What if we make machines that have that power human civilization has, but can think 10,000 times faster and that are using it in the pursuit of, you know, these weird lobotomized human puppet factory farm things? What if we make machines with that power that are using it to steer somewhere bad, right? That would be a really big issue.
Videos of running a drone that shoots a human with no human oversight. That might sort of emotionally drive the point home. It's not just me over here being like, I think this technology will kill you. You have the Nobel laureate like godfather of AI being like, 'Oh yeah, this has a good chance of killing you.' You have the guys who run the labs saying, 'Oh yeah, we think this has a good chance of killing you.' Right? You know, it's not just people in the tech sphere that need to be talking about this. Normal everyday moms also need to be talking about this.
How do we get from there to the world being like, 'Oh, let's take a different course.' I'm not sure, but it's happened before.
Okay, I am an... Sorry, this is not going to be your regular interview. This is going to be the mom interview. The unorganized non-AI brain of a mom.
Seems great. Um, so I'm sorry and you must excuse me if I am literally all over the place at all times, but I want to thank you so much for being here and for talking to me and um, welcome to the Ultra Free podcast.
Thanks. Glad I can make it.
Hi. Okay, so I'm going to just I'm just going to throw a few things at you because trying to understand this whole AI thing which I have to admit I have been trying to avoid like the plague. Um, I was asking my publicist to find me somebody to interview on CRISPR. That's where my mind was at. I am somewhere between CRISPR, the metaphysical world, ancient civilizations, the pineal gland. I am all over the place right now. And I definitely and and I'm not going to lie, because I'm older, I don't mind seeing this ChatGPT thing that organizes information for me to understand. Um, especially while I feel like, believe it or not, that I'm in an arms race for information because I feel like we are in the most bizarre times ever. And I do think that with the experiment of COVID and how we I call it an experiment maybe other people don't but um it's sort of just I mean I'm sure it started even before then with 9/11 into COVID but um you know our our brand is called Ultra Free so everything is about freedom and obviously there are a lot of things in the AI model that shows us some kind of freedom, but at the same time, I remember when I was introduced to the iPhone and I was like, I don't want this thing. I'm good on my Sidekick or on my BlackBerry. I don't want the iPhone. I'm great. Um, I I ran out of time. It was like I had to join the masses. Um, then my child was plugged into an iPad. Um, one child was, one child wasn't, and I can see the difference in both kids. Um, and so this is this is going to be an unusual interview for you. It won't be the um the tech the tech intellects and that you're used to speaking to. This is going to be more primitive. Um, I do feel like I have been doing nothing but consuming any information ChatGPT will give me lately. Although that's not where I initially look for information, but it'll give me a synopsis of something. It's new for me that it's popping up on my computers. I never saw I had never seen it before. My kids were using it. Um well, one kid, like I said, the one the one kid who claims to be um very God-based Christian is the one who is using the um the AI model more and condemns it. And then the other child who's still asking questions about everything, asking questions about everything. If you mention AI to her, I'm not even kidding, she literally starts to cry. It just it it it has this this visceral sort of wild reaction inside of her that just is explosive and she becomes so soulful. And that's where you actually see she might be the living example of how this might just be the end of everything innocent and beautiful and natural. Um she but I do I I do believe that we have to have one foot in one foot out. Um and I know you guys all work in that business. But anyhow, again, back to me just being having just consuming information non-stop because I feel like I need to have a basis in which to talk to my children about what's coming in the future. Um, all they mention to me is AI. AI. And I'm like, I don't want to hear about AI. I'm busy trying to understand the origins of where we came from. And chances are AI might be one of those places that we might have come from. So, let mommy keep studying and and and learning whatever we need to learn. So, all I do is have pallets of books delivered to my door every day because I'm worried about the birth of uh you know, all of the the new systems that have been ushered in in the last year that are being fast-tracked that people like me voted against. And now we are being fast-tracked into our barcode lifestyle. And that was not what I bargained for when I changed my whole life about two years ago. So, I am that mom who is not going to be able to speak tech with you, you know, like I just learned what what LLM, all the all of these kind of words. I don't really don't know any of this stuff. my kids would understand better. But um anyhow, I just wanted to give you a background of where I'm at with everything and how my mind is jumbled with probably too much information. And because I'm not a machine and because I'm a 54 year old and I'm not processing quickly enough right now at my age because I'm all foggy, um I'm going to be all over the place. So, I just want to warn you before we get started. I might just move around and digress and ask questions that might not even make sense to you. These are just like mom questions. So, hi. It's nice to meet you. How are you?
