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Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk zed B.

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Speaker 1: Follow this and our wide range of podcast now on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Stephen Pinker is one of the world's most influential public intellectuals,

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Speaker 2: a cognitive psychologist, linguist, and best selling author whose work

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Speaker 2: explores language, human nature, rationality, and whether the world is

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Speaker 2: actually getting better. His latest book looks at the power

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Speaker 2: of common knowledge, what we all know and what we

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Speaker 2: all know that we all know. Stephen Pinker joins us

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Speaker 2: from Boston ahead of an appearance with me at the

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Speaker 2: Bruce Mason Center in Takapuna this coming Monday. Steven, Welcome

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Speaker 2: to the show.

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Speaker 3: Thank you now.

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Speaker 2: Along with many kiwis, I think the first time I

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Speaker 2: became deeply aware of your work was with your book

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Speaker 2: Enlightenment Now, which I loved, and in it you argue

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Speaker 2: that if you look past the headlines and clickbait, the

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Speaker 2: actual data shows us that the world is getting better

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Speaker 2: in many ways. So in which ways are things getting

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Speaker 2: better and why?

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Speaker 3: Well, we'll start with the most important thing of all,

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Speaker 3: and that's late. We're living longer. The life expectancy at

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Speaker 3: birth for most of human history was on average around

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Speaker 3: thirty Today it is in the seventies worldwide, and close

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Speaker 3: to eighty in developed countries like New Zealand, like the

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Speaker 3: United States. So that's for starters. Poverty. For most of

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Speaker 3: human history, about eighty percent of humanity lived in what

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Speaker 3: we would today call extreme poverty. Today it's like eight

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Speaker 3: or nine percent. And I'll throw in a third one,

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Speaker 3: and that is literacy. We are born illiterate. We didn't

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Speaker 3: naturally develop with reading and writing, even though we didn't

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Speaker 3: develop naturally with speech. And it used to be that

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Speaker 3: literacy was a privilege of just an aristocratic elite. Now

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Speaker 3: a majority of the world, close to more than eighty

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Speaker 3: percent can read or write. Just a few decades ago

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Speaker 3: it was less than half. And other things, access to electricity,

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Speaker 3: access to clean water, years of schooling, in anything that

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Speaker 3: you can measure and plot on a graph. The numbers

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Speaker 3: are better now than they were fifty years ago, one

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Speaker 3: hundred years ago. Now this isn't a miracle. It's not

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Speaker 3: that everything gets better all the time, and some things

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Speaker 3: have gotten a little bit worse. Over the last ten

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Speaker 3: to fifteen years. The world's democracy score has drooped a bit.

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Speaker 3: That was still way better than when I was a child,

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Speaker 3: but we've shaved off some of the progress in the

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Speaker 3: last ten or fifteen years. War deaths have gotten a

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Speaker 3: little bit worse in the last fifteen years, although again

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Speaker 3: much better than at any time in the twentieth century.

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Speaker 3: So progress sometimes moves a little bit backwards. But it's

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Speaker 3: a real thing when you look at the numbers, and

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Speaker 3: its something it's hard to tell when you look at

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Speaker 3: the headlines, because the headlines are a non random sample

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Speaker 3: of the worst things happening on earth on any given day.

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Speaker 3: You got to zoom out and look at the trends

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Speaker 3: to appreciate how life has gotten better on average.

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Speaker 2: When I read your book, I finished it. When I

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Speaker 2: read them, you know, obviously written many books. But when

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Speaker 2: I read Enlightenment Now, I finished it and I said

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Speaker 2: to my partner in bed, good news. Things aren't as

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Speaker 2: bad as we thought they were. And I said, you've

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Speaker 2: got to read this. And she read it and she

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Speaker 2: was like, hmm, people might read this and stop putting

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Speaker 2: in the effort. So you know what was is that

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Speaker 2: why the optimistic message became a little bit controversial, and

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Speaker 2: because people actually got angry with you about this message, didn't.

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Speaker 3: They Some people did. But my counter is that if

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Speaker 3: you really want to get people to give up and

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Speaker 3: be completely passive and fatalistic. See that none of the

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Speaker 3: efforts that have been put into making the world a

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Speaker 3: better place have done anything to make the world a

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Speaker 3: better place. It's all useless. Nothing that we do can

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Speaker 3: make things better. That's really going to get people to

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Speaker 3: stay at home and and watch the Telly.

