Patton Oswalt & Conan Discuss The Future Of A.I. | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend 

If this were a Black Mirror episode, there'd be a twist at the end where this whole conversation was pre-written by an AI.

It's funny, 10 years ago Patton was in a sci fi show (Caprica) playing a celebrity on TV where a society just discovered AI, and these same conversations were being had but were all fictional then.

I like Matt playing the long game and trying to appease the AI overlords just in case they end up cutting him a check

1:53 That is well put. Being a jaded millenial, my first thought in my mind for any new invention is 'how will someone weaponize this?'. I do love hearing Patton geek out. He honestly would be a lot of fun in an A.I. apocalypse.

Patton is honestly such a great guest.

I could absolutely listen to this conversation go on for 35 hours and enjoy every minute of it.

The Y2K "bug" was very real. Stuff didn't go haywire because a lot of programmers were hired (often out of retirement) to fix it. I knew older guys who hadn't even worked in tech for 15 or 20 years who took a hiatus from their careers because contracting companies were paying big bucks for people with those specific skills.

I've never seen Conan less funny and I love it. This is possibly the best thing I've ever seen from him. No interruptions. No corny bits. Just great chat and banter.

I like that Roku's Basilisk was mentioned but surprised it wasn't discussed more. This was 15 fantastic minutes. I should look up the entire episode.

Patton is hilarious! Not underrated, not overrated, just rated A+

"An axe doesn't get smarter" is a profound point, very well said

Shout out to Sona and Matt for being Conan's forever guests weather they like it or not.

This is the deepest episode of the show

I feel this way every time Spotify tries to complete a playlist for me. It's always terrible songs I would never pick and now I pre-hate the songs because I didn't pick them.

This had to be my favorite episode to date. The intro, the interview, and the outro! Comedy, erudite conversations, bits, everything Conan is and embodies. Has anyone else seen Class of ‘09? Great show and explores AI in the real world. Crazy stuff!

A machine can’t get human nuance. Jordan enters the chat

Conan is a comedic genius, and he makes it seem so effortless.

Yes, no film shoot goes off perfectly, the crew and actors adapt quickly. Some of the best albums come from trouble in the studios while recording as well. Imperfection is very human.

I'm glad there are people that I respect who have reasonable fears about this. So many people seem to be brushing it off as nothing, but it can and will do real harm.

His voice is so distinctive I love it

Patton is a very smart and funny guy!

What a good conversation.

Conan says of Y2K, "now we all find that quaint." The reason things ended up working is because the problem was recognized and remediation was done on a massive scale. Many people worked tireslessly to fix those systems so that Conan could say, 23 years later, the problem was "quaint." One of my families close friends began working on remediation of systems years ahead of 2000. He was part of large consortiums working to correct the problems. As Wikipedia notes: "The total cost of the work done in preparation for Y2K likely surpassed US$300 billion ($510 billion as of January 2018, once inflation is taken into account).[131][132] IDC calculated that the US spent an estimated $134 billion ($228 billion) preparing for Y2K, and another $13 billion ($22 billion) fixing problems in 2000 and 2001. Worldwide, $308 billion ($523 billion) was estimated to have been spent on Y2K remediation.[133]" It's that work that helped smooth over the transition, not that it was a "quaint" problem.

Patton has been one of the great guests on Conan going back a lot of years

Conan 9000.......I can't let you do that Patton!

John Tesh! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

This was a good convo.

The AI advertisement on my screen is for La Quinta...where AI sleeps after a long flight...La Quinta.

COCO, I did some bobble-head dolls of you in Midjourney A.i. - they turned out quite nice.

As referenced in the podcast- A.I. Conan eats chicken and crashes his car: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-z3Ae8msn7_g.html (P.S. THANKS Patton for quickly changing the subject AWAY from my video....Theres one being made of YOU as we speak)

great episode

oh, I lost it when Conan mentioned that he is happy he decided NOT to be a Super Model!!! Sona's reaction is priceless.

