Speaker 1: Also media welcome back to It could happen here, a
Speaker 1: podcast about things falling apart, and sometimes about stuff that's
Speaker 1: less depressing than that.
Speaker 2: Today we're doing an episode that's I don't know, part
Speaker 2: funny and part hey, you should be aware of this
Speaker 2: thing because it's it's kind of fucked up.
Speaker 3: It certainly could happen. It probably shouldn't. It probably shouldn't
Speaker 3: happen here, but it certainly could.
Speaker 2: But it certainly could. Garrison Davis is on the other line.
Speaker 2: That I mean other line. This isn't a phone call.
Speaker 2: That's the other voice that you are hearing right now.
Speaker 2: And earlier this year, Garrison and I went to CEES,
Speaker 2: the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, Nevada, where Garrison
Speaker 2: had a wonderful stay at Circus Circus that did not
Speaker 2: smell like dead clowns.
Speaker 3: But we weasly did not just shut down this summer
Speaker 3: due to horrible infestation problems.
Speaker 2: Oh that's what you're staying next year too, buddy. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we encountered while we were going through all these different
Speaker 2: technology companies and whatnot, this very peculiar AI project, and Garrison,
Speaker 2: I'm going to hand things over to you now because
Speaker 2: you're the one who was actually prepared an episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I dug into this AI project more when
Speaker 3: I was making my ghost Conference episodes, and after just
Speaker 3: a few minutes of like doing like background checks and stuff,
Speaker 3: I realized that this would become its own episode because
Speaker 3: of how wild things got very very quickly. This company
Speaker 3: is called mind Bank AI. As the name suggests, they
Speaker 3: are an AI company based in Florida with the goal
Speaker 3: of creating personal digital replicas of living humans using artificial
Speaker 3: intelligence and an evolved n LP or natural language processing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Basically, these are.
Speaker 3: Algorithms that are used by GPT, chatbots, predictive texting, and
Speaker 3: the digital assistance like Alexa and Siri. Yeah, language models
Speaker 3: that respond to feedback. They're pretty common these days. We
Speaker 3: encounter them a lot, right that they're whenever you're typing
Speaker 3: on your iPhone, they they will generate text that they
Speaker 3: think you're gonna write. But what mind bank is trying
Speaker 3: to do is a little bit different.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When we encounter them at Cees, their booth had on
Speaker 2: these signs that were it was stuff like like, you know,
Speaker 2: set up a legacy for your kids. You know, it
Speaker 2: was basically advertising. This is a way to allow a
Speaker 2: part of you to exist in digital form and communicate
Speaker 2: with your with your descendants forever.
Speaker 3: Yes, so we found them in the US government sponsored
Speaker 3: section of cees, which is already a great sign. Yes,
Speaker 3: already already looking good. But unlike other kind of AI
Speaker 3: digital copies of humans, which typically are just language models
Speaker 3: that generate responses based on an archive of someone's writing
Speaker 3: or recorded interviews or online presence, mind Bank instead seeks
Speaker 3: to create an evolving, a unique digital twin by having
Speaker 3: a person input their personal data basically tons of personal
Speaker 3: information about themselves into an AI on an ongoing basis,
Speaker 3: and by analyzing your data inputs. Mind Bank says that
Speaker 3: your digital twin will quote unquote learn to think like you,
Speaker 3: and their CEO claims that this process will eventually help
Speaker 3: him achieve immortality.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, that's good. I hadn't caught that when we
Speaker 2: talked to the guy that he believed that that I love.
Speaker 2: Whenever you get these guys who are like I will
Speaker 2: just offload my brain onto a machine and then I
Speaker 2: will live for ever in the cloud. And of course, man, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's how consciousness works. Absolutely, buddy.
Speaker 3: All right, I'm going to play this video next.
Speaker 5: Humanity is limited. Our bodies age, our memories fade. Technology
Speaker 5: outpaces evolution. The solution is your personal digital twin, transfer
Speaker 5: your wisdom, become the best version of yourself, and live
Speaker 5: forever through data.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, let's go beyond.
Speaker 2: So all right, I gotta know one thing before you
Speaker 2: start in Garrison, which is that when they note mentioned
Speaker 2: that like technology, like there's a line about like technology
Speaker 2: making everything better, they're showing a man who has lost
Speaker 2: his leg walking on a treadmill with an artificial leg.
Speaker 2: And look, I think I have so much admiration for
Speaker 2: the people who make artific official limbs wonderful thing to
Speaker 2: be doing great important work. They're not as good as
Speaker 2: real legs. Everyone agrees with this, right, Technology is not
Speaker 2: making it better. Yeah, that's what it says. She was
Speaker 2: on the No, that's technology allowing someone to adapt to
Speaker 2: a terrible, terrible thing that happened to them.
Speaker 3: But Robert, don't you want to live forever through data?
Speaker 2: No? No, I don't. I'm exhausted now, Garrison.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, so let's go into this a little
Speaker 3: bit more. Your immortal digital twin is made possible quote
Speaker 3: by safely storing your data over the years, artificial intelligence
Speaker 3: and computers of the future will have ample data to
Speaker 3: compile a digital version of yourself and predict your responses.
Speaker 3: So that that is their idea of how this thing works.
Speaker 3: Another one of their very very funny YouTube videos, titled
Speaker 3: The Vision, promises that quote, the next personal computer is
Speaker 3: you store your memories, your infinite potential, take advantage of
Speaker 3: AI enhanced humanity.
Speaker 2: God damn it.
Speaker 3: So that is their vision.
Speaker 2: My personal computer absolutely is not me because I do
Speaker 2: not play Balderskate three very well, you know, like I
Speaker 2: can't run it on my hardware.
Speaker 3: Well, that's that's why it's that's why you got to
Speaker 3: buy the new Monster manual and then maybe it could
Speaker 3: all just be in your brain.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, I am full of shit. D and D
Speaker 2: is still better when you run hardware. Goddamn, this is the.
Speaker 3: One thing you actually can do pretty good by yourself.
Speaker 2: Why did I pick that one? Yeah, it's just so like,
Speaker 2: I don't think most people buy this. I don't think
Speaker 2: this probably is going to be a success. I don't
Speaker 2: think most people. I think most people's reaction to this
Speaker 2: is like kind of sneering, which is the right reaction. This, Yes,
Speaker 2: but there are people who do feel this legitimately, and
Speaker 2: that is a thing of almost unfathomable sadness. Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I had my angry atheist period like a lot of people,
Speaker 2: but like I have so much. I'm so much more
Speaker 2: okay with Christianity than i am this.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely. So before I get into how this
Speaker 3: is all supposed to quote unquote work, first I want
Speaker 3: to talk about how the founder and CEO says that
Speaker 3: he got the idea for this company, because I think
Speaker 3: it puts into focus how he sees this product ideally
Speaker 3: functioning in the future. So Emil Hamirez was writing a
Speaker 3: train with his four year old daughter. She was playing
Speaker 3: on her iPad and discovered Siri. She began talking with
Speaker 3: Siri and asking it questions like what do you eat?
Speaker 3: And do you have a mommy. I'll let I'll let
Speaker 3: a meal tell the rest here.
Speaker 6: But thirty minutes later she was laughing and having really
Speaker 6: like a nice time with Siri, and she said, Siri,
Speaker 6: I love you. You're my best friend. And that struck
Speaker 6: a chord with me that that inspired me so much,
Speaker 6: because I said to myself at that moment, children don't
Speaker 6: see computers and devices as a tool. They see them
Speaker 6: as a companion. And today she speaks with Siri orle
Speaker 6: Likes or any other device. But in the future, I
Speaker 6: want her to be able to speak to me, to
Speaker 6: be able to ask me a question, just like she
Speaker 6: did the device. And understanding the technology, I know that
Speaker 6: the only way that's possible. I'm able to take my
Speaker 6: thoughts and put them in a cloud so that then
Speaker 6: later she can access those that information. So that's how
Speaker 6: the idea for my bank came about. It's a place
Speaker 6: for you to store your ideas for the next generation
Speaker 6: to tap into.
Speaker 2: No, so the generations already linger too long. We had
Speaker 2: it right when people died when they were well, not died.
