Speaker 1: All the media.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, helloo, and welcome to it could happen here.
Speaker 2: I'm andrews Age otherwise known as Andrewism on YouTube, and
Speaker 2: I'm here with James.
Speaker 1: Just James don't have a YouTube.
Speaker 2: More than just James, I mean, I love talking to you,
Speaker 2: so in more than just James to me.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you, Andrew. It's very sweet. I enjoyed these
Speaker 1: Two's the phone for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I really I'd like to get into one
Speaker 2: of the hotter topics as of late. Not the heat,
Speaker 2: so that is a hot topic. But yeah, YEAHI artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: Oh good, Yeah, my favorite thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and more specifically the ways in which AI has
Speaker 2: contributed to and accentuated alienation and the capitalism and the
Speaker 2: state in the twenty first century. So that's a mouthful,
Speaker 2: but it's obviously very important. Okay, Yeah, I like you
Speaker 2: so lot in my opinion. Alienation, with all its meanings,
Speaker 2: really it's one of those words that you could really
Speaker 2: use to describe the current side guys, the experience of
Speaker 2: separation from yourself, from your work, from the products your work,
Speaker 2: from your community. All these things, both philosophical and material,
Speaker 2: get wrapped up into this concept of alienation. Because it's
Speaker 2: both an experience, it's something that people like feel internally,
Speaker 2: it describes the way that they see their lives, and
Speaker 2: it's also just a fact of how people work into society.
Speaker 2: You're dispossessed of the products of a labor and you're
Speaker 2: disconnected from the process of a labor and the outcomes
Speaker 2: of a labor. And this is of course all thanks
Speaker 2: to development of capitalism and industrialization and this development of
Speaker 2: a mass society quote unquote with all the apathy and
Speaker 2: loss of agency and weaken social fabric that generates.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I think alienation is like something we don't
Speaker 1: talk about enough. It's like the thing that ties together
Speaker 1: that despare the loneliness. They like loneliness is is maybe
Speaker 1: like it's a way that capitalism has come to talk
Speaker 1: about alienation without acknowledging the capitalism is creating alienation. Every
Speaker 1: sort of developed state in the colonial core have acknowledged
Speaker 1: that loneliness as a problem. Right. I saw Gavin Newsome
Speaker 1: was with launching a loneliness campaign. But like the system
Speaker 1: is a problem. The alienation is created by the way
Speaker 1: that things are, and like we can't fixate without changing
Speaker 1: the way that things are.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly it comes down to. I mean, in particular,
Speaker 2: I think we see alienation manifests in most in our relationships,
Speaker 2: of course, and in our works. And it's been an
Speaker 2: issue for some decades now. And what I'm really intrigued
Speaker 2: by is, you know, this has been an issue for
Speaker 2: a while, but how was HEI interacting with these issues?
Speaker 2: Hall is THEI impacts in the ilination that we already
Speaker 2: experience under the system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm currently teaching a class at the
Speaker 1: community college to class about pre sixteen hundred history, and like,
Speaker 1: I teach a little bit every year, right, and every
Speaker 1: year I've seen what AI use. But this year this
Speaker 1: is fully blackpilled me, Like, I don't quite know how
Speaker 1: to describe the feelings I'm experiencing, I guess, but it's
Speaker 1: class I assigned like David Graeber, I assigned Jim Scott,
Speaker 1: I assigned Charles Tilly on state making and war making, right,
Speaker 1: Like very basic left libertarian kind of text, right, which
Speaker 1: for many people will be the first time they encounter
Speaker 1: the concept of like what if no state? What if
Speaker 1: state bad? And I think they're all writing in a
Speaker 1: way that's very approachable to people who don't, you know,
Speaker 1: the dense academic writing is annoying and pretentious, and I
Speaker 1: don't like it every time I do this, cause it
Speaker 1: used to be the case that, like thirty to forty ten,
Speaker 1: the students would be like, holy fuck. Whether they like
Speaker 1: it or not, it's a new concept and it's cool,
Speaker 1: and they engage with it in like a passionate way,
Speaker 1: a human way. Every year it's got worse, and now,
Speaker 1: like I can think of two students out of one
Speaker 1: hundred who are like engaging with it in any human way,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure most of them. I would imagine they
Speaker 1: buy the a I summarize the text, or in many
Speaker 1: cases they certainly have used AI to just respond. I
Speaker 1: let my students respond in ways that they feel appropriate, right,
Speaker 1: so that they could do videos or different things if
Speaker 1: they wanted to do, like a they wanted to make
Speaker 1: a video about doing an essay, that's fine with me.
