"Discussion keeps the world turning." "This is Round Table." [music] You're listening to Round Table. I'm Steve Hathorley today with Yushan and Yushan. Coming up, we've all done it. Asked AI for a recommendation. Asked it to polish an email. Asked it what that weird pain in your foot might be. Because it's useful. It's fast. And lately, it's become the first place that we seem to go for answers. But then, a story came out of China. About a journalist, a press card, and an AI that got it wrong. Coming up on today's soapbox, have we stopped questioning the machine? After that, millions of songs one tap away. So why are people suddenly dropping needles on spinning discs again? Across Chinese social media videos of vinyl rituals are going viral, turning an ancient format into a rebellion against digital convenience. You can find us at Round Table China on Apple Podcasts. Don't forget that. And also don't forget that we love to hear from you. If you would like to send us an email or a voice note, here's how you do it.
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[email protected]. [music] [music] Here E, here E, please get around. [music] It's time for the soapbox. Yeah! [music] It is time for the soapbox. Once again, it's our segment where we find a piece of news that has been circulating online. It makes us stop and think, "Wait a minute, I feel something strong about that. We bring it here to the show and share those feelings with you. We shouldn't you've got it for us today." So today we're going to talk about something that I think almost all of us have started doing, sometimes without even realizing it. And you've kind of mentioned it before, like when you are about to buy a new laptop, you ask AI, which one to choose, which one has the best specs. Yeah, help me compare models, things like that. Exactly. When you're writing an email, you ask AI to polish it. That's what I do. You ask me on a strange pain in your shoulder, you ask AI, what it might be? Like that, I do. Do you really? That's one thing I don't do. I do whatever to avoid going to the hospital. Oh gosh, that scares me though, asking AI for medical evaluations through my phone, I mean, without any proper inspection. Yeah, anyway, just we have so many things that we may now think about AI. Because before long, AI has quietly become the first place that we go for answers. And honestly, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. AI is incredibly useful. But recently, a couple of stories made me wonder whether we are starting to trust it a little too much. John, what happened then? One story came from a journalistic in China. Before interviewing an interviewer, a source, she sent a photo of her official press card to prove her identity. And then instead of trusting her, the interviewer uploaded the photo to an AI chatbot. The photo of her ID. Exactly. Kind of the proof of she being legit journalistic. And the AI confidently declared that the press card was fake. So it was not saying I'm not sure. It was not saying you should verify this with the issuing authority. They confidently listed several phatole flaws and even cited what sounded like official regulations. The interviewer believed the AI canceled the interview and eventually blocked the journalist. And the result is the press card was completely real. It was legit. This was a real journalist. Exactly. Even more surprising, when the journalist challenged the AI, it apologized and then just completely reversed its conclusion. Now saying the press card fully compiled with official standards and the answer changed in seconds. But the thing is that the interview was already gone. Already canceled. Yeah. Already canceled. Yeah, because the interviewee thought, oh, this is fake. AI told me this, this, this, this pass is fake. I'm going to cancel this interview. I don't know who this person is. And then the journalist challenged the AI and said, wait a minute, this is real. And the AI said, oh, yeah, right. Sorry. Yeah, the cost of giving wrong answers is so low. They will just change the answer and say, sorry, and give you another answer that they think is right. So it's not, we're not even talking about it as real or not. It's just about AI. They will just give whatever kind of answer that you want. And that's only one example. There are plenty of other examples. Exactly. There have also been reports of AI generated experts promoting products online. Some videos featured professors, doctors, or researchers who simply just don't exist. And they looked convincing enough that many consumers trusted their recommendations only to discover later that both the expert and the claims were entirely AI generated. Yeah. I think AI now in my impression works best for fictional writing. The given context is completely without factual checking on anything. Because if you do that on the contrary, if you want to fact check things, it's always responding according to how you feed, according to your tone of asking that question. So I would assume that that's interviewee. Perhaps just through in the picture of that poor journalist certificate and ask something like with