Monologue: The Super Bowl Showed That Generative AI Is Washed

Monologue: The Super Bowl Showed That Generative AI Is Washed

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Monologue: The Super Bowl Showed That Generative AI Is Washed

Monologue: The Super Bowl Showed That Generative AI Is Washed

Monologue: The Super Bowl Showed That Generative AI Is Washed

Monologue: The Super Bowl Showed That Generative AI Is Washed

BonusFriday, 14th February 2025
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0:00

Resolve to earn your degree in

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the New Year in the Bay

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with WGU. WGU is an online

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demonstrating mastery of the material you

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focus on your .edu .edu

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WGU.EDU. Hello

0:32

and welcome to this week's

0:34

Better Offline monologue. I'm your

0:36

host Ed Zetron. Last Sunday

0:39

was the Super Bowl. Last Sunday

0:41

was the Super Bowl. The final

0:43

game of the NFL season. And

0:46

for those of you who don't

0:48

like sport or live in another

0:50

country or something, it's an event that

0:52

many people just watch for the many,

0:55

many, many ads that they cut into

0:57

during the game. Super Bowl ad can

0:59

cost as much as $8 million for

1:02

a 30-second commercial depending on where it

1:04

airs during the game, the most coveted

1:06

slots being just before the half-time show,

1:09

and the ads themselves tend to be

1:11

the spectacular highly produced fair. They're very

1:13

weird, but they put a ton of

1:15

money into them. This year I was

1:17

specifically excited to see what... bullshit slot

1:20

the various AI companies would try and

1:22

force down my nasty little throat. Last

1:24

year, Antropic aired a five-second long commercial

1:27

that said, and I quote, Claude is

1:29

a next-generation AI assistant. A sentence that,

1:31

when you think about it, means precisely

1:33

nothing. And Microsoft famously aired a co-pilot

1:36

AI commercial where several of the prompts,

1:38

such as write code for my 3D

1:40

Open World game, simply didn't do what

1:42

they said they did. In the case

1:44

of the Open World Game, by the way,

1:47

from last year, it generated a step-by-step guide

1:49

to building one, which isn't the same thing

1:51

at all. It's kind of like ordering dinner

1:53

and Uberits bringing you a recipe for a

1:55

burrito instead of an actual burrito, but still

1:57

charging you all the same. Nevertheless, this year...