Speaker 1: I don't care. I just want them to read the
Speaker 1: shit think about it. But like, there's been no human reaction,
Speaker 1: and that's so sad to me. Like the reason they
Speaker 1: teach is to get young people to see the world differently.
Speaker 1: It certainly isn't for the fucking money, and that's just
Speaker 1: might be in capable of doing that now, or like
Speaker 1: I can't get through that alienation that like I can't
Speaker 1: get people to engage, and like, think about it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I got to work that shit out, right, Like this
Speaker 1: generation of people who went through high school when AI
Speaker 1: was the thing and detecting AI use in long form
Speaker 1: writing was not very well developed, so they were able
Speaker 1: to use it instead of doing long form writing and
Speaker 1: maybe even reading long form, And like, I have to
Speaker 1: work out how to get those people to engage not
Speaker 1: to be so sort of alienated from the concept of
Speaker 1: reading and absorbing big ideas. But I haven't fucking worked
Speaker 1: it out yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a really big issue, and it's only cruent,
Speaker 2: you know, as EI expands, I mean, it's not so
Speaker 2: much the focus of this episode, but it is something
Speaker 2: that I wanted to touch on. You know, people used
Speaker 2: to be doing fine without it, used to be well
Speaker 2: to function without A three years ago, and now you
Speaker 2: talk to them and they can't live without it. They
Speaker 2: have to run everything through AI. You know, people have
Speaker 2: offloaded most of their cognitive processes the yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know we talk about the environmental
Speaker 2: impact of that, the way the data centers are damage
Speaker 2: in the environment, taking fresh water and taking vast amounts
Speaker 2: of energy from the system. So we all rely upon
Speaker 2: to live and you know, we could, as we touched on,
Speaker 2: talk about called schools and the education systems pretty much
Speaker 2: falling apart. Yeah, I mean, I know you're one of those,
Speaker 2: you know, genuinely passionate professors. But what I've noticed is
Speaker 2: this this whole fast now in many sections of the
Speaker 2: education system where you have students AI summarize in material
Speaker 2: if even doing that, you know, submitting AI generated essays
Speaker 2: or AI generated material, and the professors just AI created.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I heard of this.
Speaker 2: So it's just one one big puppet show, you know,
Speaker 2: one one big fast god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, one big charade, which you know, to
Speaker 1: an extent, education has always just been that, right, one
Speaker 1: big fast. But there are things that are redeemable about it.
Speaker 1: And I'm just talking about teaching now, and I'll stop
Speaker 1: in a minute. There's very little demand for in person
Speaker 1: classes compared to online classes anymore, so like that makes
Speaker 1: it harder for us to break through that alienation, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's something special about sitting in a room and
Speaker 1: talking just just find it's just like being like, we're
Speaker 1: going to be here for ninety minutes, none of us
Speaker 1: in It's a dynamic, yeah, and it's an important dynamic.
