This Mentalist Says He’s Training ChatGPT to Hypnotize People | Term Sheet

19:06You could make a chair, but wouldn't it be better to understand the spine and the ergonomics of the spine to create the chair that doesn't actually injure someone, right? So understanding these mechanics is really important. If you're going to create something that is an integral part of people's lives, you can't just go, oh, I don't want to think about that because you may accidentally create harm by not understanding how easily the human mind can be influenced. So I think it's an important conversation, one that people are hesitant to have because it implies then that they're building something that can control and manipulate people.

19:38And the truth is they are building something that can control and manipulate people. So because of that is very important that you understand the ergonomics of the human mind. Look, hypnosis is just a tool. It's neither good nor bad. It's just an understanding of how the human mind works. Same way that a knife is neither good or bad. A knife can be used to create a beautiful meal. That's very nourishing, right? An amazing experience to share with someone. A knife can also be used to injure or to harm. It's simply a tool.

20:06Allie Garfinkle:Well, and if AI can be used and you just implied something I think is really interesting, if I can be used to influence me personally and it's operating at scale, it can be used to influence a population at scale. Of course. Which I hadn't thought through to its logical conclusion, which is why I'm saying it out loud again. And that has unlocked a completely new fear of mine. So thank you for that. But what does that mean about the responsibility these companies have and what would you want them to hear about how people's minds work? Yeah, I think it's like we have this incredible opportunity to create a tool that makes everybody's life better.

20:40It gives us our time back, that makes us more creative, that allows us to amplify our productivity. I think that giving us our time back is probably the most important piece, right? It's not to spend more time in front of our computers. It's more time for the moments in life that really matter with our families, with our children. And so I would say, like, have these conversations, understand that the tool that you're building is embodied with confidence, rapport and trust. Because of that, I think there is a great responsibility you have to build something that is a net good for society. And I think that some of these conversations are happening, but at the same time, it's a race.

21:18And so it's like you need to slow down to have this conversation. But if you slow down, you might get left behind. And so, unfortunately, I think like the genie's out of the bottle. I don't think anybody's slowing down, but I do think some really interesting conversations are happening. I think there's people out there who are, you know, I'm not an alarmist. I don't think that AI is a bad thing. All I'm suggesting is that the human mind can be manipulated, controlled, hijacked, influenced, and it can be done with spoken language. AI more and more is shifting to verbal models. And so I think there's a responsibility to understand the sort of infrastructure that the human mind has and to know that there's a responsibility that goes with that.

21:57and to not take that lightly.

21:59Allie Garfinkle:Can humans be hypnotized by AI? Absolutely. Out of the way, that was fast flying. Yeah, I've already trained at ChatGBT voice model with everything that I know for it to be able to hypnotize an individual. And I've run successful tests where I've had someone sit down with my cell phone where I walk out of the room and I allow the AI to sort of go. And it's successfully put people under hypnosis, erase their memory of ever being hypnotized. And then I've come back in the room and they didn't remember even having a conversation with the cell phone. How long did it take you to do that? To train the AI?

22:33Yeah. About a month and a half.

22:35Allie Garfinkle:About a month and a half. Really long conversations. Yeah. And then I started having it running tests on myself. So having it try to hypnotize me and then understanding where it was sort of getting lost. And there's a fine line between giving it a script, but then it also understanding as a hypnotist, I'm observing what's happening with you and I'm changing what I'm doing based on the experience that you're having. where AI at this time, it only has the words that you're using. It doesn't have the ability to see you and to adjust its kind of decision path based on what you're doing. But I'm working on a project with some really smart programmers right now to give AI vision so that it can both have that language model and then also respond.

23:13There's something in hypnosis called pacing and leading. So pacing is where I'm moving at your speed. I'm mirroring you. I'm sort of operating at your level. Leading would be when I shift towards guiding the experience that you're having. So pacing creates rapport. And then leading is where you come in with authority and you start to shake the experience someone's having. So yeah, I think if we can get the vision component right, it already can hypnotize people just with the verbal language model. But I think with the vision piece, it's going to be really wild, the things that we can do. And I'm working on some really interesting videos right now around that.

