TRASHFUTURE - All That Is South Melts Into Park ft. Josh Boerman

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

Josh from The Worst of All Possible Worlds joins the gang to discuss the Humane AI Pin's latest new feature (gets really hot), Lars Windhorst's latest personal update ("I am not on the run"), and the return of Nigel Farage to frontline politics. Then, for our main discussion - a hot new company that intends to be the Netflix of AI, but that so far is only able to make different iterations of South Park.

Hello everybody and welcome to this free episode of TF. It is me. It is me. It is Riley. It is Milo. It's Hussein. It is November. It is making his twice yearly trip to London, Josh Boorman. Back on my pilgrimage, back on my bullshit, back in the studio, good to see you all again. Jug Van Der Klerk's proudest son. Absolutely. This is the one Boer you couldn't man. That's right, Riley. That's right.

Scourge of Her Majesty's hussars. Josh, of course, joins us from the Worst of All Possible Worlds podcast, and I have found some truly excellent stuff to talk to someone who talks about media about. We've finally done it, which is we've invented a new way of consuming entertainment. However, before we talk about that, I have some old friends to bring us. An old friend, number one one is a new old friend. It's the first time we've talked about them since we talked about them the first time.

But I am so excited to tell you that the Humane AI pin, the AI wearable that burns your chest and does racist accents back to people talking to you. Humane AI has written a recall to owners today saying they should, and I quote here, immediately stop using the charging case. Oh. Uh oh. Because it may pose a fire safety risk. Perfect.

Fantastic. It not only does it do all of that shit, it also explodes and kills you. It's actually because the charging case has gone anti-woke. That's right. You gotta stop dealing with it. explodes and kills you. It's actually because the charging case has gone anti-woke. That's right. You got to stop dealing. I think it's sad because like, I feel like we could have had the first AI driven suicide bomber and that's like kind of retro.

Well, like, like the AI, the AI decides which like, I don't know, Boston market it wants to bomb and then just slowly tries to suggest to you that you really want some chicken, but you don't want KFC. Maybe you should go here. Try it routes you to that particular store. And then eventually, I think, I think that's just giving it too much credit. I just think it'd be kind of funny to be like the accidental suicide bomber who just like, we had this already with like a Jamba Juice or something. We had this already with a less silly technology with the Samsung Galaxy or whatever, we have it with people's e-bike charges exploding all the time, so I for one am excited to add the useless and possibly racist pin AI powered

computer to this. RILEY Dan AI-nin. What I'd love to see. Yeah, we often talk about AI boosters as like religious zealots and stuff, right? And so like, it is only a matter of time before they're like, yeah, the best case for these products is to be used as like, self destructive weapons. That's right. So yeah, there you go. Some of my best mates are self destructive weapons.

Great on a night out though. I'd love to see... I'd just love to see the Steve Jobs impression that all of these founders do. I'd love to see them pitch what the product actually does. And they'd be like, everyone knows that what we really want when we're out and about in our busy lives is we want three devices. We want a racist accent generator, we want a chest burner, and an incendiary device. A racist accent generator, a chest burner, and an

incendiary device. Do you get it? It's not three devices, it's one pin. Honestly, it's embarrassing for them how much money they spent on developing a racist chest pin when they could have just gone through Princess Michael of Kent's sock drawer. That is so niche, but I also I want to move on just a little bit because there's another old friend And this is a very old friend and I was so excited. What am I? Charlie Palmer. Yeah, he's back. He may be coming to dinner tonight. However tonight when you hear this we'll have already had that dinner. Do not try and triangulate the position of Charlie Palmer. I repeat. Do not locate Charlie Palmer. He's too dangerous. He's like Jason Bourne, he's too dangerous. Oh my god, it's Charlie Palmer and then you say, hello.

That's really good Charlie. This is a Google alert that I have. As everyone knows, I have some Google alerts and this is my favourite one. When it trips, I know I'm having a good day. It's not Neom. Best condom. It's not Neom, it's not Yacht Aid. Let me tell you what it is.

Ahem. Lars Windhorst's publicist has confirmed he is not on the run. Oh, okay. My not on the run t-shirt raising a lot of questions. So, basically, an arrest warrant has been, against Lars Windhorst, has been activated and then temporarily suspended by a German court, after this is in the FT of course, us thank you Rob and Cynthia, after he promised to attend a hearing over the insolvency of a run down shopping centre.

So basically- Oh, he's coming down in the world, isn't he? Yeah, he went from owning La Perla, Hertha Berlin, he was like, he was hobgobbing- Yeah, and now he's trying to franchise the Glades in Munich. He's just living out the plot of Tim and Eric's billion dollar movie. He's had to sell his soundproofed Renault Clio. It's really sad. The Warren added to a spate of legal woes for Windhorst, who was threatened with jail

in April by a Dutch court in a separate business dispute. Man loves going to European court, he can't get enough of it. Windhorst faces as long as three weeks in prison if he fails to cooperate with the civil proceedings. So basically what happened is Lars Windhorst- I can never- I only ever find out, I feel, about Lars Windhorst's business deals when they start landing him in court, because he has so many. But this was-

Three weeks in prison sounds pretty bad, but is better than eternity in barrel. So, basically, right, he promised in 2019 to invest in a sort of dilapidated mall? Uh huh. Again, this is literally the plot of Tim and Eric's billion dollar movie, I cannot emphasize that strongly enough. I have a live surveillance recording of Lars Windhorst at that time. LAS VINTAGE If we're in the building when they do that

next security suite, we're all going to German prison. DARREN So, the insult... basically what happened is, he acquired a stake in this mall in 2019 for a good price because he promised to invest millions to spruce it up and revive it. ALICE Yeah, and you go, that's Lars Windhorst, from a few years ago. He owns a, like, football club and shit, like, he's not on the run for anything. He's definitely, like, good for a mall investment.