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Speaker 2: Yeah that makes sense. Now, you've also thrown yourself into

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Speaker 2: the fight for free speech. So why is friend of

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Speaker 2: speech so central to progress? And why is there such

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Speaker 2: a pushback against it these days? And I guess where

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Speaker 2: is that pushback coming from.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's important because we're not angels, we're not infallible,

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Speaker 3: we're not omniscient. All of us can be wrong. All

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Speaker 3: of us are wrong about some things. And the only

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Speaker 3: way that as a society, as a species, we've been

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Speaker 3: able to make progress is that people say offer a hypothesis,

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Speaker 3: a guess conscious to how things work, and other people

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Speaker 3: get to say what's wrong with it. And even though

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Speaker 3: we're as a psychologist, I can tell you we're pretty

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Speaker 3: bad at noticing the flaws and our own beliefs, but

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Speaker 3: we're much better at pointing out the flaws than the

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Speaker 3: other guy's beliefs. So if you have a free speech

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Speaker 3: where anyone can say what's wrong with someone else's idea,

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Speaker 3: they can try out new ideas. There's at least some

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Speaker 3: hope that we can save the things that work, try

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Speaker 3: not to repeat our mistakes, and gradually come to understand

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Speaker 3: the world better and make the world better. Now, why

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Speaker 3: has it been has been under attack, especially in just

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Speaker 3: the places where you think that ideas are the coin

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Speaker 3: of the realm what matters, namely in universities, in the press.

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Speaker 3: I think it's because we're all moralists. There's a part

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Speaker 3: of us that's curious about the way things work. But

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Speaker 3: there's always a part of us that's worried about people

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Speaker 3: believing dangerous things or breaking the norms that allow us

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Speaker 3: to live together. A lot of what allows us to

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Speaker 3: be civil to each other isn't enforced by the police,

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Speaker 3: but just things that everyone obeys because everyone knows that

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Speaker 3: everyone obeys it. You just you know, you don't belch

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Speaker 3: at the dinner tay, you don't tell racist jokes, although

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Speaker 3: when I was even when I was a kid, hell,

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Speaker 3: the ethnic jokes, even on broadcast TV, was pretty common.

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Speaker 3: That's kind of taboo now. So, and how do these

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Speaker 3: norms survive given that the police aren't going to arrest

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Speaker 3: you for making an ethnic joke. Well, if someone does

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Speaker 3: make it in a public setting, then other people feel

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Speaker 3: the urge to punish them in a public setting. Now

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Speaker 3: that could be okay for some norms that really are

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Speaker 3: worth keeping. But when you're a journalist, when you're a scientist,

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Speaker 3: when you're an academic, when you're a historian, if everyone's

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Speaker 3: going to be worried about what this finding is going

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Speaker 3: to do to the moral order, is going to be

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Speaker 3: a bad lesson for the kids, You're never going to

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Speaker 3: find out how the world works. And I think that's

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Speaker 3: what's what's been happening.

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Speaker 2: I'm talking to congnective psychologists, linguist and best selling author

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Speaker 2: Stephen painkat Now. Across your career, it seems to me

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Speaker 2: your through line has been a push towards rationality. Sos

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Speaker 2: rational by nature or do we have to foster it

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Speaker 2: in ourselves and also foster it in others?

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Speaker 3: Well, some of each. I think when it comes to

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Speaker 3: our day to day immediate experience, our physical lives, we

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Speaker 3: are pretty rational. You kind of have to be because

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Speaker 3: reality is unforgiving. It's going to punish you if you're urological,

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Speaker 3: if you want to keep petrol in the car, and

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Speaker 3: food and the refrigerator and the kids clothed and fed

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Speaker 3: and off to school and in time. You know, you

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Speaker 3: got to work by the clock, by the laws of physics,

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Speaker 3: the laws of reality, cause and effect. Reality is going

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Speaker 3: to punish you if you don't. And as a species,

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Speaker 3: we've done you know that. You know, that's why even

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Speaker 3: before high technology and the industrial revolution, our ancestors kind

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Speaker 3: of swarmed over the entire globe using living by their wits.

