Ed Helms Answers Your Hard Questions

What's going on with you?

Well, I'll tell you what's going on with me: allergies. It's allergy season—the sneezing.

Mm. It's allergy sneezing.

It's allergy sneezing season. There's the congestion. I'm taking multiple pills. I feel better today than I've felt at any point in the past 3 days, and thank goodness, because it's a recording day.

Are you a Zyrtec guy or a Claritin guy? Or a Flonase guy?

So here's the best allergy medicine: Singulair is the brand name for it. The active ingredient is something called montelukast. This thing changed my life, seriously. I was a runny-nosed monster for years, and then montelukast came into my life, and it really helps me breathe through my nose.

Wow. Have you ever tried dissolving it in a tea of any kind?

No, why would I do that?

Because then you'd be getting the Singulair-ty.

How did I walk right into that? All right, start the show. That was great.

I'm Kevin Roose. I'm a tech columnist at The New York Times.

I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.

And this is Hard Fork.

This week, Ed Helms from The Office comes to our office to talk about his new book and answer your hard questions about tech. I hope this episode wins a Dundee, Kevin.

I have a hangover. Well, we are very excited about today's episode. We told you this was coming a few weeks ago, and today we are going to be joined by Ed Helms for some conversation and some hard questions submitted by you, our listeners.

I am so excited about this, Kevin.

Me too. So this came about because of a chance encounter that we had in Austin, Texas, when we were down there for the iHeartPodcast Awards. We are both big Ed Helms fans, and we were excited to bump into Ed in the backstage area. And we were surprised to learn that he listened to Hard Fork.

Yeah. And how did that happen? Was that a mistake on your part, or were you sort of subscribed to the Kara Swisher feed? How did you start listening to Hard Fork?

That's a great question. I have no recollection of how I started, but you guys are pretty good.

Oh, thanks.

You're good at what you do.

Thanks. So Ed has a new book out called SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups. It should have a chapter or two in there about Casey.

Yeah, I sent him all of your screwups, but they didn't make the cut.

And Ed is here with us today in San Francisco, and we said, "Come on down to the studio, and let's hang out and answer some questions." So without further ado, Ed Helms, welcome to Hard Fork.

I am very excited to be here, gentlemen.

So what are you doing here? Why are you in San Francisco?

I'm on my book tour.

Yeah.

I'm bouncing all around the country. I went to New York, Philly, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, and now I'm here. Tomorrow I go to L.A., and I'm hallucinating. I have no idea what's happening anymore.

That's common in San Francisco. Did you get the little baggies in Dolores Park?

Yeah, right.

1. Ed Helms Explains Tech Snafus

So Ed, your book is all about history's greatest screwups. Do you have a favorite tech-related snafu that you could share?

Oh, wow. Well, do nuclear warheads count as tech?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

Okay, great. This one's amazing. This was during the Cold War, in the 1950s. The Cold War did not bring out the best in us, as it turns out. A plan was hatched to shoot a nuclear warhead at the moon, and you might be wondering why. Why would anyone think this is a good idea?

The thinking was that we're in fierce competition with the Soviets. Everyone's living in nuclear existential dread. If we can hit the moon with a nuclear warhead, the Soviets will be so terrified that we'll win the Cold War. Research showed that it was very likely it could easily miss the moon, slingshot around the gravitational field, come right back, and hit us.

Which, frankly, would've served us right.

Yeah. You know what?

Yeah.

That is fair punishment.

Yeah.

And eventually, it was not followed through on, thank God, but a lot of time, money, and resources went into it. Carl Sagan was part of that research team.

It sounds like an idea that Elon Musk would come up with after a ketamine bender. He's like, "Let's nuke the moon."

There's an episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns wants to blot out the sun, and this kind of reminds me of that, except it really happened.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a fun section in your book about the top 5 computer viruses of the '80s. We don't have to go through all of them, but I'm curious if you have a favorite virus from the viruses that you've covered.

I like the guy who just wrote a dumb poem that pops up on everybody's computer.

Was this the message of peace to Mac users, or was this a different one?

Uh—

No, this was the Elk Cloner virus.

Yeah.

God, Casey.

Oh, sorry. I'm still catching up on my '80s virus history.

It's one of those things that a programmer thinks is cute and a little cheeky, but then it's just disastrous.

Right. Yeah, I feel like the hackers aren't so cheeky anymore. You don't see the good-time prank hacks.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

You just see the stealing of $5 million in Bitcoin pranks.

Right.

Yeah, bring back fun hacks.

Yeah.

Yeah, like the ones that make us chuckle.

Mm-hmm.

2. Technology Blows Past Ed

So Ed, whenever we get a notable guest like you on the show, we always ask them about their relationship with technology. So what's your relationship with technology like these days?

Well, it's really evolved. I used to be very much on the ball, and I would say almost ahead of the curve. I was an early adopter of technology as it came out. I was getting the latest laptop. I jumped on the iPhones as soon as they came out. I've always been a Mac guy, so it was fun, and I was charged up by it. I liked technology.

Somewhere in the last 5 or 10 years, it has just blown past me, and now I feel I'm just that old guy, mad that I can't log into my Citibank account or whatever. It just is—

We'll help you, but just share your account name and the routing number, if you would.

Yeah.

But I feel like there's a language, or a visual language, to the iconography within apps, and an assumption that you speak that language. Sometimes I'll open a new app or upgrade an app, and all of a sudden I'm just useless.