1:59

This slot was even more obscene, starting

2:02

with an ad for Google's Pixel 9

2:04

phone. A guy has asked questions as

2:06

if he's taking a job interview by

2:08

Google's generative AI, Gemini Live. As he

2:11

answers them, it's obvious that what he's

2:13

describing is actually being a father. They

2:15

also show you an overlay of him

2:17

taking his kid to school. It's got

2:20

emotional music playing with him, taking her

2:22

to school. At one point, he, Google's

2:24

explain bullying to a child, which I

2:26

should be clear is not a Gemini

2:28

product. It's just Google search. It's unclear

2:31

what this ad is actually advertising. We

2:33

don't hear the prompt that started these

2:35

questions, nor do we know why he's

2:37

answering them, but when he's done, he's

2:40

clearly joining some sort of job interview

2:42

virtually. Gemini doesn't really respond to any

2:44

of his answers, other than to say

2:46

things like try rephrasing your answer to

2:49

sound more confident. So we can assume,

2:51

and that's all we're doing here, that

2:53

he's preparing for a job interview. He's

2:55

also pretty old. Like his kid has

2:58

gone off to college, she's a full

3:00

grown adult now. Very weird, very weird

3:02

commercial, very clearly built for people who

3:04

cry whenever they remember their parents. Sorry

3:06

if that's you, you are, do not

3:09

use Gemini Life, that's my recommendation. Next

3:11

up was Open A.S. gratuitously stupid commercial

3:13

called The Intelligence Age. which showed a

3:15

dot matrix history of time involving men

3:18

throwing spears, people riding horses, waves crashing,

3:20

a waving skeleton for some reason. It

3:22

was a plane and eventually a globe

3:24

with a few dots going toward a

3:27

computer with a modem sound playing. a

3:29

full 40 seconds in to this one

3:31

minute long commercial, we start actually hearing

3:33

prompts. Someone says, summarize this article for

3:35

me. Then someone else says, help me

3:38

practice asking for a raise. And this

3:40

prompt, by the way, is near impossible

3:42

to hear, as it's cut off to

3:44

have a guy say, act as my

3:47

sleep coach. And then there's two more

3:49

prompts in a language I don't speak,

3:51

then another that says, turn my idea

3:53

into a business plan before a chirpy

3:56

voice asks, what do you want to

3:58

create next? Good. I love this. I

4:00

also love the idea of having two

4:02

prompts in different languages because People speak

4:05

different languages other than English. I understand

4:07

that. There is no official language of

4:09

America. So it's good, but nevertheless, you've

4:11

only got a few seconds. You didn't

4:13

think to try and get as many

4:16

prompts in. Maybe it's that they didn't

4:18

have them. In fact, if you're a

4:20

listener and you watch this commercial and

4:22

you speak those languages, please email me.

4:25

It's easy at better offline.com. I would

4:27

love to hear what they actually said.

4:29

Nevertheless, asking ChatGPT to be your sleep

4:31

coach leads it to ask you about

4:34

your sleeping habits, your lifestyle, common issues,

4:36

sleep quality, and your ideal goals. Asking

4:38

it to turn my idea into a

4:40

business plan immediately led it to asking

4:43

me what my idea was. Great! I

4:45

can practice with a large language model

4:47

how to ask for a raise, but

4:49

what does that mean exactly? What does

4:51

this product do? What is ChatGPT? And

4:54

assuming that AI ends up actually wrecking

4:56

the labour market as they want it

4:58

to, the idea of using ChatGPT is

5:00

a soundboard for when you renegotiate your

5:03

contract kind of feels like more of

5:05

a cruel joke. It's also not going

5:07

to do that, but anyway. Two fucking

5:09

years into this nonsense, and these assholes

5:12

can't even come up with one interesting

5:14

or useful example. It's a fucking joke.

5:16

These people have such contempt for customers

5:18

that they can barely be bothered to

5:20

advertise their product. It's also, God damn,

5:23

half-hearted. Yet the worst one by far

5:25

was Salesforce and their gate expectations at,

5:27

where Matthew McConaughey, an actor, says that

5:29

he, and I quote, didn't use Agent

5:32

Force, the powerful AI from Salesforce, so

5:34

an AI agent didn't send him the

5:36

fastest route to his gate, or route

5:38

of your British, which has now changed.

5:41

The commercial ends by saying that Salesforce

5:43

helps London Heathrow create a first-class experience.

5:45

Everyone in the commercial was also American.

5:47

Nevertheless, I actually went and looked up

5:50

what this integration actually looked like and

5:52

discovered that Heathrow actually integrated Einstein's chat

5:54

bots. Einstein being Salesforce's large language model

5:56

chat bot thing, they've been warming up

5:58

for about a decade. But this was

6:01

back in May 2023. They claimed that...

6:03

Einstein answered more than 4,000 questions a

6:05

month and helped cut call service volumes

6:07

by 27% and that Heathrow has seen

6:10

a 450% increase in live chat usage

6:12

since launch. Then they proudly added that

6:14

today, and the article is completely undated,

6:16

Heathrow had seen about 40 to 60

6:19

second quicker per contact interactions in call

6:21

centers with Einstein chat bots. This is

6:23

the only data that appears to exist

6:25

for anything to do with Agent Force

6:28

and Heathrow. There's nothing else I could

6:30

find. I will add that a record-breaking

6:32

83.9 million passengers flew through Heathrow in

6:34

2024. 4,000 questions a month or 48,000

6:36

a year is kind of a drop

6:39

in the bucket. And like I said,

6:41

really not finding any information about their

6:43

agent force integration. All I could find

6:45

was a LinkedIn post from Sharon Pryor,

6:48

who is the director of technology at

6:50

Heathrow, who said that 400% more questions

6:52

were handled via live chat. Which is

6:54

interesting because the one from 2023, it

6:57

seems, was 450% I guess that went

6:59

down. And apparently agent force has something

7:01

called instant FAQs and internal wayfinding for

7:03

your gate plus restaurants, shops and facilities.

