HGTP WWW, known for being internet, famous why being alive is more interesting than people think it is.

My name is Alec Schmidt, and I'm very much not alone.

Katie McCohost is out this week. I'm joined by a wonderful returning guest.

You know him from his many novels, including his latest, as I'm starting to worry about this black box of doom.

It is on sale now. It's wonderful, and he has further novels coming.

Please welcome Jason Partchin. Jason, hey.

So to pull back the curtain a little bit, we record these over Zoom, like many podcasts are.

And every time I come on here, every time I log in, the prompt and the window to ask me to

add an AI assistant to my Zoom calls gets bigger to where now when you log in, it's a tiny

little thumbnail up to the top, like previewing what you're about to do, like your face. And

then the rest of the other 90% of the screen is AI, Zoom, AI,

AI companion, turn on now. They're so desperate for me to, I guess, activate a robot that will

do the podcast for me. I've never clicked on it. I'm scared to, but it is fascinating to watch

the progress because I remember like a year ago coming on

a podcast and have a little thing at the bottom like, hey, we're testing out a new AI companion.

You want to, you want to see it? So we're no more than six months away from it requiring you

to use their AI companion. Well, it's like, well, you seem to be using a human to do this call.

Why?

Why would you want to do it that way?

We've just put the AI companion up.

You know what?

It's, we'll just, you'll thank us later.

...