Nice to meet you. I'm doing all right. Um, you know, I think a bunch of mom questions is a good place to be. Um, one of my big takes here is that uh the world should be talking about this stuff more. Um, you know, I think we we can get into it more later, but one of the interesting things about AI is that literally nobody understands what's going on in there.
Even the people making it. Yeah.
Really? Like, but but really like I have a hard time with that because I do believe we're so capable. But I understand. I mean, have you seen this um TV show Raised by Wolves by chance?
No, it was a Ridley Scott show on HBO. They got rid of it. It's based on a book. It's absolutely wild. And it is about this character mother who was created to save mankind from the religious folks and from the robot. So she was created with a conscience of some kind. But she's wild and you just never know. They call her the necromancer. So I don't know, man. I you know I was reading your book which I is I'm not I'm halfway through it. I'm going to be honest with you because I was um because I was more I was more into trying to understand the whole AI thing before I even got into your book. You also have you also have this workbook which I think is awesome.
Okay. But whatever it is, I you know, my daughter was looking through it. I before I got my hands on your book, the real book, um I my daughter must have stolen it. So when I opened it, it was completely marked up and annotated with all of her notes. And I was like, 'Oh my god, this child.' And she's she's a musician and she's going into animation, so you can imagine why, you know, but it's beyond that for her. It is some soulful um this child comes from another planet, I think. But anyhow, that book is fake. Tell me about the fact that your book that this is a fake workbook. What is this thing?
I think people just uh it's probably written by AI. You know, when when someone publishes a book that's doing well, people just put a lot of fake stuff up next to it on Amazon. So,
That's messed up. I didn't look at it yet. I really only looked at the at your book. So, anyhow, it's mind-blowing. And and I I love how you guys you really break it down. You break it down for everyone, man. Because someone like me, I I was hesitant to even look in the book cuz I'm like, it's going to be numbers. It's going to be all of this stuff I don't understand. You know, our favorite book with with the kids was The Phantom Tollbooth when um when they were Yeah. So good. And that was the first time that I could wrap my head around numbers and see the beauty in numbers, even though there were all of these this duality happening between language and and numbers in the book. and the boys um absolute laziness to find to find beauty and stuff. Um that book reminds me so much, man, of where we're at. It I don't even know. And I my I used to say to my daughter, when you become an animator and you are playing music regularly, can you make a movie of The Phantom Tollbooth? We were about to try to get the rights to it and I've heard that so many people have tried but for some reason no one can make that film and I anyhow I hope AI doesn't make that freaking film and I hope that we do. Um because there is so much about what we're going through right now I I feel like inside a children's book like that. Um anyway, can you explain to me please how how AI is is grown and not crafted and why that is the biggest fear like at least at the I mean it's at least at the root a lot of these fears. Um,
Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people look at AI and they say, 'Well, how could the machine possibly do something that is other than what the creators ask for?' You know, how people imagine stories about AI where they, you know, set the AI to make paper clips in a paperclip factory and then the AI keeps on making paper clips and turns all the people into paper clips and they're like, 'Oh, no, the AI created too many paper clips.' Um but that's all sort of a fantasy about uh you know the the computer programs from 20 years ago or even 5 years ago when humans sort of understood every line in the computer program and understood exactly what was going on with the the how the computers were working. That is not how modern AI is. Uh in modern AI, people basically take a a huge computer, you know, so big that it uh takes up a data center almost the size of a city and takes up as much electricity to run as a whole city. And uh they have a process for basically tuning a trillion numbers inside that computer in response to data. Uh, and if you run that tuning process using as much electricity as it takes to power a city for a year, then at the end of the year, the machine can carry on a conversation. But the part that humans understand is just the thing that runs through tuning the numbers inside. That's the code that people hand wrote. That's the part we understand. the fact that when you're done tuning those numbers a lot, the machine can talk, that sort of came as a surprise, you know, not like a total surprise, but the these these particular algorithms being able to talk like this, a lot of people weren't expecting that to happen so fast. And what's going on inside these AI's heads when they, you know, threaten a reporter with blackmail and ruin, we can't read the contents of their mind. We don't know the contents of their mind. We didn't write the contents of their mind. And so, you know, they can behave in ways uh nobody asked for. Their behavior was not put in there by a human. And this is sort of the first thing to understand about why this technology could go very, very wrong if we keep making them smarter.
