Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey, then, welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks the future. It says tomorrow Tomorrow, I love
Speaker 1: you Tomorrow. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And this is gonna be part two of a two
Speaker 1: part episode that we had to split up because we
Speaker 1: ended up talking for a long time. But last time,
Speaker 1: what were we talking about? It? It was about our
Speaker 1: favorite predictions of the future. Yeah, we talked about a
Speaker 1: lot of very quaint French postcards from the turn of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, been with bad wings, and we talked
Speaker 1: about some driverless car technology, and then we talked about
Speaker 1: how communications doesn't make you less of a jerk? Is
Speaker 1: that what we talked about? Yeah, Well, we talked about
Speaker 1: like telecommunications predictions that the idea of the the rhetoric
Speaker 1: of the electrical sublime, the people who thought that, you know,
Speaker 1: the telegraph and eventually the internet would just bring us
Speaker 1: all together and make us connect and just be friendly.
Speaker 1: We would friendly happy people. Only we can talk to
Speaker 1: each other instantaneously. We'll bring about world peace and then
Speaker 1: we'll all just click on that little button to buy
Speaker 1: the world a coke. Yeah, and well, you guys aren't
Speaker 1: alive in the seventies, so you have no idea what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. But we all know what by the
Speaker 1: World of Coke is. Did you ever see those commercials?
Speaker 1: Were they still around when you guys were kids? Also,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking you'd like to I'd
Speaker 1: like to sing. I'd like to teach the world to
Speaker 1: sing a perfect harmony. I'd like to buy the world
Speaker 1: of coke and keep it company. I know the polar Bears,
Speaker 1: the polar Bears, you know, cute little ones. Joe, just
Speaker 1: talk about robots. Okay, So last time we talked about
Speaker 1: one of the we reached picking picking a couple of
Speaker 1: favorite predictions in the future, or at least the most illuminating.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I could say I have favorites,
Speaker 1: the ones that are spurring of good conversation, and so
Speaker 1: we did. Why list telecommunications and all that? Now I
Speaker 1: want to talk about robots. Uh So I was trying
Speaker 1: to think what my other favorite prediction would be. And
Speaker 1: I think that we we've talked about this on the
Speaker 1: show before, but I have to come back to it
Speaker 1: because I think it's so fruitful. Uh. And it's the
Speaker 1: science fiction world embodied in Isaac Asimov's Robots stories and
Speaker 1: essentially in Asimov's fictional future. Robots are very intelligent, powerful,
Speaker 1: well integrated into society, performing all kinds of labor the
Speaker 1: positronic brain, and to keep their behavior in check, they
Speaker 1: all necessarily are bound by three fundamental laws of robotics. Right,
Speaker 1: that's kind of like the I mean, we've seen tons
Speaker 1: of different science fiction stories that build upon the same idea,
Speaker 1: like even things like RoboCop where he has all the
Speaker 1: different directives that stems from this concept of the laws
Speaker 1: of robotics. Yeah, and so the three law us basically
Speaker 1: are a robot. First law, a robot may not injure
Speaker 1: or harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a
Speaker 1: human being to come to harm. Obviously, robotup did not
Speaker 1: have that one. Nope. The second one, a robot must
Speaker 1: obey the orders given it by human beings, except where
Speaker 1: such orders would conflict with the first law. So lo
Speaker 1: as you couldn't tell robot, hey, I want you to
Speaker 1: go and punch gim in the face, right, robot has
Speaker 1: to do what you say unless you tell it to
Speaker 1: hurt somebody. And then the third law, a robot must
Speaker 1: protect its own existence as long as such protection does
Speaker 1: not conflict with the first or second laws. And then
Speaker 1: there was the zero with law that got added afterwards,
Speaker 1: which is a robot may not harm humanity or through
Speaker 1: an action, allow humanity to come to him, right, the
Speaker 1: sort of the worldwide extension. And they also would sometimes
Speaker 1: extend it's not just to humans, but to property as well,
Speaker 1: so in other words like like you know, extended, saying
Speaker 1: that a robot couldn't cause damage to property unless again
Speaker 1: it violated a more important law like further up on
Speaker 1: the list. Yeah, and so if you haven't read any
Speaker 1: of these stories, I do recommend going back and reading
Speaker 1: some of Asimov's robots stories because I think they're very entertaining,
Speaker 1: their interesting, and they're usually pretty short and self contained.
