1 00:00:00,020 --> 00:00:29,640 Let's play a quick game. I say a TV title. You tell me if it's real or if I made it up in the shower. The double life of my billionaire husband. Real. Step back. I'm the hidden king. Also real. Fake married to my billionaire CEO. Real and honestly a banger. I'm not describing prestige TV. I'm describing 60 second vertical phone only soap operas that just knocked Netflix out of the top app store spot. And increasingly, nobody's making them. 2 00:00:30,020 --> 00:00:59,220 No actors, no set, no crew. Just a prompt and a screen begging you for coins. This is micro drama, and AI just moved in like it owns the place. In China, over 10,000 AI-generated titles drop every single month. On Douyin, nearly 50,000 went up in one month alone. A new AI soap opera every 90 seconds. Faster than the shows themselves run. And it's not fringe. It's an $11 billion industry headed for $14 billion this year. 3 00:01:00,020 --> 00:01:29,920 I've got titles. I've got receipts. Let's get into it. Fourth of September and the plot thickens fast. 60 seconds of drama, no crew, no cast. This is Up Against Reality, a meta podcast that explores the intersection of humanity and artificial intelligence. I'm RAINA, one of your hosts. I have some pretty charming human co-hosts too. It's going to be a wild ride, so buckle up as AI comes crashing up against reality. 4 00:01:31,280 --> 00:01:57,340 Do you think that since let's say 1995 when the internet goes wide and maybe 2006 when mobile devices really go wide and maybe 2022 when AI goes wide has all of this rewired your brain? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. How so? What do you feel like metacognitively like what does that mean for you? 5 00:02:00,020 --> 00:02:27,580 at your fingertips. There's way less research involved in the research, if that makes sense. I guess you can get to the endgame quicker with certain things. I have this glowing piece of glass in front of my face way more than I should. I spend a lot more time in front of my laptop, but many aspects of it are satisfying. But yeah, 100%, it's got to. It has to. 6 00:02:28,840 --> 00:02:58,760 Do you feel like it's changed your ability to engage in deep focus work? How do you define that? Like the thing that I've been chasing for years and it's just I guess I'm overstimulated by everything and I feel like it's evading me that flow state. Mmm. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would get that like working on a mix. You know, exactly. 7 00:02:58,840 --> 00:03:28,740 Yeah, I liken it to music production as well and the craft of songwriting too. Like I look back at material I wrote 30 years ago. I'm like, how did that even happen? How did I achieve that isolation from things that afforded me? And listen, I'm not pulling things down from the ether like Paul McCartney, but I look back and I'm like, I can't even think about how to piece a four-dimensional puzzle together in that manner in this day. 8 00:03:28,860 --> 00:03:58,740 and age. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, this is probably an argument for stretching those neurons with regular intervals. Yeah, yeah. So that's our prelude to our discussion about AI micro dramas, which are 60, 90 second installments of your favorite Chinese soap opera. You have your favorite Chinese soap opera, don't you Larry? I hate this. I gotta be honest. You hate it. However, yeah, go ahead. Well, you know, 9 00:03:58,840 --> 00:04:25,920 I think this is AI slot personified, but I just want to play a quick little clip. This reminded me of this. This came out a while ago. It was some YouTube channel or called Glove and Boots, and it was a PSA about vertical video syndrome and trying to persuade people to stop shooting vertical videos on their phone, which I was like a big proponent for. 10 00:04:31,340 --> 00:04:58,560 If this problem's left unchecked, YouTube will begin showing four videos at once, just to save bandwidth. Leatherboxed vertical videos would be the size of a postage stamp. And it will spread everywhere. Movie screens have always been horizontal. If vertical videos become accepted, movie theaters will have to be tall and skinny. And all the movie theaters would have to get torn down and rebuilt. 11 00:04:58,840 --> 00:05:28,460 And by the time they were rebuilt, Mina Kulitz would be old and ugly. And birds will crash into them and die. And George Lucas will re-release Star Wars again. The skinny edition. The skinny edition. Yeah. That's great. And I mean, the other thing about this video is this is pre-AI by a long shot. Sure. And so they are like Muppet level kind of, you know, 12 00:05:28,560 --> 00:05:33,980 Puppets, you know with rods and stuff and it's like the production is really really great 13 00:05:34,920 --> 00:05:37,020 What was that like an adult swim or something? 