Zuckerberg’s Anti-Doom Fantasy + Finally an A.I. Detector That Works + A.I. Math

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Kevin Roose** (0:25)
Casey, good morning. How are you?

**Casey Newton** (0:26)
Well, Kevin, this morning I'm feeling very dream beans filled. Are you familiar with Dream Beans? I am.

**Kevin Roose** (0:31)
I think you told me about it.

**Casey Newton** (0:33)
So Dream Beans is an experimental app from Google, and here's what it does. It reads all of your emails, and then it tries to send you a daily set of inspirations based on the sort of person you could be if you didn't have a job, and were interested in the absolutely insane things that Dream Beans thinks that you might be interested in. So if you go into our Slack here, I put some of our ideas from today, and the reason I thought of this today was that it, for the first time, made a suggestion about the two of us. So Dream Beans also plugs into your Google Photos, and the reason I keep opening it is it makes these illustrations of you and your friends, like people in your life.

**Kevin Roose** (1:09)
It makes like cartoon slop of like, here's what you and your family and your friends could be doing if you were a healthy, well-rounded person who didn't spend all day looking at a screen.

**Casey Newton** (1:19)
Exactly. Now I did have to cut off the suggestion here because it was based on proprietary information we can't release to the public. I will say I'm looking very fetching in my blazer over a graphic tee, which is not a look that I have worn since 2006 But as you sort of keep going through these, like here I am in my pajamas getting ready for bed. Here I am in the gym looking way buffer than I actually am. The incredible inspiration here is weekly undulating periodization for sustainable strength gains. Who is doing this? Who is this for?
And then finally, this is maybe one of my favorites, this is me and my fiancee. We're apparently in an old timey print shop making wedding invitations. So anyway, if you haven't used the DreamBeans app, go use it right now because I guarantee it will be shut down by the end of the year.

**Kevin Roose** (2:10)
Why do you think it will be shut down?

**Casey Newton** (2:11)
Because it serves no purpose whatsoever.

**Kevin Roose** (2:13)
I kind of like it. So it's like lifestyle voyeurism, but for your own life? For yourself, yeah.

**Casey Newton** (2:20)
What kind of person could I be in an alternate universe?

**Kevin Roose** (2:25)
Let me open it. I haven't seen my DreamBeans yet for today.

**Casey Newton** (2:27)
Bro, we got to see your beans. This is what you say to other DreamBeans user. You say, hey, show me your beans.

**Kevin Roose** (2:35)
Okay, so I've got, okay, explore the open architecture of the 1981 IBM PC. There's like me in a chore coat looking at an old PC. Oh, you're in here. It says prepping your night vision for the Perseid meteor shower. And there we are in a field together looking at the stars.

**Casey Newton** (2:54)
It's a picture of Kevin and I underneath the stars. Just like Kevin and I are friends and we do hang out. We have never actually gone to see a meteor shower before and I'm not sure that we would.

**Kevin Roose** (3:05)
Wait, I kind of love this.

**Casey Newton** (3:07)
Yeah.

**Kevin Roose** (3:07)
Let's go look at the start. Will you go look at the meteor shower with me?

**Casey Newton** (3:09)
You know what, let's get out of here. Let's go see the dang stars.

**Kevin Roose** (3:12)
Let's turn our DreamBeans into reality beans. I'm Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at the New York Times.

**Casey Newton** (3:24)
I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.

**Kevin Roose** (3:25)
And this is Hard Fork.

**Casey Newton** (3:26)
This week, Mark Zuckerberg has a positive new vision about the future of AI. Is it credible? Then, Pangram CEO, Max Spero is here to talk about the breakout success of his Slop Detector. And finally, we're running the numbers. It's time for our new segment on math.
I hope it adds up.

**Kevin Roose** (3:52)
Well, in case you missed it last week, listeners, we are preparing our swan song over here at Hard Fork. Casey and I are venturing off into the sunset and going to be starting a new adventure pretty soon. But before we go, we are doing an Ask Us Anything episode. This will air on our final episode in mid-September, and we need some questions from our listeners, things that you have been curious about. We got so many great ones after the callout we did last week. These could be questions about anything, our views on AI, the behind-the-scenes details of making the show, anything you think we've gotten right or wrong over the years. We just want to hear from you. So please send us your questions in text or voice or video to hardforkatnoitimes.com.