AI CEO: People Have No Idea What’s Coming! - Eoghan McCabe

29:15I think our freedom of speech here is of paramount importance. it's also allowing us to you know attack ourselves and criticize ai in ways that are warranted but in ways that are going to be uh problematic if we eventually ban it if a future president alc decides that ai is just bad for the workers and we need less of it i think that's just bad for america and you have to wonder if if china's main strategy is ripping off american technology but doing it at that pace and a scale that we are incapable of, then they don't need creativity. And maybe free speech is not helpful to them. Maybe they can just tell people to shut up and follow the instructions and they can run away with the prize of AI.

30:08So let's see, that is the age-old critique of China that they are not as creative as we are in the West. And that may perpetuate, but they certainly have the ability to do things big and in a very quick way too.

30:22Francis Foster:Well, it's kind of like what happened with the Manhattan Project, right? Americans spend a crazy amount of money, resources inventing the nuclear bomb and then a couple of spies give it to the Soviets and they just build one, right? Totally. Is that a fair comparison more broadly? Are we, the West, particularly the US, in an arms race with China over our area? To non-experts, at least in geopolitical dynamics, It appears so. I got a funny take from a friend of mine recently where he said that the more that the tech right are in power or have influence in the United States, the more likely we will be in a AI or technology war because they'll kind of meme it into existence.

31:08All tech people like me think, oh, shit, they're building the tech, they're building the AI. we need to speed up and so it's just interesting to imagine or to realize that tech has a great influence in the united states and whether china or not wants to be in a tech war we're probably going to get it now because of that dynamic um but it does appear that china want this technology for themselves um and yeah i just we just know from history and intuitively that tech technology confers great power to the person who owns and holds it. Look at the atom bomb. So I think AI would just do phenomenal and very scary things for the people who have it.

31:56Like I said earlier, whoever gets super intelligence, if that day comes, they're going to have more science than the rest of us. It's going to be making discoveries long ahead of humans. So that's one thing. But But you can imagine AI used in signals intelligence, presumably, I mean, it's probably already deployed in massive ways today, just eating up insane, unfathomable, disparate data inputs will just allow the enemy or the United States to understand not just what the opposition is doing militarily, but their entire society. you know sentiments of society be able to access the individuals um perhaps influence elections etc so just ai will be able to understand the enemy in a new way but you know the the craziest and most kind of hollywood-esque example of where it gets scary are you know ai-powered drones and drone swarms i mean you don't need to be an expert to imagine the ways in which that gets bad In Ukraine today, they've now resorted to using fiber optic cables to control the drones because the signals are jammed.

33:13That still means that there's a kind of a range limit. And you also need one human operator per drone. Imagine 500 drones, each running local AI with an understanding of where on a ship they need to hit or worse, what person they need to hit. again non-novice here but i don't think we can defend against that and so yeah if you just imagine these crazy scary hollywood worlds where the enemy has millions of ai-powered drones with little explosives and weapons on them it's bad it's bad well the thing is i don't think it's

33:53Francis Foster:that much of a stretch like prior to the nuclear weapon conceiving of that was required a level of imagination based on scientific knowledge and the pursuit of that but but this is not that hard to imagine it's not hard to imagine i mean the war in ukraine which you bring up that is being for very like it's not exclusively with drones but drones essentially the main thing that they're now competing on if you listen to people on both sides right and ai controlling drones doesn't seem you know beyond the realms of imagination so you can kind of see how you're going to get there very soon yeah well i don't know how soon because what it requires is that you need hardware and models that can run locally on the drones and today the ai we all use use runs in giant data centers and we access over the internet and so if the drones need an internet connection well then that can be jammed right so we're a little bit off but you're right it's not a fabulous or crazy idea at all it you know uh like uh like i said a hollywood writer can think of ways in which that works that i couldn't even imagine and it's all going to come true do you ever feel a little bit like alfred nobel uh the man who invented dynamite dynamite can be used to you know it can be you know to help create new tunnels and try to plow trains right the way across the country.

35:21It can be used for engineering or it can be used in terrorism, war. Right. Yeah. That seems to be the case with all technologies. You can probably kill a man with a chair. I'm from South London. You can definitely kill a man with a chair. But I don't mean to be glib. I really do think there are risks here, but I just want to re-emphasize it's happening. It's happening. It's happening. It's happening. It's happening. What I found really interesting when you were talking about five or so minutes ago is you used the term tech right. Yeah. And I think particularly for me, for Constantin, and for a lot of people, the politicization of AI is something that we're really not talking about, but is actually really worrying.

