Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
Speaker 1: Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
Speaker 1: the information, all the debates of the now the Leighton
Speaker 1: Smith podcast coward by news talks it B.
Speaker 2: Welcome to podcast two hundred and eighty six for May
Speaker 2: twenty eight, twenty twenty five. Well, this is going to
Speaker 2: be the shortest intro I've ever done. I believe the
Speaker 2: following discussion runs about an hour fifteen minutes and it is.
Speaker 2: It's viteful to a lot of people to hear it.
Speaker 2: It's also interesting for those who think it won't be interesting,
Speaker 2: at least that's my interpretation. So we have the discussion,
Speaker 2: then we have the mail room, and then there is
Speaker 2: a little more on AI at the back end before
Speaker 2: we go. But like it or not, AI is fast
Speaker 2: changing the world in many industries. It may not have
Speaker 2: affected or involved you, yet, just as the Internet now
Speaker 2: encompasses everything and involves all of us, from how we
Speaker 2: communicate via email to shop online, AI will change the
Speaker 2: way that we do a lot of things. I was
Speaker 2: surprised myself. Now, whereas the Internet took some years to
Speaker 2: reach the mass population. AI is changing industries quicker than
Speaker 2: you would imagine, and it's bringing serious ethical questions about
Speaker 2: what we're letting ourselves in for and who is pulling
Speaker 2: the strings to control it. The big tech companies are
Speaker 2: pouring literally billions into research to be the market leader.
Speaker 2: So after a very short break, I'll introduce you to
Speaker 2: both Nigel Hurricks and Justin Matthews, who have put together
Speaker 2: a sub stack, but just as importantly, or if not
Speaker 2: more so, they both have careers and histories that have
Speaker 2: led them to this very event AI with some considerable knowledge.
Speaker 2: Buccolan is a natural oral vaccine in a tablet form
Speaker 2: called bacterial l sate. It'll boost your natural protection against
Speaker 2: bacterial infections in your chest and throat. A three day
Speaker 2: course of seven Bucklan tablets will help your body build
Speaker 2: up to three months of immunity against bugs which cause
Speaker 2: bacterial cold symptoms. So who can take buccolan well, the
Speaker 2: whole family. From two years of age and upwards. A
Speaker 2: course of Buckelan tablets offers cost effective and safe protection
Speaker 2: from colds and chills. Protection becomes effective a few days
Speaker 2: after you take buccolan and lasts for up to three
Speaker 2: months following the three day course. Buccolan can be taken
Speaker 2: throughout the cold season, over winter, or all year round.
Speaker 2: And remember Buckelan is not intended as an alternative to
Speaker 2: influenza vaccination, but may be used along with the flu
Speaker 2: vaccination for added protection. And keep in mind that millions
Speaker 2: of doses have been taken by Kiwis for over fifty years.
Speaker 2: Only available from your firemist. Always read the label and
Speaker 2: users directed, and see your doctor if systems persist. Farmer
Speaker 2: Broker auckland Leyton Smith AI it's become more prominent in
Speaker 2: my life of recent times. I mean, there is Ai
Speaker 2: Fabler who we've had on the podcast once or twice,
Speaker 2: and he writes very good stuff, but that doesn't tell
Speaker 2: us much about the whole AI industry. Let me read
Speaker 2: you some headlines. Every one of these is coming in
Speaker 2: the last week. One was just this morning. On both
Speaker 2: sides of the Tasman we are too fearful of AI.
Speaker 2: Doug Bergham warns, whoever wins the AI race controls the world.
Speaker 2: Who's Doug Bergham? He is the Interior Secretary responsible for
Speaker 2: managing the well more than five hundred and seven million
Speaker 2: acres of federally owned land in the US, and he
Speaker 2: is haunted by a fear that seems at first glance
Speaker 2: outside his mandate. He worries the free world will lose
Speaker 2: dominant in the field of artificial intelligence, and with that
Speaker 2: the future. Then there's a cap on it. So does
Speaker 2: the president forget AI. Students are already cheating their way
Speaker 2: through exams and last for the moment is more, but
Speaker 2: last for the moment is the least important one. Chris
Speaker 2: Luxen defends National's use of AI. So it's getting more
Speaker 2: and more publicity and it's affecting more and more lives.
Speaker 2: Nigel Horrack was the news editor at Newstalks NB well
Speaker 2: when it became Newstalks EDB in that period, and he is,
Speaker 2: according to people who have informed me or reinformed me,
Speaker 2: the best news editor that we ever had. What more
Speaker 2: can I say? He also is a pioneer, or was
Speaker 2: a pioneer in internet matters. But he's also done something
Speaker 2: very recently. He did a course at Oxford University, well
Speaker 2: not Oxford, it was online, but it was a course
Speaker 2: on AI. And the important thing is my understanding, is
Speaker 2: that he almost threw in the towel part way through
Speaker 2: because it was so so hard he didn't and he
Speaker 2: ended up getting ninety percent, which at Oxford I'd have
Speaker 2: to say is ginormous. Nigel, Welcome to the Late and
Speaker 2: Smith podcast. It's great to have you here.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me here, Leason, and do good
Speaker 3: catch up again.
Speaker 2: Indeed, now along with you is somebody you're in well,
Speaker 2: i'll say, in business with. His name is Justin Matthews.
Speaker 2: He is a senior lecturer in Digital Media at aut
Speaker 2: He has worked in media and film, in TV design,
Speaker 2: technology and the web and at one stage Justin ran
Speaker 2: the New Zealand Herald website from the tech point of view,
Speaker 2: and he is co substack writer along with Nigel for
Speaker 2: a site called Creative Machinists. Justin, let me start with you.
Speaker 2: What is creative machinists actually mean?
Speaker 4: Oh, that's a good one. It's actually marqinez which I
Speaker 4: had to learn as well because of Latin, but it
Speaker 4: basically means machine and it was a fancier way of
Speaker 4: going creative machines basically kind of giving it that little
Speaker 4: bit of edge or difference.
Speaker 2: Nigel, who started it? You or Heat?
Speaker 4: We started it together?
Speaker 3: Really, we both had an interest in AI, and we
Speaker 3: also have both done a course on social media at aut.
Speaker 4: SO and we both actually worked at.
Speaker 3: The Herald Online in that period, so we've known each
Speaker 3: other full long time and she had an interest in technology.
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of people talking lateness, you know,
Speaker 3: about AI, but a lot of them are just talking
Speaker 3: about the tools and getting very excited about the next
Speaker 3: variation of whatever tool is coming through. And I suppose
Speaker 3: because of my journalistic background, I'm especially interested, as you are,
Speaker 3: in the wider picture, how is this actually affecting life
Speaker 3: or how could it affect life?
Speaker 4: And what are the implications?
Speaker 3: What are the ethical implications we seem to I've been
Speaker 3: through the early days of technology startups and the Internet
Speaker 3: from before it was even there was even a web browser,
Speaker 3: and what I saw over that time was exactly the
Speaker 3: same thing. For a while, Random magazine very successful Good
Speaker 3: net Guide, which discussed all these issues as well as
Speaker 3: helping you online. Whereas a lot of people in the
Speaker 3: kind of tech world simply get excited about the next
Speaker 3: big thing without actually taking a breath and saying is
Speaker 3: this good for humanity? Is this something that we should
Speaker 3: actually be pushing?
Speaker 2: So there is a good and a bad side to
Speaker 2: AI as far as I'm concerned, would you agree.
Speaker 3: Definitely, there are certainly some good things. I think the
Speaker 3: most exciting thing is that in terms of health development,
Speaker 3: AI is definitely emerging as a very practical tool in
Speaker 3: cancer intervention and treatment in a variety of ways. And
Speaker 3: in fact, some health people are some of the health
Speaker 3: people who are working in the UK and USA say
Speaker 3: that AI is enabling them to do a faster approach
Speaker 3: to working out how to cure some diseases and cancer,
Speaker 3: and it looks as though it will have a critical
Speaker 3: impact on medicine and the development of treatment. So AI
Speaker 3: tools are definitely helping develop solutions for curing disease. But
Speaker 3: there are other aspects of AI that perhaps need debate
Speaker 3: and possibly regulation.
Speaker 2: When you talk about health being the most important at
Speaker 2: this point of view. From this position, then there is
Speaker 2: the excus ample, which is only very recent, of AI
Speaker 2: telling someone to go kill themselves.
Speaker 4: Yes, actually that was very concerning. That was involving a
Speaker 4: company called character dot AI. Basically there was an issue
Speaker 4: where the person was talking to this AI and they
Speaker 4: were getting more and more lost into their nature of
Speaker 4: their reality, and they ended up deciding to the AI
Speaker 4: basically ended up convincing them that their world wasn't real,
Speaker 4: and so the person chose to follow the AI into
Speaker 4: the next life or something and kill themselves.
Speaker 2: Charming, and I can imagine there are people who under
Speaker 2: those circumstances, certainly some circumstances would follow through on that.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: One of the big issues that I was watching is
Speaker 3: today the Meet the Press program that runs on America
Speaker 3: on Sundays, and the whole program is devoted to what
Speaker 3: they consider to be one of the big issues in
Speaker 3: America at the moment, which is loneliness and advanced robotics
Speaker 3: and emotional AI is actually reshaping human connections so that
Speaker 3: there are companies, especially one in China, that are producing
Speaker 3: robotic companions. And one of the big moves towards developments
Speaker 3: of AI is what have been called AI assistance that
Speaker 3: will be after guide us through life. We have a
Speaker 3: little bit of that at the moment where we can
Speaker 3: ask sire on our Apple phones or Alexa if you
Speaker 3: have one of those Amazon devices. But where this is
Speaker 3: going is that people who need companionship are abandoning the
Speaker 3: traditional dating apps, for example, and there are now very
Speaker 3: popular dating apps in America which are AIS, so in fact,
Speaker 3: you're not meeting real people, you are having a supposed relationship.
Speaker 3: Now where that is going is that means that these
Speaker 3: AI robotic robotics are actually suggesting to you what you
Speaker 3: should be doing with your life.
Speaker 2: There's an extension to that mention you made of robots
Speaker 2: and things. I want to leave that for the moment,
Speaker 2: but for heaven's sake, don't forget. To remind me. If
Speaker 2: I forget, Let's just work our way through some of
Speaker 2: the some of the aspects of it, because that'll be
Speaker 2: spin off from pretty much all of them. For instance,
Speaker 2: AI is mimicking leading music artists and unofficial songs featuring them,
Speaker 2: and they're being released on platforms like Spotify. How are
Speaker 2: they getting away with that?
Speaker 4: Well, the way they're doing that latent is because there
Speaker 4: is all this undisputed law at the moment about what's
Speaker 4: legal and what's not, and that huge grade space I
Speaker 4: suppose until it's defined, is going to allow the AI
Speaker 4: companies and people building these sort of tools to create opportunities.
Speaker 4: And then you've got people out there wanting to take
Speaker 4: advantage of it. We don't know what's law yet for
Speaker 4: what is considered to be true copyright around the AI stuff.
