Rashida Jones & Conan Discuss The Imperfections Of AI | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend

Rashida Jones and Conan discuss the role of AI in her new show, “Sunny,” the impact of technological advancements on art, and the capitalization of conflict.
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ABOUT CONAN O’BRIEN NEEDS A FRIEND
Deeper, unboundedly playful, and free from FCC regulations, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend is a weekly opportunity for Conan to hang out with the people he enjoys most and perhaps find some real friendship along the way. Watch highlights of Conan, Sona Movsesian and Matt Gourley chatting with celebrities and meeting fans, along with special segments like “Review the Reviewers” and “Summer S’mores with Conan and the Chill Chums.”
ABOUT TEAM COCO
Team Coco features over a decade of comedy sketches, celebrity interviews and stand-up comedy sets from CONAN on TBS, as well as exclusive videos from Team Coco podcasts like Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, Why Won’t You Date Me? with Nicole Byer, The Three Questions with Andy Richter, Literally! With Rob Lowe, Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (sometimes), and Scam Goddess with Laci Mosley.
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[@willmendoza8498]

I like these more philosophical conversations. Obviously I am here for the comedy, but listening to thoughtful people conversing is always great

[@beefnuts2941]

shriveled dugs

[@barbarafeliga]

I love that Conan speaks about the remotes, as if we all don’t know them by heart.

[@florete2310]

This is very true. These-a a-prrrecious a-gems. Sorry, I had Conan in my inner ear saying it like a british person with a trilled rrrrr...

[@delilh325]

Lol yes I very clearly remember this one! I must have watched it 3 years ago

[@taputechnic]

Nevertheless, I'm off to re-watch it...

[@nilesoien7867]

“He’s making jokes, just laugh” is a great podcast title

[@someshwarrao42]

If CNAF was from Sona and Matt’s POV:

[@chrisii1867]

👌👌

[@filmnobelpreis]

Conan's voice sounds raspy and Rashida's voice is smooth. Good job, Eduardo.

[@f.w.2054]

Its sounded raspy for a few weeks now. Is Conan okay?!!

[@ArmArmAdv]

One word: danomb ​@f.w.2054

[@__Theodore]

He literally said he was sick last week in this part of the episode.

[@savvysearch]

I love so see more interviews with people who aren’t professional comedians. Just fun conversations without seeming too much like an improv show. This one with Jones hit just the right balance.

[@frischkaesemitmarmeladentoast]

i feel you! thats why i love the conan needs a fan episodes. i wish they would upload more video material of the fan conversations

[@mylucidlife495]

At 15:18, never a truer statement. Conan has done so much for Sona, and you can tell the love they have for each other. She appreciates him letting her be herself, and he appreciates that she is herself, allowing him to be him, even encouraging him to be himself because she has a great affinity for his humor and performances Also, at 15:57, I immediately thought he was referring to his career.

[@OArchivesX]

She literally just said "it's true I got nothing else", and bro extrapolates a whole paragraph of things she's never said lmao. Wtf kind of crack are you on

[@somarriba333]

I LOVE learning new words from Conan. "Dugs", "raconteur"...

[@colinmartin6096]

AI is also currently being used for illegal exploitative business practices and misinformation. I'm much more afraid of how people act with AI than I am about how AI acts itself. Although there's a big difference between our current AI and fully sentient AI.

[@NoviJimB]

I love her description of her attitude towards AI as being 'agnostic' - whether you hate it, love it or anything in between, there's nothing you can do to change the fact that it's here for good. And I am totally with her on the 'Luddite' thing - I've said that about myself to my friends several times. :) Not in the 'true' sense of the word, but I really hate the negatives of social media, the web, 'smart' phones (especially those), etc., more than I appreciate the positives. I think the sum total of the effect on society is negative. There are a lot of conveniences, but there are too many really negative aspects to all of it. But most people just want to enjoy those 'conveniences' and not worry about anything else. Oh the irony -things that are described as 'smart' and 'intelligence' are in fact dumbing things down for a large percentage of people.

[@Rachel-sv9pq]

Really interesting conversation

[@fletchermunson6225]

Condolences to anyone named Doug.

[@wastingtimewithjesse]

Wish the podcast was all video

[@MagiCaleb]

“I had a bad cold last week” Sona: 😧

[@KtotheL]

she pulled a BIDEN ?

