Conversation with Verity Harding — Are We in an AI Arms Race?

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0:58episode 292 route 292 is a highway in the hudson valley of new york in 1992 the first sms text message was sent if i see one more dude texting while he's driving i'm gonna roll down my window and throw my beer on that bitch go go go

1:24Welcome to the 292nd episode of the Prop G-Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Verity Harding, a globally recognized expert in AI, technology, and public policy. Also, a Brit in the great state. Great state. I have Texas on my mind. The great state of Texas. No, the wonderful city of London. By far, the second best city in the world. Literally, New York is number one. I think if you like cities, the density, the crush of humanity, opportunity, money, cool bars, hot people, there's nothing like it. London, I would describe as Godzilla came along and squished it with his foot. Is that a hate crime?

2:00Is Godzilla non-binary? Don't know. I think Godzilla was a radioactive, inspired or mutated reptilian that was born as a male. At least that's what I think. But anyways, it's as if somebody crushed it and it just spread out and there's more green. The other observation I would make, I was talking about this with Verity, is that there's something about London where it's an economy serving wealth created somewhere else. This guy I interviewed last year, whose name escapes me, this journalist, really thoughtful guy, described it as the Butler economy. And I think that was the name of his book. But I don't meet that many people who have actually started anything that's not serving other people's wealth.

2:41Anyways, it's strange. There's something, it's missing, it's missing that grit, that creativity that results in, I don't know, a collision between shareholder value and technology or, you know, I don't know, services. Anyway, it's sort of weird, but unbelievable, unbelievable football. Anyways, what's happening? Okay. I have been, I went London to Austin, great state of Texas. One of my favorite things about Texas. I had some, or have some friends in Florida whose daughter struggled with a muscular affliction and pretty severe. And they moved to Dallas because Dallas has an enormous network of support services in specialized facilities for children who are suffering or struggling with different childhood diseases or disabilities.

3:35And Dallas has become known as a place that is especially on the forefront or advanced around care for kids with physical disabilities. And I thought, Jesus Christ, does that make you love Texas or it makes you love Dallas? I didn't know that. And they said, yeah, Dallas, it's sort of almost a strategy. They attract a lot of families because it's known for that. And I thought, God, I can't imagine just a better ad for Texas than that. Even, you know, South by Southwest, great. Tex-Mex, you know, fine. You know, whatever, the Cowboys. University of Texas, that's nice. Also, I love the idea of brand.

4:12What pulse is your brand? The first thing, obviously, I think is airports. I've always been impressed by the Gulf or always had a very positive impression of the Gulf because they invested early and often in airports. I remember landing at the new Hong Kong airport 20 years ago and thinking, Jesus Christ, these people take themselves pretty seriously. That's not what I'm here to talk about. So let's move on to something we've been thinking a lot about, and that is between the talks of AI, TikTok, and further separation between the left and right, we've lost what I would argue, or we've lost the script on human interactions.

4:43uh we're mammals and while some other species or classifications of the animal kingdom do herd and run in packs and pods or whatever schools of fish mammals specifically like enjoy or need each other they need they need to be part of a pack and the worst thing you can do to an animal or remember a human is to cast them out of the herd or cast them into the darkness the worst thing you can do to a human in prison is put them in solitary confinement. And unfortunately, I think that the companies that have added the most shareholder value over the last 10 years are bringing together this really sinister chocolate and peanut butter the following.

5:20One, they tap into our flaw in the species. They tap into young women's need for validation, need for some sort of socialization or social approval on her handheld phone, and she becomes addicted to that affirmation, it starts destroying her self-esteem, which makes her even more and more addicted. It taps into young men's risk aggressiveness around gaming, around a lack of mating opportunities, around porn, around thinking that they are missing out in a competitive economy so that if they just buy crypto on Coinbase or if they just trade on Robinhood, I feel as if that they have figured out the flaw in the species is around addiction, need for validation, being especially risk aggressive, not letting.