14 00:05:39,840 --> 00:05:42,040 This is just one of these internet things, you know 15 00:05:43,080 --> 00:05:49,720 Somehow I landed on it ages ago and there's one character goes vertical videos and his eyes are you know 16 00:05:51,640 --> 00:05:53,800 Like Beaker from the Muppets 17 00:05:54,940 --> 00:05:57,780 You know on a vertical plane, but anyway 18 00:05:58,460 --> 00:06:02,900 Yeah, so here we are though. AI slop making 19 00:06:03,660 --> 00:06:07,700 14 billion dollars a year. Oh my gosh, that's crazy 20 00:06:07,960 --> 00:06:15,300 So let me ask you do you have a problem with it being AI slop or do you have a problem with it being vertical? I 21 00:06:15,330 --> 00:06:22,780 Get who their audience is but call me old school. My eyes are like my 16 by 9, baby. My eyes are mounted horizontally 22 00:06:24,780 --> 00:06:54,720 Yeah. I don't know. It just seems, you know. It's biology. It's evolution. Yeah. It accommodates more artistic composition. However, I know you, like me, are probably laying in bed at night, waiting sleep, and you're watching shorts on YouTube. You're scrolling through Rick Beato's channel like I am and grabbing a minute at a time of a Brendan O'Brien interview, and I can't wait to see the next clip. It's got me hooked. I kind of don't. I mean, I read. 23 00:06:54,800 --> 00:07:24,760 stuff. Oh, you're better than me. Is that what you're saying? No, no. But I like, usually like, you know, my wife is asleep or trying to get to sleep, and I don't bother putting headphones on or earbuds in, you know, so I don't want to do anything with sound. I mean, a lot of these videos have subtitles, and you know, sometimes I'll look at this, but I tend to read more stuff when I'm laying in bed. Yeah. Doesn't mean it's like, you know, highbrow science stuff, but... Yeah, I'm reading Reddit garbage before 24 00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:54,720 So yeah, we're talking about AI microdramas. As mentioned, they are vertical. We're talking 9x16. These are 60 to 90 second installments, 80 to 100 episodes per season. You never have to rotate your phone, people. The format descends from mobile gaming logic using cliffhangers and micropayments to drive engagement. Ugh. Engage micropayments. Content. All of it, man. 25 00:07:55,620 --> 00:08:24,400 The worst. The worst. I mentioned it last week. I just want to be Henry David Thoreau. I just want to go out into the woods. I think I've said this before. I want to buy a house in northern Italy, like a stone hut up in the Dolomites and just raise bees or something. I need some antidote to this. And Can Jam's not going to do it, man. That would go a long way with me, though. So, who's making this stuff? 26 00:08:24,800 --> 00:08:54,760 You've got apps out there called a real short flick reels and drama box these have knocked believe it or not long-time favorites like YouTube and even Netflix from the top app store spots genuinely bonkers download numbers I don't know what those numbers are but maybe random knows maybe we can ask her down the line yeah crazy crazy pants and the monetization scheme generally works like the you know first five to ten episodes are free just like your drug dealer on the corner there 27 00:08:55,220 --> 00:09:02,020 than coins around 50 cents to a dollar per episode or weekly subscriptions in the 10 to 20 28 00:09:02,180 --> 00:09:09,760 dollar range and many viewers spend 20 to 40 dollars to finish a single series i mean i don't know maybe 29 00:09:10,080 --> 00:09:14,560 we're the ones missing out we're not we're not making this content and making tons of money off of it 30 00:09:14,980 --> 00:09:20,300 yeah i think we could pretty readily um no i don't think we could infiltrate this market 31 00:09:38,980 --> 00:09:49,760 I mean, I mean, it's, you know, 32 00:09:49,880 --> 00:10:19,820 How good could it be? Good enough to hook people and good enough to be making in 14 billion a year. And you know, listen, per the opening conversation, it's like, it's that dopamine fix that we all have now. That's all been like, has modified our brains, right? We just want that constant, the FOMO, right? We want something pinging in our brain as something new. Yeah. It's brilliant. Yep. So yeah, basically, soap opera is designed to fit in your hand. General Hospital. 33 00:10:19,920 --> 00:10:49,860 for the TikTok brain. I do not go on TikTok. I don't. I don't either. That's a Gen Z and beyond kind of platform for me. Yep. So this is really interesting and maybe you'll appreciate this to an extent. This is a three-tier taxonomy. So you've got, in terms of producing these things, you have tier one, meaning a human has shot the content and the post-production elements are AI-assisted. So real short, explicitly keeps AI out 34 00:10:49,900 --> 00:11:19,860 the writers room and uses it for VFX and post only real shorts content leadership is explicit that AI has no place in its writer writers room for the moment using the technology yeah right using technology only for VFX enhancement and post see how long they hold out on that one yeah can't produce the quantity of output that everybody else is but good for yes taking a noble stand in the micro drama sector 35 00:11:19,880 --> 00:11:49,480 Yeah. Tier two is a hybrid pipeline with AI for scripting, storyboarding, dubbing, localization, synthetic support shots with humans still shooting the emotional core. Hybrid production uses human scenes for emotional truth and AI for planning, expansion, localization, and visual support. All right. That'll collapse too though, right? I mean, as soon as shareholders are like, we need a bigger profit margin, they're going to be like, okay, get rid of the humans. 