Ed Helms Answers Your Hard Questions

Speaker 1 In business, they say you can have better, cheaper, or faster, but you only get to pick two.

Speaker 4 What if you could have all three? You can with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Speaker 7 OCI is the blazing fast hyperscaler for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs, where you can run any workload for less.

Speaker 11 Compared with other clouds, OCI costs up to 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking.

Speaker 12 Try OCI for free at oracle.com/slash NYT.

Speaker 13 Oracle.com slash NYT.

Speaker 14 What's going on with you?

Speaker 15 Well, I'll tell you what's going on with me is allergies. It is allergy season, the sneezing.

Speaker 14 It's allergy sneezing.

Speaker 15 It's allergy sneezing season. The congestion.
I'm taking multiple pills. I feel better today than I felt at any point in the past three days.
And thank goodness. It's a recording.

Speaker 14 Are you user tech guy or Clareton guy?

Speaker 15 I am. I.

Speaker 14 Or a Flones guy.

Speaker 15 So here's the best allergy medicine. Singulaire is the brand name for it.
Active ingredient is something called Monte Lucas. This thing changed my life.

Speaker 15 Like, seriously, like, I was a runny-nose monster for like years, and then Monte Lucas came into my life, and it really helps me breathe through my nose.

Speaker 14 Wow, have you ever tried like dissolving it in like a tea of any kind? No, why would I do that? Because then you'd be getting the Singular tea.

Speaker 14 How did I walk right into that?

Speaker 14 All right, start the show. That was great.

Speaker 14 I'm Kevin Roos. I'm a tech columnist at the New York Times.

Speaker 15 I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.

Speaker 14 And this is Hard Fork.

Speaker 15 This week, Ed Helms from The Office comes to our office to talk about his new book and answer your hard questions about tech. I hope this episode wins a Dundee, Kevin.

Speaker 14 I have a hangover.

Speaker 14 Well, we are very excited about today's episode.

Speaker 14 We told you this was coming a few weeks ago, and today we are going to be joined by Ed Helms for some conversation and some hard questions submitted by you, our listeners.

Speaker 15 I am so excited about this, Kevin. Me too.

Speaker 14 So, this came about because of a chance encounter that we had in Austin, Texas, when we were down there for the iHeart Podcast Awards.

Speaker 14 We are both big Ed Helms fans, and we were excited to bump into Ed in the backstage area and hear to our surprise that he listened to hard fork. Yeah.
And how did that happen?

Speaker 15 Was that a mistake on your part or were you sort of subscribed to the Karis Wisher feed? How did you start listening to Hard Fork? That's a great question.

Speaker 16 I have no recollection how I started, but I don't know.

Speaker 14 You guys are pretty good. Oh, thanks.
You're good at what you do. Thanks.

Speaker 14 So Ed has a new book out called Snafu. It's what he calls the definitive guide to history's greatest screw-ups.
It should have a chapter or two in there about Casey.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I sent him all of your screw-ups, but they didn't make the cut.

Speaker 15 And Ed is here with us today in San Francisco.

Speaker 14 And we said, come on down to the studio and let's hang out and answer some questions. So without further ado, Ed Holmes, welcome to Hard Fork.

Speaker 16 I am very excited to be here, gentlemen.

Speaker 14 So what are you doing here? Why are you in San Francisco? I'm on my book tour.

Speaker 16 Yeah. I'm just, I'm bouncing all around the country.
I went to New York, Philly, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, and now I'm here. Tomorrow I go to LA

Speaker 16 and I'm hallucinating.

Speaker 14 I have no idea what's happening anymore. That's common in San Francisco.
Did you get the little baggies in Dolores Park?

Speaker 14 So, Ed, your book is all about history's greatest screw-ups. Do you have a favorite tech-related snafu that you could share? Oh, wow.

Speaker 16 Well, do nuclear warheads count as tech? Yeah, sure.

Speaker 14 Okay, great.

Speaker 16 This one's amazing. This was the Cold War, the 1950s.
Cold War did not bring out the best in us, as it turns out. A plan was hatched to shoot a nuclear warhead at the moon.

Speaker 16 And you might be wondering why. Why would anyone think this is a good idea? The thinking was that, you know, we're in fierce competition with the Soviets.

Speaker 16 Everyone's sort of living in nuclear existential dread. If we can hit the moon with a nuclear warhead, the Soviets will be so terrified that we'll win the Cold War.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 16 The research showed that it was very likely that it could easily miss the moon, moon, slingshot around the gravitational field, come right back and hit us.

Speaker 15 Which frankly would have served us right.

Speaker 14 Yeah, you know what?

Speaker 16 It's fair punishment.

Speaker 16 And so eventually

Speaker 16 it was not followed through on, thank God. But a lot of time, money, and resources went into it.
Carl Sagan was part of that research team.

Speaker 14 It sounds like an idea that Elon Musk would come up with after like a ketamine bender. It's like, let's nuke the moon.

Speaker 15 There's an episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns wants to blot out the the sun.

Speaker 14 Oh, yeah, of course.

Speaker 15 You know, this kind of reminds me of that, except it really happened. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 14 There's a fun section in your book about the top five computer viruses of the 80s. We don't have to go through all of them, but I'm curious if you have a favorite virus from the viruses that

Speaker 14 you've covered.

Speaker 16 I like the guy that just wrote a dumb poem that pops up on everybody's computer.

Speaker 14 Like, what, I mean,

Speaker 15 was this the message at peace to Mac users or was this a different one?

Speaker 14 No, this was the Elk Cloner virus. Yeah.

Speaker 15 God, Casey. Oh, sorry.
I'm so catching up on my 80s virus this day.

Speaker 14 It's one of those things that

Speaker 16 a programmer thinks is sort of cute and a little cheeky, but then it just is disastrous.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I feel like the hackers aren't so cheeky anymore. Like, you don't see like the good time prank hacks.
You just see the like stealing, you know, $5 million in Bitcoin pranks. Right.

Speaker 14 Bring back fun hacks. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 16 Like the

Speaker 16 ones that make us chuckle.

Speaker 14 So, Ed, whenever we get a notable guest like you on the show, we always ask them about their relationship with technology. So, what's your relationship with technology like these days?

Speaker 14 Well, it's really evolved.

Speaker 16 I used to be very much on the ball and I would say very almost like ahead of the curve. I was like an early adopter of technology as it came out.
I was getting, you know, the latest laptop.

Speaker 16 You know, I jumped on the iPhones as soon as they came out. I've always been a Mac guy.
So it was fun. And I, I, I, I sort of was like charged up by it.
I liked technology.

Speaker 16 Somewhere, I don't know, in the last five, 10 years, it has just blown past me. And now I feel I'm just that old guy mad that like I can't log into my Citibank account or whatever.
Like it just is a.

Speaker 14 We'll help you, but just share your account name and the routing number, if you would.

Speaker 16 But I feel like

Speaker 16 there is a language to, or a visual language to iconography within apps and a sort of like assumption that you speak that language and that sometimes I'll open a new app or I'll upgrade an app and like I'm just useless all of a sudden

Speaker 14 it's like going to the grocery store and they've changed the location of all of the food no they've changed the food like like avocados have turned into something you've never seen before yeah the broccoli's blue yes

Speaker 14 do you have a

Speaker 14 problem app or a an app that you spend way more time on than you would like to?