6:10And by the way, it's not just tech. You don't think General Foods and Kraft and Coca-Cola and PepsiCo haven't tapped into our flaw in the species where institutional production has vastly outpaced our instinct's ability to catch up to institutional production, where for the majority of our time on this planet, we've had a dearth of salty, sugary, and fattery foods such that when we can get a ridiculous amount of calories for a fairly low purchase price, we don't know when to stop. And of course, the food industrial complex moves in on that malady or on that weakness in the species and then hands you over to the diabetes industrial complex where healthcare systems, pharmaceutical companies, medical parts suppliers that have monetized or financialized obesity step in and the wheel spins.

6:59Anyways, we have this system where we are essentially finding companies have a vested interest in separating us from each other, making us less mammalia. And that is going out and making friends, finding jobs, finding romantic partners. That shit is hard, right? It involves rejection. It involves trying to develop a series of skills, whether it's being nice, making eye contact, being funny, being attractive, working out, expressing a coolness through a sense of understanding or a sense of fashion. I mean, this shit is just hard and involves rejection and cost. And especially young men who don't have as strong as social networks and don't look after each other as much, I believe are sequestering.

7:38And you have this giant wedge called big tech that's trying to convince them they can have a reasonable facsimile of their life by just watching Netflix, going on Reddit and Discord, and just, you know, experiencing something resembling friendship, having porn, which is something resembling sex, swiping left, swiping right, getting no validation because everybody wants the same dude on these dating apps. And then they lack the kind of social connection that young women are much better at maintaining. And they slowly but surely start to become a different speed. They become non-mammals. They separate from the pride, the herd, the pod, whatever you want to call it.

8:14And simply put, they become shitty citizens, absolutely more prone to conspiracy theory, misogyny, nationalism. And I'm not saying this is true of all men who kind of withdraw, but a lot of them really need the guardrails of either going into work in person, of having the prospect of a friendship, a group of people. Jonathan Heitz done some great work on this, where basically we used to have these informal social communities when you were kids that were hard to get into, but also hard to leave. You had your pack of three or four friends. You know, we used to go to the Westwood Mortuary. We used to go to the cemetery and play baseball at the cemetery.

8:50And then we'd go into Westwood and my friends would shoplift. I wouldn't, not because I was more ethical and moral, but I just didn't think my mom could handle picking me up from the police station. But these things were bonding, or we played Little League together, or we played Ding Dong Ditch together, or we threw water balloons at Cars Pass. If I sound like a delinquent in training, trust your instincts. Anyways, But these things were bonding and teach you a lot of skills. And now I believe that the most profitable companies in the world that have the greatest concentration of talent are there to just psychologically treat you to not have contact with humans in person.

9:23And we have essentially the most deep-pocketed, well-resourced companies in the world trying to turn us away from being mammals. How do we return to mammalia? How do we become mammals again? What can we do to get young people spending more time together, building something great in the agency of others? One, I've heard this wonderful solution that when you're feeling down, the best way for a young person to stop feeling down is to help others. That is to work with others and immediately go into the service, volunteer, help other people who are struggling. That gets them out of their own head, shows that they have value, shows that they matter, this whole concept of mattering.

10:02I really like that. Some other ideas for how we become mammals again. I absolutely believe we should engage or institute national service in America. It doesn't have to be military. It can be, but it can be other things, whether it's helping seniors, being home health aides, building, working on infrastructure projects. There are just so many people with so much need who would love to hang out with young people, help them develop empathy for some of the people who are struggling in our society, help them meet each other, meet friends, future co-founders of business, future mentors, future mates.

10:31I've been a investor in two Israeli companies and all of the senior management they met while they were in the Israeli army. Oh, spoiler alert also, Israel has lower levels of teen depression and young adult depression. Why? Because they have served in the agency of something bigger than themselves that connects them to one another. Two, it sounds boring. We need to get more money in the pockets of these people. Specifically, we need to give them more opportunities. We need to make them less stressed such that they're not totally fucking freaked out about starting their lives with$80 ,000 in student debt.

11:01that is not dischargeable. We need to put more money in their pockets. How do we do that? First, first, we eliminate capital gains. Everybody should pay 37 at the top rate. We eliminate mortgage tax interest. Who owns homes? Old people. Who rents? Young people. Let's fix the tax code so it's not regressive and people like me don't pay a lower tax rate than the people working with me here who are working their asses off and making good money, but not great money, but good enough money to be in the highest tax rate, but not enough money to engage in massive tax avoidance, which is what the rich have done through a complex tax code that goes from 400 pages to 4 ,000 that has such goodies as, oh, carried interest for hedge funds, tax at a lower rate.

