Episode 223 - The Web Of AI

Jen and Noam take a (slight) break from discussing the depressing political news to talk about important things, like the controversies surrounding data centers and generative AI and the new Spider-Man movie. Important things.  We get a bit into the drama surrounding the YouTube content creator Hank Green, who has for some reason self canceled over his sin of….using ChatGPT to do his grunt work so that he can have more time to make more content. Yeah, we don't understand either. We also get into the thornier issue of authors allegedly using genAI in their writing, which has become a flashpoint in the anti-AI space. The issue is, who is to say if an author used genAI, the AI? Readers? Publishing houses? And at the end of the day, does it really matter to consumers, or is this the latest cause as identity?  And of course we do a fairly in depth discussion of the new Spider-Man movie Brand New Day, which brings us all the way back to episode 0 of this podcast when we talked about No Way Home. Ah, the nostalgia. Warning - we do spoilers so if you don't want any of that (and have somehow managed to miss spoilers elsewhere) then save the back half of this episode for after you've seen the movie.