WEBVTT - The Evening Rocket: Baby X 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:27.196 Pushkin. Americans do this really weird thing. Expectant parents hold 0:00:27.556 --> 0:00:31.996 gender reveal parties now to the mystery explosion that rocked 0:00:32.076 --> 0:00:39.236 a southern New Hampshire town. They often feature explosions with 0:00:39.276 --> 0:00:43.196 smoke that's either pink or blue. An alarming number of 0:00:43.196 --> 0:00:47.236 these stunts have gone RYE turns out that blast came 0:00:47.476 --> 0:00:51.156 from an over the top gender reveal party, a couple 0:00:51.196 --> 0:00:54.236 apparently using explosives to announce the sex of their baby. 0:00:54.676 --> 0:00:58.116 People have been killed, houses have burned to the ground, 0:00:58.316 --> 0:01:01.556 even forests. We begin to night with new video released 0:01:01.596 --> 0:01:04.516 from the US Forest Service showing the moment a gender 0:01:04.556 --> 0:01:08.316 reveal video started the forty seven thousand acres Sawmill fire. 0:01:11.556 --> 0:01:14.876 Elon Musk and his former girlfriend, the musician Grimes, didn't 0:01:14.876 --> 0:01:17.316 hold a gender reveal party in a way. They did 0:01:17.356 --> 0:01:20.156 the opposite. Last year on Twitter, they announced the birth 0:01:20.196 --> 0:01:23.076 of their baby, who was named X. Grimes that the 0:01:23.076 --> 0:01:26.116 baby would be raised without a gender. Like most things 0:01:26.156 --> 0:01:28.836 involving Elon Musk, this move looks like it has its 0:01:28.836 --> 0:01:32.716 origins in science fiction. Once upon a Time, a baby 0:01:32.876 --> 0:01:35.716 named X was born. The Story of Baby X was 0:01:35.756 --> 0:01:39.516 published in nineteen seventy two in miss A feminist magazine 0:01:39.836 --> 0:01:42.196 during its very first year, at the height of the 0:01:42.236 --> 0:01:46.396 women's liberation movement. This baby was named X so that 0:01:46.436 --> 0:01:49.076 nobody could tell whether it was a boy or a girl. 0:01:49.956 --> 0:01:53.316 Its parents could tell, of course, but they couldn't tell 0:01:53.436 --> 0:01:58.196 anybody else. They couldn't even tell Baby X, at least 0:01:58.636 --> 0:02:02.316 not until much much later. You see, it was all 0:02:02.436 --> 0:02:07.556 part of a very important secret scientific experiment known officially 0:02:07.636 --> 0:02:16.236 as Project Baby X. Baby X began as a feminist 0:02:16.276 --> 0:02:19.196 thought experiment. How did it come to be the name 0:02:19.196 --> 0:02:23.276 of Elon Musk's youngest child? In a broader sense, what's 0:02:23.276 --> 0:02:27.596 the place of ideas about families in Silicon Valley futurism? 0:02:27.636 --> 0:02:29.796 And are there other ideas about families that may be 0:02:29.876 --> 0:02:31.916 ought to have a place in any vision of the future. 0:02:36.956 --> 0:02:41.276 Welcome to The Evening Rocket, a special report. I'm Jill Lapoor. 0:02:41.836 --> 0:02:44.716 I'm a historian, a professor at Harvard, and for a 0:02:44.756 --> 0:02:48.316 long time I've been studying the relationship between technological and 0:02:48.476 --> 0:02:52.796 political change. This series, I'm exploring a new kind of capitalism. 0:02:52.996 --> 0:02:59.596 Call it Muscism, extravagant extreme capitalism, extraterrestrial capitalism, where stock 0:02:59.676 --> 0:03:04.636 prices for projects from Tesla and SpaceX to cryptocurrencies and 0:03:04.796 --> 0:03:08.116 neural implants can be driven by fantasies that come from 0:03:08.156 --> 0:03:13.796 science fiction. I'm fascinated by science fiction, even by comic books. 