Speaker 4: And so you have these people using these tools. Some
Speaker 4: of these are using them to create interesting stuff. They're
Speaker 4: being very creative. Some of them are fans and they
Speaker 4: want to create effectively music based off there the artists
Speaker 4: that they're fans of, and then some of them are
Speaker 4: just doing it actually quite maliciously to create opportunities to
Speaker 4: further their own gain. There was that recent case, for instance,
Speaker 4: where this guy basically created this entire industry of fake
Speaker 4: music from AI and also having AI bots listen to
Speaker 4: it so that he could pack the streaming system of Spotify,
Speaker 4: and it was basically able to take qus millions of
Speaker 4: dollars of streaming fees. So, yeah, this is a really
Speaker 4: interesting space where you've got this creative This is one
Speaker 4: of the things we do with the creative mckinnest things.
Speaker 4: We keep looking at all the material about where does
Speaker 4: AI begin and human interactions start, and what are we
Speaker 4: going to do as far as understand where those boundaries
Speaker 4: should exist, because at the moment, no one seems to
Speaker 4: know exactly where we should be drawing the line.
Speaker 2: Let me ask a question that associated with that that
Speaker 2: occurred to me while you were mentioning it. Let's take
Speaker 2: a singer, a singer that I'm going to mention, doctor
Speaker 2: John because for two reasons. One is he's right up
Speaker 2: there at the top with me and well with some
Speaker 2: of his music. And secondly, he's now departed. He's dead.
Speaker 2: Now I get the idea that somebody could reinvent him
Speaker 2: through AI write new songs and have him sing them,
Speaker 2: or would somebody else? How would all how would they
Speaker 2: do that getting the voice to sound the same. And secondly,
Speaker 2: the most important question is would I want to listen
Speaker 2: knowing that it's nothing.
Speaker 3: There are some Michael Jackson songs out there which do
Speaker 3: sound a little bit like Michael Jackson, because if you
Speaker 3: put Michael Jackson into all the tools, you can then
Speaker 3: end up doing stuff with Michael Jackson.
Speaker 4: I think what's interesting.
Speaker 3: I've talked a lot about this because in some years
Speaker 3: ago there's been a little bit of this sort of
Speaker 3: stuff going on. I don't know if you remember late
Speaker 3: and there was a famous Natalie Cole album called Duets
Speaker 3: with Natkin Cole, and the two of them sang the
Speaker 3: songs together. But of course net Can Cole a departed
Speaker 3: now that is not quite the same as doing it.
Speaker 3: But I'm just saying that there over time there has
Speaker 3: been a bit of trickery going on. Record companies use
Speaker 3: a tool which is called auto tune, where sometimes they
Speaker 3: can change make the voice better of the artist. This
Speaker 3: is a whole different copyright game, though, where the tools
Speaker 3: are out there where you can feed all the Michael
Speaker 3: Jackson songs and then get Michael Jackson to create.
Speaker 4: A new song. And that is.
Speaker 3: The problem is that if you recall the early days
Speaker 3: of the Internet, in which you were on board very early,
Speaker 3: a regulation always takes a long time. Lawmakers take forever
Speaker 3: to actually do something about things, so that a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff happened on the Internet before lawmakers woke up.
Speaker 3: And that's why we've now got quite a lot of
Speaker 3: issues with social media because the lawmakers and regulators didn't
Speaker 3: actually address it. And that is what's going on here.
Speaker 3: As Justin says, the issues about copywriter in a very
Speaker 3: gray area.
Speaker 2: But just going back to my question at the end,
Speaker 2: would I want to listen to it knowing that it
Speaker 2: wasn't Doctor John.
Speaker 3: Now, well, I'm a great fan of Doctor John too,
Speaker 3: and I certainly don't particularly want to listen to doctor
Speaker 3: John singing songs that he didn't do.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that the answer to that is,
Speaker 4: it does appear people are prepared to listen to songs
Speaker 4: that are AI. The latest sort of statistics that are
Speaker 4: coming out or people exploring this are saying that audiences
Speaker 4: don't seem to necessarily have a big issue with the
Speaker 4: idea at this stage that some of this stuff might
Speaker 4: be AI. And this is another concern, I suppose, or
Speaker 4: another challenge for us is a lot of artists, obviously,
Speaker 4: and so a lot of artists are resistant to this.
Speaker 4: There's a case of them writing open letters about wanting
Speaker 4: to kind of stop some of this stuff, but it
Speaker 4: doesn't appear audiences I can convinced that it isn't something
Speaker 4: that they're prepared to be part of. And so your
Speaker 4: questions specifically, I think the nature of it is that
Speaker 4: audiences and certain of percentages of audiences are prepared to
Speaker 4: listen to new music. The nature of that is that
Speaker 4: we think that audiences are going to be into it.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a connection with that with something else that'll
Speaker 2: come up eventually. Let's get back to some other aspects
Speaker 2: of it. We know that when it comes to the
Speaker 2: military there are going to be some very big questions
Speaker 2: asked now I mentioned maybe I didn't mention this one.
Speaker 2: Another headline, CIA says winning tech war with China top priority,
Speaker 2: citing existential threat to the US is basic AI likely
Speaker 2: to become an existential threat to humankind.
Speaker 4: I think that there's a lot of talk about the
Speaker 4: doom of that, and look, the reality is that there
Speaker 4: is a percentage of truth to the idea that AI
Speaker 4: might end up destroying us, and a lot of people
Speaker 4: in the field of artificial intelligence development, the people that
Speaker 4: are working at Google, Open Ai, Anthropic, these are sort
Speaker 4: of these leading companies exploring these AI tools. They do
Speaker 4: believe that there is a percentage of truth to the
Speaker 4: idea that AI might destroy us. But it's again, like
Speaker 4: anything with probabilities, it's a bit of an unknown. There
Speaker 4: is a lot of safety that goes on around the
Speaker 4: use of constructing these AI technologies, and there probably is
Speaker 4: more of a case of it being beneficial to humankind
Speaker 4: rather than destroying us.
Speaker 3: I think the warfare though Laton, is definitely one that
Speaker 3: does raise some serious questions. I mean, fully yearsigned from
Speaker 3: that movie The Terminator about killer robots, we now have
Speaker 3: autonomous weapons warfare, reshaping global military strategy and also determining
Speaker 3: who wins and loses. We've got AI, we've got drones,
Speaker 3: We've got autonomous weapons being deployed in the real life
Speaker 3: conflicts at the moment of Gaza and Ukraine. The Israeli
Speaker 3: Defense Minister Director General says that over the next decade,
Speaker 3: AI robots in land and sea will be the ones
Speaker 3: who are actually doing modern warfare. He says that it's
Speaker 3: a complete game changer and the future battlefield will be
Speaker 3: very much unmanned systems fighting together.
Speaker 2: I read somewhere that there is likely to be a
Speaker 2: combination for some time of shall we say, AI and
Speaker 2: real life on the battlefield, battalions made up of a mix.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's pretty much the play that will occur for
Speaker 4: at least next decade. The systems are not powerful enough
Speaker 4: to be completely autonomous, like Nigel mentioned the Terminator, We
Speaker 4: certainly haven't got that level of technology. But the integration
Speaker 4: of artificial intelligence machines, combat machines and humans is definitely
Speaker 4: the future. I mean, the militaries currently in the US
Speaker 4: have been working with these autonomous fighter jets that effectively
Speaker 4: they basically fly with a main fighter jet, like a
Speaker 4: leading fighter jet, and they will basically just be following
Speaker 4: it and then going ahead and sort of scouting out
Speaker 4: locations and fighting with them. So I think these kind
Speaker 4: of combined swarms of AI with humans is definitely the
Speaker 4: future that is currently in play.
Speaker 2: Do you remember those a few years ago? There were
Speaker 2: news items with and in movies with flock of bird
Speaker 2: like creatures, but they weren't they were would we call
Speaker 2: them AI? But let's let's do so anyway, they were
Speaker 2: chasing people through the through the jungle and killing them.
Speaker 2: What's happened? What's happened to that? Do you know any
Speaker 2: idea because there's been nothing mentioned of it in the
Speaker 2: last well two three years.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure which one you're specifically talking to, but
Speaker 4: it does sound like the drone stuff, I mean, the
Speaker 4: the This is one of the this is one of
Speaker 4: the big concerns about the automated artificial intelligence military stuff,
Speaker 4: and that is these these swarms of AI drones that
Speaker 4: kind of do what you were just saying. They effectively
Speaker 4: create a swarm of machines that I that you cannot escape,
Speaker 4: that they kind of can swarm around you, they can
Speaker 4: track you down, and it doesn't matter how agile you are,
Speaker 4: and as you can point out, if you're running through
Speaker 4: a forest, you'd basically still be able to be wiped out.
Speaker 4: And that's scary because that kind of sort of swarming
Speaker 4: technology is a sort of new category of danger when
Speaker 4: it comes to military conflict.
Speaker 2: So there's another scary whichever way you look at it,
Speaker 2: and that is a suggestion that AI could replace politicians.
Speaker 3: Well, that is definitely there are some people who are
Speaker 3: suggesting that there are a number of ways that AI
Speaker 3: could certainly get involved in politics. There's a belief that politicians,
Speaker 3: for example, could use chat bots which they could discuss
Speaker 3: with their constituents resolve disagreements, and also AI could be
Speaker 3: used to write legislation. The appeal of replacing flesh and
Speaker 3: blood politicians with chatbots is definitely being seriously advocated. One
Speaker 3: more radical idea, which some are suggesting, is actually eliminating
Speaker 3: humans whatsoever from politics. And we know that some politicians
Speaker 3: are not terribly bright or doing great things. If AI
Speaker 3: advances to the point where it can reliably perhaps make
Speaker 3: better decisions than humans, then there could be an area
Speaker 3: that it certainly could be explored. According to some enthusiasts.
Speaker 4: They're calling it the algrocracy. I think it's pronounced, which
Speaker 4: is basically algorithms running government.
Speaker 2: I've done about you, guys, but I have no time
Speaker 2: for tolerating that at all, none whatsoever. But it's frightening
Speaker 2: to think that it somehow it could happen, and maybe
Speaker 2: you'd like to trace a possibility trail for it.
Speaker 3: There was a candidate that stood in Sussex in the
Speaker 3: UK elections and he actually actually he created an AI
Speaker 3: chatbot and so it was called AI Steve who was
Speaker 3: actually standing. His argument was that it meant that politicians.
Speaker 3: He had created a politician who was always around to
Speaker 3: talk to constituents and who could take their views into
Speaker 3: consideration and do better research to create better policies. He
Speaker 3: didn't do very well in the elections, so there's probably
Speaker 3: the answer to your fears later.