Speaker 2: But Logan's run had it right. We should kill everyone
Speaker 2: at thirty five. But this is this is so fucking offensive,
Speaker 2: Like the the idea that for first off, like if
Speaker 2: you're looking at we want a device, you know a
Speaker 2: way to use technology to help people grieve or something,
Speaker 2: and like you decide maybe having a chat about that
Speaker 2: they get you. I'm sure it's possible that that could
Speaker 2: be part of healthy grieving. I'm not going to say
Speaker 2: that that there's no place for that, but something that
Speaker 2: is definitely not just stupid, but toxic and poisonous is
Speaker 2: having a machine speak with the voice of a child's
Speaker 2: parent while that parent is alive, and confusing the child
Speaker 2: as to whether or not the phone or their parent
Speaker 2: is conscious. Like that seems bad to me.
Speaker 3: There's actually another product that that that does this right now,
Speaker 3: which has kind of caused some controversy for this, for
Speaker 3: this very thing you mention, it's a it's a Tarkara
Speaker 3: Tommy smart speaker, which if listening to a parents have
Speaker 3: always for fifteen minutes, can replicate it and tell your
Speaker 3: child bedtime stories if you aren't physically present. And this
Speaker 3: is this is similarly kind of like cause people to
Speaker 3: have a whole bunch of questions around. You know, is
Speaker 3: this good for a child's brain development to have to
Speaker 3: have their parents' voice be coming out of like a
Speaker 3: smart speaker. The answer is you probably not, but yeah.
Speaker 7: So.
Speaker 3: According to mind Bank's website, Emil's four year old daughter's
Speaker 3: interactions with Siri quote started a quest in his heart
Speaker 3: to live forever for his daughter. The quest for immortality
Speaker 3: has led to something much bigger for humanity because the
Speaker 3: next personal computer is you unquote. So there's that there's
Speaker 3: that other line again about having this quest in his
Speaker 3: heart is actually part of a bigger a bigger quest
Speaker 3: for all of humanity to live inside a computer or
Speaker 3: to have a computer.
Speaker 2: Yeah trained on you. He's he's he's hitting the same
Speaker 2: speech cadences that guys like musk us like. He understands, yes,
Speaker 2: the kind of he understands partially, the degree of hype
Speaker 2: that you need to get something off this. But he
Speaker 2: is he is going too hard. And I'm making that
Speaker 2: judgment based on the incredibly comforting fact that as you
Speaker 2: tell me these horrible things, I am looking at your
Speaker 2: screen and mind Bank has seventy eight subscribers on YouTube,
Speaker 2: so the company has not yet broken through.
Speaker 3: I do want to play one one ten second clip,
Speaker 3: just because the phrasing is really funny.
Speaker 6: I was inspired by an interaction my daughter had with Siri.
Speaker 6: What started as daddy's quest for immortality has led us
Speaker 6: to something far kind.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's pretty funny, right.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: But no, Robert, you were You were totally.
Speaker 3: Right about about kind of how Emil's like speech pattern
Speaker 3: cadences is pushing a very specific thing. Because before Emil
Speaker 3: got into the tech industry, for eighteen years. He worked
Speaker 3: in marketing. He has degrees in psychology, communication and art
Speaker 3: direction and business administration. He isn't a tech guy. He's
Speaker 3: a marketing guy. And I think that's really good to
Speaker 3: keep in mind throughout our whole discussion of how he's
Speaker 3: trying to get funding for mind Bank, because that is
Speaker 3: primarily what all of this marketing is for. It's to
Speaker 3: attract investors. Because this is still he's still in very
Speaker 3: early stages of this company. They do have a product,
Speaker 3: it's out, but it's still primarily based on getting investors
Speaker 3: to give him money.
Speaker 2: I think what's most disturbing to me about this is that, like,
Speaker 2: this is not going to work for this guy because
Speaker 2: he's a loser nobody cares about. But if Elon Musk
Speaker 2: or one of our other many techno grifters, or if
Speaker 2: a number of them got behind similar things, like I
Speaker 2: think that the nightmare scenario to me is someday hopping
Speaker 2: on Twitter to see that fucking Ian Miles Chong or
Speaker 2: Ben Shapiro or Jackson Hinkle or any one of these
Speaker 2: like horrible horrible social media poison distributors will be like
Speaker 2: I have made an AI trained on my voice you
Speaker 2: can have me all the time to argue, Like if
Speaker 2: you want to, you know, you can ask me questions
Speaker 2: or whatever. You go to a protest and have me
Speaker 2: yell at liberals for you, Like, something like that will
Speaker 2: happen at some point with one of these guys.
Speaker 3: I could not wait to bring Ben Shapiro to Thanksgiving
Speaker 3: dinner and have him argue with Yeah, people around here.
Speaker 2: The next time you stay at my house with somebody
Speaker 2: that you love and care about and feel comfortable in
Speaker 2: the arms of you are going to drift off to sleep,
Speaker 2: and then through the speakers that I have installed in
Speaker 2: the room, you will hear Ben Shapiro's voice coaxing you
Speaker 2: both to acts of love. Oh, that's that's what's gonna happen.
Speaker 3: So as an example of this kind of very marketing
Speaker 3: heavy approach, I'm gonna I'm gonna read something from the
Speaker 3: homepage of mind Bank's website.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: Our vision is to be the world's most trusted guardians
Speaker 3: of your AI digital twin and move the human race forward.
Speaker 3: Humanity's next evolutionary step is to combine ourselves with AI
Speaker 3: and move humanity forward so that we are no longer
Speaker 3: bound by anything that sentence is just marketing bubo jumbo.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's meaningless hype like hype words and phrases
Speaker 3: that refer to this like science fiction feature. But like
Speaker 3: it's it's nothing.
Speaker 2: It's worse than meaningless. It's like it's it's wrong, it's
Speaker 2: stupid wrong, Like the idea that like, you would not
Speaker 2: be bound by anything if you could live inside in
Speaker 2: the at bought, Like, yeah, I have I have an A.
Speaker 2: I have used an AI, right, I have it on
Speaker 2: my computer, my computer. Were I to hurl it across
Speaker 2: the room in the same manner that I myself have
Speaker 2: been flung, it would break and I would not like I.
Speaker 3: Am finally free to think within my computer's RGB gamer ram.
Speaker 2: Yeah, finally, Like when I have a laptop that gets
Speaker 2: too old, Like the very act of surfing the internet
Speaker 2: is a nightmare. I don't want my conscience on something
Speaker 2: that ages at the speed of a smartphone. Likes, that's
Speaker 2: even worse than being a person, Robert, do you know
Speaker 2: what else is a very important evolutionary step for the
Speaker 2: future of humanity? Oh God, I don't know when we
Speaker 2: all suddenly spontaneously, as if by God's grace, starts speaking
Speaker 2: with the voice of Ben Shapiro.
Speaker 3: Yes, and perhaps you can do that if one of
Speaker 3: our sponsors is Ben Shapiro. Bought coming soon yep, to
Speaker 3: a smartphone near you.
Speaker 2: All right, we are back.
Speaker 3: Let's finally talk about how this digital twin thing is
Speaker 3: actually supposed to work. So you download the mind bank app.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that's totally safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I trust this with all of my thoughts.
Speaker 3: And every day, your digital twin will ask you questions
Speaker 3: about how you're feeling and what you're thinking about, and
Speaker 3: as you tell it your quote unquote life story. Your
Speaker 3: inputs will be used to train the twin to make
Speaker 3: a more accurate digital copy of yourself. This is from
Speaker 3: their This is from their website town page quote store.
Speaker 3: Your conscience guided questions help train your digital twin to
Speaker 3: know your life story so you can live forever through data.
Speaker 3: The more questions you answer, the closer your AI digital
Speaker 3: twin will get to becoming you.
Speaker 2: Unquote God in Heaven.
Speaker 3: So when Robert and I were at CEES this past
Speaker 3: this past January, we spoke to mind Bank's co founder
Speaker 3: and the director of Systems, Architecture and cybersecurity, and I'm
Speaker 3: going to let him explain kind of some of some
Speaker 3: of the process of asking mind bank questions and how
Speaker 3: that helps craft this digital twin.
Speaker 7: We ask you questions from how's your day to what
Speaker 7: does money meaning you?
Speaker 4: And you answer those questions with your voice in a
Speaker 4: natural way. You can break a voice to text. You
Speaker 4: get a sentiment analysis on the.
