Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Tim Fulton 00:08
Welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. This week. This podcast was not generated by AI, but it may have been influenced by it. As all industries consider how to use artificial intelligence in their work. Walker Evans, Susan post and I discuss how it relates to journalism, disclosure and transparency. We cover Columbus underground, updated policy on the matter how content generation should and should not be used in newsroom what AI thinks about the Columbus food scene, and a lively debate on the ethical challenges of how this new tool will affect our lives. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast.com. Enjoy the episode. Sitting down here with Walker Evans, the co founder of Columbus underground and the associated editor of Columbus underground and Metro printers, Susan post. How are you guys?
Walker Evans 01:21
Good. How are you doing?
Tim Fulton 01:22
I’m good. Today we you guys have been having a lot of conversations about artificial intelligence and how it affects journalism. And so today a little bit of an experimental episode and basically discussion on AI and those things in journalism, how it may affect Columbus, what are the proper uses for it? So Barker, why don’t you kick us off with what those discussions have been like? Sure. Yeah.
Walker Evans 01:45
Well, we you know, we’ve had some artists like David Staley has written about AI in the past for his next series on CU. We’ve been hiring some new freelance writers, and one of them asked us an email, Hey, what’s your AI policy? And we’re like, we don’t have one, I guess we should probably have one. Basically saying, don’t use it. Okay, yeah, we’re paying you to do a job, we don’t want you to just turn around and ask chat GPT to do the job for you. So we spent the last couple of months kind of talking about that, and putting some stuff together and kind of getting it out there. So
Tim Fulton 02:15
it is a public facing policy at this point, basically, yes, you can assure readers and, frankly, advertisers that this content is written by humans.
Walker Evans 02:23
Yes. Yeah. It’s at the bottom, like in the footer of the website, on every page. So we’re on a site, there’s a little link to AI policy. And so it’s it’s on there, but basically just saying we don’t use it to write anything. No journalism, no editorial, you know, no images are generated by AI. Our sales team might use it to craft like emails, okay, marketing language kind of thing, which isn’t a public facing thing anyway, right. And some of the tools we use, like Gmail might have aI capabilities, where Photoshop now has AI capabilities. So some of the tools that we really that everyone uses are going to have aI talking to Siri on your phone. Yes, using machine learning, right, you know, so we can’t say that we don’t ever use it ever at all period because the truth is, like we all are using it, whether we know it or not. And what
Tim Fulton 03:12
about like consciously using things like Grammarly that is using a bit of predictive like, Hey, I think you’re trying to write this. Sure. I this. This seems informational. And you have expressed an opinion. Yeah.
Walker Evans 03:25
Well, well, that’s kind of the interesting thing about these conversations is like machine learning isn’t new. Right. So autocorrect is not a new feature. But of course Grammarly needs to say AI on it, because it’s like the hottest marketing trend. Just say everything is AI. You turned us on to a great tool. otterly which is a great otter. Otter. Sorry, Otter, yeah, everything has L Y. otter.ai, which is their website, which is ridiculous. But it’s a audio transcription. Yeah. So I will go to a meeting and I’ll record the whole thing, and then just feed that audio file and then get a written version of it. Yeah. Which isn’t a new thing. Rate. transcription services have been around for years and years and years and years. Yeah. Like, like, a computer will do it for you. Right, transcription. Well, and that’s the slippery slope. Right? They say they use AI. So it’s like, okay, well, I guess. Now that’s an AI thing.
Tim Fulton 04:20
Well, I will say I’ve used it for, first of all, full disclosure, it that is what transcribes the transcripts for the podcasts on your website, which is, you know, there has been at least one email where someone said like, what a terrible transcription. And we’re like, this is actually more of an SEO sort of strategy. Also, it doesn’t appear on the Columbus underground website. It appears on my website. Yeah. But it has also gotten really good at I give it the full edited podcast conversation and it comes back and says, here’s the summary of everything that you said. And I have pulled from it. it to sort of put together the intro to the podcast. Yeah, basically like, most people will be able to see the formula. I start off with a statement or question. I talk about who I interview, I list three things we talk about. And then I say enjoy the interview. Yeah. Those some those in the past, like year or so some have been pulled from that sort of predictive, like, here’s the high level stuff you talked about. Yeah. So yeah, please don’t fire me.