Speaker 16 Probably just like Instagram, like everybody else. Right.

Speaker 14 Or I mean, does that make me old? No, not at all.

Speaker 14 Not at all.

Speaker 15 Not at all.

Speaker 14 That's very millennial-coded. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 15 If you said TikTok, it'd skew you a bit younger. But, you know, look, there's billions of people using Instagram.

Speaker 15 Have you ever deleted Instagram or like set a screen time limit on it because you thought, I just, I can't be looking at it these days?

Speaker 16 No, I've never, I've never put a limitation on it.

Speaker 15 I think that's for quitters. Yeah,

Speaker 16 it's not ruining my life. I don't feel like controlled by it.

Speaker 16 It just keeps me up too late some nights. Honestly, I really

Speaker 16 laughed harder watching Instagram than I have like a lot of movies and TV shows lately.

Speaker 16 Like I get, I get bit, it drives my wife crazy because like I'm shaking the bed, you know, and she's trying to fall asleep.

Speaker 15 And she's just like, turn it off.

Speaker 16 She's not concerned about my screen time. She's just like, stop shaking.

Speaker 14 I'm trying to laugh quietly. It'd be funny if like the sort of like sleeping in separate beds thing from the 1950s came back among couples, but just because of TikTok.

Speaker 15 I can see it happening. Well, like, what makes you laugh on Instagram the most?

Speaker 15 Is it sort of the like native creators who are just kind of like doing fun bits and sketches, or is it like people have sliced up every movie and TV show known to existence and they know how to like serve you your very favorite ones?

Speaker 15 It's usually

Speaker 16 prank-related stuff.

Speaker 16 And I have a pretty keen radar, but Instagram has hacked it. So like, I hate anything that hurts someone physically.
Like, I just can't get into that.

Speaker 16 I don't like watching people fall or bonk into things.

Speaker 16 That's very unnerving to me. So, but I also don't like scare pranks that are clearly traumatizing to somebody.
And there's tons of that stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 15 I feel like you just described 80% of all.

Speaker 14 So what's left over?

Speaker 16 But what's left over are the ones are just like the jump scare pranks and they'll they'll be just be like a compilation of jump scares and I'm like crying laughing or just like weird scare pranks where there was a trend for a little while of people that would lie on the floor with just their head sticking out of a door on the floor and someone would walk in and see the head on the floor.

Speaker 14 Just like,

Speaker 16 apparently it's terrifying because their reaction is amazing.

Speaker 15 Well, if you ever come back to Hard Fork, I know how I'm greeting you.

Speaker 14 Perfect. Exactly.
Perfect. Exactly like that.
What about AI?

Speaker 16 are you uh using any ai stuff in your life how do you feel about it yeah i i definitely use chat gpt for what mostly just queries like uh just picking its brain for for research or i want to know about something it's kind of the my my my new google i guess do you feel like you're googling less because you're using chat gpt

Speaker 16 yes for sure yeah although I still Google and I'm definitely,

Speaker 16 I think you guys did a whole, didn't you guys do a whole episode about this about how like now with Google's AI, like no one goes to the links anymore.

Speaker 14 Exactly.

Speaker 16 And there are all these industries that have like built their entire business models on the Google links. And that's, yeah, that's a bummer.
That's just one of the many AI fallouts.

Speaker 16 I use it occasionally to help like think of a,

Speaker 16 you know, an email that I'm having trouble with, or especially if it's something kind of loaded and I just

Speaker 16 want to.

Speaker 15 I want to fire somebody.

Speaker 14 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 14 The relationship between

Speaker 14 Hollywood actors, writers, people who work on films and TV shows has been pretty strained toward technology, I would say, over the past few years, especially first it was the streaming.

Speaker 14 platforms coming in and sort of disrupting that part of the business.

Speaker 14 Now, you know, actors and writers have been some of the loudest critics of AI, talking about how it, you know, steals work from people.

Speaker 14 What do you think about the film industry's relationship to tech?

Speaker 16 Well, do you tech or just AI in particular?

Speaker 14 Both.

Speaker 16 I mean, with tech, the relationship

Speaker 16 has long been, it's like so integral to filmmaking. Obviously, the technology going back to the dawn of photography.

Speaker 16 and all the evolution of camera operation and movement and manipulation and then digital manipulation of the image, that grew into digital animation.

Speaker 16 And it's just, it's so, it's so powerful and exciting on many levels. I do think that ChatGPT introduces like a completely different paradigm of tech in entertainment.

Speaker 16 And, you know, I feel like, like, sometimes when you read notes on a project and you're like, did this executive just like feed this into

Speaker 16 is like

Speaker 16 maybe like it's thinly veiled chat GPT like you think you're pretty confident you've seen some AI notes at this point?

Speaker 15 I do.

Speaker 16 Yeah. I think so.
But I also, I'm also, you know, stunned by like ChatGPT's facility with creative tasks. If you give it, you know, an assignment, it's totally stunning.

Speaker 16 And I think the creative community is terrified and for good reason. And I'm also terrified.
not even from a business standpoint, but just from like a human,

Speaker 16 like when the need for human creativity disappears, will we still be creative? Will we still, you know, what will drive us to sort of like create beautiful things and amazing things?

Speaker 16 And just whether it's a, you know, a movie for the movie business or it's just a piece of art for art's sake, that does terrify me. Yeah.

Speaker 15 What, what a, obviously that's a very difficult question, but do you have any, any thoughts on how creative people should be approaching this moment?

Speaker 15 It sounds like you've landed at a place similar to Kevin, which is this can be a useful tool, maybe a creative partner, but there's like probably some part of your creativity that you want to reserve for yourself and not give over to a machine.

Speaker 16 Yeah, that's a good characterization of my relationship with it now, but it's only going to get better and more powerful.

Speaker 16 And I feel like also more intoxicating to use and more sort of like exciting and affirming.

Speaker 14 But yeah. Is there any tech product or service out there right now that you think will sort of become a historical snafu that you might write about in a future volume of a book?

Speaker 14 Like what out there today in the field of technology do you look at and think, oh, that can't possibly be good? Wow.

Speaker 16 So I actually have kind of a macro take on this, which is that we're at a point with device usage where it's clearly bad for us. Like it's clearly harming us.

Speaker 16 And so it feels like cigarettes in the 90s, right? Where it was everybody knows, but like, come on, we're still doing it, right?

Speaker 16 And all the, all the sort of corporate interest in it is still just sort of dumping money and more advancement into it. And in the 90s, like we're releasing better cigarettes and healthier cigarettes,

Speaker 16 but everyone still knew it was bad. And it feels like

Speaker 14 we will,

Speaker 16 I hope, at some point, recognize that,

Speaker 16 or it will come to that inflection point in the same way that cigarette smoking smoking did, where it just like, no, where we're just culture as a society, we're like, this is actually terrible.