Speaker 1: Um but anyway, the dramatic conflict in many of these
Speaker 1: stories comes from engineers and robopsychologists trying to solve problems
Speaker 1: with robots, and the problems are created by the fact
Speaker 1: that the robots are following the laws, but following them
Speaker 1: in a way that leads to unforeseen problems. Uh So,
Speaker 1: robots with these types of programming, can be caught in
Speaker 1: sort of ethical loops or traps that prevent them from
Speaker 1: doing something crucial or that allow them to do horrible
Speaker 1: things by way of misunderstanding or misapplication of the laws.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of similar, and I think I've made
Speaker 1: this comparison in a previous episode of forward thinking. But
Speaker 1: for for those of you out there who have ever
Speaker 1: played Dungeons and Dragons, if you've ever encountered a scenario
Speaker 1: where your character is granted a wish, you know that
Speaker 1: any any experienced player will spend ages agonizing over the
Speaker 1: exact wording of the wish, because dungeon masters the world
Speaker 1: over have great joy in taking a wish and then
Speaker 1: purposefully miss interpreting the wish so that a terrible thing happens.
Speaker 1: So the classic one is make me a sandwich and
Speaker 1: then boom, the character turns into a sandwich. Like that
Speaker 1: would be That would be a very simple version of that.
Speaker 1: But you typically will get someone who has to try
Speaker 1: and word out an incredibly convoluted wish in order to
Speaker 1: avoid any potential misinterpretation or or abuse of their request.
Speaker 1: The same sort of thing is is kind of underlying
Speaker 1: some of these stories where it's not that a robot
Speaker 1: is intentionally trying to find its way around its programming.
Speaker 1: It's simply that in order for it to carry out
Speaker 1: whatever task it's been given and follow these rules, something
Speaker 1: doesn't go as people would expect it to. It's really
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale about human error and hubris. Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: and also just the idea of you know, any sort
Speaker 1: of artificial intelligence that's sufficiently capable of being able to
Speaker 1: to be autonomous or even semi autonomous, it's hard. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly why I cited this. I cite this because
Speaker 1: of the increasing interest in the future challenges presented by
Speaker 1: AI and sophisticated mobile robotics. Um, but you're exactly right.
Speaker 1: You know, the more a machine is in line with
Speaker 1: what we think of as intelligence in the same way
Speaker 1: we've use intelligence to refer to human intelligence, the more
Speaker 1: their behavior and reasoning will become proportionally obscure to us.
Speaker 1: Like things that act in intelligent ways are sometimes hard
Speaker 1: to understand because intelligens is inherently complex. I've got a
Speaker 1: very relevant example that happened very recently, which was that
Speaker 1: you had some people working with a supercomputer over the
Speaker 1: course of forty eight hours to create a mathematical proof
Speaker 1: that had been proposed back in the eighties, or at
Speaker 1: least someone has said, like, I need a proof to
Speaker 1: prove this whether or not this particular mathematical problem as
Speaker 1: possible or not possible. And the computer did it in
Speaker 1: two days, and it took two hundred terabytes of storage
Speaker 1: to store the proof. And I won't get into the
Speaker 1: proof that would take forever for me to explain, but
Speaker 1: the idea being that, uh, it was such a long
Speaker 1: laborious process, even for a supercomputer working for forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: essentially that for people it was pretty much a lost cause, right,
Speaker 1: like like you almost have to uh use a different
Speaker 1: supercomputer to verify the results because you couldn't employ humans
Speaker 1: to go through all the steps. It would just take
Speaker 1: way too long and it and it'd be too easy
Speaker 1: to lose your place and make a human error and
Speaker 1: then realize that, oh, well, we've got to have yet
Speaker 1: another team check that the results here. And you started
Speaker 1: getting to this idea what this was just to do
Speaker 1: one mathematical proof and there's not a major downside to
Speaker 1: humankind if it does something wrong, right, if if it
Speaker 1: says that the proof shows that this particular mathematical question
Speaker 1: is impossible, and it turns out it is possible. Big whoop.
Speaker 1: But you might have similarly complex internal machinations in a
Speaker 1: robot that is designed to open a door for people.
Speaker 1: But the robot that's designed to open a door for
Speaker 1: people could slam the door on people and kill them.
Speaker 1: So you know, even well, maybe a robot that opens
Speaker 1: doors for people wouldn't have to be all that intelligence.
Speaker 1: I'll give the full general AI to the door opener.