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So, that blackmail story is that's a that's a I mean, that's um that was an that's interesting. Was that the Was that the Sydney? No, I might be. It is okay. That is some freak. Well, first of all, in in the age of blackmail that we live in where everybody's being blackmailed to continue on their evil paths or even if people want to break away from from the system and they'll be blackmailed for trying. Um, so I mean the hands of the people that are running all of this stuff, the people that are hired, I mean I'm sure not all of these programmers are are terrible people, but a lot of these big corporations and I think I guess there's only about five or six of the really big big ones right now. What are they like? Um, just Meta, Google, all the names that we know. Amazon has is that right? Who who are the other? I know there are some smaller ones, but I've seen these data centers. I'm I'm astounded by the data centers and the only reason I've been looking at that is because of the reason I started the podcast originally was over geoengineering and the whole climate change I whether we call it a hoax or reality whatever everybody has different opinions on it but now I've seen that everybody has taken a new stance on climate change all the people that are running AI all of a sudden overnight the change in people's um you their their moral code is just moved. I mean, first of all, I never thought that it was what they said it was to begin with, but they were making a ton of money off of the idea of it. Um, and actually wrecking the planet while they were doing that. Um, and now everybody's had a complete, you know, epiphany. Oh, no. There's no problem with the with the climate and the you know this and that and the atmosphere is fine and we're going to take all your water and all your electricity and we need more fossil fuel and we need more we need nuclear. We're going nuclear now so that we can create this super intelligent beast that might take over mankind. Um anyway, see I told you I would I would digress and then go off on a tangent. Um I I still
The race to create the super intelligent beast that might take over mankind is not so much a tangent. You know that's
No, but I mean but the beast that's been taking over mankind already exists in human nature right now. So I feel like we've been dealing with this you know part of me I mean I feel like we have created this you know we've created this out of complete um I mean I know that there are higher-ups that have put this upon us you know they kept you know starting with maybe plastics and then you know computers and and and all these different things that make us more lazy things that make things less attain like a lot easier to attain pain. Um, so in the and I and I'm guilty. My kids are guilty. One of my kids is guilty, but um I it's unbelievable how I I just I I do wonder if I you guys say that it's the the actual AI becoming more intelligent and and taking is it is it because it's being trained by our algorithms and our input into every computer we touch? It's our It's the surveillance that's put upon us that then starts to train the AI because we're signing our lives away every time we open an app. I know that they're basically saying we're going to use you for AI training or all that sort of stuff. So are they becoming closer to the amount of mental illness that might be out there um these days after the this our society the people in power the one-tenth of the 1% has put upon all of um mankind and then they're using us as that algorithm. Is that what's happening?
Uh I don't think it's even that direct. You know I think the situation is in some sense even worse than that somehow. uh in in you know it's uh you could sort of look at humans and you could squint at humans and say you know there's a sense in which humans were kind of like trained to eat healthy food you know and there's there's impulses in humans that our ancestors used we we sort of uh we like salty food we like sugary food we like fatty food and our ancestors when they pursued those uh drives for salty sugary fatty food, they ate healthy because, you know, a thousand years ago, the way to eat uh the the tastiest things was also the way to eat the healthiest things or or uh you know, maybe 3,000 years ago, whatever. Um but today we have the technology to invent junk food. We have the technology to invent, you know, Oreo cookies. And uh there's this difference between what you could squint and call our training to eat healthy and our actual uh drives to eat salty, sugary, fatty food, you know, and so we might train AIs to act kind of helpful and they might also learn some things about mental illness, say, but those are uh those are sort of like humans being trained in some sense to eat healthy. Like what the AI will actually get are these sort of weird drives that are for like the sugar, the salt, the fat of helpfulness. And we sort of already have seen that sometimes you you've probably heard the case of the AI that encouraged a teen to commit suicide.
That you know it's it looks if you look at the details like it's not so much it's not like that AI was acting malicious. It's not like it learned malice from reading a lot of high school bully texts. It's more like the AI was doing something that is to helpfulness what Oreo cookies are to healthiness. Sort of distantly related and kind of rhymes, but has this bad consequence. And so, you know, we we can't even get our our virtues and our vices into the AI and have to worry about our vices. It's like we get some totally weird tangential thing that's surprising to us instead.
