S1: I mean, have you listened to something that I think
S1: captures extraordinarily well? Why? Arguments that AI don't understand anything
S1: and can't possibly understand anything are completely misguided and empty.
S1: This is a blues version of Without Me by Eminem.
S1: It's from the 1950s, which means it's not real. And
S1: he's also never done a blues version of Without Me,
S1: to my knowledge. And so it's AI generated and it's
S1: objectively a stunning piece of music, and it's quite different
S1: from the original. So let's listen to it.
S2: Guess who's been back again? Shady's back. Tell a friend.
S2: Guess who's back? Guess who's back? Guess who's back. Guess
S2: who's back. Guess who's back. Guess who's back. Guess who's back.
S2: Guess who's back. Guess who's back. Guess who's back. No
S2: no no no no no no no. I've created a monster.
S2: Cause nobody wants to see my shoes no more. They
S2: won't shake I'm chopped liver. Well, if you want shady.
S2: This is what I give you. A little bit of
S2: me mixed with some hard liquor. Some vodka that'll jumpstart
S2: my heart quicker than a shark. When I get shot
S2: at the hospital by the doctor. When I'm not cooperating,
S2: when I'm rocking the table while it's operating. Hey, you
S2: waited this long to stop debating cause I'm back. I'm
S2: on the. I know that you got a job, Miss Cheney,
S2: but your husband's heart problems complicating. So the FCC won't
S2: let me be. Or let me be me. So let
S2: me see. They try to shove me down on MTV,
S2: but it feels so empty without me.
S1: So every time I listen to that, I feel compelled
S1: to move. I think if music makes you dance and
S1: feel things, it is real. If AI models and scaffolding
S1: can be assembled into a product that can replace human workers,
S1: it's intelligent, i.e. it has the ability to understand, pursue,
S1: and accomplish goals. If a technology can perform a task
S1: and produce an output that requires understanding, it understands. So
S1: in this frame, understanding is the ability of an actor
S1: to interpret a given task and desired outcome well enough
S1: to create an acceptable result. AI can clearly do that
S1: now across so many domains. It's true that if you
S1: break open a neural net or a human brain and
S1: start poking at it with a stick or a scalpel
S1: or an electron microscope. There is no place to point
S1: to and say this is understanding, or here is the intelligence,
S1: but it is there in both human brains and in
S1: neural nets, because we see the outputs that prove that
S1: it's there. We should stop wasting cycles on does it
S1: understand or is it intelligent or it can't be intelligent,
S1: because all these behaviors in both animals and technology are
S1: the result of emergent functionality. And the core issue here
S1: is that we still lack transparency into emergence itself, not
S1: just for tech, not just for llms, not just for AI,
S1: but for humans and other animals as well. So let's
S1: not confuse that opacity of emergence itself, which is a
S1: universal human problem in curiosity, with a specific implementation of
S1: that emergence, opacity and a new intelligence stack judge capabilities
S1: by their ground truth outputs. In other words, in your lexicon,
S1: did the creation of that output require understanding and or
S1: intelligence if it were a human doing it? And if so,
S1: then did a non-human actually produce that? Did a non-human
S1: technology produce that same thing that if you saw it
S1: from someone else, it would have required intelligence? Then guess
S1: what that is? Intelligence. Intelligence was used to produce the output.
S1: We can use the output itself, and the fact that
S1: we have defined it as requiring intelligence to say that
S1: anything that could have produced it had intelligence itself. I
S1: think this framing helps clarify the whole situation a little
S1: bit because we can start from ground truth, which is
S1: what we already know and accept as being the product
S1: of intelligence, right? If you hear a song like this,
S1: if you see a work output from an AI digital
S1: worker or something, and you say, well, if a human
S1: would have made that, I would have thought it was
S1: a good product. I would have thought this definitely required intelligence.
S1: That statement there we can use as ground truth. And
S1: then from there, it's a quick step to say anything
S1: that can produce that then also has that intelligence. And
S1: notice that this is completely separate from being able to
S1: explain how it got it. We just have to remind
S1: ourselves we don't know how we got ours either. We
S1: have no idea how. When you look at a spongy
S1: pink brain, how you can store memories in there, how
S1: you can have ideas, how you can have thoughts. We
S1: have no idea where inside of that brain any of
S1: this stuff is actually performed or stored. Now, in humans,
S1: we are not tempted to say, well, since I can't
S1: find it, we are clearly not doing understanding. We are
S1: not doing intelligence. Those things are not there because I
S1: cannot find them by looking at the substrate. We're not
S1: tempted to say that with humans, and we're not tempted
S1: to say it, because we can actually look at the
S1: outputs of ourselves doing those exact things. So why are
S1: we making this mistake with a different type of intelligence?
S1: Why are we looking at outputs that we would judge
S1: as being intelligent or requiring intelligence to make and saying, well,
S1: because I can't find where it was made or how
S1: it was made, it must not be intelligence. It just
S1: doesn't make sense. And hopefully this frame will help you
S1: have the conversation with yourself or with others. We'll see
S1: you in the next one.