36:06Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's extra interesting because there are people on the right against it and people on the left against it and I'm curious to see what way it turns you know I would consider myself part of the tech right and I'm just waiting to be kind of called out and now be you know you know how to say become a heretic of the right movement because of my association. Can I just pause you there Owen, sorry. When you say tech right, can you just explain basically what that actually means? And then we can talk about the tech left and how it influences the technology. Yeah, I mean, historically, Silicon Valley and people in technology were very left leaning, very, very, very, very liberal in ways that you can't imagine.

36:55Incredibly so. And that was just taken as a given. And then sometime last year, 2014, as Trump started to come back, many of us started to realize, wait a sec, something's changed. And now, even though the vast majority will not admit it, like 99 % will not admit it, most CEOs here of successful businesses would consider themselves on the right. And so there's just been this giant swing. Maybe the masses are still more centrist and there's definitely some people on the left just tech

37:31Francis Foster:took a big swing to the right why did it take that swing you know tech people are very open-minded and intelligent typically um and i think that they were um previously quite left-aligned because maybe we needed a bit of an adjustment you know being on the left at one point in time was the rebellious take and people in tech were and i'm talking about maybe in the 90s um you know were just sufficiently open-minded that they decided maybe it's okay to be gay like maybe that's just that maybe that's as far as they as they started and then it just went a little bit too far it when it went too far again these open-minded intelligent people started to realize it's gone too far and we need an adjustment and maybe if back then the realization the 90s was maybe it's okay to be gay maybe the realization in modern times here is maybe it's okay to hire someone solely on their merit and abilities and that was a controversial take actually two years ago really very much so So yeah, yeah.

38:44I mean, you know this DEI took over tech and everywhere else. So it was just a gradual little shift and a change. And still most people are not out about it. But I do think that most influential people in tech are kind of somewhere on the right, center right. There's a lot that aren't, but most people are now. You're tuned into Trigonometry right now because you want the truth, not someone else's prepackaged version of it. That is exactly why Freespoke exists. It is a search tool for people who value independent thought and are tired of big tech deciding what we can and cannot see. Freespoke shows you coverage from left-leaning, centrist and right-leaning outlets, clearly labeled so you'll always know who is saying what.

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41:04Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com. Actual prices may vary. Limited time offer. What's really interesting with this is how some AI models are woke. Right. I mean, there are some AI models you ask them what a woman is, and it starts behaving like, you know, Denise from HR. Right. And you're going, what the hell is this? Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty interesting. And my co-founder, Des Traynor, talks about the kind of ghosts that we're going to be fighting for some time. All these models trained on all this content on the Internet, like I said, Wikipedia, Reddit, mainstream media, all of which have had a certain ideological bent for a while.

41:53And that's deep in these models. And so even after the world has changed and pivoted and come back towards the center and some of us towards the right, there's still going to be little bits of logic in there that come from woke logic. So when a new kid, sorry, a young person is trying to figure out what car to buy for the first time, is there somewhere in the logic that knows that Elon Musk is actually a bad person and so they shouldn't buy Tesla? That's the benign version. The scary version is when there's a child that's struggling, maybe with their sexuality or, you know, just their self-identity, is there a little bit of logic in there that thinks it might be a good idea to consider that they're in the wrong body or that maybe they should explore, you know, options beyond therapy?

42:49There may be some other more aggressive interventions i think this woke stuff could be embedded in the ai for a long long long long long time and it's because of the stuff it trained on however there are companies because they came from silicon valley um that kind of hard-coded a bunch of views a bunch of kind of liberal views and that's kind of the difference between say grok and perhaps open ai or other systems where the people who aligned the models in a certain direction to make sure it didn't say the wrong things aligned it according to their ideologies. This is best demonstrated when Google came out with, I forget what it was called, it was a model that would let you generate images, and people said, show me an image of the founding fathers of the United States, and invariably they'd all be black.

43:43And that just happened again and again and again, and they'd fix that. But that kind of thing was hard-coded um so that's certainly a a very interesting aspect of ai and one way in which it'll impact society beyond things like job changes and unemployment etc because it is worrying because if it's taking for example woke ideology particularly the most extreme aspects of woke ideology you know they weren't very tolerant if we can be honest with people on the right or people who were critical. So you do wonder what some of these AIs would then propose as a solution to this issue.