7:05

I want to be clear that all

7:08

this bullshit was doable with knowledge management

7:10

systems and chat bots all the way

7:12

back in the mid-2010. Salesforce isn't even

7:14

describing AI agents, which are supposedly autonomous

7:17

chat bots. They're describing this boring Bob

7:19

standard bullshit we can help you find

7:21

your gate stuff that apps have done

7:23

for a decade. What's more insulting is

7:26

the commercial off the skates what this

7:28

product actually is. Makarahi, as a traveler,

7:30

is saying he didn't use agent force,

7:32

which is the powerful AI from Salesforce,

7:35

as if that is something a consumer

7:37

chooses to do, versus a business being

7:39

actively conned by Mark Benny off the

7:41

CEO of Salesforce. Salesforce has no powerful

7:43

AI. It's all a lie, a con,

7:46

an attempt to pretend that a company

7:48

does something that they do not do.

7:50

Salesforce has a large language model they're

7:52

working on, they've used, chatGBT or GBT4

7:55

in the past, nevertheless... I don't know

7:57

what the powerful AI is. Salesforce, well

7:59

their problem is simple. They can't do

8:01

an ad that says, hey, do you

8:04

want a slightly more powerful chatbot that

8:06

costs a great deal of money? So

8:08

they have to make this kind of

8:10

incongruent ad that lies about their product

8:13

without ever really saying what it does.

8:15

Open AI, two years into this bubble,

8:17

still can't muster up a single, meaningful,

8:19

interesting use case. And in both Google

8:21

and Open AI's case, it truly isn't

8:24

obvious what the product is that they're

8:26

selling. And that really is the ultimate

8:28

summary of the AI boom. Vague and

8:30

blatant lies that barely masks the contempt

8:32

that these companies have for customers. So

8:35

much contempt that they can't even bother

8:37

to give them a real reason to

8:39

use it. And if I'm honest, I'm

8:41

a little bit disappointed about these commercials,

8:43

because they lacked even the juice of

8:45

the 2022 crypto Bacchanalia. You see, there

8:48

we had celebrities that called you a

8:50

pig and a moron. They said you

8:52

were a hog that rolled around in

8:54

the mud and you oinked and squealed

8:56

instead of putting everything you had behind

8:58

crypto. And people like Tom Brady, well

9:01

they delivered, or at least on a

9:03

superficial level, these compelling-ish messages that suggested

9:05

you might... really need to and successfully

9:07

convince people to buy these nebulous tokens

9:09

and NFTs, even though many of the

9:11

companies they promoted turned out to be

9:14

elaborate Ponzi schemes, such as FTX. And

9:16

never have I been more certain that

9:18

this bubble will pop. This was the

9:20

biggest stage that generative AI will ever

9:22

have, and they blew it, because, well,

9:24

deep down, they realize there's just not

9:26

that much to sell. Welcome

9:36

to My Legacy. I'm Martin the

9:38

King of Third, and together with

9:40

my wife, Andre Waters King, and

9:43

our dear friends, Mark and Craig

9:45

Kilberger, we explore the personal journeys

9:47

that shape extraordinary lives. Join us

9:49

for heartfelt conversations with remarkable

9:52

guests, like David O'Yellow, Mel

9:54

Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay

9:56

Gupta, and Billy Porter. Listen to

9:58

My Legacy on the I Heart Radio

10:01

app. Apple podcast, wherever you get your

10:03

podcast. This is My legacy. That's

10:37

John back in action on on

10:40

Daily Show and In Your Ears Daily Daily

10:42

Show podcast. From his From his hilarious

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takes takes on today's politics and

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entertainment to the unique voices of

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correspondents and contributors, it's

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your perfect companion to stay on top. Listen

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to the hookup on the I

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Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or

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wherever you listen to your favorite

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shows.

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