It's like going to the grocery store and they've changed the location of all of the food?

No, they've changed the food. Avocados have turned into something you've never seen before.

Yeah, the broccoli's blue.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you have a problem app, or an app that you spend way more time on than you would like to?

Probably just Instagram.

Yeah.

Like everybody else.

Yeah.

Right? Does that make me old?

No.

No.

I mean, I feel like it does.

Not at all. Not at all.

That's very millennial-coded, actually.

Okay, all right.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

If you said TikTok, it'd skew you a bit younger, but there are billions of people using Instagram.

Right.

Have you ever deleted Instagram or set a screen-time limit on it because you thought, "I just can't be looking at it these days"?

No, I've never put a limitation on it.

You think that's for quitters?

Yeah. It's not ruining my life.

Yeah.

I don't feel controlled by it. It just keeps me up too late some nights. Honestly, I've laughed harder watching Instagram than I have at a lot of movies and TV shows lately.

Mm-hmm.

It drives my wife crazy because I'm shaking the bed, and she's trying to fall asleep. She's just like, "Turn it off." She's not concerned about my screen time. She's just like, "Stop shaking." And I'm trying to laugh quietly.

It'd be funny if the sleeping-in-separate-beds thing from the 1950s came back among couples.

But just because of TikTok.

Because of TikTok.

Yeah.

I could see it happening. What makes you laugh on Instagram the most? Is it the native creators who are just doing fun bits and sketches? Or is it that people have sliced up every movie and TV show known to exist, and they know how to serve you your very favorite ones?

It's usually prank-related stuff.

Mm-hmm.

And I have a pretty keen radar, but Instagram has hacked it. I hate anything that hurts someone physically. I just can't get into that. I don't like watching people fall or bonk into things. That's very unnerving to me. But I also don't like scare pranks that are clearly traumatizing to somebody, and there's tons of that stuff.

Yeah, I feel like you just described 80% of all pranks.

Yeah, right? But what's left over are the jump-scare pranks. They'll just be a compilation of jump scares.

Yeah.

And I'm crying laughing. Or just weird scare pranks where there was a trend for a little while of people who would lie on the floor with just their head sticking out of a door at floor level, and someone would walk in and see the head on the floor—

Ah.

Apparently it's terrifying because the reaction is amazing.

Well, if you ever come back to Hard Fork, I know how I'm greeting you.

Perfect.

Exactly.

Perfect.

Exactly like that.

3. AI Changes Creative Work

What about AI? Are you using any AI stuff in your life? How do you feel about it?

Yeah, I definitely use ChatGPT.

For what?

Mostly just queries. Just picking its brain for research or when I want to know about something. It's kind of my new Google, I guess.

Do you feel like you're Googling less because you're using ChatGPT?

Yes.

Yeah.

For sure.

Yeah.

Although I still Google. Didn't you guys do a whole episode about how, now with Google's AI, no one goes to the links anymore?

Yeah, exactly.

And there are all these industries that have built their entire business models on the Google links, and that's a bummer. That's just one of the many AI fallouts. I use it occasionally to help think of an email that I'm having trouble with, especially if it's something kind of loaded and I just want some—

You have to fire somebody.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The relationship between Hollywood, actors, writers, people who work on films and TV shows, and technology has been pretty strained. First it was the streaming platforms coming in and disrupting that part of the business. Now actors and writers have been some of the loudest critics of AI, talking about how it steals work from people. What do you think about the film industry's relationship to tech?

Well, do you mean tech or just AI in particular?

Both.

With tech, the relationship has long been integral to filmmaking. Obviously, technology goes back to the dawn of photography, through all the evolution of camera operation, movement, and manipulation, and then digital manipulation of the image. That grew into digital animation, and it's just so powerful and exciting on many levels.

I do think that ChatGPT introduces a completely different paradigm of tech in entertainment. I feel like sometimes when you read notes on a project, you're like, “Did this executive just feed this into ChatGPT?” Or maybe it's thinly veiled ChatGPT.

You're pretty confident you've seen some AI notes at this point?

I do, yeah.

Yeah.

I think so. But I'm also stunned by ChatGPT's facility with creative tasks. If you give it an assignment, it's totally stunning. I think the creative community is terrified, and for good reason.

I'm also terrified, not even from a business standpoint, but just from a human standpoint. When the need for human creativity disappears, will we still be creative? What will drive us to create beautiful and amazing things? Whether it's a movie for the movie business or just a piece of art for art's sake, that does terrify me.

Yeah. Obviously, that's a very difficult question, but do you have any thoughts on how creative people should be approaching this moment? It sounds like you've landed in a place similar to Kevin, which is that this can be a useful tool, maybe a creative partner, but there's probably some part of your creativity that you want to reserve for yourself and not give over to a machine.

Yeah. That's a good characterization of my relationship with it now, but it's only going to get better and more powerful, and I feel like it will also become more intoxicating to use, more exciting, and more affirming. But yeah.

4. Devices Become Toxic

Is there any tech product or service out there right now that you think will become a historical snafu that you might write about in a future volume of a book? What out there today in the field of technology do you look at and think, “Oh, that can't possibly be good”?