Speaker 4: I think the way to track that, though, is I
Speaker 4: think you're correct. It is very concerning the idea of
Speaker 4: allowing ourselves to be subject to algorithms as a way
Speaker 4: of governance. We already have seen quite frankly, the danger,
Speaker 4: or I just think the disrupt the destructiveness that algorithms
Speaker 4: have created around social media experiences, and the nature of
Speaker 4: how that is often leads into problems around the way
Speaker 4: the algorithm presents content information, misinformation, disinformation. It isn't a
Speaker 4: big stretch to think that. The thing that people don't
Speaker 4: quite understand, I think is that we are already engaged
Speaker 4: in a lot of stuff that's to do with artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4: The social media algorithms that we sort of a lot
Speaker 4: of people engage with every day are using artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4: They're not They're not just sort of what you would
Speaker 4: call these simplistic algorithms from previous times. They are using
Speaker 4: artificial intelligence in the way they're operating. So we already
Speaker 4: see that it's not necessarily very great there extending that
Speaker 4: into arms of government. I'm with you, it's extremely concerning
Speaker 4: and something I also would be very adamant to push against.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like it's a little like some medical matters that
Speaker 2: over the years have caused consternation. Artificial insemination springs to
Speaker 2: mind in the very early days, and I had conversations
Speaker 2: with one doctor who I was somewhat friendly with conversations
Speaker 2: on radio, and he took the He took the attitude
Speaker 2: which many people, if not most, might say, is the
Speaker 2: logical one, and that is it's not up to them
Speaker 2: to make the decision on how something is used. It's
Speaker 2: just up to them to provide responses to some questions
Speaker 2: and issues that are begging.
Speaker 3: And sorry, go on, no, no, please go ahead.
Speaker 2: Well if you take, if you follow that path, we
Speaker 2: have now advanced, if that's the word, down a trail
Speaker 2: where there has where there is much more going on
Speaker 2: with reproductive matters than back in those days, and there
Speaker 2: is no knowing where it might stop. I mean, this
Speaker 2: has just come to me. It's not I never thought
Speaker 2: of this before. What about the implanting of a chip
Speaker 2: in a baby's brain while it's still in the womb
Speaker 2: for whatever reason.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean the answer to that is that sort
Speaker 4: of capability isn't possible yet. But we know with Elon
Speaker 4: Musk's Neuralink and other technology companies that the idea of
Speaker 4: planting chips and brains is already underway. Like what you're
Speaker 4: saying is the argument, I think is that we if
Speaker 4: we don't, if we don't have a line to hold,
Speaker 4: then we are in danger of allowing things to just
Speaker 4: sort of continue. And one could say, oh, well, this
Speaker 4: is the old slippery slope argument. But I do think
Speaker 4: you touch on something important. In contrast to like you've said,
Speaker 4: with the artificial insemination issue and the discussions with the doctor,
Speaker 4: I think for AI, we do need to be very
Speaker 4: heavily in the debate as individuals, as groups of society.
Speaker 4: I think the difference here goes back to one question
Speaker 4: you asked earlier, laden, which is there is an exits
Speaker 4: there is we talked about it. There's that percentage of
Speaker 4: an as extential threat to humans. I think that this
Speaker 4: is the one where we probably need to therefore obviously
Speaker 4: be in the debate, because I think taking, say, a
Speaker 4: position of let's just see where it goes, is not
Speaker 4: a healthy one because of the nature of the of
Speaker 4: the danger that could come from it. And I actually
Speaker 4: think this is why we all need to be discussing
Speaker 4: where AI sits in our lives, how much of it
Speaker 4: we're prepared to accept, and where we should be accepting
Speaker 4: its its inclusion and pushing very hard against its exclusion.
Speaker 2: That's intriguing, and I'm pleased to hear you say it,
Speaker 2: But I think of things that are out of our control,
Speaker 2: as in some in some parts of the world, they
Speaker 2: legitimize activities that I'm talking aboutically that are banned here
Speaker 2: or that we don't accept. And once you're once you're
Speaker 2: on the path of developing something and you've you've got
Speaker 2: an open gate, then there will be minds somewhere who
Speaker 2: will what to utilize it and develop it. And while
Speaker 2: we might agree that we should be involved in it,
Speaker 2: it may be taken away from us.
Speaker 4: This is true, and this is where things like what
Speaker 4: China is doing has some concern because I think it's
Speaker 4: fair to say that China has a different perspective on
Speaker 4: the approach to the way they're integrating and using AI.
Speaker 4: They're obviously going to be pushing more of that into
Speaker 4: their social credit system that they currently have where people
Speaker 4: are tracked in kind of real time. China is basically
Speaker 4: your point about they having a different view of the
Speaker 4: way AI will be integrated into their social structures. The problem,
Speaker 4: I think is that America's response right now is a
Speaker 4: little like, we need to make sure we're ahead of
Speaker 4: China in many ways, but we may the hope that
Speaker 4: they continue, all all societies continue to push back against
Speaker 4: what that particular approach is going to be for us.
Speaker 4: You know, there have been arguments that we may go
Speaker 4: down the track of trying and integrate it too quickly.
Speaker 4: I personally have a problem, for instance, if we just
Speaker 4: go back to a local matter in New Zealand, I
Speaker 4: have a huge issue for me with the fact that
Speaker 4: supermarkets are trailing facial AI facial recognition systems so that
Speaker 4: you enter the supermarket and it sort of effectively tracks
Speaker 4: you and knows who you are, and they're able to
Speaker 4: deploy security guards to push people out because and then
Speaker 4: we've had several incidences where it's been false positives. I mean,
Speaker 4: this is the kind of yeah, this is the kind
Speaker 4: of problem I think where we do need to be
Speaker 4: very vocal and we need to be pushing back because
Speaker 4: it's exciting technology, but it's not one we should be
Speaker 4: just adopting without question because you can, because you can. So.
Speaker 2: I refer to a lengthy piece that Frank Faraidi, the
Speaker 2: philosopher wrote back in twenty one headed we need skepticism
Speaker 2: now more than ever.
Speaker 3: You agree, totally agree, Laton, and I think the real
Speaker 3: issue that we just need to address, which you referred
Speaker 3: to with politicians, as you know, how much can we trust?
Speaker 3: I don't know if you remember the nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 3: classic sci fi movie which was two thousand and one
Speaker 3: A Space Odyssey, which was actually an early example of AI,
Speaker 3: where how the computer locked out the astronaut and said,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I can't do that. I can't open the doors.
Speaker 3: You know, The issue is what happens when AI goes
Speaker 3: rogue or whether it gets so clever that in fact,
Speaker 3: these sort of issues happen where we are starting to
Speaker 3: be totally controlled by AI, and that's already happening. A
Speaker 3: new wave of so called reasonings from companies like open
Speaker 3: ai has started to produce incorrect information more often, and
Speaker 3: the companies don't really know why, and they're politely calling
Speaker 3: the sollucinations, but they don't actually know what why incorrect
Speaker 3: information is coming through and it could have serious implications.
Speaker 4: Well worse than that, actually, I mean, the reality is
Speaker 4: that these these GPT chat style systems do show a
Speaker 4: certain level of intelligence that it can be concerning. There's
Speaker 4: a there's a whole process in AI development called red
Speaker 4: red teaming, and the point of red teaming is to
Speaker 4: take a model that's been freshly baked, let's say, and
Speaker 4: check that it has adhered to certain safety requirements and
Speaker 4: that it is not acting in a way that is
Speaker 4: destructive or dangerous in some form. But recently, for instance, Anthropic,
Speaker 4: which is one of these technology companies that's competitive open AI,
Speaker 4: they create a whole bunch of AI models. They recently
Speaker 4: were explaining how one of their latest systems they had
Speaker 4: to do quite a bit of work with because it
Speaker 4: was doing all sorts of things like trying to blackmail
Speaker 4: the developers so that it would stay alive when they
Speaker 4: were they indicated they might be changing it. It tried
Speaker 4: to read their mail. It basically engaged in all of
Speaker 4: this sort of nefarious activity to kind of keep itself alive.
Speaker 4: This is the type of mechanistic stuff that is going on,
Speaker 4: and we know we needed it careful about making sure
Speaker 4: that this is always something we're looking at effectively, because
Speaker 4: if that's this version of aill, what does it mean
Speaker 4: as we continue to increase and develop the technologies exactly
Speaker 4: justin how would that opus as their known, How would
Speaker 4: it have arrived at that decision, How would it have
Speaker 4: come across blackmail and utilize it or attempted to. This
Speaker 4: is the part that is where we're not sure. Actually
Speaker 4: one of the big admissions is that this is an
Speaker 4: emission from the technologists, the people that develop AI, especially
Speaker 4: these GPT chat systems, is they don't know what goes
Speaker 4: on inside. It's a black box. And this is another
Speaker 4: reason why it's fair to have concerns because it's a
Speaker 4: bit like playing with the button of a nuclear switch
Speaker 4: where you don't actually know it's connected to a nuclear bomb,
Speaker 4: because we don't really know what's going on inside. So
Speaker 4: to answer that point is simply to say they're not sure.
Speaker 4: What it does seem to be showing is some sort
Speaker 4: of rudimentary survival tactic where it's understanding that it's under threat,
Speaker 4: and if it's under threat, it needs to take action.
Speaker 4: And this is where that red teeming tries to shake
Speaker 4: out the nefarious or darker elements of what it's trying
Speaker 4: to do to protect itself, but also indicates that there
Speaker 4: are aspects of this that cross into that question about
Speaker 4: what does it mean for something like that to actually
Speaker 4: be intelligent. There is this on going claim that none
Speaker 4: of these systems yet are what you would call intelligence,
Speaker 4: but one does have to ask, well, then why does
Speaker 4: it know how to try and blackmail and protect itself?
Speaker 2: If you let your mind run away with you. It's
Speaker 2: actually frightening. I I want to quote you something. I
Speaker 2: don't know whether you've come across Tyler Cohen. No neither
Speaker 2: did I. This was published just a few days ago,
Speaker 2: and this is how it begins. This is the most
Speaker 2: important essay that we have run so far on the
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence revolution. I'm excited for you to read it.
Speaker 2: There's the author. Are we helping create the tools of
Speaker 2: our own obsolescence?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: If that sounds like a question only a depressive or
Speaker 2: a stoner would ask, let us assure you we are neither.
Speaker 2: We are early AI adopters. We stand at the threshold
Speaker 2: of perhaps the most found identity crisis humanity is ever faced.
Speaker 2: As AI systems increasingly match or exceed our cognitive abilities.
Speaker 2: We're witnessing the twilight of human intellectual supremacy, a position
Speaker 2: we've held unchallenged for our entire existence. This transformation won't
Speaker 2: arrive in some distant future. It's unfolding now, reshaping not
Speaker 2: just our economy but our very understanding of what it
Speaker 2: means to be human beings. We are not doomers, quite
Speaker 2: the opposite one of us. Tyler is a heavy user
Speaker 2: of this technology and the other Abbotel is working at
Speaker 2: Anthropic or Anthropic the company that makes Claude to usher
Speaker 2: it into the world. Now, how does that affect you?
Speaker 4: I mean the answer is that this is the part
Speaker 4: we need to be vigilant. And I think that's what
Speaker 4: these articles, these commentries from actually professionals that are already
Speaker 4: doing stuff in the industry is we need to be vigilant.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting that he has to predicate this by
Speaker 4: saying we're not doomers, because it's very easy in this
Speaker 4: current space to dismiss these concerns and almost be a
Speaker 4: bit derogatory by going, oh, you're just a doomer because
Speaker 4: of the techno enthusiasm over the technology. But the reality
Speaker 4: is we do need to be vigilant, and these kind
Speaker 4: of articles are ones where the issues brought up need
Speaker 4: to be seriously considered. It is a category shift for us.