11:43Oh, Scott, you're an innovator. You're an entrepreneur. There's 1202, first$10 million on sale of a company tax-free. That makes no fucking sense. We need a tax code that is actually progressive, and then we need to massively lower taxes for young people, and not even lower. We need a negative income tax. You make less than$50 ,000 a year, we should give you three, five, six, $10 ,000 tax credits. So we know, A, your kids don't starve or are not food insecure. B, you have a little bit of money to engage in social activities. We need to massively level up young people, more vocational programming, more freshman seats at colleges.

12:17You don't grow your freshman seats faster than population growth. You're no longer a nonprofit. You're no longer a public servant, you're a fucking hedge fund, especially those universities sitting on$53 billion that don't want to let in more people than a good Starbucks serves in a day. We don't see above Harvard and pretty much every Ivy League organization. We need a lot more opportunity for young people, a lot more opportunities for them to meet. And we need to level up young people such that they have more money, specifically young men. There are not enough economically and emotionally viable young men.

12:47We need to age-gate social media. There's no fucking reason anyone under the age of 16 should be on social media. What's the upside? And then we need to teach the value of belonging, the value of being part of something greater than yourself. Let's start teaching civics again. Let's give these kids a sense of how blessed they are to be in America. Do we have problems? Yeah, absolutely. But guess what? We're less fucked up than anyone else. And we're raising a generation of kids specifically in the hands of TikTok, which I believe is influenced by the CCP. we're raising a generation of civic, nonprofit, military, and business leaders that don't like America.

13:21How is that going to solve our problems? We should absolutely be honest about our issues and our past and continue to address the inequities in our society, of which there are still a great number. But for God's sakes, where would you rather be? How can we not truthfully and honestly figure out a way to convince our kids that this may be bad, but it's the least bad place and you are fortunate to be here. America is a wonderful place. You have a vested interest in connecting with others. One observation I would make and try and communicate to my boys and to young people, I can guarantee you that the best things in your life, do you want the best things in your life?

14:03Do you want something really awesome to happen to you? Do you want an amazing fucking job? Do you want to find someone who you just anticipate? You just can't describe the emotion and the excitement you feel before you see that person? Do you want to be in a situation where you're taking care of your kids and you have this sense of being of masculinity or femininity or that you have purpose? Do you want to have joy? Do you want to have crazy, you know, gut-busting laughter? Do you want to feel real emotion and real grief, which is the receipts for love? Those things all have one thing in common.

14:39The thing that strings through all of these things is they happen in person. So the less time you spend not in the company of others, the less likely you are to have something wonderful, joyous, and rewarding. We are mammals. We are mammalia. Get out of the house. Think about your dogs. Where are your dogs happiest? lying on top of you, being around other dogs. Get out there, lie on top of others, be around other dogs.

15:12We'll be right back for our conversation with Verity Harding. This episode is brought to you by White Claw Surge. Great podcast pick, friend. No surprises there. After all, you're all about finding the tastiest flavors out there, just like White Claw Surge. And with big, bold flavors to enjoy, like blood orange, blackberry, cranberry, and more? It's time to go all in on taste. Unleash the flavor. Unleash White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard seltzer with flavors. 8 % alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer Works. Chicago, Illinois. Tonight on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host the highly anticipated new competition show.

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16:55Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Verity Harding, a globally recognized expert in AI, technology, and public policy. Verity, where does this podcast find you? I'm in New York at the moment. You're in New York. Yeah, I'm usually based in London, but I'm here for a talk. In your debut book, AI Needs You, How We Can Change AI's Future and Save Our Own, you write that when history enters the AI conversation, it most often distorts rather than forms. What do we get wrong about AI in terms of our perception of it? Well, I think the issues that I've had really with AI and history or history in the AI conversation has been that it's focused primarily on the atomic bomb as an example, as an analogy.