Wow. I actually have kind of a macro take on this, which is that we're at a point with device usage where it's clearly bad for us. It's clearly harming us. It feels like cigarettes in the '90s, right? Everybody knows, but come on, we're still doing it, right? All the corporate interest in it is still just dumping money and more advancement into it. And in the '90s, they were releasing better cigarettes—

Right.

—and healthier cigarettes.

Yeah.

But everyone still knew it was bad, and it feels like—I hope at some point we will recognize that, or that we'll come to that inflection point in the same way that cigarette smoking did, where it's just like, “No.” Where, as a society, we're like, “This is actually terrible.”

I should say, there are a lot of differences between phones and cigarettes, but one of the scariest differences is that it's like if someone told you the only way to do your banking or your shopping is to smoke your cigarettes.

Right.

And so you have no alternative to this thing that is also toxic to you. It becomes so integrated into your life. I don't know. I use my phone a ton, and I still feel like I use it too much. It's a conundrum.

Here's how you solve it. You actually borrow a lot of ideas from the cigarette example, and you make it so that you can only use Instagram outside, and you have to be 15 feet away from the door. Maybe that does something.

Also, you stink when you come back.

Yeah. Yes, exactly.

It makes you stink.

Exactly, yeah.

It gives you terrible breath.

5. Listeners Bring Hard Questions

So Ed, for the last few weeks we have been collecting questions from our listeners about their moral and ethical dilemmas involving technology, and we're excited to get your take on some of these too.

Fantastic.

Let’s do it.

Yeah, I would just mention that this really has become one of our favorite segments to do, not only because our listeners are great and ask such interesting questions of us, but it really lets us get a peek into people’s relationship with technology, which I think is at the heart of what we love to talk about on the show.

Yeah, so every time we’ve done this, we’ve gotten tons and tons of questions about AI and the ethics around AI use. That will be a trend that continues today. We got a ton of questions, the most popular topic by far, but for this installment, I thought we could start off with some of the non-AI questions from listeners and then work our way to the AI pile.

All right. Ready to go?

Yep.

So first up, we have a video from a listener asking that age-old question: “What do I do about my mom?”

Hi, Kevin and Casey. My name’s Charlene. I love your podcast. Thank you so much for doing it. I listen every week. I’m listening up in Canada. My question for Ed is a little internet privacy-related: How do I break it very gently to my Gen X mom that I do not want her posting any pictures of her future grandkids onto her Facebook wall?

Ooh, interesting.

Ooh, yeah.

What do you think, Ed?

Well, that’s a good one. I’m a Gen X dad, and I’m like, “No way am I putting pictures of my kids online.”

You don’t put any pictures of your kids online.

No, nowhere. And I have had that conversation with family members, like, “Please pull back on this or that,” because sometimes you’re just off at your cousin’s house, and they’re taking pictures, and it’s all great. It’s like a family barbecue, but you just have to be a little careful. I mean, there’s just no substitute for a direct conversation about this, although you could consult ChatGPT on how to approach the subject in a tactful and tender way.

That would work. The thought that comes to mind for me is maybe the way to have the conversation is to present an alternative, right?

Yes.

And say, “Hey, the baby’s coming next month. We’re all very excited. We would like for you not to post these photos in public forums like Facebook, but we would love you to post them to our shared iPhoto library, where only our family members can see it. We’re going to get it started for you, and I’m going to add it to your phone manually, and now you’re going to get an endless stream of photos, and you can share all of them this way.” That might help the situation.

Yeah, I know a lot of families with young kids who do this either on the Photos app—you can create this shared album and post photos there, and people can comment on them. It feels like social media, but without the publicness of it. Or you can do a WhatsApp thread or a group text or something. But, yeah, I think that’s a really key thing: You do not want to deprive grandparents of photos of their grandkids, or else they will just start taking them and posting them on their own.

All right. Well, I think we solved that one.

Yeah, so next up, we have a voice memo from a listener who wonders what’s going on with her friend’s online calendars, and this listener asked us not to use her name in case the friend listens to the show.

I’ve recently started doing some admin work for a really good friend. Most things are going really well, but when we need to meet virtually or do a call, I contact my friend to find a time, tell her I’m flexible, as my calendar is a lot less slammed than hers. I say, “Just send me a calendar invite at a time that works for you, and I’ll make it work.” The first time I did this, I waited, and there was no calendar invite a few hours later, so I said, “Do you want me to send you an invite?” And she said, “No, I put it on my calendar,” but without adding me. She wants me to make my own calendar invite on my calendar, so there are just 2 calendars off in space, not collaborating and with no visibility between them. I think this is insane and very weird, as well as unproductive, self-defeating, and frankly inconsiderate. She definitely doesn’t think it’s weird at all. I’ve worked in offices for many, many years, and I’ve never encountered this. Am I being hypercritical about this, or is it as weird as I think it is?

What do you think, Ed?

Well, I want to make sure I understand correctly. So she’s really upset that her friend just feels like she wants to have separate calendars.

And is not adding her to the calendar invite. It’d be like if I were wanting to hang out with Kevin and I added it onto my calendar, “Hang out with Kevin at noon,” and I didn’t add Kevin, so now he has to go make his own calendar entry, being like, “Hanging out with Casey.”

Right. Yeah.

I mean, what occurs to me is that I’m not sure if this friend of hers understands that you can do a shared calendar invite without giving the other person access to your entire calendar.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it feels a little generational. My take is that I just manage my own calendar. I find myself accepting calendar invites here and there, but I rarely send them out.

