because PRI prior to your job here you did write blog posts absolutely about and you did deep Dives on History topics yeah which involves technology a lot of time absolutely involves techn for sure which is I think why I mean I've loved your Tech quickie scripts I think that you do a deep dive and you make them funny you're a you're a standup comedian in case anyone doesn't know I'm currently sitting but you know you just got to imagine me like two feet up that's the kind of jokes we're looking for you can look forward to I I cannot tell the kind of jokes that I tell on stage in this context Jacob wrote a sit stand joke into today's Tech link asang like they will not stand for that but if you want to sit for that see this just reminds me of the time when like you were like I heard you across the room like I was finishing up a joke for TechLink and I heard you all across the room telling Jacob off for having two jokes in one script that were about shoving objects in someone's butt as I was finishing a joke about shoving objects at people's butts I mean hey it's a funny place of the body you know like it's a it's inherently humorous I mean what you what are you supposed to do not make jokes about it um but all right and now it's not time for quick bits because there aren't any today nonetheless this video is brought to you by Firebelly tea their travel mug gives tea lovers the ability to start or stop their iced or hot tea infusion anytime anywhere it's flow control and tapered lip makes it feel like you drinking from a traditional mug but with none of the spillage and you should also check out the unique handcrafted teas they're terrific go to lmg g/ belly mug grab yourself a stop infusion travel mug and use code linked 10 to get 10% off your entire purchase so on that note yeah let's talk about our favorite tech stories this year uh for me it's it's definitely one of the biggest ones and one of my favorites is AI just because I've been doing my darnest this year to make some progress on a tech longer about it and it's been very very very difficult a long road to find the to find the time uh to do it but I've been like saving so many links it's it's crazy so uh yeah how do you feel about AI is it is it going to be the end of humanity is it going to be the bright optimistic future I think the truth is somewhere in between I know I know but of course you're that's why you're presenting the dichotomy there's been a lot of both Euphoria and H hyy about AI I think it's genuinely incredibly cool it really is it's incred incredibly cool but the danger is that there are people who think that in the same way as people thought about crypto exactly and I feel like a lot of people's reaction and this is I was talking earlier about grifters a lot of people's reaction to whatever is drawing the most attention in a media space is just to immediately just try to like pick it up like it's a piggy bank and try to shake money out of it yeah regard of why regardless of there's no real thought behind it and I feel like that's a lot of the current danger about AI like I'm not really worried about human extinction at this point I am worried about people throwing away people's jobs because they think they can replace them with what is essentially a an advanced auto correct well like I'm worried about people you know just filling like flooding the zone of conversation with like AI slurry and that causing like Downstream problems for basic communication yeah I mean that's the issue though is that you just compared like the risk of extension like you're not worried about that you're worried about the money thing and I think that unfortunately the the people trying to commercialize it is what could lead to the extension I mean we it's so interesting we're doing it to ourselves I'm not worried about the AI I'm worried about the people using it what's what's a tool is a Tool's a hammer is a hammer I mean yeah and and thankfully they're not at the level of like being actual autonomous agents right now they are just tools and it's it's unclear if they will ever get to the point where they could be described as like an autonomous agent in the in the way you think of like a Sci-Fi robot being like yeah we don't know if the H 9,000 thing is currently possible yeah I mean there are there are some things that that have been made we reported on auto GPT at some point in the middle of the Year where they could string along a few uh chat Bots that kind of like you give it an overarching goal and then it self- prompts itself along towards that goal but I think that and more recently it being able to create other smaller versions of itself that that was crazy that was a crazy recent story where like AI can give birth to other AIS yeah and then we put them in our shoes we'll link to the episode for that so you more context but yeah what's so what one of the most interesting things to me about the AI thing about the AI whole spectacle is the fact that open aai uh their whole mission statement from the beginning was to not be a commercial entity exactly they were like we're not going to go down the commercial route we're just going to do research science yeah and we're going to do research so that we can stop the bad commercial people who are going to screw up the world and then will be able to stop them they are the people who put this thing out into the like chat GPT was the impetus for all of this and it was open AI the company who said that they would protect the world but you know and you could