- 5 months ago
In this bonus episode of The Vergecast, Senior Reviewer Victoria Song sits down with a bunch of Verge staffers to talk about how they use AI tools in their everyday lives. Not all of it went smoothly — we definitely get into the ways these tools fall short — but we explore how AI can be used to help bedtime go more smoothly for parents, plan big cross-country moves, supplement your internet searches (always double-check!), and even vibe code an app for your next tabletop role-playing game.
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00:00Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of testing cursed technology. I'm your friend
00:10Vee Song, and I'm here with a special Sunday bonus episode. Yay! We're calling this AI
00:18for Normies. So here's the concept. AI can be so open-ended. It's really hard for the
00:25average person to know what it's good for. And if you ask me, I don't think big tech is doing such
00:32a great job at explaining that either. But we here at theverge.com are a bunch of giant nerds and we
00:41test all of this stuff for a living. So I've asked a bunch of my colleagues to join me in talking
00:46about how they've used AI in their everyday lives. And I'm not talking about the canned demo examples
00:53that you hear at product launches that don't actually seem all that useful in real life.
01:00I wanted to know what they found to be actually helpful. And I also wanted to know what doesn't
01:06work. We have a mix of practical applications, some quirky ideas, and personally, I think my
01:14main use is a little unhinged. So stick around for the Vergecast and we'll see you after the break.
01:22Hey, you're back. So Esther Cohen is our Director of Subscriptions at The Verge,
01:29and she recently used ChatGPT to help gather the information she needed before making a really big
01:34decision. So as of last week, our family of four made the really, really big change of moving from
01:41New York City, Upper West Side in New York City, to Miami Beach in Florida.
01:48Moving is really tough. I moved not a couple of years ago to New Jersey, and I never want to do
01:56it again. I never want to move ever again. I probably will. But, you know, it's really tough.
02:01It's really hard. And you said that you were using AI to help you figure out how to manage this
02:10logistical nightmare. Yeah. So I used it. I found myself using AI, surprisingly, a lot for my move
02:16in terms of planning, finding out information, finding out kind of how things work locally.
02:24Because when you're moving to a new state in a new city, like the way things work are just totally
02:28different. But I would say the most helpful and surprising way in which I use AI for this move
02:34was actually for budgeting specifically. When you move from Manhattan, New York, to Florida,
02:41your taxes are extremely different. And things like how much utilities cost, how much gas costs,
02:53how much traffic there is during the day in your commute. And so calculating how many miles your car
02:59least should have. I was like hanging out with ChatGPT all day asking those questions.
03:06So I was very surprised. I surprised myself by how much I used it every day.
03:13So one of the things with AI that, you know, people have trouble with is having to double check
03:18that information. Did you find that it's so far? I know you just moved. So some of this will bear out
03:24over time. Did you find that those calculations were realistic? Were you worried about double
03:30checking stuff? Yeah. So I'll take an example, like basically figuring out what our new salaries
03:36and take home pay was going to be given the new tax situation. So I did a lot of ChatGPT prompting of
03:43like, if I make this much before taxes, and I live in Bell Harbor, Miami, Florida, and I'm withholding
03:54as a single or whatever information I input, what's my take home pay going to be? The first few times I
04:00did different versions of that, I did double check just to make sure. But part of why I leaned into
04:05ChatGPT was because I find doing math that is like related to different facts and like tax rules,
04:13extremely, extremely daunting and overwhelming. So I, before I even get to the math, I'm like,
04:18do I even have the setup right? So I found ChatGPT super helpful because all I did was feed it like
04:23what I needed to know. And then it did all that math for me. It explained all that math for me.
04:28And I'm happy to report we just got our first or second paycheck as a family
04:33with based in Florida and the math pretty much checked out down to the scent. So this is not a
04:42ChatGPT endorsement, but for tax and budget and salary planning, it was very accurate and helpful.
04:49Would you say that this was basically kind of making your life a lot easier as far as like
04:57pre-planning the move? But also, were there any things that you tried to like use ChatGPT for your
05:04move that didn't work out? And you were like, oh, this is not what I should be using AI for?
05:10Yeah. So I would say, great question. So I did make my life a lot easier because I got to a couple
05:17dead ends where I would have had to like hire an accountant, for example, to figure things out for
05:21me. And I was able to just like ChatGPT it up. And that was like an expense saved and time saved and
05:28kind of like having to hire one more service or one more person like that got taken off the plate.
05:32And that was really helpful. Where it was not helpful was for, I found, for shopping around or
05:38getting estimates of things. So like I wanted to figure out a thing that would have been extremely
05:44helpful for me was like, what's the right car for us given the kind of size that we need, our budget,
05:51and also thinking about what the cost to insure it is. So again, this is moving and car rabbit hole.
