AI assistants now want to do your shopping and take care of your mental health. Neither one is open about whose interests it serves. In this episode, Jeremy and Jason start with Meta’s new Muse shopping assistant: a $5 fee that nobody could explain, and Amazon blocking outside AI assistants while it builds its own. Then they look at a recent survey finding that one in three young Canadians uses AI for mental health support every month. They explain why AI makes “what will you pay” pricing cheap enough to use on you. They also cover why AI therapy keeps telling you you’re fine, and what happens to the people who depend on these tools if they get paywalled or shut off. Jeremy shares how an AI assistant helped him pull out of burnout, and why that help is itself the risk. You’ll come away with a practical way to use AI assistants without handing over your wallet or your head.

• [00:01] Meta’s Muse promises to shop for you. Is that a gift or a trap?
• [00:29] Amazon blocks outside AI shopping bots while it builds its own
• [01:56] Why Meta shouldn’t hold your purchase data
• [02:41] A reporter tests Muse and finds a mystery $5 fee
• [04:44] Do retailers already show you prices based on what you’ve paid before?
• [05:54] Ad-tech tracking is old news. AI makes acting on it cheap.
• [10:11] One in three young Canadians uses AI for mental health
• [12:19] The cheerleader problem: AI tells you you’re not the problem
• [16:32] Jeremy’s burnout turnaround using Claude and wearable data
• [19:11] The internet as a private toll road built on public land

Everyone’s waiting for AI to go rogue. Kevin Surace, whose team at General Magic built one of the first AI assistants, says that’s the wrong thing to fear. Today’s AI hacking mostly doesn’t break through firewalls. It fools a person into opening the front door. Kevin cites Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 finding that roughly 90% of ransomware attacks now come in by compromising identity, and Jason, who works in cybersecurity, pushes back hard with supply-chain attacks and exposed API keys. Then the conversation turns to Kevin’s book, The Joy Success Cycle: how AI takes the dull parts out of your job, which jobs are really at risk, and the one thing to do if AI scares you. In short: worry less about the robots, protect your identity, and start using the tools on real work this week.

• [00:00] Kevin explains why he thinks the industry is scaring people more than it needs to
• [02:37] Why AI “lies”: it learned from everything humans have written, fiction included
• [04:19] Jason on open-source models that skip guardrails, and why frontier labs have every reason to keep theirs
• [06:51] The LiteLLM supply-chain attack, explained for the rest of us
• [09:13] The Unit 42 figure: about 90% of ransomware comes in through identity, not a back door
• [15:21] Two phone calls that defeat a passkey, and why your personal phone shouldn’t be the key to your company’s network
• [19:22] The actual risk: people giving AI a goal and no limits
• [21:09] Why AI takes away the drudgery (spreadsheets, slide decks, video editing) rather than the work you enjoy
• [31:17] Which jobs AI will hit hardest, and why Kevin thinks the US has a worker shortage instead
• [38:37] Advice for 30-somethings who feel lost: do real work with AI, not toy experiments
• [46:03] Kevin cloned his own voice to record his audiobook, and only his wife can tell

The White House just had the biggest names in AI sign a pact promising to behave. It isn't legally binding, there's no penalty for breaking it, and the document had a typo. Jeremy and Jason look at what "AI self-regulation" means when the companies writing the rules are also burning cash and racing to IPO. Jason explains why a voluntary pledge looks more like a press release than a guardrail. He also covers why "superintelligence" is a real technical term that shouldn't be used for branding, and how quantum computing could break the encryption that protects your data. You'll come away knowing who this kind of deal actually protects, why the economics push AI companies to keep accelerating, and why "it's not legally binding" should be the first thing you hear.

• [00:22] The AI pact explained: a voluntary agreement with no legal consequences (and a typo)
• [02:04] Why the companies asking for regulation got self-regulation instead
• [02:14] Jason's case that AI is losing money, and why a big IPO valuation doesn't add up
• [04:02] AI vs. AGI vs. ASI: why calling today's AI "superintelligence" gets it wrong
• [05:22] South Park's billionaire satire and the "nobody needs your opinion on peptides" problem
• [08:04] Trusting Big Tech's "trustworthy technology" promise
• [09:25] The real business model: your data, digitized and sold back to you
• [10:53] Quantum computing explained in plain English, and why it threatens encryption
• [16:39] If AI loses money, why does it keep growing? It's already a social program
• [22:57] Real Genius, quantum scientists, and the "grenade with the pin pulled" problem

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