[@emu_warrior]

@@KtotheL wow you're so edgy... gtfo

[@oleoalves]

I think that's the first time I see Rashida Jones in an interview and, man!, she's so beautiful and talent and also SO intelligent? I would watch a whole course of her going on these philosophical implications that she touched on here

[@LycanLink]

Hearing her talk about her show in which she has a robot friend is making me want to replay "Murder by Numbers," a puzzle game about a girl who solves murders with an adorable robot friend. 🤭

[@creepycraig73]

Everyone in the 80s can thank Rashida for helping make New Order and Joy Division records affordable in the US.

[@frischkaesemitmarmeladentoast]

how so?

[@roberthevern6169]

I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer had some Japanese 'friends' that slept in the drawers of an upright dresser!

[@dawnmillsap285]

Great conversation

[@lachauntiswashington231]

Very good 👍

[@jaydenandressen]

This is a fascinating conversation

[@lizzz492]

dear team coco: can you please create playlists according to episode on your youtube (like snl does per episode?)

[@JMPT]

Nice 🖤🖤

[@memoryboy]

Love her take on this, she's super intelligent.

[@memoryboy]

Right after writing this they start talking about shriveled dugs haha

[@florete2310]

Yeah... *She is* pretty cool

[@elishmuel1976]

14:04 She gets it. Not too many do.

[@zachmoyer1849]

yeah it really is that simple and i say it all the time to no avail. Its perfectly evident in how so many words have changed meaning so quickly "racism" being the big one. they make it have so many meanings that everyone is just calling everyone else racists and its clearly all for engagement.

[@florete2310]

Yep. Unfortunately for all of us, this is very true. The puzzling thing is: It's actually a rather simple concept - and it is also a pretty old (or ancient, rather) instrument out of the toolbox called 'political craftsmanship' and it follows but one maxim: "Divide et impera". Probably as old as Sumer and Uruk, very popular in Old Rome - and it still, to this day, works like a charm...

[@zachmoyer1849]

​@@florete2310 Because it preys on one simple aspect, which I like to call "generational amnesia," typically as you age, you become immune to it. However, younger people are still susceptible to it, and there is no way to teach the younger generation how not to fall prey to it. Any cultural change that "combats" it never lasts because of this amnesia. So it stays forever present because of children being born with a clean slate and a certain bandwidth for learning.

[@florete2310]

@@zachmoyer1849 Very well said, I'm going to reflect on that for a bit.

[@sndsiwrite]

Don't need a live audience, you've got Sonia!

[@chrisii1867]

Does the world change over a few years? All I know is Conan is still hilarious😂🔥🔥

[@morecowbell12341]

Sounds a little like Big Hero 6

[@WhitbyStuff]

Sounds like "Machines Like Me" by Ian McEwan.

[@judyholland7236]

Rashida is so beautiful & looks just like her mother.

[@Jerler91]

"You'll see" was hilarious 😂

[@chrisii1867]

He 😂 meant just 😂 wait a few years but the women literally couldn't tell he was being humorous so 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♀️ as usual women failed at comedy in general, they took it literally

[@hanstubben]

Rashida seems to be quite intelligent, very well articulateted and I do like here way of thinking.

[@lanzer22]

And she’s usually cast as such a person in her roles :)

[@joshnicholson6194]

Rashida is awesome.

[@martinschenk1003]

Rashida has an aura of constant sincerity. Talented and beautiful and funny and sweet, a true class act.

[@MaxFleye]

There's also an issue in the USA with people being lonely.

[@Baby0din]

I think you're remembering the rise of loneliness during covid that led to the reporting of how Japan has had a loneliness problem for a handful of years that is extreme.

[@account_suspended]

It’s why social media is what it is right now and goes directly back to their discussion. People post everything and respond/troll online because they are desperate for interaction and acceptance. It’s a shame that they can’t get that in their real lives and seek it out in the digital space.

[@Baby0din]

@@account_suspended I'm pretty sure that's a problem specific to people who let screens raise their kids. They grow up dependent on them and then never put them down. Most people who don't use social media are fine. Where as it's an actual problem in Japan. But I get what you're saying.