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Speaker 3: Our ancestors were knew how to outsmart animals and plants

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Speaker 3: and to developed traps and tools and poisons and medicines

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Speaker 3: such as kind of what we do as a species.

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Speaker 3: But then there are these big questions that we have

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Speaker 3: to deal with in modern society, like who is going

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Speaker 3: to be the best leader? Who what causes wars? What

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Speaker 3: causes diseases and pandemics, and why do bad things happen

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Speaker 3: to good people? All these big kind of cosmic questions

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Speaker 3: that we don't actually deal with in our day to

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Speaker 3: day lives. Their people are not necessarily so rational. There

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Speaker 3: people kind of don't really have the gut feeling that

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Speaker 3: you that anyone can ever find out like answers to

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Speaker 3: questions like what makes us sick? And so the best story,

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Speaker 3: the most uplifting myth, the most heroic saga, that's what

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Speaker 3: people go with. And the idea is no, no, no, no.

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Speaker 3: You got to go to look to see what science says,

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Speaker 3: what historians say, what the responsible journalists say, what the

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Speaker 3: responsible record keepers say, look at the data. Do experiments

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Speaker 3: have free speech that when people are wrong, they can

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Speaker 3: be criticized, and you should criticize them if you think

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Speaker 3: they're wrong. That whole mindset when it comes to these

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Speaker 3: big ideas that doesn't sit so well with people, and

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Speaker 3: that really has to be cultivated in school. That is,

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Speaker 3: questions should be posed in a way you could try

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Speaker 3: to answer them, see what the best answers are, and

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Speaker 3: believe what the evidence points to.

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Speaker 2: I think some people have more of a proclivity towards rationalism,

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Speaker 2: and this is an example. You know, I was once

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Speaker 2: reading some of your writing on Baysian probabilities, and I

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Speaker 2: thought I'd test out that famous one on a couple

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Speaker 2: of people. You know, Arthur is a quiet, organized and

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Speaker 2: tidy man. Is he more likely to be a librarian

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Speaker 2: a farmer. And I said it to my partner and

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Speaker 2: she said to me, like, I'm an idiot, he'll be

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Speaker 2: a librarian. But then I asked my sixteen year old

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Speaker 2: son and he said to me, like an idiot, Like

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Speaker 2: I was an idiot, Well, there's way more farmer's dad,

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Speaker 2: so he's much likely be a farmer. And I was thinking, wow,

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Speaker 2: the level of rationality, because it actually took me a

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Speaker 2: while to go back and forth with that particular, you

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Speaker 2: know example, before I could get my head around it.

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Speaker 2: So I know some people come out very rational.

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Speaker 3: It would say, that's right, So maybe that your son

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Speaker 3: is a born Babian to use the jargon term for

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Speaker 3: the I. By the way, what we're referring to here

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Speaker 3: is a famous theorem going goes back to the eighteenth

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Speaker 3: century from the Reverend Thomas Base and how you calibrate

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Speaker 3: your degree of belief in an idea according to the

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Speaker 3: strength of the evidence. And the where you start from

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Speaker 3: is how likely is it before you've even looked at

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Speaker 3: any evidence one way or another. So in the case

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Speaker 3: of say farmers versus librarians, it's just how many what's

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Speaker 3: the base rate in the population how many farmers aren't there,

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Speaker 3: how many librarians are there? And that's where you begin.

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Speaker 3: And that's what your son did. And people can, under

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Speaker 3: the right circumstances, think that way. I'll give you another

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Speaker 3: example from my wife in her first marriage. Her child

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Speaker 3: had a bit of a twitch, and the doctor said, oh, well,

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Speaker 3: you know, she might have Touret syndrome, because people who

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Speaker 3: have Turet syndromes twish with their kids. So she panicked

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Speaker 3: for a second, and then she said, wait a second,

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Speaker 3: how many kids twitch? How many kids have Touretsviview not

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Speaker 3: that many kids have Touret syndrome, So she's probably gonna

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Speaker 3: be okay. So again, we can do it. And you know,

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Speaker 3: I don't know about your son's education, but I and

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Speaker 3: many people have advocated that in the schools teaching probably

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Speaker 3: so how to think probabilistically statistically like a Baysian, they

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Speaker 3: should be really fundamental because it just applies to everything

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Speaker 3: in life. But our school systems, at least in the US,

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Speaker 3: haven't yet kind of caught up to the whole revolution

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Speaker 3: and probability and statistics. They still still teach trigonometry. Now.