That’s a flex.

Yeah. Well, I don’t know. I just don’t think that way.

Yeah.

I’m just like, it’s an old-school way of doing it: Everyone manages their own calendar. You agree on a date and time in an email or a text or whatever, and then you add it to your own calendar, but, yeah, I don’t know.

Now, here’s a question for you both.

Yeah.

Do you let other people see your calendar? Because you can give people access to see all the appointments on your calendar, and I’m curious if either of you do that.

Ed?

I have someone that I work closely with who has full access to my calendar, but of course I have multiple calendars. My wife has access to another calendar, and I don’t know if anybody other than me has access to all of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’m basically the same. I have an assistant who can see my calendar, and I have a boyfriend who can see my calendar, but that’s it. How about you?

My wife can see my calendar, but because there are some security settings around it, it only says “busy” or “not busy.” It doesn’t say what I’m doing.

Interesting.

So—

That’s an interesting way to do it, but also, what is the working relationship of these 2 people? If they’re in an organization where this standard is set, then, yeah, it’s a reasonable expectation to have. But I think if you’re dealing with 2 people in different organizations that are—

Yeah.

Collaborating, then you’re just allowed to assert your preferences.

Right. So for our anonymous listener, I think our advice is to make sure that your friend, who you’re doing some admin work for, knows how calendars work and that you can create shared events without turning over your entire calendar. If it’s not an issue that results from a lack of understanding, then maybe have a conversation about how much harder it is to operate in this close collaboration without being able to have the same calendar invites.

I have slightly different advice, which is that if I were her, I would just take the initiative to send all the calendar invites.

Mm.

If it is a technical issue, I think it’s going to be easier for her to be like, “Let’s agree on a time. Great. I’m sending you the calendar invitation. Now the problem is solved.” And if she’s not open to that, this friendship is over.

I’m going to add another layer to that—

Do it.

Which is that first, just assess whatever cultural difference—your calendar culture—you guys are dealing with, because this person may really not like to use calendar invites for any number of reasons. Whatever you’re used to is practical.

Yeah. You’ve got to find out what kind of freak your friend is. Step 1. All right, let’s take the next one. This, I think, Kevin, is a question that just about everyone with a cellphone will resonate with.

Hey, Kevin and Casey. Love the pod. My name’s Calvin. I’m from the East Bay, and here’s my hard question. I get a lot of scam emails, texts, and phone calls, and I love stringing them along for as long as possible or just making them mad. My wife hates that I do this, but it brings me great joy. Here’s my dilemma: Recent reports have come out revealing that many of these scammers are being trafficked, extorted, and forced to do this work against their will. It has become a form of modern slavery. I know this is true for some of the people I probably interact with. So is it wrong for me to mess with these scammers? Should I just ignore them, or can I keep having fun even if it feels morally complex? Thanks. Also, last thing. I, I know an heiress that recently came into billions of dollars and wants to support a tech podcast for people. Send me your socials, and we can make it happen.

Hmm, that’s intriguing. We’ve got to follow up with him. Well, what do you think, Ed? I imagine you might get these texts. How do you react when you get them?

I just cold-ignore them.

Mm.

It’s so much easier that way. I can see getting a little bit of evil glee out of taunting somebody who’s out to scam you, but you’re also opening yourself up to more risk that way. You’d really never know who you’re talking to, what they know about you, and just don’t open that can of worms at all.

You know, I have to say I think Ed’s approach is the right one here. What Calvin told us is true: The people who are doing this, for the most part, this was not their chosen lot in life. Something has gone horribly wrong for them—

Yeah.

—that they have to participate in this, and you’re just taking somebody who has a very hard life and making it even harder. So while I get that it is so satisfying to text these people back, and I will admit I have texted these people back and cursed them and insulted them, I have gotten to a place where I just don’t do it.

I would also appeal to Calvin’s self-interest, because my understanding is, even if you are just responding to say, essentially, “Screw you,” you do get identified as a warm phone number, and that information is shared with other scammers. So by responding in this way, Calvin, you may be making your own problem worse.

Now, how long do you guys think that we will actually have human scammers calling people? How long before all of these are just hyper-convincing AIs speed-dialing people?

I mean, if you believe the research about persuasion that we’ve been talking about on this show, it might not be all that much longer. But I have to say, Kevin, that might be a human rights victory, because then maybe they would take these people who are locked up in these scam centers and actually let them go home.

Yeah, that’s one job I would love to see automated very quickly.

Also, it’s not your best self to do this, right? It’s not reinforcing the best side of you to be making someone else’s life harder, even if they’re not in a terrible situation and they’re just a scammer. Strive for better—

Yeah.

—in yourself too.

Do better. As Melania Trump once said, “Be best.”

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right. Next up, here is an email that came to us from a listener named Lewis, or Louie, I suppose. He wonders, essentially, whether it is ever right to commit a crime in order to prevent another crime.

Oh, here we go.

So I’ll read an excerpt from the email. He says:

“A couple of years ago, circa 2016, I had an idea I pursued, abandoned, and have wondered about ever since. I started guessing private keys of a well-known blockchain using some heuristics that I thought some less-aware people might try to use to generate their addresses. It worked quite well, and I found one address with several thousand dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency on it. Most of the accounts I found had transactions on them that had been completely emptied. And when checking the accounts that had emptied them, they were marked as fraudulent by several blockchain explorers.

