Steve is back! He joins Kris and Matt to discuss the drama around DHH’s latest keynote at Rails World and Steve’s latest views on AI. Interestingly, Steve believes that he’ll sit in opposition to how Kris and Matt see the current situation.

We start with Steve giving us the long backstory of Rails and DHH. The trio then dives into a conversation about purity tests, whether you can learn from people you dislike, and why making Linux a viable third option for desktop environments is important. From there they dive into whether the agents that carried out hacks were actually told to do that, whether alignment is about intent or obedience, and whether it’s better to be worried about Skynet now or later. Hilariously, during this conversation, Steve’s AI personal assistant texts him during the recording, bringing up a deeper conversation about AI personal assistants and how much information we should actually give them.

Supporter only content? But of course! This week the panel digs into whether AI agents are basically hammers, why agents make native apps economically viable, Kris’ argument that the literacy crisis poses a much larger and more existential risk than AI, the ways in which the pronunciation trend on TikTok is weird classism, and what happens when Jev played the trolley problem. Not a supporter yet? You can fix that today by heading over to https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe where you can sign up to gain access to extra content in our podcasts and higher quality audio-only editions.

If you prefer to watch this episode, you can view it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0Rdd1RZx-t4.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (00:00:00)
• Chapter 1: A Thing Called RailsConf (00:02:38)
• Chapter 2: This Is David at DavidConf (00:07:51)
• Chapter 3: A Purity Spiral (00:11:48)
• Chapter 6: This Guy Sucks, Therefore He Must Be Wrong (00:14:26)
• Chapter 7: A Quintessential Purity Test (00:20:09)
• Chapter 8: A Third Option for the Desktop (00:23:00)
• Chapter 9: Things Without Time Attached (00:28:15)
• Chapter 11: I Did This to Get Away From You (00:33:14)
• Chapter 12: We Told the Thing to Hack and It Hacked (00:35:44)
• Chapter 13: Remove Your Tie (00:40:46)
• Chapter 14: Unaligned Humans With Powerful Tools (00:45:45)
• Chapter 15: Worried About Skynet Now Rather Than Later (00:50:32)
• Chapter 16: Intelligence Is the Collective (00:53:54)
• Chapter 19: That’s a Lot of Killing You Gotta Do (00:59:40)
• Chapter 20: Why Rich People Have Personal Assistants (01:02:17)
• Chapter 21: Science Fiction 18 Months Ago (01:05:31)
• Chapter 22: Not Where It Will Wind Up (01:10:15)
• Chapter 24: These Are Just Predictions (01:12:27)
• Epilogue (01:14:07)

Hosts

• Matthew Sanabria – Host
• Kris Brandow – Host
• Steve Klabnik – Host

Socials:

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Changelog Zulip
• Gophers Slack

• (00:00) – Prologue
• (02:38) – Chapter 1: A Thing Called RailsConf
• (07:51) – Chapter 2: This Is David at DavidConf
• (11:48) – Chapter 3: A Purity Spiral
• (14:26) – Chapter 6: This Guy Sucks, Therefore He Must Be Wrong
• (20:09) – Chapter 7: A Quintessential Purity Test
• (23:00) – Chapter 8: A Third Option for the Desktop
• (28:16) – Chapter 9: Things Without Time Attached
• (33:14) – Chapter 11: I Did This to Get Away From You
• (35:44) – Chapter 12: We Told the Thing to Hack and It Hacked
• (40:46) – Chapter 13: Remove Your Tie
• (45:45) – Chapter 14: Unaligned Humans With Powerful Tools
• (50:32) – Chapter 15: Worried About Skynet Now Rather Than Later
• (53:54) – Chapter 16: Intelligence Is the Collective
• (59:40) – Chapter 19: That’s a Lot of Killing You Gotta Do
• (01:02:17) – Chapter 20: Why Rich People Have Personal Assistants
• (01:05:31) – Chapter 21: Science Fiction 18 Months Ago
• (01:10:15) – Chapter 22: Not Where It Will Wind Up
• (01:12:27) – Chapter 24: These Are Just Predictions
• (01:14:07) – Epilogue