Shell Game
Shell Game
Episode 5: My Digital Twin
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Episode 5: My Digital Twin

Evan takes his unique approach to answering the biggest question swirling around AI: Can it do our work for us?

Shell Game Episode 5 is out everywhere, now! In this one, we get down to business—my business, and try and determine how much of it I can have my AI voice agent do in my stead.

For a couple of years now, we’ve been hearing about the vague, unsettling possibility that artificial intelligence bots could take our jobs. Particularly under threat: jobs that involve writing, like mine, but also everything from marketing, to lawyering, to programming. We’ve already talked in Shell Game Episodes 1 and 2 about the telemarketers salivating to use voice AI calling to replace humans, and in Episode 4 about the ways AI is pushing its way into therapy sessions.

If you listen to AI proponents you’ll also hear the flip side of the fear: that these agents will take away the drudge work and allow us to live our best lives. Like the CEO of Zoom, who suggested last month that in a couple of years, our AI “digital twins” can go to meetings for us, while we kick back on the beach.

Well, I love to kick back on the beach, and by the time I heard that Zoom CEO’s interview I’d already been sending my AI digital twin to meetings for months. I let it handle my legal consultations, some marketing, even… interviewing sources. Episode 4 is the story of how it fared.

When you’re done listening, feel free to come back and we’ll give it a 360 degree review together.

And thanks for continuing to spread the word about Shell Game. We were very excited to be featured on Nick Quah’s list of the best podcasts of 2024 (so far), and we’re currently featured as an “Editor’s Choice” on Apple Podcasts. All good things for helping more people discover (and hopefully love) the show!

“Just here to listen,”

Evan

Discussion about this podcast

Shell Game
Shell Game
A podcast about things that are not what they seem, hosted by journalist Evan Ratliff. In Season One, that thing is Evan’s voice. By creating a voice clone and hooking it up to an AI chatbot, Evan set out to discover what happens when you try to take control of the very technology that threatens to replace you.
Shell Game was named one of the the best podcasts of 2024 by New York Magazine, a top 10 podcast of 2024 by The Economist, one of the five most insightful podcasts of the summer by The Week, and one of the five best tech and business podcasts of the year by The Information. It's "riveting," says The New Yorker, "awesome" says The Verge, and "slightly terrifying," says The Globe and Mail.
Over the course of six episodes, Evan’s voice agents talk to spammers and scammers, to Evan’s friends and family, to colleagues and sources, to other AIs, and even to a therapist—all to better understand what AI voice is able to do, what it can't yet do, and what to expect from a future in which more and more of the people we encounter in the world aren’t real.
Visit shellgame.co to find out more and support the show.