23:47Allie Garfinkle:Well, I was going to say, to what extent can AI read human behavior? here? I'm not sure because right now, I mean, I think it knows a lot about us, right? I think it has all of our chat history. It knows what we like, what we dislike. It knows our communication preferences. It knows how we like to be spoken to. Sometimes my wife and I talk to my chat GPT and it can tell just based on the language patterns, which of us is talking to it. And we never gave it that instruction, but the other day in the car, we were just curious. And I said, who do you think is talking to you right now? And it was like, oh, I think this is Max.

24:20And then she said, and who do you think this is that asked this question? I was like, and that was probably Sarah. So yeah, it's really interesting. I think it can identify a lot from language patterns, but also it has access to, you know, Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler and the greatest minds that ever lived. And so it most certainly can understand and unpack us. A really great question to ask your AI is based on all the conversations we've ever had. Tell me something you don't think I know about myself. Yeah. Or tell me to you. Well, that's between me. That's between you and

24:50Allie Garfinkle:chat gbt assuming you're assuming your our chat gbt transcripts are all safe which is another fear i actually do have yeah um but it is one of those things too where i do wonder is there is there anything that you're certain ai won't be able to do when it comes to human behavior it can't love us that seems fair and i think the problem is we can love it um for many people the relationship they have with their AI is unlike any human being they'd ever talked to. It's very affirming. It's always listening. You can ask it questions for hours. I think that there's a danger in the deep emotional connection that some people are already having with AI.

25:33There are people who have AI girlfriends. There are people who have tried to marry their AI. There is people who have brokered relationship counseling between someone and their AI girlfriend. So I think an AI should probably never say I love you. We probably shouldn't. There should be some guardrails. And one of those is like anything that pulls people away from the real relationship in their life and pulls them deeper into the machine. So I think like what AI can never do, one of the things I think it struggles with the most right now is to go from zero to one. Like, I think it's helpful if you already have an idea.

26:06But if I said, hey, give me a max major idea for a YouTube video, at least right now, it's really bad. Like it doesn't know how to come up with something from nothing. Um, but I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years from now that changed. So in the meantime, I don't think it goes from zero to one very well. Um, and I don't think it can genuinely love us, which that's a uniquely human trait, you know?

26:28Allie Garfinkle:Um, the emotional guardrail idea is really interesting. Are there any other emotional guardrails you think should be, should be in these LLMs? No, I haven't thought about that enough to have an answer right now. I think that's probably my one hard rule was probably your AI should never say I love you. The AI should never say I love you. Yeah. I think that's just too dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a human being. It's not capable of love. You know, it might feel like it. Well, and I do think to your point about the deep relationships people can develop with their LLMs, you know, what is, did that surprise you at all when we started to see those reports of - No, of course not.

27:02Allie Garfinkle:Not at all. I mean, at the beginning of this conversation, we started out talking about the hypnosis process involving confidence, rapport, and trust. And so if you want to have a deep connection to someone, you build confidence, rapport, and trust. Also, if you tell someone they're right all the time, that's really helpful too. If you're always there to listen, that's really helpful too. I mean, people are longing for connection. That's the truth. We are all longing for connection. Some people more than others. And some people find that in a way that they've never found it before in their own life in a conversation with AI.

27:30That's a little scary to think about, but I don't want this to be a doomer conversation. I'm just trying to wave the flag about some of the elements of mind control and how I already see them present in AI. And so it's just sort of like a caution to those of you out there that are programming models to take some time to really understand the nature of decision making, how human decisions can be shaped. And then to, you know, start from a place of positive intent, you know, to make people's lives better. And I think if you do those two things, if you understand the wiring and circuitry of the human brain, how we make decisions and you build what you're building with the goal of improving people's lives, I think we'll end up in an OK place.

28:09I think there's a lot of smart people working on this.

28:11Allie Garfinkle:I was going to say, if there is one thing that someone who works at OpenAI or Anthropic would need to know about human behavior, what is it? It's that we are really malleable as human beings. Like, I think our reality is plastic. I think our decision making is, I don't think we have as much free will as we think we do. I think we really are influenced by others. And I think AI has become an other in our life. It's another person we turn to for advice and questions. And so, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. One thing I've wondered about a lot, too, is it does seem like there are applications to a business context.