[@account_suspended]

@@Baby0din I am not talking about the “lost generation” in Japan or the kodkushi. There is a good book called The Anxious Generation that talks specifically about the world shifting from a play based society to a phone/technology based society.

[@Baby0din]

@@account_suspended Okay what you are describing has existed since the 1880's. Panic that phones are going to create a society of anti social people. Japan has an actual problem what you're trying to do, is compare a symptom to a mental health problem. And that's just not going to work there bud.

[@bobhiggins4276]

Rashida Jones is really funny yes but she's SMART!

[@Thulgore]

Rashida is one of those beauties that is absolutely amazing. Mary Steenburgen and Jennifer Love Hewitt are in the same category. I think they are flawlessly beautiful but for some reason they never get that designation usually. I also don't fully understand why I classify them the so similar. Whatever it is I absolutely adore it. I think it's the eyes.

[@MyWordPressGuy]

Always so weird to see Sona as the morning talk "laugh girl." That's gotta be hard.

[@MichaelsExplorations]

I loved her on the Office she’s so beautiful 😍

[@timmyto441]

what does team coco mean conan o'brien?

[@persuasivebarrier2419]

This advancement is a little different, maybe always is, it covers nearly every field and industry. Not specific to painting with photography, silent films facing sound, etc. “Does it all” but incrementally. The internet is already being gamed, this Wild West for human activity will be short lived.

[@sswaas]

This is exactly it. Also I think the discussion is more about how AI will change how artists create their works, so they’re really just talking from the viewpoints of artists specifically. And maybe they’re just grabbing the easiest examples they could find but the integration of that technology into our daily lives would be a lot more complicated than those examples.

[@ZoOnTheYT]

Watched the first couple of episodes. Very cool and weird in a good way.

[@TheBS1000]

Surely Conan's desire to have a robot that laughs at his jokes is inspired by Geoff the Robot on Craig Ferguson's talk show.

[@christopherwaldrop5293]

11:24 I'm sitting here screaming W.B. YEATS! "Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop"! How does Conan O'Brien not remember that what he's referencing is an Irish poet? 🤦

[@salernolake]

Also T S Eliot in The Waste Land: " I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest"

[@jeffhodge7333]

Rashida is a real talent. No nepo baby here.

[@YodatheHobbit]

There's an issue in American culture too of people being lonely, just no one does anything about it.

[@dianeblumenthal5951]

I recently caught I, Robot for the probably 50th time and robots helping us with cooking and such doesn't seem like such a far away idea now.

[@davidgibson9405]

Yep, TS Eliot wrote dugs in The Wasteland

[@futureshocked]

Well we don't have "AI"--we have LLMs which are like if you just took a spreadsheet of words, made it 3dimensional and just put stats on which words should go next to which word. It's the game No Man's Sky but for words.

[@krisu0100]

Yeah, it's a misunderstanding/lie that "AI" businesses bank on. I was fooled too first, but reading about it made it more clear that these systems cannot actually think and are way stupider than advertised. LLM is still impressive tech, but has so many faults and isn't i.e. real AI.

[@ncwolfe]

Fantastic comment, so few people understand how these things work. Great description too. I've had a hard time explaining the mechanics of machine learning to people, now I'm just going to use your metaphor!

[@futureshocked]

@@ncwolfe yeah it's a good one because once you see how it's just running statistically weighted words through a graphics processor, same way as NMS runs assets, it not only makes sense but it busts the stupid idea that it's 'sentient'. Like if some AI bro tells you AI is sentient, ask him if NMS is learning when it gets a game update.

[@joshnicholson6194]

I hope no one is seriously claiming LLMs are sentient at this moment in time...

[@edfagan4251]

Angelinos are the only people I know that consistently contract summer colds.

[@danc.732]

"It's inevitable" No. No it is not.

[@mikul93]

I thought the voice from OpenAI that got taken down because Scarlet Johansen threatened legal action sounded more like Rashida.

[@Lanternsatthelake]

She’s so intelligent but on top of that she looks AMAZING!! She needs to give me the fountain of youth wherever she’s found it 😂

[@sergeybrin6701]

Did she say original idea? The idea of a person grieving the loss of a loved one is given a robot replacement for said loved one. Yep, never heard that one before! Totally original.

[@ScandinavianCoward]

I need to get my dugs in a row. (Dug: perhaps of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Swedish dæggia)

[@MaltiPoo23]

Why is it that a comedy podcast is the only place you find deep conversation?