Susan Post 05:32
But yeah, on your website, you know, you clearly label it as transcript. Yeah, like, you know, you’re you’re setting that expectation, you’re being transparent. So I think there’s a difference between that. And then, you know, using it to write a news
Walker Evans 05:43
article. Yeah, yeah. And for us, you know, if I sit down with someone, or we have a 30 minute conversation about something, I want to go back and pull quotes of things that he said to insert quotes into my story. And I don’t want to go back and listen to the whole thing and like, type and like, oh, and people talk really fast sometimes. So it’s a matter of like pausing, typing, going back, rewinding, listening, typing, pause, rewind. Yeah, what did they say? Oh, you know, and instead, just having a tool, do that for you. And then you’re able to copy paste at it. You know, when you’re
Tim Fulton 06:13
able to control F first, you’re able to go in and be like, I know, they said something like this. So let’s dig it up and find it. Yeah, it’s a tool. Like the end of the day. It is a yes, we shouldn’t be using it. Net. I don’t suggest anyone, like use it for their homework or anything. But it is a good tool to use in certain contexts. Yeah, right. What but
Walker Evans 06:36
but that’s what I’m saying. Is that like that audio transcription existed before the AI craze that is going on right now? Yes. Do we need a disclaimer on every news article that said, we used AutoCorrect? Hmm, I typed a word and I misspelled it and autocorrect caught it for me. So therefore AI assisted in the writing of this. Yeah. Article like, that’s a little over the top, I think. And
Tim Fulton 07:00
we have seen in even in the Columbus sort of journalism’s fear publications using AI to generate articles specifically, Columbus Dispatch was called out for. I think it was a local sports game like a high school sports game. Yeah, they took the scores, they took the runners and like, it seemed templatized more than anything else, but it got things wrong. Yes. And so they immediately were like, Oh, we don’t do that anymore. Yeah.
Walker Evans 07:29
And just to be fair, to the journalists here in Columbus, who do great work at the dispatch. I think these kinds of decisions to use, these kinds of tools are being made by Canet the parent company. Yeah. I don’t think that local sports writers are like, Hey, let’s let’s fire the staff and replace it with this like garbage robot stuff. Right? So but the public responded pretty negatively to that. Yeah,
Tim Fulton 07:50
well, that program at the end of the day, it’s a trust thing, like, Can I trust what you’re reading? I mean, God forbid, just based on our last episode, God forbid, somebody took the transcript from a school board meeting, put it into transcribed it, put that real rough transcription, because to be clear, otter is not perfect, right. And then made sure it was assigning the right like roles for who talked to it, fed that into chat, chat GPT, and said, write me an article summarizing the things that happened in this school board meeting, please include to pull quotes from different school board members about significant things at this meeting, and copy and paste and nobody really copy edits it, or nobody listens to it, or reads the entire transcript. And again, a trust issue. It’s super important to have actual, like boots on the ground.
Walker Evans 08:45
Yeah. I guess I just wonder, like, what, like, if you’re going to give it that rigorous, you know, validation and testing and making sure that like, this has been fact checked? Are you really saving any time
Susan Post 09:00
yourself? Right? Yeah, that’s all I was thinking. While you’re saying that, like, you have to tell it so many prompts to get it any, anywhere close to something reasonable that it’s like, I can just do it myself that
Tim Fulton 09:10
way. But so I have thought about so I have played with it a lot. To the extent that I’ve given it a full transcript, or like an otter AI summary and say, write me a podcast introduction for this. It’s always ridiculous and over the top. But that is another thing that I’m able to be like, Oh, that’s an interesting idea. I’ll rephrase that. Again,
Susan Post 09:35
that’s a little bit different of like, podcasting production is not a breaking news article. True,
Tim Fulton 09:41
right? Absolutely. Yeah. But to that end, you can create like little basically sell formed GP T’s within their model and say like, Hey, you are that you are a writer for The confluence cast. It’s a Columbus centric pie. cast, please write an introduction for this, and those and basically save that prompt. And then just put in the thing each time. So like, it’s getting smarter and smarter. Like I, frankly, personally excited about how far we can go and not be damaging, right?
Walker Evans 10:20
Sure. But isn’t it human nature to run things off a cliff? I
Tim Fulton 10:25
have a higher maybe vote of confidence for humanity than you.
Walker Evans 10:33
I hope I hope we don’t want that direction. I’m just saying that bad actors will always yes, do things bad with it. To Susan’s point about breaking news. I mean, it’s it’s not something that can get things right. Like it will never be a replacement for that. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that’s a lot of what we do is like, of the of the minute, you know, sort of stuff. Yeah. Additionally, you know, it can’t really give you a pinion. It could fake it, but it’s not real. So we can’t replace Miriam our restaurant reviewer, right with Chad GBT, it’s not going to tell us how a hamburger tastes right? True.
