735: We’re Walking on Sunshine

735: We’re Walking on Sunshine

From Grumpy Old Geeks by Jason DeFillippo & Brian Schulmeister with Dave Bittner

February 27, 2026 · 1h 24m · Episode 735

About this episode

The episode discusses various topics including Tesla's legal issues, AI technology's impact on productivity, and the military's use of AI.

Starting off in FOLLOW UP, we’ve got a tax economist who actually made money betting against the "efficiency" of Elon’s budget-slashing fever dreams, while Tesla is busy trying to dodge a $243 million jury verdict for an Autopilot-assisted fatality. Not content with being legally liable, Tesla is also suing the California DMV because they’re offended someone called their "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving" marketing deceptive—ironic, since Jack Dorsey just "proactively" halved the staff at Block to make room for more AI slop. Speaking of which, Goldman Sachs is here to remind us that all this AI spending added a grand total of zero to the US GDP last year, mostly because we’re just exporting all that cash to overseas chip makers while 80% of execs admit the tech hasn’t actually done anything for productivity yet. Moving into IN THE NEWS, Sam Altman had the audacity to compare ChatGPT’s energy-sucking habits to the 20-year evolution of a human, though the internet wasn't exactly buying the "my bot is just like a baby" defense. Anthropic actually stood its ground against the Pentagon’s demand for killer robots and mass surveillance, so naturally, the military just signed a deal to…

People in this episode

Hosts: Jason DeFillippo, Brian Schulmeister, Dave Bittner

Topics covered

  • AI technology
  • Tesla news
  • surveillance
  • economics
  • productivity
  • military technology

Keywords

  • Tesla
  • AI
  • ChatGPT
  • surveillance
  • Goldman Sachs
  • Elon Musk
  • Jack Dorsey
  • productivity
  • military technology

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tesla, California DMV, Goldman Sachs, Anthropic, Pentagon, Flock

Products: ChatGPT, Grok

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