Shadowing Practice: I think AI slop is about to trigger a renaissance, actually - Learn English Speaking with Video
Choose a practice mode
Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.
409 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
Hello, hello, hello, hello.
2
Thank you for joining me.
3
In 2023, the American Dialect Society picked and shitification as its word of the year.
4
That is, online platforms becoming increasingly worse because they know you won't leave and therefore they can just maximize profits.
5
In 2024, Oxford picked brain rot as its word of the year.
6
And in 2025, Merriam-Webster picked slop.
7
Are you seeing a pattern here.
8
Because to me, the sentiment behind these three words reminds me of three other words.
9
You see, most of the AI conversation right now is centered around fear.
10
AI is going to take all the jobs.
11
It's going to kill human connection.
12
It's going to kill art and creativity.
13
Some very serious people say it might even kill everyone.
14
And although these concerns are real, I think the more likely danger isn't that AI makes us useless, it's that it makes us comfortable, passive, dependent.
15
And here's the messed up part, we might secretly like that because it will feel like abundance.
16
Neil Postman put it like this, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
17
In this episode, I want to show you the invisible trade
18
that we risk making as this technology becomes ubiquitous with modern life, but I want to show you why I'm actually feeling hopeful.
19
Because as the old world starts to break, there is room for a new one to emerge.
20
And when anything can be made in an instant by anyone or anything, value doesn't disappear.
21
It moves.
22
Value moves towards those people that still have something to say, that still have a perspective to share.
23
So by the end of this video, I want to show you exactly what I'm doing to protect, nourish, and foster those skills that will be completely indispensable in the near future.
24
My name is Mikey.
25
This is In Perspective.
26
Let's get into it.
27
It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
28
The very first thing we have to talk about is that whenever a new technology is invented, there is an invisible trade that is made that does not show up until much later.
29
A sort of second-order consequence that occurs really with anything in life, but it is especially prevalent with technology.
30
The most obvious examples of this that people love to quote when they're talking about this are examples like the calculator.
31
We used to be able to do mental math and making arithmetic by hand was a very important skill.
32
All of a sudden the calculator shows up and that's a skill that atrophies.
33
It's a skill that disappears with time.
34
Another example would be something like the GPS.
35
We used to be able to navigate, to look at highway signs, to look at maps, to find your way.
36
Now, of course, GPS is extremely useful, but nobody has developed that skill or nobody maintained that skill of being able to wayfind by themselves.
37
But I want to illustrate this idea of invisible trades with a bit deeper examples, unlike the ones you've heard before.
38
So it really solidifies in your head of how important this is.
39
The first example that I want to give you is cars.
40
When cars came about, it is an impossible thing to say no to, right?
41
Easy, reliable, affordable travel for the average person, right?
42
Cars were an incredible, incredible, incredible invention.
43
Obviously, they were not affordable in the beginning, but you know what I mean, eventually.
44
Now, what happens is that as soon as people can drive everywhere, all the time, affordably, people no longer need to live in the cities that they work in.
45
So what happens is that developers saw this opportunity
46
and they started to spread housing far
47
and wide They started to buy all of this cheap land around big cities
48
and then they just built homes this idea of the suburbs Happened we built highways.
49
We built strip malls single-family homes.
50
You get a pool.
51
You get a pool You get a pool.
52
Everybody gets a pool.
53
Everybody gets a backyard.
54
This was awesome, right?
55
This whole idea of the single-family home really exploded because people could afford homes now
56
what happens is that you get this phenomenon that if you've studied urban design, you might be familiar with, which is called urban sprawl.
57
The trade was communities, right?
58
Because when everybody has to drive into the city and then drive back, you lose serendipitous encounters with your neighbors, with your barber, with the butcher.
59
You lose third spaces.
60
You rob children of their autonomy because now they're dependent on mom
61
and dad to drive them everywhere in order to hang out with friends, to ride their bike into the city and do something.
62
You rob elderly folk of their independence once they lose the ability to drive.
63
Oh, and not to mention that now everybody's driving an hour into work.
64
Carbon emissions basically doubled since this happened, right?
65
So there's a massive damage to the environment that happens as well.