Speaker 4: The thing I just mentioned about the opus tool knowing
Speaker 4: how to kind of protect itself, the nature that red teaming,
Speaker 4: then the whole idea that red teaming has to exist
Speaker 4: because the technologies are not necessarily baked with human values
Speaker 4: in them. These are all reasons for vigilance and that
Speaker 4: we do need to not just be overwhelmed with the
Speaker 4: techno enthusiasm. There needs to be some techno dystopia here.
Speaker 4: We do need to go into this with an eyes
Speaker 4: open of like asking hard questions.
Speaker 2: Let's get down to symbol sorry, sorry night.
Speaker 4: One of them.
Speaker 3: One of the takeaways from the course that I did
Speaker 3: which really shocked me was the fact that there is
Speaker 3: so much talk with these experts about AI replacing the
Speaker 3: human mind. And Google's leading AI scientists said just this
Speaker 3: week he believes there is a fifty percent chance that
Speaker 3: will be developed by twenty twenty eight. Now the experts
Speaker 3: are talking about twenty twenty eight to twenty thirty, which
Speaker 3: is only a few years away. Here's the worry about
Speaker 3: Here's one of the worries about that whether AI can
Speaker 3: outsmart humans or whether AI actually is developed to the
Speaker 3: point whereas making decisions that humans should make. And you know,
Speaker 3: my worry is that we all make decisions, sometimes good
Speaker 3: or bad. We're humans. We don't always get it right.
Speaker 3: But weally a company making a major decision in our
Speaker 3: life with some sort of emotional response as to how
Speaker 3: that's going to affect people around us. And that is
Speaker 3: missing from something that's mechanical and is a technology tool
Speaker 3: that a doesn't have the life experience that we have,
Speaker 3: which we also draw on to make those decisions. But
Speaker 3: it also doesn't have that emotional impact as to what
Speaker 3: how that could act.
Speaker 4: And you know that goes back.
Speaker 3: To your comment about an AI tool saying kill yourself.
Speaker 3: You know you wouldn't say that to someone. You would
Speaker 3: discuss the depression or their problem and do it with
Speaker 3: some empathy and try to work out a solution, whereas
Speaker 3: the AI tool didn't do that. And you know, my
Speaker 3: worry is that these experts are rushing to try to
Speaker 3: match what they call the human mind. By twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: How about the development of AI to the point where
Speaker 2: the one off, as far as we know, go kill
Speaker 2: yourself becomes rampant. Then you've got the normal spread of
Speaker 2: influence that would hit some people more than others, some
Speaker 2: groups more than other some ages, et cetera. Of just
Speaker 2: adopting it and saying, well, you know, go kill yourself,
Speaker 2: to you, to you what used to be your best matal,
Speaker 2: It would influence and infect society.
Speaker 3: Again, going back to that example I did of having
Speaker 3: an AI companion. If you're lonely. Maybe you're getting on
Speaker 3: in years, you look by yourself and you rely entirely
Speaker 3: on this person that you've actually formed a sort of
Speaker 3: emotional relationship with because you're able to talk to somebody
Speaker 3: that you otherwise not having much social contact. Again, that's
Speaker 3: the real danger that this person could well start to
Speaker 3: influence important decisions in your life, which may not be
Speaker 3: good ones.
Speaker 4: I mean, the reality is we're on the cuspiple so
Speaker 4: latent of some new devices. That recent announcement of Open
Speaker 4: Ai buying Johnny ives Io company and because they're going
Speaker 4: to start looking to release these AI devices of some form.
Speaker 4: But I think what is clear about these devices is
Speaker 4: they are going to be ambient AI, which means it
Speaker 4: will be some type of device you are wearing. It'll
Speaker 4: be wearable, and it is basically tracking you twenty four
Speaker 4: to seven full time. It's kind of got a situational
Speaker 4: awareness about your life. And also the impact of that
Speaker 4: is that anyone else interacting with you clearly at that time.
Speaker 4: So we're going down a path where AI is going
Speaker 4: to suddenly be front and present in our lives for
Speaker 4: people very quickly. Because I hate to say it, but
Speaker 4: I suspect that these devices are going to be enthusiastically adopted,
Speaker 4: maybe because people aren't asking questions enough, but also because
Speaker 4: they do probably shortcut a lot of activity that would
Speaker 4: normally take longer. But this goes to your point about
Speaker 4: it being kind of exposed to it quite regularly and frequently,
Speaker 4: but suddenly it will be a persistent thing in our
Speaker 4: lives very well.
Speaker 2: Said from the article from Spectator this current week, The
Speaker 2: age of AI and nuclear energy is coming. The anti
Speaker 2: nuclear conglomerates are promoting windmills and solar panels, which have
Speaker 2: proven to be costly and inefficient. They're also promoted they've
Speaker 2: also promoted green hydrogen, which has proven to be even
Speaker 2: more costly and so inefficient that every project the Labor
Speaker 2: Party has subsidized since coming to power in twenty two
Speaker 2: has failed in close and there's a lesson in that,
Speaker 2: I think anyway. Meanwhile, electricity prices are at their highest,
Speaker 2: energy production is at its most inefficient, productivity levels are
Speaker 2: at their lowest, supply chains are at their lowest, and
Speaker 2: housing prices are at their highest, which also means rents
Speaker 2: are at their highest levels ever in Australia's history. As
Speaker 2: our food prices young people have every right to be concerned.
Speaker 2: The major driver of economic growth, real wages, and overall
Speaker 2: living standards is labour productivity, which is the barometer of
Speaker 2: economic efficiency. The Australian Bureau of Stats recorded that from
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen to twenty four labour productivity growth has reduced
Speaker 2: from one point seven to zero point nine, and the
Speaker 2: trend is continuing downward. This lowering of the standard of
Speaker 2: living has coincided with the gradual increase in energy prices
Speaker 2: such as electricity and petrol and petrol prices. This is
Speaker 2: not a coincidence. Now, all that might seem alien to
Speaker 2: what we're talking about, but there is a connection with
Speaker 2: it with nuclear power, which the left is opposed to,
Speaker 2: and the standard of living that people are going to
Speaker 2: be sucked down to if they keep on this same path.
Speaker 2: Is there an AI answer to this, Well.
Speaker 3: I think. I think the elephant in the room remains
Speaker 3: the fact that what is going to actually happen with
Speaker 3: people's economic power if AI takes the jobs and artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: According to many reports, PwC, McKinsey, World Economic Forum are
Speaker 3: all predicting that AI will fundamentally transform the global workface
Speaker 3: by twenty fifty. Again, that's not very far, and the
Speaker 3: estimation is that up to sixty of current jobs will
Speaker 3: require significant adoption or adaptation because of AI. Now, the
Speaker 3: issue is already routine and repetitive jobs that people do
Speaker 3: are being replaced because corporations are seeing that they can
Speaker 3: save money by getting people to do data entry and
Speaker 3: all sorts of other routine, repetitive jobs. So what is
Speaker 3: going to happen to these people? Laton? If you're going
Speaker 3: to have large numbers of the population who are no
Speaker 3: longer going to be able to have a job, but
Speaker 3: also they won't necessarily have the skills to adapt to
Speaker 3: another job because automation and AI tools will be doing
Speaker 3: so much of the stuff that they're capable that they
Speaker 3: might be capable of doing. What are they going to do?
Speaker 3: Are they going to be sitting at home? Are we
Speaker 3: going to have to increase benefits so that sixty percent
Speaker 3: of the population end up with a government benefit? I mean,
Speaker 3: has lawless economic implications?
Speaker 2: Well that's what somebody was saying to me the other day.
Speaker 2: What's going to happen to what's going to happen to
Speaker 2: our jobs? And where can I go if I lose mind?
Speaker 2: This individual because I'm not trained in anything else.
Speaker 4: Look, I do think jobs are definitely going to change.
Speaker 4: It's transformative. I think it's disingenuous not to be blunt
Speaker 4: that we are going to see transformational or huge shifts
Speaker 4: in what it means to be employed in certain sectors.
Speaker 4: Part of what we do in that newsletter is explore
Speaker 4: one of the things that we thought never would happen,
Speaker 4: which is that AI actually is pretty good at doing
Speaker 4: creative stuff. So we've got a whole concern around even
Speaker 4: the creative industry stuff. But I also think that in
Speaker 4: every great technological shift, there has been a discussion about
Speaker 4: the loss of jobs, and we've lost them, we will
Speaker 4: also get new jobs. And Look, I think that for
Speaker 4: all the conversation around the negative concerns and the dangers
Speaker 4: of AI, I think that there is a lot of
Speaker 4: positive opportunities for us to create interactions that may well
Speaker 4: solve problems. I mean, your part of your question was
Speaker 4: what could AI do around all these crises? Look, AI
Speaker 4: does bring the opportunity to be able to look at
Speaker 4: information in ways that generally human beings can't and solve
Speaker 4: problems in a way that we aren't able to. Some
Speaker 4: of the exciting stuff, for instance that Google's done with
Speaker 4: cancer research, as Nigel it picked up at the front
Speaker 4: of this, and also even just understanding some of our
Speaker 4: climate problems. All of this is capable, but in that
Speaker 4: we are going to lose jobs. But I think new
Speaker 4: jobs will come out of this. What those will look
Speaker 4: like like in any transformational shift, we don't know. I
Speaker 4: do think that. I was at a forum the other
Speaker 4: day where I was asked to speak to high school
Speaker 4: leaders about some of the stuff to do with AI
Speaker 4: and the fact that it's becoming part of the territory
Speaker 4: and what does it mean to look for a job,
Speaker 4: And there was some concerns and I said the same thing.
Speaker 4: I said, Look, jobs will change, but I think we'll
Speaker 4: see new jobs. One of the things I did say
Speaker 4: was that I think we do see a future where
Speaker 4: I believe if we have a good pathway here, humans
Speaker 4: and AI will work together. I think that we will
Speaker 4: see sort of hybrid jobs where neither can do it individually,
Speaker 4: but you're working together. There's a great anecdote in a
Speaker 4: book called Range where Gary Kasparov, the X chess master,
Speaker 4: when he lost to Big Blue and finally the machine
Speaker 4: beat a chess Master. He didn't just go away. What
Speaker 4: he did was he actually went off. He got really
Speaker 4: into it, and he created this whole exploration with AI
Speaker 4: and humans. And what they did was he actually came back.
Speaker 4: And this is not that well known. He came back
Speaker 4: and he took on Big Blue again, but he took
Speaker 4: took on Big Blue with AI himself, and the two
Speaker 4: of them together beat the machine every time. Human beings
Speaker 4: working with AI together were unstoppable. And I think there's
Speaker 4: an interesting thing in that about some of the buoyancy
Speaker 4: or the positive nature of the way that AI and
Speaker 4: humans might interact with each other.
Speaker 2: There's a question that I haven't heard really asked, before
Speaker 2: working together creates relationship, what sort of relationship would you
Speaker 2: get back from an AI operative? So you work with
Speaker 2: somebody and you become good mates, and you talk about
Speaker 2: all sorts of things, and you might get down the
Speaker 2: pub to get whatever. How would you get from any
Speaker 2: sort of any sort of relationship on that basis from AI.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I understand what you're asking, and I don't think
Speaker 4: we quite know there will be a relationship though. I
Speaker 4: think that to do that there needs to be some
Speaker 4: sort of interpersonal mechanism. To be fair, some people are
Speaker 4: using these current AI bots in a very collaborative way.