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Speaker 3: I have nothing against trigonometry. I love trigonometry, but I've

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Speaker 3: used trigonometry like maybe once in my life. I use

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Speaker 3: probabilistic thinking every day now. Maybe the school systems in

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Speaker 3: New Zealand are are a little more sophisticated, and they've

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Speaker 3: they've taught our kids are busy in reasoning, and I

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Speaker 3: think there's no reason they shouldn't. It's not that complicated.

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Speaker 3: Or maybe he's you know, maybe he's just he was

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Speaker 3: born with the right way of.

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Speaker 2: Thinking, essentially, because he's almost exclusively focused on English and art.

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Speaker 2: So I'm not sure where the logical street came from.

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Speaker 2: But maybe there's something something in there. Now and you

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Speaker 2: and your fantastic book, you know, when everyone knows that

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Speaker 2: everyone knows common knowledge and the science of harmony, hypocrisy

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Speaker 2: and outrage. Now they're focused on common knowledge. But what

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Speaker 2: do you mean by common knowledge, because ironically it's probably

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Speaker 2: not exactly what most people think common knowledge is.

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Speaker 3: No, no, it's not common knowledge. That's because academics, as

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Speaker 3: they often do, will take a term from the language

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Speaker 3: and they'll give it a technical meaning. In this case,

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Speaker 3: the technical meaning that I have in mind from the

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Speaker 3: literature in logic and economics and game theory and philosophy

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Speaker 3: and linguistics specifically means when everyone knows something and everyone

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Speaker 3: knows that everyone knows it, and everyone knows that everyone

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Speaker 3: knows that everyone knows it, and so on. Or I

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Speaker 3: know something, you know it, I know that you know it,

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Speaker 3: you know that I know it, I know that you

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Speaker 3: know that I know that you know it. So that

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Speaker 3: is common knowledge in this technical sense, and the reason

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Speaker 3: that it's significant is that it's necessary for coordination for

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Speaker 3: people to be on the same page. It isn't enough

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Speaker 3: to know that you know in a particular place that

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Speaker 3: you've visited for the first time the law is to

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Speaker 3: drive on the left or to drive on the right.

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Speaker 3: You have to know that everyone else knows it, and

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Speaker 3: they have to know that everyone else knows it, because

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Speaker 3: if you're the only one who knows it, it's kind

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Speaker 3: of useless. Likewise, if you're having a rendezvous with it

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Speaker 3: with a friend, it's not enough to know that they

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Speaker 3: like to go to a particular cafe, because if they

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Speaker 3: don't know that you know it, then they might try

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Speaker 3: to go where they think to your favorite cafe is,

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Speaker 3: and each one of you could try to outthink the other.

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Speaker 3: You really have to know that the other person knows

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Speaker 3: that you know that they know in order to end

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Speaker 3: up at the same place at the same time. And

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Speaker 3: there are lots of examples like that. They're just every

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Speaker 3: day there's examples from everyday life, but a lot of

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Speaker 3: our big institutions, like like like paper money, Why do

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Speaker 3: you accept a piece of paper in exchange for something

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Speaker 3: of value? Well, because you know the other people will

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Speaker 3: accept the piece of paper in exchange for something of

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Speaker 3: value that they'll give you. And why would they do that, Well,

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Speaker 3: they know that still other people will accept it. So

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Speaker 3: money is kind of propped up by nothing but common

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Speaker 3: expectation or a lot of political power. You defer to

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Speaker 3: an authority because you know that he'll stand his ground,

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Speaker 3: and he stands his ground because he knows that you'll defer.

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Speaker 3: Why will you defer because you know that he'll stand

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Speaker 3: his ground. Even governments don't have enough firepower to intimidate

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Speaker 3: every last citizen, But people accept the power when they

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Speaker 3: just know that everyone else will accept it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Well, speaking of power, you describe in your book how

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Speaker 2: modern censorship works in places like China and Russia, and

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Speaker 2: I found it really interesting the kinds of communications authorities

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Speaker 2: like the CCP stamp out. Can you took us through that?