ZACH This is Lars Windhorst, who if you Google and restrict the time to before 2010 looks like a perfectly reasonable- he was a Wunderkind! I don't know what happened since then, but I'm sure it was all fine I don't have I've used Google sequentially. I haven't gotten to 2010 yet He's he's he's a wonder kind in the sense that German prosecutors are kind of wondering I can hear the knees being slapped from the FT headquarters No that's good, because I saw your show last night too Milo, like you're in rare form right now I'm in rare form, nobody shits

This is my direct to Kay Wiggins podcast So, the insolvency proceedings turn in a shopping center in which Windhorst, she's in Hong Kong now, acquired a majority stake in 2019, promising millions to spruce it up. After the expensive revamp, and I can't believe this with Lars Windhorse, the money never materialized. Can you believe the money to revitalize the dead mall never materialized? You'd think one time, okay, fine. Twice with like La Perla, a third time with Her Berlin a fourth time with H with Nataxis and H2O

Acid management, but a fifth time is just too that's too come on. What are the odds? That's just being careless So and where two crucial office tenants the municipality of Hanover which apparently was based in a mall like a dilapidated mall And the energy company, Entercity, terminated their contracts and stopped paying rent. In late 2023, Hanover-based lawyer, Jens Wilhelm V. Absolutely. Yes, yes!

Perfect, perfect, thank you. Was appointed an administrator, and Windhorst was urged to hand over information about the ownership structure, payment flows, and other documents for months and months and months, according to a person with direct knowledge of the warrant. And then he just, surprisingly, because it was like, surely, surely, just hand over like, four bank statements and this will clear all of this right up.

And Lars Windhorst was like, I won't, I'm not gonna return your calls, I am super not on the run, though. Right. This is a fantastic statement to give at any time. Just like, unprompted, or very lightly prompted about a different thing, to just kind of loudly drop a tray full of drinks and be like, I am not a flight risk. I'm not on the run, I'm walking right now. Passports falling out of every pocket. It sounds like one of those memes

from the Affirmation Instagram account. I am not on the run. I am not on the run. I'm kind of glowing but- I'm focused, yeah. Lars Wintour speaking from his new rental property on Pitcairn Island. Rumors that I'm on the run are greatly exaggerated.

I just like being here. Yeah, that's right. Look at all these people, is that very normal? I just love the, hey, could you just, super easy to do I'm sure, produce some documents about this business deal you were in, and the answer being, look, firstly, I'm not on the run. Right right now at all. Anyway, we always always know this podcast has taken one very strong anti-carceral stance abolish boffin right all boffin. Free my boy. Abab all boffin are bastards. Yeah free Marcus Brown. Yeah Marcus Brown is a prisoner of conscience, and the conscience was,

I want money, don't want to do the normal stuff for it. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, fucking, um, Jan Marsalek, political exile. Exile of Gordy Dekor on the Ryblovka somewhere. Yeah, I think like, Jan Marsalek is, of course, um, a political exile. Like, they're going to send him back in a sealed train to restart the German economy. He's in a gilded cage, but it's literally gilded and it's so gaudy. Alright, alright.

Anyway, so, Lars Wintourst update, solidarity with Lars. So, on to just some UK news. We're gonna be doing most of the election election updates talking about Davey mania and stuff On the bonus episode this week, but before we get to our core subjects, I thought it'd be worth talking about how once again The national media is terrified of Nigel Farage So they cannot stop covering him uncritically and the only thing that they're more scared of is people hassling Nigel Farage Yeah, yeah Well, therefore they're worried that he's gonna 9 of is people hassling Nigel Farage. ALICE Yeah.

Well, therefore they're worried that he's gonna 9-11 them, like he did to that field that time. ALICE But instead it was Nigel Farage who got 9-11, with a milkshake. Just the white. Just the shake. RILEY What is it, 2017 again? ALICE Ay. Yeah.

ALICE I mean, listen, I think this was funny, this was good, like, there were some great photos of this, and that's my main interest, is like, as a photographer, as a hobby, I really appreciated the kind of like, arc of McDonald's banana milkshake heading towards his face, I thought that was very very well done. Yeah, I mean, amazing they found a McDonald's where the milkshake machine was working, so fair play to them. So, and once again, right? The British media and political establishment is desperate to treat Nigel Farage like a

normal politician, right? Because I think there is this belief that the kind of European neo-fascism that you see in like, Fra D'Italia or like AFD or Front National, all of these kinds of like resurgent right parties. England, specifically in Britain generally, told itself, we defeated that when Nick Griffin was embarrassed in 2010. That's now done. Our politics is normal now.

And we're not going to understand that what actually happened is Nick Griffin lost precisely one battle and then more or less decisively won the war. Yeah, well because he made a good stew. And that's what everyone remembers. People will forget your question time to base but they will remember your hearty home-cooked meals. And so then what happens right is it doesn't matter what he is a part of, it doesn't matter what Farage is a part of. It doesn't matter what he's trying to do and to whom. And it doesn't matter that everybody involved knows exactly what he represents

and the kind of like, and him as the avatar of a desire to, essentially a fascist drive to use state power to crush dissent, but pulverize minorities and similar you know, and similar, right? That they just treat him like normal. Like he's not also Nick Griffin. Yeah. It's been interesting for me seeing this because like, again, the last time I was over here was during the, like the big Gaza protest, like the big one.

And I remember we were talking about like Suela Bravman, that was before she got forced out. and it was the same kind of rhetoric It's the same kind of rhetoric you hear from Nigel Farage about like, you know The the need to preserve our and I was hearing it too during the debate last night from both sides It was fucking uh, you know, Keir Starmer was trying to outflank You know, Keir Starmer was trying to outflank Rishi from the right on this shit. And it's like the nature of this rhetoric and this extreme nativism is so, from top to bottom,

it's permeated all levels of discourse. And the same thing is true in the United States. And there's something really startling too about the fact that like we are recording today on the 80th anniversary of D-Day and they've been putting this shit all over like you know the BBC and stuff like that because there's this idea that because we defeated it that one time it's been defeated and that makes us the good guys yeah it's like well it's like we defeated it the one time in Germany and

then it kind of got this new expression in Europe in the 2010s Britain uniquely defeated it in 2010. And it doesn't matter that it's like, no, the guy we defeated won. He he sort of jumped across and sort of he jumped into everybody like Agent Smith. Basically, in the same way that we defeated fascism in the United States in 2020 by not reelecting Donald Trump. Right. Yeah. So now fascism is back in Germany. But let's not worry about that.