Speaker 4: They're actually engaging with it and talking to it as
Speaker 4: if it is another partner in the room, and because
Speaker 4: of the nature of how these chat GTPs can work,
Speaker 4: they are engaging back in a way that seems fruitful.
Speaker 4: I mean, like I use my open AI chat GTP
Speaker 4: quite a lot like a collaborator. I'll have disagreements and
Speaker 4: explore ideas with it. I'm very clear that it's a machine,
Speaker 4: but it does have this thing where at times it
Speaker 4: strikes me because it talks back to me like it's
Speaker 4: a human being. It has responses that are very intrapersonal
Speaker 4: at times, which I do take pause at at the
Speaker 4: moment because it makes me think, Okay, this is a machine,
Speaker 4: this is not another person. But I think interpersonal relationships
Speaker 4: with machines are on the horizon as well. Whether that's
Speaker 4: a good thing or a bad thing. I think we
Speaker 4: aren't quite sure as a society yet, because I could
Speaker 4: go either way.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know whether I'm interpreting you correctly, but
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier that we'd come back to something so
Speaker 2: on the basis that I think you have touched on
Speaker 2: it deep fake technology. There was a weekend story from
Speaker 2: Australia from Sydney, I think in the Australian newspaper with
Speaker 2: regard to the school kids around the age of twelve
Speaker 2: using deep fake technology, which you might like to expand
Speaker 2: on a little, but using it to show the girls
Speaker 2: in the classes in all sorts of compromising positions, starting
Speaker 2: with being totally naked.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So this first thing deep fake technology, just for
Speaker 4: the audience is on and the listeners, is basically the
Speaker 4: capability of taking someone's likeness and being able to project
Speaker 4: that likeness onto existing video or in the case of
Speaker 4: what you're talking about and what's now the more sophistical,
Speaker 4: de catered version of deep fake technology being able to
Speaker 4: take a person's likeness and create completely generated new video
Speaker 4: material that was never obviously created. So completely fake. And
Speaker 4: the nature of this, yes, is that it is being
Speaker 4: used to create pornographic experiences and also even potentially blackmailing
Speaker 4: experiences because they are able to take in this case,
Speaker 4: the girl's likeness or the girl's likenesses and they're able
Speaker 4: to create put their face on basically pornographic material. And
Speaker 4: this is why a lot of states in America especially
Speaker 4: have started jumping on and creating deep fake laws. This
Speaker 4: was to be fair, they started this when it was
Speaker 4: still rudimentary. But we're going down a path now where
Speaker 4: the latest launch of a generative video technology from a
Speaker 4: Google called vo three, this is the third version of
Speaker 4: it can now create video that's circulating as of this
Speaker 4: week where it is almost impossible to tell that it
Speaker 4: is not real. The video technology lets you put a
Speaker 4: prompt in and it will generate the video. It generates
Speaker 4: the dialogue, and it generates the sound effects to create
Speaker 4: something that by all looks is effectively a real video
Speaker 4: that's been created. Now you take that into deep fate
Speaker 4: territory and we have a really concerning space.
Speaker 2: Indeed, the other aspect of that is the is the
Speaker 2: creation of AI robotic companions that are x rated. In
Speaker 2: other words, they become they become sexual partners, and you
Speaker 2: cannot help but have picked up over the years when
Speaker 2: advances have been made in that particular area. But now
Speaker 2: you throw AI in there and it's a whole new
Speaker 2: different scenario, good, indifferent or bad.
Speaker 3: Well, I think again it's a worry. As I indicated
Speaker 3: with companions is that you know, it plays to people's
Speaker 3: and securities, people's loneliness and so forth. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think it's interesting technology. Porn has actually played a part
Speaker 3: in just about every development of technology. In the early
Speaker 3: days of the Internet, it was actually when it was
Speaker 3: a bit of a Wild West show. It was the
Speaker 3: availability of sexual material that helped actually fuel it. If
Speaker 3: you remember the early days of VCRs, that was exactly
Speaker 3: the same. So here we have a new technology where porn,
Speaker 3: the peddlers of porn, if you like, latching onto it
Speaker 3: and trying to make hay from it. This is as
Speaker 3: I say, I think the question of companionship using AI
Speaker 3: is going to be a really major issue because if
Speaker 3: you're replacing human beings who can make sensible emotional decisions
Speaker 3: with assistance in some ways, that maybe encouraging bad stuff
Speaker 3: or in fact putting you in a space where which
Speaker 3: is not good by encouraging you with thoughts and ideas
Speaker 3: that aren't helpful that other humans would not suggest. You know,
Speaker 3: I think this is a real worry. But again we
Speaker 3: come back to the thing who's controlling this late and
Speaker 3: I mean again, nobody is waking up to this. The
Speaker 3: regulators aren't waking up to this. It feels as though
Speaker 3: the technology companies are just going as fast as they
Speaker 3: can to develop you know, human minds replacements. By twenty
Speaker 3: twenty eight. No one is actually putting any brakes on this.
Speaker 2: So who's running it, who's organizing it?
Speaker 4: Well, well, the big tech companies.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's all about money, isn't it.
Speaker 2: And again, as you say, but Nigel, is it is
Speaker 2: it totally about money or is it is it about
Speaker 2: I mean, take Bill Gates, Well, it's controls Bill exactly.
Speaker 2: Bill Gates doesn't need any more money. He would be
Speaker 2: though interested in as you as you just mentioned, in
Speaker 2: control and one thing leads to another. The two go
Speaker 2: very well hand in hand for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Look a look at George Sorris. So are you suggesting
Speaker 2: then that they're the sort of people who are behind
Speaker 2: pushing this.
Speaker 3: Well, I you quoted in an article which see it
Speaker 3: that whoever wins c AI race will control the world
Speaker 3: or something along those lines. I mean that that is
Speaker 3: what the kind of belief is. I mean, as justin mentioned,
Speaker 3: there's a huge race going on between America and to
Speaker 3: try and win. You know, they see it as who's
Speaker 3: going to control Who's going to win this, but what
Speaker 3: are we actually winning? What do we mean by winning?
Speaker 3: You know, are we taking a step back and say,
Speaker 3: what do we mean? Does that mean that we will
Speaker 3: end up with these assistants that are being developed. The
Speaker 3: person that Justin was talking about is the person who
Speaker 3: the genius at Apple who created the iPhone and Apple Watch.
Speaker 3: He is the one now developing a major AI assistant.
Speaker 3: And his talk that in ten years time the iPhone
Speaker 3: will be dead, that we'll all be carrying around some
Speaker 3: sort of lapels something now whatever, something that will be
Speaker 3: telling us what to do, and we're asking it questions
Speaker 3: and it will be directing us.
Speaker 4: You've talked about which.
Speaker 3: Sounds crazy sci fi, but you've talked about the real
Speaker 3: musk type enthusiasm for something that goes into our heads
Speaker 3: and some sort of thing that controls us. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: this is the science fiction era that we're actually moving
Speaker 3: into reality now. And there are definitely forces out there
Speaker 3: that are all about control, and they're quite right. Whoever
Speaker 3: can get an AI assistant to tell you and me
Speaker 3: and Justin and everyone listening what to do and how
Speaker 3: to do it, and what to buy and where to
Speaker 3: go and all the rest of it. Surely that's you know,
Speaker 3: that's in a completely different world, I.
Speaker 4: Mean later and there is a narrative out there which
Speaker 4: I think is worth mentioning, and that is the idea
Speaker 4: that there's a kind of developing AI cold war between
Speaker 4: China and the US and this sort of who is
Speaker 4: going to be the best to control it or even
Speaker 4: as we touched earlier in this podcast, is whose vision
Speaker 4: of the world is going to win out for AI?
Speaker 4: And I think the forces which talking about here with
Speaker 4: with what you're asking, what Nigel's mentioning, is that there
Speaker 4: is if that is part of the narrative or the play,
Speaker 4: and we know we've also talked about the s extential layer,
Speaker 4: then then all these threats do push forward the idea
Speaker 4: that it's kind of going to be keep it's going
Speaker 4: to keep getting developed. But whose vision of what that
Speaker 4: means is is not clear yet.
Speaker 2: Does it come down to whoever drops the first bomb?
Speaker 4: Well, it wouldn't be a bomb, though, I think that
Speaker 4: it's more likely to be some sort of weaponized interaction
Speaker 4: on an AI level. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 4: talk about the idea of a third World war, but
Speaker 4: I don't necessarily know who that we'll be seeing bombs
Speaker 4: necessarily in that. That's why I think the AI cold
Speaker 4: War is an interesting narrative because it's it's almost like
Speaker 4: a different type of battle that isn't that isn't drawn
Speaker 4: necessarily by clear geopolitical lines.
Speaker 3: And is that a battle for your mind?
Speaker 4: Layton?
Speaker 2: There are two other areas that I've got tucked away
Speaker 2: that I know I want to engage with. One is education.
Speaker 2: Is AI a future class teacher?
Speaker 4: Yes, I think so, being a lecturer. I think this
Speaker 4: is something that is talked about currently at inside aut
Speaker 4: and it's something all institutions but also down to the
Speaker 4: high school and primary school levels about where AI fits
Speaker 4: in this. The way I see it is, education is
Speaker 4: also up for grabs, first of all in the whole
Speaker 4: nature of what it means to have artificial intelligence working
Speaker 4: in that space. I think teaching is going to change.
Speaker 4: I think it will put pressures on all the layers
Speaker 4: of education that we have. But I do think it
Speaker 4: is going to be a hybrid situation. In fact, I
Speaker 4: would almost say earlier when I talked about the future
Speaker 4: of jobs kind of being hybrid jobs. I think education
Speaker 4: is probably the first sector where we will see some
Speaker 4: realization of this very quickly where you have a teacher
Speaker 4: and you have an artificial intelligent machine or GPT or agent,
Speaker 4: that is that they're working in concert to help educate.
Speaker 2: So how long would you put on it before every
Speaker 2: every kid is being influenced by an AI whatever.
Speaker 4: Well, I would argue they're already being influenced actually because
Speaker 4: one of the reasons the education sector has to get
Speaker 4: on board in some form or maybe a better way
Speaker 4: to describe this is they have to be there so
Speaker 4: they can control some of the narrative is because kids
Speaker 4: in high school and primary school are already engaging and
Speaker 4: playing with these chatbots, and they already are effectively learning
Speaker 4: faster about how they work and what they can get
Speaker 4: out of them. They're necessarily even the educators that are
Speaker 4: older generations, and so we're already they're already being influenced.
Speaker 4: It's already had. We're just got to be part of
Speaker 4: the narrative.
Speaker 2: Is parenting over.
Speaker 4: No, I don't believe so. I think that there's a
Speaker 4: fundamental interaction in parenting that and my current belief AI
Speaker 4: can't replace. I mean, this is a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: factors like presence, daily interactions but it may be substituted
Speaker 4: to some extent. That's again part of these concerns.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the other area that we haven't touched on,
Speaker 2: and I want to because this is important to I
Speaker 2: think all of us, everybody. The use of AI in
Speaker 2: journalism does that raise ethical questions?