05:58But sometimes even if a car lease is cheaper, it'll be more expensive to insure it if it's not as safe
06:03of a car or sometimes like crossovers are cheaper to insure than sedans. So I would have loved for
06:10ChatGPT to tell me, okay, get this particular car model because even though the lease will be a
06:14little more, the insurance will go down. So it sucked at that. It did not give me accurate
06:17like lease pricing. It did not give me accurate insurance pricing. I had to get on the phone with
06:22the insurance broker and like figure all that out and call all different insurance companies before
06:27I got to the right one. So it was really, really bad at that. Same with movers. Like I wanted to get
06:32a sense of like how much will it cost to move a family of four in a three-bedroom apartment from
06:36Manhattan to Florida. And it did a lot of like basic Google answers. Like it could be anywhere
06:44between $6,000 and $27,000 depending on the following factors. So I did not find it helpful
06:51when it came to shopping around. That would have been really nice if I could have had more help with
06:56that. Another question I had is like, how long did it take you to kind of figure out that, oh,
07:00this is something like, this is something that I can do. Here's how I ask the AI the appropriate
07:07prompts to kind of get the answers that I need. Because I found that like when I'm experimenting
07:12or using with different AI models, like the real key is learning how to ask the question correctly.
07:19And I spend a lot of time in the beginning while testing, just learning how to ask the question.
07:25So I'm just curious how long that took you to kind of get in the groove.
07:29It took me a minute to figure out what the right way to approach this was with ChatGPT.
07:33I did a lot of like, explain to me how taxes in Florida work kind of prompts in the beginning.
07:39And those were utter failures and did not get me the info that I needed. I thought I could get the
07:44tools to do the math myself. And then I finally realized, oh, what if this, I really just treated
07:50like an accountant and I'm like, here's how much I'm making. Here's my paperwork, figure out how much
07:56I'm going to take home every month. Once I did that and I figured out, I can literally redo my
08:01prompt. It was like, if I make X amount of money and have this many dependents and live in my
08:08neighborhood, how much take home pay will I bring every paycheck or something? And it literally was
08:15able to do the math, explain to me what all the different like deductions and with, sorry,
08:20withholdings are, lay that all out for me and then give me a yearly amount and a monthly amount.
08:25So that was amazing, but it did take me a minute to get there. Cause I, I think as someone who is,
08:30um, a collaborator and likes to figure things out on my own, my first approach was like, okay,
08:35let me ask ChatGPT for the tools to figure this out. And it took me a few steps before I was like,
08:41no, the whole point is that I don't want the tools. I want ChatGPT to do the figuring out for
08:47me. Once I did that, it was smooth sailing.
08:49Yeah. It's, it's, it's sort of like a, a catch 22 because you have to know what you want,
08:55but you're also trying to go in without knowing what you want and figure these things out. So
09:01like, I find that I spin wheels a lot of times when I'm trying to, trying to really get my answers.
09:05So then if you could do this move all over again, or if you have, uh, if we have listeners out there
09:12who are, you know, on the verge of a move, do you have any advice for them?
09:17If you need to lay something out very clearly before making a decision to move, like whether
09:24it's your budget for moving, what your new salary is going to be, um, any kind of logistical problem
09:30that you're trying to solve as your decision-making, ChatGPT is your friend. I find sometimes
09:35we were making a really, really big, um, daunting life decision. What I personally struggle with,
09:42um, is when there's so many moving pieces before you can even make the decision. Like,
09:48so like I, I personally really struggle with like the whole, there's so much to figure out before we
09:54even do the thing of it all that it's actually been really, really nice to have a tool that like
10:02got rid of, I would say three quarters of that, right? Like there isn't that much to figure out.
10:08We can figure it out with our computer and like with a glass of wine and two hours, I can do a lot
10:14of that, like figuring out like the groundwork before actually having to make a decision or do
10:20the big thing. And that was like personally and like emotionally a huge, um, a huge crutch and a
10:27huge help for me. I love that. Thank you so much. I'm how, how far are you along? Are you on
10:32unpacking? Are we, are we like 10% of the way there? 0% of the way there? We're like 3% of the way
10:39there. I mean, I, I moved over a year ago and I think 18 months ago maybe, and I'm still somewhat
10:48unpacking. So yeah. Yeah. That's just how it goes. Godspeed. Good luck. And all right. Thanks, Esther.
10:56Thanks Vy. Love talking to you. Bye. Next up, Alison Johnson is our senior smartphone reviewer,
11:05which means she's had to test a lot of different AI assistants over the last two years.