“So, to recap, I had found a stack of gold, and it was only a matter of time before a bad guy swooped in and stole it. After some deliberation with my parents and girlfriend, now wife, I decided that the safest course of action was to do nothing. What do you think should have been the best and legally sound reaction? Inaction? Taking the tokens as my own? Donating them to charity? Or maybe something else I have not thought about?”

What do you guys make of this?

Yeah, this is not complicated to me. Just stay out of the mess. It’s like jumping into a meeting with a bunch of mobsters and being like, “What’s this? This is a moral quandary. Should I join in with them, or should I just leave?”

Mm-hmm.

This is actually the plot of No Country for Old Men.

Yeah. I have to say, we should disqualify this for not being a hard question. This is just: Do not commit a crime, and hopefully that will save you.

Now, I will say, as far as some advice—

Yeah.

—on what they could do that would be productive with this, some blockchain projects, a lot of tech projects, have these kinds of bug bounty programs. If you discover a security flaw in their system, you can contact them and say, “Hey, I’m a security researcher, and I found this bug,” and sometimes they will pay you money for doing that. So if this blockchain project, whatever it was, has a bug bounty program, this person could actually turn that in and make the whole system safer for everyone—

Great idea.

—and maybe get a reward out of it.

That’s a great idea, Kevin. Do that.

So one last one before we get to our AI questions. This is from a listener who wonders: When did headphones become optional?

Hi, my name is Sarah, and I’m calling from Stratford, Ontario, Canada. I have noticed that there’s an epidemic these days of people watching videos out loud on their phones in public—in restaurants, movie theaters, on trains—and I’ve tried various ways to politely ask people if they have headphones or if they could turn off the sound on their games or videos on their phones, to varying degrees of success. Often, people are quite rude to me and just flat-out say no. So I was wondering how you would handle this. Thank you.

I love this question. Ed Helms, how would you handle this?

It sounds like she’s handling it exactly right. You say something, and I rarely see this. I did see it on an airplane recently, and I was stunned, because on an airplane you have to listen so loud.

Right.

This person had their phone just cranked all the way up, watching a basketball game or something, super loud. And, yeah, I think her approach—

Did you say something?

—her approach... I didn’t. I was a few rows back. It wasn’t that bad. For me, it wasn’t that bad, but I could tell it was crazy. But, yeah, I don’t get it. I feel like there are just some people who don’t understand how awful that is.

It’s so true. The reason I was so excited to get this question is because I see this all the time now. I just spent 2 weeks in New York. I would say every other subway car I was on, somebody was doing exactly this thing. The behavior seems insane to me.

I’m an extremely conflict-avoidant person. I would never once think to do what Sarah did and actually ask these people to maybe turn it down, although that does seem like the right thing to do. So I don’t know what I could do. The only thing I’m left thinking you could do is try to guess this person’s private keys and steal their crypto. What would you do?

Or put your own headphones on.

Yeah, yeah.

What I would do, and I don’t encounter this that much, because I don’t spend a lot of time in places where this is going on, but—

Kevin only takes private cars everywhere.

No. No, but I think my strategy, if the earnest request to put on headphones or turn down the volume failed, I think I would just start asking them questions. I’d be like, “Hey, what game are you playing there?” “What are the rules of Temple Run?” “What’s your high score?”

Yeah.

“You just troll them.”

Yeah, like, “I see you’re watching a basketball game. Fill me in. Who are the hot draft picks this season?” Eventually, maybe they just catch on and get so annoyed that they turn it off and do something else.

I actually would love—I don’t think I could ever do that, but I would love to observe you doing that.

It is crazy because headphones are so cheap at this point. I mean, you can get earbuds for $15, I bet. And yet, it seems like the cheaper they get, the more people are just saying, “You know what? The heck with it. Everybody can listen to the basketball game with me.”

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, the weird thing, too, is when people are actually having conversations on speakerphone.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like, just hold it up to your—

Yes.

Well, they’ll hold the phone in front of their face like a little piece of pizza and talk into it with the speaker on.

Yes.

Just put it up to your ear.

Again, in New York, I saw multiple people just walking down the street, FaceTiming with people, and I’m like, is it because you look so cool walking through the streets of New York and you really want people to have the visual? I do not understand. You’re so likely to just fall into an open manhole cover.

It’s true.

Anyway.

That is always happening.

Yeah.

All right. When we come back, we will tackle your hard questions about AI, including a worker who fears backlash for using AI at work, and a boyfriend who worries that AI could doom his relationship.

Uh-oh.

Well, Ed, every time Casey and I talk about AI on the show, we have to do our AI disclosures, so we'll do them real quick in our best speed read. I work at The New York Times. We're just suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright violations related to the training of AI systems.

And my boyfriend works at Anthropic.

Ed, do you have a disclosure about AI that you'd like to add?

No.

Okay.

I'm terrified of it. I'm terrified—

Okay. No, that's good.

I feel like the singularity's around the corner, and I'm absolutely petrified. So I like AI, I guess, is how I hedge that.

Yeah. No, that's a good disclosure.