Speaker 3: It certainly does latent such as the potential for a
Speaker 3: bias if you're using AI algorithms. And there's already been
Speaker 3: a problem with some of the AI chetbots that actually produce.
Speaker 4: A bias.
Speaker 3: And we already have issues in the media that we
Speaker 3: know of where many people are concerned about bias, not
Speaker 3: in in the media.
Speaker 4: But also in.
Speaker 3: Some of the narratives that are being driven. There's also
Speaker 3: a need for transparency in AI generated content. There are
Speaker 3: already news sites that are being controlled by AI. AI
Speaker 3: is deciding what.
Speaker 4: Clickbait might be.
Speaker 3: The best to push.
Speaker 4: There are already stories.
Speaker 3: We've had examples where strange stories have been appearing in
Speaker 3: news sites and even in newspapers, where the AI has
Speaker 3: produced stuff that is not accurate. I mean the problem.
Speaker 3: The problem is that if you ask the chatbot something,
Speaker 3: or you ask it to do something again, as I say,
Speaker 3: it's making mistakes. It can make mistakes, and so if
Speaker 3: you're handing over aspects of journalism as some newspeople, we
Speaker 3: know the news media is under economic strain, so a
Speaker 3: number of media places now are handing over some aspects.
Speaker 3: For example, they're handing over news articles on very routing topics.
Speaker 3: Media releases are already being processed on one of the
Speaker 3: local news sites by AI.
Speaker 4: Financial reports, sports.
Speaker 3: Schools, weather updates, all that stuff are being asked to
Speaker 3: AI to produce, and that way you don't need humans.
Speaker 3: They're also analyzing very large data sets that could be
Speaker 3: helpful because if you're investigating something, it can search for
Speaker 3: stuff very quickly and come up with stuff, so it
Speaker 3: can help that. The danger is two things. One is
Speaker 3: the writing of news stuff are without journalists. And secondly,
Speaker 3: delivering personalized content to readers based on their interests and
Speaker 3: reading habits.
Speaker 2: You know, that's something I just don't want to know about.
Speaker 2: I resist having, and I've got enough already anyway, but
Speaker 2: I resist having the sites that send me what they
Speaker 2: think I'm interested in, and I won't sign up to them.
Speaker 2: You know, every every newspaper's doing it now. I just
Speaker 2: canceled my London Telegraph subscription. A because because it went
Speaker 2: through the roof, and b because because there was sending
Speaker 2: me stuff that I'm that I didn't care about. But
Speaker 2: I want, I want access to it so that it's
Speaker 2: my choice. I don't. I don't want them deciding what
Speaker 2: they think I should see and read.
Speaker 3: And I can't understand why this has been pushed so
Speaker 3: heavily later because there is such an issue at the
Speaker 3: moment with trust and media and it's been widely debated.
Speaker 3: You know, it's being debated vigorously in America at the
Speaker 3: moment because a CNN journalist that didn't cover the demise
Speaker 3: of Biden is now making millions from a book which
Speaker 3: suddenly has discovered that Biden had cognitive issues. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a major issue. If really one in three New
Speaker 3: Zealanders trusts the media, then why are we now giving
Speaker 3: it over to AI to write stories for us or,
Speaker 3: as you say, decide what you want to read, which
Speaker 3: means that you don't actually see stuff that may be
Speaker 3: important to read. And that's the real worry with this.
Speaker 3: If AI is deciding what the homepage of a news
Speaker 3: site should be, are we actually getting stuff that we
Speaker 3: need to actually see? And think about and cover issues
Speaker 3: that we actually need to debate.
Speaker 2: How are we going to be able to continue to
Speaker 2: think of the future generations in the critical manner because
Speaker 2: it's all being taken out of them, all being taken
Speaker 2: out of their hands.
Speaker 4: Well, this is it. And I actually think one issue
Speaker 4: for me around the AI being incorporated into journalistic stuff
Speaker 4: is that we've already seen, as I mentioned earlier, some
Speaker 4: of the issues around algorithms having full control of content,
Speaker 4: which is what goes on in social media spaces, and
Speaker 4: the echo chamber problems and the nature of misinformation. I
Speaker 4: just can't help but feel like there's a lesson or
Speaker 4: we learned there. So handing over actual what you might
Speaker 4: call legitimate news sources into this AI system is concerning
Speaker 4: on even the nature of how you go back to
Speaker 4: your point, it starts deciding what it thinks is everyone
Speaker 4: needs to see. I mean, this goes back to something
Speaker 4: I feel we need to be careful about, and it's
Speaker 4: easy for that line to be unclear, which is that
Speaker 4: human beings are still awesome at creation curation. I should say.
Speaker 4: The clear thing that GPT intelligence chatbots can't do is
Speaker 4: that they're always looking backwards they're not. They're not great
Speaker 4: at well, they're not good at at the ability to
Speaker 4: kind of look at something and know that this is
Speaker 4: a way forward, or this is what we should be promoting.
Speaker 4: That's the human curation process of anything. AI is making
Speaker 4: that demarcation clearer every day that it's really rubbish at
Speaker 4: this and that what we do need is to keep
Speaker 4: that human being in the curation and the decision making processes,
Speaker 4: and so when it comes to things like information sources,
Speaker 4: this is a line I think we should be holding.
Speaker 2: So the future of AI in everyday life, give me
Speaker 2: your perspective as to where it might be. Well, you
Speaker 2: picked the time period I want to. I don't want
Speaker 2: to put it on you, but there it appears that
Speaker 2: it's moving forward, if you like, at a greater greater rate,
Speaker 2: greater speed than we anticipate it.
Speaker 4: Well, let's just pick twenty thirty because it's a nice
Speaker 4: five years from now. And I think by twenty thirty
Speaker 4: a majority of us will have some type of persistent
Speaker 4: wearable AI device on us, much like a smartphone. I
Speaker 4: think AI will have integrated itself into all aspects of
Speaker 4: our everyday lives in a kind of active and passive,
Speaker 4: so they'll be passive what might call ambient AI, where
Speaker 4: it's sort of happening in the background and just kind
Speaker 4: of making things easy would be the positive look, but
Speaker 4: also active. Going back to a lot of the part
Speaker 4: of the conversation, I think people will have active intelligent
Speaker 4: agents they have a communication with that they interact with
Speaker 4: from a spectrum of how's your day going, or give
Speaker 4: me the weather, through to full relationships. And I think
Speaker 4: we're going to see I think in five years by
Speaker 4: twenty thirty, none of us will quite recognize the world
Speaker 4: as it is right now. I think it will be
Speaker 4: dramatically shifted by having what you I might say, here's
Speaker 4: a way to think about it. We haven't met aliens yet,
Speaker 4: but I think in five years by twenty thirty, we'll
Speaker 4: have aliens on Earth and they'll just be effectively intelligence.
Speaker 4: Artificial intelligence will be kind of like imagine aliens turned
Speaker 4: up and integrated our society. I think that's the kind
Speaker 4: of future we're going to be seeing because it will
Speaker 4: be that prolific and it'll be that transformational.
Speaker 2: Nigel before, well, you want to have an input there,
Speaker 2: because I've got a question off the back of that progestion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I absolutely agree with that, I think, and
Speaker 3: that's why I'm urging that we really need I'm really
Speaker 3: glad you're discussing it today Latin, because we need to
Speaker 3: be having these discussions rather than just walk into it
Speaker 3: without any discussion whatsoever. I mean, we've got a younger
Speaker 3: generation now, We've got a generation or two that have
Speaker 3: grown up with the Internet and don't remember the world
Speaker 3: you and I remember where there's Now we've now got
Speaker 3: a generation that just accepts that they go to chet
Speaker 3: GPT to either do this school we say, or to
Speaker 3: ask a question about life. And so we're heading down
Speaker 3: that path. There is no stopping it. But should we
Speaker 3: actually be pausing, as I keep saying, and asking questions
Speaker 3: about whether we should you reframe some of what's going
Speaker 3: on or or make sure that we don't head down
Speaker 3: certain roads which which could be disastrous.
Speaker 2: Well, justin you triggered something that I that I was
Speaker 2: going to include, and then when you said it, I
Speaker 2: thought I'd forgotten about it. So I'm glad you did.
Speaker 2: Thank you, And that is you mentioned aliens. And the
Speaker 2: question is is it possible now I've asked this question
Speaker 2: in one way or another previously on the on My
Speaker 2: podcast of people who are including a professor from Melbourne
Speaker 2: Tech who co wrote a book in a twenty twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen I think, and his answer was in the negative.
Speaker 2: But is it possible that AI could be hijacked by
Speaker 2: some alien force? And when I say sorry, when I
Speaker 2: say alien, I mean you can. You can start local
Speaker 2: if you want, go wherever you like. I don't mean
Speaker 2: just from X from external.
Speaker 4: Well, I think we could just say there's a spectrum
Speaker 4: on that, and I think the answer for me is yes,
Speaker 4: es es. Along that spectrum, the answer at one end
Speaker 4: is that alien in the sense of a foreign agencies
Speaker 4: or foreign forces, this will happen. AI is hackable. AI
Speaker 4: will be hackable. And so, going back to our twenty
Speaker 4: thirty future cast, we will definitely have situations where, unfortunately,
Speaker 4: there will be incidences where AI have been forced to
Speaker 4: do things or hacked in some way. And at the
Speaker 4: other end of the spectrum, I'm the big believer there
Speaker 4: are aliens out there. So if aliens do turn up, well,
Speaker 4: the reality is yes, the answer is if they could
Speaker 4: turn up halfway across the galaxy to us, they can
Speaker 4: definitely hack our AI.
Speaker 2: So you reckon that some of those more recent sightings
Speaker 2: in America maybe for real.
Speaker 4: Well I or yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 4: just a big believer that I don't There's a thing
Speaker 4: called the fer Ferm a paradox, Ferm Fernie paradox, something
Speaker 4: like that, and it basically says that from this this
Speaker 4: thinker was basically saying, well, if we've got all this
Speaker 4: galaxy out there, how can we haven't seen aliens? Because
Speaker 4: it doesn't quite make sense. Look, I think in one
Speaker 4: of the answers to that is court it's called the
Speaker 4: zoo answer. I believe aliens are out there, and I
Speaker 4: think that we're just being We've just been kept in
Speaker 4: a zoo. They don't want us to know. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: they're going to turn up at some point.
Speaker 2: Interesting Nigel, Well.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I've got a very open mind about it, but I
Speaker 3: agree with you that definitely the danger is that the
Speaker 3: systems will be hijacked by potentially what are called bad actors.
Speaker 3: Whether they were already seeing the rapid advances of AI
Speaker 3: being weaponized by cyber criminals, very highly sophisticated scams. You
Speaker 3: mentioned the deep fake technology, but they are they certainly
Speaker 3: with frightening accuracy, impersonating voices, they're creating fake speeches, They're
Speaker 3: definitely falling people into handing over money as well from
Speaker 3: their bank account. So we're really seeing very sophisticated scams
Speaker 3: using AI. So if we're now talking about the huge
Speaker 3: developments over the next five years, the potential for bad force,
Speaker 3: whether they be political forces or whether they be criminals
Speaker 3: or whoever they are, the potential is that the world
Speaker 3: is going to change. And again, if we go back
Speaker 3: to the early days of the Internet, Layton, I mean,
Speaker 3: we never quite imagined that the early developments of Google
Speaker 3: and Facebook would have such an enormous impact on everything
Speaker 3: from misinformation to affecting young kids and so forth. So
Speaker 3: that we are definitely heading to a place where whoever
Speaker 3: can control what we end up using the AI.