Speaker 1: Like the function of the university is to fucking turn
Speaker 1: out people with stem degrees who can go on and
Speaker 1: make shitty apps. We don't need. It's to prepare us
Speaker 1: to be citizens in the community, exactly, and we are
Speaker 1: failing at that. And yeah, instead I'm just great and
Speaker 1: chet GP deal day know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's that's a big piece of the puzzle
Speaker 2: that we end up missing, because the way in which
Speaker 2: the sort of dynamics and the connections that you would
Speaker 2: get from the university class room and beyond just social
Speaker 2: connections in general is lacking and alienated world. And it's
Speaker 2: wisened by you know, the instruction of the I I
Speaker 2: managed to complete most of my education, most of my
Speaker 2: bachelor's degree, that is, prior to the pandemic. Right, I
Speaker 2: was nearing the end of my third year when lockdown,
Speaker 2: you know, came into FOCE, and then it just I
Speaker 2: did my entire fourth year online, and honestly, I'm so
Speaker 2: glad that I was able to do my classes in Boson,
Speaker 2: you know, and I'm so glad that I did my classes,
Speaker 2: you know, entirely on my own in a time where
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, I was not a thing. You know,
Speaker 2: there were times where you know, it probably feels like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, it's so stressful, like, but you just
Speaker 2: had a buckle had to buckle down and figure out
Speaker 2: a way to get it done. And because we could
Speaker 2: talk about the perverse incentives of breeding systems and schools
Speaker 2: and how that sort of pushes some students who you know,
Speaker 2: may have learning difficulties or time management difficulties or whatever
Speaker 2: to actually do their stuff, they end up going down
Speaker 2: the I route. But yeah, I mean, even just looking
Speaker 2: back at my experience because lockdown hits during the semester,
Speaker 2: I had a writing class that I was a part of,
Speaker 2: and every time we went into class, it was so dynamic,
Speaker 2: was so lively, it was so engaging. All the ideas
Speaker 2: were just bouncing off for each other. After the lockdown,
Speaker 2: that class completely feels a lout. Everything that we were
Speaker 2: getting from it was just absent because we were entirely online.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's really a struggle and I think social
Speaker 2: life that's coming out of the education conversation, social life,
Speaker 2: community and connection all ends up lacking because of the
Speaker 2: aliens and need of the system the way that things
Speaker 2: have been set up. But also AI is playing a
Speaker 2: major role too. AI in a sense as a category
Speaker 2: is you know, you can have a whole discussion about
Speaker 2: that quibbolo for definitions. But in a sense AAI has
Speaker 2: already been playing a major role into how people socialize
Speaker 2: even before these large language models came to be in
Speaker 2: because you have a sort of artificial intelligence in the
Speaker 2: algorithms that people interact with on social media. You know,
Speaker 2: people have the content they consume being curated by algorithms.
Speaker 2: They end up in these sort of echo chambers, these
Speaker 2: reinforcement loops and outrage bait and then dopamine loops, and
Speaker 2: all those things have lended to people spending more and
Speaker 2: more time online because you know, it's hitting that part
Speaker 2: of the brain, and everybody is hyper connected and always online,
Speaker 2: and more and more of life takes place on the Internet,
Speaker 2: and that has left people feel and isolated. I think
Speaker 2: loneliness is obviously not entirely the result of social media
Speaker 2: and now AI, but the sort of irony is that
Speaker 2: loneliness has been a side effect of this digital hyperconnection. Yeah,
Speaker 2: when you look at some of the factors that are
Speaker 2: contributing to this this already isolated nature of our world, right,
Speaker 2: you know, people don't have as much free time. You know,
Speaker 2: there's in as much public space as there used to be.
Speaker 2: Some people have no public space available to them. Public
Speaker 2: spaces that do exist are not open in the times
Speaker 2: when people are available to go to them. Libraries are
Speaker 2: a famous example. A lot of them are you know,
Speaker 2: not open for working people pretty much. And then people
Speaker 2: who do want to go out and socialize and stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, you're dealing with the higher cost of living,
Speaker 2: so there's little resources that you can use to you know,
Speaker 2: go and put yourself out there because you have to
Speaker 2: spend money to go to places. And then it also
Speaker 2: just moons out energy ys because of you know, the
Speaker 2: long work week, long work hours, just trying to make
Speaker 2: against meet psychological to all of that. Yeah, and so
Speaker 2: part of what AI has been doing is pushing these
Speaker 2: AI companions on people. And you know, I don't mean
Speaker 2: to fair mongo or anything, because I know there a
Speaker 2: lot of people who reject AI and who stand against AI,
Speaker 2: and of course that could just be the bubble that
Speaker 2: I'm in. But yeah, I also know somebody in person,
Speaker 2: or rather I knew somebody in person who spoke to