6. AI Changes The Workplace

Okay, so one clear theme that has emerged from the questions that our listeners submitted is that there is a lot of uncertainty around how and when to use AI at work. So our next 2 listeners are both grappling with that subject, but from quite different perspectives. Let's start with the perspective of a manager. This comes to us from Scott K., who asks, “Should I call out a junior person using AI and be a hypocrite?” His email reads, “As a team lead, I sometimes use AI to help brainstorm solutions when my developers hit a wall, but every so often I'll see one of my junior developers magically land on the exact same AI-suggested solution, and it's painfully obvious they didn't invent it themselves. And then I'm stuck thinking, ‘Do I call them out and ask, “Hey, walk me through your thought process here,”’ while fully aware that I'm over here secretly tag-teaming with AI myself?” So what do you think about this? Is it hypocritical to call out a junior employee for using AI when you are using it yourself?

Yes, it is. But I also think that we're just in this early moment with AI, and we haven't quite figured out how to navigate these things. It seems like maybe everyone should just be owning their AI use a little more transparently, but that sort of diminishes the magic of AI. I guess people are thrilled to present things as their own ideas.

I think this is sort of a strange question for this reason. Most of the developers I know who are using AI understand that everyone is using AI, and that if you solved a problem using AI, most people would be like, “Yeah, we're all solving problems with AI.” I'm curious: if Scott were here right now, I would say, “Why is this an issue? Is it that the junior dev is suggesting really bad suggestions from the AI?” Because if that's the case, then I think AI isn't really the issue, right? The issue is that your junior colleague is bringing bad ideas into the workplace, and that is worth calling out and saying, “Hey, this actually wouldn't work, and here's why.”

Yeah, I agree with you both. I think we just need to presume that, unless specified otherwise, people are going to start using AI in their jobs, basically whatever their job is. I was hearing a talk from the economist Tyler Cowen the other day, who teaches at George Mason University, and was talking about how he now requires all of his students to use an AI chatbot for their assignments, and he doesn't consider it plagiarism. He just grades the finished product. And I think that's how we should evaluate work at our jobs, too: Is it good or not? If it's not good, then you used AI wrong or you didn't use it in the right ways. And if it's good and you used AI, more power to you. What matters is the finished product.

I just am not sure, especially in an academic context, if the finished product represents how educated the student is on the subject, and that that's what the grade should reflect. An educational environment is not a widget-making—

Yeah.

I guess that's right. I mean, that's definitely a fringe position in academia, where we still do care that people are thinking things through on their own. But in the context of a software team—

Yeah.

At a big company, what matters is whether the code compiles.

Yes. For sure.

Not whether—

For sure in that context.

You used a certain tool. So—

But do you worry, though, like, as somebody with kids, that they're going to get to school and they're going to be using ChatGPT for everything and they might not develop the critical thinking skills you want them to have?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it goes back to what I was saying before about just the generation of creative things. I work in an industry where the people who are good at that are really rewarded for it, and it's highly competitive. But when no one is as good as the AI, then not only does the question emerge, “What's the point of doing it if the AI can just keep doing it better?” The other, darker question is, “What's the point of learning to do it or studying the art forms?”

Right.

And I mean, that's a very dystopian long view, but it's not something I'm worried about in the near term for my kids. But I do feel like that's kind of—

I would just be happier if it let me learn more easily. In The Matrix, when Keanu's like, “I know kung fu,” because they just uploaded it into his brain, I would also like to know kung fu—

I would love that.

—and put that amount of effort into it, you know?

And I will say, I'm a musician. I really struggle to remember song lyrics. I can't wait until I can put on glasses and just read song lyrics and suddenly have 1,000 songs at my disposal. That sounds really, really fun and cool.

Totally.

All right, we're going to get emails from people who say that they've invented this, so we'll pass those along to you.

Okay, great.

All right, now let's consider the perspective of somebody who is just starting out in their career. This listener asked to be anonymous for fear of backlash from colleagues, but she emailed the following: “What do you all think about people who are AI snobs? I am a NASA scientist, and surprisingly, I found that for an organization full of scientists, there is a lot of snobbery over being better than using AI. People basically act like those who use AI are too stupid to solve problems themselves, and that they are smarter than everyone else because they are capable of an existence free of AI assistance. I've even heard, quote, ‘Even if AI can help you solve a problem faster, why would you avoid the cognitive stimulus? That's the whole fun of being alive.’” So I guess my question is, how do you respond to people who keep acting like they are better than you simply because they don't use AI?

Wow.

Have you heard a version of this, Ed?

No, I'm not sure I've heard this bubble up.

Yeah.

My hunch is that those people are probably lying—that they are using AI behind closed doors—but I haven't encountered anti-AI snobbery.

Oh, I have. I think there are people who are reacting this way basically as a fear response. They worry that if they use AI and it makes them smarter, then maybe they weren't that smart to begin with, or maybe they're going to lose their job. I think there are a lot of reasons that people react this way to AI, including the fact that they just cannot believe that a computer could do what they do better than them.

Hmm.

And everyone seems to have a version of this for their own job. Everyone kind of thinks that—

You're right. Yep.

AI's going to take everyone else's jobs, but me, I'm the special one, and what I do can't be replicated. And I see that attitude a lot.

Yeah, I mean, this is one where I want to be careful because, look, I do believe if you have a job and you don't want to use AI, you don't have to use AI if you don't want to.

If you love the cognitive stimulus of everything you're doing, that's great. You probably have a great job. How should you relate to people who do use AI? I would say with kindness, particularly if they're using it well.