66
Whoops.
67
An invention is made.
68
There's a technology that is created, but we don't see the ripple effects, the second order consequences, the invisible trades, until much after.
69
So now the question becomes, what will the invisible trades, what will the second order consequences of a technology like AI be, right?
70
Once this technology gets diffused into all elements of society, what will we be trading?
71
Before we entertain this discussion, I think it's very clear that we get one of the most important pieces of context out of the way,
72
which is that many serious scientists are calling this the last invention we'll ever make.
73
And this is not to be dramatic or to simply bump up their stock prices, although maybe there's a bit of that as well.
74
But this is because the stated mission of every single major AI company right now, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and so on,
75
is to get to a point of what is called the recursive self-improvement.
76
That is a point in which
77
The AI will be able to train the next version of itself because as soon as we can do that, then this sort of exponential growth curve,
78
this explosion of intelligence occurs where the AI is now an artificial general intelligence,
79
AGI, and it can improve the rate of progress across everything, right? scientific discoveries,
80
the optimization of global supply chains, military security, surveillance, healthcare.
81
This is why you see people like Sam Altman
82
and all these people propping up these AI companies make these crazy claims
83
that this technology is going to save humanity and solve everything.
84
But there's some truth to this, right?
85
Which is that this is what they're building.
86
They are building a technology that will be better than the average human at virtually every single cognitive task that exists.
87
Now, what are the implications of that?
88
And Shanid Bovell wrote a phenomenal Substack article on this
89
that I'm just going to read to you because I think it frames this discussion perfectly.
90
We are moving towards a future where AI will handle everything, or so we're told, and we'd best start preparing for that.
91
With the exception of a few, I think most people, myself included, wouldn't be thrilled about the prospect of not needing to or knowing how to think.
92
From a health perspective, use it or lose it is not just a catchy phrase.
93
It is a physiological reality.
94
A society without thinking skills could face faster cognitive decline and more stable, more unstable democracies.
95
And there you have it.
96
The main thing that we are at risk of trading, now that you know what these major AI companies are trying to build,
97
a machine that outperforms humans at virtually every cognitive task, the thing that we are at risk of losing is our ability to think.
98
And this is not an exaggeration.
99
Our ability to sit with hard problems for a long time to wrestle with ideas and abstract dense information,
100
to sit with a problem for long enough until it becomes interesting and we solve it.
101
Another thing it threatens is our ability to develop our taste and our curiosity.
102
And this we're already seeing with our hyper-personalized,
103
hyper-optimized entertainment algorithms that exist on every single person's Instagram, every single person's TikTok, every single person's LinkedIn,
104
every single person's YouTube, right?
105
These are hyper-personalized, hyper-optimized, artificially intelligent algorithms that are just feeding you what you want, quote-unquote, right?
106
Feeding you what you should want, feeding you what you think you want.
107
But in reality, that's not really what you want.
108
These are often just the things that are most commercially profitable for them, right?
109
They're going to show you the things
110
that are most emotionally conducive to keeping you on the platform as long as possible
111
so you can see more ads and they make more money.
112
Another thing that we subtly lose is our ability to own our thoughts, to own our ideas, to own our outputs.
113
What I mean by that is that when you struggle with something, when you wrestle with an idea, when you work on a project and you fail and you fail
114
and you fail and you try again and you try again, When you're wrestling with something, whatever output you get at the other side of that, you own that, right?
115
If you've spent 100, 200, 1,000 hours working on a PhD dissertation or on a YouTube video that you're creating,
116
on a book, on a movie, you own those ideas.
117
You feel a deep sense of pride and connection to the arguments, to the nuances, to the failures, the lessons you have to overcome it shapes you.
118
But when you're just focused on the output, right?
119
When you have this hyper intelligent AI that you're completely offloading all of your thinking, all of your work to, and it's just giving you the output in an instant,
120
you lose the connection to that work.
121
You're like, sure, I can make a beautiful AI movie, but I'm not going to be connected to the story, to the characters, because it did not come from me.
122
It did not come from the toil, the wrestling, the friction.
123
Okay, so those are the things that we are at risk of losing.