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Speaker 3: Yes? And this is work done by one of my

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Speaker 3: colleagues at Harvard, Gary King, who actually got They managed

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Speaker 3: to download a huge trove of emails and social media

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Speaker 3: posts from China to see what the government was censoring,

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Speaker 3: and it turns out it's not criticism of the government.

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Speaker 3: In fact, for them, it's kind of useful intel to

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Speaker 3: find out which officials are doing their jobs and mollifying

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Speaker 3: the masses and which ones need to be replaced. So

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Speaker 3: they're just fine and getting actual feedback. But what they

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Speaker 3: will absolutely stamp out is anything that will allow people

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Speaker 3: to coordinate. Let's show up at a meeting to discuss

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Speaker 3: what's wrong with the government. Let's show up at a protest.

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Speaker 3: Let's circulate an article. That's what really terrifies ittocracies.

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Speaker 2: Van Jones was on Bill Mea The Show the other

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Speaker 2: day and he said, in real life, we get on

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Speaker 2: pretty well with our neighbors. Then one day you go

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Speaker 2: online and look up a yoga mat. The algorithm goes,

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Speaker 2: you're a lefty. Next thing, you get nothing but hard

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Speaker 2: left stuff. Your neighbor looks up buying a pickup truck.

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Speaker 2: The algorithm goes he's right leaning and feeds them nothing

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Speaker 2: but right leaning stuff. So pretty soon you and your

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Speaker 2: neighbor are living in different virtual realities and you start

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Speaker 2: to look sideways at your neighbor over the fence in

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Speaker 2: real life. So you know, this is you know, Western democracies.

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Speaker 2: The question is, what is the state of common knowledge

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Speaker 2: in Western societies under the yoke of those those algorithms.

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Speaker 3: Yes, it's the it's the algorithms, is not. But it's

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Speaker 3: not just the algorithms, although that is part of it.

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Speaker 3: It's also just the fragmentation of news sources in general.

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Speaker 3: Several decades ago, there's a small number of broadcast networks

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Speaker 3: and everyone listened to them. There was a small number

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Speaker 3: of print publications that and you when you read them,

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Speaker 3: you knew that everyone else was reading them, like you know,

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Speaker 3: Time magazine or the the the Herald, some of the

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Speaker 3: biggest papers. Now, with the Internet, you could subscribe to

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Speaker 3: any of hundreds of feeds. Even before that, satellite and

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Speaker 3: cable television. So there's there's that. There's the the at

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Speaker 3: the same time, the erosion of some of the civil

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Speaker 3: society organizations that encourage people to meet up face face

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Speaker 3: to face, where it's harder to call someone a fascist

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Speaker 3: or a racist or a bigot when you're actually looking

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Speaker 3: them in the eye. And by the way, eye contact

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Speaker 3: is itself a generator of common knowledge, because when you're

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Speaker 3: looking at someone's eyes, you're looking at the part of

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Speaker 3: them that's looking at the part of you that's looking

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Speaker 3: at the part of them there's looking at the part

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Speaker 3: of you. So eye contact generates an instant common knowledge

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Speaker 3: and acknowledgment of each other's reality. But as people are

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Speaker 3: less likely to go to church, as they're less likely

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Speaker 3: to be drafted into the army, as they're less likely

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Speaker 3: you need to belong to bowling leagues and volunteer organizations

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Speaker 3: like Lions Club and Kuwanas and rotary, you don't see

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Speaker 3: people see each other less face to face, and the

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Speaker 3: natural encouragers and inhibitors are less active.

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Speaker 2: So because that's true of laughter and blushing, isn't it.

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Speaker 2: It's like we've got bodily functions just that out us

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Speaker 2: and reveal common knowledge against our wishes and a Jimmy

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Speaker 2: Carr's the comedian that's touring the country at the moment.

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Speaker 2: He recently said that we laugh reflexively and the gap

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Speaker 2: that follows shows our conscience sketching up and in that sense,

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Speaker 2: the act of laughing actually it makes you complicit in

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Speaker 2: the joke in some way. Blushing is kind of the

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Speaker 2: same thing eye contact. These sort of biological ways where

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Speaker 2: we're outed.