Speaker 1: You say it, But actually when I went to south
Speaker 1: By Southwest, one of the panels I too. They talked
Speaker 1: about how there was, uh this team that was trying
Speaker 1: to develop a robot that could open different types of doors,
Speaker 1: but it would take hours for the robot to figure
Speaker 1: out what kind of door it was, and how three
Speaker 1: types of doors. There's your problem, right right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's only got the one door. If you only got
Speaker 1: one door, then you're fine. But but as we saw
Speaker 1: also in the darker robotics challenge like opening doors and
Speaker 1: walking through them, certainly the walking through them part, right,
Speaker 1: So you know, you've got to find a way to
Speaker 1: prevent robots from causing harm, and this causes we've got
Speaker 1: to think about the AI control problem, and it's not
Speaker 1: as easy as it sounds. And I think this is
Speaker 1: very well predicted by Asimov's stories, which makes this one
Speaker 1: of my favorite future predictions, because he starts with these
Speaker 1: three laws that if you read them, they sound very
Speaker 1: simple and they sound very air tight. It sounds like
Speaker 1: they cover all the bases. But you you only have
Speaker 1: to think a little bit further as Asimov did, and
Speaker 1: start trying to apply them to unexpected malfunctions and use
Speaker 1: case scenarios. Well, and it could you it also just
Speaker 1: imagine where it's not even a malfunction. You could just
Speaker 1: imagine where a robot would take no action, because it
Speaker 1: turns out the robot is able to project all the
Speaker 1: potential consequences of its actions and determined that some of
Speaker 1: them may in fact cause some form of harm to someone,
Speaker 1: and that it's not even that necessarily identified, right. It
Speaker 1: may just be like, well, I took into account the
Speaker 1: task you gave me, I plotted out all the variables,
Speaker 1: and it turns out there's maybe a twenty seven percent
Speaker 1: chance that this could hurt somebody's feelings. And because I
Speaker 1: interpret that as being harm. I can't actually do what
Speaker 1: you asked me to do, so I'm just gonna stand
Speaker 1: here motionless, and you're gonna think I'm broken. The chaos
Speaker 1: effective robotics like you've created a very expensive brick, and
Speaker 1: that brick is just constantly thinking like well if I
Speaker 1: opened this door, then yeah, it's it's a robot paralyzed
Speaker 1: by self doubt. Essentially, because we so we're creating a
Speaker 1: Douglas Adams character, would you would have to create a
Speaker 1: threshold for the robot saying you have to be above
Speaker 1: this percentage sure that this action is going to cause
Speaker 1: some form of harm before you decide not to do
Speaker 1: it right now. Now. Of course, the application of this
Speaker 1: to the real world is all well, actually I was
Speaker 1: going to say it's all assuming we ever create general
Speaker 1: AI of any consequence, but actually I think it's not
Speaker 1: even even if we don't. As a MOOV stories are
Speaker 1: interesting for thinking about ethics as they apply to humans. Well,
Speaker 1: it's also too, I would argue, it's interesting to apply
Speaker 1: that even if you're talking about narrow definitions of AI,
Speaker 1: there's still something to be said about it may not
Speaker 1: be sentient, it may not be self aware, it may
Speaker 1: not have general AI may not it may not be
Speaker 1: walking around and interacting with us, but it could very
Speaker 1: well still affect us in a in a pro in
Speaker 1: profound ways and so thinking in this case, even for
Speaker 1: something like narrow AI, I think it's important. It is
Speaker 1: also important when it comes to just our thoughts about
Speaker 1: how humans behave I agree, but it's it's it's something
Speaker 1: that a lot of people have been arguing we should
Speaker 1: be talking about more anyway, with the state of AI
Speaker 1: as it stands right now, which I think everyone would
Speaker 1: say it falls easily into the category of week AI. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and we talked about autonomous cars in the last episode.
Speaker 1: You start entering when you've gotten multi ton death machines
Speaker 1: with combustible engines in them running around being controlled by
Speaker 1: week AI. Uh, you have you have a potential future
Speaker 1: rife with Charlie problems. Yeah. Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where you get to that situation where, uh, an action
Speaker 1: must be taken and there is no clear action that
Speaker 1: will prevent harm from some happening to someone, right, whether
Speaker 1: it's yeah, which which someone you choose to cause harm? Right?
Speaker 1: Would it be the person sitting in the past, your seat,
Speaker 1: would it be a person outside of the vehicle, would
Speaker 1: be a person in another vehicle? Yeah, that whole thing exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it also comes down to things that
Speaker 1: are in conflict. In some of those stories were like
Speaker 1: you have a very very low risk of a major
Speaker 1: problem in conflict with a compelling need for something petty
Speaker 1: as opposed you know, So like in a driverless car,
Speaker 1: this might mean, Okay, should the car come to a
Speaker 1: stop every time there is a point zero zero zero
Speaker 1: zero one percent chance that doing so would prevent injury
Speaker 1: to someone? I don't know. I mean, what if that
Speaker 1: means it's coming to a stop all the time and
Speaker 1: being really inconvenient. So in other words, like let's say
Speaker 1: that it's um let's say that it's a car that
Speaker 1: has predictive algorithms that can track motion of various entities
Speaker 1: around the vehicle. Right, so pedestrians for example, knowing that
Speaker 1: sometimes pedestrians will walk into the street not at a crosswalk,
Speaker 1: so it's not a place where they're designated to cross. Well,
Speaker 1: autonos cars will have to be able to deal with that,
Speaker 1: have to be able to detect that a person has
Speaker 1: stepped out into the street and stop. At what point
Speaker 1: do you tell the car this is indica an indicator
Speaker 1: that a person is going to walk out on the street,
Speaker 1: as opposed to this is someone who's trying to step
Speaker 1: around some dog do that's on the sidewalk, and they're
Speaker 1: not actually gonna walk in the street, but their path
Speaker 1: has diverted enough so that if they were to continue
Speaker 1: on it, they would go out on the street. But
Speaker 1: that's not what they're playing on doing. If the car
Speaker 1: thinks you're gonna walk out on the street, then it's
Speaker 1: gonna stop. So in that case, a really really sensitive
Speaker 1: car might kill fewer people in the total, but it
Speaker 1: will take you forever to get to You might be
Speaker 1: stopping all the time. Another psychological science fiction example, there's
Speaker 1: there's a movie called Robot and Frank that I think
Speaker 1: I've brought up on the podcast before Frank Angel and
Speaker 1: it's got somebody. I think you're right, Yeah, human of
Speaker 1: some kind or another. I'm pretty sure you're right. I've
Speaker 1: seen it on that. I've seen that it's on Netflix.