I've not ever ended badly before. So, and so this is from an article in Daily Mail. I tend not to read much unless they're like trying to, I don't read their comments at their opinion pages because it's just, it's too far gone. I stick to the stuff about cellulite mostly. I find that to be quite interesting. They say Nigel Farage has accused anti-racism group headed by Diane Abbott. So it was out of fashion in the British media to hate on Diane Abbott for half of a day

when you looked like you could score points on Keir Starmer for it. Which is actually the longest it's been out of fashion in years. Indeed. Yes. Nigel Farage has accused an anti-racism group headed by Diane Abbott of encouraging and celebrating violence against him. Stand up to racism, which is being denounced by Mr. Farage, counts Miss Abbott as its president, posted a laughing emoji on one of its social media accounts above a picture of a milkshake being thrown over the reform UK leader. And then and once again, you're doing you're doing the thing where you are you are at once both projecting an image of quite sort of masculine strength and

sort of I will deal with the problem of the boats using force, for example, while at the same time saying, you've been mean to me and you must condemn this behaviour, because... ALICE This is the thing, it all goes through proxies, is the thing. Like, Nigel Farage gets to kind of laugh it off, and then every room temperature IQ dipshit in the British media goes, Nigel Farage was executed yesterday when an OnlyFans model used the doohickey that was used to assassinate Shinzo Abe to put two in his chest or whatever. Functionally, our whole democracy is at risk.

RIght. Has anyone considered giving him an AI pin? Oooo. Yeah. Could warn him of threats. I mean he would be a hundred percent into this once you told him it does like racist accents. So he described the incident as quite frightening and claims he's targeted because he goes out

and meets the public, which no one else does. And to be fair to Nigel Farage, that is true. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starber have both, like, sealed themselves in hermetic chambers, just trying to wait for the election to happen despite them. Ed Davey goes out and meets the public. He's not afraid. Ed Davey was on a log flume at the time of this incident, with four guys he'd just met. Ed Davey's the manic pixie dream politician. Yeah, Ed Davey is at like, sailors gay sauna wearing nothing but a towel asking them what

they think of the issues. Like, he's not afraid. I was talking with a member about this, it's like, I think the Lib Dems position in the last sort of 25 years has been to try to default to whatever they think normal is So like that's why they were against the Iraq war Yeah, but also it's like they truly they because I mean obviously they did they truly bought into the austerity narratives They were like, okay We're gonna try to like we're gonna try to restrain the beast what we all agree that it must happen

But maybe we should restrain the beast. Very stupid, very evil, but nevertheless. And then when Corbyn came in, who was actually talking to the material concerns of people, they defaulted to what they thought was normal, which was again, the Swin Zone. Yeah. And so now finally they can do what they were, what they think that they ought to be doing in the early 20, in the early 2000s, which is default to normal, which is why Ed Davey is the only political party leader that does seem like a human,

despite what he represents. Yeah, he's like your uncle. With like a bit of a drinking problem, maybe. Not that Ed Davey has a drinking problem, but he feels like your uncle who does. And the hiding from the public, I mean, that's been sort of ramping up over the last few elections, I think a lot about Boris hiding in that fridge, or stealing a journalist's phone. And the thing is, if you tried to, god forbid, throw a milkshake at Keir Starmer, instantly

assassinating both him and our democracy, you would be tackled through the ground by like fifty close protection guys, before you got within a mile of it. Luke and Curse would bite you on the ankle. You'd be in big trouble. Yeah, well, it would be sort of a two stage thing, where like, first a bunch of angry cops would rugby tackle you, and then a bunch of like, labour rightists would all kind of like, come in with like, pressure holds and stuff.

Yeah. So, yeah. Bad times around. Dying instantly as their bodies make contact with yours. So, but look, right, Nigel Farage understands, I think, that he's not a normal politician. Most broadcasters. Yeah, he revels in that. Like, it's useful for him to be that, because it also helps to facilitate this phenomenon of ostensibly normal politicians giving him everything that he wants, right? And believing, like, either kidding themselves that they're outflanking him, or like marginalizing

him, or just not giving a fuck and being able to see their numbers go up in a very sort of short-termist way. It all kind of serves him. RILEY Well, we talk often about the way that Britain is structured, I think we get closer to defining this every time we talk about it, is that there is some core organizing axiomatic belief at the base of everyone, at the base of the skull, of everybody who is able to lend their voice to providing permission to govern for a government. This is the British establishment. Everyone involved in that, believes that,

but basically believes that you mustn't ever allow a quote unquote, sandal wearing vegetarian anywhere near the eyes of the levers of power, because what they will do is muck it all up for everybody else, because they don't understand that this is for us, right? They will try to like actually make this place work for the people who live in it, as opposed to perpetuate a very, very brittle and well-defended elite. But also, they understand as

well that the system is very brittle and needs to be changed. And so the only person who will ever have political room to maneuver, who will be able to set the agenda and who will be able to move things forward is a revolutionary who is not a sandal wearing vegetarian, which means that exactly like, which it means that that billboard of Britain is full that caused so much horror when it was put up in 2016 is now the main plank of every party because you, everyone who was anybody had to agree with it eventually. Once it's like, oh well, he's proven to be right, so let's just keep on doubling down.

Even though we hate him personally, we fear him personally, we're going to try to beat him by giving him everything he wants at every opportunity and just understanding him when it works for him as an ordinary politician and when it's convenient for him also as not an ordinary politician. It is essentially his world in the British establishment, no matter how much they might like to deny it. Well, the value of a reactionary who is still given some space is that it allows the mainstream to launder opinions

they otherwise would not be willing to express. So they don't have to explicitly sign on to the fucking You know Nigel Farage platform, but what they can do is point to it over and over again But oh he said that he said that he said that in a way that maybe seems disapproving on the surface But in reality it's about repeating the the mimetic quality of the statement itself in such a way that it starts getting into people's heads. This has been the tactic of the organized right for a very, very, very long time. Exactly, that's basically what we're seeing happen again

in real time, but that's the thing, right? Like the same journalists who kept talking about disinformation and who kept talking about having to try to keep, like, protect democracy, whatever, whatever, all these same people, not just the same type of people, the literal same people who are the same people, since 2016, falling for it again, because they want to. Well, that's the thing, I think falling for it is not exactly accurate, is it?

Yeah. Or rather, allowing themselves to be taken along quite happily by him. And this is why now, even in polite society, you can hear people saying things like, Big Chungus sent his regards! I think I even have that as a drop, I'd say. A great hog day! That shit's fuckin fucking poggers. Let's go.