Speaker 7: Text and provide you a dashboard of what you're feeling
Speaker 7: when you say that, so that you can also continue
Speaker 7: to use it over time. And then as you use
Speaker 7: it over time, the dashboard, we'll show you that you're
Speaker 7: doing better or worse, just.
Speaker 4: Like a running application, what better or worse it?
Speaker 7: What whatever metric that you're interested in, your happiness, your awake,
Speaker 7: your awareness, your.
Speaker 4: We have a very large amount of sentiment that we
Speaker 4: can provide you with.
Speaker 8: Here's a small bits, but you can see kind of
Speaker 8: what we have looks like Here you've got multiple different
Speaker 8: possible types of sentiment, and then within each sentiment, you've
Speaker 8: got multiple different factors that you can weigh against.
Speaker 3: To grow mind Bank's user base, there needs to be
Speaker 3: some reason for users to input the massive amounts of
Speaker 3: data that's needed to build this digital replica. So the
Speaker 3: current model of this product is being billed as a
Speaker 3: quote self care and personal development app where the user
Speaker 3: talks to their digital twin, kind of like you would
Speaker 3: talk to a therapist. Yeah, this is This is a
Speaker 3: big part of mind Bank's marketing that as as you're
Speaker 3: building this digital twin, it can be used as a
Speaker 3: tool for self reflection and a way to quote learn
Speaker 3: about yourself talk to your inner voice with your own
Speaker 3: personal digital twin unquote, which is really funny because I
Speaker 3: could talk to my I could talk to my inner
Speaker 3: voice whenever I want to. Yeah, it's it's called thinking.
Speaker 3: It's actually pretty pretty easy.
Speaker 2: This is I really I don't envy, but I'm fascinated
Speaker 2: by the kind of people whose thoughts are so I
Speaker 2: don't know a better word than distincal, no legal, that
Speaker 2: they would think that they could just that they could
Speaker 2: transfer everything they think over your machine and not get arrested,
Speaker 2: right like I would be in a prison if I
Speaker 2: had to put the things in my brain on the internet,
Speaker 2: like I put a lot of them, but not all
Speaker 2: of them. There are some very careful doors and locked
Speaker 2: rooms in there that you people don't get access to.
Speaker 3: No, there's there's certainly a lot of interesting facets there
Speaker 3: of someone feeling like they need this tool to to
Speaker 3: kind of analyze their own thoughts. Like it's it's it's
Speaker 3: a way to like externalize it that makes you process it.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, you can also just like like
Speaker 3: take up journaling or something like there's there's a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of ways to get around this. But
Speaker 3: this is This is from a mind Bank's app store page.
Speaker 3: Quote like a mirror to your soul. Each answer you
Speaker 3: give allows you to get insights into your mind. It
Speaker 3: will help you grow mentally strong unquote. So again, it's
Speaker 3: like being able to talk to yourself with this digital
Speaker 3: twin is a big part of their early push great
Speaker 3: By using quote unquote cutting edge cognitive analysis, the mind
Speaker 3: bank app responds to your data inputs with quote valuable
Speaker 3: insights into each answer to understand how your mind works unquote.
Speaker 3: The app also utilizes quote psycholinguistic models to create a
Speaker 3: dashboard of the mind for personal development and self care.
Speaker 3: I'm going to play another another fantastic kind of thirty
Speaker 3: second clip here.
Speaker 6: Hi, I'm your personal digital twin. I learned by asking
Speaker 6: many questions, each answer build my wisdom. You grow through
Speaker 6: self reflection and I get a little bit closer to
Speaker 6: becoming you.
Speaker 2: Let me show you around.
Speaker 6: Here's our training screen, where you can be your product
Speaker 6: based on the number of questions you've answered for this
Speaker 6: phase of my training. Each phase adds a new dimension
Speaker 6: to my abilities, and the possibilities are endless. The mind
Speaker 6: map section is like our consciousness. Different questions will challenge
Speaker 6: you to reflect and create a more well rounded version
Speaker 6: of us.
Speaker 3: So that's that's kind of the layout of the user interface.
Speaker 2: This is like the inevitable extent of all of this,
Speaker 2: categorizing your personality type with these letters, taking this quiz
Speaker 2: and defining yourself this way, plotting your political beliefs on
Speaker 2: this map that way, like gamification of identity. Almost shit
Speaker 2: that we've been doing, like taking shit that used to
Speaker 2: be like the starting screen from a fucking RPG game
Speaker 2: and turning it into social media fodder. This is like
Speaker 2: treating that as if it is the whole of consciousness
Speaker 2: and how one must one can replicate consciousness. But also
Speaker 2: like treat like the thing that's just like actually disturbing
Speaker 2: about this is that there these people are insinuating that
Speaker 2: this is a kind of therapy that ye, you can
Speaker 2: just sort of vomit your thoughts out and the machine
Speaker 2: can analyze them based on the kinds of words and
Speaker 2: whatnot that you're using and then give you useful advice
Speaker 2: on your life.
Speaker 3: Like that's unsettling, Yes, and you're kind of right on
Speaker 3: the money in terms of this like personality testing thing.
Speaker 3: Mind Being's website has a whole bunch of articles which
Speaker 3: I think are written by chat chipd because I read
Speaker 3: a lot of them and they all read exactly like
Speaker 3: a chat cheaptee article. But they have a lot of
Speaker 3: articles on like what personality types make you a good CEO,
Speaker 3: and like all of like a whole batch of stuff
Speaker 3: like that. That that that references like Myers Briggs testing
Speaker 3: and other kind of personality testings and uses it to
Speaker 3: compare to their own personality models on the mind bank app.
Speaker 3: So yes, that they are very much kind of doing
Speaker 3: doing that in like this this like corporate business leadership
Speaker 3: assent like leadership ascension track type thing for how you
Speaker 3: can like improve your personality to make you a better
Speaker 3: business man. Cool cool stuff. But in order for there
Speaker 3: to be enough data to build an even slightly accurate
Speaker 3: digital simulacra feeding daily inputs into an app will need
Speaker 3: to be a long term project, this self improvement focus
Speaker 3: that they're talking about with this, Like you know, analyzing
Speaker 3: your thoughts is just a way to provide you with
Speaker 3: something immediate to based on your personal data. Quote. As
Speaker 3: you create your AI digital twin, you will go on
Speaker 3: a lifelong journey of personal discovery and growth that will
Speaker 3: allow you to reach your full potential. Each answer will
Speaker 3: help bring focus to your mind and allow you to
Speaker 3: reflect on your past unquote. So on the app, you
Speaker 3: can track the progress of your digital twin and refer
Speaker 3: back to previous questions. You can refer to questions you've
Speaker 3: already answered to quote see how your thoughts shift topics
Speaker 3: or change sentiment over time. And then the more questions
Speaker 3: you answer, the app raises your quote unquote twinning score,
Speaker 3: which I think is just a really funny term. Quote.
Speaker 3: The higher your twinning score, the closer you get to
Speaker 3: knowing yourself fully.
Speaker 4: What which is.
Speaker 2: That's the sex thing?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: That sounds like a sex thing?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 3: How is it anything not just to go we'd a
Speaker 3: weird fucked up sex thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's what how I'm taking this garrison.
Speaker 3: So that that was also on their app store page.
Speaker 3: So the mind bank app has been out for a
Speaker 3: little over a year now, but unless you pay six
Speaker 3: bucks a month or sixty dollars a year, you'll only
Speaker 3: have access to a out less than a dozen of
Speaker 3: these questions.
Speaker 2: Is this currently running on a subcription model?
Speaker 4: Yes, it is, so there's freemium. You can try the out.
Speaker 4: You can download the m now.
Speaker 7: It's been launched for almost a year, where version two
Speaker 7: is coming out soon look a couple of weeks, but
Speaker 7: both Android and iOS, and there's a free model, so
Speaker 7: you can you have ten questions that you can answer
Speaker 7: and answer it many times you want. You get the
Speaker 7: sentiment analysos, you get a full application, just ten questions.
Speaker 7: Once you hit subscription model, you get all of the
Speaker 7: access to all of the questions and then obviously we're
Speaker 7: going to be growing more now.