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Speaker 3: Exactly, and they have been a puzzle for millennia. Like

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Speaker 3: if something is amusing, okay, well you know there could

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Speaker 3: be you can register the anomaly, but why does it

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Speaker 3: take over your breathing hairbrats and you're and you're vocal

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Speaker 3: to these? Yeah. Likewise, if another puzzle is when you're sad,

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Speaker 3: or when you're touched, or when you're moved, why should

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Speaker 3: fluid come out of your eyes when you're embarrassed? Why

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Speaker 3: should blood rush to your cheeks? So I take on

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Speaker 3: these these puzzles in the chapter called laughing, crying, blushing, staring, glaring,

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Speaker 3: and might the the the The hypothesis that I offer

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Speaker 3: is these are all designed to generate common knowledge. That is,

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Speaker 3: when you express the when you express them, you know

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Speaker 3: that you're expressing them, and you know that other people

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Speaker 3: know that you know. So when you blush, for example,

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Speaker 3: you both feel the heat of the cheeks from the inside,

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Speaker 3: but you know that other people can see the reddening

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Speaker 3: of the cheeks from the outside, and you know that,

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Speaker 3: but they know that you're feeling a blush, especially when

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Speaker 3: they say you're blushing, which makes people blush even more. Likewise,

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Speaker 3: with crying, you see the world through a layer of tears.

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Speaker 3: At the same time that you know that others are

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Speaker 3: seeing the glistening in your eye or the trickle down

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Speaker 3: the cheeks. So again you know that they know that

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Speaker 3: you know. And laughing, your speech is interrupted. You're making

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Speaker 3: a conspicuous noise. You know that other people can hear it,

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Speaker 3: and you know that other people know that you know

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Speaker 3: that you're laughing because you're breathing is interrupted. Your speech

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Speaker 3: is interrupted, And as the comedian noted, laughter is often involuntary.

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Speaker 3: It's often hard to kind of stifle a chuckle, and

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Speaker 3: it is highly contagious. So it is indeed a way

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Speaker 3: to generate common knowledge, usually of someone's weakness, infirmity, embarrassment.

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Speaker 3: You're pointing out you're cutting someone down to size in

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Speaker 3: a way that everyone knows that they are being cut

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Speaker 3: down to size.

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Speaker 2: When I was reading that chapter, it took me back

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Speaker 2: to Uni, and I had this unfortunate experience with a

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Speaker 2: girl that I had a crush on, and her name

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Speaker 2: was Anya. Just to take you on a little detour here,

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Speaker 2: and I was walking with a friend and she came

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Speaker 2: up to speak to me, and I'd been thinking about

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Speaker 2: it so much I've just went completely bright red in

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Speaker 2: the face. And she said to me, oh, Matt, have

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Speaker 2: you been skiing? And I said what she said, have

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Speaker 2: you been skiing? You look sunburnt? And I said ah

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Speaker 2: yet year And then because she had acknowledged the blushing

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Speaker 2: but not saying blushing, the blushing started to come down,

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Speaker 2: which then made me realize that she'd realized that I

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Speaker 2: hadn't been skiing because because now I was becoming pale.

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Speaker 2: And then so the blushing came down of it, and

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Speaker 2: then just came back with even more, even more force.

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Speaker 2: And I remember thinking at the time, before obviously many

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Speaker 2: many times before, many many years before I was going

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Speaker 2: to read your book even have any thought of about this.

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Speaker 2: I felt so betrayed by my face that day.

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Speaker 3: That's a fantastic story, and it really does show how

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Speaker 3: blushing works, that it is what it is. It's not

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00:22:18,133 --> 00:22:23,693
Speaker 3: even a confession of any anything wrongdoing. It's a you know,

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00:22:23,733 --> 00:22:26,573
Speaker 3: you didn't do anything wrong. You know, you fancy this,

398
00:22:26,933 --> 00:22:31,013
Speaker 3: nothing wrong with that, but you know what it is

399
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Speaker 3: is it's an acknowledgment that other people think that I

400
00:22:34,253 --> 00:22:38,853
Speaker 3: might have floated some norm or done something it committed

401
00:22:38,853 --> 00:22:42,173
Speaker 3: some full power. You don't even have to feel guilty.