17:40I don't think it's a helpful analogy for lots of different reasons. I mean, obviously, the circumstances in which it's created are very unique. It's a weapon. But it's not really that I want to pick apart the specific different ways that it's not like the atomic bomb. It's more that if we're trying to sort of create a future path for AI that's beneficial and in defense of the public good, something that is democratically controlled then i think looking to a sort of wartime created weapon really like removes the agency that we have and that's a problem i find in the ai conversation quite a lot generally is this sense that ai is the thing that's happening to us and we are sort of passive passengers in the back of the back of the car whereas whereas actually what history shows and what show in the book is that we are very important players in guiding how technology develops.

18:36My sense is, and I'm curious if you agree with this, my sense is that there's a certain level of techno-narcissism where every inventor of a technology wants to convince you it's the single point of savior for humanity or the singular point of extermination of humanity. That my shit is just so important. What I've invented here is so incredible that it's either going to save or destroy the world. And the reality is it's probably somewhere in between, right? I just don't, doesn't it feel a little bit like this, all this catastrophism is a bit narcissistic? Yes, definitely. I think everyone wants to be Oppenheimer, right?

19:12And the movie probably didn't help. It's like such an obvious observation. I never thought of that. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah, it makes you sort of one of the central characters in the history of our entire species. If you, you know, do something on that level, the sort of changes for good, what society is and how we operate. And you see that the examples that I choose in the book to look at the history of science, I look at everything after the atomic bomb because it was this singular moment that sort of changes science and changes how people see science. And unfortunately, some people I think have taken slightly the wrong message from that story and they want to actually create something.

19:52So I completely agree with you. It strikes, typically new technologies either create a new batch of powerful companies that goes to the incumbents. This feels like so far it's going to the incumbents. Even OpenAI feels sort of a proxy for Microsoft. Do you see there's been just an explosion in market capitalization of value here that's inspired by AI. And so far, I guess you could argue NVIDIA is sort of a new player, but so far it feels like it's going to the incumbents. Do you think it's going to play out where there'll be more kind of long tail value creation or do you see that this reflects a trend towards kind of the rich get richer, if you will?

20:35Yeah, well, one of the main arguments I make in the book is that science and tech is as shaped by the sort of politics and culture of the time as the politics and culture of time is shaped by the science and tech, that actually technology is incredibly political and sort of reflects in a way the sort of existing zeitgeist and you see this throughout history and I think it's no coincidence then that if you think about what type of society are we living in now you know vastly unequal extremely polarized a huge lack of trust in our institutions and our leaders and I think that's therefore playing out and you're seeing you look at just San Francisco itself and the kind of contrast between the riches and the poverty there and I think that sort of plays out in the industry there's groups of us that have been doing work on AI and ethics and responsible AI and how are we going to manage AI as society for years and then as soon as it kind of reaches the mainstream it just splits immediately along US partisan lines and either you think AI is woke you know or you think is racist and there's sort of nowhere in between so I don't think that it's a surprise that we're seeing those sort of existing entrenched divides replicated in AI and I don't think we have a lot of hope for them just naturally resolving themselves I think if we want them to resolve ourselves if we decide that they want that we need them to that that can and we can do that but it sort of needs to be a choice that we take rather than something that will happen naturally I think.

22:16But in your seat, you must see a decent amount of deal flow or what people are most excited about where capital and human capital and IQ is going. In terms of the gold rush of financial and human capital into AI, which rivers or branches does it go into? Does it go into media? Does it go into healthcare? Is it being used to try and figure out, I don't know, weapons deployment or where do you see i mean a lot of these things are self-fulfilling prophecies right if everybody focuses on ai to to you know make commercial real estate more productive in office layouts more more easy easy to build then ai will be great at it where where are people pointing the ai canon right now well it's interesting isn't it because i don't i mean I'm curious what you think, Scott, but the actual deployment in real terms in a way that is, you know, affecting the profits, affecting the bottom line of non-tech companies, you know, companies benefiting from AI products already, doesn't seem to be happening.

23:31And I'm starting, I kind of felt this when chat GPT blew everything up, you know, just over a year ago. We went into this new like massive hype cycle. And you couldn't move for people saying that AI was going to change absolutely everything. And my instinct seeing how hard it really is to actually integrate AI into stuff. I mean, not least because some of these big businesses and certainly governments, you know, not even really well equipped for digital, just basic digitization and digital transformation, let alone layering AI into that. And I think that has borne out, you know, 18 months or however long later that you're not really seeing it going into integrating quickly into existing business models.