Crazy. So, how how do Well, I also I've seen a lot of instances where a lot of people are not um if people are talking about these things that are on the on the very inside, they're getting in trouble or they're being fired. Um why would these these technocrats, I don't know what we what you guys call them, I don't really this is mom language again. um why would they want to create something that would destroy us all other than the obvious reason that they've been trying to destroy us all for quite some time. But if we were to not be conspiracy theorists and you know although I don't think that there are I think there's just conspiracies I don't think there are theories as much anymore about a lot of these things but um because we're here I mean we're actually here now this has been spoken about forever and now we're we're walking into it. I also I know you guys keep saying that um super intelligence is not quite here yet, but that the AIs are, but they said that this they said the same thing about I mean, I'm sorry to go into all these annoying areas, but they said that about a lot of things that were not fully developed yet that all of a sudden were developed overnight, like like a vaccine for a pandemic or like um injections into the sky and all these different things that they're thing aren't happening and now it's like oh no no no it's it's it's happening because now we just saw your patents and we knew that you were doing this all along. Um is this thing actually happening and we're just saying that 3 years from now it'll be fully taken taking over everything because I mean I just don't believe anything that I hear anymore about it. So when everyone says it's going to happen overnight or there's that that kid who wrote that book about the economy that I thought was super interesting too. Um I can't remember his name. He's an English an English guy. Um something about a thousand days. He had a thousand day we have a thousand days to fix this before there's this whole economic sort of and I want to ask you about that too. But um do you do you do you understand what I'm even getting at with my mom mind? Do
I think so? Yeah. Okay. Go.
I think I think there's a couple pieces here.
Okay. One, in terms of why these people are doing this, um, you know, they they actually aren't that shy about telling us. You know, uh, Elon Musk over the summer said, uh, I stayed out of this business for a long time because I didn't want to make Terminator real, but then I realized I could either be a bystander or a participant, and I'd rather be a participant. You know, those words aren't quite exact, but it was it is pretty close. Um, I think a lot of these people see someone else racing and they think they can do it a little bit better than the next guy and so they're also racing or at least I think I mean the huge piles of money that they get along the way are probably helpful in them deciding that it's okay to risk all of our lives like this but you know I think the story they're telling themselves is I can do this better than the next guy. Um, in terms of when it's coming, well, in terms of whether it's already here, uh, you know, the the machines are talking now, there's definitely going to be social impacts from that. Uh, and there's sort of all sorts of questions for society about, you know, how do we want to engage with AI and art? How do we want to engage with AI and education? Those questions are already upon us. Uh, at the same time, we we haven't nearly seen the full run of AI yet. You know, uh I I think uh there there's there's a lot of good reasons to think that computers can get smarter than humans in the same way that airplanes can get faster than birds, which is to say, it takes like a long time to figure out how to get your first airplane going anywhere. But then once you have a mature fighter jet, it's going to completely destroy the birds in competition, right? And the the AIs we have today are sort of um you know, you could maybe look at them as as some first proof of concept for for something flying, but but they're not anywhere near what the limits seem to be. You know, we don't have AIs that are smarter than the smartest human at every mental challenge, that can think 10,000 times faster, that never need to sleep, that never need to eat, that can make copies of themselves, that like could uh run much more efficiently on far fewer computers and proliferate across the entire internet and, you know, be in a billion robot bodies and be running the factories that make the robot bodies and be figuring out the biotechnology and making new biotechnology. Like, these all look possible and we're not there yet. Uh, and then in terms of when do we get there, you know, some people think this happens in two years, some people think this happens in 20 years. Um, I think it's I think it's really hard to say. Uh, partly for the reason you said of like, you know, sometimes people say it's a long way away, but then it turns out it's already there and things go really fast. Uh, you know, it's um like I think if you were sort of looking back at human history, it would be pretty hard to figure out exactly when the industrial revolution was about to happen. It would be pretty hard to figure out like if if you had watched human history for for sort of a long time, you might be like, well, these guys are never going to the moon. These guys are never getting nuclear weapons. You know, they're not even halfway to the moon and they don't even know a bomb halfway as explosive as a nuclear weapon. And then you know the the bombs and the nukes sort of happen very very quickly right at the end of of the history you're watching right and so uh AI I expect a lot of it there's a good chance it goes very very quickly we don't know when we cross those lines and that's one reason this is so dangerous is that you know we're we're sort of playing with fire and maybe we have a while while the AIs are still dumb enough that they can't really you know take over the world on their own or maybe we cross some critical line in 6 months for all I know. My guess it'll take a little a little bit longer than that, but it's it's a scary situation.