Alright. So look, I want to get to our core segment now. You talk a lot about media on the worst of all possible worlds. We do. And I want to talk about a theme that's close to our heart as well, which is the desperate drive by AI companies to automate everything that could be considered a pleasurable human experience like making music or art or whatever. We've talked on this show before, quite a few times actually,

sometimes with like striking writers and so on in Hollywood, about the drive by studio executives, venture capitalists, and their sort of bean counting associates, to try to transform the movie business from sort of a cocaine driven sort of tinsel town wonderland into a tech company, right? To try to get to just get rid of the kind of madness that gave us Top Gun and replace it with Well, we're gonna see what with now. They've automated fucking my wife the milkman stop coming

So we're going to that's the kind of joke that you would only get in old Hollywood Yeah So we're going to, that's the kind of joke that you would only get in old Hollywood. And we now are talking finally about a company that says that they have done this. So it's no longer the studio executives talking about what they want and the tech company leaders talking about what they can do. The company that says they have done it. They are claiming to be Netflix for AI. And it's called Showrunner.

We believe the future is a mix of game and movie. Absolutely. Personally, I believe the future. What awesome sentence. I believe the future is like a mixture between game and movie. That's right. I believe the future is a mix between game and watch,

but that's just me. Mm-hmm. My life is a gallery of game and watch. Yeah, It's a heady mixture of pheasant and movie. Simulations powering thousands of Truman shows populated by interactive AI characters. Okay quick quick question. Yes my love. Do they do they think that the Truman show was good and that was the point of the movie The Truman Show? Not quite. What they've done, as far as I can tell, I've read their white paper, is they have basically created a number of what you might call AI environments.

You can sort of imagine these like a kind of top-down game, right? And in those AI environments, there are characters, and then you can move them together as you please. And these characters are kind of, these quote unquote characters are interacting with one another. Really what's happening, again, if what they say is true, is they have a number of statistical models

running as agents. Those statistical models input to and output from one another, and then affect the further outputs which are then rendered as like Dialogue basically does that make sense? Yes, I mean this is this is what they say they are doing Yes, but having watched just a little bit of the demo that they have to offer and you're a big fan I love it. I love it. Um, I'm pretty convinced that this is all horse shit and we'll get there but so I love it. I'm pretty convinced that this is all horse shit, and we'll get there, but. So, basically, that's the whole premise, right?

Is you have these agents that are sort of constantly interacting, the statistical model sort of learning via feedback, and that what you can do is you can log on to Showrunner, and you can say, I'd like a version of South Park where me and Cartman are friends and I am anti-Semitic to Kyle. Yes. Basically.

That's what, and the South Park thing is actually no exaggeration. Most of what they seem to be doing is making South Park. Yes, this is actually, their initial proof of concept for this software was that they took, I'm assuming all the South Park scripts and put them into their model

and then it simulated a South Park episode with a prompt, I guess. Yes. I've watched this, it's terrible. And a lot of the coverage of this concept is extremely credulous and it's like, whoa! It made a joke, and I almost laughed at it! And it's like, yeah.

Uh huh. Yeah. I- as a- as a guy who's run this company, Russian, because the only adults I've ever met who are into South Park are Russian. Oh. Milo, Milo, Milo. Poor, sweet, naive Milo. It's Edward Satchi's company.

It's, so, British fail-sun. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah! Who, what, adults, who are into South Park? Like I just... It's confusing to me. There is another reason why you would do South Park, because the animation is so lo-fi.

Yes. Yeah, that's true. As with all AI stuff, it's like, easy to steal. Yeah. Loads of animation is shit now, though, to be fair. So they stole the South Park animation style, or whatever, made a bunch of episodes of South Park with AI, and sort of, I guess, published it as nominally as research, and then both this and all the subsequent things I've seen them do seem like an attempt to get assassinated

by like a Disney Black Ops team. It's very much like almost daring capital to like, you know, take care of you. RIght? Well no one dies at Disneyland, but we're not Disneyland. Have you seen the Disneyland, like, security challenge coins? I mean, it's a real thing, yeah. Mickey Mouse with like, laser eyes or whatever. I need one.

Mm. I think that what they really want to be is bought by Disney. So that, what we can, and because what they're, but the problem is, they'd have to be like, alright, the Avengers, guess what, you can be an Avenger now. It can be like... ALICE It's such a funny tactic to what is functionally the company equivalent of a job interview, to just be stealing stuff from the lobby of the building on the way in, is walking in with a backpack full of vases, and I've got an

art print I've taken off the wall slung over my shoulder, and I'm just like... I've got five thousand Disney pens in my bag. Yeah, if I'm this good at stealing shit from you, you really should hire me. And that only works for some fields, I think. Mm. Well, and the extent to which any of this actually works, which is to say generating dialogue or anything like that, it's exactly what happens when you go into chat GPT and you ask it to tell you a joke about something.

It's the exact same format where it's like, sort of wordplay, but not really. It's just pointing out that this thing is also connected to this thing because that's the nature of large language models That's what they do. They are predicting text that is connected to the prompt Well, one of the reasons that sort of large language models are so bad at writing at writing jokes that aren't sort of grown obvious is because large language models again the output of the text you're seeing is the textual representation of an language models, I get the output of the text you're seeing is the textual representation of an extrapolated straight line. Right. So you cannot fundamentally, you cannot create

an undermine an expectation because it's a straight line. Right. You cannot. The large language model does not work like that. It does not do turns. It does straight. As a large language model, I cannot answer that question.cely there you go god damn it what's amazing about that is it was a blue line from the AI South Park but also plausibly a line from the real South Park when they inevitably do an AI emphasize they already have done so it says imagine producing your own TV show, any idea imaginable, just thinking, then watch it. Get ready for the simulated show revolution.

It's like Henry Ford. It's like you can make any show you want so long as it's so hard. Which to be fair is also Henry Ford. Henry Ford, you would have loved Cartman. And Walt Disney's also involved somehow? Right, yeah. Well, it's interesting too, like the use of South Park specifically, I think. There's something, because we just talked about on Worst of All Possible Worlds, we

just talked about Team America World Police this past week. And so we did quite a bit of digging into Parker and Stone and their whole deal. And they came out of University of Colorado Boulder with sort of this chip on their shoulder, right? They were like, we gotta take on the fucking, you know, Hollywood establishment. We gotta take on CalArts. We gotta take on UCLA. we gotta take on USC.