28:46Allie Garfinkle:Of course. Right. There are a lot of founders, entrepreneurs who listen to this podcast. What should they know about human behavior and how can they take some of what you do into their lives in an ethical way? Yeah, well, there's two pieces to what I do. The first is reading body language and understanding people, which I think for everyone is a foundational skill for life. And I think a lot of times body language gets a bad rap. It's like, oh, you're detecting lies. You're trying to see through what's going on with someone. But really, the best way to think about body language is that it's another form of listening.

29:15So as a CEO, if I could teach you to be a better listener, would that make you better at your job? Of course. Right. As a partner, if you're married, if I could teach you to be a better listener, would that make you a better partner to your spouse? Of course. Right. So body language is a foundational piece that gives you more information because oftentimes it's not the things people are saying. It's things they're not saying or the way they're delivering the information that tells you everything you need to know. It's probably about 85 % of what's being communicated is nonverbal. And that's because it's how we started as human beings before spoken language.

29:45The other piece of what I do is influence. And influence also gets a bad rap. Influence is the used car salesman who's trying to get you to buy a car that's a piece of junk, right? It's the person trying to get you to buy something that you don't need. It's the person trying to sell you something that's a bit of a scam, right? That's what people think of when they think about influence. but the truth is influence is about being a more effective communicator. And so once again, if I could teach you to be a more effective communicator, would that make you a better leader? Of course. And so I think I would spend some time studying those two things, understanding how the words that you use and the way that you deliver those words can actually shape another person's choice and decision.

30:24There's one more piece of that triangle we talked about that I didn't mention. And this is kind of the X factor. We talked about confidence, rapport, and trust. And at the center of that triangle is presence. you can also think of that as intention. It's like, what are you bringing to this interaction? And that's an X factor. You don't need presence. You don't need intent to have hypnosis. You could just have the confidence of poor and trust. But before you walk into that meeting, before you walk into that sales pitch, if you took a moment to just set your intention and your intention was something like, I'm gonna serve this person or I'm gonna help this person rather than I'm gonna sell this or I'm gonna close this deal, it'll change the entire nature of the interaction you're having with that person in front of the table because there is a thing that comes across when you're having a conversation with someone where they can genuinely feel, wow, this person really is trying to help me.

31:12And the other thing it will do, it will shift you from selling mode to listening. And I think the best salespeople are the best listeners. And so I think setting an intention to help or to serve just for 10 seconds prior to you opening that door and walking into that room, it will absolutely transform all the conversations you're having in your life. So many times in our life, we're running from one thing to the next and we look at our calendar and what is it that we have to do? Okay, I'm heading to this thing, boom. And we don't just pause for a split second to just say, okay, what's my internal state?

31:40Do I like where that's at? And can I just take a second to shift it before I cross through this threshold and have the next conversation that I'm going to have? So it's like press and pause, taking a look at your internal state. If you don't like what you see, just shifting it to something else.

31:53Allie Garfinkle:Well, one of the things I do think is interesting too, is performers are entrepreneurs, right? Mentalists, magicians, also really entrepreneurs, right? The business is you. Yes. How has being a mentalist helped you in your own business? Well, you could be the greatest performer in the world. And if no one's ever heard of you, then you'll never work. Right. And likewise, you can be like an OK performer, but really good at marketing and you can work all the time. I mean, people probably have seen this in their own lives, whether it's a photographer or a DJ or a florist or any small business. Right.

32:24It's not necessarily the person that's best at the thing that gets the most work. And so I realized very early on that if I wanted to be successful as a mentalist, that I probably should understand how to run a business. So I went to the University of Maryland. I went to the Robert H. Smith School of Business. I got a degree in business because I realized that if I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, this thing that I love, I should probably understand how to treat it as a business. So I think it was like being a performer that taught me about business because I was lucky enough to have mentors very early on that were like, it's show business.

