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.

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.

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.

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.

Patton is honestly such a great guest.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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 is the deepest episode of the show

What a good conversation.

His voice is so distinctive I love it

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

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

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.

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.

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

Patton is a very smart and funny guy!

This was a good convo.

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

Love the Veruca Salt ref from Patton!

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.

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

great episode

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

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..."

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 😂😂

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 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

I was SO stoked with early Tivo. Gen 1.

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

I love this girl. Her laugh is gnarly!

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

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

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

I have been ALL IN on AI for only a couple months. Learning everything I can and even starting this YT channel. The technology is moving SO fast, it's nearly impossible to keep up. New tools and models EVERY DAY. I can't even imagine how much more advanced it will be one short year from now. In 5... 10... 20 years from now, not even the A.I. can imagine that world. It will be different and it is coming. There is literally NO way to stop it now.

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!

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

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

(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 😂

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

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

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

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.

Bravo, Conan

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

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

John Tesh! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

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

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

I remember him from Two and a Half Men

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

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

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

Veruca Salt reference. Good one, Gen-Xer.

The axe just keeps getting bigger and sharper

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.

He is speaking out his butt. The grid is not self repairing enough to think it’s unable to be shutdown or to fail in a catastrophic manner.

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”.

Texan here. The grid can definitely go down.

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 sounds like the last scene of WarGames

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

Do people not know that Y2K was avoided by programmers? This was my moms job for that time period. People worked REALLY hard to avoid it becoming a problem. So maybe we should do that for AI...That was a real problem

Somewhere in the afterlife, Harlan Ellison is laughing evilly.

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

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

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

Even if AI doesn't go rogue, imagine the loss of whole skill sets and tolerances. "Oh, I can't fix this bug in the system. I can diagnose it and prompt the AI to fix it, but no other person who works here knows how to do this anymore." Loss of skills is natural. How many people can build a decent fire? How many can hunt without a gun? Air conditioning has made many, many people unable to endure even moderate summer heat.

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.

I best remember Patton Oswalt from my fave sitcom, The King of Queens. It was great. I haven't seen everything he's done since, but nothing compares to that amazing comedy show.

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.]

Why are the microphones all sharp and the faces blurry?

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

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

I'm a spatial statistician and work with big data and computer models everyday, including some AI and machine learning approaches for analyzing the huge datasets I work with. All this talk of AI in terms of "mentality of a 6 year old" or a program that tries to kill entire portions of the world's population is a bit silly. At its root, AI is merely advanced pattern recognition software. What we think of as human intelligence is merely pattern recognition. Intuition is pattern recognition. Each of us has a brain that is constantly collecting data and running stats on that data to make predictions based on previous experiences. As I write this, I'm sitting in my home office near a window and I can hear what sounds like a garbage truck coming down my block. I'm extremely confident it is in fact a garbage truck even without seeing it because I have a few key pieces of data to help with my prediction: it's garbage collection day, it's early morning and that's when the garbage truck tends to come by, and it sounds the way a garbage truck sounds. Lo and behold, I was right. That's a pretty simple pattern to recognize. Garbage day + early morning + garbage truck sound = high likelihood of it being a garbage truck. One could easily write a computer program to make that prediction. Other patterns aren't as easy to recognize because they are vastly more complicated (like driving, for example), but it is possible to break down those patterns into simple mathematics all the same. So much so that a computer program can make remarkably accurate predictions and decisions that look an awful lot like what we call intelligence. A program can be designed to maintain a power grid because we know with a high degree of confidence, based on previous experience, that a power grid failure is caused by a few likely scenarios that such a program could easily detect and fix. At its core, it's just statistics.

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

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

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

❤❤❤

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 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

I love how Patton is in Fallout vault colors.

without problems, there's no problem solving

Has he not seen Colin Diffusion?? 7:30 The dude is doing exactly what he just said

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

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.