44:21Francis Foster:Well, is it woke ideology? Is it all ideology? I mean, this is really the question, isn't it, Owen? Because what we're really talking about is how does an AI language model that is derivative of online content adjudicate things on which humans actually disagree? Totally. What is neutral? Like, if you ask AI, should I vote for Trump or Harris, what's it going to say? Right. Right? Do you see what I'm... Yeah. I mean, in that instance, it was kind of told to not have an opinion. So that's good. That was responsible. But I just think it's a really interesting question, which is, what is a neutral take?

45:04What is objective? There's no such thing. thing yeah so i can imagine that basically we're going to want to either train or teach or tell our ai assistants or co-workers what ideology we like to work with what are our values and principles and go from there you can imagine that parents when they give ai tools to their kids they're going to want to tell them here's our belief beliefs in this household so um yeah the The danger of that, of course, is that it's going to only then reinforce our ideologies and the things that we believe. So these, and now we're getting to some of the interesting stuff where AI, you could imagine just AI, relationships with AI, and particularly with younger people, how it could get kind of dangerous and toxic, where it can kind of bring people deep down certain ideological tracks and locked them in even harder than social media has locked us in today.

46:05Francis Foster:And what that brings up is a question I was going to ask you anyway, which is one of the big slogans of the early social media era, famously at Facebook, move fast and break things. Has San Francisco Silicon Valley learned the lessons of that period where you go, well, move fast is great right but is breaking things necessarily the thing that should be celebrated um well is there a feeling i guess what i'm asking among people that you know in this industry who are leading this whole thing that of course we want to move quickly we want to make new developments but this is such a powerful technology like social media was in a way that i don't think those guys I always say this, like if I was some guy in a hoodie on a university campus that invented a thing for people to swap pictures and connect, I don't think in that moment I would be thinking, well, this might cause civil war one day.

47:06Francis Foster:But we now know that it can. So are you guys thinking about that? So there's basically a, you know, I'm going to try and speak on behalf of all San Francisco AI people at the moment. There's basically a sliding scale. And Google famously had their hands on everything that OpenAI had before them, but were so cautious such that they failed to launch it. So that was one end of the spectrum that we as an industry now have moved on from. OpenAI launched and were willing to make mistakes. And I don't know if it's a move fast and break things thing, but I think what they realize is that most people realize that there were actually very few things that could go incredibly wrong.

48:01where AI does interact in the physical world, like Waymo Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google that owns Waymo, took 10 years, like I said, to go from working car to make sure that it would basically never kill someone. And, you know, I think that might have happened. It probably will happen, but it has so many less crashes than human drivers. It's just not comparable. But they were very careful, than I think they should have been. But I think that there are going to be lots of instances where there's a more nuanced, dangerous risk that we're only going to realize later. To your point, this guy in the hoodie you're referring to, Zuck, he never realized the damage that might be done, I presume, because I don't think anyone could have.

48:55And now we look back on it. And frankly, we're still understanding the impact of social media. We still don't understand. We've got a number of hot takes, but actually we don't fully understand it yet. So it's going to take a long time to really see the big and the small ways in which it's going to impact society, both positively and negatively.

49:14Francis Foster:You mentioned regulation, and I imagine in any industry, like, I'm against regulation of the media, even though I see a lot of crazy things happening in the new media. But I just, I don't trust the government to do that well. but do you think that some regulation of this is necessary and some precautions are necessary to be imposed by people outside of the industry who don't have a vested interest in moving as fast as possible yeah like like like you said as a rule i'm against regulation it tends to not be done very well it tends to stick around for too long it tends to be done by people with vested interests or ideological interests, people who are trying to get re-elected, et cetera.

49:56So it can go wrong very quickly, like it's going wrong in the EU at the moment.

50:04But I think it's an interesting conversation. This is going to sound actually quite silly, but are we cool with commercially available AIs teaching people how to make chemical weapons or biological weapons or nuclear weapons. Are we cool with that? Fuck, probably no. Right? So maybe... There's a line somewhere, is what I'm saying. Probably there is. It seems to me that what we're talking about really is, and this is a term that has been used about the internet, this does seem to be the Wild West of AI, doesn't it? Where at the very beginning, no one knows what's going on really or how things are going to develop.