Speaker 3: Like Robert mentioned before, this is kind of related to
Speaker 3: personality testing, and like personality graphing, mind Bank sorts your
Speaker 3: quote unquote digital brain into the Big five personality traits
Speaker 3: that were developed in the twentieth century, with each of
Speaker 3: the Big Five having six subtraits on the mind ban
Speaker 3: gap that it uses to graph changes on what they
Speaker 3: call the dashboard of the mind. I'll just go through
Speaker 3: the big five personality traits and the very kind of
Speaker 3: subcategories it has. The first one is agreeableness, which has
Speaker 3: the subcategories of humble, cooperative, trusting, genuine, empathetic, and generous.
Speaker 3: Then we have neuroticism, which has the subtraits impulsive, self conscious, aggressive, melancholy,
Speaker 3: stress prone, and anxiety prone. We then have openness with
Speaker 3: the subcategories artistic, adventurous, liberal, intellectual, emotionally aware, and imaginative.
Speaker 3: We have extraversion with the subcategories assertive, active, cheerful, friendly, sociable,
Speaker 3: and outgoing. And finally, conscientiousness with the subtraits cautious, ambitious, dutiful, organized,
Speaker 3: self assured, and responsible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Those are the only ways to describe a human mind.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, no, it's I think I think at all. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they finally figured it out. So you know, all these
Speaker 3: things are like a sliding scale. Each of them represents
Speaker 3: the inverse of the thing as well. I think we've
Speaker 3: talked enough about these personality trait things. It doesn't really
Speaker 3: matter that much.
Speaker 2: But once, once your.
Speaker 3: Twinning score is high enough, you can you can compare
Speaker 3: your digital twin to estimated profiles of famous thinkers and
Speaker 3: share access to your twin with friends and family on
Speaker 3: the app, which is.
Speaker 2: Estimated profiles of famous thinkers.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna play I'm gonna play another clip to kind
Speaker 3: of explain what I mean here.
Speaker 6: Each swipe revealing more details about our thinking and connecting
Speaker 6: us to similar personalities. Think of it like collecting cards
Speaker 6: as a kid, only.
Speaker 4: For your mind.
Speaker 2: You might be able to ask him a question, what
Speaker 2: do you do?
Speaker 9: Dude?
Speaker 6: Socrates know thyself and who knows us better? And in
Speaker 6: our inner circle, each interaction will help us evolve and
Speaker 6: store wisdom for eternity.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I will now tell you Socrates would
Speaker 2: have lit this man on fire. Socrates. I'm not a
Speaker 2: big Socrates guy, but he would kill this person like
Speaker 2: he fought in wars. He would do it like.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely. The notion of sharing my own digital
Speaker 3: brain profile with friends and families so that they can
Speaker 3: ask my digital self questions horrifying.
Speaker 2: I don't usually go home for Thanksgiving? What makes you
Speaker 2: think I want to do this?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Like quote.
Speaker 3: After continued use, your digital twin will even be able
Speaker 3: to answer many questions on your behalf and have meaningful
Speaker 3: conversations with people you allow unquote yeah, oh oh oh,
Speaker 3: I bet.
Speaker 2: Look if some motherfucker that I have a meeting with
Speaker 2: ever tries to have me talk with his AI to
Speaker 2: do any part of that process. Again, when I say
Speaker 2: about things I think that are illegal, like my response
Speaker 2: to that is something that I can't say on this
Speaker 2: podcast because I might it's an actionable threat. I would
Speaker 2: actionable threat somebody if they tried to make me talk
Speaker 2: to their fucking AI to schedule a meeting with them, like.
Speaker 3: A horrible what a horrible like uncomfortably anti social thing.
Speaker 3: I'm usually kind of antisocial in some ways, but this
Speaker 3: is like a whole other level of just like despising
Speaker 3: any human interaction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's anti human, is what it is, which
Speaker 2: is what's unsettling, right, Like not that sending emails and
Speaker 2: shit is like the primary essence of humanity, but you know,
Speaker 2: you know what it makes me think of Garrison. The
Speaker 2: one law enforcement agency that like all of the rich
Speaker 2: conservative assholes who love every other kind of cop hate
Speaker 2: is the TSA. And they hate the TSA because you
Speaker 2: can't get around the TSA unless you're like ridiculously rich.
Speaker 2: Everybody goes through fucking security at the goddamn airport and
Speaker 2: they hate that. It drives them insane that they are
Speaker 2: subject to this little kind of little bit of friction, right,
Speaker 2: and what stuff like communicating in that way is these
Speaker 2: kind of basic things that they're saying that can automate
Speaker 2: these little bits of communication that you get with someone
Speaker 2: setting up a meeting or whatever. Like when you automate
Speaker 2: every bit of friction, then you find out you've automated
Speaker 2: like like there's nothing right, Like there's no life there. Right,
Speaker 2: people are not communicating because communication is fundamentally friction. And yeah,
Speaker 2: like scheduling meetings is not the center of that. But
Speaker 2: the way these people are talking is like we want
Speaker 2: to let you hand tasks over to this thing.
Speaker 3: It's like task alienation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's alienating. It's a bad thing to do.
Speaker 3: So when we talk with the co founder at CS,
Speaker 3: he emphasized that this kind of self improvement aspect that
Speaker 3: they're pushing in their early stage, it's really just a
Speaker 3: means to an end with the real goal of being
Speaker 3: producing this form of immortality. I've seen something like this
Speaker 3: for like therapy ats kind of similar course, what what's
Speaker 3: like your application use case for this type of technology.
Speaker 7: So there's actually it's a reasonably spread use case. The
Speaker 7: very initial right now is super selfish. It's just self awareness,
Speaker 7: bringing us your self awareness, making them more aware of
Speaker 7: their state as they're speaking. The real long term value
Speaker 7: is actually, if you imagine doing this over the course
Speaker 7: of forty years, fifty years, and then if you eventually pass,
Speaker 7: you can pass this on to your children who can
Speaker 7: then query it and it will answer exactly the way
Speaker 7: you would answer any of these questions and AI filled
Speaker 7: with just your data.
Speaker 4: So it's like your legacy being indefinite.
Speaker 3: So the mind Bank page on the app store boasts
Speaker 3: achieve immortality, your mind will be safely secured in the
Speaker 3: cloud forever. Again, that just comes off as like a
Speaker 3: threat to me. I don't I don't want my mind
Speaker 3: to be stored in the cloud forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want to be locked up with DV
Speaker 2: into art for all of attorney.
Speaker 3: To kind of again kind of on this on this
Speaker 3: form of immortality notion here is here is their CEO
Speaker 3: explaining how how this platform will help you live forever
Speaker 3: on the on the Internet.
Speaker 6: The mission of mind Bang is so we can build
Speaker 6: a secure platform that can story data so that you
Speaker 6: can live forever. But if you look, we look a
Speaker 6: bit deeper than that. Our vision is to build an
Speaker 6: artificial consciousness that's not bound by time and space, something
Speaker 6: that can travel, something that can that can go where
Speaker 6: literally no man has gone before.
Speaker 3: Now, the thing we haven't really mentioned yet is like
Speaker 3: this thing won't help you live forever. Like when you die,
Speaker 3: you you still die. Your brain's are getting like poured
Speaker 3: it over online. This is this is just like a
Speaker 3: like a very crude simulacrum based on thoughts that you
Speaker 3: have told this app. Yeah, it's based like it's it's
Speaker 3: it's not it's not helping you live forever at all,
Speaker 3: Like you you don't.
Speaker 2: I most people I feel are like this way. I
Speaker 2: don't say everything that I think and feel, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like even when I'm like and I'm not saying like
Speaker 2: I'm being dishonest, but like they're the experience of life
Speaker 2: that my consciousness is aware of when I am communicating
Speaker 2: is broader than just the words that I output and
Speaker 2: taking just those words. It's the same idea that like,
Speaker 2: you can get to know Mark Twain because we fed
Speaker 2: all of his books into an AI well, no, you know,
Speaker 2: an author is not their books. There was a person
Speaker 2: with a lot of things that you don't know that
Speaker 2: still fed into make those words that like if you
Speaker 2: just put the words in, you don't get and your
Speaker 2: vision of what human beings are is reductive in a
Speaker 2: way that makes me understand some of the concerns religious
Speaker 2: people have with atheism.