0:03:14.036 --> 0:03:16.316 They once read a whole about the political history of 0:03:16.396 --> 0:03:20.276 Wonder Woman. The science fiction men like Elon Musk and 0:03:20.356 --> 0:03:25.476 Jeff bezos Ador generally concerns gleaming futures in which fantastically 0:03:25.516 --> 0:03:31.476 powerful and often immensely rich men colonize other planets. This episode, 0:03:31.556 --> 0:03:34.036 which is called Baby X, I want to take a 0:03:34.036 --> 0:03:36.236 look at the science fiction that's usually left out of 0:03:36.276 --> 0:03:41.836 that vision new way, afrofuturism, feminist science fiction, post colonial 0:03:41.876 --> 0:03:47.076 science fiction, including the story of Baby X. The smartest 0:03:47.116 --> 0:03:49.836 scientists had set up this experiment at a cost of 0:03:50.036 --> 0:03:54.556 exactly twenty three billion dollars and seventy two cents. This 0:03:54.676 --> 0:03:57.676 might seem like a lot for one baby, even if 0:03:57.716 --> 0:04:02.676 it was an important, secret scientific experimental Baby. This sort 0:04:02.676 --> 0:04:05.716 of science fiction generally involves both ideas about gender and 0:04:05.756 --> 0:04:10.836 sexuality and actual people who are not men and children babies. 0:04:10.916 --> 0:04:14.396 Even I think I can help explain the domestic politics 0:04:14.396 --> 0:04:18.476 of extreme capitalism. So blast off back to the beginning 0:04:18.516 --> 0:04:25.916 of this century. No blue smoke, no pink smoke. Elon 0:04:25.996 --> 0:04:28.836 Musk met his first wife, the Canadian writer Justine Wilson, 0:04:28.956 --> 0:04:31.796 in college. They married in the year two thousand and 0:04:31.876 --> 0:04:35.636 had a baby who died tragically, and then triplets and twins. 0:04:36.236 --> 0:04:39.196 After the marriage ended, Wilson wrote an essay called I 0:04:39.276 --> 0:04:42.396 Was a Starter Wife for Marie Claire, a women's magazine, 0:04:42.956 --> 0:04:46.636 about how weeks after Musk filed for divorce he texted her. 0:04:46.676 --> 0:04:49.196 She wrote to say he was engaged to a gorgeous 0:04:49.196 --> 0:04:53.876 British actress in her early twenties. Musk and that actress married, divorced, remarried, 0:04:54.116 --> 0:05:02.796 and then divorced again in twenty sixteen. In twenty eighteen, 0:05:03.036 --> 0:05:06.916 Musk met Claire Bouchet, an innovative Canadian born musician known 0:05:06.916 --> 0:05:12.476 as Grimes. She had studied neuroscience at McGill. Like Musk, 0:05:12.756 --> 0:05:15.716 Grimes is an avid science fiction fan. Her first album 0:05:15.796 --> 0:05:18.476 was a tribute to Doone. The New Yorker once called 0:05:18.476 --> 0:05:21.836 her a mad pop scientist. She's also a feminist, and 0:05:21.916 --> 0:05:24.796 she's offered a fierce indictment of the music industry, where 0:05:24.916 --> 0:05:27.956 she said women feel pressure to act like strippers and 0:05:28.076 --> 0:05:32.396 it's okay to make grape threats. Being Musk's girlfriend and 0:05:32.516 --> 0:05:35.236 doing things like defending him against charges that he prevented 0:05:35.276 --> 0:05:39.156 Tesla workers from unionizing annoyed a lot of her fans. 0:05:39.156 --> 0:05:42.396 She's been attacked with a particular venom reserved for female 0:05:42.476 --> 0:05:46.476 artists and writers. Grimes has got a sophisticated interest in 0:05:46.556 --> 0:05:50.156 gender and voice. Hey everybody, this is Grimes and I'm 0:05:50.236 --> 0:05:52.596 very excited to be here kicking off my brand new 0:05:52.716 --> 0:05:57.516 six month residency for BBC Radio One. After she got pregnant, 0:05:57.596 --> 0:06:00.876 she hosted a radio show and the theme is sci 0:06:00.916 --> 0:06:07.956 Fi Baby or weird science fiction and electronic music for babies. Now, 0:06:07.956 --> 0:06:10.076 this song might be a little hard for some babies, 0:06:10.796 --> 0:06:13.676 but some babies might really like it. This