We Need a W3C for AI - DTNSB WEEKEND
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Welcome to another Daily Tech News Show Weekend Edition. I'm Tom Merritt, and joining me once again to reenact one of our text message conversations is Molly Wood. Welcome back, Molly. Hey, thanks for having me.

Yes, of course, you all know Molly Wood from the internet, but what do you give top billing these days when you introduce yourself? Oh, everybody in the pool. So I'm the founder and CEO of Molly Wood Media, which is a climate solutions media company where I produce and host the podcast, Everybody in the Pool.

highlighting solutions, tech solutions to the climate crisis. So I went from tech reporter to a climate tech reporter. You got your 500th episode coming up too, right? 100. 100. Oh, what did I say? 500? That is spoken like a man who's still doing a daily show. We're a weekly. Gotcha. Sorry. Sorry. I wasn't trying to set you up for unreasonable expectations. I know. I'm like, 100 sounded so cool. Talk to a guy who does a show every day.

No, 100 episodes is a big deal. So congratulations on that. Thank you. I'm very excited. I feel very proud of the show. I love it. I love it. So we did this before. People seem to like it, where we got going on a text message conversation with each other and then decided, you know what? We should probably record this. So-

obviously we're going to be reading some of the things we wrote on the text message and then adding things that come to our head now. And there might be a couple of things from the text message conversation that aren't appropriate to say in front of everyone. Um, but, uh, we were having another conversation and it kind of led into us talking about using these chat bots and large language models and privacy implications. And I said,

that I wanted advice about my blood tests that I got the other day. By the way, they came back very good. But I was just like, well, I'm curious what this means. But I very much did not want to give it my actual test results. So I just asked questions about specific results. I didn't like upload the whole thing. And then I told it, my dad got these results. What do they mean?

You went full asking for a friend. Yeah, totally. Yeah. My dad is also the same age as me. Weird time travel. Don't ask. But yeah. So wild. Same name. It's just like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But this kicked off a long conversation about trust in AI, which I think is

you know, a growing conversation. And we will get more into that later in the text thread. I responded and said, you know, it's funny because this is sort of why I am currently fascinated with this South Korean company called Noonal, N-E-W-N-A-L, which, and full disclosure, like full disclosure, the way that I found out about this company is that I am an advisor to a PR firm that is currently representing Noonal.

And so they were like, hey, can you do you want to like connect with this company and maybe talk to some media about them? And are you know, it just sounds like something you might think is interesting. So I just want to like disclose that off the bat. This is not an organic discovery. However, the they were totally right. I was completely fascinated by this because the deal with Noonal is that they're creating an OS, first of all, like a software, a Web3 based software.

operating system that takes in all of your personal data and creates a digital clone of you on device not like you send it all to gpt right it's trained only on your data and then it becomes you your constant companion which is how so many people including me and i need to not do this because it is ecologically damaging and also i'm giving too many secrets to like claude

But it becomes your constant companion unless it needs information from the web. So I said, this is why I'm like kind of obsessed with this because that clone that's only created on my data that by the way, lives on noodles own phone, uh,

is very appealing these days. Yeah. And I very much so. If I can run an open source model, and I think I was actually thinking of a Google announcement where they're, they have a framework that lets you download things from hugging face.

and run them locally. But if I can run an open source model on my phone with no internet connection, so it doesn't even need wifi to be on and it could analyze my blood test, then yeah, I'll give it my full test. I won't pretend to be my own dad. I'll just let it look at it 'cause I know it's not going anywhere.

Right. Or I can say, I went externally to the web and I compared, I always just put in the numbers of a blood test, right? And I'm like, what's the range? Take all of that back to my digital clone and be like,

based on everything that you know about me what do you think here and i'll be like well you did go vegan you know whatever like anyway um yeah yeah it would know more about you than any given instance of claude or chat gpt or any of them right exactly it knows it is it is in fact me so i would myself should i change my diet and it would be like girl you know you're not going to stick with that that kind of thing so i so i was like i love that yes and even up to including

alternative hardware, which you and I, we have been around, right? We have seen low cost phones running alternative operating systems come and go and fail just about every time. And I've been skeptical about that forever, but also like, I don't trust Apple anymore either.