11:10Here's what she found most useful. Definitely my favorite, like, and it's not even close,
11:16is using AI to put stuff on calendars. I don't know how it's possible to be bad at calendars,
11:23but I am bad at doing calendars. If there's like a way to mess up putting something on a calendar,
11:30I will do it. Like without fail, I'll put something on the wrong day or, um, the wrong calendar. And my
11:37husband's like, what are you talking about? You don't have an appointment this weekend. I'm like,
11:40actually I do. So the bar is already really low. I think that's important that like AI really can't
11:47mess this up more than I'm already messing it up. So it's the perfect candidate for like,
11:55maybe AI can do this. This has been something that's been like in the works with Gemini on Android
12:01phones for a while. And, um, I like, to be honest, the first like few weeks, maybe a month I tried it,
12:11it like consistently got stuff wrong and like would insist that I was leaving. Uh, I had a flight out
12:19of the wrong airport and I was like ready to give up on this whole concept, but it's, I don't know what
12:24they did. They did something behind the scenes. It works. It like works so well, um, that I am just
12:33like never going to do my own calendar again. I think on, uh, an Android phone, you'll like summon
12:41Gemini and you tap something that says, um, ask about this screen. And then if there's, it'll kind
12:48of like take a screenshot and it looks for dates and stuff. Um, and if this sounds like, did we need AI
12:56to do that? Um, yes and no, uh, it'll, it it's really smart, actually. It'll ask you like follow
13:04up questions about what's on the screen. It can, um, sort out like time zones, like it will,
13:11will put something on my calendar for the correct Eastern time, time zone. Um, and that, that'll be
13:19reflected. So it's like, it's the ideal kind of like AI tool, I think where it's, it's sort of low
13:27stakes. I wasn't doing it great to begin with and it's pretty easy. Um, so I, that's like my first
13:37AI on a phone thing where I'm like, yes, a hundred percent. I want this and I'm going to keep using it
13:44for the rest of time. And so this is like Android, Android phones only. There's no hope for us on iOS
13:50yet. There is hope. iOS has it. It is an Apple intelligence feature. Um, it's like pretty good.
14:00Uh, I would say not as good as Gemini. It doesn't do the like follow-up questions. It did get tripped
14:06up on a time zone thing once. But again, if the bar is very low for you and it is for me,
14:15it's like something to start with. And then you, you fix a couple things and you usually get there.
14:22So like what's been most useful for you in terms of like these calendar adding, is it like flights?
14:27Is it, uh, I don't know. I don't have kids, but I have been told by parents that kid schedules are
14:34absolutely banana bonkers. Appointments is everything. Like, is there a particular thing
14:41that this calendar AI magic is, is best for? It is a hundred percent the kid stuff. And I
14:48didn't fully grasp it until you have a kid in school or like my kids in daycare, but it's like
14:54a preschool program and you will get an email with the most insane list of dates. And it's like crazy
15:01hair day is Friday. And it like, the information will not be complete. You know, it's like raptor
15:08visit on such and such day. Um, wear your pajamas to school on this day and going through all those
15:16things and adding my calendar manually is a nightmare. And also it sucks if you send your
15:21kid to pajama day and they're not wearing pajamas. Like it's so sad. Um, but this is like a thousand
15:27percent the best use case for it. Cause you do the screenshot, it scans the whole thing. And it's
15:33like, I added all this to your calendar. And then, then your kid isn't like sad when they show up on
15:40crazy hair day. But to be fair, my kid has crazy hair day every day. So we're covered there, but.
15:46My immigrant parents would have been like, you're not doing that. Just be sad.
15:49So. Yeah. Maybe I'm depriving him of like a learning experience where it's like, well, sometimes you
15:59don't do crazy hair day on the right day. But, um, for the most part, I think it's been good for
16:05everybody. Yeah. Is there anything else that you found particularly useful? We were having like the
16:12worst time with kid bedtime. This is a thing that happens throughout like early parenthood. Like kids
16:19sleeps great. You're like, this is amazing. I can read a book and like relax at night. And then all
16:25of a sudden it goes completely off the rails and you're like negotiating every little tiny thing.
16:30And you're like, please, dear God, I just, I need this hour to myself. So I was like kind of desperate
16:37and I went to the AI and I was like, describe the situation we're having his age. And like,
16:45I was like, help me out. Like, what can we do? And it goes and finds whatever relevant,
16:50like things on Reddit there are. Like it's, it's always Reddit. Like there's so many
16:56parenting things on Reddit, but it kind of like brought it all back and was like, you could try
17:01this, this, and this. And I was like, okay, I want to try this thing in this thing. Can you put this
17:08all together in a, I don't know, I called it a playbook. Cause like I needed to communicate it
17:15to my husband and he, he will get overwhelmed if I just kind of sit down. I'm like, we're doing this
17:22thing. He has two passes. He can use a pass. We sit for five minutes and the, you know, it's like
17:27so convoluted. Um, but it's been it all, it, it like explained everything. There were sub heads.
17:34It was very like logical. Um, and the funniest thing is the thing it could not do. I was like,
17:43great. Can you put this in a Google doc for me? And it was like, I'm sorry. I can't,
17:49I don't even understand.
17:51It's a Google platform.
17:54Yeah. Like I have all the little like plugins for all the, I don't know why it couldn't do a Google
18:00doc, but it literally, it was like, you can use command, you know, V or whatever, like copy and
18:06paste it. And it, the, I was like, okay, let's don't explain copying and pasting to me machine.
18:13Um, but the, the kicker is like, this honestly did work. Like it's, it's probably a little more
18:21complicated than it needs to be. And we've, we've like tweaked the system a little bit,
18:26but like, I sent my husband the playbook. He read it. Like we, we went into bedtime, like
18:34just ready. We were like a united front, uh, and, and it has worked. So did, did Gemini just like
18:43read a bunch of Reddit threads back to me and like format it? Probably. Um, do I feel good about that?