is definitely 0:06:13.756 --> 0:06:15.756 a bit of a hard song though, so I guess 0:06:15.876 --> 0:06:18.236 you know, to see how your baby feels, and if 0:06:18.276 --> 0:06:21.396 they don't like techno, then don't play them this song. 0:06:21.756 --> 0:06:25.876 Cool sweet. A few months later, announcing their baby's birth, 0:06:26.236 --> 0:06:28.676 Musk said it was a boy, but Grimes declined to 0:06:28.716 --> 0:06:31.396 mention its gender and tweeted, I don't want to gender 0:06:31.396 --> 0:06:33.516 them in case that's not how they feel in their life. 0:06:34.276 --> 0:06:37.716 This is called gender neutral parenting. It's had some recent 0:06:37.796 --> 0:06:41.116 uptake among people including celebrities who support the cause of 0:06:41.116 --> 0:06:43.996 trans rights and who believe children should get the opportunity 0:06:44.196 --> 0:06:47.556 to decide their own gender identity. In twenty eleven, when 0:06:47.596 --> 0:06:50.036 Grimes was at McGill, there was a lot of coverage 0:06:50.036 --> 0:06:52.076 of a family in Canada. Well, it's a couple in 0:06:52.076 --> 0:06:54.236 Toronto that is creating a quite a stir right now 0:06:54.236 --> 0:06:57.476 because they're raising their baby what they're calling gender free. 0:06:57.996 --> 0:07:01.036 This all seems very twenty first century, born out of 0:07:01.076 --> 0:07:05.076 the heated contemporary culture war over trans rights, but it's 0:07:05.116 --> 0:07:08.916 also very nineteen seventies and second wave feminist. It's an 0:07:09.316 --> 0:07:13.116 X was absolutely all they would tell anyone, and that 0:07:13.156 --> 0:07:16.396 made the friends and relatives very angry. The Story of 0:07:16.396 --> 0:07:19.996 Baby X from nineteen seventy two was written by Lois Gould, 0:07:20.116 --> 0:07:22.396 a novelist and mother of two boys who was also 0:07:22.436 --> 0:07:25.236 an editor of Ladies Home Journal and a columnist for 0:07:25.276 --> 0:07:27.956 The New York Times, where she wrote the HER's column. 0:07:28.556 --> 0:07:30.636 At the time Gold was writing, a lot of feminists 0:07:30.676 --> 0:07:32.636 had been arguing that kids should be able to wear 0:07:32.676 --> 0:07:35.476 whatever clothes they want and play with whatever toys they want, 0:07:35.476 --> 0:07:38.156 not just pants and trucks for boys and dresses and 0:07:38.236 --> 0:07:41.316 dolls for girls. So they bought plenty of sturdy blue 0:07:41.316 --> 0:07:45.076 pajamas in the boys department and cheerful flowered underwear in 0:07:45.076 --> 0:07:48.556 the girls department, and they bought all kinds of toys. 0:07:49.316 --> 0:07:52.956 The head scientists of Project baby X checked all their 0:07:52.956 --> 0:07:56.516 purchases and told them to keep up the good work. 0:07:57.316 --> 0:08:00.956 In nineteen seventy five, Baby X, the feminist fable, led 0:08:00.996 --> 0:08:04.556 to an actual scientific experiment whose results were published in 0:08:04.556 --> 0:08:08.196 a journal article that was also called baby X. Although 0:08:08.236 --> 0:08:11.836 the story was science fiction fantasy, the question of how 0:08:11.876 --> 0:08:16.116 adults would actually respond to a child appeared to merit investigation. 