Episode 10: Better Off Regulated, with Ed Zitron

[upbeat music] Welcome back to Dreaming Against the Machine. I'm your host, Adam Becker. This week's guest is Ed Zitron, who I'm tempted to say needs no introduction. He is perhaps the most prominent critic of the AI industry. He is the host of the podcast Better Offline, where I've been a guest a couple of times. He is a very outspoken guy and a, a, a bit of a, a bit of a curmudgeon. And so on this week's episode, I ask him, because this is Dreaming Against the Machine and not Better Offline, I ask him what he would like to see from the AI industry and from the tech industry, rather than just criticize it. Not that criticism is, is a bad thing. I engage in it all the time. But, you know, we're trying to think about what a good future might look like, and Ed's answer was pretty interesting, and I think you're gonna enjoy this conversation. Let's get to it. [upbeat music] Ed, welcome to Dreaming Against the Machine.

Hello.

Good to have you here.

Good to, good to be here. I was about to say good to have you here-

[laughs]

... but I guess, I guess it is.

Yeah, sure.

It is good?

Yeah. No, it's good. It's good to have the-

We love Adam.

[laughs] Jesus. [laughs]

Hit, hit 'em with the Trump impression five seconds in.

Oh, God.

That's, that's how we're gonna do here. But I'll h- I'll have it, I'll have it again before the end of the time as well. I'll hit the Musk one as well.

Yeah, it's gonna set the tone for the show. Is that your cat?

Yes. The, the, my cat that randomly will sleep for most of the day but also sometimes join for an entire video, which is more f- more fun than it looks but also far more annoying than it looks too.

Okay, hold on. Before we jump into it then, we, we gotta know, like, what's your cat's name? What's your cat's deal?

His name's Howl.

Howl.

Like Howl's Moving Castle.

Yes. Good. Fantastic.

And he is a big white and ginger ragdoll, and he is a big an- he's big, beautiful, and annoying, just like Daddy.

[laughs]

Oh. He's now trying to drink my Diet Coke, just like me.

Incredible. Okay. Well, Ed, I'm glad you're here. This is gonna be interesting because, like, I've been on your show a couple of times. We've talked before. We've met. But on, on your show, I feel like we complain about a lot of things, and on this show, we try-

Yeah

... to talk about what a good future could look like. But that also often ends up involving complaining about a lot of things.

Yeah.

So I was thinking that today we could talk a little bit about something that [laughs] we both hate and see if we can turn that into something that we like, uh, or, or see if we can turn that-

Okay

... into having a conversation about things that we would like to have happen. So let's start by talking about this upcoming SpaceX IPO.

Right.

Because that looks, to me, like nonsense.

It does, and I think the fact we still haven't seen an S1 is completely insane.

Okay. Can you explain to me what an S1 is?

So it's the paperwork you file when you go to go public, and usually we see it months in advance. We have yet to see it. We've seen various reports from various outlets that I assume are run by cowards who refuse to publish these things. But it's very weird because those reports that I've seen about it