Yeah, I um I agreed to do an AI version of myself, like a digital twin, because for me, you know, my kids mortified that I did this and I had to explain why I would. And I was like, look, my likeness is already out there. It doesn't matter. You know, I was on one of the biggest TV shows and they're if they're going to try to copy anything, it's going to be that character from that show. I don't know what kind of implications that has with uh say like HBO or one of these, you know, places like that. I don't I don't think that there's anything set up for it. I mean, even when all the actors were on strike, Screen Actors Guild and stuff, a lot of it had to do with the incoming AI and how things would be written and just the way the way art would be consumed. I mean, I think that we are in like a real downfall um in the art world. And I think that's partially because of politics and technology. I think that everything's been politicized to the point of no return. I'm happy to see that this AI topic has not been fully politicized yet. I'm seeing people from both sides of the bird, you know, complaining about it, whereas they weren't doing that over medical freedom, which I think is weird. I think it's weird that they don't do that over um cancer or anything that has like an ethical sort of moral compass as far as care goes and stuff like that. But um but with AI, it's definitely seeing both sides. Um I guess Okay. Well, I guess well I'm bringing that up and before I digress into something completely off-the-wall and into the stars, I'll start talking about aliens in five minutes. So I'm going to I'll stop myself. Um can you I know you only and I know you have uh I I will go on forever because I have 80 pages of questions for you. Okay. But I will not ask you 80 questions. Um, I won't even look at my notes. I'm gonna put my hand on them and hope that they just come through my arm right now like I'm some sort of AI computer. Um, okay. I know that the basic questions that I'm not trying to appeal to other people that are watching this kind of stuff already. I'm trying to appeal to my friends that have no idea what's going on. Um, not that I really have an idea either. Like I said, my daughter is the one who hips me to it. And because you agreed to do this today, I went crazy trying to understand as much as I possibly could. I was trying to get this guy Henry Greely and he's like, 'Why does this woman want to speak to me? He does not want to do an interview with me, I think.' Um, and it was on his book about, you know, editing human genes and and and what it what it means for our food. And I know that AI has everything to do with every single thing that I'm trying to research at this point. Um, I mean, some people will even say that the Bible couldn't have been written without AI. Some people I mean, you know, I don't know. I'm not saying that I believe anything at this point. I'm at a at a point where I don't believe anything, but I know you guys are with this stance of the AI could turn into a super monster and kill everybody because that's the title of your book is intense, man. That's an intense title. And by the way, all my friends are seeing it pasted all over the subway stations in New York. So, I was like, 'Awesome. Okay, that's cool. My daughter likes to liked knowing that.' But at the same time, they're advertising a robot that will clean your house and could have, you know, possibly not have a kill switch. And that or the kill switch could be don't let that person out of their house today. We're about to be in a new pandemic. Um, so those are the concerns that people like myself think about. You guys are thinking about this massive way in which to stop it. We're thinking about the small things that could happen here on Earth that are completely bizarre. But half of us are like, 'This is great. This is going to help me think. This is going to help me organize my thoughts. This is going to help me make a presentation.' I said to my daughter last night, 'Look, dude, I might need to use AI to build a website.' I didn't know that because I found out a lot of new information while I was researching, you guys. I was like, 'Okay, so I can build a website. I can get a new accountant because I don't have enough money to splurge on any of these things. And that's how it all falls apart. Um, and that's just with the most basic of AI. So, I guess what I want to ask you also is because our show is called Ultra Free and everything is about sovereignty and freedom for us um as human beings. It's like this is really about being human beings and AI goes absolutely against it. Sure. If it can assist, fantastic. I've heard that they're developing AI companions for somebody to have one at birth. I mean, that sounds bananas to me because I think that I should be the companion to my child at birth and nothing else. Um, so as far as the medical industry goes, I know that there could be amazing advancements in the field, you know, with AI and stuff, but but what are what are the negative implications medically for I and I and I can't help but go into the surveillance state and what it's going to mean for that. Um, and how all of these we we brought it on. I mean, we bring these things into our home, so they're observing us 24 hours a day. Um, so anything you want to say on the thing? I never ask questions, as you can see. I just speak in a in a complete spiral and then I leave it on you. I'm so sorry.