Speaker 16 The only difference, or I used to say, there's a lot of differences between phones and cigarettes, but like, one of the most scary differences is that it's like if someone told you the only way to do your banking or to do your shopping is to smoke your cigarettes.

Speaker 16 And so you have, there's, it becomes so integrated into your life that you have no alternative to this thing that is also toxic to you.

Speaker 15 So, I don't know.

Speaker 16 I've, I use my phone a ton and I, I still feel like I use it too much.

Speaker 14 It's a conundrum.

Speaker 15 Here's how I say you solve it.

Speaker 15 Uh, you can only, it's, you actually sort of borrow a lot of ideas from the cigarette example, and you make it so that you can only use Instagram outside, and you have to be 15 feet away from the door.

Speaker 14 Maybe that's not something.

Speaker 14 Also, you stink when you come back. Exactly.
It makes you stink. Exactly.

Speaker 16 It gives you terrible breath.

Speaker 14 All right. When we come back, we're going to answer your hard questions.

Speaker 1 In business, they say you can have better, cheaper, or faster, but you only get to pick two.

Speaker 4 What if you could have all three?

Speaker 5 You can with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Speaker 7 OCI is the blazing fast hyperscaler for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs where you can run any workload for less.

Speaker 11 Compared with other clouds, OCI costs up to 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking.

Speaker 12 Try OCI for free at oracle.com slash nyt.

Speaker 13 Oracle.com/slash nyt.

Speaker 18 This episode is supported by KPMG.

Speaker 18 AI agents, buzzworthy, right? But what do they really mean for you? KPMG's agent framework demystifies agents, creating clarity on how they can accelerate business-critical outcomes.

Speaker 18 From strategy to execution, KPMG helps you harness AI agents with secure architecture and a smart plan for your workforce's future.

Speaker 18 Dive into their insights on how to scale agent value in your enterprise.

Speaker 1 Curious?

Speaker 18 Head to www.kpmg.us slash agents to learn more.

Speaker 19 JP Morgan Payments helps you drive efficiency with automated payments and intelligent algorithms across 200 countries and territories. That's automation-driven finance.
That's JPMorgan Payments.

Speaker 20 JP Morgan Internal Data 2024. Copyright 2025.
J.P. Morgan Chase and Company.
All rights reserved. J.P.
Morgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Deposits held in non-U.S.
branches are not FDIC insured.

Speaker 20 Non-deposit products are not FDIC insured. This is not a legal commitment for credit or services.
Availability varies. Eligibility determined by JP Morgan Chase.

Speaker 20 Visit jpmorgan.com/slash payments disclosure for details.

Speaker 14 So, Ed, for the last few weeks, we have been collecting questions from our listeners about their moral and ethical dilemmas involving technology.

Speaker 14 And we're excited to get your take on some of these too.

Speaker 16 Fantastic. Let's do it.

Speaker 15 Yeah, well, I would just mention, and this really has become one of our favorite segments to do, not only because our listeners are great and they ask such interesting questions of us, but it really lets us get a peek into people's relationship with technology, which I think is at the heart of what we love to talk about on the show.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 So every time we've done this, we've gotten tons and tons of questions about AI and the ethics around AI use. That will be a trend that continues today.

Speaker 14 We got a ton of questions, the most popular topic by far. But for this installment, I thought we could start off with some of the non-AI questions from listeners and then work our way to the AI pile.

Speaker 14 All right. Ready to go?

Speaker 15 Yep. So first up, we have a video from a listener asking that age-old question: what do I do about my mom?

Speaker 21 Hi, Kevin and Casey. My name is Charlene.
I love your podcast. Thank you so much for doing it.
I listen every week. I am listening up in Canada.

Speaker 21 My question for Ed is a little internet privacy related.

Speaker 21 How do I break it very gently to my Gen X mom

Speaker 21 that I do not want her posting any pictures of her future grandkids onto her Facebook wall.

Speaker 14 Oh, interesting. Oh, yeah.
What do you think, Ed?

Speaker 16 That's a good one. Like, I'm a Gen X dad, and I'm like, no way am I putting pictures of my kids.
You don't put any pictures of your kids online. No, nowhere.

Speaker 16 And I have had that conversation with family members, like, please, you know, pull back on this or that.

Speaker 16 Cause sometimes you're just off at like your cousin's house and they're taking pictures and it's it's all great. It's like a family barbecue, but you just have to be a little careful.

Speaker 16 I mean, there's just no substitute for a direct conversation about this. Although you could consult ChatGPT

Speaker 14 on how to approach the subject

Speaker 16 in a tactful and tender way.

Speaker 15 That would work. The thought that comes to mind for me is like, maybe the way to have the conversation is to present an alternative, right? And say like, hey, like the baby's coming next month.

Speaker 15 We're all very excited.

Speaker 15 We would like for you to not post these photos sort of in public forums like Facebook, but we would love you to post them to like our shared iPhoto library where only our family members can see it.

Speaker 15 And we're going to get it started for you. And I'm going to add it to your phone manually.
And now you're going to get an endless stream of photos and you can share all of them this way.

Speaker 15 That might, I think, help Saruja.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I know a lot of families with young kids who do this either on the photos app. You can sort of create this shared album and post photos there and people can comment on them.

Speaker 14 It sort of like feels like social media, but without the publicness of it. Or you can do like a WhatsApp thread or a group text or something.

Speaker 14 But yeah, I think that's a really key thing is like you do not want to deprive grandparents of photos of their grandkids or else they will just start taking them and posting them on their own.

Speaker 14 All right. Well, I think we saw that one.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 So next up, we have a voice memo from a listener who wonders what's going on with her friend's online calendars. And this listener asked us not to use her name in case the friend listens to the show.

Speaker 22 I've recently started doing some admin work for a really good friend.

Speaker 22 Most things are going really well, but when we need to meet virtually or do a call, I contact my friend to find a time, tell her I'm flexible, as my calendar is a lot less slammed than hers.

Speaker 22 Like, just send me a calendar invite at a time that works for you, and I'll make it work. The first time I did this, I waited, and there was no calendar invite a few hours later.

Speaker 22 So I was like, do you want me to send you an invite? And she said, no, I put it on my calendar. But without adding me,

Speaker 22 she wants me to make my own calendar invite on my calendar so like just two calendars off in space not collaborating and with no visibility between them i think this is insane and very weird as well as unproductive self-defeating and frankly inconsiderate she definitely doesn't think it's weird at all i've worked in offices for many many years and i've never encountered this am i being hypercritical about this or is it as weird as i think it is what do you think ed well i want to make sure I understand correctly.

Speaker 16 So she's really upset that her friend just feels like she wants to have separate calendars.

Speaker 15 And is not sort of adding her on the calendar invite.

Speaker 15 It'd be like if I were like wanting to hang out with Kevin and I and I added onto my calendar, hang out with Kevin at noon, and then I didn't add Kevin.

Speaker 15 So now he has to go make his own calendar entry being like hanging out with Casey. Right, right, right.

Speaker 14 I mean, what occurs to me is like, I'm not sure if this friend of hers understands that you can like do a shared calendar invite without giving the other person like access to your entire calendar.