Love the Veruca Salt ref from Patton!

The year 2000 "Glitch" is always just passed over as a flub. There was ALLOT of work behind the scenes to cover those patches. Its not like people said "Ahhh, let's just see what happens". People losing their life savings, Reactors going critical and melting (trying to keep it YT friendly), rockets launching, etc., etc.. It wasn't a let us watch and see thing.

Part of the reason, a fairly LARGE part, that nothing really happened during "Y2K" is because THOUSANDS of computer programmers (like me) and others worked HARD and tirelessly for MANY months to fix the most potentially egregious problems. I also warned the company I worked for around 1995 that there was going to be a problem, and we started back that far fixing our software.

I love the fact that Patton brings up the first Evil Dead not the remake Evil Dead Dead By Dawn. Great podcast Conan you will always be my favorite late nite host.

Speaking of AI and Conan's show, I was re-watching some of his old clips on youtube, and found the wikibear skits, they are really funny but watching them after the invention of chatGPT is just hilarious

I love this girl. Her laugh is gnarly!

AI Conan eating chicken is really funny. He sometimes looks like a cross between Conan and Tarantino.

the thing I took away from this is that Patton is a very smart dude who seems to have a decent grasp on everything he says.

I was SO stoked with early Tivo. Gen 1.

The TIVO part was hilarious. I loved Spence in KoQ.

Thank Goodness for comedians that can make light of the worst that life can offer! :)

Like the head in the jar/Futurama comic con episode!!

The mall scene in Minority Report...I instantly recognized that as our future.

The axe just keeps getting bigger and sharper

In 1987, I was friends with an ABD (All But Dissertation) doctoral candidate. Eric Adolfson was my TA instructor for "Grammar and Usage" at UWM. He conveyed to me the struggle of teaching a computer about language. At that time, he was working on "psycho-linguistics" which is now machine learning. He was leasing time on one of the Cray super computers - usually the available times were at 3 o'clock in the morning; and they were trying to get the computer to construct sentences. They would feed in the information - "Boy, Ball, Threw, Fence, Over." They were trying to get: "The boy threw the ball over the fence." What they got back was a garbled mess. "The boy the ball the fence threw" (etc.) What sticks in my memory the most is - Eric said that in order to teach the computer about sentence structure and conversation; they FIRST had to teach MILITARY TACTICS. I.E. "I counter your position, I DEFEND my position, I stand my ground against your statement" etcetera. So my point is, the first thing that A.I. is taught are MILITARY TACTICS - because that is the basis of argument. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you... I don't know what will.

the mention of Veruca Salt was so random, i like it.

What a pleasure listening to all the intelligence in the room.

Bravo, Conan

I remember him from Two and a Half Men

And this is why oswalt can talk for fifteen minutes about sci-fi worlds in front of the pawnee city council.

(summer '75)While visiting my cousin on a family vacation in FL, he first took us to see Jaws, then the beach... Which was somewhat crowded... although NO ONE, was actually IN the water 😂

also thank old lady Verna Fields, her vision and intelligence and talent as editor, for what you appreciate in Jaws

Veruca Salt reference. Good one, Gen-Xer.

Wow that sounds so familiar, I could have sworn I saw that in a movie with this big purple guy 4:30

The reason Y2K didn’t turn out to be a huge disaster is because a LOT of programmers worked really hard to fix it before it happened

The phone thing! I have been talking to many folks lately who said that it creeps them out. They haven't even said or searched for anything, and then there's an ad! I had ice cream cones at a friend's house, and when I turned on Pandora later, there was an ice cream ad!

A while back, Penn and Teller didn't curse for a year. They came up with great substitutes! (Delivered mostly by Penn.)