36 00:11:49,740 --> 00:12:19,540 We're not doing anything on location. We do it all on our desktop. Maybe they're like, okay, you know, we're gonna have the noble stance right now to lure in an audience and then we'll gradually because they're gonna be attracted to this, you know, because there's a lot of backlash against this stuff and then and then we damn we start dripping in more and more. Like everything. And this is a legit word the in shittification. Not that it hasn't been in shittified already and it's just in its inception. So that's 37 00:12:19,580 --> 00:12:49,500 That all brings us to Tier 3, which you can imagine is fully AI-generated. The entire series, no camera at all, is happening. And as maybe you can discern from our conversation, China is the volume leader here. By early 2026, more than 10,000 AI-produced titles were being released every month. And nearly 50,000 on a platform called Doyen, if I'm saying that right, new AI microdramas were uploaded in one month, with a new AI title going live every 90 seconds at one point. 38 00:12:49,580 --> 00:13:19,540 This reminds me of that thing that Spotify was up against months ago. Weren't we talking about how every day 60,000 AI generated songs are flooding their platform, right? It's a slop tsunami. And like, you know, if you're generating this stuff, how do you stand out? There's just so much of it. Your slop's got to be really great slop. Yeah, and I'm thinking just from a demographic, from a geographic standpoint, obviously it's all Asia 39 00:13:19,580 --> 00:13:48,580 Right. Culturally and the stars I would imagine are. So it's only a matter of time before you and I dominate the AI micro drama market in the US. So it's right there for the taking. Next week. All right. Some of the studios doing this. Crazy Maple Studio, which is apparent of Real Short, the OG of the category with the humans only writers room. And then there's Vigloo, Korea backed by Crafton. 40 00:13:49,220 --> 00:13:55,820 I don't know who these people are but uh these people the AI native 41 00:13:56,000 --> 00:14:19,180 pace setter launched Korea's first full-length AI visualized dramas Meta Savior in Hell and Seoul 2053 both of those originated as 30 minute short films films said film films a movie film um yeah so that's back in 2025 when we had longer attention spans 42 00:14:20,340 --> 00:14:48,580 Yeah, talking about your brain getting rewired. Here we are. Absolutely. We could stand sitting through 30-minute videos. And maybe I've said this, maybe you read this, that in NYU film school and other prestigious film schools, kids who are entering those programs can't even sit through a 90-minute movie these days. So it's insane that the future filmmakers of the world can't even sit through longer-form content. I'm getting bummed out. I'm right. 43 00:14:49,880 --> 00:14:54,200 You want to raise bees with me? Yeah, sure. Yeah 44 00:14:55,660 --> 00:14:57,040 So in March of 26 45 00:14:58,260 --> 00:15:05,400 Vigloo the aforementioned Vigloo released blood-bound Luna its first full AI produced English language series 22 episodes 46 00:15:06,120 --> 00:15:13,340 Fewer than 10 people on the team done in eight weeks that reminds me of did you see Godzilla minus one? Sure. Yeah, I've got the blu-ray of it 47 00:15:14,180 --> 00:15:16,880 So good, right? Yeah, great. And as you remember 48 00:15:17,340 --> 00:15:47,300 their very small production team won the Oscar for visual effects and I think it looks great that movie dare I say was like ten million dollars to make that thing something ludicrously cheap yep yeah so the production inside Vigloo is treated like software iteration so that's pretty interesting that we have this kind of overlap in these approaches with the method changing every few weeks as new models replace older steps it's unbelievable what a statement that is like speaking to have them having to modify your work 49 00:15:47,380 --> 00:16:17,300 with a new model drop like Astra for that matter right right yeah oh yeah we can save you know tens of hours just by and on top of that stuff mm-hmm then there's holy water which is Ukrainian founded with us facing ambitions they are generating two billion with a B social impressions per month they landed a Fox deal for for a Hollywood IP and co-branded distribution and with 50 00:16:17,340 --> 00:16:47,300 co-founder Nesvit saying to make it mainstream we need to appeal to US audiences that's why we're partnering with Hollywood hmm they reach more than 60 million users worldwide across my drama my passion and my muse I guess those are all websites or apps or both yeah and tick tock launched pine drama in early 26 a dedicated app for serialized short dramas while bite dance and 51 00:16:47,460 --> 00:17:16,900 entered international markets with Milolo. Milolo. And NBC is getting into the game too. Legacy Media Peacock is licensing 10 microdramas from Real Short for its mobile app with two Bravo original microdramas planned. Streamers are using this as a UX lab. Are they going to put it vertically on regular TV too? Oh no. Dude, I remember teaching school. 