Speaker 16 Yeah, it feels a little bit like generational because that's my take is like, I just manage my own calendar. I find myself accepting calendar invites here and there, but I rarely.

Speaker 16 uh send them out that's a flex yeah well i i don't know i just i don't think that way i'm just like it's an old school way of doing everyone manages their own calendar you you agree on a date and time in an email or a text or whatever and then you add it to your own calendar but yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 14 Now, here's a question for you both. Do you let other people see your calendar? Because you can give people access to be able to see all the appointments on your calendar.

Speaker 14 And I'm curious if either of you do that. Ed?

Speaker 16 I have someone that I work closely with who has full access to my calendar. But of course, I have multiple calendars.

Speaker 16 My wife has access to another calendar. And I don't know if anybody other than me has access to all of them.

Speaker 15 Yeah. I'm basically the same.
Like I have an assistant who can see my calendar and I have a boyfriend who can see my calendar, but that's it.

Speaker 14 How about you? My wife can see my calendar, but because there's some like security settings around it, it only says like busy or not busy. Yeah.
It really doesn't say like what I'm doing.

Speaker 16 Interesting. So that's an interesting way to do it.
But also, what is the working relationship of these two people?

Speaker 16 Like if they're in an organization where this standard is set, then yeah, it's a reasonable expectation to have.

Speaker 16 But I think if you're dealing with two people in different organizations that are collaborating, then you're just allowed to assert your preferences.

Speaker 14 Right.

Speaker 14 So, for our anonymous listener, I think our advice is make sure that your friend who you're doing some admin work for knows how calendars work and that you can create shared events without sort of turning over your entire calendar.

Speaker 14 And if it's not an issue that results from a lack of understanding, then maybe have a conversation about like how much harder it is to operate in this close collaboration without being able to have the same calendar advice.

Speaker 15 I have slightly different advice, which is if I were her, I would just take the initiative to just send all the calendar invites.

Speaker 15 Like, if it is a technical issue, I think it's gonna be easier for her to be like, let's agree on a time. Great.
I'm sending you the calendar invitation. Now the problem is solved.

Speaker 15 And if she's not open to that, this friendship is over.

Speaker 16 I'm gonna add another layer to that. Do it.

Speaker 16 Which is that first, just assess whatever cultural difference your, you know, calendar culture you guys are dealing with, because this person may really not like to use calendar invites for any number of reasons.

Speaker 16 And whatever you're used to is practical.

Speaker 15 Yeah, you got to find out what kind of freak your friend is.

Speaker 14 Step one.

Speaker 15 All right, let's take the next one. This, I think, Kevin, is a question that just about everyone with a cell phone will resonate with.

Speaker 17 Hey, Kevin and Casey. Love the pod.
My name is Calvin. I'm from the East Bay.
And here's my hard question. I got a lot of scam emails, texts, and phone calls.

Speaker 17 And I love stringing them on for as long as possible or just making them mad. My wife hates that I do this, but it brings me great joy.

Speaker 17 Here's my dilemma. Recent reports have come out revealing that many of these scammers are being trafficked, extorted, and forced to do this work against their will.

Speaker 17 It has become a form of modern slavery. I know this is true for some of the people I probably interact with.
So is it wrong for me to mess with these scammers?

Speaker 17 Should I just ignore them, or can I keep having fun, even if it feels morally complex?

Speaker 23 Thanks.

Speaker 17 Also, last thing, I know an heiress that recently came into billions of dollars and wants to support a tech podcast for people.

Speaker 17 Send me your socials and we can make it happen.

Speaker 15 That's intriguing. We got to follow up with him.

Speaker 15 Well, what do you think, Ed? I imagine you might get these techs. How do you react when you get them?

Speaker 14 I'm just cold ignore.

Speaker 16 It's so much easier that way. I can see getting a little bit of like evil glee out of sort of taunting somebody that's out to scam you.

Speaker 16 But you're also opening yourself up to more risk That way, you'd really never know who you're talking to, what they know about you. And like, just don't open that can of worms at all.

Speaker 15 You know, I have to say, I think Ed's approach is the right one here. Like what Calvin told us is true.
The people who are doing this, like for the most part, this was not their chosen lot in life.

Speaker 15 Like something has gone horribly wrong for them that they have to participate in this. And you're just like taking somebody who has a very hard life and making it even harder.

Speaker 15 So while I get that it is so satisfying to text these people back, and I will admit, I have texted these people back and cursed them and insulted them. Um, I have gone to a place of just not doing it.

Speaker 15 And I would also just appeal to Calvin's self-interest because my understanding is even if you are just responding to say, like, essentially, screw you, you do get identified as a warm phone number, and that information is shared with other scammers.

Speaker 15 So, by responding in this way, Calvin, you may be making your own problem worse.

Speaker 14 Now, how long do you guys think that we will actually have human scammers calling people? Like, how long before all of these are just hyper-convincing AIs speed dialing people?

Speaker 15 I mean, if you believe the research about persuasion that we've been talking about on the show, you know, it might not be all that much longer.

Speaker 15 But I have to say, Kevin, that might be like a human rights victory because then maybe they would take these people that are like locked up in these scam centers and actually let them go home.

Speaker 14 Yeah, that's one job I would love to see automated very quickly.

Speaker 16 Also, like, it's not your best self to do this, right? Yeah, it's not, it's not kind of reinforcing the best side of you to be making someone else's life harder, even if they're

Speaker 16 not in some sort of like terrible situation. They're just a scammer.
Like, strive for better in yourself.

Speaker 14 Do better.

Speaker 15 As Melania Trump once said, be best.

Speaker 14 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 14 All right.

Speaker 14 Next up, here is an email that came to us from a listener named Lewis or Louis, I suppose.

Speaker 14 He wonders, essentially, is it ever right to commit a crime in order to prevent another crime? Oh, here we go. I'll read an excerpt from the email.

Speaker 14 He says, A couple of years ago, circa 2016, I had an idea I pursued, abandoned, and wondered about ever since.

Speaker 14 I started guessing private keys of a well-known blockchain using some heuristics that I thought some less aware people might try to use to generate their addresses.

Speaker 14 It worked quite well, and I found one address with several thousand dollars worth of cryptocurrency on it.

Speaker 14 Most of the accounts I found had transactions on them that had been completely emptied, and when checking the accounts that had emptied them, they were marked as fraudulent by several blockchain explorers.

Speaker 14 So, to recap, I had found a stack of gold, and it was only a matter of time before a bad guy swooped in and stole it.

Speaker 14 After some deliberation with my parents and girlfriend, now wife, I decided that the safest course of action was to do nothing. What do you think should have been the best and legally sound reaction?

Speaker 14 Inaction, taking the tokens as my own, donating them to charity, or maybe something else I have not thought about. What do you guys make of this?

Speaker 16 Yeah, this is not complicated to me.

Speaker 14 Just stay out of the

Speaker 14 stay out of the mess.

Speaker 16 It's like jumping into

Speaker 14 a meeting with a bunch of mobsters and being like, what's this is a moral quandary? Should I join in with them or should I just leave? This is like actually the plot of no country for old men. Yeah.

