Michael Calore: So what you’re saying is that you’re not really a fairy-tale prince?
Knight of Will: No, sadly not.
Michael Calore: Surrounded by lilies? Because that’s what I see when I put your images in Lensa.
Knight of Will: Oh is it? ALRIGHT. I have to try that.
Michael Calore: I hope you don’t mind if I show Lensa pictures of Will Knight.
Knight of Will: No. As long as I can see them, as long as I can see through.
Lauren Goode: I guess it depends on how much you want to extend that analogy. If using the du jour app is misinformation, it’s this super weird creative AI app that creates AI-generated images of yourself, it’s different… and those images aren’t. real. It’s not what you look like. How is that different from just putting a smoothing filter on Instagram?
Michael Calore: Right. Probably not much different.
Lauren Goode: So we just have our online avatar, online character, and IRL experience, and those are now completely different, and that’s all. That is the world we live in. It will have a second life.
Michael Calore: Also, who’s to say which is real and which is simulated?
Lauren Goode: Oh, such a good word. That’s a nice WIRED word. I feel that appears in at least every issue of WIRED. Right. Who will say? On that note, let’s take a break and we’ll come back with suggestions. Will they be man-made or will they be AI-generated? TBD.
[Break]
Lauren Goode: This is the part of the show where we give weekly recommendations, but for today’s topic, we thought we’d pass this on to the AI chatbot. So I asked ChatGPT, “If you had to recommend something to a friend, a book, a podcast episode, an app, a food, an album, what would you recommend?” And it replied, “As a large OpenAI-trained language model, I have no personal experience or preferences so I can’t make recommendations based on my own preferences or experiences. My best is to assist you” … well, now you’re not really assisting me…” with your questions and providing you with information based on the input I received. I can’t browse the internet or access outside information, so I can’t make recommendations for books, podcasts, apps, food, or albums.” So I think we have to go back to the good old-fashioned people for our proposals this week. Will, that doesn’t mean you’re flawed, but we should start with you. What is your recommendation for this week?
Knight of Will: Proudly flawed and happy to. I can recommend the GPS tracking collar we have for our hypoallergenic expensive cat, which makes us happy to know where we could be… We know where she is. where if we need to try to find her, which I have to do a few times, and you can see where she went all night, all these little GPS tracks. There’s even a small ranking of local and national cats, and we have some friends with cats on it, so it’s a little social network. It’s a little scary, a little bit brotherly, but at least we know where she is. Unfortunately, yes, unfortunately, she has been scared for something and has been stuck at home for the past three days, but I can see where she has been, so I can come and try Trying to figure out what scared her.