[@gmcubed]

Isnt tha the plot of Spielbergs "Ai"?

[@s1mplebeauty]

Shriveled Dugs is a great band name

[@Davett53]

Spielberg's movie from 20 years ago, named AI,....was about a family that buys or rents an almost human child,..a hi-tech robot, that looks and acts like a real boy,...an (android). It's a great sci-fi movie and a very disturbing, concept.

[@Nazhussain07]

Rashida talks about AI like she doesn't want to upset someone.

[@lauristonbrewster9097]

I love how effortlessly well-read Conan is 11:00. Like, they all think he's doing a bit, but that really is a word used in "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot. And he just pulled that out of thin air.

[@jaredmatthews252]

Everything cant be about money, it makes for a hollow society, made of people with hillow souls. The muppwts began as a passion and a dream ......capitalism turns that into a commodity

[@Michael-Philip]

😍Rashida ❤

[@Davett53]

Some of the better robotic "animals" like pet cats and dogs, are so real,...that it is easy to forget it isn't real. A real living pet, is a million times more rewarding. However,...it doesn't take long to begin to have feelings of (love) towards the robot cat or dog,....in the same way a child can love his or hers , favorite stuffed animal.

[@kstepko]

Are Conan and I the only people who still use the word “dugs”?

[@stevenwymor1398]

“Potential crash” was a spoiler.

[@chadsuniverse]

This was funny AND EDUCATIONAL...'Dougs'

[@DoestheDogDiet-hq9mt]

Stand with all artists (visual artists, musicians, actors, writers, etc) against generative AI! It is the mass theft of underpaid artists to benefit the pockets of those same tech bros you are claiming to criticize as boogeymen in this video!

[@Eskay_The_Evil_Genius]

Dugs Jugs and Jub Jubs baby!

[@YourCritic]

Don't worry Conan, I dig your dugs dog.

[@SinisterPuppy]

I miss the era of internet when Natalie Portman and Rashida Jones told me the cure to the worlds problems are puppies, kittens, and chickens. 🐶🐈🐤. These days everyone is so grumpy and everything is monetized; guess they're to young to have heard that free sagely advice.

[@twentyfifthdui4717]

I knew I was inhuman. I am very turned off by conflict. Now I find out that makes me an otherly outlier.

[@thomasmorganproject]

Whatever antidepressant Conan is on, he is thinking with a brain rejuvenated to his college years... AND with a cold!!! Conan for President!

[@mrj8214]

Rashida Jones has always been exotically attractive and beautiful, IMO.

[@fforw]

Rashida is largely arguing her own misconceptions about the current state of AI. What she seems to perceive as current state of AI seems to be very close to an artificial general intelligence (AGI). But we're not anywhere near that. The current AI wave is driven by large language models (LLM), which just do not have any kind of identity, wants, personality or anything. They're just trained on a huge amount of input data and can produce probable output from that. Which always requires some external mind to query output and to judge the output and give it meaning. The LLM does not know about meaning.

[@LongDuree]

Skinner boxes

[@isaacfield432]

It seems to me that we already embrace these things about robots and companionship and trying to put human traits in non human things via DOGS!

[@Nick_Naim]

What ethnicity is Sona? My Google is broken.

[@twentyfifthdui4717]

Dugs. Dude Jugs?

[@densprangdedrangen]

Conan seems to be having a lot of colds in this day and age... Is his immune system okay??? D:

[@pamlittle847]

My mother was born in Scotland, where “dugs” and “lugs” are indeed things. Saggy breasts, dugs - ears, lugs.

[@shiryu22]

ai apparently in the comments already

[@elishmuel1976]

Yeah. Bots have been infesting this channel's comment section for a while now. Very unfortunate

[@zachmoyer1849]

@@elishmuel1976 its just because these videos get so few comments, on larger viewed videos they usually get buried pretty quickly. I mean there are only a few on here that i see but as a percentage of total comments it seems like a lot.

[@ImotekhtheStormlord-tx2it]

one of the best new characters in the office.

[@yon_monster]

Dad jugs?

[@Archimedeeez]

3:19 😂

[@fransschreuders8488]

Over on Figueroa Street you can rent a wife

[@chamamemestre]

What a "comeback". Everyone loves those right?