We're going to sort of bring our unconventional style and our iconoclastic approach to the world of animation. Now of course, the people who were actually propping them up were industry players. A big part of the reason they got as far as they did as fast as they did is that Scott Rudin was, as fast as they did, is that Scott Rudin was a big backer of theirs, as was George Clooney. And between these people, you had like serious industry guys.

Oh, and David Zucker too. They were all making shit happen for them, but they were claiming this sort of outsider status. Which is exactly what Showrunner does. Exactly. They all like, if you look at like the developers of Showrunner, because these are, some of them I actually have been following for a bit.

If you look at the developers of Showrunner, they say like, we're finally gonna make like, AI, you're gonna finally be able to free TV from the gatekeepers. Right. Basically. Fucking Edward Satchi's dad. Yeah, your parents, when they won't get let you have

the remote until it's time for bed. And you're like, I want to watch more South Park. Edward Sachi in his thirties is still not allowed to watch South Park by his parents because they say it's too rude. This kind of misses the point because they, they're launching like, they're trying to launch a few shows. So like at least there's like more examples. And I watched classically me, like I watched the sort of beyond the one that you sent me I also watched this anime one. Yeah. It's just Deus Ex. It's just Deus Ex.

But it was kind of like it just it reminded me a lot of like this isn't a TV show this is sort of very bad dialogue for like you know one of those sort of fake games that you see advertised. Oh absolutely. And the community note on them is always like, this is a scam, don't buy it. This is not real. None of this exists. You pull out a key and then lava goes down the hole of some guy's dick. And you're like, what?

It's, they're finally making, I can finally realize my dream of making a show of Ebony the King's return. Absolutely. But it's like, they's like, in South Park. But the premise of it sort of misses the point of like why, cause they like want to call themselves like the Netflix, the AI Netflix or whatever, right? But it sort of misses the point of why people watch TV because it's kind of like, if the premise is like, well, like, you know, we can sort of make a show that's up to your

specifications. It's like, well, I don't watch TV because I want to know everything before it happens. I kind of want to watch stuff because I like being surprised by things or I like sort of thinking about stuff afterwards or, you know, I like the tension that is. And like, I like it being independent of my thoughts, right? That is the way in which you learn how to think about things. And so it does, it feels like it kind of like they're sort of aping the aesthetics of it. And it's very clear that like this sort of, they're very excited about the South Park and Rick and Morty thing. Cause like, I imagine a lot of them kind of, that was sort of their formative

TV and they never sort of went beyond watching those types of things. Um, yeah, it just, I, it feels like he just misses the point. Um, which is, which is like to say that I'm not giving like any credit to an AI company because every single one of them doesn't really understand how human societies actually function. No, and I do want to talk a little bit more later too about like the actual creative process, how it works and why this is of no interest to actual creative people. Partly also, right? It's just building on that and what you were saying, Hussain, right? The whole idea, the whole thing this sells is you can put yourself into stories you like.

Right. But in order to put yourself into stories you like. Yeah, like the Goosebumps book where you. Someone has to write the story first. Right. So what you're really doing is it's a new way to be a weird obsessive fan, but there is no, but I think,

and this is not just true of AI companies, I think this is actually true of a lot of movie studios, a lot of publishers, a lot of the way culture is marketed, because whenever you think about AI, and you think about the AI revolution, in every case, what it does is it just, it takes what was already 95% of the way there and just pushes it a little bit further along,

because already these things were made for hyper curatorial fans. And I've saw just Marvel movies. That's also fucking, I don't know, like the endless hunger games books that is so much of the sort of bulge bracket of pop culture is, is just curatorial. Yeah. And so the ultimate four it's it's basically they're offering you night at the museum where you can go and you can hang out

Among all of the things that you love to be to obsessively know about and consume well, and I think it's so interesting It's not just consume product you can become product right and I think what's so interesting I think what's so interesting about that sort of focus in this idea of like art as product is that it kind of reflects the world that Edward Sachi comes from. I mean, his dad is like one of the most influential advertising executives ever, you know? Like these ideas don't just develop in a vacuum.

And I think it's interesting too, how like you can see these different people who come from these different sort of moneyed statuses, but they do different things with that money. Like if you look at like Annapurna for instance, right? The film studio and game studio. Megan Ellison is in the enviable position

of being able to do and make whatever she wants because her dad is like the fifth richest person in the world and he's willing to personally guarantee any and all debt that that company goes into. But she's actually using that as an opportunity to make something. Whereas in this situation, the best that this guy can fucking come up with is this cooked scheme, which genuinely feels like something that Ehrlich Bachman in Silicon Valley would pitch, which is funny because to me, Edward Sachi also kind of looks and sounds a little bit like

British Ehrlich Bachman. It's like the same just galaxy brained, we are taking something, we are searching for something that we don't quite even know what it is, but if we can sell you on it, then fucking great. Well, you will also remember, right, that there's a long tradition in human history of great art arising from people in the sort of,

I don't know, 15th century doing what Megan Ellison is doing with Annapurna. Not saying everything Annapurna has ever made has been great, but they've made some excellent movies. No, but they've made some excellent movies. No, but they've made some good shit! They have. And I think what we have now is, with a much more direct way for our sort of like, permanent aristocratic class to try to create art, as opposed to just finding the guy who will create the good art, we're basically seeing what would happen if a Medici tried to paint the fucking chapel ceiling.