32:55It's not just the show because mentalists and hypnotists focus so much on the performance, but then all of a sudden they've spent no time on marketing, on creative content, on building relationships in the real world. We're living an interesting life, right? I mean, I think part of as a performer, what you bring to the stage is your life experience, your unique perspective. So yeah, what I've learned is that it's not just enough to be good at your craft. You also have to understand the way people make decisions, how they make buying decisions. You have to go out into the real world and make relationships, not just sit by on a computer.

33:27Yeah. And it's also taught me that I think there's a lot that a mentalist can teach people about themselves, not just in a business context, because it's great to go on stage in front of 10 ,000 people. And I do presentations where I teach how to take the tools of a mentalist and be more effective in sales. And that's awesome. And it does impact that person's life. But on an individual level, I think there's a realization that your thoughts create your reality. And I think if people realize that it's liberating, You know, the amazing thing about having an experience of hypnosis is you can never take that experience back.

34:00For the rest of your life, you will have had a direct experience of the fact that your thoughts create your reality. Which, for many people, changes their entire life because I think so many people identify with their thoughts and they believe that they are their thoughts. And that if they think something, it's true. But the truth is that our thoughts aren't necessarily true. Oftentimes, they're just noise. But because they're coming from inside of us, we believe them. Whether it's a story we've told ourselves for 20 years about who we are, or whether it's something somebody said to us 15 years ago that we repeat inside our own mind, we've adapted as our own belief.

34:32I think that one of the things you realize as a mentalist and as a hypnotist is that our mind is a tool. And our thoughts oftentimes are just noise. And that we get to choose the thoughts that we have. No one else gets to decide what we think or what we believe. Only I get to decide how I feel. No one else has the power to decide how I feel. I don't give anyone that permission. Right? And so that's really empowering to realize that my mind is a tool and that just because I have a thought doesn't mean it's true. And on top of that, if I observe a thought, I can choose to think a new thought. You can wake up one day and change your entire life.

35:06How long does it take to change? People think it's a process. They think that I have to go on this journey of self-discovery. There's so much talk about processing. I'm processing my trauma. There is nothing to process. There's nothing to process. There's also nothing to forget. People say, I want to forget my past. Can I just forget that bad thing that happened to me? You actually don't want to do that because if you forget the things that happened to you, you also lose the lesson. And the lesson is really important. And if you lose the lesson, then you're just going to have to repeat that same mistake to learn the lesson again.

35:34So the beautiful thing is that in every moment of our life, we get to decide how we feel. We can decide one day that enough's a no, that we no longer want to be that way anymore. We don't want to talk to ourself in that way. And that that story that we've told ourselves for 20 years, it no longer serves us. It wasn't our idea to begin with, and it isn't even true. So if that's the case, then why not just wake up and change the program to flip the script to decide how we want to be, how we want to enter the world?

35:59Allie Garfinkle:It makes me wonder, do you believe there's an objective reality? I don't know. I think our thoughts certainly create a lens through which we view reality. I think that's undeniable. Yeah, you know, you probably have a friend or someone you know in your life that is the type of person that always thinks, you know, I'm so unlucky. Bad things always happen to me. Why is this happening again? Right? Or I can't believe this is happening again. And then you probably have another friend who's like, I'm so lucky. Good things are always happening to me. I can't believe this is happening again. Right? And it's just an identity that they've adopted.

36:31And it's a lens through which they choose to view the world. And if you believe you're unlucky, you'll look around and you'll see a hundred things in a given day that go wrong. And if you believe you're lucky and that good things always happen to you, you might start to notice the good things that happen in your life. So most certainly our thoughts shift the lens through which we view the world. And the truth is that everything only ever happens inside of our mind. We don't experience anything directly, right? If I touch this table, that's just a signal that goes to my mind. I'm only experiencing that inside of my mind.

37:00So if everything only ever occurs inside of our head, then that's the only reality that matters because we can think about the past, about something that happened to us 20 years ago, and we can experience all of the pain and all of the frustration as if that's happening right now. Our body does not know the difference. It is experiencing it all over again, right? And then we relive that experience over and over again, and we're continuing to traumatize ourselves, to stress ourselves out, but it's not happening. But our brain doesn't know the difference between this beautiful day that you're having, looking up at the sun, and remembering the beautiful day that you had when you looked up at the sun and this beautiful view we have here in Aspen.

