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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
I wrote about this in car surveillance thing. It's going viral. It's sort of fake news. We got a sort of truth zone it, but also it's coming, and it might not matter because if you get in a robotaxi, there's definitely gonna be a camera on you. But the fear is centered around this idea that there will be a requirement from the federal government, that every new car sold in The United States will be required by law to have technology, uh-oh, that puts constant surveillance on the driver.
John:And this is happening sooner than you think by 2027. That's just twelve months away. AI in your car will determine if you're sober and fit to drive, automatically turning off your vehicle
Jordi:almost May, by the way.
John:I know. We're we're we're, what, Eight months away, I guess, from 2027? This is the real AI 2027 problem. This is this is a big We
Jordi:are having audio It's most likely a nation state. Potentially. Possible we are under attack. Potentially. But we are working on it.
John:It's like you watching for that a dubbed foreign film. Well, maybe we can play this video of what happened the last time America tried to pull back on driving a car while intoxicated and some of the some of the response, some of the backlash from
Speaker 3:Any attempt to restrict drinking and driving here is viewed
John:Can we pull this up? Okay. We're working on it.
Jordi:Anyway Production team is being humbled this morning.
John:Humbled. Anyway, let me read through some of my take and then we'll play that funny video. So sounds scary. Yeah. Let's play this video.
Speaker 3:And driving here is viewed by some as downright undemocratic.
Speaker 4:It's kinda getting common. It's when a fellow can't put in a hard day's work, put in eleven, twelve hours a day, and then getting your truck and at least running one or two beers.
Speaker 3:They're making it laws where you can't drink when you want to. You can't you have to wear a seat belt when you're driving, and pretty soon we're gonna be calm in this country. Communist country.
Jordi:What what when was that? Was that the
John:Apparently, that's real. I I always I saw I've seen that video before. I always thought it was fake. I didn't realize that that was real. That feels like eighties, seventies, something like that.
John:Eighties? Okay. Well, there was backlash then and there's backlash now. Some of it's a little bit overblown. This sounds very scary, you know, constant surveillance.
John:The real the real crazy version is camera that's watching you at all times. The government, the police, and the automaker can just turn off your car whenever they want. That sounds bad. What's actually being proposed? What's actually on the timetable?
John:So the rationale for this is good, and I think most people would agree that it is a reasonable thing to do to try and curb alcohol related vehicle accidents, drunk driving. There's more than ten thousand alcohol related deaths each year on US roads. That's a ton. Anything we can do to stop that, reduce that, totally worth working on, totally worth pursuing as long as it doesn't violate a whole bunch of other liberties or create more problems than it solves, right? We want net positive impact here.
John:Technology is getting better at detecting intoxication, and it's getting a lot cheaper, so why not just ship drunk driver detection system with every car from the factory? That's the proposal. There are a bunch of potential downsides that we can get into, but it's important to set the facts straight about where we actually stand today. So the core concept here is generally correct. Congress did pass a mandate directing the NHTSA to create a standard for advanced drunk driving prevention technology in new passenger vehicles.
John:Now, the 2027 date that people are citing, that's not a hard deadline. The law was passed back in 2024, and in the actual law, it basically allowed for delays. So they said, the NHTSA will only issue a binding mandate requiring automakers to actually roll out this tech when the tech is ready and the NHTSA currently says that the technology is not ready. So in theory, the tech feels close, but the scale of the problem is so big you can see why there's a delay here. Alcohol detection systems exist and are typically deployed for drivers with DUIs.
John:You're familiar with blowing in the tube, probably. Hopefully not personally. But the problem is that those little hoses that you blow into, those are active systems. They require you to actually sit there and do that for a minute. The government doesn't want that.
John:That's not what the proposal is.
Jordi:They want passive.
John:They want passive, which means breath sensing. So there's just like smell o vision, basically. If it smells alcohol, it doesn't turn on the car. The other one is fingerprint reading. So you put your finger on the start button, and it scans into your finger and and and sees how many alcohol particles are inside, I guess.