Speaker 1: I have not watched it. It's it's cute, um, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a fun it's a fun film. It's
Speaker 1: it's comedic and and and traumatic at the same time.
Speaker 1: And and the basic storyline is is that this this
Speaker 1: this elderly man who is a reformed criminal UM is
Speaker 1: being placed in the care of a of a home
Speaker 1: care robot and uh, and the robot can't keep this
Speaker 1: dude happy. It's directive is to keep the dude happy?
Speaker 1: Should the robot take him on heists hijinkson soon? So
Speaker 1: you know, like like how like like at what point,
Speaker 1: at what point does morality kick in? Yeah, how do
Speaker 1: you prograb a robot to like not take dudes on heists?
Speaker 1: Assuming that it shouldn't get similar to maybe it should
Speaker 1: right starts starts also falling into the plot for Chappie
Speaker 1: as well, You've got terrible. It's not great, but but
Speaker 1: it falls into that that same sort of plot. The
Speaker 1: idea of having a robot that is generally meant to
Speaker 1: be kind of a positive influence and then bad people
Speaker 1: or at least people with bad intentions get hold of
Speaker 1: the robot and UM and and twist its sense of
Speaker 1: morality because it doesn't have something immately programmed into it
Speaker 1: so that like, hey, we we need to survive, so
Speaker 1: in order for us to survive. We need to be
Speaker 1: able to do these things which are technically crimes, and
Speaker 1: then convince the robot to do those things. Um, Chappie
Speaker 1: is is kind of a lot of people have compared
Speaker 1: it to short circuit, the short circuit movies. I think
Speaker 1: that's fair. It's not. It's not complimentary, but it's fair.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that about does it for me, Lauren.
Speaker 1: Do you have some of you want to talk about? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I also wanted to continue talking about speculative fiction because
Speaker 1: that is where I tend to live, and in thinking
Speaker 1: about this, I was finding it interesting that that a
Speaker 1: lot of science fiction and speculative fiction, however you want
Speaker 1: to say, it centers around those cautionary tales about technology
Speaker 1: that we were talking a little bit about previously. Um,
Speaker 1: you know the kind of plot line of like mankind
Speaker 1: has created this amazing thing and it destroys him, possibly
Speaker 1: from the inside out, don't we I'm sure? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's fun storytelling. But but take take
Speaker 1: Ray Bradbury's work, for for example, UM, excellent work. UM.
Speaker 1: Ray Bradbury kind of hated technology. His work frequently disdained
Speaker 1: television and telecommunications in general. In his stories, those kind
Speaker 1: of technologies made people placid and unthinking and isolated and
Speaker 1: even cruel. And it's not just in stories. He kind
Speaker 1: of held the same feelings in real life. There's a
Speaker 1: great quote from him from an interview with The New
Speaker 1: York Times in two thousand nine where he was talking
Speaker 1: to them about the possibility of his work being put
Speaker 1: into e book format and he said, it's it's great
Speaker 1: all around. He said. Yahoo called me eight weeks ago.
Speaker 1: They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo.
Speaker 1: You know what, I told them, to hell with you,
Speaker 1: to hell with you, and to hell with the Internet's
Speaker 1: father science fiction, y'all, or like at least at least
Speaker 1: one of the crachity uncles of this is a guy
Speaker 1: who he didn't drive, he didn't fly on airplanes, um
Speaker 1: and okay, like to be fair, he was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty and not everyone finds it easy or even
Speaker 1: desirable to adapt to new technology. And that is fine.
Speaker 1: It is not up to everyone to adapt to everything
Speaker 1: that goes on in the world. Um. But but this
Speaker 1: was this was a guy who envisioned like in air
Speaker 1: communication headsets and also a t M S Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: like earbuds and also self driving cars and also like
Speaker 1: wall sized flat screen TVs and virtual reality. And he
Speaker 1: did all of this in the nineteen fifties. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: be fair, though he thought it was going to be terrible.
Speaker 1: The future is going to have all this stuff. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be awful. Yeah. In another interview, um, he said,
Speaker 1: I don't try to describe the future. I try to
Speaker 1: prevent it. Well, I mean and end time. Now in
Speaker 1: some of the books, and some of the books you
Speaker 1: can see what he's saying, Like like in some of
Speaker 1: his books, you understand exactly what the point is that
Speaker 1: he's getting at, like like fair Knefe or fifty one.
