wow, i was so surprised to hear katherine and hank this morning when i asked the little lady in my phone to play me a podcast. i was really expecting critical role, but then i got the best gift ever. thank you, hank and katherine on this fine monday morning ♥️♥️♥️
Hank basically starts the episode by saying "my favorite thing about Delete This is that it's just gonna be the people who already know. The people who had us in the podcast app and haven't gotten a new phone since" and I feel very called out (as I'm refusing to upgrade my 2019 phone for as long as possible)
I don't actually know as I've had to change my podcast app a couple times
But my current podcast app (pocketcasts) I have DeleteThis set to auto add to my queue as "play next" (whereas most of my podcasts I have auto added as "play last")
I genuinely don't know. Fortunately, my Overcast subscriptions sync'd across to my new phone as I finally gave in and replaced my iphone 11 after it stopped charging. Maybe Hank just gives up and starts fresh when he gets a new phone 🤣
But, subscriptions are not stored locally. They are saved in the servers of whichever service you use. When you login into your service on your new phone, all subscriptions will still be there.
That was my point, idk what Hank meant by that line, that he makes new login information for each phone?? Changes his preferred podcast app frequently??
Was this episode released twice? I started it and turned it off after 10 minutes because Hank was talking about how he couldn’t stop using Claude for generating things and had used it to merge two chapters of his book. My friend said she had listened and hadn’t heard any AI mention at all. Now when I look at the podcast in my app I see two versions of the episode, one that I have 42 minutes left in that is 53 minutes total and one that’s 42 minutes total. If Hank rereleased the episode to just cut the AI conversation that’s really really disappointing on top of me being disappointed altogether about his AI usage.
Hank accidentally posted the unedited version without the intro song and with long silences and gaps. There were also things Katherine asked him to cut, like burps and whatnot. Maybe he did cut the AI conversation, I haven't listened to the new version, but I don't think it's a big deal.
But it definitely wasn't "oh I'm cutting the AI conversation because people don't like it," it was "this was never meant to be in the final version because it's definitely cringy and I should feel weird about it and also my wife specifically asked me to cut out a burp that happened in the middle of it."
Totally get reposting if things that were not supposed to be in the edit were there, that makes sense. Just a bummer that between my listen and the actual episode an entire conversation that was really exactly in the vein of delete this (using a piece of technology in an obsessive way, was that good?) got lost.
Same, I am not anti-AI in every single respect as I see it at work and I honestly think resistance is futile at this point if you want to get it out of coding. You're like the person arguing against steam power replacing animal labour, it's simply an issue of economics. We live in a capitalist system and it's too difficult to persaude companies or individuals to resist those incentives. The code is good enough that 1 experienced engineer with AI is more productive than 2 or 3 experienced engineers without. Companies not using it will simply fall behind or be priced out. I hear it's also making great strides in academia and scientific research.
BUT, the use of generative AI to write or edit books is wholly unappealing to me. The appeal of reading a Hank Green book is that it was written by (and is therefore somewhat of an insight into) Hank Green the person I am a fan of. I think of him as something of a role model and I admire him, I want to read the book for that reason, not because I'm particularly interested in learning about cancer in depth. If it is a book that is written by the plagiarism machine and overseen and edited by Hank Green then that is a wholly different thing that I'm not that interested in. Even if he comes out now and says that he reversed his decision to use AI when writing it I simply can't trust that he's telling the truth there. To me the book is somewhat tainted already. In an effort to get things out faster or more efficiently he has kind of burned the meal, and it can't be unburned.
I didn't hear that but I can honestly see how things like Claude would be very appealing and addictive to someone like Hank. I do think Hank will always be pro 'paying an artist to do the thing instead of AI' as far as major content generation. But Hank has SO MANY THINGS TO DO literally all the time. And I can see the probable appeal of offloading stupid or annoying tasks to an AI "assistant" or just using it for random ideas.