18:52I don't, I'm not a hundred percent sure, but like, I need, I need that kid to go to sleep
18:58and that has happened. So I, I'm like, well, all right.
19:04My real life bedtime story AI thing was like for a while I was just like really struggling to fall
19:11asleep. So my spouse actually was just asking AI to generate bedtime stories for me. Like I was a child
19:19based on just like based on our family. So like they generated a story about my cat Petey becoming
19:29a cult leader and how Pablo, our other cat brought upon his downfall. And I don't know what prompt
19:38they used, but it was like kind of good. And if I were to like try and publish the story,
19:46I wouldn't because it's just so hyper specific. But if I just needed like a quick, really funny
19:52bedtime story to listen to for myself to fall asleep, we've actually kind of done that every
20:00once in a while and just been like absolutely shocked. So yeah, it was like, I forget the title
20:08of it, but it was just like, Petey starts a cult was the title. And I was the number one cult
20:14follower. I didn't use any critical thinking in this AI story. And I was like, oh, that's
20:20actually quite accurate. Pablo, our other cat would be the one to like, what is, what is
20:26a cat if not a cult leader? You do their bidding. They're a little bit evil.
20:34Yeah. I mean, like ideally it would have, would it have meant more if my spouse had actually
20:38written that story, um, and, and like presented it? Yes. But I needed, I am the child in this
20:45scenario. I needed to go to bed right away. So they just like whipped it up. Uh, and that
20:52was like a good running saga for a week. And I was like, yeah, this is actually kind of cute
20:59and adorable. So, you know, we're just a hundred percent read Petey, the cult leader, by the way,
21:05I'll see if I can get the transcript because that was, that was truly just fundamentally the most,
21:13I, you know, I actually almost didn't go to bed. I was laughing so hard.
21:17Right. That's the danger.
21:19That is the danger, but we're just trying to help people go to bed, uh, help their kids go to bed.
21:25We all just want some rest. That's, that's all we want. Thank you, Alison. I, I'm sure the parents
21:32will now have some other tools in their arsenal. Please. Yeah. Message me on threads. We'll,
21:39we'll brainstorm. We'll bring Gemini into it. Yeah. We'll get through it together.
21:44So we're going to go to break. And when we come back, Jake will tell me his tips for
21:49how to best use AI for search. Cause you know, AI sometimes do be lying. See you soon.
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23:27We're back. So it's pretty hard to search for anything on the web these days without an AI
23:33large language model, butting in and telling you to put glue on pizza or something like that.
23:38Jake Castronakis is our executive editor, and he's been figuring out how to use AI to help him
23:44find actually accurate information. A thing that I thought could not be done.
23:50Well, for one, it is actually changing how I search online. You know, I think for good reason,
23:56people are very skeptical of using ChatGPT or Gemini as a search engine, right? Sometimes it's wrong.
24:01That is, in fact, very true. But one thing that's interesting is that over the years, I've heard
24:05Google executives saying like, oh, you know, all these kids, all these people who grew up smartphone
24:11first, you know, they don't search the same way all of us do, right? And I'm in my mid-30s. I think
24:17anybody, you know, my age, anybody who's been using Google for decades, when you do a search, right,
24:23you're very precise and specific, right? You enter a couple keywords to get exactly what you want,
24:29right? If you want to figure out how much RAM the iPhone 16 has, you just type in iPhone 16 RAM.
24:36You're not going to type out that whole question. There's a bunch of extra words. They're going to
24:39get filtered out. They might, you know, pull up search results you don't want. With ChatGPT,
24:45you really do just type in the question. And that allows you to get more specific and get nuances
24:52that you wouldn't be able to get. And this might, okay, my example right now is one that I use for work.
24:57But I think it shows what these tools can do in a way that a normal search engine couldn't.
25:01So recently, we covered that Reddit says it wants to become a search engine.
25:06That's like, that's really weird. That's a big idea. And so I wanted to make sure, okay,
25:10has Reddit said before that it wants to become a search engine? So I went to Google, right,
25:16typed in Reddit search engine. Well, that's not a very good search. Because number one,
25:22first off, you just get a ton of results from Reddit, right? All the results are from Reddit
25:28about search engines. Okay, well, so now you got to know how to filter out Reddit searches. That's
25:33easy. So I filter out Reddit searches. Now it's just a bunch of stories about how everybody's using
25:37the Google hack where you just type in Reddit to your search. Okay. So because the keyword search
25:44is too messy, there's too many results, I can't actually find what I need here. So I go to ChatGPT
25:51to see, okay, can it find this for me? So I type in, hey, I'm looking for examples of Reddit,
25:56the company, or its executives, saying that they want the company to be seen as or operate like a
26:04search engine. And that's like pretty specific, right? And it's able to sort through all of that.