Even creepier...I deliver things for a living. Every time I put an address into Google Maps, just the first couple or 3 numbers is enough for it to know EXACTLY where I'm getting ready to go. Almost ALWAYS gives it to me as the first choice! Even if it's 10 or 15 miles away and there's other similar numbered addresses that come before it. I dont know how it does it, because there's literally NOTHING SAID vocally to me or coming from me concerning the delivery address. It's truly, TRULY creepy!!

Art is only art when it has the trace of the artist.

Hey it's that guy from Red Letter Media's "Best of the Worst" episode!

Texan here. The grid can definitely go down.

Conan: "It's, like this, kind of Frankenstein Monster version of me." Patton: "Right... Now, it is!" Conan: "Now, it is." Sona: "Give yourself a couple of years..."

Is there a place to watch the full episodes, rather than just listen?

This sounds like the last scene of WarGames

Love that Conan shows his age with the term “porno”. 😂

The very problematic matter about the A.I is that it violates most of the copy rights since it is learned by most of the copy-righted material. And it is hearting the rights of the creators.

Who knew this hilarious bit on TiVo gives us such a succinct example of what AI is and could be.

Have y'all seen the AI Arnold singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow? LMAO!

Bonin O'cryin

I'm a little surprised there wasnt more real convo about production studios wanting to catalog people/voices/etc and pay a flat fee and then use AI to recreate/own their image in future productions

I agree with Sona that AI misses nuance. The problem is that projects without soul are cheaper... I have copywriter friends that have already been laid off and fully replaced by GPT and similar. They don't care if the product is inferior, It's getting better every day and it's way cheaper.

Now I'm imagining if Arnold sang House of the Rising Sun instead of Eric Burdon. hahaha!

The Future Doesn’t Need Us. Great old article by Bill Joy, refers to the Unabomber manifesto and AI. Spooky stuff. Also like the discussion about no limits causing problems. I remember a saying I cannot verify it’s origin but basically it’s “the worse prison is absolute freedom”.

the TiVo bits - flashing back to like...Patton's first or second album? MUSTARD FART STATION

This was a few years back, and it's interesting that A.I. is central to the writers strike currently taking place.

I made this on ChatGPT. I asked "Write a funny dialogue between Conan OBrien and Patton Oswald" Conan O'Brien: Ladies and gentlemen, my next guest is not only a brilliant comedian but also a self-proclaimed expert in the fine art of binge-watching. Please welcome the one and only, Patton Oswalt! [Patton Oswalt enters the stage to applause and takes a seat next to Conan.] Patton Oswalt: Thanks, Conan! It's great to be here. I was just in the middle of a 27-hour Netflix marathon when they dragged me out for this. Conan O'Brien: Well, we appreciate you tearing yourself away from your streaming cave. What's the latest show you've been obsessed with? Patton Oswalt: Oh, it's this gripping documentary series called "The Life and Times of My Fridge." It's got everything-drama, suspense, and some questionable leftovers. Conan O'Brien: Sounds intense! But speaking of drama, have you ever had any weird encounters with fans while you were out and about? Patton Oswalt: Oh, definitely. Once, I was at the grocery store, and a fan approached me with a bag of frozen peas. They said, "Can you sign these as 'Patton Froswalt?'" So, naturally, I did, and now I'm the world's foremost pea enthusiast. Conan O'Brien: That's fantastic! You've turned vegetables into a fandom. Now, I hear you're a foodie. Any memorable dining experiences you'd like to share? Patton Oswalt: Well, I once went to a restaurant that served experimental cuisine. I ordered the "Molecular Whimsy Surprise," and they brought me a plate of vaporized food. I took a bite, and I swear it tasted like I was chewing on a cloud. Then they handed me the bill, and it turns out I'd just paid $200 for a mouthful of air. Conan O'Brien: That's the most expensive breath I've ever heard of! So, tell me, Patton, what's your secret to staying upbeat in this crazy world? Patton Oswalt: Well, Conan, I find solace in the fact that no matter how tough things get, at least we can all laugh about it together. And, of course, the occasional snack break helps too. Conan O'Brien: Wise words! Thanks for bringing your humor and snacks to the show, Patton. It's always a blast having you here. Patton Oswalt: Thanks, Conan. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Netflix date with my microwave. We're trying to rekindle our old popcorn romance. [They both share a laugh as the audience applauds, and the interview continues with more hilarious anecdotes and witty banter.]

is the speed wrong on this? does the pitch sound weird to anyone?