Susan Post 11:12
Or it’s gonna pull someone else’s view and tell that person thought it tastes Yeah.
Walker Evans 11:17
And then you’re plagiarizing other people’s stuff. That’s the problem, too, is a lot of these things don’t really fully tell you where it’s getting its information from right. So when the I just wrote an opinion piece, and I kind of just as examples like, fed it some prompts to show. Yeah, and I and one of them was like, kind of pointing out that like, it’s great if you’re doing stuff very generically.
Tim Fulton 11:39
Yes. Yeah. Or something you don’t know how to do like write a business plan, or I’m talking
Walker Evans 11:46
specifically about journalism. If you want a listicle it will generate a listicle. And so I said give me Yeah, give me a listicle five hamburger restaurants in Columbus, Ohio. Okay, spat back a very generic listicle. Okay, and the Thurman burger was right up. Of course. Number one. Number five was though, In
Tim Fulton 12:07
and Out Burger Cray eatery. And drinkery Cray is not around anymore. It’s
Susan Post 12:12
a restaurant that closed eight years ago, in
Walker Evans 12:14
2016. And it said it was on High Street and not Fourth Street.
Tim Fulton 12:19
But it didn’t know about Cray like Cray is somewhere in the bot. Is
Susan Post 12:25
that due? Because it’s closed? Yeah.
Walker Evans 12:27
So if you want like to generate bad information, I don’t know. To me, it’s like to what end? Are you doing stuff? You know, if I want to generate 1000, like SEO centric listicles for Columbus underground to spit them out there? I’m having a robot right material for robots to read. Right? Like, are we actually doing journalism anymore at this point? True?
Tim Fulton 12:46
Absolutely. Take that to sort of the basically the internet, right and like, how do you make money on the internet? If it’s just the internet, it’s advertising. And how do you just get eyes on something without paying for highs to get on something? It’s through SEO? And like I shout out to Brad Keefe. We were just texting about this this morning. He was like SEO is writing for humans and robots. And people actually get the human part wrong a lot. Sure. And chat, GBT is also going to get the human part wrong, but it’s likely going to get the robot part pretty right. But there’s
Walker Evans 13:23
also like a quality of it is your reaction to that, like you can generate a lot of garbage and get a lot of garbage eyeballs. But you’re not building a lasting audience. You’re not You’re not building trust. You’re not getting returned visitors. Yeah. You’re just sort of scraping the bottom of the internet barrel at that point for couch change.
Tim Fulton 13:42
Yep. I mean, yeah, it’s a bench billboard. Yeah, again. Yeah, absolutely.
Susan Post 13:48
Well, I think, you know, we have a lot of discussions about kind of what our audience expects of us. And like, you know, they will call it out if something is crappy. And they and they should, you know, and so I think it’s really important to us to always make sure we’re putting quality work out there. And not just like, go try this burger. It’s great. You know, like, that’s, that’s not what we do. Yeah. And that’s not what people want to see from us. Yeah. Well, speaking
Walker Evans 14:11
of high quality stuff that our readers are asking for, yeah. I’ve typed into chat GBT in front of me. Give us five topics for discussion and a podcast about Columbus, Ohio. Can we see what it says?
Tim Fulton 14:23
Well, hold on. I’m putting it into the chat GP, the pro version? Yes. Give us what is it five,
Walker Evans 14:29
give us five topics for discussion and a podcast about Columbus, Ohio. And to backup to we did a forum with the Columbus Metropolitan Club which I’m on the programming committee for. And I said, you know, we should do a topic on AI. They hadn’t really done anything. This is last summer. And kind of the gimmicky, fun sort of thing was we had a human moderator to human panelists. And then the third panelist was Chad GBT invented the questions and it was reading it out loud and voice and like everyone was sort of like, oh, this is kind of cool. I want to see Yeah, what it has to say and it was a nice Like it was a one on one sort of discussion. But when I was demonstrating to the board, because a lot of the folks there have like heard of it, but they never really messed around with it. I’m like, Well, this is what we can do. And I typed in a prompt like this and said, Give me several topics for potential Columbus Metropolitan Club forum ideas, right? And it spat back like eight of them. And they all worked. Yeah. But they were very generic. It’s like you could talk about the growth in the healthcare sector, urban development and infill is happening with this. There’s changes in like workforce retention. And it’s like, well, these are all kind of forms that they already do. Like, they already hit all these topics, but I
Tim Fulton 15:39
am gonna push back on you here. Like, that’s a prompt problem. Right? Okay. Like it’s, if you are if you hone in a little bit more, and basically set first of all, tell it who it is. Yeah, you are a programmer you for this forum. Yeah. You want to fill a variety of specific things, you know, because I imagine programmatically, they’re like, Okay, every fiscal quarter, we got to hit an economic issue. We got to hit our health care issue. Yeah. And sit and get and given that, right, yeah, you might get more specific. So let’s let’s check our GPT Okay, so your says it to be clear, it says give us five talk topics for discussion in a podcast for I said about Columbus about okay, I just want to be exactly the same. So let’s
Walker Evans 16:31
comma Ohio period.