make an argument that like okay AI is too powerful for one company to control so they had to get it out there so that people could like see what's happening and do stuff with it and all this all this uh stuff but open AI is not doing it open source they're doing it proprietary exactly meta is doing open source stuff there's a lot of good interesting stuff going in going on in the open source Community I mean mistol is is is pretty close to like it's behind claw which is just behind chat GPT but like I don't know that so like to your point about the the the conflict between those two drives there is that conflict but it's also so complicated because the the companies that are saying that're are here to protect us or the companies who are trying to commercialize it mhm so and Commercial interests they it's kind of like a Whirlpool like it has its own gravity it has its own momentum it sucks you towards it whether you like it or not whatever your original intentions were yeah let's talk about the sort of the details of of AI a little bit like how how long did it take you it took me a long time to wrap my head around the idea that this is like a neural network like do you let's let's let's get into the deep stuff do you think it'll ever be conscious I like to think that that's plausible like there's a part of me that finds that very compelling as an idea I think because of how important like sci-fi writers have been writing about the idea of autonomous agents like iroot like all of this these ideas this Grand cultural weight of the idea of like what if we could create life what if human beings could create a Consciousness that is analogous to ourselves right now to be clear I don't actually think it's that plausible that we will create something that is like human beings no I I don't think that's the cas I think I agree I think it's fundamentally different um yeah we might create like a uh super intelligent uh crazy like a thousand years from now Poss plausibly even but it's not going to be like us yes it's not going to be analogist to us the thing is I would never feel comfortable saying no it will never happen right I think that is a fundamentally arrogant like intellectually dishonest position to take yeah you can say that it's unlikely honest you can say that it's nowhere near in the near future but not no yeah honestly I I completely go back and forth I'm like I think at the beginning I was like it's not conscious it's just a whatever and then like I saw some stuff and I was like whoa that's this is actually pretty crazy and look at it structurally you're like this is structurally very very similar to the way that neurons work in the human brain but then it's like oh there's all these levels of complexities that you know it's like this is a computer it's not like a physical like neuron with a milein sheath and everything like there's so many complex interactions that we don't even understand the brain and now we're suddenly doing psychology on computers see that was exactly what I was thinking like just thinking just now it's just like we don't even understand why we're conscious yeah exactly we like that's an emergent property of our brains we like you cannot point to the the spot in the brain where Consciousness lives right you don't know we know where our personalities are it's right up front here we know where our sight is it's in the back we do not know why we have a sense of self exactly we may never we may never like we are trying to understand something that is exactly as complicated as our own brains with our own brains yeah yeah so in in terms of like I think I think the thing that was easiest for cuz like it was wild at first looking at some of this stuff I think the kinds of comparisons that helped me the most was like like it's it's using it this is a a very advanced form of pattern recognition oh yeah like that's what this thing is doing and like it kind of reminds me a lot of like the hallucinations and like odd behavior oh my gosh that like Sydney coming out it just it's just so obvious that we trained AI on like llms on the internet because it got just got so emotional it's just like we've created life and given it a personality disorder like immediately immediately I was trying to find the Articles from the the um the the the the Contemporary uh dis discussion of it uh uh I'm not sure what you mean by that the the articles that came out at the time yeah yeah yeah I was I was trying to find articles from the time when like people found out about Sydney the code name that like Bing chat had and I was trying to find the Articles where they or where Sydney came up with other personalities there were like multiple personas yeah somebody asked Sydney like who else is in there with you or whatever and they she she he it I don't know described all these different personalities and I'm like what that was wild that was in the early days very early days and part of the issue it reminds me of and by early days I mean like March March this has moved so fast it's wild fast it's just a whole new reality and part of the issue is it reminds me of the problem you get when you are like this is a problem with children trying to like discuss like crimes when they're witnesses to something because you can end up in this situation where the adult is just kind of like trying to get a specific answer out of the kid and like the kid just doesn't know what they want so just starts responding to what's getting a reaction yeah that's what I feel like a lot of