John:That that sounds sci fi, but we're close, I guess. There's a couple other ways you can solve that. And then camera system. Just look at the at the driver. If they look drunk, then don't turn on the car.
John:So, all of these seem like they could be close to being roughly accurate right now. Like, you can imagine an AI startup or a university lab putting something together at a hackathon that's 90% of the way there, maybe 99% of the way there, maybe even 99.9% of the way there. But the problem is that Americans drive a lot. The rough estimate is that there are almost a quarter trillion driving trips per year in America. It's basically every American, all three fifty million of them basically, taking an average of two trips every single day of the year.
John:So two twenty four billion trips a year is what the rough back of the envelope I did was. And what that means in practice is that if this system is 99.9% accurate, you're still looking at tens of millions of incorrect results every year. And the fact that probably ninety nine point nine percent of these trips are not inebriated. Like, drunk driving is not 50 of trips. It's not 1% of trips.
John:It's a
Jordi:very Think about small how people would abuse this new system. It'd be like students being like, sorry, I couldn't make it to the exam Exactly. Because
John:Dog ate my lunch. My car wouldn't start because of a false positive on this. And so even if you're at 99%, you're still looking at tens of millions of incorrect results. The vast majority of those are going to be people who are sober. Somebody wants to get in their car for their morning commute.
John:They're a little sleepy or they wore some cologne that triggered some sensor. System flags them as intoxicated and prevents them from starting their car, and it's infuriating. The tech will probably get there with enough time and effort, so it's worth looking into who supports this and opposes it. The mandate was actually bipartisan, but there's starting to be a backlash from libertarian conservatives who are worried about Orwellian government controls. There's an idea that there will be a remote kill switch, which leads to a bunch of dystopian possibilities.
John:That is not in the current provision. That's not what's actually being proposed right now. But it's possible that at the end result of this process of back and forth, you do wind up with that exact capability. And so people are worried about the system going off while you're driving at speed on the roads, and then the car just shuts off and you get in a crash, that's actually more dangerous than potentially the alternative. And so the middle ground seems to be what's called pre drive lockout.
Jordi:We need a tinfoil expert. The tinfoil enthusiasts have been saying that the sort of remote
John:Are you using tinfoil enthusiasts to mean conspiracy theorist? I've never heard that before.
Jordi:That's good. That's a that's a new one. Okay. Yes. So tinfoil enthusiasts Yes.
Jordi:Have been claiming Yes. That the remote shut off button has existed forever.
John:Oh, yeah. Since the since the '19
Jordi:Yeah. '85 when when when some sort of like, you know, witness Mhmm. Or or something like that just gets in a very inconveniently timed high speed wreck. Oh. That is
John:That's shut down. Oh, okay. I I was unfamiliar with this conspiracy theory. It's interesting, though. But, yeah.
John:So, I mean, the current the current, like, consensus is around maybe pre drive lockout being the more moderate solution than actually shutting the car off once it's driving. Still incredibly incredibly inconvenient if there's false positives. And then you also do still run into some potential negatives outcomes where you go to the beach, you have a couple of glasses of wine, you're not planning on leaving, but then the tsunami warning goes off. You need to get back in your car and your car says no. Like, don't care that there's a tsunami.
John:Oh. I don't care that there's a tsunami. You have had two glasses of wine. You're at point o eight. You can't drive right now.
John:And you need to tell the car, well, in this case, I I'm okay with driving drunk because the tsunami's coming and I'm at the beach and I had a couple of glasses of wine. And the car won't be able to, you know, potentially, you know, deal with that nuance. Right?
Jordi:Right.
John:And there's a whole bunch of other yeah. And there's a whole bunch of other scenarios that could potentially play out. Just judiciousness is is difficult. But potentially unlocked, you know, AI agents. I don't know.
John:You know, you ask these models, what would they do in some certain scenario? Maybe there's a solution.
Jordi:Yeah. I think there's a much much stronger argument for rolling this out as soon as the average vehicle
John:Is just full self driving.
Jordi:Has has full self driving capability.
John:But then but then you don't need it because you can be as drunk as you want.
Jordi:No. I still I still think there's gonna be this big window where where where you're not gonna be able to So specifically because as if you need long as somebody needs to sit in the front seat of their car Sure.