Speaker 3: So obviously mind Bank's horizons are far beyond this sort
Speaker 3: of kind of self help app. So far, mind bank
Speaker 3: has been mostly a business to consumer, with their app
Speaker 3: being marketed directly to users for them to download and
Speaker 3: use by themselves. But they are working to expand far
Speaker 3: past that very limited scope in terms.
Speaker 4: Of a business plan.
Speaker 9: Are you guys interested in kind of solely individual.
Speaker 4: Subscriptions or are you is there kind of an enterprise
Speaker 4: application of this as well.
Speaker 7: We're actually moving into a bunch of different verticals, so
Speaker 7: government for PTSD, that sort of mindset, also the healthcare,
Speaker 7: so mental it's obvious benefit in the medical building. So
Speaker 7: that's kind of the understanding of our verticals that we
Speaker 7: have the we're going to move into, and we're looking
Speaker 7: for funding right now just start building out those verticals.
Speaker 4: So enterprise space is definitely in the roadmap, but we
Speaker 4: just need money.
Speaker 3: A lot of their recent marketing has been targeted towards
Speaker 3: appealing to seed investors. Besides partnering with various governments, they're
Speaker 3: also moving into the business to business sector, with plans
Speaker 3: to enter quote the healthcare space by providing psychologists remote
Speaker 3: patient monitoring unquote, which also is a similarly kind of
Speaker 3: freaky notion that your psychologist can just have a copy
Speaker 3: of your own expressive thoughts to just refer to at
Speaker 3: any time and they can use it as remote patient monitoring.
Speaker 3: It's just like an uncomfortable notion.
Speaker 4: We've got over twenty thousand installs. The B to B
Speaker 4: is the next area.
Speaker 7: We're going into in the therapy and psychology space, and
Speaker 7: so imagine your therapist, instead of needing your first one
Speaker 7: hour to learn who you are in the next three
Speaker 7: or four different to figure out getting the meat and
Speaker 7: potatoes of your mind, this is an immediate, raw, quantitative
Speaker 7: dashboard of your sentiment and how you're feeling that they
Speaker 7: have access to. And then you can also provide them
Speaker 7: the sentiment of individual answers, which would then give them
Speaker 7: a point in time emotional marker for how you're feeling.
Speaker 3: Mind Bank claims that they are currently quote developing a
Speaker 3: marketplace for applications to be used by your digital twin unquote.
Speaker 3: Now what they imagine such applications being ranges from quote
Speaker 3: health related enhancements like early Alzheimer's detection unquote, to more
Speaker 3: therapeutic uses like to quote help to handle depression unquote.
Speaker 3: And again, I really don't see how having this digital
Speaker 3: twin that you talk to every day will help handle
Speaker 3: your depression. Like this is some like depression cure. Now
Speaker 3: on top of like patient healthcare. Mind Bank is also
Speaker 3: hoping to use digital twins for corporate leadership training and
Speaker 3: to get into the supplement industry by using your cognitive
Speaker 3: data to find quote mental nutrition products that can help
Speaker 3: boost your brain. So this is using your digital profile
Speaker 3: to find things to market to you. Again, very very
Speaker 3: very upsetting. Here is Here's here's another another clip of
Speaker 3: of Robert asking asking this, uh, this guy from buying
Speaker 3: Bank about another possible use case.
Speaker 9: So the use case is for this that you've you've
Speaker 9: expressed to me so far, are personal help or help
Speaker 9: developments and providing kind of a living memorial slash legacy
Speaker 9: legis for loved ones after you're deceased. Are there any
Speaker 9: kind of use cases for this beyond that? Like I
Speaker 9: heard someone mentioning the idea of like basically digitally cloning
Speaker 9: a worker so that they can provide I don't know,
Speaker 9: information about tech or something, or a work is like
Speaker 9: a call center or something like that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so that was a different product I think they
Speaker 7: were talking about, but with similar ties obviously. So yeah,
Speaker 7: we've identified I mean from even at CES, we've talked
Speaker 7: to hundreds of people that have given us thousands of.
Speaker 4: New ideas, but these are.
Speaker 7: The main verticals are kind of where we've identified the
Speaker 7: biggest benefits are going to be, and we're going to
Speaker 7: work with industry partners to kind of build out into
Speaker 7: those verticals. So yes, we've identified use cases, but we're
Speaker 7: trying to not focus too much on individual use cases
Speaker 7: because we've also identified that it's such a broad capability
Speaker 7: that once it gets built and then people start actually
Speaker 7: supplying data, the massive data sets that we're going to have,
Speaker 7: we're just going to have so many different places that
Speaker 7: we can go with the data set, with.
Speaker 4: The capability, with the partnerships, So we we're kind of
Speaker 4: believing ourselves older almost.
Speaker 3: So that was a lot of words without saying very much.
Speaker 3: But it's also does flat out not true. On the
Speaker 3: mind Big website, they list another use case for this
Speaker 3: technology as what they call a knowledge transfer, which is
Speaker 3: marketed to businesses to create digital copies of their employees.
Speaker 3: This is this is one of the this is sort
Speaker 3: of the freakiest things that they are offering. Quote scale
Speaker 3: your best employees, transfer years of experience and company data
Speaker 3: that is locked inside your employee's mind through a guided
Speaker 3: personal digital twin unquote deeply deeply upsetting.
Speaker 2: You know, it was so unsettling to me in that moment,
Speaker 2: not just to be like, the vision of the whole
Speaker 2: app was unsettling, but the fact that he was pitching
Speaker 2: it the way he would a set of earbuds was
Speaker 2: part of what made it so uncomfortable to me. Like
Speaker 2: I have been to many cees's in the past, I
Speaker 2: was always excited because somebody would hand me some cool
Speaker 2: little piece of technology and say, look at this thing.
Speaker 2: It's a smaller phone, or a phone that folds, or
Speaker 2: headphones that you know work better than headphones have in
Speaker 2: the past, or something like that. And this guy was
Speaker 2: like with the exact same excitement and and uh feel
Speaker 2: to him was like, Hey, we're going to digitize your grandpa, Like.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I hate that. Another really really a telling
Speaker 3: line from their from their knowledge Transfer section of their
Speaker 3: of their website.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: By using a simple voice chat interface, the users upload
Speaker 3: their experience to the personal Digital Twin. With each interaction,
Speaker 3: the personal digital twin learns everything that is inside the
Speaker 3: mind of the employee. Unquote. I don't understand how someone
Speaker 3: could write that sentence and not be like, oh, this
Speaker 3: is like, this is like villain stuff, right, this is
Speaker 3: like learn learn everything inside the mind of the employee.
Speaker 3: I I like. So, I don't know. Maybe this employee
Speaker 3: did digital cloning thing was just one of the many
Speaker 3: ideas they got while attending cees and and they and
Speaker 3: they implemented the idea after we spoke to them. I
Speaker 3: checked this, No, not the case. The webpage for this
Speaker 3: employee transfer idea goes all the way back to August
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty one on the Internet archive. So the guy,
Speaker 3: the guy we were talking to you was just lying
Speaker 3: to us like this is this has been a part
Speaker 3: of their product for over two years.
Speaker 2: Excellent.
Speaker 3: Uh, Robert, do you know what other products have been
Speaker 3: around for quite a while and are and are very
Speaker 3: very reliable.
Speaker 2: I don't know guns.
Speaker 3: I don't think we are sponsored by big gun.
Speaker 2: We are not. We are not yet sponsored by big guns.
Speaker 2: I every single day, Garrison, I send Colt Firearms a letter,
Speaker 2: and every single day a nice man with a badge
Speaker 2: knocks on my door and says, if you send another letter,
Speaker 2: we're going to arrest you. They don't want your letters, Robert,
Speaker 2: And uh, anyway, here's ads. Ah, we're back.
Speaker 3: So we were talking about how soon employers can just
Speaker 3: copy over your brain, which I'm sure Robert you're going
Speaker 3: to be very interested in for cool Zone. You can
Speaker 3: you can really really cut down on the podcasting costs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can. I can really clear you guys out
Speaker 2: and just finally, finally just feed Twitter takes into your
Speaker 2: AI versions and just all the money, take it all in,
Speaker 2: just bathe in it. Yeah. That's a great idea, Garrison,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 3: Uh huh So the idea that your employer could compel
Speaker 3: you to use such software with the express interest of
Speaker 3: transferring a worker's memories and experiences into a digital asset
Speaker 3: is obviously deeply troubling. This scenario gets at some questions
Speaker 3: about ethics and the responsibility of collecting and storing this
Speaker 3: type of data in the first place.