Speaker 15 I have to say, we should disqualify this for not being a hard question. This is just just like, you know, do not commit a crime and hopefully that will save you.

Speaker 14 Now, I will say, as far as some advice on what they could do that would be productive with this, some blockchain projects, a lot of tech projects have these kind of bug bounty programs where if you discover a security flaw in their system, you can contact them and say, hey, I'm a security researcher and I found this bug.

Speaker 14 And sometimes they will pay you money for doing that.

Speaker 14 So if this blockchain project, whatever it was, has a bug bounty program, this person could actually turn that in and make the whole system safer for everyone

Speaker 15 and maybe get a reward out of it. That's a great idea, Kevin.

Speaker 14 Do that.

Speaker 15 So one last one before we get to our AI questions. This is from a listener who wonders, when did headphones become optional?

Speaker 23 Hi, my name is Sarah and I'm calling from Stratford, Ontario, Canada.

Speaker 23 I have noticed that there's an epidemic these days of people watching videos out loud on their phone in public at restaurants, movie theaters, on trains.

Speaker 23 And I've tried various different ways to politely ask people if they have headphones or if they could turn off the sound on their games or their videos on their phones to varying degrees of success.

Speaker 23 Often people are quite rude to me and just flat out say no.

Speaker 23 So I was wondering how you would handle this. Thank you.

Speaker 15 I love this question. Ed Helms, how would you handle this?

Speaker 16 It sounds like she's handling it exactly right. You say something, and I rarely see this.
I've seen it.

Speaker 16 I did see it on an airplane recently and I was stunned because on an airplane, you have to listen so loud. Right.

Speaker 16 And this person had their phone just cranked all the way up watching like a basketball game or something super loud.

Speaker 14 And yeah, I think, I think

Speaker 16 I didn't. I was, I was a few rows.

Speaker 14 I can't say. So do you know what social media is going to do to him if he says something?

Speaker 16 I was a few rows back. It wasn't that bad.
I just, but I could tell for me, it wasn't that bad. I could just tell it was crazy.
But

Speaker 16 yeah, I don't, I don't get it. I feel like certain, there's just like some people don't understand how awful that is.

Speaker 15 It's so true. The reason I was so excited to get this question is because I see this all the time now.
Every computer, I just spent two weeks in New York.

Speaker 15 I would say every other subway car I was on, somebody was doing exactly this thing. The behavior seems insane to me.
I'm an extremely conflict-avoidant person.

Speaker 15 I would never once think to do what Sarah did and actually ask these people to maybe turn it down. Although that does seem like the right thing to do.
So I don't know what I could do.

Speaker 15 The only thing I'm left thinking you could do is try to guess this person's private keys and steal their crypto.

Speaker 14 What would you do? Or put your own headphones on?

Speaker 14 What I would do, and I don't want to counter this that much

Speaker 14 because I don't spend a lot of time in places where this is going on. Kevin only takes private cars everywhere.

Speaker 14 No, but I think my strategy, if the sort of earnest request to put on headphones or something or turn on the volume failed, I think I would just start asking him questions.

Speaker 14 I'd be like, hey, what game are you playing there? What are the rules of a temple run? What's your high score?

Speaker 14 You just troll them. Yeah, like, I see you're watching a basketball game.
Like, fill me in.

Speaker 14 Who are the hot draft picks this season? And eventually, maybe they just like catch on and get so annoyed that they turn it off and do something else.

Speaker 16 I actually, I would love, I don't think I could ever do that, but I would love to observe you doing that.

Speaker 15 It is crazy because, you know, headphones are so cheap at this point. I mean, you can get earbuds for $15, I bet.

Speaker 15 And yet, it seems like the cheaper they get, the more people are just saying, you know what? The The heck with it. Everybody can listen to the basketball game with me.

Speaker 16 The weird thing, too, is when people are actually having conversations on speakerphones.

Speaker 14 Like, just hold it up to your ear. Yes.

Speaker 16 Like, they'll hold the phone in front of their face like a, like, like a little piece of pizza and talk into it with the speaker on.

Speaker 14 Yes. Just put it up to your ear.

Speaker 15 I was, again,

Speaker 15 New York. I saw multiple people are just walking down the street, FaceTiming with people.

Speaker 15 And I'm like, is it, is it because you look so cool because you're walking through the streets of New York and you just sort of really want people to have the visual? Like, I do not understand.

Speaker 15 You're so likely to just, you know, fall into an open manhole cover.

Speaker 14 It's true. That is always happening.
Yeah. All right.

Speaker 14 When we come back, we will tackle your hard questions about AI, including a worker who fears backlash for using AI at work and a boyfriend who worries that AI could doom his relationship. Uh-oh.

Speaker 2 In business, they say you can have better, cheaper, or faster, but you only get to pick two.

Speaker 4 What if you could have all three? You can with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Speaker 7 OCI is the blazing fast hyperscaler for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs where you can run any workload for less.

Speaker 11 Compared with other clouds, OCI costs up to 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking.

Speaker 12 Try OCI for free at oracle.com/slash nyt.

Speaker 13 Oracle.com/slash nyt.

Speaker 17 There used to be very little visibility and control in treasury.

Speaker 19 Today, JP Morgan Payments delivers real-time dashboards and control at your fingertips.

Speaker 20 That's the power of clarity.

Speaker 19 That's JPMorgan Payments.

Speaker 20 Copyright 2025, JP Morgan Chase and Company, All Rights Reserve, JP Morgan Chase Bank, and a member, FDIC. Deposits held in non-U.S.
branches are not FDIC insured.

Speaker 20 Non-deposit products are not FDIC insured. This is not a legal commitment for credit or services.
Availability varies. Eligibility determined determined by JPMorgan Chase.

Speaker 20 Visit jpmorgan.com slash payments disclosure for details.

Speaker 24 Lowe's knows how to get you ready for holiday hosting with up to 35% off select home decor and get up to 35% off select major appliances.

Speaker 24 Plus, members get free delivery, hall away, basic installation, parts, and a two-year Lowe's protection plan when you spend $2,500 or more on select LG major appliances.

Speaker 24 Valent through 10-1, member offer excludes Massachusetts, Maryland, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Florida. Installed by independent contractors.
Exclusions apply. See Lowe's.com for more details.

Speaker 14 Well, Ed, every time Casey and I talk about AI in the show, we have to do our AI disclosures. So we'll do them real quick in our best speed read.

Speaker 14 I work at the New York Times, which is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright violations related to the training of AI systems.

Speaker 15 And my boyfriend works at Anthropic.

Speaker 14 Ed, do you have a disclosure about AI that you'd like to add?

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 16 I'm terrified of it. Okay, so that's good.

Speaker 14 I feel like the singularities around the corner and I'm absolutely petrified.

Speaker 16 So I like AI, is I guess what my, how I hedge that.

Speaker 15 Yeah, well, that's a good disclosure.

Speaker 14 Okay, so one clear theme that has emerged from the questions that our listeners submitted is that there is a lot of uncertainty around how and when to use AI at work.

Speaker 14 So our next two listeners are both grappling with that subject, but from quite different perspectives. Let's start with the perspective of a manager.