Tim Fulton 16:34
About Okay, enter.
Susan Post 16:40
I’m very curious. I’ve never personally used chat. GPT.
Tim Fulton 16:44
Finish. Okay, you want
Walker Evans 16:46
me you want me to just
Tim Fulton 16:47
go with your first one. And I’ll tell you what my first
Walker Evans 16:48
one was? Number one. What says certainly here are five engaging topics that could be discussed in the podcast. I always read the responses in like, Game Show voice yelling, like, like market or like commercial, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like radio.
Tim Fulton 17:03
Mine also says five engaging topics, but here
Walker Evans 17:06
we go. Number one, exploring Columbus as diverse neighborhoods.
Tim Fulton 17:09
Okay, my first one, the evolution of Columbus. Okay, what’s your second one?
Walker Evans 17:14
Second one is the evolution of the Ohio State University. Mine
Tim Fulton 17:18
is the Columbus culinary scene. Okay. It’s interesting that it’s not the same, right?
Walker Evans 17:23
Yeah. Number three is Columbus is role in Ohio’s political landscape.
Tim Fulton 17:29
Yours is better. Mine is like arts and your mind is arts and culture in Columbus
Walker Evans 17:35
saving money. Yeah. Number four is the Columbus arts and music scene with
Tim Fulton 17:41
very similar innovations and business in Columbus. Number
Walker Evans 17:45
five for me as innovations and startups in Columbus there you
Tim Fulton 17:48
and I have community and lifestyle like mine just literally named sections of the newspaper. Yeah,
Walker Evans 17:53
pretty much. I think culinary was the only one that was not in this list. I had that.
Susan Post 18:00
so broad.
Tim Fulton 18:01
It is. Yeah, it is right.
Walker Evans 18:03
Yeah. Like you can ask it to narrow and ask it to focus and ask it to get more specific and stuff like that, but
Tim Fulton 18:10
well, and so I’m copying and pasting and writing, right, five podcast topics around the evolution of Columbus. And it’s giving me from Franklinton to the capital, the founding and early years of Columbus. And it’s writing about that. Columbus in conflict, Colin, the Civil War and its impact on the city. Three, the industrial boom and urban expansion colon Columbus in the late 19th. And early 20th, early 20th century
Walker Evans 18:47
sound like WSU they do
Tim Fulton 18:50
for cultural melting pot calling the influence of immigration and diversity in shaping Columbus and five modern Columbus colon urban renewal tech innovation, and the city’s future. Like they do sound like Pat like that’s what I mean by if you get a little bit if you keep your own down the path, right.
Susan Post 19:10
Well, and this is a maybe my ignorance question, because I know the data set stops at what January 2022, something like that. So like, it’s about two years behind. Yeah. If you ask it, like, what are the best new restaurants in Columbus to visit? Oh, it was like, what is it? What does it do? What does it think at
Tim Fulton 19:27
least mine would come back and say, I do not know. My Data stops here. Okay. And here is what I know about before that interest. It’s pretty explicit about that.
Walker Evans 19:37
Yeah, yeah. When I asked like write a news article about the car crash that just happen outside, it’s like, I’m sorry to hear about the car that just crashed. So I don’t have information on that and blah, blah. Yeah, well,
Tim Fulton 19:50
but I do. I’ve listened to a couple of podcasts about it from a technical standpoint and from a like, how should we think about this standpoint? And it. And the the thought I have is like, this is like a calculator. Like this is a phone. This is a television set just is the internet. Yeah, this is the next sort of like these, this is going to make things more efficient. And yes, it if you trick it to say racist things, it’s going to say racist. Yeah. And if you but first of all, why are you doing that? Like, why are you trying to get it to do terrible things? Like I can make a playdough penis all I want but why the Why would I do that? Like, that’s not that’s not what it’s for. I’m saying Well, years go on that’s No, you just made a face. Tell?