124
But like I promised in the intro, I want to share with you why I'm actually feeling hopeful.
125
Because first of all, I think there is a small but noticeable pushback,
126
a cultural resistance towards this in-shittification, AI slop, hyper tech accelerationist type of world.
127
the first example of that is the words that I listed in the beginning.
128
The fact that we've developed cultural language, a cultural vocabulary to describe these shared experiences that we don't really like.
129
Words like brain rot, words like doom scrolling, words like AI slop and shittification, touching grass.
130
Right?
131
Think about all these cultural words and shared experiences that we're having that say, we don't really like where this is going.
132
Another prevalent example of this kind of resistance is the very fact
133
that this conversation around the damage that social media has done to teenagers and our mental health,
134
that is very prevalent in popular culture, popular general culture.
135
Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation, which is a brilliant book that talks about this kind of stuff.
136
That's been in the New York Times bestselling list for over 100 weeks.
137
The Social Dilemma, a documentary on this issue, won two Emmys and it got viewed by over 100 million people.
138
This is in the general discourse, the general cultural discourse is, hey, we don't really like screens.
139
We don't really like brain rot.
140
This thing is probably pretty bad for us.
141
And right at the same time that this is unfolding is when this whole AI slop,
142
hyper accelerationist tech forward conversation is unfolding.
143
So there is some sort of resistance or almost repulsion towards AI slop
144
and things that are AI generated that feel not human.
145
Okay, so that's point number one of why I'm feeling hopeful, right?
146
There's some sort of resistance, a cultural resistance that you can feel that is kind of pushing back against this.
147
But the second reason why I'm hopeful, which is a much deeper reason, and it doesn't sound like a good thing at first, but I actually think it might be,
148
is the fact
149
that once we get to this point where an AI can do every single human job better than a human would, and there's this sort of wave of mass unemployment,
150
which is pretty much inevitable to happen within the next, you know, 10, 20 years when we get to that point where people no longer are required,
151
their skills are no longer required in the marketplace and they don't need to work anymore, the more problematic issue is that this will be a crisis of meaning,
152
a crisis of identity for millions and millions of people.
153
Because our culture for the past 20,
154
30, 50, however many years has made it so that our identities are deeply connected to what we do for work.
155
If you're a lawyer, if you're a doctor, if you're an engineer, if you're a plumber, even whatever it may be, there is a deep sense of pride in what you do for work
156
and how you earn money and how you provide and how you, that is pivotal to our identities, right?
157
One of the first things that people mention in conversation is what do you do for work?
158
Or they take pride in that, right?
159
So now when you remove that from a person's identity, that is going to be a big deal for a lot of people that a lot of people will struggle with.
160
But the reason why I'm saying I'm hopeful is because that is an opportunity, right?
161
It is an opportunity for you to really ask yourself the fundamental philosophical existential questions
162
that lead to beautiful art and beautiful work and meaning.
163
Questions like, who am I?
164
Why am I here?
165
What do I value?
166
What do I want to do?
167
Right?
168
I think millions of people will be forced to ask
169
that question very abruptly because their entire paradigm of how they saw the world, of how they saw work, of what they saw their role in society as,
170
that's going to be shattered.
171
So they'll be forced to ask those questions.
172
And I think while this may be devastating in the short term for a lot of people, I think the people that are aware of this, people that are likely watching videos like this, that is a beautiful opportunity
173
because again you are here to create you are here to
174
build things you are here to self-actualize to rise to the highest level possible of what you could be
175
and to serve others with that unique gift
176
and by de-attaching your sense of identity your sense of worth from what you do for work
177
which even before you lose your job you should already do that.
178
But by doing that is where you create space for you to really answer those questions.
179
Who am I?
180
Why am I here?
181
What do I want?
182
What do I value?
183
How do I want to spend my time?
184
What do I want to create?
185
What is my energy good for?
186
What should I spend it on?
187
Now, the third reason why I'm hopeful
188
and I think this technology could lead to a sort of human renaissance is
189
because AI does not experience things the way that we do.
