414: ‘Annoying Friendliness’, With Joanna Stern

2024/11/19

The Talk Show With John Gruber

Joanna Stern discusses her 24-hour adventure with AI chatbots, highlighting their capabilities and limitations in simulating human companionship.

AI chatbots like Copilot, ChatGPT, and Google AI can engage in complex conversations.
These bots have arbitrary limits and can be overly friendly, which can be annoying.
AI chatbots lack the ability to set timers or perform basic device control tasks.

Joanna Stern returns to the show to talk about our new best friends, AI chatbots, and I chime in with how the Voight-Kampff test got it all wrong.

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Links:

Joanna on YouTube: “I Spent 24 Hours in the Woods With Talking AI Chatbots)”.
Joanna’s excellent interview with Craig Federighi on Apple Intelligence), which is also on YouTube).
My commentary) linking to it.
Ann-Marie Alcántara’s Wall Street Journal piece: “When Did Apple’s Notes App Become an Extension of Our Brains?)” (also on News+))
Larry David on Siri).
Voight-Kampff Test).
There’s a social media thing where people are posting ChatGPT’s illustrations from the prompt “Based on what you know about me, draw a picture of what you think my current life looks like.”
Here’s mine): I’m all alone in a nice study with lots of books, a leather couch, and a manual typewriter.
Here’s Joanna’s): Boy Scouts, basketball, cameras, computers, and lots of bagels.
Here’s an alternate from Joanna).

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.