Speaker 2: chat reipt like their partner and therapists. Yeah, they listen like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's it's I mean, it's sad. Yeah, it's as you said,
Speaker 2: almost kind of black pillar, you know, because these chatbots
Speaker 2: they listen in a simulated sense, they respond in a
Speaker 2: simulated sense, and they affirm with the certain is dealing with,
Speaker 2: is going through, is venting about. They're almost like a
Speaker 2: hug box because you don't really see chatbots disagreeing with
Speaker 2: the people they're speaking to. Chetbots are very much like
Speaker 2: you know, fawning, you know, they try their best to
Speaker 2: affume everything that a person is telling them. So you
Speaker 2: have this kind of cuddle box for people's egos, which,
Speaker 2: in two, it makes it even more difficult for them
Speaker 2: to connect to real people because you know, real people
Speaker 2: are going to call you out. You know, they're going
Speaker 2: to disagree with you, You're going to have friction and conflict,
Speaker 2: but there's also a lot of joy becomes for interact
Speaker 2: with real people, and unfortunately a lot of people, because
Speaker 2: they're not getting that, they're turned into this on demand affection,
Speaker 2: this on demand flirtation, this pseudo therapy, and it's it's brutal,
Speaker 2: you know, Loneliness is a brutal experience. Relationships are very hard,
Speaker 2: and therapy is extremely expensive for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: So I understand that, you know, you can only put
Speaker 2: so much blame on individuals because the will is not
Speaker 2: really set up to support those kind of lasting connections. Yeah,
Speaker 2: people live very spread out. They have few and fewer
Speaker 2: opportunities to interact with each other. In fact, a lot
Speaker 2: of times, the last time a Polson had extended exposure
Speaker 2: with other people was in school or in college. And
Speaker 2: outside of that, you're just kind of on your own. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and places are increasingly not walkable, the more cor eccentric,
Speaker 2: the sort of spontaneity and friction and interaction that would
Speaker 2: have made relationships blossom naturally and the religious possible, as
Speaker 2: messy and inconvenience as they can be, sometimes those things
Speaker 2: are lacking now and unfortunately some for action of people.
Speaker 2: And I don't know what the actual number would be
Speaker 2: because I can imagine a lot of people will not
Speaker 2: admit that they turn into a chatbot for companionship. But
Speaker 2: it is a frightening woman of what their action we're
Speaker 2: going in, and I also worry about the potential outcomes
Speaker 2: of you know, egoic behavior that might results from that
Speaker 2: sort of continue us interaction with something that is affirming
Speaker 2: in every belief and thought and conclusion. What kind of
Speaker 2: google are we going to be there? First?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, it's the world that super rich people
Speaker 1: already live in. One of the reasons that the gulf
Speaker 1: between the rest of us and the super rich, like
Speaker 1: the really you know, incredibly wealthy people. Part of that
Speaker 1: is that no one says no to a lot of
Speaker 1: those people, and that's why they exclusively end up socializing
Speaker 1: with each other, right, Like they're they're surrounded by nothing
Speaker 1: of the affirmation.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things we see was Trump, right, is
Speaker 1: that like, if there is a reality that he doesn't like,
Speaker 1: he manifests his own reality. He just speaks things and
Speaker 1: expects them to be accepted as truths. Right. Growing up,
Speaker 1: my dad worked for a lot of extremely wealthy people,
Speaker 1: and so I've interacted with them, and like, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who just aren't used to hearing no
Speaker 1: or why, but not a lot that there is a
Speaker 1: number of them, and like I think when you see
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about it. The behavior that you know,
Speaker 1: did Trump now asserting with the Epstein thing is like
Speaker 1: it is made up, right, and it's a hoax, and
Speaker 1: it just when we were talking about AI. It sort
Speaker 1: of reminds me of that, right, that like constant affirmation,
Speaker 1: because what a I want you to do is to
Speaker 1: please you so that you spend more time on it,
Speaker 1: I assume. And there's some way that it attempts to
Speaker 1: monetize that, I'm sure, and it just wants you to
Speaker 1: keep interacting with it so it can get more information
Speaker 1: to take into its model. I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The dates are called rush.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, And and people are doing the same with
Speaker 1: with wealthy people, right, They just want to interact with
Speaker 1: them so they can siphon off some of the resources
Speaker 1: is that those people have accumulated, Like it's not maybe
Speaker 1: it's not the same. I think that's still humans interacting
Speaker 1: with wealthy people is distinct from an AI interacting with humans,
Speaker 1: but it sort of gives us a window into what
Speaker 1: the impact of that being most of your human interaction
Speaker 1: over time.