Speaker 1: You know, you look, you read that book and you realize, like,
Speaker 1: this is a book that's warning us about anti intellectualism.
Speaker 1: It's warning us about turning to things like television as
Speaker 1: a source for information and entertainment and issuing the idea
Speaker 1: of books which apparently magically make you think while television
Speaker 1: magically makes you not think. I think that's oversimplification, but
Speaker 1: you see the route he was going. Yeah, Well, and
Speaker 1: we and we still have the concept kicking around today
Speaker 1: that digital communication makes you a colder and more more
Speaker 1: isolated than person to person communication does, although that's a
Speaker 1: little bit that's that's a little bit prejudiced in that
Speaker 1: it's not taking into account people who are bad at
Speaker 1: in person communication, who have, you know, whatever kind of
Speaker 1: anxiety or or inability to get out of the house
Speaker 1: or etcetera, etcetera. And so it also ignores the trend
Speaker 1: of urbanization where you get to a point where, uh,
Speaker 1: you weren't growing up in a small a lot most
Speaker 1: people these days, I should say most people are not
Speaker 1: growing up in a small community where everyone knows everyone else.
Speaker 1: In communication is pretty easy because you already know everybody,
Speaker 1: and I mean that's you can't really get around it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you get into an urban environment where you
Speaker 1: may have potentially millions of people around you. There's no
Speaker 1: way for you to know everybody, and so the people
Speaker 1: you know, the people with whom you form relationships may
Speaker 1: not be people you encounter all that frequently, unless you're
Speaker 1: just hanging out with the people you work with or whatever. Uh.
Speaker 1: So technology has allowed them to maintain these relationships in
Speaker 1: a way that they couldn't necessarily do without it. There
Speaker 1: was actually a comic strip I wish I could remember
Speaker 1: who it was that drew this, I just one of
Speaker 1: those things that you pop that pops up on a
Speaker 1: Facebook timeline and I saw, but it was commentary on
Speaker 1: that very idea. It shows for people on like a
Speaker 1: subway train and they all have their phones out, and
Speaker 1: then there's like the one the one version of the
Speaker 1: thing saying people today, you know, they want to be
Speaker 1: on their phones. They don't take the time to bother,
Speaker 1: to communicate with each other, it's terrible. And then there's
Speaker 1: a flip side of it where it shows what each
Speaker 1: person is supposedly typing on their phone, and it's all
Speaker 1: things like like I'm gonna be home soon, I miss you.
Speaker 1: Like it's actual messages of love and support to people
Speaker 1: that are meaningful to them. Uh, it's not that they
Speaker 1: don't have any care for the strangers around them, but
Speaker 1: they are communicating. They're just communicating to people who aren't
Speaker 1: in that space at that time. And say, it's kind
Speaker 1: of judgmental to make that broad statement. You could argue
Speaker 1: that there are trends that perhaps are changing some of
Speaker 1: our cultural values, but to make a like a flat
Speaker 1: statement saying, you know, people care less now because they
Speaker 1: aren't talking to each other in public, I think that's
Speaker 1: overly simplifying the matter personally. Joe Joe thinks so too.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, I mean, I get it. Where like the
Speaker 1: idea that you are, you can there are people who
Speaker 1: use technology as a shield from interacting with others. We
Speaker 1: do it here at work. You put on headphones, and
Speaker 1: that tells everybody, even if you're not listening to anything,
Speaker 1: it tells everybody. Hey. The main move I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: is like you're out somewhere and you see somebody you
Speaker 1: don't really want to talk to, so you pretend to
Speaker 1: be doing something in your phone. Yeah. Yeah. Usually for me,
Speaker 1: that's when I'm walking home and I just see someone
Speaker 1: walking the opposite way towards me on the sidewalk, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like, I don't want to have an interaction
Speaker 1: with this human being. What can I do? Time to
Speaker 1: pretend to send a text? I hate saying hello, Hello
Speaker 1: is fine? Hello is fine. Having to have a five
Speaker 1: minute conversation on why I don't want to buy your
Speaker 1: John Wayne blue rays uh that I don't want to
Speaker 1: have to do again just because I was wearing a
Speaker 1: cowboy hat. That, by the way, true anecdote. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got some blue rays of John Wayne and like, Okay,
Speaker 1: He's like, do you want to buy a Like no,
Speaker 1: he's they're collector's items. Like still no. Like I first
Speaker 1: of all, I could go into a very long conversation
Speaker 1: with you about why physical media no longer holds any
Speaker 1: sway with me, but that's beside the point I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get home anyway. Anyway, I wanted to bring all
Speaker 1: this up to just as an illustrative point of how
Speaker 1: UM biased our perceptions of the future can be based
Speaker 1: on what our current culture and current technological state UM
Speaker 1: and and to kind of springboard off of that. Some
Speaker 1: of my favorite predictions for the future predictions in big
Speaker 1: Old scare quotes UM because they're their imaginings, really, since
Speaker 1: their speculative fiction are UM like like really like grimy,
Speaker 1: cyberpunk esque visions like like in the comic book series
Speaker 1: trans Metropolitan UM by Warren Ellis and the artist Derrick Robertson,
Speaker 1: or The Snow Crash, which is by Neil Stephenson UM.