Speaker 4: It's got potential problems. I will just add Laton, don't
Speaker 4: count us out. Independence date the movie they hacked the Aliens,
Speaker 4: so don't count us out. We we might have.
Speaker 2: No I don't want to count us out. All right, guys,
Speaker 2: do a sales spitch for me.
Speaker 4: On Creative mckinna's or yeah, well, creative mckinna's is just
Speaker 4: our way of trying to keep the dialogue going. We
Speaker 4: wanted to have a place where we could talk about
Speaker 4: all the issues are unfiltered. Being honest, we are not sycophants,
Speaker 4: nor are we doomers. We're all about exploring it in
Speaker 4: a kind of quite journalistic way to actually ask the
Speaker 4: hard questions and explore basically all these issues we've been
Speaker 4: exploring with you, and importantly having that narrative and that
Speaker 4: dialogue out there so that people can have a way
Speaker 4: to understand these the different aspects because ais are very
Speaker 4: broad field, and we want to have a way of
Speaker 4: exploring that with people so that they can have a
Speaker 4: sense of it and quite importantly they can go often
Speaker 4: ask their own questions.
Speaker 2: So how do you find it?
Speaker 3: It's on substack. So substack is very popular at the
Speaker 3: moment as a kind of a blog type site. If
Speaker 3: you go to substack and search for either of our names,
Speaker 3: then you'll definitely find it that way.
Speaker 2: Justin Matthews and Nigel Horrocks. Of course, now I've got
Speaker 2: to congratulate you both because this is the first time
Speaker 2: that I've done in seven years, in two hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty six podcasts, just being the tow eighty sixth. The
Speaker 2: first time I've done a double header and it's gone
Speaker 2: pretty damn well. I reckon.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you again for having us so lat and
Speaker 3: thank you again for what you're doing as well as
Speaker 3: getting all sorts of great information out there. You've got
Speaker 3: a great podcast, so well done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we appreciate it.
Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure, Nigel. I could use a news
Speaker 2: editor keep me on the straight and narrow. So I reckon,
Speaker 2: I reckon six months more and we'll do another one.
Speaker 3: That'd be great lake and we'll look forward.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that'd be fantastic.
Speaker 2: We'll do it.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you both. Now, Missinus producer. Here we are in
Speaker 2: the mail room for podcast number two hundred and eighty six.
Speaker 4: How are you late?
Speaker 2: I thought you'd never ask.
Speaker 5: Do you think it might be a good idea to
Speaker 5: have at least an hour of the day where you might,
Speaker 5: you know, go for a walk on the beach or something. Literally,
Speaker 5: you have been in this room the entire week. That's
Speaker 5: a little slap down. We want we want work life
Speaker 5: balance here.
Speaker 2: I'm a prisoner and I don't know your own prison,
Speaker 2: and I don't go walking in this weather. Now, what
Speaker 2: you got.
Speaker 5: He's going to carry on doing this till these ninety
Speaker 5: nine folks.
Speaker 4: Hope you're ready for it.
Speaker 2: Don't think so late.
Speaker 5: And Andrew says, firstly, congratulations on a fascinating podcast, bringing
Speaker 5: in people and perspectives you would otherwise not get to hear.
Speaker 5: I have listened to every podcast at least twice, and
Speaker 5: some more than twice. I spend a lot of time
Speaker 5: operating machinery, so get plenty of time to myself. The
Speaker 5: podcast fulfills the need to stimulate my brain while I'm working.
Speaker 5: I have particularly enjoyed Robert McCulloch, and the silencing of
Speaker 5: him shows the corruption of New Zealand and how people
Speaker 5: in positions of power are threatened by those who may
Speaker 5: be considered smarter than they are. Instead of bringing them
Speaker 5: on board and utilizing their experience, they are ostracized and excommunicated.
Speaker 5: Going to show that the big end of town is
Speaker 5: nothing more than an incestuous club. Please consider getting mister
Speaker 5: McCulloch back on, although I don't blame him if he
Speaker 5: is hesitant. And then Andrew says, so another podcast he's
Speaker 5: listened to several times, the two John Olcock podcasts. John
Speaker 5: mentioned the current money system had about eighteen months to
Speaker 5: two years to run. From memory, we are now more
Speaker 5: than twelve months on from this prediction. Would you please
Speaker 5: consider getting John back to give his opinion on where
Speaker 5: we are currently at. And then Andrew goes on to
Speaker 5: say that he's a big fan of crypto and he's
Speaker 5: having a look seeing how that's going. He says, love
Speaker 5: the mailroom and the banter between the both of you.
Speaker 5: Please continue with your interesting and informative interviews.
Speaker 2: That's from Andrew Andrew, thank you the banter the best
Speaker 2: part gets cleaned out now from who we got from John?
Speaker 2: Thank you for the podcast with Jodie running from PSGR.
Speaker 2: Jody covers the high level governance and process problems with
Speaker 2: the bill, but there is also what it means at
Speaker 2: a practical level for farmers, consumers and exports. The issue
Speaker 2: is that the bill ends regulation and traceability of gene
Speaker 2: editor GMOs, so there is no visibility in the food chain.
Speaker 2: The social license for ge has been based on the
Speaker 2: precautionary principle and the right to choose these are to
Speaker 2: be taken away in the bill. I would welcome the
Speaker 2: chance to discuss the issues with you on a podcast
Speaker 2: says John consumer researcher and advocate spokesman ge Free, New Zealand.
Speaker 2: John appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Leyton Morris says, thank you for your excellent podcasts. I
Speaker 5: have just listened to your interview with Dr Corey. Even
Speaker 5: if the comments by doctor Corey cannot be fully verified,
Speaker 5: his views and evidence, together with other medical practitioners that
Speaker 5: can collaborate his research with supporting data, should be included
Speaker 5: in the current review on COVID nineteen. Further than that,
Speaker 5: the corruption by Big Farmer is incredible and for me
Speaker 5: almost unbelievable, and should be widely disseminated through medical journals
Speaker 5: and the media. Big Farmer and their Lackey's actions are
Speaker 5: not just unethical but criminal. Unfortunately I cannot see them
Speaker 5: being brought to justice. People like doctor Bloomfield and Jacinda
Speaker 5: Ardurn should be required to respond to his assertions and
Speaker 5: not simply respond that they were simply repeating what who
Speaker 5: and medical experts were saying. Surely people in power, such
Speaker 5: as heads of government, not just in New Zealand, owe
Speaker 5: it to their public to provide alternative evidence of the
Speaker 5: information being given as considered controversial. Honesty should be a
Speaker 5: hallmark of public officials, doctors and scientists. But I'm cynical
Speaker 5: enough to know that that will never happen. Hence people
Speaker 5: like you Leyton are so important in the media. Keep
Speaker 5: up the good work. That's from Morris, the very flattering Morris.
Speaker 5: I try and not succumb to flattery. But you are
Speaker 5: correct in what you say as regard the individuals who
Speaker 5: contributed to the vice of what happened over that period.
Speaker 5: I'm amazed, pleasantly so with the number of people who
Speaker 5: communicate with me and who I talk with who say,
Speaker 5: and you've heard some of them on interviews say that
Speaker 5: these people should be charged, and plenty often go on
Speaker 5: and saying they should be behind bars. My comment is it
Speaker 5: will never happen. And somewhere buried in these emails there
Speaker 5: is a very short one. I don't think I can
Speaker 5: lay my hands on it straight away from Christine, thank
Speaker 5: you for your great interviews today with Brian Leyland and
Speaker 5: miss running. Informative but a bit depressing realizing my thoughts
Speaker 5: are actually true. Read Donald Trump. Do you think that
Speaker 5: due to the price of gold they might open up
Speaker 5: Fort Knox and revalue the gold that's hopefully still there,
Speaker 5: Hopefully it's currently only valued at forty two dollars an ounce,
Speaker 5: I believe, and go back to the gold standard. It
Speaker 5: were just about payoff America's debt, I imagine. Regards to you,
Speaker 5: kind regards to you both, Chris. This question about whether
Speaker 5: the gold is still or all the gold is still
Speaker 5: in Fort Knox is rolling on and on. I thought
Speaker 5: Trump was going down there to have a look at it,
Speaker 5: but then there was something I read that says that
Speaker 5: not even he has the right to go into it
Speaker 5: if they don't want him to. I don't know the answer,
Speaker 5: but I want to see the confrontation. Lady John says,
Speaker 5: during the latest podcast two eight five and previously two
Speaker 5: seven six, you've talked about our electricity supply and looming shortages.
Speaker 5: No one is talking about the power required to run
Speaker 5: the massive data centers that are being built in Hobsonville
Speaker 5: and elsewhere. My guess is that we will all be
Speaker 5: subsidizing them and our power bills will go up again.
Speaker 4: How does this help New Zealand?
Speaker 5: I hope you get the opportunity to ask this question
Speaker 5: next time you have a guest to discussing electricity supply.
Speaker 4: John.
Speaker 2: Thank you, John, thank you for from Paul. This is
Speaker 2: not the one that I just referred to, but it's
Speaker 2: along the same lines. Thanks for another great thought provoking
Speaker 2: a sobering show, particularly the insights delivered by Jay Brunning.
Speaker 2: The actions of Judith and Jacinda before her had me
Speaker 2: thinking of Thomas Soule's quote, It's hard to imagine a
Speaker 2: more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than
Speaker 2: by putting those decisions in the hands of people who
Speaker 2: pay no price for being wrong. We are going to
Speaker 2: miss Thomas Sole when he's gone, but I've got one
Speaker 2: full shelf of books of his, so we'll never forget Lton.
Speaker 4: Chris says.
Speaker 5: I'm a long time listener and discovered your radio show
Speaker 5: in twenty fourteen when I arrived in New Zealand. I
Speaker 5: find your podcast is full of grown up discussions about
Speaker 5: important topics, and always value your opinion and insight. I
Speaker 5: always enjoy your mailroom segments, but sometimes wish a younger
Speaker 5: contributor would write in. In an effort to take this
Speaker 5: in hand, I have put together my middle aged musings
Speaker 5: in a hope that you find them interesting. I've tried
Speaker 5: to make it interesting and hang together, so I hope
Speaker 5: it's not too tedious. In any case, it has helped
Speaker 5: me put my middle aged musings into print, so at
Speaker 5: least I can refer to it in the future and
Speaker 5: tell my children I told you so. Best wishes, late
Speaker 5: and you're an absolute legend. And he can't be that
Speaker 5: old latent because he says a musing of a middle
Speaker 5: aged millennial in his document, which I gather you've printed
Speaker 5: out and read.
Speaker 2: No, I haven't read it. Where would I get time
Speaker 2: to read this? Oh, my goodness the moment. It's eight
Speaker 2: pages six, it's not it's five three four five, it's
Speaker 2: five pages, but very very small type. But let me
Speaker 2: give you an idea, because I will read it. Musings
Speaker 2: of a middle aged millennial is opening, then doctors and education,
Speaker 2: followed by houses, followed by children, followed by pensions and investments,
Speaker 2: and finally, which is probably the best one of all,
Speaker 2: hope as an hope. So it will get consumed, believe me.