Just like nudging Michelangelo out of the way and just be like, no no no no no no. It's just like that Spanish woman who repaired the fresco of Jesus, you know? Yes, yes. That's the whole Sistine Chapel. Yeah, but what's so interesting about it, I think too, is that there's this populist angle. Again, there's this idea of like, the gatekeepers have been getting in the way of you. Yes, you, making the great art

that you were always meant to make. With showing no regard whatsoever for the specificities or even the vagaries of the creative process. It just wants to present this as like a magic box that you can put the input into and then art comes out at the other end, which is not how any of this works. It's like, you love box that you can put the input into and then art comes out at the other end, which is not how any of this works. You love product, you can also make, but that's also the vision for the company of course

is that it would be Netflix but with no creative people employed. Because the way that the idea of how it works is you generate shows for yourself, you post them on showrunner, then other people can watch the shows that you generate for yourself, you post them on Showrunner, then other people can watch the shows that you generate for yourself, and then if they like them enough, then Showrunner buys your show. And so the more people, so basically there is a contest now to create more episodes of Exit Valley, their original content that we'll talk about in a moment. And then all the best ones we put on Showrunner the people are given lump sum payments and essentially it is a kind of Trying to unite the social media model with the Netflix model where it's instead of having

Create I've to have instead of paying people to make things people just use a large language model to Create different South parks for themselves and then the most popular South parks are distributed among everybody else But of course the big problem here is that this shit isn't going to fucking work. You know we all watched exit Valley You want to take us through exit Valley by all means you take us through the first thing Okay, so the first scene of the first episode of the showrunner original series exit Valley has some children question mark huddled around a campfire their faces are largely non-existent because again the nature of the way that this works they don't have any real discernible features or characteristics it will all have six fingers, though. That's kind of weird. That's, it was fucking strange.

Didn't we just just say Norfolk? Um, but basically, yeah, they're sitting around this fire and they're having a story told to them. Now who is telling them the story? Well, I'll have you know that it is none other than the, what, the T-800, right, from Terminator? Just the exoskeleton. He's sitting there and he's being like, once upon a time.

But he's sitting there, only his mouth is moving. Yes, correct, nothing else is moving. The fire is moving, his mouth is moving. It's like a, it is like a Hanna-Barbera frame. But worse. Yes. Somehow. And he's basically saying that back in the day, humans, which are now largely obsolete,

even though they're, the kids around the campfire are also day, humans, which are now largely obsolete, even though the kids around the campfire are also humans, whatever, they sought to create an amazing intelligence that would change everything, and this led to the end of the world. Oh! Oh! Oh! And then it cuts to a second scene. November, take us through the second scene. ALICE Yeah, so we got to Silicon Valley High, the high school in Silicon Valley, where the teacher from South Park has advanced her transition

a bit, I guess. This is the thing, right, I watched this, I watched this like half an hour ago, like maybe an hour, and it has just slid off my brain because I found it so unpleasant to watch, and so much of AI content is like this, that it just, I found it like, actively unnerving to the point that I do not want to remember it. Yeah, I really hated this. It really reminded me of the Bored Ape videos that we watched. Yeah.

Not to do the Miyazaki like, I strongly believe that this is an insult to life itself thing, but it is though. The entire cast of TF have committed seppuku after watching it. I feel like it to be honest. Well, it's um, we'd love to show Mishima exit valley, but this is, as we said, it is extremely uncanny. And it is a version of South Park that is yet more unpleasant than South Park

because again, it does also talk, all the characters talk in that very distinctive AI voice where they say, well, where you sort of set up what you're about to say by saying, now we will delve into this topic. You can always tell by the way, because AIs are always diving or delving. They love delving.

They love delving. They love it. They're crazy about delving. I don't think we should teach them to delve. I don't approve of doing that. And then the third scene is a kind of gold rush retelling of the social network movie. But where Mark Zuckerberg kills... Excuse you, Thomas Zuckerberg III. So, there would've been two Thomas Zuckerbergs before him.

I guess? What does he think he is, some kind of German lawyer? He monologues about gold, and then murders the Winklevosses, and... Okay, well, not moving. Well, only moving his mouth. The mouth which is superimposed over, like, his existing mouth. He's got a mouth on his mouth, yeah. You have a mouth for talking and a mouth for, like, posing, I guess.

That's why God gives you two ears and two mouths, so you should talk and listen about the same amount. That's goddamn right, Riley. And one mouth just for fun. The secret mouth. The third mouth. From your mouth. The third mouth. So from your mouth to God's mouth. And that's right.

And that is the show. It is three scenes of barely moving still images spinning out, not just like reviews of it are like it. The dialogue is slightly stilted, but believable bullshit,

bullshit, bullshit bullshit bullshit of spitting out the most basic chat gbt 3.5 answer well in the other thing that got me to was that they're trying to pitch this as something that came straight out of the asshole of the algorithm the third mouth exactly but I'm always saying this but but but the thing is it is so clearly been edited again Like there there are various cuts. There are various zooms things like that There's musical underscoring and these things I'm Convinced just because the nature of what this shit looks like in its raw form

That they put it together and they put in a title card and they put in this other stuff to make it look cleverer and better than it actually is, and it still looks like fucking ass. This is, I wanna quote a sort of guest of the show and friend of the show, Brian Merchant, who's recently sort of, I'd say, did a head-on reckoning in a newsletter about what will the AI jobs apocalypse look like,

and I think that's a bit of a hint of what it will look like. It is going to make terrible stuff that you will be paid less to fix, basically. And that is, that it seems to be what the showrunner show, Exit Valley, is. There's a little bit more about showrunner. They have created Sim Francisco, a digital metropolis

bustling with thousands of AI characters, each experiencing unique lives across diverse neighbors. So this is the constant simulation thing. Right. Again, I'm still, I'm dubious about this claim. I don't think it's anywhere near as real as they pretend that it is. Well, but you may think that, but have you considered

that in Sim Francisco, you can do free play where you can where you know that Elon Musk lives at accession tower and if Elon's asleep you can wake him up and then send him clubbing with Marc Andreessen and Javier Millay. I mean I'm considering it now. Jesus Christ. Yeah fucking yeah. Elon wake up it is time to go clubbing with Mark and recent and obvious For the rest of your eternal life Kidnapped by the dark held are and that's what you experience in the talos

I will say this one thing that was funny to me about these Episodes to the extent that they can be called that is that they are including episodes to the extent that they can be called that is that they are including famously charismatic people such as Mark Andreessen and the voice is trained on his actual voice and so and they've really got the pointiness of his head I've always wanted to say that's the thing that pisses me off the most like if you're gonna fucking do bullshit knockoff South Park Mark Andreessen you gotta make the guy look like a fucking egg yeah that's if they wanted to do if they wanted to do a Marc Andreessen in South Park they would have point they would have given a pointy head you're not doing