402
00:22:42,373 --> 00:22:44,933
Speaker 3: You just have to sense that other people think that

403
00:22:45,013 --> 00:22:48,773
Speaker 3: you have have have violated the norm. You know, in

404
00:22:48,813 --> 00:22:52,533
Speaker 3: this case, you know, expressing affection to someone where you

405
00:22:52,573 --> 00:22:55,173
Speaker 3: don't don't have the relationship with yet.

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Speaker 2: And because it's twenty twenty six, we have to move

407
00:22:58,253 --> 00:23:02,933
Speaker 2: the conversation to AIS. It's almost compulsory and enlightenment.

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00:23:02,973 --> 00:23:03,133
Speaker 3: Now.

409
00:23:03,333 --> 00:23:06,253
Speaker 2: You spent some time at the end of the book

410
00:23:06,293 --> 00:23:09,733
Speaker 2: easing our fears about AI, and of course that book

411
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Speaker 2: was twenty seventeen, which was before the blowoff of che

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Speaker 2: GPT and such and other large language models. Do you

413
00:23:16,573 --> 00:23:20,053
Speaker 2: still believe fears around AI and it's existential threat to

414
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Speaker 2: humanity being overstuded? Statement?

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Speaker 3: Well, I think there are, you know there are. It's

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Speaker 3: going to be massively disruptive in a number of ways.

417
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Speaker 3: We don't know what it's going to do to employment.

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Speaker 3: If it's a lot of not just manual jobs, but

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Speaker 3: white collar jobs are automated, and we haven't figured out

420
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Speaker 3: what we're going to do about that. As something that

421
00:23:38,413 --> 00:23:43,973
Speaker 3: that happens, that may be used by malevolent actors to

422
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Speaker 3: create pathogens or to create deep fakes that disrupt politics.

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00:23:50,853 --> 00:23:53,133
Speaker 3: So those are real threats. What I was writing about

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Speaker 3: is the existential threat that AI is either going to

425
00:23:56,733 --> 00:24:01,213
Speaker 3: take over, because if it's that much smarter than us,

426
00:24:01,253 --> 00:24:03,293
Speaker 3: then it's going to treat us like you know we

427
00:24:03,333 --> 00:24:09,773
Speaker 3: treat animals, or like colonizers treated indigenous peoples, or that

428
00:24:09,973 --> 00:24:13,733
Speaker 3: by accident. Uh, it's going to be We're going to

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00:24:13,773 --> 00:24:17,133
Speaker 3: program it to do one thing, and it's going to

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00:24:17,693 --> 00:24:22,413
Speaker 3: run a muck in maniacally carrying out that task, and

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00:24:22,493 --> 00:24:27,173
Speaker 3: we'd be collateral damage. In the famous example, we give

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Speaker 3: AI the goal of making as many paper clips as possible,

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00:24:30,533 --> 00:24:33,173
Speaker 3: and it turns the entire world into paper clips, including

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00:24:33,253 --> 00:24:39,173
Speaker 3: our bodies to mine the iron. Presumably, this is the

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00:24:39,173 --> 00:24:40,293
Speaker 3: one you're the last class.

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00:24:40,373 --> 00:24:41,933
Speaker 2: This is the one you talk about as well, which

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00:24:42,013 --> 00:24:44,693
Speaker 2: is a cure cancer and humans, so you know, get

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00:24:44,773 --> 00:24:47,493
Speaker 2: rid of cancer and humans, and that the logic is

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00:24:47,533 --> 00:24:49,373
Speaker 2: get rid of all humans because then we know cancer.

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00:24:50,573 --> 00:24:55,133
Speaker 3: Yes, now, so those those scenarios do not keep me

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00:24:55,253 --> 00:24:59,933
Speaker 3: up because well, for one thing. They're not artificial intelligence,

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00:24:59,973 --> 00:25:07,333
Speaker 3: they're artificial stupidity. Every intelligence means you combine multiple goals.