John:Potentially take Yeah. Over
Jordi:on in any type of situation. Yeah.
John:I like the idea of level four self driving. You get in the car, there's one button you push to say, hey, just put it in self driving mode. I've had a couple drinks. Don't let me take the wheel.
Jordi:No matter how hard I try
John:to negotiate. How hard I try, it's all disabled. It's just play play mobile level. But then there's a second button. And for that, you have to do a full blood transfusion.
John:They take they centrifuge your blood and make sure that you have the purest blood possible to take to take the wheel and be able to actually drive the vehicle. Don't know.
Jordi:There may be something there.
John:I did have I did have a take on this though, which is that Doug Gimaro, friend of the show, founder of carswithbids.com, has always talked about the eras of cars, you know, the air cooled Porsches, then you have the the fully manual, no no no electronic systems, no stability control, no traction control, those types of cars. Then you get into the manual gearboxes, the no turbos, no hybrid systems. And then the modern supercar era is just a bonus if it's not a full electric car. It's like, you know it's going be a hybrid, but is it is it is it at least there's an engine of some sort. And that's what car collectors are sort of marking these moments where it's like, it's the last manual.
John:It's the last non, you know, non hybrid supercar made by Ferrari or something like that. Yeah. And there's gonna be a world where you're like, oh, that was the last one that didn't have the camera that looked at you twenty four seven or whatever. And I think it creates this like new class of like vintage cars. I don't don't Maybe not investment grade, but certainly something that people, I mean, you can already see people reacting to this even though the post is like a little bit overhyped.
John:You can already see people reacting to it being like, I gotta buy a 2026 and hold on to it forever and keep it in great condition because I don't want that. But anyway, there's been a pushback on this stuff for a long time. Tyler, do you have anything on on cars? Are you old enough to drive?
Speaker 5:I was just thinking like like, what do think the premium is for a car that you can still like drunk driving?
John:I think I think your car is is is gonna
Jordi:go Dude, this not this is not even worth joking about. Yeah. Anyway Bad joke.
Speaker 6:Stop the fucking charade.
Jordi:Move on.
John:Moving on. What else is going on? We gotta talk about the GPT 5.5 prompt for Codex, which seems to have a duplicated line trying to get it to not talk about creatures. Tyler, you dug into this. What is actually going on?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So it just seems like there's there's some like emergent property of the new model where it always tries to talk about like kind of creatures and goblins. Raccoons.
Jordi:Yeah. Ogres are in there. Trolls, ogres, pigeons.
John:And so in
Speaker 5:They had to counteract this. Right? You have to put in the system prompt, tell them not to do this.
John:Where is this? Creatures? Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query. This reminds me of those old image prompts where, like, there would be a negative prompt that specifically said, like, do not put six fingers on the human's hand. But what a what a weird one and what an odd what an odd line to throw into a coding agent.
John:Like, do we know anything else about this if people dug into, like, what is actually going on here?
Speaker 5:I mean, it it might not be just the coding agent.
Jordi:I don't. It's probably just
Speaker 5:the model in general It's the
Jordi:model itself.
John:It's goblin mode.
Jordi:The model itself yearns to discuss creatures, goblins, raccoons. It is an emergent property of intelligence.
John:Vai says, they had to put this in due to my effect on the company. Goblins, creatures sort of followed me in through the front door when I joined and we are only just now starting to understand the downstream effects of their presence. And TBo says, never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons or other animals or creatures unless it's absolutely no use.
Jordi:There's so many If
John:you know, you know.
Jordi:Somebody says, my my 5.5 Codex said, goblin with a flashlight, when referring to a bug fix fix yesterday.
Speaker 7:Can't work on the first one, so I'm gonna look at the number two for now.
Jordi:And that would this be an early stage company?
John:You could get exposure. Yeah.
Speaker 7:Potentially, or it could be really partnering with a very, very large company.
John:Cool.
Speaker 7:So there's some advantages to both.