Speaker 2: Indeed, Indeed, and as we speak of wealthy people, I
Speaker 2: suppose we should look at the other way in which
Speaker 2: EI is intersected with alienation, right, because you know, for
Speaker 2: the current narrative has been about you know, EI is
Speaker 2: taking jobs, and before then it was about automation was
Speaker 2: taking jobs. EI is you know, a form of automation,
Speaker 2: and before that it was just innovations in general, just
Speaker 2: steps in some technological direction would be eliminating jobs. But
Speaker 2: always marveled at stepping back and looking at the whole
Speaker 2: conversation about this has taking jobs, that has taken jobs
Speaker 2: is at the root of it is this dependence on employment,
Speaker 2: on jobs for people to have, you know, life, to
Speaker 2: be able to have a quality of life. We have
Speaker 2: gotten more and more productive, and I mean that productivity
Speaker 2: has helped people in some ways, and it's harm to
Speaker 2: the environment in a lot of ways. But we have
Speaker 2: a certain level of productivity now and we've produced so
Speaker 2: much now that in some sectors we have more of
Speaker 2: the enough for several decades to come. I think fashion
Speaker 2: is one of them where we have like quite the
Speaker 2: excess of clothing everybody. And of course you can talk
Speaker 2: about how that level of productivity is done damage to
Speaker 2: our creativity or craftsmanship, but it's all the worse when
Speaker 2: you think about how even with all that productivity, the
Speaker 2: work has hardly benefited. You know, more productivity doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: mean more pay. And so even before EI came around,
Speaker 2: we were having issues with labor and alienation, right, people
Speaker 2: disconnected from their work from whether it be a service job,
Speaker 2: a factory job, or delivery job, whatever, any of these
Speaker 2: jobs that you look at, it's structured at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, not around providing a product or providing
Speaker 2: a service, but around profit, around the podynamic between the owner,
Speaker 2: the capitalist and the worker. The worker who is not
Speaker 2: in control, is alienated from their labor and from the
Speaker 2: products of their labor. And this is what Marx famously
Speaker 2: spoke about, but he wasn't the only one to speak
Speaker 2: about it. This sort of alienated labor that is compelled
Speaker 2: rather than creative, that has no control for work, and
Speaker 2: where workers are treated as commodities on a labor market Tankfully,
Speaker 2: i haven't had to look for a job in a while,
Speaker 2: but I've had to see my friends seeking jobs and
Speaker 2: it's not a nice experience. And I have to spend weeks,
Speaker 2: months sometimes looking for a job. But you will most
Speaker 2: likely heed, but you need to survive. You know, and
Speaker 2: a lot of these jobs you end up looking for,
Speaker 2: end up getting into, and you've unnecessary jobs. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of bullshit jobs, and I don't contribute to
Speaker 2: a person's you know, development and fulfillment or they could
Speaker 2: have humanity in any way. Yeah, and then a lot
Speaker 2: of the benefits that people have fought for, even for
Speaker 2: these jobs have either been eroded, you know, rolled back
Speaker 2: over time, or they've been loopholed out. So you know,
Speaker 2: for example, you don't even get enough hours to qualify
Speaker 2: for benefits when you work at certain places, or you
Speaker 2: are an independent contractor instead of an employee, so they
Speaker 2: can get away from you know, giving me your due.