South Park right that's true now here are some others though they have the one you alluded to Hussein um Ikiru Shino is a dark horror movie set in Neo Tokyo in 2046 the city is hybrid AI human where most humans have chosen to be physically augmented with AI technology. 2046 isn't far enough AI human where most humans have chosen to be physically augmented Six isn't far enough in the future. That's like what 22 years well Physically augmented with AI technology, I guess you could call them The story picks up after the catastrophe of November 17th 2046 a cataclysmic this was clearly written by an AI all of this was written by AI a

Cataclysmic event where AI augmented humans become ultraviolent That's just never let them go to Millwall. That's just a sex mankind divided and they blow it up It's x human revolution a sex man This x human revolution is where they all go crazy and then mankind divided is about picking up the pieces after and we're never gonna Get game three because I know racer in the fucking Saudis. Thanks a lot, assholes. It's so funny that all of these guys sit around in Silicon Valley all day long telling each other ghost stories about how AI is going to bring about the end of the world. Well, two things. Simultaneously, A, they're deliberately making more AI. And secondly, it's 53 degrees in Bangladesh right now.

It's such a funny, they're like three-way cognitive dissonance, it's quite impressive. Yeah, well, the other thing to remember always is that the AI will bring about the end of the world thing is a marketing tactic, because if you own a company and you're like, wow, I'm about to bring on a Salesforce tool that is going to end life as we know it, but not before I retire, probably, then you're gonna spend a lot of money on it. Right. Um, so.

It's gonna end the world for my kids, who I fucking hate. Did you all see the clip of Pixels? I didn't. Oh boy. Again, stealing from, what, cars? Oh wait! Yes! I did watch that one! like, inside that one. I did watch that one.

Yeah, I really hated this. I think I hated this one the most. In a crowded field. These have really upset me, Riley. I was really, I was like, really, like, I was working with our accountants today, and at points during these quite short videos, I went back to the accounts for a break. I was like, just give me some numbers. ALICE Yeah, but wait, Milo, you didn't like these?

I thought you... I thought... ALICE I wasn't expecting to see Lightning McQueen get sort of extraordinarily renditioned, functionally, is the thing. RILEY Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Disney SWAT team took him out. ALICE This is basically, yeah, like, Lightning McQueen but with a lobotomy.

RILEY Yeah. ALICE And it's two Teslas. Again, having the, because the other is another thing, right? AI is not good at conflict. No. AI is agreeable. Yes. Right?

Because it always, it says yes and to everything. So essentially, Wayne Frost. Except for that, I like that brief period of time when they trained it on a whole bunch of like work emails and it started saying, do it yourself, asshole. That was funny So these are two two two cars one of which is visibly a Tesla are talking and it's like oh This isn't a show about the super geniuses making AI

It's a show about the AI gadgets that make our lives better and it's two Tesla's being like I like you I like you as well our owners meet, I think that would be good. What if we got them to synchronize their charge time so they would meet one another and we could see each other again? That is a good idea, future of entertainment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, awesome baby.

Sorry, also, static background as well. All of it is Hanna-Barbera. Oh, static background and static foreground too. I mean, it is a stretch to call this animation. Their mouths barely even move. They think wings of desire meets Toy Story Which mouth the third one? Also, there's a show called hutzpah, which I mean is Let me just say sorry dub Friedman the co-creator of the TV show who is he who is this man?

Well, he said in a statement, We've put all our, our, we've put all our all into creating Hutzpah, but our lack of Hollywood connections made it impossible to get our foot in the door. We couldn't even get a yes or no because no one would give three newcomers a meeting. Huh, wonder why? Sounds like they just needed to go at it with a little more, um...

Pffft. They spell Hutzpah without the H, without the C, which I think is odd, but nevermind. The premise is, Bernie, a curmudgeonly widower, tries to teach his arrogant billionaire son Murray a lesson when he rejects an offer to move into Murray's gaudy mansion. Instead, Bernie checks himself into a run-down senior's home, where the misfit residents show him that he may be the one who's got some learning to do. You're a billionaire!

You're less than 1% of our society and yet you control 99% of the wealth! I don't... I like... Again, it's like you have this like, kind of like hackneyed premise, and then you're like, I cannot believe the Hollywood gatekeepers are not making our show about a billionaire's curmudgeonly dad who meets misfit like lovable misfits in a retirement home. And this entire pitch doesn't even sound like something that was written by a person, it

sounds like something that was written by AI, again. And I can't prove it, obviously, but there's certain things about the nature of this writing that always, always jump out at me. Um, oh This shit makes me so mad. I think that there should be an actual law Where if you try to make it like on Broadway or in Hollywood or whatever and you don't you should be legally barred From making any entertainment related anything for the remainder of your life And it should be you should be able to the police should be able to arrest you You get you get one go yeah, and then you're like okay commercial real estate license. That's it I had my try that fucking real estate license. It is over for you. Yeah, that's right

So yeah, there should be like government mandated Like mandatory commercial real estate licenses. I am always saying this. The commercial real estate license is like being served with papers. Like you can dodge it and keep writing your screenplay, but if they touch you with it, it's over. Well, like a tip staff in like, George and England. Yeah, that's right. You got to stop answering to your own name.

Oh, I'm driving up La Cienica, but there are bums all up and down who are going to try to take me to writer's prison. I don't mean bums homeless people. I mean bums is what they used to call bailiff's court. Yeah, roustabouts. Things of this nature. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It feels like even by the logic of what they're trying to do, because they're trying to release so much stuff onto this new platform and like, I don't know, like, I, you know, just to sort of think a little bit about Quibi and just like, I think this makes me miss Quibi. It makes me miss Quibi because Quibi was better and Quibi was like at least a little bit more fun. Quibi got some of my friends jobs. I'm serious. I am so fucking serious about that. We've got like a golden arm somewhere. Yeah. Like I think it's strange because it's like you kind of first have to be invested into

this world and like there's no, but they haven't like told you why you should be invested. It's like, Hey, it's AI. It's cool. You should, you should be on it. Why not? Um, right. And I feel like that's kind of a problem because if like, if you're going to call yourself a Netflix or something, and I think this is already like a kind of, this is a problem, but take this by, take this by like how they understand it. Like the reason why Netflix became so popular when it came out was partly because it was like doing a fairly original thing at the time in terms of like on demand TV, a lot of this sort of, you know, it had