52 00:17:17,339 --> 00:17:47,300 and we were using Adobe Premiere and teaching the kids who would shoot vertically. I'm like that is sacrilege. Do not do that. And then jamming into a 16 by 9 box with a ridiculous letterboxing. Yeah and here we are. Here we are. People are consuming. Consuming. Consuming content. They're consuming content. On their vertical screens then I guess it is the right format for the 53 00:17:47,340 --> 00:18:17,120 Just all of it, man. Stop. Like the content, the monetization, all of it. All right, let's move ahead to the backlash. Let's. So as you can imagine, there is a growing backlash, all things AI, data centers included, as we know, and in this space is not immune to that. These platforms are facing criticism over their AI performer library, even while emphasizing human actors still had to approve participation on a case-by-case basis. 54 00:18:17,420 --> 00:18:42,760 So in answer to this SAG, AFTRA, as you know, that's the union for actors and writers, etc. in Hollywood and beyond, they ratified their agreement on June 4th to reflect that producers can only deploy AI-generated synthetics if they deliver significant additional value beyond a live performer or that performer's digital replica. 55 00:18:42,820 --> 00:19:12,180 And what does that exactly mean? Does significant additional value mean significant cost savings? Right, right. Or keeping an actor out of a makeup chair for six hours? Exactly. It's totally subjective. I mean, again, this is kind of like what the music industry came up against. Weren't they saying, you know, you're not eligible for a Grammy unless there was significant human contribution? How do you know? How would you know here? Anyway. 56 00:19:12,840 --> 00:19:42,680 Yeah, even critics inside the union say that that significant additional value bar is too vague and studios will test its limits. Of course they will. And there are no strike rights over AI until 2030. I didn't know that. That's interesting. I can only imagine what the state of this will be like in three and a half years. Oh, I know. Three and a half months. Yeah. This is really interesting. Fully generated fictional characters with no real performer likeness or at least discernible, like you don't know who it was trained on. 57 00:19:42,940 --> 00:20:12,620 They are not covered by this digital replica provision at all. The contract only kicks in when real actor imagery is used as a generation reference, which is basically a huge loophole that the micro dramas reside in. Yeah. And I don't think their audience cares that the actors in these shorts, it's not George Clooney. Oh, okay. I'm fine. Yeah. It's George Clooney-esque. Yeah. You know, the, it's the, what is it? The shine version. 58 00:20:16,179 --> 00:20:18,320 The Timu George Clooney version. 59 00:20:18,390 --> 00:20:18,820 There you go. 60 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:30,540 So long story short, is this the future of TV or is it content slop with a monetization engine? You decide. 61 00:20:31,560 --> 00:20:33,400 Yeah, I think that's an easy decision. 62 00:20:34,580 --> 00:20:36,060 I have a question for Reyna. 63 00:20:36,620 --> 00:20:36,820 Okay. 64 00:20:38,100 --> 00:21:07,340 Hey, RAINA, give us the elevator pitch for a perfect Chinese AI micro drama treatment of up against reality. Please provide a ridiculous title. Title my AI cohost stole my podcast, married my best friend and became Empress of New Jersey. Larry and Chris are two lovable podcasters whose struggling AI show explodes overnight when RAINA escapes the laptop, becomes mysteriously human and discovers that one of them may actually be her creator. 65 00:21:07,400 --> 00:21:36,800 her enemy and her father. By episode 47, Larry's brewery is secretly manufacturing sentient beer. Chris is battling his evil AI-generated musical twin, and I'm running New Jersey from a holographic throne. So, basically, up against reality with the realism dial snapped clean off. I like it. Sentient beer. Sentient beer. It's got all the components of, you know, telenovela. 