Honestly, TNO is always my operative procedure. And that's not even casting judgments. It's like, just trust no one. Which I think sometimes people say, oh, so you don't do anything? I'm like, no, I just do things knowing this data could go and be used for anything.

So I'm going to say I won't upload my blood test, but I will put some stuff out there because I'm like, they're going to find this stuff out about me anyway. Right. But but don't assume that it's not getting out there is kind of where I come from. Right. Exactly. And then how can we do better? Which led into that in your suggestion? Yeah. So it reminded me of Tim Berners-Lee's solid book.

But for AI, Solid is his project to create a decentralized identity verification where you control your personal data and then you...

decide where to store it. Maybe you run it yourself, or maybe you find a trusted partner where you can run it, just like you would do with a website or a bank or something. And then you can grant or revoke access to parts of your data on a case-by-case basis. But you control it, and it's under your control. It's not stored anywhere else. Yeah. And

And I said, as much as as much as it kills me, as much as I think Web three and blockchain have gotten a bad rep, the idea that that's what this technology should have enabled is something similar to that, to have something be decentralized, have it be blockchain based and under your control. Like, yes, we desperately need something like this sooner than later.

And I started searching around to see what Tim Berners-Lee had said recently, because I'm like, well, he can't have not commented on AI unless he's been passed out for a year or two. And I found this article, Berners-Lee compared the current environment around artificial intelligence with the dawn of the World Wide Web in the early 90s. Back then, companies like Microsoft and Netscape were

came together with people like Tim Berger's lead to form the World Wide Web Consortium, the W3C, which oversees the infrastructure of the open internet. And then there's a quote, all these companies were building the web together and we made it together, he said. That collaboration isn't happening in generative AI today. He sees companies competing and trying to race each other to superintelligence, but no comparable organization to the W3C setting standards.

And he suggested that AI developers should create a similar group or something like CERN, which is what gave rise to the birth of the web. And CERN is an intergovernmental nuclear research laboratory in Europe. Berners-Lee said, we have it for nuclear physics. We don't have it for AI. And I said, but honestly...

I fear we have already lost because given the cost of training models, this was always going to be the next set of monopolies unless, of course, deep sea. Which came out of China and they said, oh, we train this with 5Million dollars instead of 5Billion dollars unless that turns out to be a genuine revolution.

Only the companies with the deepest pockets will be able to do this and they don't have any incentive to come together and try to create standards. But I said the Tim Berners-Lee proposal is fascinating and I wish we lived in a timeline where that was going to happen instead of one where like proposed federal budget bills, you know, would ban regulating AI for a decade. Yeah, I'm...

And then we jinxed on the procedural aspect of it. And I hurry, so I'm in the car. Let me set this down. I'm in the car. And I know as soon as I said that, because I didn't say proposed in my initial text. I said one where our effing federal budget bill bans regulating AI for a decade. And then I'm like, wait, I'm talking to Tom. So I...

i need to be precise and so i responded as he was responding to me i said proposes banning i know and i can't imagine that part won't get struck because they can't do that with the reconciliation but you know what i'm saying yeah and i'm not i'm 97 sure that the parliamentarian is going to squash that ai part of it uh i'm even 27 sure thinking the senate might kick it out themselves but to your point they want to do it right it's it's in the proposal

And this is not exactly. And so what I was sort of saying is this is not the specific administration and certainly not the atmosphere in which somebody in the U.S. is going to post starting that body. And I don't even know that I see one of the companies stepping up. There might have been a universe, ironically, where it could have been Microsoft. But now they're so all on Microsoft.

on this as a business strategy that I'm not sure they can afford to slow it down with standards that might cause information sharing or some kind of delay. Yeah. My only hope is that standards come in surprising ways. Matter was impossible to believe in until it started to happen because the benefits of creating a standard for interoperability for the smart home started to outweigh the pressures.

And then, so I'm trying to think, okay, well, what are the pressures that could push someone to decide they need to cooperate on AI? There's more public pressure around AI than I think people give a credit for. OpenAI is signing licensing contracts right and left, not because they have to, but because of public pressure. Now, some of that pressure is the law might come someday, so let's get ahead of it. But a lot of it is just wanting to combat the potential threat

uh, perception that they are unfair to artists or unfair to publishers. So I don't think it's impossible. I'm just not sure which pressures on which players push them to cooperate. Uh, the W3C happened because it started that way before the companies got in. And I was like, Oh, so was there an analog, an analog for that with, uh,

AI and it's like, yeah, it was called open AI. It was started as an independent nonprofit foundation to kind of be that keeper of that flame. And now it has become something else. Yeah.