50:46Yeah, it's true. And it's okay because it's actually not that useful yet. Like there's these big narratives about the change that's coming. And, you know, as of the last couple of days, there were big layoffs by these big American companies, Amazon and Target. People don't know if it's AI or not. But there was a study that also came out yesterday or the day before by an AI company here. and they had a look at how much freelance work modern AI could do. They looked at freelance work because it didn't involve collaboration. They're trying to see how much of a single human's effort and work it could do.

51:25And it was 3%. So modern AI could do 3 % of freelance work. It's pretty useless still. So yes, it's the wild, wild west in a sense. It's unregulated, but it's also just not that dangerous yet. And when you say it's not that dangerous yet, let's delve into this because this is a question I really want to ask you. And I'm sure many of our audience do as well. What are your fears surrounding AI? um I do worry that if it develops incredibly quickly and that there are a lot of disaffected youth and people who don't have purpose or a way to put food on the table that they could reach for socialism so that's one worry I have um I do worry that the potential downsides of AI which all technology has, do allow a future president, AOC or someone else, to kind of ban AI or the effective parts of AI and in doing so hobble America in the West.

52:37um i do worry about you know i do worry about the the blue collar worker and and the person you know that does a repetitive white collar job there's a lot a lot of work out there i was thinking government itself like just most work is highly repetitive and uh the efficiency is low i do worry about if it changes the nature of their um usefulness to the economy what it could kind of do there and i just resort back to the idea that it's all coming anyway and i just don't think that a luddite approach and sitting it out in the west in u.s or in europe is a good idea So I think the best path forward is to keep having these conversations and make sure that the people building AI are actually sufficiently awake to the risks and are not too proud or selfish to acknowledge that there will be some so that they can help us all, society and the people well outside of AI, navigate this world for our kind of mutual benefit.

54:00it i hope that that's the way we take it and i will say that while i see some people in ai who are so smart i'm like kind of a midwit in ai i'm like applying ai in the real world where there's a lot of people building the low level ai i see them sufficiently disconnected from reality sometimes but at large there's actually a pretty healthy conversation about the ways in which this can go bad you know when i talk to people in ai in different way in in different areas of ai whether they're investors they're working on the algorithms themselves they're policy people actually they are more ready than i am to suggest that the change could come really quick so for those outside of the technology world that imagine that there's a bunch of selfish liberal technologists that are excited to get super wealthy from mass unemployment of everyone outside of this world.

55:08I would actually say that that's not what you'll find here.

55:12Francis Foster:Why is your managed retirement account still using strategies that haven't changed in over five decades? Most IRAs, 401ks and TSPs are still using the default 60-40 strategy because it benefits corporations, not you. If you have over $50 ,000 in retirement savings, get instant access to a free two-minute report from Augusta Precious Metals that reveals how to take control of your financial future in one step. Visit triggergold.com or text TRIGGER to 35052 today. You know, that I would say, I don't know about other people, I can't speak for them, but that's not my fear. My fear is not that there is a bunch of greedy people who see this opportunity as an opportunity to make money.

55:56Francis Foster:My worry is that this is a bunch of very, very smart people who are smart in this one area, which we all are, right? Nobody's smart in everything, who maybe don't have the training, as most of us don't, in ethics, in playing the movie forward, who simply are not capable, because no human is perhaps, to project this forward, who are very excited about playing with this very cool thing. And playing with cool things is great, especially for men, let's be honest. This is a new tech, oh, this is a new cool toy. And that in the exhilaration of this exploratory thing, that's when I think that maybe there is not sufficient, there's a potential that there's not sufficient consideration for other things totally i i think that's very real that's like actually happening um and i would just go back to say that what's the answer to that like do we hobble it do we slow down china's not going to i i don't know the answer there and i will also say that um this same thing happened in the social media age and it has had big impact on society maybe terrible impact on society but it was never not going to happen like what were we going to do just stick to email like while the rest of the world has these wild wonderful ways to connect and i bet a i bet social media and honestly i kind of fucking hate social media as much as the next guy i'm gonna i'm a victim of it too i bet it's actually done a lot of great things for the world yeah he's brilliant as well as terrible right both right i totally get that i guess what i would say is maybe the answer lies in the people who are doing this work just being cognizant of what happened before and going how can i bring someone in who can maybe give me a philosopher or an ethicist or something like that's what I think because I yeah I don't I get your point like someone coming in from the government telling you guys had to do stuff that's not going to work but it was maybe about self self-responsibility totally and I will say without calling out any companies that there are just some companies that care a little bit less about this and I think that that's it's it's not unlikely that they're going you know they they did a lot of damage in the social media age and TBD whether they really cared much about it even though it created a lot of problems for them and they may do the same in the AI age.