Speaker 14 This comes to us from Scott Kay, who asks, should I call out a junior person using AI and be a hypocrite?

Speaker 14 His email reads, as a team lead, I sometimes use AI to help brainstorm solutions when my developers hit a wall.

Speaker 14 But every so often, I'll see one of my junior developers magically land on the exact same AI suggested solution, and it's painfully obvious they didn't invent it themselves.

Speaker 14 And then I'm stuck thinking, do I call them out and ask, hey, walk me through your thought process here while fully aware that I'm over here secretly tag teaming with ai myself

Speaker 14 so what do you think about this is it hypocritical to call out a junior employee for using ai when you are using it yourself

Speaker 16 yes it is but i also think that we're just in this early moment with ai and we haven't quite figured out how to navigate these things it it seems like Maybe everyone should just be owning their AI use a little more transparently, but that sort of diminishes the magic of AI.

Speaker 16 I guess people are thrilled to sort of present things as their own ideas.

Speaker 15 I think this is sort of a strange question for this reason.

Speaker 15 Most of the developers I know who are using AI understand that everyone is using AI, and that if you solved a problem using AI, most people would be like, Yeah, like we're all solving problems with AI.

Speaker 15 So I'm curious, if Scott were here right now, I would say, why is this an issue? Is it that the junior dev is suggesting really bad suggestions from the AI?

Speaker 15 Because if that's the case, then I think AI isn't really the issue, right? The issue is that your junior colleague is sort of bringing bad ideas into the workplace.

Speaker 15 And that is worth calling out and saying, hey, you know, this actually wouldn't work and here's why.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I agree with you both.

Speaker 14 I think we just need to like presume that unless specified otherwise, people are going to start using AI in their jobs, basically whatever their job is.

Speaker 14 Hearing a talk from the economist Tyler Cowan the other day, who teaches at George Mason University, was talking about how he now requires all of his students to use an AI chatbot for their assignments.

Speaker 14 And he doesn't consider it plagiarism. He just grades the finished product.
And I think that's how we should evaluate work at our jobs too, is like, is it good or not?

Speaker 14 And if it's not good, then you used AI wrong or you didn't use it in the right ways. And if it's good and you used AI, like more power to you.
What matters is the finished product.

Speaker 16 I just am not sure, especially in an academic context, if the finished product represents how educated the student is on the subject and that

Speaker 16 that's what the grade should reflect. Like an educational environment is not a widget making.

Speaker 14 I guess that's right. I mean, that's definitely a fringe position in academia where we still do care that people are thinking through things on their own.

Speaker 14 But in the context of like a software team at a big company, like what matters is whether the code compiles or not, not whether

Speaker 14 you use the certain tool.

Speaker 15 But do you do you worry though, like as somebody with kids that they're going to get to school and they're going to be using ChatGPT everything and they might not develop the critical thinking skills you want them to have?

Speaker 15 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 16 I mean, it goes back to what I was saying before about just the generation of creative things.

Speaker 16 And I work in an industry where that's the people that are good at that are really rewarded for it and it's highly competitive. But when no one is as good as the AI,

Speaker 16 then not only is like, does the question emerge like,

Speaker 16 what's the point of doing it if the AI can just keep doing it better? The other sort of darker question is like, what's the point of learning to do it or studying the art forms? Right.

Speaker 16 And I mean, that's a very dystopian long view, but I'm not worried about that in the near term for my kids. But

Speaker 16 I do feel like that's

Speaker 16 kind of.

Speaker 15 I would just be happier if it like let me learn more easily. Like, you know, in the Matrix when Kianu's like, I know kung fu because they just like uploaded it into his brain.

Speaker 14 I would also like to know Kung Fu. I would put that amount of effort into it.
And I will say, like, I'm a musician.

Speaker 16 I really struggle to remember song lyrics. I can't wait till I can put on

Speaker 16 glasses and just read song lyrics and suddenly have like a thousand songs at my disposal. Totally.
That sounds really, really fun and cool.

Speaker 15 All right. We're going to get, we're going to get emails from people who say that they've invented this.
So we'll, we'll pass those along to you.

Speaker 14 Okay, great.

Speaker 15 All right. Now let's consider the perspective of somebody who is just starting out in in their career.

Speaker 15 This listener asked to be anonymous for fear of backlash from colleagues, but she emailed the following. What do you all think about people who are AI snobs?

Speaker 15 I am a NASA scientist, and surprisingly, I found that for an organization full of scientists, there is a lot of snobbery over being better than using AI.

Speaker 15 People basically act like those who use AI are too stupid to solve problems themselves, and they are smarter than everyone else because they are capable of an existence free of AI assistance.

Speaker 15 I've even heard, quote, even if AI can help you solve a problem faster, why would you avoid the cognitive stimulus? That's the whole fun of being alive.

Speaker 15 So I guess my question is, how do you respond to people who keep acting like they are better than you simply because they don't use AI?

Speaker 14 Wow.

Speaker 15 Have you heard a version of this, Ed?

Speaker 16 No, I'm not sure I've heard this bubble up. My hunch is that those people are probably lying,

Speaker 16 that they are using AI behind closed doors, but I haven't encountered anti-AI snobbery.

Speaker 14 Oh, I have. I mean, I think there are people who are reacting this way basically as a fear response.
Like they worry that if they use AI

Speaker 14 and it makes them smarter, then maybe they weren't that smart to begin with, or maybe they're going to lose their job.

Speaker 14 Or I think there are a lot of like reasons that people react this way to AI, including the fact that they just cannot believe that a computer could do what they do better than them.

Speaker 14 And everyone seems to have a version of this for their own job.

Speaker 14 Like everyone kind of thinks that AI is going to take everyone else's jobs, but me, I'm the special one and what I do can't be replicated. And I see that attitude a lot.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 I mean, this is one where I want to be careful because, look, I do believe if you have a job and you don't want to use AI, you don't have to use AI if you don't want to.

Speaker 15 If you love the cognitive stimulus of everything you're doing, like that's great. Like you probably have a great job.

Speaker 15 How should you relate to people who do use AI? I would say with kindness, you know, particularly if they're using it well.

Speaker 15 And I think a lot of folks, and I would include myself among these people, do feel like it's giving me at least some kind of advantage in some set of things, you know?

Speaker 15 So I do believe that over the long run, more and more people are going to come around because they're going to see people like our emailer here just kind of doing well at their jobs.

Speaker 15 And they're going to assume that, you know, not just the AI, but all the products.

Speaker 15 productivity tools that they're using are helping them you know get a little bit of an advantage and so yeah i guess that's my answer to that one.

Speaker 14 I mean, that's a very kind and empathetic response that both of you have given. There's also the option of just trolling your coworkers.
Like,

Speaker 14 you could go over with an abacus and take away their calculator and say, I just, I didn't want to deprive you of the cognitive stimulus of using the abacus by taking this cheap shortcut.

Speaker 16 Let me take the abacus.

Speaker 14 Just use all cognitive power.

Speaker 14 That's good.

Speaker 15 Yes. All right.
So we have two related final questions that I think get at the heart of how AI is complicating many people's deepest and most meaningful relationships. Let's play the first video.