26:10And it came back to me with a bunch of results. And it says, okay, Reddit hasn't said it wants to
26:15become a search engine. But here are some similar quotes from executives where they're saying things
26:24about how Reddit's thinking about search, or how search is a valuable opportunity. And so it's able
26:29to, you know, sift through all these other stories that are irrelevant, but have the right keywords
26:36and find the specific things. Now, here's the trick, right? Everybody's worried about AI being
26:42wrong. And I think when it comes to quotations, that's an area where AI is really likely to make
26:48stuff up. And so particularly for our jobs, we have to make sure everything is correct. And so
26:52fortunately, you know, now ChatGPT does the thing where it will give you web links. So I click through
26:59these, and in this case, they're all right. And so that was fantastic. That was really useful. And I was
27:02able to use this to help me suss out whether they had made claims like this before. I will say as a
27:08counterexample, I tried a very similar thing when Apple said, okay, we're going to make all of the
27:15glass for the iPhones in the US. And I was like, okay, ChatGPT, how much of the glass is already made
27:23in the US? And it just made up a quote. It just made up a quote. So you got to check. You have to
27:29check. But I think it's the same thing with right with Google, where you have to have the skill set.
27:36I know this is like a super interesting example, because I have a much sillier
27:40problem that really mirrors what you were saying. Like, um, so I have been watching Law and Order
27:47SVU, because I found out my spouse had never seen an episode of Law and Order recently. And I was like,
27:52what? This is like 900. There's like 20,000, there's 24 or 25 seasons of Law and Order SVU.
27:59Um, I, I actually wasn't aware that it was still going, but, um, we started watching it and,
28:05you know, uh, he had seen clips before and he's like, I did ice. Does Ice-T always have a ponytail
28:12in, in Law and Order SVU? And I was like, well, you know, he changes up his look. I don't recall
28:18him wearing suits all the time either in the first season. Uh, cause I think normally he wears
28:23something more like a leather jacket. So I went into Google and I was like, when does Ice-T lose the
28:29ponytail in SVU? Uh, I got nothing useful. And then I was like, okay, let me try the Reddit thing.
28:37Let me see if there's a Reddit community that talks about it. All I found were Reddits voting on whether
28:42they like bald Ice-T or ponytail Ice-T better. I could see that there was like some sort of-
28:48Who's winning? Um, it was pretty even. There were like people just who were pro-ponytail Ice-T,
28:55pro-bald Ice-T. But, you know, I wasn't getting a, when does he, he changes look thing. So I went to
29:01perplexity because, you know, I'm trying like, like you, I'm testing all these things and perplexity
29:06calls itself an AI search engine first. And, um, it told me like the exact season and I was like,
29:12oh my God. And there were like links saying the exact season. So I was like, oh, at the end of
29:17season three, beginning in season four, that's when he changes his look. That's early. It's very early
29:23considering there's 24 seasons, uh, of this show, but it, it gave me the answer of like exactly when
29:30that, that like I'll, I'll, I'm in season three now. So we'll, we'll see if at the end, at when we
29:36switch to season four, um, whether he becomes bald, but it, it, it's a very silly example, but it's, it's
29:43kind of what you were referring to. No, I think that's so interesting. And, and I think it really
29:48speaks to the fact that the types of searches you can do are changing. And, and I think that is the big
29:54thing to tap into. Right. And so I do think there are people who are maybe missing out as a result of,
30:01of being too skeptical that AI can be useful. So I actually had another really interesting
30:09chat GPT use case literally just this past week. Um, so I've been trying to get work done in my
30:19apartment. Um, and so I, I, I have this big open room and I want to kind of put up a wall to, to turn
30:26it into a bedroom, right? It's split it in half. It's a little bedroom, little office. Um, and so
30:31I started, uh, thinking, okay, let's, let's chat GPT for ideas. Um, and honestly, it was not very
30:39helpful. Right. I, I, I described the project. It didn't really, you know, I think it's, it's not
30:45great at like giving me image generation that, that is consistent, coherent and makes sense. Um,
30:51I already had pretty clear ideas on my own of like where to put this wall. So like, it wasn't
30:56too complicated. So that didn't really help me. But one thing I did was that, uh, you can keep
31:02going back to the same chat GPT thread over and over again. And so, you know, I've, I've been, this is
31:07something I've been working on for like months at this point. And, you know, every time I had an idea,
31:12I would just go back to this thread and, and, you know, I don't have anybody to toss these ideas
31:17around with, right? Like I don't have like a professional I can, I can talk to cause I need to
31:21hire that person. Um, and so I, you know, I would like bounce things back and it would give me some,
31:27some ideas to think through. And anyway, I finally got a contractor to work with me, um, about a week
31:35ago and the contractor sends over a quote, right? And so I paste the quote into chat GPT. Um, and it
31:44has like a breakdown of all the, all the work this person is supposed to do for me. Um, and I say,
31:48Hey, are there any questions I should ask about this? And chat GPT goes, well, it doesn't list the
31:54closet that you want it to add. And that was a mind blowing moment for me because I had told chat GPT
32:00months ago that I needed to put up a wall to add a closet. And I had told the contractor this in
32:05person, but in their estimate, they, they had forgotten to include that. And it had noticed
32:12that they didn't include it. And I had missed it. I had missed that the closet wasn't there.