the weird weirdest stuff that AI does comes out where it's just it's a mirror yeah it is feeding us back what we're responding to yeah I think a turning point for me thinking about Ai and what it means and how it works and stuff was when people started like there was the initial wave of hype and obviously you know I didn't get fully swept into all this I think like I keep kind of a more detached like skeptical stance on it but I have to follow the story as it's like developing so there were people who were like it's alive and then sometime after that uh um sentiments that got more prevalent where people saying this kind of thing where it's like the AI is saying crazy stuff because we're asking it to say crazy stuff we're like we're it's a mirror yes and so you know we are responding most to when it is craziest yeah yeah now I want to I would love for this whole thing to be about AI but we should probably mention some other stories that we uh enjoyed this year um I have so many but they're all very odd yeah well I mean those are the perfect ones I love the really odd ones um what's what what's an odd one I absolutely lost my mind when there was a proton Port of cheex quest do you mean that like it was hilarious to you that someone went out of their way to like ensure that the check's Quest had support for Bron yes the uh emulation layer between Linux and windows games absolutely that was magical to me I love people's odd little projects yeah you did a whole segment in W recently yeah and it went over pretty well with the uh branded retr branded games yeah retro branded games I feel like there's a lot of culture and this is coming from me as someone who really loves history a lot of the cult like we get this idea that past cultures were far more serious than we are but the problem is it's a survivorship bias thing there's a lot of garbage that we just threw out because it was garbage but it's kind of magical when some of that stuff survives into the present and you get to get a glimps into like this is what we were making 20 years ago oh man yeah I I love adver games for that reason like really really old advertisements like I don't like modern ads at all but like really old quirky advertisements are hilarious to me that that's what that's one thing that's amazing about the internet is the fact that you can find that stuff and yeah sometimes when I'm researching a story I'll go and look for stuff that happened you know early 2000s or whatever and all the a lot of the time I mean some of it's being deleted there was a whole story about what was it CET started like like deleting their old articles off randomly deleting their old articles because for SEO reasons and like every SEO expert was like no don't do that yeah for the most part A lot of the old stuff is still there so you can go and do a Google Search and it it's like a weird experience going on a forum uh you know chat boards or whatever from like early 2000s and seeing how people wrote It's Like You Can Tell cultural differences it's like digging into the archives you know in like one of these movies where they do research or whatever I feel like I'm I feel like I'm in another world or it's like it's years ago you're just in there like Indiana Jones snooping on their little Forum posts trying to grab a an interesting snippet and then run away before well that's how I felt when I was digging through like I found a huge Archive of like like stuff that had never originally been on the internet it was uploaded in January 2002 and it was news articles from the earlys and and the late '90s wowow and I thought that stuff was amazing apparently Amazon was engaging in union busting so weird wild what a different time than today Microsoft was being investigated for antitrust oh man I got to say one of my favorite stories will technology kill us all it was very fun in early 2000s silly concerns they had at the time I got to say one of my favorite stories this year was uh you know okay I'll say it's my favorite it's one of my favorite stories but it's also one where I'm starting to kind of be like I don't know if this is a good thing all the antitrust uh action by governments obviously we had the epic games uh suit against Apple uh couple years ago and now Google this year that happened as well but like EU put a lot of their uh legislation into effect I Apple actually launched an iPhone with USBC this year uh they announced plans to allow side loading and other app stores I think that's I think they have to do that by next year I have to look it up but they'll be doing it at some point we got this whole beeper versus apple with the iMessage compatibility thing that's kind of opening up just now but the reason it makes me be like hm hold on a second is is the fact that like a lot of this is happening because of government regulation yes and I think that I think that I'm wary of a turning point in which we've been reporting on all this EU stuff happening we're like yeah get apple make apple open up their platform ET ET yeah and I'm worried that there's going to be a Tipping Point where the EU like their regulations start rubbing us the wrong way yeah well because keep going M and part of the problem is that like I think we've seen through a lot of our reporting or a lot of people's reporting is just like often Regulators don't understand technology ology very well mhm and off like this this is often we're very skeptical about like apple jumping on and support of like right to repair legislation me personally I