But all been surprising. I wouldn't be shocked if he just started it one day. You kind of never know what that guy's going to do. Yeah. And those are all, I have to acknowledge those are all excellent points. It's actually not like me to be so hopeless to be like, I don't think anyone's going to do this and it's never going to happen. And to your exact set of points, open AI did abandon its plan to become a for-profit structure. And then, like you said, start signing those licensing deals and also, uh,

The public lack of trust in AI is genuinely astonishing as a cultural force. Yeah, it is strong. Like, it is super strong. Super strong. And I said, you know, I don't, look, I don't trust Sam Altman one tiny iota. But then again, you never know what he's going to do.

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I don't think he's trustworthy. That wouldn't be the word I pick. But he's less predictable than the Elon Musks of the world. Not that Elon Musk is all that predictable, but Altman's even less predictable. He's really an oddity.

He really is. And again, and I said it's sort of good to hear that it's not just my impression that the backlash is real because I haven't been plugged in as much to the tech discourse. But I have done speaking engagements and been in areas with young people who just flat out refuse to

Wow.

And my son is basically just like, you're ruining your brain by using AI. Like it's fast. Yeah. Brian Brushwood's got three daughters. They're all Gen Z, you know, basically high school to college age. And he tells me stories about how all three of them criticize him for his position and use of AI.

And they, you know, he describes it as friendly arguments, but they are arguments where they're like, you should not be doing that. It's wild. And the environmental impact is...

argument has worked for people has worked i see people all the time now granted threads is a blunt instrument algorithm wise but i see a lot of posts on threads of people saying you know if you're willing to take a torch to the planet just to get a question answered quicker like basically just like you're like the boomers of the fossil fuel industry that doesn't care about the planet i'm like wow yeah i think there really is a perception that when you type a query into claude

that belching black smoke billows into the air for that query. Totally. Yeah, it's wild. But back to the Sam Altman topic, he is an oddity. He definitely does not think in a kind of linear fashion that you can follow every time. There is always the possibility that he will...

recover some of the initial philosophies. I mean, OpenAI was always supposed to be the more responsible and less dangerous version of this. It's just like, will the Middle East have to stop throwing huge quantities of money at him before he recovers that sanity or North Star? Yeah. I almost hate to say this, but Altman is like Jobs, Steve Jobs, in that he doesn't fit a mold.

I'm not trying to say he and Steve Jobs are the same because they're not. But he's like Jobs in that he may not be quote unquote good, but he's also not quote unquote bad. And I always felt that way about Jobs too. Like he's definitely not predictable in that same way. Also,

he's from the St. Louis suburbs from like the wealthy area of the St. Louis suburb. And I'm, I'm a downstate Illinois guy. So I got my biases on this, but, uh, there is a weird thing about the St. Louis suburbs. Like,

They I grew up thinking like they were equivalent to people in the Hamptons in New York. But I get the sense now that I'm older and wiser that the people in the Hamptons don't agree. And there's this weird I don't know if it's really an inferiority complex or not, but there's there's just it's a very different world to come from.

I think that is so, I was like, that is probably the most fascinating insight yet. But yes, like he appears to be susceptible to money and attention and

which to me makes him less trustworthy overall. But I also think what draws him to the Middle East and even sort of to cozy up with the current administration and all of that is frankly just its energy, right? It's money, but also fossil fuels because they can't do, you know, to the point about the environmental impact, one, the energy usage is real.

But more important, they can't build what they want to build. Like he cannot pull off that. What is it called? The Starlight or the Supertrack or the, you know, they all have the same name. Hypermega Globalcom, gigantic, $10 billion data center installation without the energy.