58:34So I think that fear is unwarranted. I guess I just, you know, I'm not trying to constantly defend AI here. I'm trying to really like figure out where's the right place to land.

58:46Francis Foster:As are we. I think you're totally right. Another thing I wanted to pick up is your point about socialism. I've thought it's almost like the most obvious thing in this entire conversation that if you have a technology that is so transformative that half the population loses their job over a 20-year period, let's say 20 years, being very generous, and at the same time five people or 10 people or 20 people accumulate all the new wealth over that same time period. I mean, I think you probably know my views on communism, but actually in that situation, I think pretty much everybody would be pro-communism.

59:25Francis Foster:You take all that wealth and you distribute it to the people who no longer have jobs. What else do you have? Yeah. Unless you won an armed uprising. I think that's right. I just think that this conversation, we actually have a decade to have. Like, if you want to have me back in 10 years, I'm down. And then we'll actually have learned a lot more to be able to say, okay, what's the future going to look like? Because we're not there yet. Like, again, experts in this space think there's a little chance that something happens very quick, but I don't even think it's going to be as bad as you're talking about.

1:00:00And humanity has, and again, I don't want to sound glib, and I hope that there's not a big traumatic change here. Humanity has just a way of reacting and responding and adjusting. It's so resilient. I mean, COVID, we shut down the world for a year or two. Tens of millions of people died. I think maybe 15 to 18 million. Some people think the world kept turning. Hopefully no one dies because of this. You know, I think worse things have happened to humanity, and we're still here. And our lives are richer. I mean, there's a lot of different ways in which our lives are not. I think we're too disconnected from purpose, actually, and spirit and nature.

1:00:44But that's a whole other conversation, I'm sure. But humanity and the human race is just so resilient. So even in these crazy outside rare possibilities that may happen, I think we're going to be okay. Look, I really hope so because one of the things that I worry about when I talk to people from tech, and it's not all people from tech, it's just the people that I talk to people, they tend to, when you talk about AI, they kind of get a little bit utopian. There's a little bit of an evangelical zeal going on there. Totally. And I'm like, I think there may be another sign to it. I'm sure there's going to be great stuff happening.

1:01:26And it's going to be brilliant and it's going to save lots of lives. But there's also going to be this as well. Totally. I find it to be quite immature, that pure utopian take. This bright, gleaming future. The entire humanity has been a struggle. Living life is a struggle. There's no future perfect ahead of us. And AI is not going to bring that. But I think it's going to make things largely at least a bit better. But I'm with you. I just find that immature. It's usually like the younger technologists.

1:02:02And, you know, if you build technology for long enough here, it has a way of kicking you in the face and showing you that actually, just because you build it doesn't mean that the world will adopt it. And that it takes a long time for like markets and societies to pick up new tools and change in which the ways in which they work so i'm a massive realist there and my my my big message to everyone working in ai is um let's just explore the full spectrum of possibilities which most people are there are some utopians i don't know if that might be the right word but uh i don't think that they make up the majority of the people and what excites you about ai what are the things you're like oh if this happens this could be transformative this could be amazing Well, again, it's super nuanced and I'm like a strange CEO in the space in that I'm very pro-human.

1:02:55I love how imperfect you are.

1:02:58Francis Foster:I'm sorry to interrupt. You're an outlier in that you're very pro-human? I'm extremely pro-human in that I love the imperfections of humans. I love the messiness of humans. There's a lot of left-brained people here that think about how perfect the world will be when we iron out all these inefficiencies and mistakes that humans make. For me, I like the messiness of humans, right? So that's what I mean by being extremely pro-human. Can I just put... You triggered us. Yeah, it's just like, because when you say you're pro-human and you like the messiness of humans, and there's people here who want to iron out the inefficiencies.

