Short answer: Sam Nadler worries people may get too close to AI personalities, but says a senior companion mode could ease loneliness. Jordan Metzner says it may help with loneliness and notes Grok also signed a Department of Defense deal.
Watch this answer from Episode 4 (starts at 26:00) · Episode 4 notes and transcript
From Episode 4: Why Our Recruiters Stopped Reading Resumes And Let AI Take Over Everything, starting at 26:00.
Sam Nadler [26:00]: Yeah. This companion with NSFW mode, I think it's just, another piece of news about how AI is, becoming much more feel much more to some users like a, like, an emotional relationship. There was a segment, I believe, on CBS Sunday mornings recently about a gentleman who was married, had kids, but, seemed to have a deep emotional connection with ChatGPT. There's this article. I think this is one of the bigger concerns I have with AI is, you know and maybe there's some benefits to it. But do do people feel are people getting too close to these AI personalities and will no longer, engage as much in real life relationships. And then NSFW mode, I mean, I'm, I'm these things tend to happen very quickly, and I'm I guess I'm not surprised. But, yeah, I do think there are some concerns for people who may be introverts, who may tend to shy away from social events or interactions, and does this have a negative impact on society or for those types of individuals in the future?
Jordan Metzner [27:32]: Yeah. Or does it have a positive impact on loneliness and, people who are alone and find this as a way to find, companionship and happiness? It's, it's like the Internet, good and bad coming at the same time. I just I mean, it's hilarious to me that, like, Elon launches a new model, the first thing he does is launch a not safe for work companion mode, rather than solving, real world issues. But I did see kind of Grok at the same time as announcing this also just signed a deal with the Department of Defense. So, it seems like they're trying to hit on all angles. I think the Grok four announcement was pretty impressive as far as its performance goes. It seems like, they did probably cut some corners as far as safety as we've seen with some of these, funny responses on Twitter and whatnot. But, hopefully, over time, those things will get solved and smoothed out. And, I think competition is good for the game. You know? I think we've almost, like, kind of decided, like, ChatGPT is the winner for most things, and Claude is the winner for code. And that seemed like that was almost it for a little while. And then, Gemini started to come back, and now Grok is starting to come back.
Jordan Metzner [28:40]: And I just saw, yeah, Meta, obviously, invest big investment spend. I just saw Mistral launched a new, text to speech model that beats ChatGPT. So, this is yeah. Yeah. Amazon's new coding agent. You know? So it seems like this is a war. It's not gonna slow down. And the winner is the developer. At least, right now, the winner is the developer, the builder, the you know, you and me, the ones who get to sit down and use these tools every day because, for only a few dollars, you get access to these very, very expensive models and these very expensive chips that are, helping you process and write a lot of code. And, yeah. I mean, who knows what's gonna come next week? Who knows when, GPT five or whoever is gonna, you know, go above the current best model. But, once that happens, we'll see another, form function change of kind of what these models can do and how helpful they'll be. And, yeah, I think that's exciting.
Jordan Metzner [29:37]: Exciting for me as a builder and as a developer.
Sam Nadler [29:39]: Yeah. My final thought on this companion mode is I think it's easy to immediately point out the negatives. However, you and I are somewhat familiar with one of our businesses about senior loneliness and its impact on health. It's like it's a really important problem where as seniors get older and older, they get more lonelier and lonelier, and it has really adverse health effects. And maybe a senior companion mode, obviously, not NSFW, but senior companion mode could help alleviate some of those feelings of loneliness and, drive better health outcomes. So there's always kinda two sides to the coin and, to be determined if seniors will use AI in that way or who knows. But, just something that popped up while we were discussing this.
Jordan Metzner [30:35]: Yeah. It just feels like, maybe Alexa came a little too early. I mean, I think we saw the first Alexa in, like, 2014 or 2015. She really never got very intelligent or very smart or very companion like, but now we're starting to see kind of v two, v three of these kind of companions, and, hopefully, we'll get a lot more value out of them.
Sam Nadler [30:53]: Alright, Jordan. Well, thanks for the time, and we'll talk again next week.
Jordan Metzner [30:57]: Thanks, Sam. This was an awesome episode. Really cool to chat about all these things, and see everyone next week. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Thanks, everyone. Enjoy Built This Week. See you soon.