Speaker 1: And maybe maybe because I feel like things like that
Speaker 1: are are are closer time wise and and feel more
Speaker 1: realistic to me than than futurists kind of sweeping visions
Speaker 1: about what's going to be going on? Um In In
Speaker 1: stories like these, commercialism and personal interests are driving technology forward.
Speaker 1: This this translates to booms and in wearable and implantable
Speaker 1: technology that that keep us constantly connected. Uh. The the
Speaker 1: the information industry in these stories rules the world not
Speaker 1: too far off from where we are right now. Genetics
Speaker 1: affords the characters upgrades and strength and resilience. UM can
Speaker 1: even allow for like X Men style voluntary mutations UM.
Speaker 1: And the lines between humans and their technology are are blurred.
Speaker 1: Not not quite a race, so not not quite to
Speaker 1: a point where you would call it the singularity, so
Speaker 1: certainly not uh and probably not even as far as
Speaker 1: trans humanism um. But but but bumping up against that
Speaker 1: that thresholds somewhere in the squishy meat space before transprisa
Speaker 1: UM and and all of these these changes and developments
Speaker 1: results in really amazing things. You can you can pop
Speaker 1: an anti cancer pill and just never get cancer. You
Speaker 1: can you can spend your free time in vast and
Speaker 1: beautiful and enriching virtual world. You can learn about anything
Speaker 1: and everything that that whole Uh, what is it the
Speaker 1: the rhetoric of the electrical sublime, that that's that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Um, but in these stories it also leads
Speaker 1: to terrible things. Technology viral code can threaten your life
Speaker 1: and your sanity. Um. Viral code not viruses. Yes, so
Speaker 1: you can get a virus, but this is a computer virus.
Speaker 1: It's it's a brain virus. It's a brain computer virus.
Speaker 1: M most bodily upgrades in these stories that are considered
Speaker 1: tacky or vain at best, and are mostly portrayed as
Speaker 1: just being kind of grotesque. Personal privacy is a complete joke.
Speaker 1: The lines between the upper and lower classes are even
Speaker 1: more stark than they are today. So you've got like
Speaker 1: the haves have way more and the have nots have nothing.
Speaker 1: Sure and and furthermore that the poor in these stories
Speaker 1: are being told that a virtual life should be enough. Ah.
Speaker 1: So this is like the Chimney sweet poem, Like you
Speaker 1: guys are you guys? I realized that your your real
Speaker 1: world life is crappy, but if you just stick with it,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have such a wonderful, wonderful existence afterward. That
Speaker 1: was essentially the message of the Chimney sweep. Uh it's
Speaker 1: a poem from the nineteenth century. In that case, they
Speaker 1: were it was essentially the It was specifically criticizing a
Speaker 1: very particular approach that some Christian ministers were taking when
Speaker 1: they were talking to the poor, saying, you should just
Speaker 1: accept your lot in life because if you if you
Speaker 1: do that and you're a good person, you will be
Speaker 1: rewarded in heaven. And the poet in this case was
Speaker 1: our doing. You're saying this in order to preserve the
Speaker 1: status quoe. You're not actually saying it because you believe
Speaker 1: these people's souls are destined to heaven. You're saying it
Speaker 1: because it's convenient to keeping these people where they are
Speaker 1: in their social class. If you believe they're destined for heaven,
Speaker 1: is that destiny dependent on them doing a good job?
Speaker 1: As being a chimney sweep? Right? So, and furthermore, is
Speaker 1: is that really a happy ending? Like? Is that a
Speaker 1: nice thing? Well? And and here's the problem is that,
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember studying this poem in college and uh,
Speaker 1: it was a freshman or sophomore poetry class, which meant
Speaker 1: that uh, and it's technically the chimney sweeper. It's a
Speaker 1: William Blake poem. And so it was one of those
Speaker 1: things where several of the students weren't aware of the
Speaker 1: satirical nature of the poem. They were taking it at
Speaker 1: face value and that was problematic, whereas it sounds like
Speaker 1: this is probably a more apparent satire. Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: It's it's not saying that this stuff is rad it's
Speaker 1: saying that this is a potential problem of the future.