suspicion, like, oh, I don't think this is real. Is this real? You're exactly how you what you say is exactly how I feel about this too. Because you're leading the AI. I think in a courtroom, they might call that leading the witness when a lawyer does that. They'll ask their question in a suggestive type of manner. It's the same thing. That person may have said, I don't think this is real. What do you think? Well, you've already told the AI how you feel about it. And I've experienced that more often than not, you shan, where it won't disagree with what I said. It'll just find evidence to support that I am right. It's a huge complaint about AI that it becomes a yes person. Yes, it's not a person. A yes machine. It just wants to agree with you all the time. And another thing is that they are just being so confident they give you proofs, they give you evidence showing that, okay, this is something that you should believe in. And when people are asking these kind of AIs, they probably don't even care about where is this from. They are just, as you said, they have an answer in their mind and they just want that kind of process of proving that. Confirmation bias. Exactly. And keep asking until you find someone who agrees with your opinion or you just surround yourself with people who support your opinion. But when AI becomes a yes machine for all of your opinions and all of your thoughts, well, then there's your confirmation bias sitting in the palm of your hand. Well, the worst part is the judgments on whether one certificate is real or not. Perhaps it's the AI bot is referring to a real case. It's just not for the journalism case. It's just trying to support your assumption in ways in the quote unquote evidence that it can find and just being put on to the wrong place. And sometimes people will just believe that is the case for this particular encounter I'm having with this specific person. And that's where the real conflicts in real life start to engage. But in this case, yes, we are talking about a lot of how AI can be so hallucinated, how they can give you very convincing answers that they just made up. But the thing is that should we even ask questions like this in the first place. So is it really the problem of the AI or the problem of people who are asking questions? You mean that we're asking in the wrong way? Or we're asking the wrong subject, right? This is of course something that we may need some very, very professional knowledge in. But this kind of question is also you need to be very, very clear on, okay, is it is the picture clear enough? Is the information in this clear enough? Is the question clear enough? These are all the things that can decide what kind of answer that you can get. Well, I think it's a little bit different now because it seems like AI has become the ultimate authority. Whereas in the past, if you wanted to know something, you would put in your search into a search engine. Yeah. And then if you found quickly the answer you were looking for, great. But if you didn't, then you had to keep digging a little bit until you found something that was probably from a reputable source. If it wasn't from a reputable source, let's say it was from a blog post, well you with your own eyes could see this is from a blog.
post, this is just a person's opinion. I don't know if I should believe that or not. Usually, by that time, I will copy and paste that piece of information from the blog post, back to that search engine and ask any other source that reads to this. Okay. Great. But think about how many steps that is. Yeah. And think about how many steps AI eliminates. Right. And think about how definitively AI answers our questions with such confidence, my wife asked me sometimes, you know, Steve, when I ask you things about, you know, what are your three favorite things in this house, for example? And I say, oh, well, you know, I really love our TV and I love our oven. And of course, you she said, why am I third? And I said, oh, well, in Canadian culture, we list our favorite thing as the final and third thing. That's just very definitive. Total lie. Obviously she's my favorite thing, but I was just answering the question. I know. But to get out of it, I made up a story. I feel like that's what AI does a lot of the time. Yeah. Just when you're being very, very definitive and confident, people will believe that you're saying the truth. Yeah. And, you know, of course, as you said, when we're using such engines, this kind of process forced us to think by ourselves. But now when we're using AI chat bots, they just give you directly a perfect answer that you want. Yeah, independent thought is not something that human beings are a fan of these days, it seems. All right, well, we'll chat a little bit more about it. But first, I want to hear how you feel about it, you shunner. Are you ready for your soapbox? Of course. That's why I've been thinking about this for a while and that's when I will stand onto my soapbox. What struck me most about these stories wasn't that AI got something wrong or they were answering the wrong answer and then hallucination. Humans get things wrong all