AI News from China
A Glenn Show cartoon
The latest experiment at The Glenn Show has three points of origin:
First, ever since I made the show’s logo, I’ve wanted to animate it.
Second, our team has been thinking about a project with the working title Glenn Loury Reads the News—a segment for the show where Glenn would browse the morning paper and share his spontaneous reactions to the day’s or the week’s events. The most ambitious version of this idea—and, Glenn tells me, one that is potentially explosive for his marriage—could be called Breakfast with the Lourys. This would involve Glenn discussing recent news with his wife, LaJuan Loury, a progressive who, to put it lightly, disagrees with many of Glenn’s political views.
Third, there’s something called The Weird News Project that I’ve been working on over at my Substack, Psychopolitica. The premise is to use the old-school, dry, just-the-facts journalistic voice to summarize the trippiest current events, making the reader/listener feel as though they live in a Philip K. Dick novel. I’ve written about fish addicted to meth, attempts to insert advertisements into dreams, the world’s governments’ stance against regulating killer robots, and more.
The cartoon below is minimalistic visual packaging—an evolution of the “audio essays” format we’ve been developing here at TGS—for a beautiful audio presentation by Glenn that uses the latest installment of The Weird News Project as a starting point (do check out the full version, which has more news and beautiful art by Jason Novak and Giorgos Terzakis).
Glenn reads three news items from China, all dealing with AI and then shares his thoughts on what he’s just read (with a few modest contributions from me).
I encourage you to listen until the end. The speculation about “unfreedom” being the governing principle of humanity in the 22nd century must be one of my favorite Glenn Loury Rants™ to date.
As usual, we are very interested in your feedback—on the content, on the format, on the ways you’d like to see us develop this further. We’re always paying attention to the comments.
Honestly, I don't care for this format.
What is gained by replacing Glenn's naturally expressive face and body language by a cartoon?
Moreover, for the first five minutes, in lieu of Glenn's brilliant spontaneous oratory, we have... Glenn reading someone else's words from a page.
I find that highlighting each word as Glenn says it is distracting.
Sorry to be negative, Nikita. To end on a positive note, I'll add that I do really like the "Glenn head" logo itself. It's one of the best on Substack. I also like these little experiments you are trying with the Glenn Show (the puzzles were my favorite), so don't take my negative reaction to this one in particular as a negative reaction in general. Best wishes to you in faraway Russia.
I would love to hear Glenn talk about the news!