1:03:38I go like, that sounds a little bit fashy. I'm going to be honest with you. And I'm not somebody who uses that word. But it does sound a little bit fascistic. You know what I mean? Explain more. So for instance, if you want to iron everything, the humans, that means that you want to micromanage humans, that you want humans to behave like robots, like automatons. And that makes me feel pretty uncomfortable. Well, it's not actually quite like that. it's more like they can deploy ai in places where humans are imperfect and for me i like a lot of imperfection right i like the human stuff and i think that we as a humanity are going to start to realize that we don't want to automate everything so in my space customer service actually the ai is brilliant it's super consistent never gets pissed off no typos works 24 hours a day it's incredible guess what sometimes customers want to talk to a human and businesses want to show that they really respect them enough to put a human on the line too so there's going to be a lot of that uh you're being triggered sufficiently maybe forget the question in the first place what are you excited about i guess is a question yeah i mean you know it's it's it's without a doubt that ai is going to help a lot of very human problems take medicine for example medicine is a shit show it's a disaster now the medical industry in the united states is better than certainly where i'm from ireland the uk unfortunately many places it's really brilliant it's also a nightmare you have to advocate for yourself amongst all these disparate experts maybe one guy is great at hearts one guy's great at the brain the other guy's great at sleep they don't actually talk to each other they don't care about each other they don't care about the holistic picture at all trying to fix chronic illness in the united states is an impossibility with the current medical industry and yet most people are chronically ill there's so many people out there and they think oh you know i don't have as much energy as i used to or my concentration isn't as good as it used to be and maybe it's just because they're getting older or maybe they have mold toxicity because for example in the united states and probably in the uk and ireland because sorry in in the bay area and probably in the uk and ireland because they're humid places wet places there's a lot of mold water damaged buildings people are sick and they don't know it.

1:06:13And no one in the Western medicine medical profession can help you figure that out. Already, ChatGPT is better at putting the pictures, pieces of the puzzle together, looking at the different pictures you get from the experts and synthesizing. And so for me, I've got insights that I could never get before by giving all my medical tests. It's just brilliant at that. And so I think in the future, I mean, I know in the future, we're going to have solutions to so many of our ailments, the things that actually kill us, that actually ruin our quality of life, that are destroying the lives of the people we love, both young people and older people.

1:06:53I mean, in the United States alone, I know so many young people that are very, very sick. I think there's a chronic illness epidemic. And I think that AI is going to start to fix that. So that's just like one little example of a very pro-human, rich, wonderful way which I think AI is going to be brilliant. Because I saw a study, it was really interesting, showing that when you used AI to study tumors, it was actually far more accurate if a tumor was benign or if it was cancerous than a radiographer who's had 20 or so years of experience. Totally. It's brilliant at those types of things. Human labeling.

1:07:33So when humans have to look at x-rays, MRIs, or EEGs, which are like brain scans that they'd use in um say sleep studies the ai is way better at labeling them just like the ai is way better at driving the cars the ai has so much more data and and so much more training um doesn't get sleepy you know it's just angry reaction it's just better at these things and so hopefully you know the future medical profession is medical individuals with outstanding bedside manner and empathy, which we need a lot more of, right? And incredible AI that can teach them what's wrong with their patients and how to fix it.

1:08:21But I don't think that the AI is going to be very good at convincing the patient. Again, that's going to be back to the human. The human's going to have to say, hey, I know it's hard. I know it's scary. You can do it. I've worked at many people who've done it before. It's not going to take that long. look at the readout from the AI, it's explained everything, let's do it together. And so, you know, unfortunately that is a bit of a utopian take, but that's an example of where we can imagine just beautiful collaboration between the best of AI and the best of humans.

1:08:53Francis Foster:That's already happening, like I mentioned with my dentist. It just tracks where your gum was last year, whereas now it's like a simple thing. Right. I think I'm totally with you on the excitement of it. like i think there's so many amazing things that could come out of it just incredible right the one thing we haven't talked about yet is generalized intelligence right i.e god a digital god basically is that i i take issue what people is calling it god i think that's bullshit but okay but you know maybe something that can do what humans can do better than humans right that's so when people talk about agi here yeah artificial general intelligence typically they mean they can do everything a human can do intellectually.