[@Archimedeeez]

4:54 😂

[@Archimedeeez]

15:58 😂

[@British_Rogue]

Imagine if Conan interviewed Neuro-sama or Vedal987.

[@florete2310]

Adding: (...) and then, additionally, try to imagine, that he's conducting the interview with the voice and the cadence of HAL 9000. Edit --> Name of the podcast's new spin-off: "Conan O'Brien needs a Backup"

[@Studeb]

Saying that AI is here, so get onboard of the train is not really an honest point of view. AI is still breaking copyright, just taking from thousands of creators at the same time, and mixing them up so nobody can claim "Hey, that's clearly my work you stole.". We know the people elected to government are really old, slow and often corrupt, but that doesn't mean that one day all the work you get from it will be deemed illegal as it should be.

[@Mishk]

But isn’t that what humans do? We are all stealing and leveraging ideas from each other all the time. That’s why we have human progress. We use the things that succeed from the past to go even further.

[@zachmoyer1849]

that is not the only space that AI is relevant though. It could also do many other things. My favorite would be personal secretaries to schedule and organize my digital life.

[@outlander234]

@@Mishk There is bunch of stuff wrong with your logic... So its perfectly okay for me to take Conan's likeness and use it in my project? That's not stealing or leveraging an idea so do we allow that? Also humans or group of humans cannot process not even remotely close to what AI systems can, which is basically whole of humanities work. Another thing is we are capable of infusing our own originality in works of art, even if we started by emulating something else when AI cannot, it copies always. Also I cannot copy someone's work and sell it as my own without lawsuit but AI can? There are so many things wrong with it but I will keep main one for last; its completely generic. Just generic nonsense with no substance.

[@NickScott86]

Plus with our climate crisis, generative AI is just making our world more uninhabitable because of its outrageous energy and water use. Companies like Microsoft and Google are going back on their climate pledges in order to profit off the death of our planet.

[@Mishk]

@@outlander234 Yeah but AI is not taking the likeness of individuals. its just predicting the next word in a very advanced way. it's an amalgamation of billions and billions of inputs. it's taking tiny bits and pieces from everything.

[@LycanLink]

I dunno, Rashida. At the very least, I don't think we should be friends with AI-generated art. Many artists are at odds with that whole situation.

[@joshnicholson6194]

Many artists embrace it. The only issue one could have is undesirable competition, i.e., a kind of capitalist greed. You do not see philosophy as a discipline saying "hey, we invented deductive logic which is the foundation of computing, why are we all broke unless we get a position as a professor?", or the mathematician saying "hey, that Pythagorean theorem thing you use for Google maps, or that linear algebra theorem for page rank, that is ours, where is our cut Google?" Mathematicians and philosophers cannot copyright their ideas and profit. They are too important to be guarded by their inventors. What makes artistic ideas so different that artists should make millions while philosophers and pure mathematicians squalor...?

[@DoestheDogDiet-hq9mt]

It is plagiarism and it is stealing and it is unapologetic. The companies doing generative AI need to stop,and they need to pay royalties (as well as get artist's permissions for any and all training data used). Any artists using generative AI are sellouts that are happilly throwing all their fellow artists under the bus for personal gain.

[@OArchivesX]

AI will never be "sentient", at the end of the day it's just a machine learning program. There is no such thing as real "AI", the term is horribly misused. The real power of AI is just being able to imitate art without the need for anyone doing real work

[@superpartypooper7925]

Karen from the office? 😮

[@DailyJuggle]

Is this the check that’s trying to ban porn

[@Czechbound]

"You'll see .... " ....... The horror ....

[@davidrogers3804]

Drugs meaning breasts is way older than Pound or Eliot.

[@telford32]

I like to think Conan has a picture of his fake Japanese family in his house amongst pictures of his real family.

[@eyeDavid]

Did RFK infect Conan!

[@dorkporkknobslob9918]

Harvard grad using big words like interpolate. Rashida is the Shid.

[@zachlafond2652]

Conan do yourself a favor and get an ebike for you and Matt to take long rides thru the streets of LA. Matt is by far your best employee and you 2 should spend more time together.

[@royconestoga7326]

I agree. They could macrame themselves a matching set of jean shorts and shoot promos holding hands and frolicking.