Episode Transcript
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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
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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,
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many, many ads that they cut into
0:57
during the game. Super Bowl ad can
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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
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slots being just before the half-time show,
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and the ads themselves tend to be
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the spectacular highly produced fair. They're very
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weird, but they put a ton of
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money into them. This year I was
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specifically excited to see what... bullshit slot
1:20
the various AI companies would try and
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force down my nasty little throat. Last
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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
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Open World game, simply didn't do what
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they said they did. In the case
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of the Open World Game, by the way,
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from last year, it generated a step-by-step guide
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to building one, which isn't the same thing
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at all. It's kind of like ordering dinner
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and Uberits bringing you a recipe for a
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burrito instead of an actual burrito, but still
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charging you all the same. Nevertheless, this year...
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This slot was even more obscene, starting
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with an ad for Google's Pixel 9
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phone. A guy has asked questions as
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if he's taking a job interview by
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Google's generative AI, Gemini Live. As he
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answers them, it's obvious that what he's
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describing is actually being a father. They
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also show you an overlay of him
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taking his kid to school. It's got
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emotional music playing with him, taking her
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to school. At one point, he, Google's
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explain bullying to a child, which I
2:26
should be clear is not a Gemini
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product. It's just Google search. It's unclear
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what this ad is actually advertising. We
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don't hear the prompt that started these
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questions, nor do we know why he's
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answering them, but when he's done, he's
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clearly joining some sort of job interview
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virtually. Gemini doesn't really respond to any
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of his answers, other than to say
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things like try rephrasing your answer to
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sound more confident. So we can assume,
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and that's all we're doing here, that
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he's preparing for a job interview. He's
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also pretty old. Like his kid has
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gone off to college, she's a full
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grown adult now. Very weird, very weird
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commercial, very clearly built for people who
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cry whenever they remember their parents. Sorry
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if that's you, you are, do not
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use Gemini Life, that's my recommendation. Next
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up was Open A.S. gratuitously stupid commercial
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called The Intelligence Age. which showed a
3:15
dot matrix history of time involving men
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throwing spears, people riding horses, waves crashing,
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a waving skeleton for some reason. It
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was a plane and eventually a globe
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with a few dots going toward a
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computer with a modem sound playing. a
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full 40 seconds in to this one
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minute long commercial, we start actually hearing
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prompts. Someone says, summarize this article for
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me. Then someone else says, help me
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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
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have a guy say, act as my
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sleep coach. And then there's two more
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prompts in a language I don't speak,
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then another that says, turn my idea
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into a business plan before a chirpy
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voice asks, what do you want to
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create next? Good. I love this. I
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also love the idea of having two
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prompts in different languages because People speak
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different languages other than English. I understand
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that. There is no official language of
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America. So it's good, but nevertheless, you've
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only got a few seconds. You didn't
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think to try and get as many
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prompts in. Maybe it's that they didn't
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have them. In fact, if you're a
4:20
listener and you watch this commercial and
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you speak those languages, please email me.
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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
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coach leads it to ask you about
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your sleeping habits, your lifestyle, common issues,
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sleep quality, and your ideal goals. Asking
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it to turn my idea into a
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business plan immediately led it to asking
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me what my idea was. Great! I
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can practice with a large language model
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how to ask for a raise, but
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what does that mean exactly? What does
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this product do? What is ChatGPT? And
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assuming that AI ends up actually wrecking
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the labour market as they want it
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to, the idea of using ChatGPT is
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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
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to do that, but anyway. Two fucking
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years into this nonsense, and these assholes
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can't even come up with one interesting
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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
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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
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he, and I quote, didn't use Agent
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Force, the powerful AI from Salesforce, so
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an AI agent didn't send him the
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fastest route to his gate, or route
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of your British, which has now changed.
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The commercial ends by saying that Salesforce
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helps London Heathrow create a first-class experience.
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Everyone in the commercial was also American.
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Nevertheless, I actually went and looked up
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what this integration actually looked like and
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discovered that Heathrow actually integrated Einstein's chat
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bots. Einstein being Salesforce's large language model
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chat bot thing, they've been warming up
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for about a decade. But this was
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back in May 2023. They claimed that...
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Einstein answered more than 4,000 questions a
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month and helped cut call service volumes
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by 27% and that Heathrow has seen
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a 450% increase in live chat usage
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since launch. Then they proudly added that
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today, and the article is completely undated,
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Heathrow had seen about 40 to 60
6:19
second quicker per contact interactions in call
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centers with Einstein chat bots. This is
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the only data that appears to exist
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for anything to do with Agent Force
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and Heathrow. There's nothing else I could
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find. I will add that a record-breaking
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83.9 million passengers flew through Heathrow in
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2024. 4,000 questions a month or 48,000
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a year is kind of a drop
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in the bucket. And like I said,
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really not finding any information about their
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agent force integration. All I could find
6:45
was a LinkedIn post from Sharon Pryor,
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who is the director of technology at
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Heathrow, who said that 400% more questions
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were handled via live chat. Which is
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interesting because the one from 2023, it
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seems, was 450% I guess that went
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down. And apparently agent force has something
7:01
called instant FAQs and internal wayfinding for
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your gate plus restaurants, shops and facilities.
7:05
I want to be clear that all
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this bullshit was doable with knowledge management
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systems and chat bots all the way
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back in the mid-2010. Salesforce isn't even
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describing AI agents, which are supposedly autonomous
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chat bots. They're describing this boring Bob
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standard bullshit we can help you find
7:21
your gate stuff that apps have done
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for a decade. What's more insulting is
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the commercial off the skates what this
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product actually is. Makarahi, as a traveler,
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is saying he didn't use agent force,
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which is the powerful AI from Salesforce,
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as if that is something a consumer
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chooses to do, versus a business being
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actively conned by Mark Benny off the
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CEO of Salesforce. Salesforce has no powerful
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AI. It's all a lie, a con,
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an attempt to pretend that a company
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does something that they do not do.
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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
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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.
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Open AI, two years into this bubble,
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still can't muster up a single, meaningful,
8:19
interesting use case. And in both Google
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and Open AI's case, it truly isn't
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obvious what the product is that they're
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selling. And that really is the ultimate
8:28
summary of the AI boom. Vague and
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blatant lies that barely masks the contempt
8:32
that these companies have for customers. So
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much contempt that they can't even bother
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to give them a real reason to
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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
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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
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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
10:44
takes takes on today's politics and
10:46
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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