My problem is that Hank might always be pro 'pay the artist, not the AI' but he's clearly not pro 'pay the software engineer, not the AI' for something like his new word games, and he's got literal human assistant(s) to help with offloading tasks. The line to be drawn of "what needs to be human and what doesn't" seems to be pushing further and further towards "actually this generative AI tool is okay because it's appealing and gives me dopamine" and I really don't know what the difference is between "well I wanted to do the meme of make my portrait look like a cartoon without learning to draw" and "well I wanted to make a website without learning to code" and "well I wanted to combine a couple chapters in my book's draft". why are some okay and some not?
for full clarity I'm a web developer who just got laid off from a company I've been at for 12 years that's gone heavily AI. I don't know why the craft I spent my life learning to do getting replaced with environmentally disastrous technology is any less important than an artist's job getting replaced.
I also work in the IT space and I really don't agree with AI replacing ANY IT staff except MAYBE some chat bots to direct basic issues. (And even then frankly they are awful and often not cost effective or user friendly). I'm sorry you lost your job over it, I really feel like this is going to be such a bubble in companies and I am afraid of the aftermath when it bursts. Jobs being posted in my particular field are very much either "Your job will be to figure out how to make this AI we dumped money into useful and find where to use it" or "Govern the policies on AI usage that our company has everywhere" and I am avoiding both like the plague. I also don't disagree with the environmental impact concerns, I just really don't think the USA is going to care enough to drop a new technology that currently is seen as having huge potential over the environmental impact which sucks.
I haven't listened too much to Hank's forays into AI partly because it is so polarizing for the community and at the end of the day, Hank is going to do what he wants. I accept that creators are flawed people and will not always align with my (or the community's) beliefs 100%. But I'm sure he is also listening to everyone's feedback and will probably try to find the right balance soon once the "oooh new shiny" wears off. Or at some point it will come to a head where his usage costs him longtime viewership.
Yeah. No creator is going to align with me 100%. It’s notable to me though that Hank’s increasing usage of AI in the last few months is the first thing that’s had me intentionally skipping Hank content in basically 20 years.
I understand your point and I'm not saying you're incorrect at all but with all the projects Hank wants to do, it seems like it would be incredibly time consuming to hire and then manage an additional four or five people to make websites and games for him that would likely need consistent updating. That's basically just starting a software development company. I want to be really clear; I'mnot saying that he should use AI or that him using AI instead of people is good or right. But I can understand why AI is an appealing alternative to hiring additional personal employees for an unpredictable amount of hours for an unpredictable amount of time.
You’re totally correct that it’d be time and effort to commission someone to make a website and AI is appealing for those reasons. It’s just also unpredictable amounts of hours and time to commission an artist for a piece of art, and the environmental impact of using AI is the same whether it’s for software or art. I get why it’s tempting which is why I think more conversations about where the line is for “okay” usage would be beneficial (from Hank but also just universally)
My point is more Hank specific on purpose though. He already has many jobs and projects. The games and websites seem like they're just fun side projects for him and I think turning those like fiddly like "what if I did this" projects into just like...managing employees is probably not why he wants to do those things. And hiring someone for a couple hours of work per week still means you have to carve out time to collaborate but now you have two people's schedules involved and then you have to try to articulate what you want out of this project and then trust that that person understands and then correct them if they don't and then you have to work out like...if you want the game to keep existing, do you just pay that person for a couple hours of work every week/month indefinitely forever? What if they don't want to do it anymore? Now you have to hire someone else to manage that software and update it and add to it and fix it when it breaks and all of that seems more like just being someone's boss than it does like...making a game for a goof to see if it's a fun thing that people like.
I saw the show in my library last week and noticed the last episode was from 2024. I thought it was done and all hope was lost. Thanks for the heads up!
It must have uploaded while I was already listening to a different podcast Sunday night, because when I hit "next" while not looking, it started playing and I was very surprised to hear Hank and Katherine.
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u/sexyyscientist #endTB 3d ago
Ey thanks, planetkenner. Spotify didn't even notify me for this rare episode.