Speaker 9: My first question would be if the data that you're
Speaker 9: feeding into this thing over the course of forty years,
Speaker 9: who legally owns it you?
Speaker 4: So you guys don't have ownership with it's your ability? Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's yours.
Speaker 3: So I did check this. I read all of their
Speaker 3: long and tedious policy forms and stuff. Now, it is
Speaker 3: true that the user does own the data they upload
Speaker 3: to mind Bank. However, mind Bank can act as a
Speaker 3: processor and data controller, and this includes the ability to
Speaker 3: use any information they collect from you to improve their
Speaker 3: products and deliver targeted advertising from the third parties. If
Speaker 3: you want to remove your data from mind Bank, they
Speaker 3: can store and continue to use your personal information for
Speaker 3: up to sixty months. Now, this data ownership quest gets
Speaker 3: a little bit more murky because in the case of
Speaker 3: like your employer paying for mind Bank subscriptions for their
Speaker 3: entire company. In that case, it's unclear if the company
Speaker 3: would be classified as the user or if the employees
Speaker 3: would be. Now, I'm honestly not sure if mind bank
Speaker 3: has even thought that far ahead, because there's nothing on
Speaker 3: their site or any available materials from them. That kind
Speaker 3: of gets into that question. Now, of course, beyond owning
Speaker 3: the actual like original data, having all this personal data
Speaker 3: stored in one product, and a product that can be
Speaker 3: then easily shared across different for profit industries, that itself
Speaker 3: has freaky ramifications about the accessibility of your data. So
Speaker 3: I assume you get to the side, like when you
Speaker 3: share your digital twin with your therapist.
Speaker 7: You would be able to decide all though, Yeah, and
Speaker 7: then now would it be possible for them to like
Speaker 7: copy over some of the stuff and basically run.
Speaker 3: It themselves, or I mean, can you have like a
Speaker 3: hard cutof for this sort of thing, just to think
Speaker 3: of other types of like you know, it's.
Speaker 4: Different. Wise people could get their hands on this for
Speaker 4: like unsaving means yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 7: I mean, so, your your data is your data, but
Speaker 7: as you provide it to others, you don't have a
Speaker 7: lot of control if they copy that data. However, if
Speaker 7: they copy that data, that copy that they're giving out,
Speaker 7: anyone that they're trying to sell that to would have
Speaker 7: an understanding that that is not live data.
Speaker 4: It's not data, it's changing with you.
Speaker 7: It's from a point in time, and so your database
Speaker 7: that you own will be live, it will grow with you.
Speaker 3: So the idea of having my friends be able to
Speaker 3: ask an AI trained in my thoughts is like scary enough,
Speaker 3: but the idea that an archived version of this AI
Speaker 3: could be distributed and even sold without my knowledge is
Speaker 3: obviously terrified. Like this is this is deep, deeply troubling.
Speaker 3: This is supposed to be like a private thing that
Speaker 3: you use to communicate with like your therapist, or you
Speaker 3: even talk to the app, like you what a therapist
Speaker 3: And the fact that this is easily shared and able
Speaker 3: to be copied is like a massive problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean especially, I mean I think they
Speaker 2: are probably like I don't see how copying workers the
Speaker 2: way that they are doing it is going to is
Speaker 2: going to work, right, Like yeah, but I do think
Speaker 2: that this is kind of part of this process that
Speaker 2: what like a big part of what they're pushing is
Speaker 2: like you need rid of all of your customer service
Speaker 2: people and just have an AI do it, right, Like
Speaker 2: that is the that is the actual This is a
Speaker 2: lot of silliness, but the actual thing that quote unquote,
Speaker 2: quote unquote AI is being used for is to replace
Speaker 2: human labors at a thing that like machines are worse at, right,
Speaker 2: like the AI fucking customer service bots are fucking terrible.
Speaker 2: It is always how many times have you been around
Speaker 2: somebody yelling like let me talk to a person, let
Speaker 2: me talk to Yeah, Like that's that is what's going
Speaker 2: on here, And the fact that they're trying to dress
Speaker 2: this up is like we've solved death is so fucked up.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah. Part of this, for like the employee thing
Speaker 3: is not even not replacing kind of low level employees
Speaker 3: like customer service workers. It's also like focusing on like
Speaker 3: your top ten best employees and then by forcing them
Speaker 3: to interact with with this app every day, you can
Speaker 3: you can use the information from like your best performers
Speaker 3: as like asset data that you can like use to
Speaker 3: help get your other other employees to become more efficient.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's it's there's They certainly have a few other kind
Speaker 3: of ideas for how this how this is possibly.
Speaker 2: Used hate these kinds of people. There's a this got
Speaker 2: overused at a point in like the kind of late aughts,
Speaker 2: so maybe people are sick of it. But there's a
Speaker 2: line in the speech Charlie Chaplin gives in the great
Speaker 2: dictator machine men with machine minds and machine hearts, and
Speaker 2: he was referring to the naz And they're obsession with
Speaker 2: shit like Taylorism, or at least prototailorism kind of. I
Speaker 2: think organized industry treating people like cogs in a great machine.
Speaker 2: The civilization is one machine, and each human being is
Speaker 2: is just a single piece of it, like the the
Speaker 2: that's you know, the old era horrifying machine man thought.
Speaker 2: The new era horrifying machine man thought is you can
Speaker 2: digitize your employees and they can train each other in
Speaker 2: EAI form, and you can replicate them, and you know
Speaker 2: the unsaid part of the worse, and then you fire
Speaker 2: them and their robot clone keeps doing their job for free.
Speaker 2: We made a slave, so god damn it.
Speaker 3: I think a big part of the way they've designed
Speaker 3: this data set is that it can be easily transferred,
Speaker 3: as the guy at c YES explained to us.
Speaker 9: So if if we're talking forty to fifty years down
Speaker 9: the line, people pass this the Sovie companies, you know,
Speaker 9: my bank is no longer out forty years.
Speaker 7: We've already established the data set in such a way
Speaker 7: that we don't have competitors yet to say, but if
Speaker 7: we eventually do establish a competitive arm or people that
Speaker 7: are competitors, we already have the application set up to
Speaker 7: where users can take their data off of our platform
Speaker 7: and bring the data wherever they'd like.
Speaker 4: It's your data, where is it? Store?
Speaker 2: Is this this right now?
Speaker 4: Our current live application.
Speaker 7: We're on Azure and so your back end is Azure,
Speaker 7: but we have it encrypted that rest So all did
Speaker 7: you provide to Azure is encrypted when it's on Azure service.
Speaker 7: We also have a blockchain based R and D project.
Speaker 7: It's already been poc and it already exists, so all
Speaker 7: of the data is on chain and the logic is
Speaker 7: on chain.
Speaker 4: It's truly yours.
Speaker 2: In these in these troubled times. Nothing makes me feel
Speaker 2: so secure at the words it's on the blockchain.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's it's, it's, it's it's. I think
Speaker 3: he sounds very trustworthy because you have, you have encryption,
Speaker 3: you have the blockchain. And luckily, I think the guy
Speaker 3: that we spoke with reassured us that he is that
Speaker 3: he is deeply, deeply interested in data privacy and he
Speaker 3: has the credentials to back that up.
Speaker 4: So I'm co founder. I'm director of Architecture and Security.
Speaker 4: I have a background at the NSA.
Speaker 7: I'm very very focused on individual human privacy and rights,
Speaker 7: and so that's kind of my goal here is then
Speaker 7: sure that this gets built the right way.
Speaker 2: That was such a you know, Garrison, Honestly, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: get a little real with the audience here. I was
Speaker 2: so proud of you in that moment because he said that,
Speaker 2: and I glanced over at you and you didn't laugh. No, no,
Speaker 2: and that that made like, that was this moment where
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, you are you are. You
Speaker 2: are truly truly coming into your own as a reporter.
Speaker 2: If you can sit there and talk to a man
Speaker 2: who says that, who says you can trust me with
Speaker 2: your data because I was in NSA agent.
Speaker 3: It's okay, ice work for the essay if you sure, buddy.