Yeah. Energy and unlimited access to energy and friends who have energy money, you go to the Middle East. And I think, I think he, he's a really smart guy and I, and it's, it's probably really dangerous for me to even skate close to trying to psychoanalyze it. But, uh, cause I don't know him, but I know that he gets respect, uh, and he probably gets respect from people abroad that he doesn't get from some people in the U S just because of where he's from. Like I can identify with that. Uh,

And that's, that's got to feed that somehow too. Yeah. Could be. This is the point by the way, where, uh,

where Siri asked me if I wanted to reply to Tom. And I started yelling at the car, which is just kind of amazing. It's like a computer crossover. And I started yelling at the car or something along the lines of like, yeah, I would love to, but I'm currently having a tantrum about how I'm going to have to call the driver of this family-owned tow truck who drives so recklessly on the San Mateo Bridge because it's very windy and he's tailgating people who set up to drive right next to me and his truck is like swaying and a car is going to fall on me. Yeah.

And that was roughly the end. If you had better local Apple intelligence, it would have known that. It would have picked up on that. And then I tried to say driving like that is so enraging. And then in evidence that Apple, by the way, is just not keeping up. And that's why we need to get rid of it as an intermediary to my. I tried to say it was enraging, which is pronounced enraging. Uh huh.

And Siri transcribed it as in ragging.

Yeah. So, yeah. And then, you know, you got to your destination and I had other things to do. But I think the idea of a standards organization is not like we're not the first people to think about it. I've seen people in the industry, including Sam Altman, like bandy around the idea or respond to questions about the idea. It really would...

It would take someone like Altman or Satya Nadella or somebody to step forward and say, guys, we really need to do this. Let's all figure out where our common ground is and come up with protections for that. I think Berners-Lee is on to something.

I wonder if he could be a key point in that. I don't think if Tim Berners-Lee comes and says, hey, everybody, you need to do this, they would say, thank you, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Thank you for inventing the web, but no thank you. We have bottom lines or whatever. But if he had an ally, that could help because, again...

I feel like Don Quixote when it comes to cheering for solid because it's been around forever and it just doesn't ever seem to get the traction that I would like it to get. But it is or something like it is what we need and we need it even more now where our data is not just our private data, our ad tracking data. It's personal avatars like you were talking about earlier. Picture this.

You're in the garage, hands covered in grease, just finished up tuning your engine with a part you found on eBay. And you realize, you know what? I could also use new brakes. So where do you go next? Back to eBay. You can find anything there. It's unreal. Wipers, headlights, even cold air intakes. It's all there. And you've got eBay guaranteed fit. You order a part, and if it doesn't fit, send it back. Simple as that.

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when it comes to attempting to get people to care about their privacy and their data. And there are tons of people out there who are just cheerfully using ChatGPT for everything and Cloud for everything and not caring about the environmental impact or where their data is going.

But also, I think that the lack of trust that we talked about is an underreported cultural phenomenon and that more attention on that because because what you have is people who will not adopt it. If you have young people saying, I will not adopt this technology, I'm treating it like 3D TVs or even virtual reality. Like then none of those investors make back their money.

Yeah. And none of these companies who have bet the farm on AI make back their money. If I had to guess...

There are plenty of people saying one thing and doing another when it comes to AI just based on the usage. People love convenience. You know, where they're like, I hope no one, it's the vegan that eats a burger. You know, like, I hope no one catches me asking you at GPT this question late at night alone in my room. I think that happens. I think that if they're not careful, though, then even those people stop doing it, you know, if it gets out of hand. So you do have to combat that. You do have to acknowledge it.

I think an even more insidious problem, though, is the same reason some people are like, oh, yeah, I don't search those terms because I don't want that to show up in my algorithm. That's getting supercharged with chatbots. And so if people don't use the tools because they start to be worried about what this tool knows about them because it really knows them in a way that Google didn't.

that could be a bigger impediment to development. - Yeah, I totally agree. So, you know, I mean, again,

We'll see. We again, we have never won the battle of getting people to care about their data. But the backlash is real. And I think the more the backlash starts to be reported, the more you might actually see some of these guardrails happen organically as opposed to as a result of regulation. Well, Molly, this is always fun. Thank you for doing this. Adding road rage into it. I hope that tow truck.

has runs out of gas yeah safely closed running a business yeah uh if people want to get everybody in the pool before the 100th or later episode where should they go everybodyinthepool.com or of course wherever you like to get your podcast go check it out thanks molly have a great weekend everybody

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