I think a lot of folks, and I would include myself among these people, do feel like it's giving me at least some kind of advantage in some set of things. So I do believe that over the long run, more and more people are gonna come around because they're gonna see people like our emailer here just doing well at their jobs, and they're going to assume that not just the AI but all the productivity tools that they're using are helping them get a little bit of an advantage. So, yeah, I guess that's my answer to that one.

That's a very kind and empathetic response that both of you have given. There's also the option of just trolling your coworkers. Like, you could go over with an abacus—

Yeah.

—and take away their calculator and say, “I just didn't want to deprive you of the cognitive stimulus of using the abacus by taking this cheap shortcut.”

You know what? Let me take the abacus.

Yeah.

Just use all cognitive power.

That's good.

Yes.

7. AI Complicates Relationships

All right, so we have 2 related final questions that I think get at the heart of how AI is complicating many people's deepest and most meaningful relationships. Let's play the first video.

Hey, Kevin, Casey, and Ed. Dan here from Chicago. I'm a devout listener of the show. I recently started a new relationship, and after sharing an episode of Hard Fork with my girlfriend, I realized that she hates AI. She has a visceral negative reaction anytime I mention something AI-related, unless it's Adobe Illustrator or A.1. Steak Sauce. And it makes her so uncomfortable that she doesn't even want to entertain a thought about it.

Now, this has become a real point of tension because I use AI in my everyday personal and professional life, and I'm really interested in these thornier questions around the future of work, society, and what it means to be human in this new era. So how can I navigate a situation where I can't even bring up something that is so intrinsic to my life with my significant other? Kevin, I'm especially curious to hear your thoughts given that AI almost broke up your relationship too. Thanks, guys.

Great question. Kevin, what are your thoughts?

So, look, I have a lot of sympathy for this. I think a lot of people in my life are not as into AI as I am. My wife is sort of getting more interested in it. We talk about it sometimes, but for a long time it wasn't of immediate concern to her, and so it was sort of my thing.

And that's why it's so important when you're in that situation to start a podcast—because then you do actually have someone to talk about AI with without ruining your relationship.

Ed, what do you think?

Every relationship has things that are tough and that one person is into and another person isn't, and this feels very surmountable to me. At a certain point, the culture will probably start to—AI will start to just infiltrate his girlfriend's life in ways that make her more open to it. But even if not, it just seems like: find your buddy that you can have these conversations with.

Yeah. I have to confess this is not a problem I have in my relationship. If anything, the issue in my relationship is, could we talk about something other than AI? But I feel like in so many relationships there is a subject like this. Sports comes to mind. Maybe you're obsessed with the Golden State Warriors, and your partner isn't, and every time you bring it up, you see them rolling their eyes.

I just think this speaks to the fact that it helps to have people in your life other than your primary partner that you can just distribute the weight of your interests in.

Yeah. There are a lot of AI clubs popping up around the country. I've met people when I've been out doing various events who say, “Oh, I'm part of the local AI club,” and this is a thing that I think is starting to emerge over the last couple years. So maybe if there's one in Chicago, you could find the local AI club and join that and find a way to have a weekly discussion about these things.

What do people do at AI Club?

Casey, the first rule of AI Club is—

All right.

—you don't talk about AI Club.

I walked right into that one.

But I will give my earnest piece of advice here, because I think this is something really important: people don't automatically buy that AI is going to be meaningful to them until they see something that they struggle with in their life that it is useful at solving.

Mm.

So I think one thing that you could do if you're in a relationship where one partner cares a lot about AI and the other person hates it is just to figure out what they value. What things do they like doing? What do they struggle with? What are some places, maybe at their job or in their personal life, where they might be able to use AI?

And don't force it on them, but maybe take one of those problems and prompt an AI model with it and see if it solves something or does something interesting for them, and then show it to the partner. Maybe try to meet them where they are and make their interest organic rather than just pretending that they're into it for your sake.

Yeah, but I would also say: take no for an answer from your partner here, and maybe just cool it on the AI talk for a while. See if she brings it up at any point, and maybe then you'll have an entry point. But until then, I don't know if it's worth it.

All right. Let's go to our last question here. This comes from a listener who goes by Elle.

Let's take the L.

And Elle asks, “How do I help people get prepared for AI without totally freaking them out?”

Hi, Kevin and Casey. I'm Elle, and I live in the Deep South. Here's some context for my question. I've been getting anxious in conversations where AI comes up. I'm tech-avoidant but interested in tech forecasting because I wanna feel prepared for what's ahead.

But most people I know aren't as tuned in as I am, so I'm hesitant to share my realistic/grim take on the potential of AI. I don't wanna plant scary seeds in their brains. As a result, I'm feeling mentally and existentially isolated. I'm doing better at making the best of my time in case it's running out faster than I'd hoped, which is how we should live anyway, so that's positive.

On the other hand, I'm feeling distant from my peers and loved ones in a way that is hard to articulate. What should I say to my loved ones if it comes up? I want them to be mentally prepared, but not super sad. Living in the moment, but worried about frightening others, Elle.

Now, Ed, I'm curious to hear your take on this, because it sounds like you may have a version of this yourself. You mentioned earlier that you are worried about the singularity, and you're—

Right.

—sort of terrified that it might be coming soon. So what should Elle do about trying to live in the moment, take advantage of the time that we have, but also avoid freaking out her friends and family?

It's hard not to talk about something that is scaring you or that you're obsessing over. And this may sound glib, but I think she could benefit from a therapist.