24:12So what I've seen is huge use of chatbots for customer service, but not in a way that is like really evident that it's working. You probably saw the issues with DPD, the parcel delivery service, a few weeks ago where they've replaced some, you know, they use some new LLM and it immediately starts saying horrific things about the company and swearing and all sorts of stuff. So, you know, we're sort of seeing people pull back from that. But there is promise, I think, if they can operationalize things like, you know, the use of AI in medical imagery, for example. but where I see it going at the moment is a lot of people slightly flailing feeling like we should be able to use this for productivity we should be able to use it for efficient for efficiencies we should be able to use it somewhere in our business and we must immediately integrate it everywhere but they're not quite sure where to go or what to do next um I think you know we're seeing a lot of pushback in the media um in the media industry I should say rather than the media writing about it.

25:18We've seen this Hollywood strikes, of course. And I think that shows where some of the kind of easy gains might be made, but not necessarily the best for the long term. And you write that the national security establishment and tech leaders think we're in an AI arms race and that that is a problematic narrative. Say more. Yeah, I think it all feeds into the same thing we're talking about. If you sort of agree and accept that AI is the revolution of our time and it's happening rapidly, then it's quite easy to be convinced that AI is a battle to be won. That's not how I think we should see AI. AI is an exciting new science and technology that we should see as a potential to sort of uplift humanity, not something that becomes this sort of very nationalistic, militaristic focus.

26:11And instead, that's exactly what's happened. I mean, if AI is in the conversation of geopolitics at all, it's as an arms race, usually between the US and China, and one of them has to win. And I think that's, you know, I think it's bad for business, because we're seeing these sort of semiconductor export bans that people are having to navigate around, and I'm not sure how effective they're going to be anyway. I think it's bad for dialogue and diplomacy and cooperation, collaboration conversation which we know is critically important to sort of safe management of the globe and I think it's bad for sort of us as consumers because if we continue to sort of whip into a frenzy about an AI arms race then you're going to see AI directed into more militaristic roots um or you're going to see sort of the lack of free flow of ideas just make less progress and you know leave us with less good sort of products and services um so yeah i've i've set up this thing called the ai and geopolitics project at cambridge which is about trying to find alternative narratives when we talk about ai and geopolitics that are rooted more in collaboration rather than sort of competition just to say that's not to be naive national security is really important they used to work in national security you know economic competitiveness as a nation you know our growth as a country or you know as as different countries thinking about their economic growth is critically important but what i show in the book by using this example and this analogy with the space race is that there's sort of no need to do that in a way or there's a way to do that while also encouraging sort of inspiring, exciting science and cooperation and collaboration between nations, which I think is really just the only way forward.

28:12It's really interesting. I love your view on this and the space race. First off, I mean, it's weird. We don't have a food race. We don't have a media race. Well, I'll put forward a so you tell me. It feels very bro-y and testosterone-filled to me. The tech is largely the domain of the people influencing it, running it, and making decisions are mostly men. And they immediately position it as this is a race and they become very nationalist. Like we can't sell chips to China. This technology is so powerful. We have a national interest in beating everybody as opposed to saying, okay, this is a marvelous innovation and it's going to help the world, it immediately turns very like there's just win-lose.

29:00And to your point, we go militaristic. And I wonder if it's a function of tech is still mostly invested by, run by, and controlled by men who tend to be young and tend to be just, quite frankly, more into the macho. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's this thread. on everything we've spoken about isn't there there's like crazy hype cycle around revolutionary AI you know AI scientists as new modern day Oppenheimers and arms race it does all seem to be linked by this um these defining characteristics and look you know boldness and bluster and sort of competition can all be really good things but you know they can also be not so much bad but counterproductive and I think that they are currently counterproductive I think we're going to see less progress if we keep going down this route frankly and so yeah I think there's a lot there's a lot in what you said and the example that I um talk about in the book the space race is a really interesting example of that right because you get Kennedy President Kennedy being very macho and bold and blustery, kind of in the best way when he sets this moon mission.