Speaker 1: It's not quite a caut nary tale of technology. It's
Speaker 1: more like a cautionary tale of society, of of like,
Speaker 1: where given these things society could go, especially considering that
Speaker 1: that with these stark divides between the rich and the poor,
Speaker 1: conflict and violence are still thriving in opposition to something
Speaker 1: something along the lines of like Star Trek, where you know,
Speaker 1: certainly there's conflict with with other other alien races, but
Speaker 1: within humanity everything's pretty much sorted out. Everyone's got their
Speaker 1: basic needs met. They they are allowed to pursue any
Speaker 1: type of activity they want, whether it's something that would
Speaker 1: be described as a job or just you know, you
Speaker 1: just want to I just want to sit and think. Fine, fine,
Speaker 1: go ahead, do not think also fine? And and there
Speaker 1: are still, in those sweepingly optimistic stories like Star Trek,
Speaker 1: a little little side tales, side quests. If you will
Speaker 1: about about particular groups of people who, for whatever reason
Speaker 1: are being oppressed or or miss read it in some
Speaker 1: way because I don't know why, but because maybe maybe
Speaker 1: because we can't currently imagine a future without people being jerks. Well,
Speaker 1: and dramatic necessity, Well, I mean, but that's what I'm saying, like, like,
Speaker 1: does dramatic necessity mean that we like, like that is
Speaker 1: the fact that a story is boring to us if
Speaker 1: bad things aren't happening to people, Like, what does that
Speaker 1: say about us? That you can't just tell a story
Speaker 1: where everything is pleasant, there's never any conflict, and then
Speaker 1: everything just ends fine. That seems like it's not a story. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what that's That's kind of what Lauren's point is
Speaker 1: is that without that conflict, we don't consider it a story. Well,
Speaker 1: does that mean that at the very basic core of
Speaker 1: being a human we need bad people and bad things
Speaker 1: to happen in order to define, you know, to understand it.
Speaker 1: I was I was thinking about this when you were
Speaker 1: talking about Marconi's point about things like wireless technology making
Speaker 1: things like war ridiculous, and and I found myself wondering
Speaker 1: whether any technological thing could ever solve war or or
Speaker 1: conflict or poverty, because it it does seem like at
Speaker 1: this point in society at least, distrust and greed for
Speaker 1: better or for worse are are are part of the
Speaker 1: human experience. They're part of the fabric of our makeup.
Speaker 1: And and maybe it's just one of those things that
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine being different from our current perspective. Um,
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't mean this to be a
Speaker 1: downer note. It's actually an optimistic downer note because maybe
Speaker 1: some unpredictable technology will come along that will solve energy
Speaker 1: or solve empathy and um and lead to a kind
Speaker 1: of utopia. Yeah. I don't know if I can ever
Speaker 1: see a full utopia. I just see things. Uh. My
Speaker 1: optimistic vision for the future is one of progressive solving
Speaker 1: of small problems. In my optimistic view of the future
Speaker 1: is that we get to a point air we've already
Speaker 1: we've already reached the point where we can talk to
Speaker 1: almost anybody that's continuing. Obviously, not everyone has access to
Speaker 1: the internet, but that is that that the number of
Speaker 1: people who don't have access to the Internet decreases every year.
Speaker 1: My optimistic vision of the future is that we arrive
Speaker 1: at a day where we're listening to everyone. We're no
Speaker 1: longer just talking to everyone, but we can actually listen
Speaker 1: and at least be able to have that conversation, which
Speaker 1: you could argue it gets right back to that simplistic
Speaker 1: notion of all sit down and talk it out and
Speaker 1: everything will be fine, right. I mean, I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to criticize you for this, but if you just take
Speaker 1: that literally, just listen to everyone, well, a lot of
Speaker 1: the people you're going to be listening to are going
Speaker 1: to have some really stupid and hateful things to say.
Speaker 1: But then if you ultimately get at the core of
Speaker 1: why they say those things, you could perhaps address the
Speaker 1: root issues that are that are producing this in the
Speaker 1: first place. Unless you just come to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: some people are inherently bad, which I have I have
Speaker 1: a I have a problem with that idea, but I mean,
Speaker 1: there's some people who certainly behave as if they are
Speaker 1: inherently bad and give very little indication that they are otherwise.
Speaker 1: But assuming that you don't buy into that that philosophy,
Speaker 1: then you could say, let's look at the series of
Speaker 1: events or the various uh components of the scenario that
Speaker 1: are in place that have led to this behavior and
Speaker 1: find out are there things that need to be addressed
Speaker 1: so that people don't develop these ideas or thoughts or prejudices,
Speaker 1: because I think more often than not it comes from
Speaker 1: a place of putting blame on others for a situation
Speaker 1: that you are in, whether it was justified or or not.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you might say I'm not as
Speaker 1: successful as I should be because those people over there
Speaker 1: begin are given preferential treatment, or I am I should
Speaker 1: be guaranteed the place where I'm at. Don't give that
Speaker 1: other group the same sort of opportunities that I've had,
Speaker 1: because then you're somehow taking away where I'm at, Like
Speaker 1: you have to get to the bottom of where does that?