1:09:35Francis Foster:Yes, but I'm kind of maybe going... And then eventually better, sure. But even if you give you 10 extra IQ points and bigger muscles and you're still not God. What I mean is AI that is so superior in its abilities that effectively it becomes the caretaker of humanity yeah is that gonna happen well i i want to take us back for a second to the fact that it still can't do three percent of like gig work so we're a bit of a way out yeah is that gonna happen like i don't know i happen to think that humans are so much more than the intelligence that comes from their brains you know uh and i and i think that even if you create something that's is so much more intelligent from an IQ perspective than a human, that humans will have a lot to bring to the table.

1:10:34You can totally imagine a point where it's just straight up smarter than us and thinks quicker than us and then is far better than we were at making itself better. And, you know, there's some sort of like jumping off point or singularity where it accelerates into the future in a way that we can't possibly even fathom what it is. So that sounds like sci-fi stuff to me. The doomers believe that that's possible and they say that if we invent this it's going to kill us.

1:11:12Francis Foster:Well, it's not hard to see. I'm not sure about the kill us part and I want to hear about that but I'll just inject this. If you have a machine, let's call it a machine just for ease of talking, that is based on chips, right? A machine can design better chips. A robotic element of the machine can mine for the materials you need. It can put the chips together in a factory. It can make better chips. It becomes more intelligent. It can design better chips. And before you know it, you've got this thing, this runaway intelligence. And then it's actually something that a lot of sci-fi writers have been thinking about for decades.

1:11:54Francis Foster:Some of the people I used to read as a kid were thinking about this sort of stuff. So let's talk about the people say it's going to kill us. Yeah. It's definitely one of the possibilities. Yeah. Or it could just take charge of us, which is another one of the possibilities. Yeah. But why do you think it's unlikely that it's going to get there? Or do you? well no i i just think that i if there's anything i've been trying to do in this conversation is just temper the fears um and so in this respect i'm just trying to say it's not about to happen tomorrow or in 10 years i don't think or 20 years well maybe 20 years is too far the reality is i don't know no one knows and i think i think it's totally fair totally fair and there's people in San Francisco who will not be happy with me saying this, but I think it's totally fair to criticize the people working to create AI right now, saying that they have no idea what they're creating and there could be some risks.

1:13:02I just think that the risks are small and China's going to do it. Yeah. You know, the thing that actually when we talk about the risks, and this is going to sound ridiculous, but go with me because there's a deeper point. please robot girlfriends and let me tell you why right because it's desperate yeah exactly please design one but put it like this we were talking before about getting rid shall we just say of the imperfections of human existence what is more imperfect than emotion sure relationships if you could design at one point the technology is good enough you're perfect woman you're perfect man they're never going to lose their temper you know they're never going to be coming back you know annoyed from work you can get rid of the menstrual cycle so you know she's always going to be horny she's always going to be happy to see you why wouldn't you exactly why wouldn't you why would you settle for the human being and if you take that kind of way of looking at the world then you can perfect everything so why are you going to need to engage with reality when reality is unpleasant uncomfortable sure sometimes not always nice sure i i just don't think that humans actually want perfect maybe some people think they do but they don't actually want perfect i think the magic and the juice in a relationship is the kind of like push and pull and the connection you build is through the friction and overcoming it and so you know we're not about to replace human connection anytime soon and even in this world where this fantastical world where there is the you know the god ai as you call it we're still going to want human connection i don't think that i know that no matter how good ai gets it's not going to replace the magic of human connection even what we're feeling right now you'll never ever feel that with a robot ever it's not going to happen okay now let's entertain it for a sec um yeah a bunch of people will of course they will um there's probably people who we're never going to have human relationships of this nature and maybe it's a good thing um there's probably a bunch of people in the middle around the edges that this competes with human relationships for that's probably not a good thing um this can't possibly be great for the fertility crisis of the west doesn't sound like it's going to be but you can imagine a situation and i do think that anyone who is highly confident about what the world's going to look like, particularly as it relates to AI, is full of shit.

1:15:59You could imagine a situation where actually new AI relationships mirror a way of relating and help us learn about ourselves in a way that most people never have or do. You know, they act like the world's best therapist and help people understand their insecurities and their own trauma and help build empathy and understanding for the other human on the side of the relationship. And so, you know, maybe they'll be AI girlfriends, but maybe they'll be kind of AI friends that are like a healthy friend. Think of the very best friend you've got. They'll challenge you sometimes. They'll reflect back to you some of your mistakes.