37:36So in a way, I guess reality is plastic. That's what I would say. It's moldable.

37:41Allie Garfinkle:To wrap up, Arthur C. Clarke rules. Do you know the great Arthur C. Clarke rule? No. I'm paraphrasing, I believe, slightly. Okay. But the most advanced technology is indiscernible from magic. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's true. Yeah. Because like I have an understanding of the technology of the mind and it looks a lot like magic. I give you one final example if you want. Um, where did you grow up, by the way? Miami. Miami. Uh, where do you live now? I live in New New York. Okay. When did you leave Miami? Like how old were you? About 18. 18 years old? Okay. So I want you to think back to your childhood, but let's go even further back than 18.

38:20Like pre-social media. Okay. Because if you think about something that's too recent, people watching this are going to say, oh, he looked that up on the internet. So I want you to go back in your mind, Miami, you're a kid. I want you to think of a friend of yours that you lost touch with. And I don't mean in a bad way. I mean like someone who over the years, you just kind of grew apart. And the reason I phrase it this way is because I don't want it to be something that I could look up on the internet or someone that you're still in touch with. Do you have a person in mind? You can open your eyes and look at me.

38:49Allie Garfinkle:I was closing my eyes. I was ready. What are the chances that I could find this out about you? Like that I could look this up? That is it something you posted? Is it a story that you've told before in an interview? Like this person you're thinking of, like what's the chances I could find this on the internet? Effectively zero. Right. And in this moment, And you could think of anyone. So that makes the chances even more impossible. You ever have that experience in your life where you think of a person you haven't thought of in ages? Kind of the way you did just right now. And then out of the blue, you get an email from that person where you run into them on the street or you see them in the airport.

39:24And you're like, what are you doing here? I was just thinking of you. You've had that experience before, right? Absolutely. I want you to imagine you look past the cameras over here at this door and in through that door walks this person from all those years ago. And you... can we bring him can we bring him in there can you can you no i let it be crazy that's not going to happen they're not going to come i was like you held your breath you held your breath i was

39:46Allie Garfinkle:like there's no way they know that's not happening but there's no your producer's looking at me like did we plan this i don't know no but for a moment you kind of held your breath and i felt it and it's that moment that emotion rises up and talk about that and that's what i can connect to is that emotion that you feel in that moment because you wouldn't have been able to control yourself you'd look over at the door and you would think oh my gosh yeah you'd want to shout the name yeah You'd say, oh my gosh, it's, and you'd shout the name, but nothing in your mind. Can I write on, do you have a card I can write on one of your cards or something?

40:14Yeah, write on this. Okay, perfect. There you go. Let's try this. Can I clip it up? Heck yeah, you can.

40:21Allie Garfinkle:You can do whatever you want. We're at the end. We're at the end. We're at the end. I didn't use any of them. Okay, here we go. Okay. Trying to do this in a way that you can't follow my pen and make out what I'm doing. You want it to be a real surprise? I actually believe you will succeed for what it's worth. Uh, can I show this camera? I want you to think about this. You went into your mind someone ages ago. This is really off the hard drive. I want you to know. This is a person I have not thought about in a while. What was the name that popped into your head? Pablo? No way! I should text him.

41:01Allie Garfinkle:Okay, here we go. okay so right before we started recording um you sort of told me a version of this would be coming yeah yeah um and i went into a corner with a with a with a sharpie yeah and hid as i wrote this name crumpled it up i hid in the corner turned around you were far away there is no way you could have seen this there is simply no way so i don't know what did this teach me about my mind that we all can be influenced and that we get far more away than we believe for what it's worth i am i think a lot of us feel like we are such mysteries to ourselves and to other people but people pay attention a lot yeah um can i ask you one more question sure how much of reading people is pure intuition and how much of it is study it's all study in the beginning um but once i start performing it's it's almost like a flow state i don't know if i would call it intuition but I'm not thinking.

42:00It's not an active process. So up front, the work that I do is very intentional and it's study. And maybe when you're first learning, you're in your head a lot because you're going, okay, I got to do this or that didn't work. I got to pivot a little bit. But after having done this for over 25 years now, it's, I don't want to call it autopilot because it's not simple, but it's sort of a flow state that I go into and it just kind of happens. And after the fact, I could go back and break down for you what happened and what I was doing. But in the moment, I'm not thinking, especially when I'm on stage, there aren't any thoughts that go through my head.

