Surprise - It's Not a Toaster » Touch Point Media

Surprise – It’s Not a Toaster

Season 2, Episode 6: Liquid What Now?

Jun 23, 2025

Season 2, Episode 5: The Seduction of Streaks

Jun 12, 2025

Season 2, Episode 4: Zoom Sucks – Prove Me Wrong

May 27, 2025

Dec 12, 2024

Episode 30 – Jargon, Just-in-time News and Juxtapositions

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer discuss the history of the annual “Word of the Year” presented by various sources (including the Oxford English Dictionary). They also share a useful Bluesky plug-in to help curate news, and then test GenAI’s ability to create unique pub trivia facts.

Nov 21, 2024

Episode 29 – It’s All About the Algorithm

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer discuss the current state of journalism and the rise of social influencers in becoming primary news sources. They also share their experience with Bluesky as then test GenAI’s ability to create poetry.

Nov 7, 2024

Episode 28 – AGI, AirPod Adventures, and Aggravations

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer discuss their frustration with the shifting expectations around achieving AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). Ed then shares his personal experience using Apple AirPods as a hearing aid, and Chris conducts an experiment to see if asking GenAI questions politely yields different results compared to using insults.

Oct 24, 2024

Episode 27 – Artificial Sales Events, AI Agents and Apple Analysis

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer discuss the growing trend of artificial online sales events and delve into the potential impact of AI Agents. They also explore a study commissioned by Apple, highlighting the limitations of GenAI’s logical reasoning abilities.

Oct 10, 2024

Episode 26 – Falling Out of the Trough into The Valley

d Bennett and Chris Boyer discuss how GenAI is starting to replicate natural human language in a frightening way, and ponder how quickly it will fall from the Trough of Disillusionment to bridging the Uncanny Valley. They also take NotebookLM for a spin and share some surprising results.

Sep 26, 2024

Episode 25 – From User Agreements to AI Shenanigans

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer vent about online user agreements and the universal struggle we all face with them. Then they share how ChatGPT 4.01 can be your secret weapon for conquering those pesky Connections puzzles. Finally, they put AI to the test by asking it to summarize complex book and movie plots.

Sep 12, 2024

Episode 24 – Tech It or Leave It, this is the Recap Episode

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer recap past discussions, and provide a quick update on various annoyances, technology tips and put GenAI to the Turing test.

Aug 29, 2024

Episode 23: Switcheroo Episode: Gamification, Gantt Charts and Guessing

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer discuss the challenges of gamification and wonders if things have gone too far. They also share a great tool to help develop flowchart visualizations using text prompts and then try to stump GenAI to answer a hypothetical question to determine how much it will hallucinate.

Aug 15, 2024

Episode 22: CarPlay, Computer Monitors and Caterpillars

Bennett and Chris Boyer dive into the world of infotainment, exploring their love-hate relationship with Apple and Android car apps, and why they believe automakers should steer clear of developing their own. They also geek out over the perks of a brand-new widescreen monitor and put Generative AI to the test with a deceptively simple logic puzzle known as the “Alice in Wonderland problem.”