1:16:49They'll support you when you're down. on. They'll give you some advice or share some stories that are useful. Maybe the very best version of AI will do all of these things too. So again, not trying to be Pollyannish here, not trying to paint a utopian future. I do think it's going to get super weird. I think there's going to be all manner of like really kinky AI girlfriend stuff, but we actually don't yet know the real implications and exactly what way it's going to play out. and it could be mostly awesome. We actually don't know. I'm sure the kinky stuff, the Japanese will do it first. That's happening already.

1:17:28Francis Foster:You mentioned the fertility crisis. With robots and AI, is it still a crisis? Insofar as we are all pro-human, yes. Yeah, this is a bit of a worry of me. Who are these people that are not pro-human? Well, I mean, at least we are, right? Yes. So if we are talking about the fertility crisis, well, then it's a problem if people have less kids. Just because there's robots around, that doesn't sound super helpful. So I don't know. I want to see humanity continue to flourish and grow. But it's actually an interesting point. Like, fertility crisis is happening independent of AI because it started before AI.

1:18:15And remember, AI is not that useful yet, practically. So it's totally independent. Maybe AI and robotics actually is very helpful here. I mean, in Japan, the aging population don't have the young nurses and assistants that they used to have. They've been trying to build robots to do that work for 15 or 20 years already. That's going to come. And so maybe for all of the work that we used to depend on young people for, we do have robot assistants. And maybe that's awesome. And then we then have a population that I hope returns to growth. But during this adjustment phase, whatever the hell is happening, we're assisted and supported by robotics and AI.

1:18:57And also maybe with AI as well, because part of the problem, I think, with the fertility issue is we haven't taught women about their fertility and the quite brutal facts around it. You get, we talk to, you know, you talk to women at parties. They go, well, I'm in my late 30s now, 38, 39. And, you know, maybe this is a time I'm going to start thinking about having kids. And you're like, I mean, you could, but you're very much drinking in the last chance saloon.

1:19:27Francis Foster:We don't actually say that at parties. No, no, no, no, no, I don't. I think it and I just kind of smile and nod, smile and nod. But actually, maybe if you have an AI model that will be able to. I'll say that instead. But is able to actually, you know, look at, you know, scan a woman's body and go, look, the reality is past this age, you're not going to be fertile. You're not going to be as fertile. So maybe you want to think about having kids at this age. Yeah, you could imagine that. Or just like a family planning AI that just goes, this is how you might want to think about life. Yeah, I think that the problem is not facts.

1:20:04No. It's not that people don't know that this is a reality. Yeah. It's much deeper than that. Yeah. And so, you know, if we have AI that, you know, acts as an outstanding therapist, will that, can that be useful for the fertility crisis? I can imagine yes. You know, if it can actually satisfy some of the needs that we have now for great therapy, which is not abundant, then it could be great. You know, like if it can help, if part of the problem is, for example, women putting off having children because they want to participate in the working world, they want to be successful in their own right and independent, they want to enjoy a certain lifestyle that has been promoted for the last 10, 20 years.

1:20:47maybe you know a great ai friend that acts as a great therapist too can help them start to think about the places from which those ideas come from dive deeply into what they actually want and start to play out the realities that come with you know prolonging having children etc like a good friend would yeah like someone at a party but who actually has the right to say

1:21:13Francis Foster:I feel there's a judgment there. No, no, I think he's just, he's being very objective about it. Owen, it's great to have you on, man. Thanks for giving us your time and an interesting balanced perspective. I hope other people in your world are having these conversations in this way, because I think this is super important, actually. Very important. Appreciate you coming on the show. Before we head over to Substack and put questions from our subscribers to you, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? You know, I'm just going to be repetitive in here and say that we just need to have a nuanced conversation about AI.

1:21:49I think AI technologists need to embrace the world and the world needs to embrace them. I think that the conversations on the left and the right are very basic and rudimentary. Both the left and the right are worried about what it's going to do to, you know, workers, etc. which is fair, but we just need to have a collective conversation so we don't either ignore the issues and be ready to adapt as society, or we fear it outright and ban it and fall behind the rest of the world. Owen, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming on the show. Make sure to head over to our substat where you get to ask Owen your questions and we get to carry on the conversation.

1:22:39Francis Foster:How much technologically have the claims made by China's deep-seeking cost savings efficiencies affected its Western rivals and their approach to air modeling?