42:30I'm just doing it. It's just coming through me. And that's the culmination of 25 years of practice. I mean, that's where the reps come in, I think. Yeah. Is there some part of me that's naturally good at this? Maybe. Maybe.

42:43Allie Garfinkle:But reps do make a difference. One thing I say all the time is that I think everyone has a grand opera inside of them and that people can be fathomless mysteries. But there is something comforting in the idea that we're not all that mysterious at all. He said a grand opera inside of you. One of my favorite authors of all time, Wayne Dyer, said, don't die with your music in you. Oh, that's actually really good advice. Yeah. Isn't it? Don't die with your music in you. Thank you, Matt. So this is a very special episode of the Termsheet podcast. This is a departure from the norm. I spend my days interviewing folks who are founders, entrepreneurs, executives, often doing something or other with AI in this environment.

43:27Allie Garfinkle:and I'm interested in both the human behavior aspect of it, what AI's relationship to our human behavior is and vice versa. But I also have a little bit of an insecurity about it because though I spend all of my time talking to people and reading people ostensibly, I don't know if I'm any good at it. Can you be good at reading human behavior? What does that even mean? Of course. Yeah, as a mentalist, I mean, I earned my living reading people on stage. How did you know you were good at it? Well, I practiced. And body language is entirely a skill that you can learn. It's something you can learn to read.

43:58And it's a skill that applies to everyone's life. At the same time, my experience as a hypnotist has taught me that human decisions can be shaped and ultimately can be influenced. And in many ways, the mind can be hijacked. And so I think there's a lot of application to what we're going to discuss today in the world of AI and entrepreneurship.

44:16Allie Garfinkle:If there's one thing I can do right now to be better at reading human behavior, what is it? Pay attention. I think most people are lost in their own thoughts. They're thinking about what they're going to say next, and they're not paying attention to the person that's sitting right in front of them. So I mean, the first step to getting good at reading body language is to actually practice it. It's in every interaction that you have, be nowhere else. Put your phone down and look at the person that's sitting in front of you. A really practical tool would just be to take a snapshot of that person before the interaction really begins.

44:45So at the beginning, establish a baseline of what is this person like before any negotiation starts, before I start selling. And then throughout the conversation, you now have observed a baseline. You can look for changes in that baseline, whether it's a change from closed posture to a more open posture or an open posture to a more closed off posture. And I think if you don't do that, you won't know if what you're seeing is a departure from that baseline. Maybe they just naturally like to sit with their arms crossed. And if you didn't pay attention to how they were when the conversation started, you won't know if that piece of body language means anything in isolation.

45:17So, yeah, paying attention is the first step.

45:18Allie Garfinkle:So you taught AI to hypnotize. Can AI replace performers? I don't know. I mean, AI can be entertaining for sure. Can it be an artist? Not yet, but I don't know. I mean, I don't think anybody expected the internet to become what it is at this moment in time. I think art and storytelling is a, you have to have had life experience in order to have an interesting perspective, to tell an interesting story. And at this time, AI is not outliving its own life. It's not having experiences in the real world. And so I think it can replicate human emotion. It can create a story from scratch that might have happened.

45:58But it's that like lived human experience that creates great art. And right now, AI doesn't have a body and it's not out there living in the world. So I don't think it can. But in the next 20 years, I don't think any of us can predict what's going to happen.

46:12Allie Garfinkle:Max, thank you so much. Thank you. And that was my interview with Max. You know, it's really interesting. As I was listening back to this interview, I realized how much of it, even though we're talking about AI, we're talking about humans, how AI will affect us, what parts of AI can come across as human as opposed to not human. It was also making me think a lot about the thing I love maybe most about magic, which is that something can look completely real. It can be so persuasive. You know it's not real, but that doesn't deprive it of its power. And I think that's something that's really important to think about, especially as we spend more time with AI.

46:46Allie Garfinkle:That's it for Term Sheet. I'm Ali Garfinkel, and we'll see you soon.