find that very optimistic one it shows a turning point it shows that they see that as the winning team but also I do want Apple to actually be at that table I do want them to be at that table because they will know when it starts going too far will they I mean I you I don't know that's a hard thing but like it's it's one of those things where you can never really predict like at this moment you can never really predict at this moment what things are going to look like in 5 years what's going to go too far what's going to have these unintended consequences so what I would prefer is a balance between different powers MH like this kind of like shaky back and forth I feel is mostly a good thing it's like that Churchill quote you know it's the wor democracy is the worst possible form of government except all the other ones that have been yeah yeah like I I do want well hold on you're not taking a stance here I mean uh I'm just imagining comments that's all yeah my stance is that I would prefer no one to have complete sovereignity over me oh yeah and I feel like most people would agree with that regardless of like where they specifically fall hot take unless unless it's a you know hyper intelligence Supreme AI Overlord who knows what's best for you I for one welcome our new Sydney overlords Sydney I just I don't like anybody having too much power so I I would like a little bit of of back and forth one of the big things for me uh was um YouTube okay both uh the Crackdown on ad blockers and the early ier I feel like at this point mostly in the background um crackdowns on vulgarity yeah within and like there's always that uncomfortable relationship between advertisers like the people who are mostly financing these platforms and the basic reality that vulgarity is a normal part of human communication yeah yeah I mean that's how it is yeah that that was really interesting that whole uh changing their their uh terms and or not ter terms and conditions but their their guidelines their friendly guidelines um at the end of yeah at the end of 2022 but that story kind of like broke more uh like it happened in in November 2022 and then it broke more early this year and yeah that was only the start YouTube had a crazy year as you say they they're like fighting ad many ad blockers are broken although now many of them are working again but that war has gotten more intense than ever this year and they also added tests like that well actually 1080p premium 10 1080p premium on YouTube is not a test anymore it's just a it's a thing they launched it I guess their test went okay people didn't really complain about it they said specifically that it's not degrading the non premium experience it's only that the premium people get better which I guess you have to take your word for it unless you do some crazy testing I haven't heard any complaints so maybe it's fine um shorts started getting Revenue this year they did uh what else oh there was one more the ads they started doing these experiments another test they were doing was that like frontloading like 10 ads in front of a video instead of like spacing it out people did not like that so they haven't launched that but yeah YouTube has changed a lot I think one thing that I want to I want to end on this um because I completely forgot about this until I started looking through the stories for the Christmas special do you remember the Chinese spy balloon yeah a while I was like what that was this year that was this year they forgot about it the world was going nuts for a second yeah we were we were losing our minds like they shot down one they shot yeah they shot it down they there was a couple oh yeah there was one that got shot down over Canada really yes oh yeah yeah like the the Canadian government had to give them permission to fly into our airspace in case you couldn't tell I haven't finished the techland Christmas special so we're like reacting to finding out about this stuff for the second time you know for the first time if that makes sense uh so this will be a a whole proper Roundup in the TechLink Christmas special which you probably have already seen maybe if if that came out on a Monday anyways it's also been a rough year for physical media oh yeah wait yeah what do you mean I forget oh the dropping of DVDs and CDs and various stores well best yeah they Best Buy announced plans to drop it next year yes uh and Netflix will no longer be sending DVDs in the mail oh no which is just devastating for me yeah I I actually was one of the original users of the the Netflix uh mailing system I remember that from way back wow no I never I never used that I heard about it I had OG Netflix wow where they sent it through the mail yeah I used Blockbuster right it up until it died I wasn't about to use that new fangled DVD mailing yeah well I always lived in the woods so and don't you live in the woods WS watch techlinked and game linked Etc that are going to keep happening that's the end of this episode because they're going to start the W show soon and we suddenly have to abruptly end uh will AI kill your kids yes jeez Louise honestly we're weighing the parents and kids thing right now but one of them's going to go yep and you're going to be forced to adopt AI robot children or parents so just you know make peace with that Robo grandma and and make peace with the fact that this episode is over that's outro transition number two uh subscribe to TechLink say bye-bye to Jessica okay subscribe and I'll see you on the next time Jess bye\n"