Speaker 2: And so then in this environment you have EI coming
Speaker 2: in now and taking certain rules varying levels of quality
Speaker 2: and writing and in art and coding and administrative work.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I think for one, EI does
Speaker 2: a lot of these jobs very poorly. But then there's
Speaker 2: also cases where I don't like copyrighting, which is something
Speaker 2: I used to do. The Yeah, copyrighting and the sort
Speaker 2: of copyrighting that I had to write is back in
Speaker 2: the day. It's almost indistinguishable in terms of it feels generic,
Speaker 2: quite less. You know slop, Like it's just you're pumping
Speaker 2: this out to pollute the airwaves in a sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very like it has a very formulaic nature
Speaker 1: when a human does it. It's funny when I think
Speaker 1: about copywriting, right, Like you can see the people have
Speaker 1: identified the completely generic nature of it, because occasionally you'll
Speaker 1: have like brands who do it in a non formulaic
Speaker 1: way and briefly see success from it, like just by
Speaker 1: having some element of humanity in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like Wendy is when they did that for a
Speaker 2: little while, and yeah, then every brand to copy that
Speaker 2: method and then it became steel and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, some almost sometimes like puncturate for a minute,
Speaker 1: and then like you say, everyone will run after it
Speaker 1: like a viper. Sunglasses, this one, I guess they're very
Speaker 1: popular with like right wing bigots. Every time like biggots
Speaker 1: are pictured in their sunglasses, they'll like donate money to
Speaker 1: LGBTQ affirming causes or like gender affirming care stuff or
Speaker 1: whatever depends what the people are being bigoted about. And
Speaker 1: like briefly I saw them have success with that just
Speaker 1: because like people are so accustomed to brand's being a
Speaker 1: political rather than just being like no, fuck you. So
Speaker 1: by doing the kind of basics of being a good person,
Speaker 1: it appears human and therefore not so generic, and people
Speaker 1: you know, briefly fall in love with it or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I mean at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: of the corporations and our potsons, there are people behind corporations. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I guess I sat that sort of wonder with
Speaker 2: these kinds of jobs that are all being build in
Speaker 2: at recent part by EI, what is the impact on
Speaker 2: our pots self worse? Oh yeah, but they're they're skilled
Speaker 2: to be just sort of swapped out for a machine.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of people have already felt that
Speaker 2: their work is non essential, and then you have a
Speaker 2: sense of being replaceable and unneeded. And in some cases
Speaker 2: the difference is negligible because, like I said, the work
Speaker 2: they was already being put out was the sort of
Speaker 2: generic stuff that it sort of fills people, yeah, and
Speaker 2: fill screens. But then you also have more necessary, the
Speaker 2: more creative work. It is also just being sort of
Speaker 2: funneled out. You know, I'm seeing billboards all over the
Speaker 2: place that just have like this nasty, smooth looking like
Speaker 2: AI generated pictures. Yeah, just a lot of slop, you know,
Speaker 2: slop content, slop ad slop emails, you know, even on
Speaker 2: YouTube now Like I like to listen to these sort
Speaker 2: of music mixes when I work sometimes, and most of
Speaker 2: the channels being recommended for music mixes on YouTube nowadays
Speaker 2: is at least in the genres that I would listen to.
Speaker 2: It's just like, yeah, I generated jazz chill. The thing
Speaker 2: is they were't titlet that way. Yeah, you know, the
Speaker 2: titlet some some wood and they probably haven't somewhat AI
Speaker 2: generated thumbnail and whenever. And then you just, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're unaware of the pattern of how those channels operate,
Speaker 2: my click on are thinking, oh, it's just like a
Speaker 2: music mix, like every other music mix, and then you
Speaker 2: listened to it for a while and listen to a
Speaker 2: few of them, and you realize, oh, this is just
Speaker 2: like a machine made this. It has no flavor, yeah,
Speaker 2: like no soul. There's also a lot of articles that
Speaker 2: just fill in the Internet. It's just like slow yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, just AI generated articles that feed into the
Speaker 2: AI pool of references, and so the I almost eats itself. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's sad, but I think it was like we
Speaker 2: always going in this direction in a sense, not to
Speaker 2: say it was entirely inevitable, but this was the trajectory
Speaker 2: that we are pointed at. This actually could have been changed,
Speaker 2: but now it hasn't been. So it's how we kind
Speaker 2: of got here. I don't know if it's just me,
Speaker 2: but I feel like there was a time when, boy,
Speaker 2: it may it may still be true that a still
Speaker 2: plus is not always a good thing. There's something to
Speaker 2: be said about the value that we impue to things
Speaker 2: when they are a bit rarer, you know, when it's
Speaker 2: you have to be more attentive and engaging with it.
Speaker 2: You know. I was actually thinking about it earlier today
Speaker 2: when I was a child and I was watching TV.
Speaker 2: You know, if they didn't have anything on the TV
Speaker 2: that I wanted to watch, I have to go and
Speaker 2: do something else, right, Yeah, And nowadays TV is pretty
Speaker 2: much unlimited because at any point in time, you couldn't
Speaker 2: have access to anything that an algorithm could see. If
Speaker 2: you're up there is perfectly curated to your interests, and
Speaker 2: it's ought to play and everything. It's just one hits
Speaker 2: after the next. In that excess, I just feel like
Speaker 2: we've lost the sort of attentive curation of your tease
Speaker 2: curation of and evaluation of things. Of the effort and
Speaker 2: energy and craft goes into making things, we just end
Speaker 2: up sort of taking things for granted.