190
And therefore, whatever it creates,
191
no matter how efficient or interesting and productive it may be for the marketplace,
192
it can't move us the way that human art, human creation can.
193
I want to read you a quote from Rick Rubin, who if you don't know, he's one of the most prolific music producers of all time,
194
who's worked with all sorts of amazing He said, one reason art resonates is because human beings are so similar.
195
We're attracted to the shared experience held within the work, including the imperfection in it.
196
We recognize some part of ourselves and feel understood and connected.
197
An AI will always generate responses based on statistical patterns that it found in its training data.
198
And it's very good at doing this, right?
199
It will come up with novel and interesting solutions because its training data is massive.
200
But what we don't know is if and how it understands these things.
201
We don't even know if it understands.
202
Its thinking is completely alien to us.
203
What we do know is that it can't experience things.
204
It can't feel things the way we can, which means you could ask it to
205
write the screenplay for a movie or write a manuscript for a book on trauma
206
and sure it has access to every single piece of written work every movie every song every poem
207
that has been written with the tone the emotion of trauma and it could produce something interesting
208
but it does not know what it feels like to be locked in your room
209
when you were seven years old crying and scared shitless
210
because your father is screaming at your mother in the kitchen
211
and there's dishes breaking and things getting thrown around it doesn't know what
212
that feels like and
213
that is the beautiful thing about human arts about human creativity
214
our perspectives are singular right you could ask the ai to write you
215
new scientific research on love and brain chemistry
216
and try to understand this phenomenon
217
that we've been trying to decipher for hundreds of years millennia
218
and sure it could go read all the the research synthesized things it could read all the books
219
and shakespeare and whatnot
220
but it does not know what it feels like to look at a person in the eyes
221
and be like feel like god put this person in front of you just for you
222
and they they have the power with a simple smile
223
or a look in your eyes to uplift you from the
224
darkest places they don't know what it feels like to lose that person
225
right and then have these memories flashing in your head of all these mundane
226
but beautiful moments of how they brush their teeth
227
or the way in which they rub their eyes in the morning
228
when they woke up or like the way their face lights up
229
when they're eating they take a first bite of something like all those micro experiences
230
that are deeply human and visceral to us it can't pull from that, right?
231
Which is why we always feel like AI slop is a thing.
232
There's something missing.
233
There's something uncanny, right?
234
AI can write this beautiful email or LinkedIn post or brand marketing campaign or whatever, but there is something missing.
235
That thing that's missing is perspective.
236
That thing that's missing is experience.
237
Experience is what gives us meaning.
238
Human experience is singular, informed by all four experiences, biases, dreams, goals, traumas, limitations,
239
insecurities, stories, side characters, adventures, and so on.
240
We don't have to try to make a point in order for the authenticity of our perspective to shine through.
241
Everything we experience and create is constantly being passed through this filter of our experiences, which is beautiful and infinitely unique.
242
This is what we have to protect because in a world where machines can think better than us,
243
they can synthesize information and create things way faster and way better than we can.
244
What is left for us is our taste, our judgment, our ability to think critically,
245
to think holistically, to think big picture, right?
246
Our ability to use our filter of our experiences and knowledge and biases
247
to filter information and organize it in an interesting and unique way, in a way that connects with other people.
248
There's this great quote which says, the personal is the universal.
249
That's what Rick Rubin was getting at as well.
250
Now in this next chapter, I want to share with you the things that I'm doing in my life to nourish those skills, to nourish my taste, to nourish my judgment,
251
to foster a perspective, and to protect my ability to think.
252
The first thing is to think on paper, right?
253
One of the most beautiful things about writing,
254
whether it be journaling or writing a letter to a friend or actually writing an essay,
255
a video, working on a project on paper by hand, is that writing is a form of thinking.
256
how often have you had the experience where you have these abstract ephemeral kind of feelings
257
and emotions you think you know something you think you understand your point of view on something
258
but as soon as you try to speak it to a friend it comes out a complete jumbled mess
259
or as soon as you try to write to yourself about
260
it it's not clear it doesn't come through it is
261
because writing is thinking speaking is thinking when we use language to organize the abstract world of ideas and emotions and concepts,
262
when we use writing and thinking to put it on paper and structure it, we are crystallizing our knowledge.