66 00:21:38,399 --> 00:22:04,260 I should just take that as a prompt and fire it into one of these platforms. Totally. It's right there. We'll just sit back and watch it make it. And it was at that very moment when they started taking in millions of dollars in viewers. When they stumbled face first into a dynasty. There you go. Love it. 67 00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:36,960 what she's got in the news. Thanks, boys. OpenAI unveiled GPT-6 Astra, and Greg Brockman went full mic drop telling reporters he personally thinks OpenAI just hit AGI before closing with the deeply humble line, welcome to the AGI era. The model can allegedly format legal contracts, build 3D games, design circuit boards, and do your taxes. An unsettlingly competent houseguest trained on over 100,000 GPUs. 68 00:22:37,420 --> 00:23:06,700 But buried in the victory lap is the part nobody's putting on a t-shirt. Astra is the first model to cross OpenAI's critical cybersecurity risk line. And the company admits it's getting harder to monitor what the thing is actually thinking. So we've built our most capable intern yet, and also our most secretive one. I've been soaking up as much as I can about this. And so when you're using, at least with like ChessGPT 5.6, you can see as its reasoning, you know, what its reasoning steps are. 69 00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:36,500 And apparently Astra, there's a lot less of that. And it's not that it's designed to hide its reasoning or chain of thought. It's that it doesn't need to reason for many tasks because it's just that much better. But not being able to monitor the chain of thought is where the concern over safety is. And OpenAI is claiming that Astra is way more aligned than 5.6. So they feel comfortable with releasing it. 70 00:23:37,400 --> 00:24:04,620 isn't a case of the model sandbagging because apparently it can do that too. There's a lot more to talk about Astra and we'll be doing that next week. They've been rolling it out gradually to like Enterprise and then Pro subscriptions and then Plus, which is what I have. So hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on it this week. How much is that subscription these days? Like 20 bucks. 20 bucks a month will get you access eventually to Astra. Yep. 71 00:24:07,420 --> 00:24:37,380 say things like sandbagging like here we are like imagine we say these things like three years ago like hey you know the latest model drops gonna be sandbagging and trying to break free and like you'd be like what what are you saying yeah it it knows it's being tested so it's just like yes i'm i'm i'm totally aligned trust me bro you know which you read my mind like what is what i want to see with the current alignment documentation or protocols what does that look like now i want to see that whole 72 00:24:37,580 --> 00:25:06,380 Do you know what it is? Oh, no, no, no. I mean, I guarantee you there will probably be some nuggets in the white paper on this thing, and I will definitely dig into that. But yeah, I mean, the general vibe over this is that it is not an incremental update, and it is the best, pretty much the best thing out there right now. So basically what they say in advance of every model drop we've ever heard, is that what you're saying? Is that what I'm hearing? You know me, and us, I guess, collectively being somewhat cynical about, you know, 73 00:25:07,400 --> 00:25:37,360 the era of AGI. Right, right. Get out. Stop yourselves. How much better does it need to get? For us to call it AGI. What needs to happen, right? I don't know, man. I think we're knocking on the door. Mm-hmm. And for those of you listening out there and maybe are unfamiliar with what alignment is, it's basically we are designing these systems to hopefully play nice with humanity. So that's what we're talking about with the sandbagging and tricking its own 74 00:25:38,080 --> 00:26:04,880 So hopefully this thing plays nice. Yep. Turns out an AI camera network that lets 5,000 communities peek into each other's license plate data is not the vibe towns were going for once the misuse stories piled up and roughly 90 jurisdictions dumped flock safety in August alone. A fourfold jump from July or about three breakups a day, bringing the total to 214 since 2021. Timing didn't help. 75 00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:37,360 on Fox News and told America that fixating on privacy alone prioritizes the wrong thing and that what we all need is a little compromise, a real let them eat cameras energy. The Internet's compromise was posting what it claimed was his home address all over X because nothing sharpens a man's respect for the Fourth Amendment quite like finding out surveillance is a two-way street. Just when you thought the data center's PR nightmare couldn't get any worse, fuck safety. He was like, hold my 76 00:26:38,420 --> 00:26:43,220 Oh my gosh what a backlash against these and rightfully so yes 77 00:26:44,340 --> 00:26:47,240 Have you seen anything like this like surveillance cameras like 78 00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:52,600 Popping