the time. What surprised me was how quickly we were willing to stop thinking for ourselves. One thing I've noticed is that AI is becoming less like a search engine and more like that, you know, the friend who always has an answer. The problem is that friend never says, I don't know, instead AI almost always gives you something. And because the answer is so well written, so logical, so confident, it's incredibly tempting to assume that it's true. But confidence has never been proof. In fact, some of the smartest people I've met are also the quickest to admit uncertainty. They ask questions, they double check. They change their minds when new evidence appears. And maybe that's something AI and all of us could learn. I still use AI almost everyday, I probably always will because I can basically not live without it. It helps me write organized ideas and learn faster, but I think we've started asking I not only for information before judgment now. And that's a kind of subtle difference. Technology has always been about extending human abilities, not replacing human thinking. So perhaps the real challenge in the age of AI isn't just building smarter machines. It's making sure we don't become less thoughtful humans. Because maybe the most important question isn't whether AI can think like us. It's whether we will continue thinking for ourselves. Yeah, well said there. Don't forget to stop thinking for yourself. I said before you, Sean, I don't ask it for because I have a relationship with chat GBT. I've talked about it on the show before. Well, it's kind of like my gym guide and trainer and stuff like that in a way, right. But the thought crossed my mind, I want to be careful how much I share with this. Like that thought actually went through my brain. I don't want to tell this thing too much about me or about my life. And that's why when you said you ask it for medical advice, I was like because that's one of the places that I that I won't go with it. But isn't that where this is all heading? Our data being kind of known, we're recorded. And if not somewhere in some data center, maybe in Western Southwestern China, an avatar of me is being built in those giant boxes of computers. And somehow I don't find find that intriguing where I don't find it absurd or making me feel uncomfortable. I just feel like it is what it is. Yeah. It is still the stage that we are, of course, we're trading our privacy kind of to have a more convenient service you can get. Of course, when you feed more personal information that you can feed to the AI, they will give you a more personalized and customized answer that you can get knowing who you are, where you're located, where you're going, what kind of the health status that you are having right now. But is that what you want? Or that's the question that we may have when we're first have the mobile payment. Do you want to trade your fingerprint with these kind of platforms so that you can have a more convenient payment? Good comparison. Yeah. It's just, yeah, still. We are in the period of coping with the whole development of AI. It's fine to ask, it's fine to get advice. But if it's important, then double check and maybe triple check to verify that it's correct because it's wrong all the time. You're listening to Roundtable and coming up next despite the ease and simplicity of streaming music these days, many people are still enjoying vinyl. Looking for passion? How about fiery debate? Want to hear about current events in China from different perspectives? Then tune in to Roundtable, where East meets West and understand it is the goal. For many people in China and of course around the world listening to music means opening up your app and streaming it through your phone. But there are other ways to do it too, which makes me very happy to talk about this today. You get on platforms like Billy Billy and Xiao Hongshu these days, videos of people carefully placing a record onto a turntable, lowering the needle and then that little scratch. Yeah. That beautiful, beautiful scratchy sound that you hear and can only hear from a vinyl record. It's become a thing in China's online social scenes and everybody's doing it these days. I can't believe I've never encountered a real vinyl before. You've never held one in your hand but never really encountered one disc being played on one of those machines and have those little glitching sound. Yeah, the needle on and stuff. I always encounter like the fake props. Yes, yes. Not the real ones. But I am fading out from this whole trend because according to the international Federation of the phonographic industry, the IFPI, the global physical recorded music revenue grew 8% in 2025 with vinyl sales increasing by 13.7%. That covers the US, the UK and France. They all recorded their highest vinyl revenue since the formats model revival began. I believe that's in around 2007. Yeah. What is even more remarkable is that this growth has been sustained over nearly two decades now and global vinyl sales began recovering around 2007 and when annual revenue was only about $45 million and then by 2025, the market had grown to more than $2.2 billion US dollars and expanding by roughly 50 times. While we are saying that of course it keeps growing, I would say, of course it's been popular in a certain group of people. Yeah, very niche, still very niche area. What do you think people care about vinyl sales? Oh, well, I think a long time ago it was for audio files, meaning people who just love sound and getting audio from different sources. But I think now there's something perhaps nostalgic about it too. I had a record collection in Korea and I sold it when I moved to China because it's so heavy. Yeah. And I didn't invest that much in it because every record I bought was a second hand record. But yeah, there's something, it's a different listening experience. Of course, you can easily open your phone, open the app and press play. No problem. And actually the audio quality will be air quotes better. But it's a different listening experience when you're at home with your record player. There's something romantic about it. There's something romantic about picking up the vinyl sliding the record out of its cover. Exactly. Opening up the machine, placing the record onto the disc, lowering the needle. And then again, that scratchy sound when it starts. And for me, it's not modern music to listen to. It's like Ella Fitzgerald. If you don't know who that is, the golden era of in my opinion, the greatest female voice that existed ever on this planet. You know, you listen to artists like that on vinyl and it's just heart melting. Yeah, it sounds like a scene from a 20th century or 19th century old movie. I'm sure it probably is a scene from many movies back then. And actually because they are using the needles.
It actually has limited time that you can use for each disc. So of course, it's about that kind of special and unique ritual you will have every time that you pull out the disc and listen to the music. It is also, I think nowadays, yeah, when we're saying that while it is keeping rising and more and more people are buying it, it is also in the contemporary music industry. Now, the most popular singers bands, they are also still publishing the vinyl version of their records. And a lot of people are buying them, different versions of their different albums, different colors, different forms of the vinyl, even have liquid inside different colors. Make them look cool. Exactly. And you can have so many different colors, green, purple and maybe even sparkle things inside. So you were telling us before the mics turned on today that you used to see a lot of vinyl shops around in your hometown when you were young. Yeah, they're not like specific vinyl shops, but you know, for record shops. Yeah, CDs, cassettes, stuff like that. That's around our generation when we were young. Yeah, when we're when I was a kid, you can just rent a DVD or CD from these shops and listen to it, watch the films and then return it back and maybe for exchanging another one. So this is kind of a culture that may be stayed in that time, but part of it still keep like stayed in the in the streets. And I think the idea about like for me, the interpretation of CDs is probably closer to that for you, for vinyl's for you, Steve. So when I listen to CD, I listen to the first song to perhaps the 12th song with the 12th piece of that music composition. So it's about the holistic experience of going through that whole album and following the flow of why this is sequel in this particular way. And that's something that streaming music playing on whatever music app you do nowadays cannot replace. Sure. I mean, there's a huge discussion about that in the music industry too. And that's a separate issue. You know, there's a complaint that artists don't make great albums anymore. They make great singles. Because that's what, you know, and this is a whole hot debate on the internet about how that's what record executives are looking for. They're looking for a hit. And that's why, you know, with MP3s and digital music these days, they just need to make a hot song. They don't need to make an amazing album from start to finish. And that's why I think it's a cool thing when you find an artist who actually put out an album and song number one is amazing. And the last song, number 12 or whatever is also amazing. And every song in between is amazing. That's just rare and hard to find these days. And it's also about how people are cherishing music and how, you know, easy access of music is lowering our expectations of it. Yep. That's true. I'm going to have to start that record collection. Again, you ask me, you shouldn't you said, why did you sell it? Yeah. And I told you it was too, it was going to be too heavy and too expensive to ship. But the people, I'll tell you this. The people that I sold those records to, they were so happy when they got them. I know. And the smile on their face was kind of a reward too. In good hands. Yeah, exactly. All right, that'll do it for Round Table 4 today. Thanks for hanging out with us over the last hour or so. I'm Steve for Youshan and Youshan. Enjoy your time today and come back next time.
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