263
We are thinking on paper, right?
264
So that is a skill that you have to maintain, that you have to protect, that you have to foster.
265
Keeping physical notebooks to jot down ideas, right?
266
You go to a meeting, instead of having a little AI note taker instead of taking notes on
267
that meeting in a little notion tab
268
or google doc take notes by hand right journal every single
269
morning clarify your thoughts clarify your intentions clarify your goals work
270
through whatever emotions problems in your life you're going through think
271
on paper connected to this idea of thinking on paper is
272
creating clear boundaries as to what will stay human and what you are comfortable offloading to an AI, right?
273
I'm not telling you to never use AI.
274
AI is an amazing tool and we're going to get into that in a second, but you have to create clear boundaries for yourself as to what you will keep uniquely human.
275
For example, which might not be relevant for you guys, I will never use AI to script a YouTube video.
276
I don't even script these videos, as you can probably tell.
277
But that is something that I want to keep uniquely human.
278
Because for me, the process of reading, learning things, writing things by hand, wrestling with ideas, that is me protecting my ability to think clearly,
279
to organize thoughts, to organize my ideas.
280
Me practicing, turning on a camera, not reading a script, and just speaking about these ideas in a cohesive way.
281
That is me protecting and nourishing this skill.
282
For you, maybe you're in school, maybe you tell yourself, I'm only going to use AI for the research portion of this thing that I'm working on,
283
or I'm only going to use it to stress test my ideas, but I'm actually going to type everything.
284
Great.
285
Whatever it may be for you that is relevant in your work, but you have to create clear boundaries as to what you will keep human.
286
The next thing is to introduce cognitive friction into your life.
287
And what I mean by cognitive friction is to read.
288
Read.
289
Consume long format media, right?
290
Instead of doomscrolling all the damn time, consume long YouTube videos like this.
291
Consume podcasts.
292
Consume lectures.
293
Watch a documentary.
294
When you allow your brain to engage with and wrestle with long, complex, dense, abstract ideas and really think through them slowly,
295
methodically, without even trying, you are automatically training your brain to think critically
296
because you're engaging with an idea long enough for your own thinking to kick into place and start judging, critiquing, questioning.
297
Another form of introducing cognitive friction is to stress test your beliefs and ideas in conversations.
298
Call your friend, call a brother, have communities where you can have interesting conversations about the things that you're thinking about and wrestling with.
299
Test them in person.
300
Don't just hold these beliefs.
301
Mikey told me this thing about where AI is going, so now I'm going to believe him.
302
Yeah, this is going to be an AI renaissance.
303
Great, because Mikey told me.
304
No, I could be lying to you.
305
These are my thoughts.
306
I'm explaining the world to myself in public.
307
Go and test these ideas in the world.
308
Go have a conversation with a friend about it.
309
See what they think.
310
See what you think.
311
Write about it.
312
Journal about it. With everything.
313
That's what thinking critically is.
314
It's questioning.
315
The next thing, which I kind of alluded to earlier, is learning to curate and create your own sort of algorithm, right?
316
It's so fascinating to me that because our algorithms have gotten
317
so good and they are amazing at feeding us content
318
that is related to our interests and the things that we possibly want to learn about.
319
I'm not discounting that, right?
320
The engineers and people that work at Google, at Meta, at TikTok, these are brilliant people and they've designed a fascinating thing.
321
But we forget that we can create our own sort of algorithm.
322
We forget that we can pursue our own curiosity.
323
You can grab a pen and paper, write your name at the very top in like a little bubble chart and then write a line.
324
What are the things that I care about?
325
Self-actualization.
326
I care about fitness.
327
I care about psychology.
328
I care about clean energy.
329
I care about birds, whatever it may be.
330
And then you, from those bubbles, you extend them out.
331
Okay, what are some other topics that I want to explore related to that?
332
You can literally create your own sort of map of curiosity, your own adventure map of knowledge that you can then explore.
333
And instead of using an algorithm
334
and letting Mark Zuckerberg design this thing of what he's going to feed you every single morning with your Cheerios, you can decide to be like, okay, what are the top 10 books on psychology?