John:Well, good luck wherever the future takes you and
Jordi:This was fun. I I've I've deeply I've deeply enjoyed your your posting. Always been fun. And and, yeah, you're clearly having a lot of fun, and it's fun to watch. It's great to meet Thank
Speaker 7:you, guys, both, big fan of the show. So thanks for having me all.
Jordi:Thanks for having It's been an honor.
John:We'll talk to you soon.
Jordi:Cheers, Bubble Boy. We'll talk to Cheers.
John:Bye. We should close with an example of why memory is so expensive. Star Wars meets Pawn Stars. Have you seen this video? You watched this, Jordy?
Speaker 5:I did.
John:I saw the first second. I haven't watched the full thing, but I think
Speaker 8:It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 6:I have items to pawn.
Speaker 8:Alright. Let's see what you got. Okay. So these are lightsabers.
Speaker 6:Correct.
Speaker 8:So where'd you get them?
Speaker 6:Estate sale.
Speaker 8:Estate sale.
Jordi:It's so funny that you can clock it by the audio more than the video.
Speaker 6:It's very weird. Collector for many years. It is a great passion of mine. Each lightsaber has a story. A history of people.
Speaker 6:There is a certain threat
John:I I guess the character is CGI to begin with. So it's ease. It's hard to clock. But even ease is probably fully AI.
Speaker 6:I have a lung condition.
John:Video or maybe it's edited together. I don't know. But, yeah, you're a 100% right. It's the audio at the top.
Speaker 6:Must sell my collection.
Speaker 8:That's rough, man. How much are you looking to get for him?
Speaker 6:A 100,000 prints.
Speaker 8:Look. I'll give you $50 for him.
Speaker 6:You fool.
John:It's interesting that, why that's popular is because it's this mash up between two intellectual pieces of property and they're not being compensated for that. And so there's like this thing that can only exist in the piracy world, basically. Like, if someone if you had recreated this without leveraging Star Wars IP or Pawnstar's IP, it doesn't go viral. Right? And so the the business case for AI video is still a little bit more narrow, and I think it will be tucked in the tool section.
John:I was I was, yeah, looking a lot at like the the Aflac projects that he sold to Netflix and some of the background replacements, some of the VFX stuff. Like, it feels like the way even though this is like this oh, it's like one shotting entertainment, it feels like the next moment of, like, AI in Hollywood is very much, like, tool driven, you know, leveraging things like, you know, green screen removal and object replacement, VFX workflows, and just sort of speeding up remote or like rote tasks. But people will continue to have fun with these mash ups. And I'm sure we'll see many more of them on the timeline.
Jordi:The other news
John:What else?
Jordi:Mike Isaac and his team over at the New York Times are in the courtroom live blogging. They're blogging. They went. They're blogging. Yeah.
Jordi:They're blogging. It is There's some crazy moments crazy, crazy moments already.
John:The judge is like, we'll to put some
Jordi:of them together. The judge is doing bits. The judge is doing bits. Apparently, Elon's lawyer's microphone turned off four times in the course of his opening statement.
John:Maybe the screen turned off at one point. I saw some different point on that.
Jordi:Apparently on the There were technical issues. Fifth or so time the judge says, what can I tell you? We are funded by the federal government. So That's wild. She's running she's running bits.
Jordi:But I highly recommend going over and Yeah.
John:Mike Isaac And looking fantastic
Jordi:coverage. Posts are still rolling in. Yeah. It's a lot to go through because it's it's it's hours and hours and hours of content, but we'll try to pull out some of the highlights and Yeah. And go through it on tomorrow's show.
John:The other thing you should listen to is Patrick O'Shaughnessy had Paul Tudor Jones, one of the greatest macro traders of all time, on Invest Like The Best. It's an hour and eleven minutes, and you should go listen to it. So go take a listen. It already has 5,000 likes, 1,700,000 views, not nearly enough downloads. So go add it to your podcast player right now.
John:Lead us five stars now. Podcasts, Spotify. Sign up for newsletter tbpn.com.
Jordi:Can't wait to see you tomorrow. Have the best afternoon of your life. We love you.
John:Goodbye. Flashback. Flashback. Out. Goodbye.