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00:25:08,053 --> 00:25:11,173
Speaker 3: You know, you build a car, it's got an accelerated pedal,

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00:25:11,213 --> 00:25:13,773
Speaker 3: It's also got a breaks in a steering wheel. That's

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00:25:13,813 --> 00:25:17,693
Speaker 3: what driving is. You never build a device that just

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00:25:17,853 --> 00:25:22,573
Speaker 3: does one thing, regardless of all the consequences. So something

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00:25:22,613 --> 00:25:27,213
Speaker 3: that tried to cure to eliminate cancer by eliminating humans

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00:25:27,573 --> 00:25:31,253
Speaker 3: obviously was too stupid to understand what eliminating cancer means.

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00:25:32,693 --> 00:25:36,533
Speaker 3: So and the people devising it, who were ingenious enough

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00:25:36,573 --> 00:25:40,173
Speaker 3: to give it the capacity to exterminate every last humans,

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00:25:40,293 --> 00:25:43,493
Speaker 3: it never occurred to them to program it to understand

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00:25:43,533 --> 00:25:47,013
Speaker 3: what eliminating cancer really means. So I think it's just

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00:25:47,013 --> 00:25:50,373
Speaker 3: self contradictory. Is not to say that AI won't be disrupted.

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00:25:50,413 --> 00:25:54,533
Speaker 3: It clearly will be. But let's focus on the I say,

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00:25:54,573 --> 00:25:59,493
Speaker 3: on the real threats and not these sci fi scenarios.

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00:26:00,093 --> 00:26:04,453
Speaker 2: Now, finally, across your books, you've explored language, the human mind,

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00:26:04,573 --> 00:26:09,973
Speaker 2: human nature, violence, moral progress, rationality, free speech, and now

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00:26:10,173 --> 00:26:12,973
Speaker 2: shared knowledge. I always get excited when you've got a

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00:26:13,053 --> 00:26:16,693
Speaker 2: new book coming out, So what's tickling your fancy right now?

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00:26:16,733 --> 00:26:18,773
Speaker 2: Have you decided what you're looking into next.

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00:26:20,453 --> 00:26:22,773
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. I mean, one possibility, since it is

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00:26:22,813 --> 00:26:26,973
Speaker 3: a frequently asked question, is yeah, yeah, you wrote this

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00:26:27,013 --> 00:26:30,133
Speaker 3: book about human progress, but it came out in twenty eighteen.

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00:26:30,173 --> 00:26:32,613
Speaker 3: That means you sent it off to press in twenty seventeen.

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00:26:32,853 --> 00:26:34,733
Speaker 3: Maybe it was true then, but hasn't the world gone

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00:26:34,773 --> 00:26:39,213
Speaker 3: to hell since? And so I could pardon me thinks

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00:26:39,653 --> 00:26:43,973
Speaker 3: about talking about about progress progress in the twenty first century.

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00:26:44,333 --> 00:26:47,293
Speaker 3: What is it, what propels it, what sets it back?

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00:26:47,333 --> 00:26:50,213
Speaker 3: How well are we doing? What are the problems facing us?

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00:26:50,333 --> 00:26:54,253
Speaker 3: So that that's one problem. But at this point, the

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00:26:54,253 --> 00:26:57,853
Speaker 3: hardcover has come out, the paperback hasn't even come out yet,

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00:26:57,933 --> 00:26:59,613
Speaker 3: so it's too early for me to commit to the

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00:26:59,693 --> 00:27:00,173
Speaker 3: next book.

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00:27:00,973 --> 00:27:03,253
Speaker 2: It's a bit of an unfair question before you do

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00:27:03,453 --> 00:27:07,973
Speaker 2: Enlightenment now with an exclamation mark probably would be. So

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00:27:08,053 --> 00:27:09,853
Speaker 2: thanks so much for talking to us today. You've got

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00:27:10,453 --> 00:27:13,453
Speaker 2: fourteen thousand kilometers to cover to get here for your gig,

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00:27:13,693 --> 00:27:16,213
Speaker 2: so we better let you go. Thanks again, and yes

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00:27:16,373 --> 00:27:18,853
Speaker 2: see you at the Bruce Mason Center Monday night.

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Speaker 3: See you then.

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Speaker 1: For more from News Talks ed b listen live on

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00:27:22,853 --> 00:27:25,812
Speaker 1: air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever

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00:27:25,853 --> 00:27:28,453
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