No Mercy / No Malice: Mammal.ai

0:28This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. answer to them. Shopify. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses, including Thrive Cosmetics and Momofuku, and it'll help you with everything you need. From website design and marketing to boosting sales and expanding operations, Shopify can get the job done and make your dream a reality. Turn those what-ifs into sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer. I'm Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice. We are wired to seek and sustain relationships. The society of isolated individuals is less prosperous, less free, and more vulnerable to external threats.

1:09Mammal.ai, as read by George Hahn.

1:21Within and across species, relationships are essential to surviving and thriving. Complex social arrangements between trees and fungi sustain forests. Individual bees and ants cannot feed themselves. Beavers work in groups of up to 10 to build their dams, and bald eagles mate for life. Crocodiles and orcas engage in coordinated hunting strategies reminiscent of those practiced by early humans. Humans have speedballed the power of relationships. Physically, we are weak, slow, and fragile with mediocre senses and absurdly long infancies. Yet, thanks to our superpower of cooperation, we've dominated our environment and become the apex of apex predators.

2:16There are more birds in captivity than birds in the wild. Hint, chicken. In aggregate, humans outweigh all the wild mammals on planet Earth, and our domesticated livestock outweigh both groups combined. I just read the last sentence and hope, if there's an afterlife, that judgment is not part of the process as the cruelty we levy on animals is staggering. But that's another post. We are wired to seek and sustain relationships and cannot survive without them. The future of the human race won't turn on space travel or climate tech, but on our ability to attach to others, a sense that we matter, that we can call on and be called upon by others to ease burdens and celebrate joy.

3:09A study of Romanian orphanages where babies received adequate nutrition but were deprived of affection found they had smaller brains and reduced cognitive function. Videos of the Still Face experiment show how intensely babies crave not just affection, but also social connection with their parents. Among adults in the U.S., Social isolation increases the risk of premature death by 29 percent, more than smoking 15 cigarettes per day. In sum, loneliness kills.

3:50Friendship is an economic accelerant. The economist Roz Chetty found that for people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, having wealthier friends, quote, is the single strongest predictor of upward mobility, unquote. Unemployed people who volunteer are 27 % more likely to find work than those who do not. Aided by the social capital, economists speak for friends, they accumulate through volunteering. Regions with greater civic engagement are more resistant to economic slowdowns and communities to which the residents have a strong emotional attachment see higher rates of GDP growth. The flip side?

4:38The CDC estimates that loneliness costs the U.S. economy$406 billion a year, more than the combined GDP of Vermont, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, South Dakota, and Rhode Island. The political manifestation of weakening relationships is extremism. In the 2016 election, extreme candidates on both the left and right drew outsized support from disaffected, isolated voters. And there are more such voters than ever. A study during that election concluded, quote, quote, Americans' core social networks are significantly smaller and more politically homogenous than at any other period, unquote. Extremism is incompatible with legislative and judicial processes, witness the dysfunction in Congress and the rapidly eroding credibility of the Supreme Court, and can lead to violence.

5:46As social networks shrink, anxiety and polarization and we become soft targets for bad actors and self-inflicted harms. Scams targeting lonely people are the go-to tactic for con artists. This month, former National Guardsman Jack Teixeira pled guilty to leaking military secrets over Discord. Teixeira was showing off for his online friends. He only got caught because some of those friends circulated what he'd shared, drawing the attention of reporters at the New York Times. Teixeira's motivations were personal, not political. And that's what is so ominous. An adversary doesn't need to find anti-American citizens, but lonely Americans seeking social status.

6:39The military is justifiably concerned about a wave of lonely recruits betraying their country, and it's relatively well positioned to monitor contacts. However, vulnerable people also work at nodes of critical infrastructure, power plants, data centers, hospitals, water treatment plants. It's cinematic to worry about AI attacking humans, but a more likely threat is that humans will use AI to attack other humans. Well-intended companion bots like Replica have millions of users, but their privacy and security protocols are suspect. With the tech getting better and cheaper, it's likely that Putin, Xi, and Biden have programs under development to produce bots that can establish deep relationships with lonely soldiers and technicians, and weaponize them.

7:38Think of it as a consumer marketing funnel, but at the bottom is an act of terror versus buying Nespresso pods. Using public records, a spy agency or terror group identifies thousands of people in sensitive posts, reaches out with AI girlfriends or boyfriends, and tests what activities move the target further down the path, like sharing articles and experiences, engaging in joint pursuits, sexual messages that feel personalized, etc. etc. Then, monitoring millions of signals per second, turn on your webcam. I want to see you. The AI identifies windows of opportunity when the target seems especially tired, paranoid, angry, etc.

8:26And activates, coaxing them to share a password so the bot can access a computer at work, not inspect a certain container, turn off the drone defense system, etc. It's a centuries-old espionage strategy, but executed with AI avatars and tech, it can be done with a reach and scale that could radicalize hundreds, maybe thousands. Fallow cells of people in highly sensitive roles on warships, in nuclear power plants, or at ports could be waiting for activation. It's not an Ian Fleming book, but reality. The KGB allegedly had a school to train female agents in the art of sexpionage Islamic terrorists have been radicalizing Americans for years The 2009 Fort Hood shooter who killed 13 people Was an isolated, lonely man who had difficulty making friends And needed only minimal encouragement from a radical cleric over email To nudge him into terrorism The 2015 San Bernardino shooters, who killed 13 in the name of Islam, were radicalized online.

9:44All that's new is the power to do this at a near-infinite scale. An army of highly intelligent, unsleeping agents that shift personalities and modalities at the speed of compute. and an ever-increasing population of people who lack the robust real-world social networks to inoculate them against online manipulation, such as the troubled young man who broke into Windsor Castle armed with a crossbow in 2021 intending to kill the queen after being encouraged by his replica AI girlfriend. There's nothing pithy or revelatory about the solution. We need to advocate for programs. After school groups, athletic leagues, affordable education, public spaces, paid non-profit work, national service, vocational training.

10:41And also, money. More of it. More economic support, like a negative tax rate, that levels up young people who've seen their share of wealth leak to older Americans through a set of policies designed by old people, elected by older people. Every population segment has its vulnerabilities to loneliness and weaponized AI. But young men are ground zero. Young men need more friends. and older men need to take responsibility for getting more involved in their lives. The abundance of single-parent homes, a dearth of male teachers in primary school, and technology firms that invest billions in keeping kids sequestered from in-person friendships mean millions of boys are being raised with almost no male contact or relationships.

11:41The single point of failure for a young man is when he loses a male role model. Boys need men. Full stop. In my view, the ultimate expression of masculinity is to become irrationally passionate about the well-being of a young person who you are not biologically related to. But not enough of us are there for them and fighting for the resources they need. We are failing our brothers, sons, neighbors, and country. Being a man means making better men. We have adversaries, but our real enemy is loneliness.

12:26Life is so rich.

12:36Thank you.