Walker Evans 20:46
Yeah, sorry. I’ll get to that in one sec. But I guess you know, because we said five engaging topics for a podcast about Columbus, Ohio. This is the same issue that I had, like with the CMC stuff was like, give us forms on this like, yeah, replace Columbus, Ohio with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, because of the health care industry, the big college diversity in the workforce, like it’s just kind of paint by numbers like, and the reason that they asked me to be on that panel is to come with ideas, right? And this is like, okay, these are like, c plus ideas. Like I’m there to provide something a little bit more than that, right? Yeah, I don’t know. Anyway, now that I asked the question of, what are the best new restaurants in Columbus? Number one Alberta’s Pizza Kitchen?
Tim Fulton 21:31
Not familiar.
Walker Evans 21:32
I don’t know. That is if that’s okay. Apologies to Alberto. Sorry, Albert is
Tim Fulton 21:36
starting a new GPT when you didn’t know I
Walker Evans 21:39
did. Yeah, I know that you’re supposed to if you’re wildly off topic, but some of these I think are newer, so it’s probably
Susan Post 21:46
pulling information. Where do you one South High Street, according to my googling 541
Walker Evans 21:50
South High Street. Okay.
Susan Post 21:53
Very district.
Walker Evans 21:54
Is it a ghost kitchen?
Susan Post 21:56
I don’t know.
Tim Fulton 21:59
So my man, hey, I just asked GPT and it started by saying my last update is April 2023. But here you go. Oh, you know what it did? It said? It said my last update was April 2023. So here are some ways to go find ya know, go blog. Yelp word of mouth. Oh,
Susan Post 22:22
it’s in. Victories classics. Oh,
Walker Evans 22:26
all right. Well, sorry, to sorry. But Piazza Pollino, which is newer,
Susan Post 22:32
which that opened. December. Yeah. Okay.
Walker Evans 22:35
And so go.
Tim Fulton 22:36
You got quite a GPT over there, I
Walker Evans 22:38
guess. Yeah. Why are you paying for the premium? High wrath is in here. Cobras in here. But it’s like a really weird list because like, birdies grill at the fairway? I don’t know. That’s up in Dublin. Maybe. Okay. Bowl boba. I have no idea
Susan Post 22:57
where that is. We need to be checking this for story ideas. No. But
Walker Evans 23:01
also apartment B, which is like the speakeasy thing behind bodega, which is a bar not a restaurant. Yeah. But thunder wing brewing our friends brewery, yeah. So does not have food.
Susan Post 23:11
Then where is it pulling this information from?
Walker Evans 23:14
Well, you ask it that. And it’s like, can’t really say I have been fed all this information coming from everywhere, which like if you asked a journalist, like cite your sources, and they’re just like, I looked it up online, you’d be like, you’re fired.
Tim Fulton 23:28
And there was just as this morning as of recording, something came across my feed that said, most major news sources have put in the ad do not call this for generative AI Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Which is, have you done that? I’m just curious.
Walker Evans 23:45
Um, I know, Justin, like our main web developer. We were talking about it. I can’t remember if he implemented it or not. Okay, that we wanted to opt out of stuff, though. Okay. Yeah. Because it’s, it’s stealing. Yeah. Well, there’s also some interesting kind of like think pieces that I’ve seen about like, if if this is based on what’s out there, but what’s out there in the near future is stuff generated by this, you get this like, slowly it becomes it degrades. Yeah, it’s like a fax of a fax have a copy of a copy of a fax, and yeah, all of a sudden, everything is nothing is correct anymore. And
Tim Fulton 24:21
that has that started, like, what, six months after GPG came out where and this is me following like tech podcasts where they’re like, yeah, they have to refresh the model every now and again. Yeah, to basically do that. And then there’s a whole subset of like, copyright issues to be addressed and all that stuff, but I guess I hope that there will be a curated environment where this is a healthy, productive tool. But yeah, I do not want to be told by what I think is a person, meaning a news organization, something that says regurgitated because of their $20 a month subscription to chat GPT. Yeah,
Walker Evans 25:04
yeah. So I think one of the coolest applications of this that I’ve heard about is the ability to take a large library of audio of voice content. Someone speaking like yourself, yeah. And then be able to transcribe or not transcribe, but translate. Yeah, into other languages. So being able to podcast specifically, yeah, so like, be able to listen to conference cast in French. And it’s our voices. It’s Siddiqui. Francais? Right, yeah. Because you have the voice data to be able to do that. It’s like, we don’t need to know how to speak French, you could easily you know, take a podcast recorded in one language and translate it into 200 different languages like that, and open up a lot of accessibility that the downside is, you’re going to trick a lot of old grandmas into thinking that Joe Biden said something that he didn’t actually say, yes,
Tim Fulton 25:55
yeah. Well, and there’s like, it’s easy to use here, too, right. But there’s, but yeah, there is a scary use case of like, that didn’t happen. Will Smith didn’t eat that spaghetti. And there’s just a lot, but so real. But this does go back to the entire, like, media literacy argument that we’ve been having for years with misinformation and all that stuff. This suite of technology has simply sped it up. True. So yeah,
Walker Evans 26:25
I think a lot about how, you know, when the printing press became a thing, you know, it kind of allowed people to mass produce literature, you know, so for the first newspapers, and, you know, that sort of stuff was able to be made, but you had to afford the printing press and the paper and the material. So like, not everyone in the world. Yeah,
Tim Fulton 26:49
it started newspaper. Well, it’s the argument, like don’t get in a fight with somebody who buys ink by the barrel. Yes. Right. Yeah.