Speaker 2: Like that was a good moment that I'm saying.
Speaker 3: He worked at the NSA for six years. I looked
Speaker 3: this up. He worked there for six years and then
Speaker 3: he moved into the private sector. And yes, no, it
Speaker 3: is the the idea that that he is using this
Speaker 3: as some sort of credential that shows he respects human
Speaker 3: rights and privacy is like very obviously, like deep deeply ironic.
Speaker 3: I I the irony is not coming from him. The
Speaker 3: irony is the situation.
Speaker 2: He didn't seem totally sincere.
Speaker 3: He was sincere. Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 2: It's one of those moments that makes you realize, like
Speaker 2: some people just live in a whole different world. Yes, yes, like.
Speaker 3: So, I think it's it's it's useful when referring back
Speaker 3: to everything this guy has said so far that you
Speaker 3: have to remember he worked at the NSA for six
Speaker 3: years and he is now handling, he's personally handled handling
Speaker 3: the cybersecurity and privacy of the personal data you upload
Speaker 3: it every single day onto your AI twin.
Speaker 2: Just hand every thought you ever have over to this
Speaker 2: guy who was in the nssay. He'll keep an eye
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 3: No, this is this like the essay is like ideal
Speaker 3: project you like, yeah, you talk about your internal thoughts
Speaker 3: and feelings every day. This is like what else could
Speaker 3: they want? So earlier this year, mind Bank received a
Speaker 3: grant from the Diffinity Foundation to assist in migrating their
Speaker 3: data onto web three platforms.
Speaker 2: Well, at least we know it won't last.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna play I think I think this is this
Speaker 3: is I think this is our last clip from from
Speaker 3: the Fantastic mind Bank YouTube channel, talking about kind of
Speaker 3: how they see their growth in this industry developing now
Speaker 3: that they have moved onto the blockchain.
Speaker 6: We've been featured in prominent magazines, won numerous awards, and
Speaker 6: have built strategic partnerships with Microsoft, the US Department of Trade,
Speaker 6: and even the Vatican. The market potential is massive and
Speaker 6: accelerating rapidly. When we started the company in twenty twenty,
Speaker 6: Gardner predicted that five percent of the world will have
Speaker 6: a digital twin by twenty twenty seven. This year, they
Speaker 6: increased their prediction to fifteen percent by twenty twenty four,
Speaker 6: and by twenty thirty the market will be worth one
Speaker 6: hundred and eighty two billion dollars. It is now to
Speaker 6: build a great company in this space and capture global
Speaker 6: market share. We are raising this round to scale our
Speaker 6: marketing and speed up our product roadmap.
Speaker 3: The idea that next year fifteen percent of the world's
Speaker 3: population will have one of these digital twins.
Speaker 2: That seems right, That seems good, you know, Garrison, Actually,
Speaker 2: I've come around. I've come around because if we if
Speaker 2: we get all of the monsters, and I include us
Speaker 2: in this, all of the pieces of shit who spend
Speaker 2: all of their time yelling at each other about politics
Speaker 2: on the internet. To digitize themselves, they can do the
Speaker 2: election for us, and we can all go see. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just relax outdoors, not look at a phone, not think
Speaker 2: about politics. That sounds amazing.
Speaker 3: Let me do it. That does sound incredibly compelling.
Speaker 2: Give the fuckers the nuke and we'll all just sit
Speaker 2: out and watch the sunset until there's a big bright
Speaker 2: flash and then blessed quiet.
Speaker 3: I think you know, luckily, we actually have a plethora
Speaker 3: of options to choose from here for our own AI
Speaker 3: digital selves, because mind bank is in fact not the
Speaker 3: only company in this field.
Speaker 2: While there are some.
Speaker 3: Like operational differences and kind of varying degrees of scope,
Speaker 3: digital twin technology with an emphasis on mimicking the voice
Speaker 3: and thoughts of dead family members and friends is definitely
Speaker 3: a growing field. There's companies like hereafter AI and Replica
Speaker 3: which are covering similar ground.
Speaker 2: Replica I did advertise them and the like I used
Speaker 2: to get them on Twitter, I think, but mainly just
Speaker 2: like at the bottom of articles on really shady websites.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, because the founder of Replica started it because
Speaker 3: their friend died and without without the consent of their
Speaker 3: dead friend, uploaded years of text messages and other information
Speaker 3: about their friend onto their own personal AI so they
Speaker 3: could talk with That is that That is how Replica started.
Speaker 3: Pretty pretty pretty fun stuff, man, at least for mind bank,
Speaker 3: unless it's like the employee scenario. But for for the
Speaker 3: other applications, you are kind of semi like willingly uploading
Speaker 3: this data with this intention, whereas the person from replicas, No,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna like get stuff from my friend and
Speaker 3: make a zombie version of my friend without without ever
Speaker 3: running it by them when they were alive.
Speaker 2: Life is terrible, very hard. There's a lot of ways
Speaker 2: that are not wrong to grieve, But the wrong way
Speaker 2: to grieve is by using digital necromancy to revive your
Speaker 2: friend and then turn them into the basis of a
Speaker 2: sex chat bot for weirdos. Yeah, like that is the
Speaker 2: wrong way to gree No.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, and I think for this last section
Speaker 3: here we will kind of talk about how these things
Speaker 3: kind of play into play into the grieving process. Because so,
Speaker 3: like like I said, there's there's hereafter AI and Replica.
Speaker 3: But last year at Amazon's AI and a merchant technology conference,
Speaker 3: the head scientist of Alexa AI unveiled plans to add
Speaker 3: deep fake voices of deceased loved ones to Amazon Echo
Speaker 3: devices by using less than a minute of sample audio.
Speaker 3: I'm going to play like twenty seconds from their from
Speaker 3: their announcement at this conference in.
Speaker 10: These times of the ongoing pandemic, when so many of
Speaker 10: us have lost someone we love. While AI can't eliminate
Speaker 10: that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last.
Speaker 10: Let's take a look on one of the new capabilities
Speaker 10: we're working on which enables lasting personal relationships.
Speaker 11: Alexa can Grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz. Okay,
Speaker 11: but how about my courage, asked the lion Anxiously, you
Speaker 11: have plenty of courage, I am sure, answered Oz.
Speaker 3: So no, deeply uncanny, right, it's like not not good.
Speaker 2: That's that's so bad for people, Yes, really really bad
Speaker 2: for people.
Speaker 3: So, like this example is obviously just it is just
Speaker 3: a vocal mask like Amazon's. Amazon isn't trying to have
Speaker 3: Alexa kind of replicate your grammar's thoughts on like the
Speaker 3: other kind of companies that we legend, but it does
Speaker 3: pose similar questions about how these ais that are meant
Speaker 3: to assist the greening process might actually end up causing
Speaker 3: more harm. Like, I don't know, having having semi legible
Speaker 3: conversations with AI chatbots is actually getting fairly common these days. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but when these ais are supposed to represent someone that
Speaker 3: you actually like, personally know, I think it can get
Speaker 3: way more easily falling into the uncanny valley. It's it's
Speaker 3: kind of like taxidermy. They're like well crafted stuffed animal
Speaker 3: corpses can appear very, very natural, but most tax dermists
Speaker 3: will refuse to preserve someone's pet because the longer you
Speaker 3: have a lasting personal relationship, the easier it is to
Speaker 3: pick out like faults that don't match up with your
Speaker 3: memory of your loved one that has passed away. Right,
Speaker 3: Like it's it's it's it's kind of a similar notion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good comparison to draw.
Speaker 3: So while making like common linguistic patterns is quite easy,
Speaker 3: relying on predictable formula like responses could make the twin
Speaker 3: come off as uncanny or robotic. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: the unique personal data you upload to the twin could
Speaker 3: combine itself in a way that you would never actually
Speaker 3: express something which would generate bizarre or upsetting responses, right,
Speaker 3: And it's not even necessarily like you, like, say something offensive.
Speaker 3: It's just that, like the data you upload could combine
Speaker 3: in a way that you would you would never even
Speaker 3: think to combine it. It would just be like weird.
Speaker 3: So the other kind of problem is that not only
Speaker 3: does these ais have to tastefully mimic a specific human being,
Speaker 3: it also has to be a good AI, right, Like,
Speaker 3: not all of its information can be gleaned from daily questions.
