Summary: We kick off the show with a call for listener suggestions to select our first read for The All Turtles Book Club. Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega then dive into a “Maybe it’s kinda bullshit?” segment on patents, asking whether they’ve outlived their usefulness. Your hosts also try to distinguish between human and AI-generated voices. This week’s listener questions lead to revelations about Phil’s 100,000 unread emails, Jessica’s knowledge of container ship videos, and whether Blaise is named for St. Blaise or Blaise Pascal. Show notes Listener suggestions for the All Turtles Book Club (1:30) Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art by Virginia Heffernan The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett Safety: Car Crashes Pose Greater Risk for Women by Nicholas Bakalar, New York Times How Music Works by David Byrne Patents: Maybe they’re kinda bullshit? (4:24) U.S. Constitution, Article One, Section Eight: [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” United States Patent and Trademark Office First U.S. Patent issued in 1790 Patent kings: The world's 50 most innovative companies (USA Today) Apple was Granted 39 Patents Today covering Facial Recognition and the iPad Pro's Smart Keyboard Connector and more (Patently Apple) Human voice or AI-generated voice? (18:17) Google’s voice-generating AI is now indistinguishable from humans (Quartz) Fake Voices Will Become Worryingly Accurate (The Rand Blog) Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown, published 1798 Audio samples from Tacotron 2 (Google’s Github page) Uncanny valley (Wikipedia) Love in the Time of Robots (Wired) Interrobang in punctuation Lyrebird.ai Listener questions How might AI be used to filter signal to noise? (36:00) Screenshot of Phil Libin’s 100,000+ unread emails: Clapping during President Trump’s State of the Union address Will All Turtles expand to Vancouver, British Columbia? (43:06) Containers podcast by Alexis Madrigal How do you spend your Sundays? (45:30) We want to hear from you Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes: Email: hello@all-turtles.com Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website. Thanks for listening