been established for a long time, like before it became a streaming platform. Also, they had friends, they had friends, but it was like, but it's like flagship show. And I think I remember like sort of house of cards being one of them, right? But that was just like the one, like they weren't advertising so many things. It was like, Oh, Hey, here are like a bunch of actors that you know, who are sort of in this new thing, but it's kind of familiar to like the West wing. And so if you're interested in that stuff and you might be interested in this one, but if you're not, we have friends and we have like all the, you know, sort of other IP stuff and that you're interested in. And so like the buy-in kind of comes from there, but over here it's like, okay, well there's this world, right? And it's AI generated

and there's an AI Elon Musk and you can wake him up all the time and make him go to the AI Burgheim with Mark Andreessen. But it's not Burgheim, it's something else. And also like there's a bunch of shows that feature characters in this world and like, but the shows are different and they're not really related to each other. Like even if you were sort of sincerely going into this, none of this sort of coherently makes sense. And it kind of, it strikes me as one of these kinds of examples of an AI company that it's just like, we've got the AI and that's, that's it. And you should be really into it because it's the AI and like, we're excited about it. So why aren't you, you know, you should be excited about it too. And like that's, that's the pitch.

Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing to remember, right, is that a few things. Number one, this, the companies that are making these things, they're never made to be used. Yeah. They're made to be bought by a bigger company that worries that one day they might take their market share. Um, so like that what they're doing is by building this as the Netflix for AI, there's playing a double game where on the one hand you have to believe what you summarize who's saying you have to believe that that's plausible. Yeah. You have to believe that that's plausible enough that you as Netflix are willing

to spend a billion dollars making sure it doesn't happen. Or if it does, that you're the one that does it. And so it's like, you have to, on the one hand, you know, it will never work. But on the other hand, the story that you, it will never work But on the other hand the story that you that you just told like that premise Has to still be believed by people with money right which is in fucking sane We used to make it up man and even the the pitch now Which is you know dumb and dull and and for for child minds Like if you compare this to the way that he was pitching it back in October of last year in his fucking TED talk

It's been really interesting to see sort of what the nature of the pivot has been. I wow he was doing a TED talk That's so like right 2011 but he was I love that there's a Ted talk show that Edward Sachi gave in October 2023 where he talks about how Eventually all of these agents, you know, simulating in fucking Sim Francisco, could perhaps lead to the advent of like the first actual self-aware artificial intelligence. Back in October, which was fucking what?

Eight months ago? Less than one baby ago. People were still buying that bullshit. Now the ambition has been scaled back, relatively speaking, as far as, well, we're gonna be able to make you magic Netflix. The scope of what this technology is actually able to do is so small.

And so they're going to have to keep cutting back on the promises time and time and time and time and time again, but they're gonna hope that they get that fucking, you know, $500 million Netflix exit before people catch on to the fact that there's nothing under the goddamn hood. Well, it's like the opposite of what Netflix does, right? Which is it starts by sending you out DVDs

and then it's gonna be like, okay, well now we're gonna do streaming. It's like, they're like, we're gonna start with artificial general intelligence, God, basically, then go back to Netflix, and eventually it's gonna be like, we will hire a guy in a Cartman costume to come hang out with you. Right.

We will pay for that. But just the last thing before we close out, whenever anybody has an artificial intelligence company that makes video, it's always very important to ask them the one question that causes them to short circuit and leave the room. What is your system trained on? What is your system trained on? What is your system trained on? What is your system trained on? And Sachi-

What have you stolen all of this from? Which is patently fucking obvious in every case. South Park. It's South Park. It's just South Park. It's just South Park. They've taken South Park. The fake South Park seems to be heavily based on the real South Park.

Sachi says the system is trained on, quote, publicly available data, and when asked a follow-up question about the widespread allegation of the use of copyrighted materials by AI companies to teach their technology He adds quote what matters to me is whether the output is original content is what will decide whether the tech is worthwhile So it's like look I may have stolen South Park But the South Park that I am making is going to be very original and not South Park at all I'm just out of curiosity. I did a real quick search and I am currently looking on the South Park archives which is a wiki and I'm looking at the entire script of Cartman gets an anal probe. So in a sense this is public. That's right. Okay. All right. All right. I think that's all the time we have for today, but... The probe right in the sad mouth.

Josh, I want to thank you It's always a great time whenever you come over and come on the show and to remind listeners to go check out the worst of All possible worlds yes, and I want to thank you as well for having we live in Britain. What do you mean check it out? Hey, hey Yeah, no I this this was a lot of fun Just to finally like talk about some shit that really gets my blood boiling and if you are interested in media analysis and Just like the way that culture is making our lives worse But also the ways that culture can point to better possible futures

Check out the worst of all possible worlds in your favorite podcast platform We have a patreon it is patreon.com slash worst of all and we have a Patreon, it is patreon.com slash worst of all, and we have a website which is worstpossible.world. ALICE And we have a website which is showrunner.ai. RILEY That's right. And I can now be found every Monday and Thursday on a stream that is now known as the Traditional Scrench alongside one of the co-hosts of this very podcast. ALICE That's right.

The Trashfuture stream has had a conscious uncoupling, and now it's a traditional scrunch, so same time, same... well, different channels. RILEY We wouldn't want any of that newfangled scrunch. ALICE That's right. RILEY That is, of course, because Riley was burnt out. ALICE Alright, we're all burnt out. RILEY True. ALICE Alright, alright. Milo has dates, We're all burnt out. True. Milo has dates, they're on his website.

Yeah, I do. Please buy my special. It's on, many of you have already. If that's you, thank you. If you haven't already, consider doing that. There's bonus material that's only available if you purchase it now. That's right. Alright, alright. We gotta go to dinner. By the time you're listening to this, we will have gone to dinner.

Amazing. Do not try and triangulate Charlie Palmer. Alright, we gotta go to dinner. So but by the time you're listening to this we will have gone to dinner amazing Yeah, yeah, yeah, do not try and triangulate Charlie Palmer. Yeah again. It's so important that you don't do that He will we can't be responsible for what he does the man won't be char hangulated. He's Charlie Palmer not Charlie Starmor. Come on Alright, we gotta go. Bye everybody. Bye everyone. Goodbye Bye!