Speaker 1: And like I think we kind of lower the standard
Speaker 1: that we will accept because it's just so much of it.
Speaker 1: There's so much volume of it. Yeah, Like, and you're
Speaker 1: not so attentive to it because it's always there that
Speaker 1: like slop becomes okay, it just kind of fills the
Speaker 1: gaps in this non stop stream of content.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just filling feeling the noise. I have to catch
Speaker 2: myself sometimes, yeah, because I mean just like sometimes I
Speaker 2: just put something on because it was there, you know,
Speaker 2: and just feeling noise, and sometimes I have to remind myself,
Speaker 2: you know, falls just be with your thoughts for a bit,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I try not to put too much blame
Speaker 2: on myself even as I try to work on it,
Speaker 2: because all of this, once again is probably you know,
Speaker 2: these platforms and these algorithms have been set up to perfectly.
Speaker 2: They're perfectly honed into their ability to exploit the little
Speaker 2: shortcuts and weaknesses in the human mind to engage just
Speaker 2: for as long as possible. Yea. So even if you
Speaker 2: feel like Oh my gosh, I want to get off
Speaker 2: of smedia. I want to quit this, that or the other.
Speaker 2: It's hard, you know, even on you when you know
Speaker 2: in your mind that it's detrimental, that it's affecting your negatively,
Speaker 2: you still end up going back because again it's it's
Speaker 2: hacked into your brain in a sense. But so I'm
Speaker 2: just really frustrated by the way that AI has contributed
Speaker 2: to this sort of disconnect because I also think it
Speaker 2: makes the whole breadth of human creativity a lot less valued,
Speaker 2: practiced and supported, you know, instead of people actually respecting
Speaker 2: and you know ports in the craft and the afthlet
Speaker 2: that goes into into things, it's just like, oh, scrolls
Speaker 2: the next thing, scrolls to the next thing, or for
Speaker 2: some people who seem to love yeah, it's just oh yeah,
Speaker 2: you're you're you're obsolete. Now you can be replaced by
Speaker 2: this you know, junk of.
Speaker 1: Just thinking about like art, like I see it so
Speaker 1: often in like like even in revolutionary spaces, I'll see
Speaker 1: it right like there, I guess sometimes is what it
Speaker 1: is actually is AI accounts that have no idea what
Speaker 1: a revolution is. They're incapable of doing so because they're
Speaker 1: not human, but like I just designed to monetize clicks.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll see there's a bunch of fucking Israel
Speaker 1: stands with Kurtistan ads which will just like AI generate
Speaker 1: pictures of yep as women, like the women who fight
Speaker 1: for their an es, right, and like it's just I
Speaker 1: don't think these are not again, people are actually part
Speaker 1: of the revolution, right, there are people who just who
Speaker 1: want to in a sense objectify the revolution and the
Speaker 1: women who fought in it and continue to fight in
Speaker 1: it for financial benefit. But like it's the antithesis of
Speaker 1: the beautiful life that people are trying to build there, right,
Speaker 1: Like it is the opposite of everything that that revolution
Speaker 1: stands for.