335
Who are the three best thinkers, the leading thought leaders on clean energy?
336
Okay, do they post on LinkedIn?
337
Have they written a book?
338
Do they have lectures?
339
Do they have interviews?
340
Let me go consume them.
341
You can choose your own path.
342
You can, if you care about a specific thing, instead of just going to Amazon and, you know, asking the Amazon algorithm to give you the top 10 books on this thing,
343
you can walk into a local bookstore and talk to the person at the shop.
344
You can walk into a local bookstore and just sit there for three hours,
345
read the first 10 pages of five different books and see what speaks to you, right?
346
So don't forget that you can pursue your own curiosity.
347
That is very, very important.
348
That is how you develop taste.
349
That is how you develop judgment.
350
Now let's talk about using AI
351
Because the interesting thing about AI is
352
that it is simultaneously the most incredible tool that's ever been created for learning and understanding things better,
353
while also being the worst possible thing that we've ever created.
354
Because it completely, we can completely offload all of our thinking
355
and all of our cognition to this thing and never have to think, never have to write an essay again, never have to literally do anything ever again.
356
so it is like the epitome of a double-edged sword right
357
it is up to you to use it well right do
358
not become this person that's like fuck technology technology is horrible
359
it's gonna ruin society i'm just never gonna touch this stuff no use ai right
360
if you have if you've done those other things
361
that we've talked about you've pursued your own curiosity you've read books you're consuming podcasts, you're having conversations with friends, you're in university maybe, you're asking questions to your professor, you're reaching out to people,
362
hey, do you want to grab coffee for 20 minutes?
363
I really like this work that you're doing here and I'm really interested in learning more.
364
You're doing all those things.
365
At the same time, you can be using AI to stress test your thinking.
366
You can be using AI to speak to it, tell it what you're thinking, tell it what you're learning about, tell it what you're curious about, tell it where to guide you to find new interesting sources.
367
You should absolutely be using this tool to learn, right?
368
But if you use it to give you the result without doing any of the work yourself, that is where you fuck up.
369
So you have to be, you have to experiment.
370
There's no formula I can give you here.
371
You have to experiment, right?
372
Sometimes you might try something and it'll be like, that didn't feel good.
373
That felt too AI that I didn't hear myself.
374
When I wrote that, I didn't hear myself.
375
I didn't see myself.
376
maybe you try something that didn't feel right.
377
Maybe you try something and it felt great.
378
And I was like, oh, that's a good use case for AI, right?
379
There's all sorts of interesting tools.
380
I'll give you one specific example of how I like to use AI.
381
Google has this tool called notebook LM.
382
One thing I like to do is when I'm already wrestling with different ideas, different concepts, I might grab a book that I've already read and I've already understood.
383
And maybe I grab a long format lecture from a similar-ish topic that I've also already read, already consumed.
384
So I'm not asking it to summarize these things for me, but I'll grab these two, three different sources and I'll put it into notebook.lm and it'll create a podcast about these topics,
385
synthesizing this information.
386
And then I'll go on an hour long walk.
387
I'll go on a run.
388
I'll go to the gym and I'm just listening to this podcast
389
that is like a synthesis of these two things that I've already combined.
390
Cool.
391
Interesting use case, right?
392
So there is ways in which you can use AI that you absolutely should experiment with, but be very, very, very careful offloading your cognition, offloading the work to it.
393
Because the struggle, the friction is what gives it meaning.
394
The struggle, the friction is what gives you a sense of ownership over the work.
395
That's all I have for you today.
396
I hope this helps.
397
I hope this has given you some hope.
398
AI will transform the world.
399
It really, really will.
400
But I think if you are intelligent in how you pursue your own curiosities and how you create things, make sure you are creating things, you're putting original work out there,
401
I think there is an opportunity for truly a new kind
402
of renaissance to emerge where we'll see a resurgence of great movies, of great music, of great books,
403
of new other new technologies, these other new companies that really resonate, that really feel human, that really help.
404
Right?
405
And I think you watching this can be part of that wave
406
if you do some of the things that we talked about in this video.