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about particularly you're talking about like
Speaker 1: group prejudice or something. But there's also I mean, there
Speaker 1: are lots of ways to have nothing good to contribute.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can also just be like a sociopath
Speaker 1: who hates people. Well, sure, but that's that's always going
Speaker 1: to be the case, right There always going to be
Speaker 1: sociopath unless we come up with h is it yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe not. I mean I mean, if we come up
Speaker 1: with a way of identifying it immediately. And then but
Speaker 1: then you have a question of how do you deal
Speaker 1: with that? Do you do something where you're making a
Speaker 1: fundamental change to someone's uh neural, uh, you know, performance,
Speaker 1: so that they are not going to be a sociopath?
Speaker 1: At what point does that go way too freaking far? Right?
Speaker 1: These are we did. We did a whole other very
Speaker 1: long episodes like The Moral Moral Bio Enhancements. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean they're always going to be outliers. I don't
Speaker 1: think you're ever going to get a thing where it's
Speaker 1: going to be universal. But I I at least not
Speaker 1: that I necessarily think we're going to get to a
Speaker 1: point where we're all listening to one another. But I
Speaker 1: think we should always be striving to that right, that
Speaker 1: should be our goal. Even if we have all concluded
Speaker 1: that that goal will we will never be there. To me,
Speaker 1: it's still something that we have to strive for if
Speaker 1: we want to continue to improve as just humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the way I would interpret that, maybe what
Speaker 1: you're saying is making a good faith attempt to understand
Speaker 1: everyone else's point of view. Yeah, that's that's that's fair,
Speaker 1: fair assessment. Yes, yeah, yeah, if we could have a
Speaker 1: technology that would allow people to do that, and I
Speaker 1: think so easily that it would come as second nature.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those I think it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where perhaps, uh, we just get to
Speaker 1: a point where we're able to switch the focus is
Speaker 1: from the technological capability to more of all, right, let's
Speaker 1: really address the social and cultural issues that are in
Speaker 1: place that are allowing such things to foster and really
Speaker 1: just have conversations about that and really talk about what
Speaker 1: are the what are the various causes of this um
Speaker 1: and what can we do about it? Like, are there
Speaker 1: things that we can are there problems that we can
Speaker 1: actually work on solving? Are there some things that are
Speaker 1: really it's so you know, nebulous that there's not really
Speaker 1: a way to solve it, and if so, what else
Speaker 1: could we do? But then, to me, that's not talking
Speaker 1: about the technology anymore. That's that's talking about people being
Speaker 1: people um And And you know, maybe the technology allows
Speaker 1: for greater conversations to happen, but the technology itself doesn't
Speaker 1: doesn't actually make the change again unless we get that
Speaker 1: good evil switch in everybody's head and you just make
Speaker 1: sure everyone switched to good. Yeah, no, I I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think that that's the That's the point about all
Speaker 1: of these discussions of prediction for the future is that
Speaker 1: whatever future technology we can imagine, people, as far as
Speaker 1: I can personally discern, are are still going to be people.
Speaker 1: Um And and it technology can slowly change the way
Speaker 1: that we act, in the way that we interact, But
Speaker 1: I don't think it changes us like intrinsically, I don't
Speaker 1: think it does either. What I think it would allow
Speaker 1: us to do is just, uh, again, be more aware
Speaker 1: of what is going on beyond our our own selves. Um.
Speaker 1: Whether that means that we care, that's kind of up
Speaker 1: to the individual. Right. That's technology is not going to
Speaker 1: magically make someone care if a person around on the
Speaker 1: other side of the world is suffering or not, even
Speaker 1: if they see really compelling evidence that that person is
Speaker 1: indeed suffering. Um. But it it certainly, it certainly makes
Speaker 1: more people aware of it. And that's at least the
Speaker 1: first step toward getting something done, because if people are unaware,
Speaker 1: then of course there's no they're not going to move
Speaker 1: to action. Yeah, they can't act because they didn't know, right, So,
Speaker 1: whether the ignorance was self imposed or not, Um, anyway,
Speaker 1: these are This is exactly why we wanted to do
Speaker 1: these episodes, right, to have these kind of conversations, to
Speaker 1: talk about these big predictions and big ideas. And uh,
Speaker 1: there's so many more we could have touched on, Like
Speaker 1: we limited ourselves to just a couple each because we
Speaker 1: knew We didn't know it was going to go over
Speaker 1: to two episodes, but we knew it was going to
Speaker 1: be a heck of a conversation. But we've got so
Speaker 1: much more to say. You'll have to tune in next
Speaker 1: week to hear our our thoughts. Uh, we've got a
Speaker 1: very special episode coming up for you guys, so you
Speaker 1: should tune into that. And um, guys, it's been great.
Speaker 1: If you want to check us out on Facebook or Twitter,
Speaker 1: we are FW thinking. All were on Twitter. Search fw
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Speaker 1: we will talk to you again really soon on this topic.
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