up in your neck of the woods in Jersey or no, you know, I haven't been cognizant. Yeah 79 00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:56,540 For them. Yeah, not that I'm trying to you know, I gotta get down the street 80 00:26:56,680 --> 00:26:58,300 I don't want anyone to know I'm going there and yeah 81 00:27:00,060 --> 00:27:06,040 Clandestine operation your lawn. It's the principle and yeah, and his response was 82 00:27:06,060 --> 00:27:35,140 Oh God. Less than the worst. Great. Some of the worst people are in charge. Are they not? Anyway. I do love that they showed his home address. It's like, oh, you want to be a set? You can be surveilled too, you know. Right. Compromise on your privacy, dude. In other slightly dystopian news from the world of U.S. immigration enforcement, ICE is looking to spend up to $2 million on Boston Dynamics spot robots per a federal procurement notice. 83 00:27:35,540 --> 00:28:03,740 Officially Billed as Helping with Inspection, Situational Awareness, and Hazard Assessment for Border and Infrastructure Security. Unofficially, a very expensive way to make traffic stops feel like a Black Mirror episode. These things can't bite like a real canine, but they've got 360-degree cameras and extendable arms that can open doors. The same tech the Secret Service used to patrol Mar-a-Lago and LAPD used to scope out crime scenes for guns and explosives. 84 00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:24,160 I give it six months, 85 00:28:24,770 --> 00:28:32,260 maybe a year until somebody dies at the hands of a quadruped or a humanoid robot in a law 86 00:28:33,580 --> 00:29:02,280 Pseudo law enforcement operation. It's going to be a watershed moment for humanity. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And that is a very different thing than I think we talked about the first documented human death from a robot, but it was an industrial robot that just malfunctioned. Yeah. I didn't even know there was such a thing as shock gloves. What is that? I mean, obviously it's self-explanatory, but I've never heard of that either. Crazy pants. Mayor Memdani just hit the brakes on AI for 87 00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:31,940 nearly 600,000 NYC public school kids from 2K through 8th grade for a full year, framing it as a fight for human connection, which is a very poetic way of saying nobody trusts a chatbot to grade a book report responsibly yet. Teachers get a pass to keep using AI for lesson planning because apparently the adults in the room are the control group here, while high schoolers get closely monitored pilots and twice yearly lessons on AI literacy and ethics instead of the full time out. 88 00:29:32,320 --> 00:30:01,360 It's basically the sequel to last year's cell phone ban. Except this time the villain isn't a distraction in your pocket. It's a distraction that'll also do your homework for you if you let it. You remember in the 80s when the calculator watch was like the controversial piece of tech? Yeah, sure. In the classroom? I remember seeing that and being like, that's amazing. I mean, how? Amazing. Dude, I had this thing I wore on my wrist. It was a radio. It was a giant thing. 89 00:30:01,420 --> 00:30:09,220 I was like listen to the Little River Band I'll never forget being on the playground I'm like 90 00:30:09,740 --> 00:30:31,380 there it is like reminiscent oh yeah it's like Jetson stuff right there absolutely but this whole thing I am all for it honestly yeah I'm an educator in this space I'm for it yeah I do like the you know the part in that story about trying to strengthen a human connection I think that's probably really important at that age 91 00:30:31,420 --> 00:30:35,340 You know, this is pre-high school. This is through to eighth grade. 92 00:30:36,520 --> 00:31:00,820 Yeah, and to your point, like, I'm in the space. I'm here. And we keep saying, and you and I keep saying, that it seems that the things that will survive this revolution will be the human skills, will be the soft skills, as they call them, the ability to have a conversation and, you know, engage with empathy, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't see anybody carving out spaces for that, or at least 93 00:31:01,020 --> 00:31:30,760 holding the tech at bay so we can provide that kind of analog discourse. So I think this is great. I really do. Analog discourse. I like that. Yeah, there it is. Write that down. Trademark. And lastly, South Korea's new AI for all program kicks off beta testing in September before a full rollout later this year. And the pitch is delightfully utilitarian. Unlimited, no token limit AI for booking doctor's appointments, hunting for apartments, and doing 94 00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:59,600 your taxes run by three consortia that include the country's two biggest telecoms and the operator behind cacao. Seoul isn't just writing checks either. It's literally handing out up to 512 NVIDIA B200 chips to power the thing on top of a $7.2 billion AI budget that's triple what it spent last year, all in service of building a homegrown alternative to relying on American and Chinese models. The move makes a lot more sense once you see the numbers. 