Gemini [archival audio]: Key body-weight exercises, squats, stand with feet shoulder-width apart, lower your hips as if sitting in a chair, keeping your back straight and chest up. Go as low as you can comfortably.
Michael Calore: Lunges for each leg, three sets of 10, plank, three sets holding for 30 to 60 seconds, which is torture. Glute bridges, three sets of 15 reps. And then it talks about progressive overload and it talks about rest days and all of those things, which is great. And then I was like, “OK, I do not know how to do a lunge. Can you show me how to do a lunge?” And it presented me with a bunch of videos, five videos.
Lauren Goode: YouTube, presumably?
Michael Calore: Yes, they were YouTube videos. Two of the links were exactly the same, but I watched all the videos and I was like, “OK, I feel like I can do a lunge now.” And I did a lunge and I did not hurt myself, and I felt the burn. So I feel like that’s pretty good.
Lauren Goode: That’s pretty great, actually.
Michael Calore: Yeah. The only thing that was weird about it is that I did a Google search and found exactly the same information from a couple of different places. And aside from the video, I do not know where Gemini got any of this information. I don’t even know where it got the recipes from. It was all just presented to me as, “This is what Gemini says.”
Lauren Goode: No sourcing.
Michael Calore: No sourcing. And I tapped through in everything, and I didn’t see any good sourcing.
Lauren Goode: And presumably humans put together those workout plans or wrote about those recipes. And that was published and sorry, but your infinitesimal bits of data are being chopped up now and added to some recipe, and you have no idea where it comes from.
Michael Calore: Julienned.
Lauren Goode: That’s right.
Zoë Schiffer: OK, so are you going to stick with this? Are you going to keep using it for this purpose, or did it feel like a one-and-done experiment?
Michael Calore: Honestly, the workout regimen, it’s pretty solid. I’ll keep doing it.
Lauren Goode: Nice.
Michael Calore: And as far as the recipes go, I have so many cookbooks and so many years of experience making food for myself that I absolutely do not need to make this quinoa salad again, Lauren, unless you would like me to make it and give you some of it.
Lauren Goode: I’ve had other meals that you’ve made, and I think maybe I’d suggest those next time.
Zoë Schiffer: So diplomatic.
Michael Calore: OK, great.
Lauren Goode: But thank you, appreciate you.
Michael Calore: So I got to say that, for me, as a person who understands myself and understands my own needs, it was not really that big of a help. The workout was nice. I could have found that without Gemini 2.O, but if somebody who is new to this or somebody has a lot of questions, or if somebody’s considering making these types of lifestyle changes, then it actually did give some pretty good advice.