I heard of a russian submarine that had a super sophisticated AI on board that became sentient and went in the cloud and started threatening governments etc, and only way to shut it down was entrance to the physical thing that stores the source code

Hal, on 2001 was perplexed by contradictory commands. Confused AI.

I'm so happy Conan has seen the fried chicken video 😆

without problems, there's no problem solving

This segment is the most Conan thing I've ever watched Conan: Let's talk about AI Patton: I know right? It's going to change everything in the world Conan: And here's how it can impact me and my image Patton: The infinite possibilities could transform mankind Conan: That's interesting but here's how it might affect my show Never change, Conan 😂😂

It is a fascinating topic. Great convo. Conan and Patton have mucho depth on this. Matt too. Sona has so blended with the team. She rocks. Being the occasional voice in this situation can be frustrating...but she finds her opportunities. In real life I am a retired IT guy and huge enthusiast of tech. Anything. Did Patton just mention Veruca Salt? I went to a Veruca Show back in the day...and it was perfect. Those rockers ROCK 🤙. I'm with everyone in the podcast room on many of their points. Very interesting. Thanks Team Conan!

This talk also shows how people clearly are just astonished of a simple language model AI. People also mix up “machine learning” and AI quite a lot. What keeps websites and networks together (example) is not an AI. Even though it is automated.

tell that guy to bring back Happy!

Why are the microphones all sharp and the faces blurry?

Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor was shot on an incredibly small budget. Set in an insane asylum, it had a really minimal set and was lit starkly, looked like German expressionism. That only added to the tension of the story, the setting happened because of the limits. Or In Cold Blood, where Robert Blake's character was facing execution, and was looking out a window being streaked with rain. It looked like he was crying, not noticed until later. Powerful effects. Limits engage imagination.

It's funny at the end...so many people put faith in this idea that human creativity and human element will somehow be this saving grace. As if AI isn't also going to emulate that, or also be unique and pioneering.

It’s a bit off topic. But I’ve always wondered if he inspired boba Fett’s return by what he said on parks and rec? Since, they brought him back exactly the same way Patton described it. During his filibuster scene

Has Patton always sounded like Andy’s smart-aleck brother

I love how Patton is in Fallout vault colors.

11:14 Time to bring in Jordan Schlanskbot and see what he's calculating on that issue😏...

I just checked the Arnold Schwarzenegger House of the Rising Sun deep fake Patton was talking about and maybe because I'm a musician but it didn't look he was even singing. The lips and mouth not being convincingly synced aside all kinds of visible physical changes go on when a singer sings. Their whole body is involved. Depending on where the voice is coming from you can see it in their stance, how their holding their head, the muscles in their face, neck, chest, etc.

I always thought Conan’s hair was A.I. generated

Glad to hear Patton give a shout out to Sam Raimi and the Evil Dead!!!

for decades chess players were also saying that a machine could never beat the world champ at chess but now it's just like beating a toddler for chess programs that you can get for free or very cheap. if the very top players have a ton of time to prepare and a huge amount of time to play on the clock (computers calculate fast enough to play an entire world class game in a second now) then it's possible to win occasionally, but I don't think there's anyone who could win a match vs the top chess programs anymore. and the scary thing is a machine never gets tired or has a bad day unless it's part of its programming.

Between rising housing costs and AI being used to replace workers the homeless rate is going to skyrocket in the next few years.

I found this episode entertaining. 10 out of 10 comedy generative pre-trained transformer.