Walker Evans 26:55
So chat, GBT launched and it was on everyone’s phone in the world overnight. Yeah, yeah. So everyone had access to use this tool, and it just speeds up not only the ability to make it better, but also the ability to become a bad actor very
Tim Fulton 27:07
quickly. Yes. And I think yeah, the whole stuff with Sam Altman, and I don’t quite I didn’t get very tired of following it for that weekend. I have to hope that the folks who are in control for lack of a better word are consistently monitoring consistently like how do we make this better and safer? So that like,
Susan Post 27:33
you hope but do you really think that it’s gonna be like that or is money gonna win out in the end
Tim Fulton 27:38
as a hello cynicism? Well, no, I get that but I but I would argue that money winning out in the end means that people are going to be like, we can’t generate a tool that hurts people right like we can’t Google’s I believe us we we we the Board of Directors we
Susan Post 27:57
the Facebook, what kind of damages that already done to people
Walker Evans 28:01
apps, but it was a I mean, every big corporation in the world does things that does damage to people, I
Tim Fulton 28:07
understand what you’re saying. But I guess the argument I would make is when that does happen, and then we become aware of it and I’m I will admit that like I should probably be more cynical here but the market corrects itself. The market does sort of say like, Hey, this is unethical or frankly we elect people that should be regulating the space you know, and if they don’t God bless globalism the EU will
Walker Evans 28:35
we all just got to move to Europe
Tim Fulton 28:37
well no no but the the choices that they are making as somebody who works in the tech field yeah the choices that they’re making like I have to adhere to cookie policies in California if I want to sell to people in California right and in the EU if I want to sell to people in the EU Yeah and like those those liberal democracies and I use small l there will make things there will be somebody got checking it Yeah. If you’re not watching this on video Walker’s just like just this I don’t know face. Yeah,
Walker Evans 29:18
I mean, I think as long as money is the bottom line, yeah, ethics will always take a backseat.
Tim Fulton 29:25
i Okay. Yeah, fair. And
Walker Evans 29:29
I’m not saying that as a cynic. I’m just saying like you look at any major corporation, and like they’re only like three steps removed from like slave labor on the other side of the world, whether it’s choose or
Tim Fulton 29:42
it will
Walker Evans 29:44
but there is precious metals
Tim Fulton 29:47
there’s a whole lot of a you know, a cottage industry of people who actually go and check these things right. And yes, they are not infallible but there are people want I want clean food, I want shoes that were made ethically. And I realized that that’s not like a thing. But at least the the labor that I don’t like, is actually better than the labor of sorry, the work available to those laborers in the place where that labor is done, if that makes sense. Sure, like, rising tide is like, I am an optimist about the our brand new calculator. So I’m
Walker Evans 30:30
each in the middle. You’d be the optimist. I’ll be the pessimist. Yeah, just hope it all shakes out. Okay for everyone, right.
Tim Fulton 30:38
Thank you guys for your time today.
Walker Evans 30:39
Yeah, this is fun. Thank you
Tim Fulton 30:52
Thank you for listening to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. Again, you get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast.com. Please rate subscribe, share this episode of The confluence cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite prompt engineer. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info at the confluence cast.com Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.