32:17And, you know, that's like pretty important, right? It is important that we, we have in writing ahead of
32:22time, the, the work that this person is going to be doing. And the fact that I had missed it, I thought
32:27it was like, yeah, that, that really, really, uh, sent me for a trip.
32:31That gets to another thing that I've been thinking about, like in my testing, which is like
32:35the best scenarios I found for AI chat bots is just like thinking of it as me talking to myself
32:43in the mirror, but the mirror version of me has like a Google access and like a running list of
32:50everything that I said I wanted. So like, I don't know if I believe all of the hype, uh, where these
32:57big tech companies are like, AI is going to be your companion. It's going to be what, like, I,
33:01I find it more useful when I think of it as like, I'm talking to myself because I don't have a
33:06sounding board and I need a sounding board and all the other people in my life who I would use as a
33:12sounding board are one tired of hearing me talk about this or two currently unavailable. So like I,
33:20like you, I, I have these like different project things that I've been like iterating on brainstorming
33:25on where it's just like, Ooh, I don't want to bother someone just yet. Cause I am going to take
33:31something to someone and do a real in life meet person hashing out of ideas, but I want to go in
33:37prepared. I want to like have thought through the stuff already. I want to know what questions I should
33:42ask or like, have I missed something after like what I said, those things. And in that sense,
33:48it's been pretty useful, still not useful at times, like in the beginning, which gets to my
33:56other issue with AI is that you have to do so much training for it to get to that like little
34:01nugget, uh, which is pretty labor intensive, but when it works, you're just kind of like, ah,
34:07look at that. No, that's such a good way to think about it. Like, I think you're right. And it's,
34:11it's funny. Like, I think people get very concerned, rightfully so, uh, about like where this is
34:17taking away people's people's jobs. And I think in these cases, like it really is just talking to
34:23myself. It's in a lot of ways it's, it's like talking to, yeah, you're right. It's like talking
34:28to myself with Google. Who's just able to spit stuff back at me. Yeah. I wish we talked about
34:32this kind of way to use AI more instead of like the, I get why companies do the flashy marquee versions,
34:39but this, I feel like it's more useful framing. I will say there's a limit to this. There are also
34:46those stories of the people who like go off the deep end and like chat GPT told me I can run
34:53through a wall and you're like, no, no, no, no, no. Like you still gotta still have to like use all
35:01of your like good judgment and instincts here. If you use it rationally, I think there are actually
35:06some like very like simple ways it can kind of, um, um, you know, just make you more productive
35:14or, uh, able to think through things a little bit more clearly. It's not like I, I would have
35:20not been able to accomplish these things without AI, but you know, it was a lot easier and a lot more
35:27fun than having to search through a million forums on, you know, how walls are put up right now.
35:37It's true. That does lead to the downsides, right? It, you know, we, we, we've been writing quite a bit
35:42about how Google search traffic is declining. And I think some of us is because of AI. Um, and it's
35:49like, right. Okay. So all these, uh, you know, construction forums that I probably would have read
35:54through, um, you know, are, are not getting my traffic and that absolutely leads to issues.
35:59Um, on the other hand, it's hard to argue that that would have been a better experience for me
36:05than having a tool that can just give me a readout. Totally. And, you know, we'll see. I don't think you
36:13can put it back in the box at this point. So you might as well figure out how to make it work for you
36:18in some ways, some ways, like find the practical, uh, because it's getting shoved down your throat,
36:26uh, whether you like it or not, at least with search, it's helping with the fact that Google
36:32is no longer what it used to be. There is this idea forever that Google could not be toppled,
36:37right? Nobody could build a better search engine than Google. And it's true. I think like nobody has
36:44built a better search engine than Google. However, it turns out that this other product
36:49is quite competitive. Um, and it has challenges. It absolutely does. Um, but so does Google. And I
36:55think the, the key is knowing what the difficulties are and knowing where you need to be careful and
37:01apply your judgment in both cases. That's so simple, but also the rub, the applying your good
37:10judgment, I think is a thing. So much less fun. If you just believe everything it says.
37:15Yeah. So much less fun. And also like you can have good judgment or believe you have good judgment
37:20and then find, Oh, I got fooled. I gotta practice a little bit more, but to your point, the good
37:27judgment part is key. Well, that was enlightening. Thank you so much for, you know, talking with me
37:34about how you're evolving your search process. I think that was like really helpful to just
37:41chat that out and also made me realize that I also am kind of going through that same process
37:46myself, but yeah. Thank you so much. No problem. Good to talk to you. Thanks for having me.