Speaker 15 Hey, Kevin, Casey, and Ed.

Speaker 25 Dan here from Chicago. I'm a devout listener of the show.

Speaker 25 So I recently started a new relationship, and after sharing an episode of Hard Fork with my girlfriend, I realized that she hates AI.

Speaker 25 She has a visceral negative reaction anytime I mention something AI-related, unless it's Adobe Illustrator or like A1 steak sauce.

Speaker 25 And it makes her so uncomfortable that she doesn't even want to entertain a thought about it.

Speaker 25 Now, this has become a real point of tension because I use AI in my everyday personal and professional life, and I'm really interested in these thornier questions around the future of work, society, and what it means to be human in this new era.

Speaker 25 So, how can I navigate a situation where I can't even bring up something something that is so intrinsic to my life with my significant other?

Speaker 25 Kevin, I'm especially curious to hear your thoughts, given that AI almost broke up your relationship too. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 15 Great question. Great question.
Kevin, what are your thoughts?

Speaker 14 So look, I have a lot of sympathy for this. I think a lot of people in my life are not as into AI as I am.
My wife is sort of getting more interested in it.

Speaker 14 We talk about it sometimes, but for a long time, it was like, you know, she just, it wasn't of immediate concern to her. And so it was sort of my thing.

Speaker 14 And that's why it's so important when you're in that situation to start a podcast, because then you do actually have someone to talk about AI with without ruining your relationship.

Speaker 15 Ed, what do you think?

Speaker 16 Every relationship has things that are tough and that one person is into and another person isn't. And this feels very surmountable to me.

Speaker 16 At a certain point, the culture will probably

Speaker 16 start to, you know, AI will start to just infiltrate his girlfriend's life in ways that makes her more open to it. But even if not, it just seems like find your buddy that

Speaker 16 you can have these conversations with.

Speaker 15 Yeah. I mean, I have to confess this is not a problem I have in my relationship.
If anything, the issue in my relationship is, could we talk about something other than AI?

Speaker 15 But, you know, I feel like in, you know, so many relationships, there is a subject like this, you know, like sports comes to mind, you know, like maybe you're obsessed with the Golden State Warriors and your partner isn't.

Speaker 15 And every time you bring it up, you know, you see them rolling their eyes.

Speaker 15 And I just think this speaks to the fact that like it helps to have people in your life other than your primary partner that you can just kind of distribute the weight of your interests in, you know?

Speaker 14 Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of sort of AI clubs popping up around the country. I've met people when I've been out doing various events who say, you know, oh, I mean, I'm part of the local AI club.

Speaker 14 And this is a thing that I think is starting to emerge over the last couple of years.

Speaker 14 And so maybe if there's one in Chicago, you could sort of find the local AI club and join that and find a way to have a weekly discussion about these things.

Speaker 15 What do people do at AI Club?

Speaker 14 Casey, the first rule of AI Club is you don't talk about AI Club.

Speaker 15 I walked right into that one.

Speaker 14 But I will give my earnest piece of advice here because I think this is something really important is that people don't automatically buy that AI is going to be meaningful to them until they see something that they struggle with in their life that it is useful at solving.

Speaker 14 So I think one thing that you could do if you're in a relationship where one partner cares a lot about AI and the other person hates it is just to figure out like, what do they value?

Speaker 14 Like what things do they like doing? What do they struggle with?

Speaker 14 What are some places maybe at their job or in their personal life where they might be able to use AI and don't force it on them, but just maybe take one of those problems and just prompt an AI model with it and see if it solves something or does something interesting for them.

Speaker 14 And then show it to the partner. Maybe try to meet them where they are and make their interest organic rather than just like pretending that they're into it for your sake.

Speaker 15 Yeah, but I would also say, like, take no for an answer from your partner here and like maybe just cool it on the AI talk for a while and like see if she brings it up at any point.

Speaker 15 And like maybe then you'll kind of have an entry point. But until then, I don't know if it's worth it.

Speaker 14 All right. Let's go to our last question here.
This comes from a listener who goes by L. And let's take the L.
And L asks, how do I help people get prepared for AI without totally freaking them out?

Speaker 26 Hi, Kevin and Casey. I'm L and I live in the deep south.
Here's some context for my question. I've been getting anxious in conversations where AI comes up.

Speaker 26 I'm tech avoidant, but interested in tech forecasting because I want to feel prepared for what's ahead.

Speaker 26 But most people I know aren't as tuned in as I am, so I'm hesitant to share my realistic/slash grim take on the potential of AI. I don't want to plant scary seeds in their brains.

Speaker 26 As a result, I'm feeling mentally and existentially isolated.

Speaker 26 I'm doing better at making the best of my time in case it's running out faster than I'd hoped, which is how we should live anyway, so that's positive.

Speaker 26 On the other, I'm feeling distant from my peers and loved ones in a way that is hard to articulate. What should I say to my loved ones if it comes up?

Speaker 26 I want them to be mentally prepared, but not super sad. Living in the moment, but worried about frightening others.

Speaker 14 Elle. Now, Ed, I'm curious to hear your take on this because it sounds like you may have a version of this yourself.

Speaker 14 You mentioned earlier that you are worried about the singularity and you're sort of terrified that it might be coming soon.

Speaker 14 So, what should Elle do about trying to live in the moment, take advantage of the time that we have, but also avoid freaking out her friends and family?

Speaker 16 It's hard not to talk about something

Speaker 16 that is scaring you or that you're obsessing over. And this may sound glib,

Speaker 16 but I think she could benefit from a therapist.

Speaker 16 Someone that she really can explore these feelings with and help her process them. And then also give her an outlet where she's not burdening friends and family with that.

Speaker 16 Because the other thing is, you know, none of us really know what's coming. And so to be,

Speaker 16 and there are a lot of AI optimists out there, and maybe they're right. So to be kind of chicken little in gloom and doom, as much as it's not a choice sometimes, feels a little premature.

Speaker 16 And again, finding an outlet, a therapist perhaps, to explore these feelings could be good.

Speaker 15 I'm glad you said that. I had the same thought.
This really could benefit from therapy.

Speaker 15 And, you know, I guarantee you, Elle, you will not be the only person talking about your fears about an AI future in therapy.

Speaker 15 I think it's actually quite common here in the Bay Area for folks to talk to their therapists about that.

Speaker 15 You know, while I totally understand you're hesitant to bring everybody down with your fears about AI, I do think that part of living in a democracy is bringing up the things that you're concerned about.

Speaker 15 And there's no reason why you couldn't take, maybe, you know, break it into small chunks and talk to your friends about things that you see out there that worry you.

Speaker 15 So if you see that all of a sudden the chatbots have gotten super sycophantic and you're reading stories about people having like mystical experiences with chatbots and convincing themselves that they're the Messiah and you worry about that technology like being used by young people, let's say.

Speaker 14 There's no reason why you shouldn't talk about that.

Speaker 15 In fact, I think you should talk about it. And I think one reason why we started this show, Kevin, was we like talking about these issues and we want to get other people talking about them.