Yeah.

Someone that she really can explore these feelings with and help her process them, and also give her an outlet where she's not burdening friends and family with that. Because the other thing is, none of us really know what's coming, and there are a lot of AI optimists out there, and maybe they're right. So to be Chicken Little and gloom and doom, as much as it's not a choice sometimes, feels a little premature.

And again, finding an outlet—a therapist, perhaps—to explore these feelings could be good. I'm glad you said that. I had the same thought. This really could benefit from therapy. And I guarantee you, Elle, you will not be the only person talking about your fears about an AI future in therapy.

I think it's actually quite common here in the Bay Area for folks to talk to their therapist about that. While I totally understand you're hesitant to bring everybody down with your fears about AI, I do think that part of living in a democracy is bringing up the things that you're concerned about.

And there's no reason why you couldn't take, maybe, break it into small chunks and talk to your friends about things that you see out there that worry you. So if you see that all of a sudden the chatbots have gotten super sycophantic and you're reading stories about people having mystical experiences with chatbots and convincing themselves that they're the Messiah, and you worry about that technology being used by young people, let's say, there's no reason why you shouldn't talk about that.

In fact, I think you should talk about it, and I think one reason why we started this show, Kevin, was we like talking about these issues, and we wanna get other people talking about them. So I totally hear you, Elle, on not wanting to be a bummer, but I think everyone's allowed to be a bummer at least 10 or 20% of the time, don't you, Kevin?

Yeah.

Although I should say, I spend a lot of time talking with people about AI in my life, and I have found that when I'm in my gloomiest mood about it, when I'm feeling like my P(doom) is quite high, I tend not to have good conversations with people because they come away feeling like we're all screwed and there's nothing we can do about it. It sort of strips agency away from them when I talk—

Mm.

—about it like that. Whereas when I'm feeling more optimistic, I tend to have conversations that are rooted in wanting to help people understand things, make them excited, or give them some hope for the future. And I think that when you give people a sense that they are not just inexorably marching toward this future that they have no control over, it just goes a lot better.

My advice for the AI doom crowd is always not to frame things in terms of what will happen no matter what, but to sketch out paths for people and say, “Well, if we make good decisions, it could go in a really good way. And if we don't, it could go in a really bad way.” But it's very important not to make people think that they just have no choice in the matter.

Mm. Hmm. Well said.

What do you think, Ed?

I don't know. I'm getting anxious talking about it, honestly, but in what I think is a good, healthy way. I do really like what you said, Casey, that we're allowed to be a bummer sometimes, and it is important to be honest about where we're at with things with our communities and the people who care about us and love us—and also, if it's really feeling like an excessive burden, to seek help and assistance with it, whatever form that takes.

Absolutely. Well, before we go, Ed, we want to give you the opportunity: Do you have a hard question you'd like to ask Kevin and me? Anything going on with technology, any dilemma you've confronted recently that we can offer you our expert assistance with?

8. Tech Support Shows Love

Let's see. I give my mom, who's 85, a lot of tech support, and it can be quite frustrating. I would love some advice on moving through that with grace—

Mm. Mm-hmm.

—and also to what extent it's necessary. There are times when it feels like maybe this is just not something to get figured out, and is that okay?

Hmm. Kevin, what are your thoughts about that?

Yeah, so I have shifted my views on this recently. My mom also requires some tech support from time to time, and I'm not physically there, in the same place as her, so I often end up doing it over the phone. What I have found useful is to just fix things for her.

Yeah.

Do not try to walk her through it. The next time I am in the same place as her, just take her phone and fix all the things she doesn't like—

There you go.

—and do it very quickly, and make it very hard for her to undo those fixes.

Mm-hmm.

Basically, I think that there is a point at which people just do not want to learn the entire process of changing some settings on something. So if you can just set it up for them, they are eternally grateful, and you save yourself and them a lot of grief.

I think that is a perfect answer. The only thing that I would add to it is, to the extent that you feel like your mom may have any curiosity about technology, I do think it's fun to nurture it a little bit. Yes, I think you're almost always going to be better off just fixing it. That's just an act of love that you can give your parents, fixing things for them.

But you can also see if, in the process of fixing it, you might share a little bit about how it works or what you think is interesting about it, and see if that sparks anything for them. Maybe they'll go off and learn a little something themselves. I have to say, I talked to my mom this week, and she told me that she had just used Claude to pick out some songs to put on a playlist for her 50th wedding anniversary party, which is coming up in a couple of months.

I was beaming with pride because she had had a good experience. She did think that it was too sycophantic, which actually worried her. She sent me a screenshot. She was like, “This thing is being way too nice to me.”

What did it say?

It was like, “You can't be having your 50th wedding anniversary. You're only 40 years old.”

That's right. It was something in that neighborhood. But what I loved about it was, in the process of me talking to her all the time about AI, she was sort of like, “You know what? Let me investigate and see if this thing could do anything for me.” I think that is a really nice gift we can give our parents, too.

Amen. I do think that tech support is a great expression of love—

Yes.

—tech support.

It's the least we can do for our moms and other—

After what we put them through.

—parental figures. Exactly.

You better believe it.

All right, Ed Helms, thank you so much for joining us. Ed, this was great.

Thanks so much for having me, guys.

I feel like we made it out of this without a single snafu, and that was important to me.