37:52Last up, Travis Larchuk produces the Verge cast and he's actually been vibe coding. We found someone
37:58who actually has vibe coded using Google Gemini to help him with admin for tabletop role-playing
38:04games. I run an RPG online for some friends over. What are we using now? I think we're using
38:13discord now. This is an original world. It is inspired by Pokemon. And so what the players
38:21are doing is they are these trainers. They're going around and capturing these creatures or
38:28finding other trainers who have their own creatures to battle against them. And this is an original
38:34rule set that I created. And one of the things that I wanted this world to have was that the
38:42creatures would essentially be randomized. Like, I don't know if procedurally generated is the right
38:48term for this, but basically like I wrote a rule set of like, here's everything that a creature could
38:54be like, here are the moves that it potentially could have. Like, here's how many bonuses it can
38:59have at this level. But I didn't want to like have a bunch of lists printed out where I just like roll
39:05dice to like see on each table, like each thing that the creature would be. So I fed the rule set into
39:13Gemini and told it what I wanted it to vibe code for me. And so I will now share with you and our video
39:23audience, the app, and I will do my best to describe it for the audio audience. Here is
39:31the crystal spirits generator. These are called crystal spirits, which I think also sounds like
39:37a Boone's farm style. Pretty wild. Okay, so crystal spirits generated generator at the top of the page.
39:44It lets you select number of spirits you want to generate from one to four,
39:48the level of the spirits that you're generating from one to six, which biome they're going to be
39:54generated in. This world has color coded biomes according to the visible light spectrum.
40:00So I'm going to generate, let's see, two spirits level three in the blue biome. All right,
40:09it would generate. And so we've got, uh, it also automatically determines their initiative order
40:15for combat as soon as they're generated. Um, and gives them a name randomized from a list of,
40:24I think about 200 real animals and fictional creatures that I also fed into Gemini. So we've
40:30got octopus crab is the first creature that was generated. It is a water creature.
40:36This is amazing. It's got two XP. It's combat die is a D8. It's, it's a drag. It's on strike this
40:42too. So it's interesting. Like the way that you do this, it's like you ask Gemini for a cake and
40:49then it gives you a cake and then you taste the cake and you're like, can you make me another cake?
40:53But like useless, it's just like, you're getting all of these like fully formed cakes. Right.
40:59So each time it'll like create this thing. And then, you know, you have to test it to make
41:05sure that it's implemented the rules correctly and then you make little tweaks. So, so yeah,
41:09this is what I've been doing with my time with Gemini. Oh my goodness. How long did this actually
41:14take you to make? Because I, you know, I think we've heard the term vibe coding a bunch recently
41:20in all of these, um, you know, developer conference keynotes. Did you have like the basics
41:27of programming in your head? Like, did, did that help inform how you were going to do this? Or did
41:33you just go like, here are the rules, Gemini make a thing? I went here are the rules, Gemini make a
41:39thing. Like I know very, very basic coding. Um, it was something that I was actually really good at
41:45as a kid. And then my life, like it was one of those moments where two branching paths present to
41:50themselves. And I went on the one that, um, didn't make me an insanely rich, uh, engineer. Um, but yeah,
41:58so I mean, like I'm, I'm really into like tabletop games in general, like board games and like, what
42:05is a, what are, what is it, what are instructions to a board game other than like a extremely simple
42:10set of like rules and code? Right. So it's not like too far of a stretch to take that and then give
42:16that to Gemini and ask it to create an interactive out of it. The, the parts that take a lot of time,
42:24like it, it basically like what you're seeing here are like, there are a bunch of, it's a very simple
42:29looking app, but there are buttons that have like different colors associated with them. Like I didn't
42:34ask it to do any of that. Like it picked all the fonts that like pick the emoji that it uses when it's
42:40showing that something is like a water element, all of that stuff like Gemini came up with by itself.
42:45But the thing that does take time is like you experiment using it. You realize that it
42:50misinterpreted a rule that you gave it. And then you have to convince it that it's wrong
42:56because sometimes it'll be like, well, I did that for you. And you're like, no, you didn't
43:01like, please try again. Was it just something that you were like,
43:05Hmm, I don't want to have all these sheets. Let me see if AI can do the thing. Or was it something
43:11that you found other game masters have been doing that you've heard of? Like,
43:15is this a Travis original idea? Did you find it on Reddit? Like what, what sparked this
43:20as like a reason to use AI?
43:23So there are, there are a bunch of, um, uh, of systems that work for existing like, uh, games,
43:30like for example, Dungeons and Dragons. There are plenty of places online that you can go to and
43:36your, your character sheets are already in there. Like, you know, the, the dungeon master,
43:40basically all they have to worry about is coming up with whatever challenges the players are going
43:45to have to face next. Like all of the rules for the enemies are baked in, like rolling the dice.
43:51That's all baked in because this is an original game system that I came up with. Um, and I don't
43:58know how to code something like that for me. I figured I would just see if it worked. Um, and,
44:05uh, yeah, I think it works a lot better than I expected it to. I mean, in terms of AI, like I
44:14wouldn't want to use it to ask it like, Hey, so what should happen next in this story? I'm like the
44:22entire point of playing the game is that we are coming up with what happens next in the story. So,
44:26uh, I wouldn't want to use it for that, but I think for sort of this admin use case, uh, I'm,
44:34I'm pretty happy with it. Uh, it, it does something that would be a lot more complicated
44:38for me to do on the fly. Like it would be possible, but I would just be like, hang on
44:45everybody. And then I like, I got to roll a D 100 right now. Uh, okay. The first part of the
44:51animal is fish, you know, like I could, I could do that. But, um, instead I basically wrote all of
44:59that down and then told Gemini, like make a thing that does that for me.