Speaker 15 So I totally hear you, Elle, on not wanting to be a bummer. But, you know, I think everyone's allowed to be a bummer at least 10 or 20% of the time, don't you, Kevin?

Speaker 14 Yeah. Although I should say, like, I spend a lot of time talking with people about AI in my life.

Speaker 14 And I have found that like when I'm in my sort of like gloomiest mood about it, when I'm feeling like my P doom is quite high, I tend to not have good conversations with people because they sort of come away feeling like we're all screwed and there's nothing we can do about it.

Speaker 14 It sort of strips agency away from them when I talk about it like that.

Speaker 14 Whereas when I'm feeling more optimistic, I tend to have conversations that are just like sort of rooted in like wanting to help people understand things or like make them excited or give them some hope for the future.

Speaker 14 And I think that when you give people a sense that they, they are not just like inexorably marching toward this future that they have no control over, I think it just goes a lot better.

Speaker 14 And so my advice for these like, you know, sort of AI doom crowd is always to like not frame things in terms of like what will happen no matter what, but like to sort of sketch out paths for people and say well if we make good decisions it could go in a really good way and if we don't it could go in a really bad way but like it's very important i think to not make people think that they just have no choice in the matter

Speaker 16 what do you think ed i don't know i'm getting anxious talking about it honestly but in a in a what i think in is a good healthy way i i do really like what you said casey that like we're allowed to be a bummer sometimes and it is important to kind of be uh honest about where we're at with things uh in our with our communities and the people who care about us and love us.

Speaker 16 And also, if it's really feeling like an excessive burden, to seek help and assistance with it, whatever form that takes.

Speaker 15 Absolutely. Well, before we go, Ed, we want to give you the opportunity.
Do you have a hard question you'd like to ask Kevin and I?

Speaker 15 Anything going on with technology, any dilemma you've confronted recently that we can offer you our expert assistance with?

Speaker 16 Let's see.

Speaker 16 I give my mom, who's 85, a lot of tech support, and it can be quite frustrating. And I would love some advice on sort of moving through that with grace and

Speaker 16 also to what extent

Speaker 16 it's necessary. There are times where it feels like maybe this is just not something to get figured out.
And is that okay?

Speaker 15 Kevin, what are your thoughts about that?

Speaker 14 Yeah, so I have shifted my views on this recently. My mom also requires some tech support from time to time.
And I'm not physically there, like in the same place as her.

Speaker 14 So I often end up doing it over the phone. And so what I have found is useful is to just fix things for her.
Like do not try to walk her through it.

Speaker 14 Just like the next time I am in the same place as her, just take her phone and fix all the things she doesn't like. There you go.

Speaker 14 And do it very quickly and make it very hard for her to undo those fixes.

Speaker 14 And so basically, I think that there is a point at which people, they just do not want to learn the entire process of like changing some settings on something.

Speaker 14 So if you can just sort of set it up for them, they are eternally grateful and you save yourself and them a lot of grief.

Speaker 15 I think that is a perfect answer.

Speaker 15 The only thing that I would add to it is to the extent that you feel like your mom may have any curiosity about technology, I do think it's fun to nurture it a little bit.

Speaker 15 Like, yes, I think you're almost always going to be better off just like fixing it. That's just an act of love that you can give your parents is fixing things for them.

Speaker 15 But you can also see if in the process of fixing that, you might share a little bit about how it works or what you think is interesting about it. See if that sparks anything for them.

Speaker 15 Maybe they'll go off and learn a little something themselves.

Speaker 15 I have to say, I talked to my mom this week and she told me that she had just used Claude to pick out some songs to put on a playlist for her 50th wedding anniversary party that is like coming up in a couple of months.

Speaker 15 And I, I mean, I was beaming with pride because she had had a good experience. She did think it was too sick of fantastic.
It actually worried her. She sent me a screenshot.

Speaker 15 She was like, this thing is being way too nice to me.

Speaker 14 But what did it say?

Speaker 14 It was like, you can't be having a 50th wedding anniversary. You're only 40 years old.
That's right. It was a, yeah, something in that neighborhood, you know.

Speaker 15 But what I loved about it was in the process of me talking to her all the time about AI, she was sort of like, you know what? Let me like investigate and see if this thing could do anything for me.

Speaker 15 And I think that is a really nice gift we can give our parents too.

Speaker 16 Amen. I I do think that it is a great expression of love.

Speaker 14 Yes,

Speaker 14 it's the least we can do for our moms. I don't know what we put them for parental figures, exactly.

Speaker 15 You better believe it.

Speaker 14 All right, Ed Helms, thank you so much for joining us. You can buy Ed's book now.
It's called Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. Ed, this was great.

Speaker 16 Thanks so much for having me, guys.

Speaker 15 I feel like we made it out of this without a single snafu, and that was important to me.

Speaker 12 In business, they say you can have better, cheaper, or faster, but you only get to pick two.

Speaker 4 What if you could have all three? You can with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Speaker 7 OCI is the blazing fast hyperscaler for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs where you can run any workload for less.

Speaker 11 Compared with other clouds, OCI costs up to 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking.

Speaker 12 Try OCI for free at oracle.com slash nyt.

Speaker 13 Oracle.com slash nyt.

Speaker 19 JPMorgan Payments helps you drive efficiency with automated payments and intelligent algorithms across 200 countries and territories. That's automation-driven finance.
That's JP Morgan Payments.

Speaker 20 JP Morgan Internal Data 2024, Copyright 2025, JP Morgan Chase Company, All Rights Reserve, JP Morgan Chase Bank, and a member, FDIC. Deposits held in non-U.S.
branches are not FDIC insured.

Speaker 20 Non-deposit products are not FDIC insured. This is not a legal commitment for credit or services.
Availability varies. Eligibility determined by JP Morgan Chase.

Speaker 20 Visit jpmorgan.com/slash payments disclosure for details.

Speaker 24 Lowe's knows how to get you ready for holiday hosting with up to 35% off select home decor and get up to 35% off select major appliances.

Speaker 24 Plus, members get free delivery, hallway, basic installation, parts, and a two-year Lowe's protection plan when you spend $2,500 or more on select LG major appliances.

Speaker 24 Valent through 10.1, member offer excludes Massachusetts, Maryland, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Florida. Installed by independent contractors.
Exclusions Apply. See Lowe's.com for more details.

Speaker 14 Hard Fork is produced by Whitney Jones and Rachel Cohn. We're edited this week by Matt Collette.
We're fact-checked by Anna Alvarado. Today's show was engineered by Katie McMurrin.

Speaker 14 Original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell. Our executive producer is Jen Poyant.
Video production by Sawyer Roquet, Pat Gunther, and Chris Schott.

Speaker 14 You can watch this full episode on YouTube at youtube.com/slash heartfork. Special thanks to Paula Schuman, Hui Wing Tam, Dahlia Haddad, and Jeffrey Miranda.

Speaker 14 As always, you can email us at hardfork at nytimes.com.

Speaker 16 Suffering from dry, tired, irritated eyes? Don't let dry eyes win. Use Sustain Pro.
It hydrates, restores, and protects dry eyes for up to 12 hours. Sustain Pro, triple action dry eye relief.