Speaker 2: So you see, and people are like AI generates in
Speaker 2: these humount iters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, exactly, and then using that for some either
Speaker 1: just straight because you get paid per click on x
Speaker 1: now right, or for some nefarious propaganda bullshit, but like
Speaker 1: it's and then by contrast, right by friends in Memma,
Speaker 1: there's a group called Art Strike Collective who do these
Speaker 1: cool drawings of various individuals who have fought in the revolution,
Speaker 1: and like one is a beautiful thing that shows your
Speaker 1: respect for these people. Many of whom have given their
Speaker 1: lives for this revolution. And another is just complete fucking
Speaker 1: slop that is actively harming the thing it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be supporting.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, and it's a cliche at this point, but many
Speaker 2: such cases. Yeah, yeah, I saw this short lecture on
Speaker 2: YouTube by a professor im professors name as Jim. There's
Speaker 2: such a short clip from I'm assuming a longer lecture,
Speaker 2: he said. The title of the video was really what
Speaker 2: captured me. It was something along the lines of consumerism
Speaker 2: as the perfection of slavery, and it was really speaking
Speaker 2: about how we are able to be so perfectly locked
Speaker 2: into our role as workers, as cogs in this machine
Speaker 2: to become, you know, so docile because of just how
Speaker 2: good the consumeristic system has gotten at keeping us chasing
Speaker 2: that next you know, dopamine, hit, that next purchase, that
Speaker 2: next thing to consume. You know. So we're still being exploited,
Speaker 2: We are still wages slaves in a sense, but we
Speaker 2: are either unaware of it or we accept that rule
Speaker 2: just to chase after, you know, the next tie of consumption.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. Yeah, Like when you think about a brave
Speaker 1: new world in nineteen eighty four, right, these two dystopian
Speaker 1: novels roughly, I mean briefly what came up before eighty
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. Right. The difference is one is like
Speaker 1: a boot stamping on the human face forever, which is
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, and hux Leaves Dystopia is based on
Speaker 1: people being essentially bought off through pleasure. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like unlimited cookie in for everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they call it. It's called sohmer. I think, right,
Speaker 1: we're in the unlimited it came for everyone world, right,
Speaker 1: like it's it's stuf.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we're in both. You know, it's
Speaker 2: a simultaneously a hux leyerand a well yeah and yeah Dustopia,
Speaker 2: you know what's the fourth worlds?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. I'm starting to read Jack London's Dystopia
Speaker 1: the Iron Heel. Now I have decided I want to
Speaker 1: work out who was best calling the dystopia. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we we have a little bit of both. Now we
Speaker 1: have the they'll get you at both ends, right, Like
Speaker 1: they'll try and give you things to keep you glassid
Speaker 1: and then also things to keep you afraid. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I mean there's there's a lot of reasons to despair,
Speaker 2: you know, people just blindly embrace an EI and they
Speaker 2: don't see the problem with you as in the EI
Speaker 2: and all these different things. There's also, as I'd like
Speaker 2: to end things on reason to hope, right, there are
Speaker 2: people who are willing to voidcott it. Who are you know,
Speaker 2: maintaining a stigma around it. You know, people are not
Speaker 2: taking it lined down. Artists are not taking it lined down.
Speaker 2: Writers and are taking it line down designers, We're not
Speaker 2: taking it lined down. People are still craving the authenticity,
Speaker 2: connection and craft that comes from human people. And although
Speaker 2: there's little any individual can do to resist the alienation
Speaker 2: of this society, whether be at work or relationships by themselves,
Speaker 2: you know, it's very hard, there are things we can
Speaker 2: do together in tandem to make things a little bit
Speaker 2: easier as we sort of try and strive toward social revolution.
Speaker 2: You know, there's the classic you know, touch grass, you know,
Speaker 2: log off and try and find where people are. There's
Speaker 2: also the individualist solution of reclaiming your agency by finding
Speaker 2: some version of digital minimalism that works for you, you know,
Speaker 2: taking a break soon and out limiting your screen time
Speaker 2: here and there. But really it's going to take system change.
Speaker 2: It's going to take collective action. It's gonna take us
Speaker 2: boycotting both you know, of course the AI products, there's
Speaker 2: a boycott already taking place with those, but then also
Speaker 2: just yeah, striking at the pressure points of the system
Speaker 2: and prefiguring about the world for everyone. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 2: I hope that everybody is able to do what they
Speaker 2: can to take steps in that direction. And yeah, so
Speaker 2: please don't use the I.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I always like that Superman
Speaker 1: Dane Marcos quote where he says, like, it's not necessary
Speaker 1: to conquer the world, it's sufficient to build a new one.
Speaker 1: I like that approach to this AI stuff. The way
Speaker 1: we make it so people in our community don't turn
Speaker 1: to AI to talk about things they want to talk
Speaker 1: about is to be there for them to talk to, right,
Speaker 1: to build community, to build real human interactions with each other,
Speaker 1: so people don't have real human conversations with the computer.
Speaker 2: Absolutely agreed. Yeah, and that's all they have for today.
Speaker 2: So all part, it's all the people. This has been,
Speaker 2: It could happen here. I've been Andrew, this has been
Speaker 2: James and Lasst Yeah, thanks, it could happen here is
Speaker 2: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com,
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.