45:03I feel like you just described what I think, you know, the real use case of AI should be,
45:11which is taking the tedium out. Because to your point, I can just imagine all the various dice
45:17that you have clattering on a table and then it falls off the table. And then you're like,
45:21hang on guys, I got to figure this out. Oh no, I got to find the dice. Oh, my cat is taking the
45:25dice. And, and just kind of interrupting the game flow. So just like offloading the admin,
45:31but keeping the creative bits to yourself. Like, I feel like that's what we should be doing instead
45:36of just saying that AI is going to do it all for us. So I don't know. I feel like this is a very
45:44cool, nerdy, after my own heart as a, as a, as a board gamer, uh, way to use AI. I love it.
45:52Thanks, B. Bye. One more break. And when we come back,
45:55I'll tell you what I've personally been using AI for. This is the Verge guest.
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47:32All right, we're back. Time for me to confess the very, very silly thing that I have been using AI for.
47:40So to, to bring it back a bit, uh, a couple of years ago, I kind of fell into the astrology
47:48rabbit hole on Tik TOK. And I'm not talking about, Oh, you just look in your weekly horoscope and you
47:54look at your sun sign. I'm an Aries and you go, Oh, this is what's going to happen for Aries. No,
47:58I got into the extremely nerdy version of this, which is natal birth charts. Oh yeah. It takes your
48:05time of birth, where you were born. And depending on the status of the stars in the sky at that point
48:13in time, you can apparently learn a lot about yourself and what's going to happen. And it's
48:17absolutely, it's absolutely crazy. I want to preface this by saying that I don't really believe
48:24in a lot of it, but there's been some batshit things happening over the last couple of years.
48:29And when you feel that there's no hope, I don't know. Sometimes I feel a little better going and
48:35looking at my natal chart and going, Oh, Mercury is in retrograde. And that's why everything is
48:41sucking. Yay. Um, you know, and just going on with my life because I don't know that's there.
48:48So at the start of this journey, I was using the app costar. You've may have heard of it. It's an AI
48:55powered astrology app, and it's pretty well known for being very sassy in its, uh, horoscopes, but
49:02also very surface level. Like if you want to go deep into stuff and kind of get some really
49:10nitty gritty insights, which, you know, it starts off being fine, just getting roasted by an AI
49:16saying like, girl, Mercury, Mercury retrograde is happening. So get your shit together. You sad sack
49:24like, you know, that kind of vibe of thing, you know, after a while you get really into something,
49:28you want to learn more, you want something more direction in your life because the chaos
49:34of the world is getting really un, unmanageable. Uh, so, you know, costar wasn't cutting it for me.
49:42And I was trying all these different apps and putting my birth time, nothing seemed to be
49:46answering the questions I had, uh, when I was in these moments of like, dear God, I need,
49:53I need something to tell me it's going to be okay. So, uh, one day I was just onto the site
49:59astroseek.com and then I scrolled down. I went, Oh, it has listed everything out so that you can
50:06copy paste the entire details of your birth chart into, uh, uh, chat GPT. And then you can just have
50:14chat GPT, save your birth chart as a memory, and then you can ask it whatever. So basically I have
50:21been asking chat GPT stuff like, you know, I'm planning this project, what transits, uh, of
50:27planets in the sky support me being successful? When am I supposed to manifest certain things?
50:32And like I said, I don't actually believe in all of this nonsense, but I am trying to make sense of
50:38a senseless world. And I've actually found it kind of useful to, I don't know, just go to chat GPT and
50:46ask my unhinged questions when I'm feeling just a little out of my mind and just need to be like
50:53brought down to earth a little bit. And, you know, at least I'm not using chat GPT as a therapist. I
50:57have a real person for that, but yeah, I go to it with a bunch of different timing and astrology
51:02questions and go like, Oh, thank you. Chat GPT. My mercury is in the ninth house and in Aries. And
51:07that does mean I am a direct communicator. Thank you. So very silly placebo type things. Uh, I probably
51:15just confessed to all of you that I'm neurotic as hell and I'm using AI for a very, very silly
51:20purpose, but Hey, I've downloaded every AI powered astrology app at some point during the past five
51:29years. Do I think this is a particularly healthy coping mechanism? No, absolutely not. But it is
51:35what it is. And it's, I don't know, it's working for me. So that's what I've been using AI for.
51:41Don't at me that astrology is fake because I already know and agree with you. Just let me
51:48have this. Ms. Cleo isn't around anymore. Just let me have this. Okay. So that's it for the Vergecast.
51:55Thanks to all of my colleagues who've joined me today. As always, if you have thoughts, questions,
52:01feelings, examples of how you use AI in your daily life, you can always email us at Vergecast
52:07at theverge.com or keep calling the hotline 866-VERGE-11. This show is produced by Eric
52:14Gomez, Brendan Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, and Andrew Ferruino. The Vergecast is a Verge production
52:20and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. See you next time.
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