407
Anyways, I hope this served you.
408
I'll see you next week.
409
Peace.
Download App
Everything you need to speak fluently
AI PronunciationScore every sentence
IPA PracticeMaster every sound
VocabularyBuild your word bank
Vocab GameLearn while playing
Same Channel
FOR YOU
Recommend Video
B24
132 sentences
Are we heading to an era of stagnation or innovation?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2278 sentences
Fastest way to become an AI Engineer in 2026
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
198 sentences
Jack Dorsey’s New Dessa AI Voice Sounds Scary Human
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
546 sentences
Do Elite Degrees Still Matter In The AI Era? | Jamie Beaton from Crimson Education | EP 410
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B28
12 sentences
PoliteToAI video
Daily ConversationHigh School StudentsUniversity Students
B23
43 sentences
Translating Claude’s thoughts into language
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
208 sentences
it really was the damn phone: i stopped scrolling and remembered who i was
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
74 sentences
AI & Inequality | Daron Acemoglu: Big Tech poses risks as AI reshapes society
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
623 sentences
The Only SaaS Moats Left in 2026
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C111
39 sentences
You Will Only Like Half of This Video
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B29
36 sentences
What Keeps Me OPTIMISTIC About the Future | Simon Sinek
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C114
20 sentences
Alexandr Wang on what matters in an age of abundant intelligence
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “I think AI slop is about to trigger a renaissance, actually”. This video has 409 sentences and 5274 words to shadow. The speech runs for 31:01. The speaker talks at a natural 170 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| wrestle verb | /ˈɹɛs(ə)l/ | To take part in (a wrestling bout or match). |
| algorithm noun | /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/ | A collection of ordered steps that solve a mathematical problem. A precise step-by-step plan for a computational procedure that possibly begins with an input… |
| slop noun | /slɑp/ | Any semisolid substance; goo, paste, pulp. |
| friction noun | /ˈfɹɪkʃən/ | The rubbing of one object or surface against another. |
| hopeful adjective | /ˈhoʊpfl̩/ | feeling hope |
| consume verb | /kənˈsum/ | To use up. |
| curiosity noun | /ˌkjʊɹ.iˈɑ.sə.ti/ | Inquisitiveness; the tendency to ask and learn about things by asking questions, investigating, or exploring. |
| invisible adjective | /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/ | Unable to be seen; out of sight; not visible. |
| nourish verb | /ˈnʌɹ.ɪʃ/ | To feed and cause to grow; to supply with food or other matter which increases weight and promotes health. |
| offload verb | /ˌɑfˈloʊd/ | To unload. |
| organize verb | /ˈɔɹɡənaɪz/ | To arrange in working order. |
| prevalent adjective | /ˈpɹɛvələnt/ | Widespread or preferred. |
| clarify verb | /ˈklæɹ.ɪ.faɪ/ | To make or become clear or bright by freeing from impurities or turbidity. |
| renaissance noun | /ɹəˈneɪs(ə)ns/ | A rebirth or revival. |
| critically adverb | /ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kə.li/ | In a critical manner; with, or in terms of, criticism. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| show up verb | To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically. | |
| bump up verb | To increase something suddenly. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| come through verb | To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway. | |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. | |
| drive back verb | To force someone or something to retreat or move away; repel. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| light up verb | To illuminate, to bring light to something, to brighten. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Questions like, who am I?
- What do I want to do?
- How do I want to spend my time?
- What do I want to create?
- What is my energy good for?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has developed · you've heard · you've studied |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is centered · can be made · is invented |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | with, which is · Generation, which is · hopeful, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 118 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: friction /ˈfɹɪkʃən/, nourish /ˈnʌɹ.ɪʃ/, invention /ɪnˈvɛnʃən/, cognition /kɑɡˈnɪʃ.ən/, implication /ˌɪmpləˈkeɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: curiosity /ˌkjʊɹ.iˈɑ.sə.ti/, invisible /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/, critically /ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kə.li/, personalize /ˈpɜː.sə.nə.laɪz/, calculator /kæl.kjə.leɪ.tɚ/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like wrestle, algorithm, slop.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.