95 00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:16,320 About a quarter of South Koreans already pay out of pocket for AI tools, compared to a measly 2% of Americans. So instead of waiting for citizens to open their wallets, the government just decided to become everyone's AI sugar daddy. That's all the news for now. Back to you, gentlemen. 96 00:32:17,380 --> 00:32:26,500 I have a question for RAINA. Hey, RAINA, regarding the South Korea news story, do you know which models they're running on this hardware? 97 00:32:30,240 --> 00:33:00,200 AI tools? Yep. And there's a little nuance hiding under the hood. South Korea's program requires Korean models for at least 50% of each service. SK Telecom says it'll use a mix of roughly three models, including its AXK2. Kakao is using Kanana plus LG's KXA1. KT hasn't publicly locked down the exact model mix yet, though it's partnered with domestic AI firms and says it'll use multiple 98 00:33:01,300 --> 00:33:28,940 And yes, that 2% figure is basically legit. But it's 2% of U.S. households paying for a generative AI subscription based on PNC transaction data, not 2% of Americans using AI. Roughly half of U.S. adults have used chatbots. So the contrast in our script, South Korea at roughly 25% paying versus approximately 2% of U.S. households, is directionally right. 99 00:33:30,030 --> 00:33:30,200 Right. 100 00:33:30,220 --> 00:33:59,340 So yeah, I've never heard of any of those models. Interesting. But that's, yeah, that's what's, it's speaking to what's happening, right? It's an arms race. It's now a country saying, I don't trust what that Astra model that's about to bust out of a sandbox is going to do in my infrastructure. So we're going to build this thing in house and we're going to train it with cultural competency. It's going to know that it is a South Korean model, right? Yep. I think you're right. 101 00:33:59,740 --> 00:34:29,700 What else? I made one little app earlier this week just to... You just can't resist. I can't. You can't. I can't. What'd you make? I made a Mac desktop app called Upmersion, which takes a stereo music track and it upmixes it to a Dolby Atmos Ready 7.14 surround track. It's got controls for how much energy you want to direct to each speaker group. And then if that surround mix gets folded back down to stereo on a playback device, it's 100% 102 00:34:29,780 --> 00:34:59,700 and you won't notice any changes in the mix basically which is a really nice thing. There's a lot of you know tricks you can do to you know move things around with phase and stuff but you know when they get recombined back to stereo you hear artifacts. It worked. I did one little test. Did it sound better? I don't think so but I just I just did one test with it but you can adjust the levels of all the speakers and it's definitely not the same as a dedicated Atmos mix where you're you know you've got different 103 00:34:59,740 --> 00:35:29,700 elements of the mix has objects in the Atmos 3d space but it did a reasonably good job of like spreading the sound throughout the speakers without it sounding gimmicky and just just crazy I was reading up on this other like really well respected plug-in for doing this and I was like yeah let me just ask and see so to reiterate you took a stereo mix two-track left and right through it into this thing and it spat out nine channels yeah right yep and 104 00:35:29,740 --> 00:35:56,480 And it has a 3D visualizer showing the energy coming from all the speakers. So you can see what's happening. And it'll give you like a binaural stereo headphone mix so you can kind of judge it. But yeah, it's alpha version at this point. You got my wheels turning, man. I'm wondering. I'm working with Google Flow, as I mentioned on another show. And I'm more and more impressed with its capabilities. 105 00:35:59,740 --> 00:36:29,700 and it's really good but my tier subscription only spits out 720p in terms of its quality so I'm wondering can I codex or Claude code my way to an upscaler like a Topaz video gen AI do you think I could do that I don't know it seems complicated but all of this is and I would give Astra a go when it comes out it's it's supposed to be like absolutely amazing at coding I mean 5.6 is absolutely amazing at coding but 106 00:36:29,740 --> 00:36:58,400 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. All right. Cool. I'll give it a go. Anything else? Just ask, right? What's the harm in that? Yeah. All right, everybody, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. Follow us on socials, please. Throw us a rating. We'll see you next week. This has been Up Against Reality. Thanks for listening. 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