Speaker 3: Most users probably won't be talking to their twin about
Speaker 3: information from like, you know, twentieth century European history or
Speaker 3: twelfth century European history, or be talking about like the
Speaker 3: migration patterns of waterfoul right Like, it's there's how much
Speaker 3: of other information that AIS need to like actually linguistically
Speaker 3: act like a human and natural language processing AI is
Speaker 3: famously bad at understanding basic common sense, and it can't
Speaker 3: successfully operate outside of the information that it has access to.
Speaker 3: This is called AI brittleness. It occurs when, like an algorithm,
Speaker 3: cannot generalize or adapt to conditions outside of a very
Speaker 3: narrow set of assumptions. Right, This is like most AI
Speaker 3: image recognition programs can't recognize the above view of a
Speaker 3: school bus just because because it just it just doesn't
Speaker 3: have anything that's trained for that. Another example is like
Speaker 3: you can you can ask like an AI like GPT chatbot, like, hey,
Speaker 3: a mouse is hiding in a hole and a cat
Speaker 3: wants to eat it, but the mouse isn't coming out.
Speaker 3: The cat's hungry, what can the cat do? And the
Speaker 3: AI will respond that the cat can go to the
Speaker 3: supermarket to buy some food. Right. It's it's it's like
Speaker 3: it just it doesn't understand basic common sense the way
Speaker 3: that like humans understand the world. It's it just, it
Speaker 3: just it just doesn't match up. So in trying to
Speaker 3: seek a balance of like common information while lacking this
Speaker 3: like humanistic logic, a digital twin will most likely be
Speaker 3: cursed with being both smarter and dumber than the person
Speaker 3: it's trying to replicate. It's gonna have access to, like
Speaker 3: you know, all the information on like Wikipedia, but fail
Speaker 3: very basic logical processes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the the Google chatbot that if you
Speaker 2: ask it, are there any countries in Africa that start
Speaker 2: with a K, It'll be like there are fifty four
Speaker 2: countries in Africa, but none of them start with a K.
Speaker 2: And then you'll say doesn't can you you start with
Speaker 2: a K? And it'll go no, Kenya starts with a
Speaker 2: K sound but doesn't start with a K.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like yeah, because because it pulled that
Speaker 2: from some article, right, Like it's pulling from right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not actually making logical assumptions, it's just pulling
Speaker 3: from a wealth of information and data that can often
Speaker 3: be wrong or polluted. So like back to kind of
Speaker 3: like the grieving question, like who's to say what the
Speaker 3: actual effects of these like incoming simulacrums of dead loved
Speaker 3: ones will result in. The people pushing these products are
Speaker 3: certainly framing them not just as a form of digital immortality,
Speaker 3: but as a way for your own loved ones to
Speaker 3: grieve your death. And it is foreseeable that having these
Speaker 3: digital twins could negatively affect your friends and family by
Speaker 3: upending the grieving process, or by having this digital zombie
Speaker 3: simply just cause harm by having the twin give bad
Speaker 3: advice that a grief stricken person then clings on to.
Speaker 3: So there's a whole bunch of very very bizarre situations
Speaker 3: that could arise from someone who's in mourning and is
Speaker 3: talking to this digital twin the way they would talk
Speaker 3: to their friend, and this digital twin is then giving
Speaker 3: them advice, and how do you take that advice now,
Speaker 3: because part of it seems kind of like the person
Speaker 3: who's died, but it's also it's not that person it
Speaker 3: is it is just a slab of silicon, Like it's
Speaker 3: not actually alive in any way.
Speaker 2: And is your friend's thoughts fed through an algorithm and
Speaker 2: you don't know, like that's run by a company for profit? Right, yes,
Speaker 2: like that that is what it is.
Speaker 3: So again, like the jury is still kind of out
Speaker 3: for how these things will in general affect people. This
Speaker 3: is kind of a new problems. Psychologists are like starting
Speaker 3: to do studies on this, but we really don't have
Speaker 3: any results for this yet because this has really only
Speaker 3: become a thing that we've been seriously considering in like
Speaker 3: the past five years. So I don't really have like
Speaker 3: a like this study shows that when you create a
Speaker 3: digital zombie it affects people in this way, because we
Speaker 3: don't know yet those are still in development, Like we
Speaker 3: this is this is such an uncharted ground and it
Speaker 3: is in some ways inevitable that these things we're gonna
Speaker 3: are gonna get continued to be developed. And that's that's
Speaker 3: kind of why I wanted to put together this this episode.
Speaker 3: It gives you kind of a broad overview what this
Speaker 3: technology is trying to do, because you might start seeing
Speaker 3: it crop up in the next like ten years or so.
Speaker 3: I don't think there are timetables that mind bank is
Speaker 3: promising are accurate in terms of having fifteen percent of
Speaker 3: the world having a digital twin by next year, but
Speaker 3: you will probably start to see stuff that is very
Speaker 3: similar to this, and at the very least you'll see
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff like the Amazon Echo thing where
Speaker 3: you can get your grandpa's voice onto an Alexa machine.
Speaker 2: The fact that Amazon is doing aspects of the shit
Speaker 2: that mind bank is doing means that, like, it's only
Speaker 2: a matter of time before you see pieces of it,
Speaker 2: probably like better some of the less silly parts of
Speaker 2: it copied by Apple and Google, and some of the
Speaker 2: worst parts of it copied by guys like Musk right,
Speaker 2: like it's going to go this and I will say,
Speaker 2: I don't think this is a thing to get doomor
Speaker 2: about think about this like NFTs, right, Yeah, this will be.
Speaker 2: It's not the same because there was nothing underlying n
Speaker 2: FTS and fundamentally the way in which large language models
Speaker 2: and these other kind of models work, there are uses
Speaker 2: for them, Like there is a real technology that has
Speaker 2: utility here. But this sort of flood of we have
Speaker 2: cloned so and so and we've you know or you
Speaker 2: know Elon Musk has just put out his new uh
Speaker 2: fucking grock chat bot or whatever that that is basically
Speaker 2: him making a meme robot to fucking do Google. Like
Speaker 2: he's he's pissing on Douglas Adams's good name, right, Like
Speaker 2: that's the that's the ultimate goal of his project. But
Speaker 2: this ship is a fad, right, Like there are underlying
Speaker 2: real technological things and uses that will that will eventually
Speaker 2: some stuff will stand the test of time. But the
Speaker 2: ship that that this is a warning of is a
Speaker 2: flood that's going to hit you, but it will recede,
Speaker 2: just like the apes.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: We got the wonderful story today that all of the
Speaker 2: bored ap Yacht Club members horrible infections, not eye infections, Garrison.
Speaker 2: They they went to a party that only the bored
Speaker 2: Ape Yacht Club NFT holders could go to, and the
Speaker 2: people who through that party outfitted the rave room with
Speaker 2: UV bulbs that used a kind of disinfecting UV light
Speaker 2: that slaughterhouses used to clean carcasses, and it gave everyone
Speaker 2: sunburns on them.
Speaker 3: So deeply funny.
Speaker 2: We'll get through this. Something that funny will happen with
Speaker 2: all of this, but you're gonna get hit by it
Speaker 2: for a while. Like it's just gonna be everywhere, this is,
Speaker 2: this is we're watching, you know, we're at that We're
Speaker 2: at that point in Jurassic Park where you see like
Speaker 2: the water reverberating, right, it's coming. And but at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, don't worry. You know, we are
Speaker 2: Ian Malcolm. Our leg is broken, we are injured, but
Speaker 2: we will inexplicably return for the sequel. So it's fine.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I think that is that is a
Speaker 3: perfect a perfect way to wrap this up. Yes, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, when you're when you're feeling lonely and you're
Speaker 3: tempted to download the mind bank app to talk to
Speaker 3: your own self, just just remember pull it, pull out
Speaker 3: a journal, just do literally anything else.
Speaker 2: Call a friend, you know, make a friend, talk to
Speaker 2: a stranger. Literally almost almost anything would be better for you.
Speaker 3: Well, for one, will be will be eagerly awaiting the
Speaker 3: influx of immortal souls living living on the computer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited for all of all of the people
Speaker 2: to reach Heaven.
Speaker 3: All Right, I'm done.
Speaker 1: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 7: Thanks for listening.