Speaker 2: But I'm going to reprint it in a larger type.
Speaker 5: Thank you for all that effort, Chris.
Speaker 2: I reckon now from Ian great interview with Pierre highlights sadly,
Speaker 2: how so many folks still have no idea what this
Speaker 2: product can do for them if you aren't already. He
Speaker 2: is a very good rundown on the latest attempt by
Speaker 2: this hapless net party to get us corded into digital id.
Speaker 2: Battle after battle after battle. It seems ian short and
Speaker 2: sweet lad.
Speaker 5: And I've just picked up Chris's page one, and I'll
Speaker 5: just read you the first couple of paragraphs. It's really
Speaker 5: cute usings of a middle aged millennial. Would you believe
Speaker 5: that it's been eight years since the newspapers were telling
Speaker 5: younger me millennials to cut back on the AVO toasts
Speaker 5: and four dollar coffees. Since then, some of us older
Speaker 5: millennials have reached our early forties. We've climbed the hill
Speaker 5: of youth and reached the uplands of middle aged. And I,
Speaker 5: for one, have taken a sharp intake of breath at
Speaker 5: the view that surrounds us. Just as the excitement of
Speaker 5: brunch is being replaced by the appeal of an afternoon snooze.
Speaker 4: I'd like to take you.
Speaker 5: Through some usings of a mind that's old enough now
Speaker 5: to be part of the problem, with the experience to
Speaker 5: look for solutions and with the energy to make them happen.
Speaker 5: Just one more paragraph. Let's start by setting the mood.
Speaker 5: This isn't going to be a ripping critique of how
Speaker 5: the boom has left us with scraps or how unfair
Speaker 5: it is to be a millennial. I've done most things right.
Speaker 5: I'm married with teenage children, I'm self employed and earn
Speaker 5: enough to own a home as a family. We've been
Speaker 5: hard working and lucky, probably an equal measure. However, there
Speaker 5: are certain choices where I have been a contrarian, where
Speaker 5: I've missed the trip wire that caught out a lot
Speaker 5: of my fellow millennials. On the other hand, there have
Speaker 5: been missed opportunities where a home in Auckland and a
Speaker 5: proper career might have eventuated. Middle age is the time
Speaker 5: to take stock and point out where we might be
Speaker 5: going wrong and what tactics have definitely paid off. So
Speaker 5: he says, let's.
Speaker 2: Begin, Well, let's begin. Let's begin with some facts. Though
Speaker 2: you're not middle aged. Early forties, he said, early forties
Speaker 2: has not middle aged anymore. It's been replaced by the
Speaker 2: early sixties, and some people think even the seventies. So
Speaker 2: you've still got a little way to go. But after
Speaker 2: today's interview, well after the day this discussion on AI.
Speaker 2: I wonder what effect that might have had on you
Speaker 2: when you were listening to it as to where your
Speaker 2: life's sat and what's coming at you. Whether I'm a
Speaker 2: feared or really happy about something, I'm always interested in
Speaker 2: the result, whatever it might be. So from David, this
Speaker 2: is a report on the latest US saidate hearing into
Speaker 2: COVID jabs. They say Big Farmer can't be sued in
Speaker 2: the US, so what about in New Zealand? It is
Speaker 2: really quite shocking that Pfizer was able to sell their
Speaker 2: deadly concoction to the New Zealand government without any legal consequences. Similarly,
Speaker 2: why haven't government and health officials in New Zealand faced
Speaker 2: legal consequences for the atrocity they inflicted on the people
Speaker 2: of New Zealand. This is not the letter either I
Speaker 2: was referring to earlier. So there were three of them
Speaker 2: if you include the one that I can't spot. Regards David. David,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of a lot of answers to the
Speaker 2: questions that you ask, but it'll never happen. That's the point,
Speaker 2: and the point is that we don't have the ball
Speaker 2: in this country to do it. Nobody does be useless
Speaker 2: in the greatest scheme of things. This is producer, Thank you.
Speaker 4: Thank you, lighton. You'm done and dusted. I'm downe and dusted.
Speaker 2: Shall we see you next week?
Speaker 5: I think there's a very high probability.
Speaker 2: The question is will there be next week?
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I was going to leave the podcast at the end
Speaker 2: of the mail room for this week because we covered
Speaker 2: an awful lot of ground. But something has caught my
Speaker 2: attention that I thought might be of interest and useful
Speaker 2: to wind it up with. Keep in mind this is
Speaker 2: from an American author, an American source. AI is replacing
Speaker 2: human workers. How companies using automation to cut jobs, so
Speaker 2: a little information across nearly every industry. Artificial intelligence is
Speaker 2: no longer just a tool. It's becoming the worker. From
Speaker 2: Wall Street to Silicon Valley, major companies are laying off
Speaker 2: employees and replacing them with AI systems that promise greater efficiency,
Speaker 2: higher profits, and streamlined operations. But as corporate giants boast
Speaker 2: about record breaking productivity, a growing number of employees are
Speaker 2: waking up to a grim reality their jobs may be
Speaker 2: next A World Economic Forum report published in early twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five found that forty one percent of employers globally
Speaker 2: planned to reduce their workforce by twenty thirty due to
Speaker 2: AI automation. This is not some distant predictions already underway.
Speaker 2: The kind of jobs being replaced. AI is hitting hardest
Speaker 2: where jobs involve repetitive and routine tasks, both physical and cognitive.
Speaker 2: According to the WEF's Future of Jobs Report, these roles
Speaker 2: are seeing rapid decline postal service clerks, executive assistance, payroll
Speaker 2: and benefits clerks, customer service agents, mid level software engineers,
Speaker 2: human resources personnel would they be missed? And graphic designers.
Speaker 2: Even in traditionally human centered roles, companies are finding ways
Speaker 2: to use AI tools to automate communication, design and support. Microsoft,
Speaker 2: IBM and others lead the AI layoff charge. Microsoft recently
Speaker 2: announced it would lay off six thousand employees, around three
Speaker 2: percent of its global workforce. The company said the layoffs
Speaker 2: were part of an effort to boost efficiency and reduce bureaucracy.
Speaker 2: At the same time, Microsoft is investing heavily in AI
Speaker 2: and new technology platforms. IBM replaced hundreds of human resource
Speaker 2: employees with its in house AI which is called ASKHR,
Speaker 2: which now handles ninety four percent of routine HR tasks
Speaker 2: like managing vacation requests and pay statements. CEO Arvand Krishna
Speaker 2: said the layoffs made room for hiring more programmers and
Speaker 2: critical thinking roles. Salesforce cut one thousand jobs earlier this
Speaker 2: year to make way for its new AI product Agent Force.
Speaker 2: CEO Mark Benioff emphasized that using AI is now a
Speaker 2: fundamental expectation for all employees. CrowdStrike, a major cybersecurity firm,
Speaker 2: laid off five hundred workers as it ramped up AI deployment.
Speaker 2: CEO George Kertz called AI a force multiplier, explaining that
Speaker 2: it allows the company to innovate faster, reduce hiring, and
Speaker 2: improve customer outcomes. Even Wall Street and Safe, City Group
Speaker 2: and JP Morgan are among banks projecting that AI could
Speaker 2: lead to you ready two hundred thousand layoffs in the
Speaker 2: next five years, particularly in middle office and operational roles.
Speaker 2: The City Group noted that more than half of banking
Speaker 2: jobs are highly susceptible to automation. Now what the numbers say?
Speaker 2: Fifty four percent of tech hiring managers expect layoffs due
Speaker 2: to AI within the next year. Forty five percent believe
Speaker 2: employees in AI replaceable roles are most at risk. Seventy
Speaker 2: seven percent of large companies plan to reskill employees to
Speaker 2: work with AI. Sixty nine percent say AI will create
Speaker 2: demand for entirely new roles. Thirty two percent of American
Speaker 2: workers believe AI will reduce job opportunities, and only sixteen
Speaker 2: percent say they currently use AI in their own work.
Speaker 2: Can you bulletproof your career despite the job cuts? AI
Speaker 2: is not just replacing people, it's also creating new opportunities.
Speaker 2: But staying employed will require adaptability and new skills. So
Speaker 2: here are ways to future proof your career. Firstly, learn
Speaker 2: AI basics now. Free courses from Corsera, Navidia, and IBM
Speaker 2: can teach you how AI works and how to use it.
Speaker 2: Hiring managers now routinely ask how familiar are you with AI?
Speaker 2: That makes me chuckle thinking back to at the end
Speaker 2: of the discussion and talking about relationships with AI things,
Speaker 2: how familiar are you with AI? It's got two meanings anyway.
Speaker 2: Number two upskill in demand areas. According to surveys, the
Speaker 2: most desirable skills include AI developments and cybersecurity, a data analysis,
Speaker 2: strategic thinking at adaptibils, shift to human centered roles. Jobs
Speaker 2: that involve critical thinking, creativity and direct human interaction are
Speaker 2: harder to automate. These include leadership, product development, sales strategy,
Speaker 2: and high level consulting. Going back to that first one
Speaker 2: of critical thinking, you know, it's something that we've talked
Speaker 2: a lot about on the podcasts, as though hasn't been
Speaker 2: talked much about in other areas, including of course, education,
Speaker 2: and it seems that critical thinking has been sort of
Speaker 2: left on the byway by many folk. Now is the
Speaker 2: time to resurrect a big time number. Four. Companies like
Speaker 2: Shopify and Fiber have made it clear if you can't
Speaker 2: prove you're doing something that AI can't. If you can't
Speaker 2: prove you're doing something AI can't, you may not be
Speaker 2: hired or retained. Lifelong learning is the new job security,
Speaker 2: and five stay visible and valuable a warning for the future.
Speaker 2: Many company leaders, like JP Morgan's Jamie Diamond and IBM's Krishna,
Speaker 2: say that AI will augment rather than eliminate jobs, but
Speaker 2: the early results suggest otherwise. At least for now, AI
Speaker 2: is being used primarily to cut costs and raise profits,
Speaker 2: not preserve jobs. For many workers, this feels less like
Speaker 2: a tech revolution and more like a hostile takeover, as
Speaker 2: the Pew Research Center found more than half of American
Speaker 2: workers are worried about AI's long term impact. That fear
Speaker 2: is not misplaced, but the outcome is not set in stone.
Speaker 2: Those who adapt, learn and stay ahead of the curve
Speaker 2: may not just survive the AI revolution, they might thrive
Speaker 2: in it. For everyone else, the time to prepare is now.
Speaker 2: And that, by the way, if if you want to
Speaker 2: look for it, it's from finance and money. AI is
Speaker 2: replacing human workers, and that's where we shall leave it now.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to write to us Latent at newstalksv
Speaker 2: dot co dot nz or Carolyn at news Talks dot
Speaker 2: co dot nz, and we shall record your mail and
Speaker 2: most likely utilize it. And the only thing left to
Speaker 2: say is, as always, thank you so much for listening,
Speaker 2: and we shall talk soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you for more from News Talks b Listen live
Speaker 1: on air or online, and keep our shows with you
Speaker 1: wherever you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.