0:08:16.836 --> 0:08:19.996 Forty two volunteers, mostly graduate students at the City University 0:08:20.036 --> 0:08:22.036 of New York, were put in a lab with a 0:08:22.076 --> 0:08:25.636 baby under different conditions. Those in the male and female 0:08:25.716 --> 0:08:28.476 conditions were told that there was a three month old 0:08:28.516 --> 0:08:31.756 baby boy or baby girl to play with, while those 0:08:31.796 --> 0:08:34.196 in the neutral condition were told that there was a 0:08:34.276 --> 0:08:37.236 three month old baby with no mention of its sex 0:08:37.396 --> 0:08:41.596 or name. Unsurprisingly, the volunteers interacted differently with the baby, 0:08:41.636 --> 0:08:43.556 depending on whether they'd been told it was a boy 0:08:43.956 --> 0:08:46.836 or a girl, or just a baby. But this sort 0:08:46.836 --> 0:08:50.436 of experiment has other origins too, especially in the work 0:08:50.436 --> 0:08:52.876 of one of the most influential science fiction writers of 0:08:52.916 --> 0:08:57.316 the last century, Ursula K. LeGuin, who on BBC Radio 0:08:57.396 --> 0:09:01.556 four introduced herself this way, I am a man. Now 0:09:01.556 --> 0:09:03.876 you may think I've made some kind of silly mistake 0:09:03.916 --> 0:09:07.076 about gender, or maybe that I'm trying to fool you, 0:09:07.156 --> 0:09:10.316 because my first name ends in A, and I owned 0:09:10.356 --> 0:09:13.996 three bras, and I've been pregnant five times. When I 0:09:14.036 --> 0:09:17.916 was born, there actually were only men. People were men. 0:09:18.396 --> 0:09:23.276 They all had one pronoun. His pronoun, I'm the generic key, 0:09:23.436 --> 0:09:27.236 as in, if anybody needs an abortion, he will have 0:09:27.356 --> 0:09:30.876 to go to another state. Legwin was born in California 0:09:30.916 --> 0:09:33.756 in nineteen twenty nine. In the nineteen fifties, she was 0:09:33.796 --> 0:09:36.396 studying for a PhD in Paris when she fell in 0:09:36.436 --> 0:09:39.636 love and got married. By nineteen sixty four, she had 0:09:39.636 --> 0:09:43.436 three children. Her breakout book, The Left Hand of Darkness, 0:09:43.916 --> 0:09:46.796 was published in nineteen sixty nine. It's about a planet 0:09:46.796 --> 0:09:51.276 whose inhabitants have no fixed gender. We're neither man nor 0:09:51.356 --> 0:09:55.316 woman except with every moon when we're in Kema, and 0:09:55.476 --> 0:10:00.276 what either. Legwin once wrote an essay a riff on 0:10:00.316 --> 0:10:03.116 an essay by Virginia Wolf about how the subject of 0:10:03.156 --> 0:10:07.236 all novels is Human Nature, the ordinary, humble, flawed person 0:10:07.876 --> 0:10:12.356 Wolf called her Missus Brown. Legwin thought science fiction had 0:10:12.396 --> 0:10:16.316 lost track of Missus Brown and seemed to be trapped 0:10:16.356 --> 0:10:20.196 for good inside our great gleaming Spaceships hurtling out across 0:10:20.196 --> 0:10:24.276 the galaxy, Ships capable of containing heroic captains and black 0:10:24.316 --> 0:10:28.316 and silver uniforms. Ships capable of blasting other inimical ships 0:10:28.316 --> 0:10:32.716 into smitherines with their apocalyptic holocaustic rayguns, and of bringing 0:10:32.756 --> 0:10:36.636 loads of colonists from Earth to unknown worlds. Ships capable 0:10:36.636 --> 0:10:41.756 of anything, absolutely anything, except one thing. They cannot contain 0:10:42.236 --> 0:10:48.876 Missus Brown. And that's my worry too, the worry that, 0:10:48.996 --> 0:10:53.476 notwithstanding a baby named X, the future envisioned by Muscism, 0:10:53.556 --> 0:10:57.796 the future being built in Silicon Valley, it doesn't contain 0:10:57.836 --> 0:11:08.676 Missus Brown either. In two thousand and eight, Vandanna Saying 0:11:09.116 --> 0:11:11.796 published a short story called The Woman Who Thought She 0:11:11.916 --> 0:11:16.116 Was a Planet. It begins this way. Ramnath Mishra's life 0:11:16.196 --> 0:11:19.876 changed forever one morning when, during his perusal of the 0:11:19.956 --> 0:11:23.436 newspaper on the Verandah, a ritual that he had observed 0:11:23.476 --> 0:11:26.516 for the last forty years, his wife set down her 0:11:26.556 --> 0:11:29.796 cup of tea with a crash and announced, I know 0:11:29.876 --> 0:11:34.076 at last what I am. I am a planet. Vandana 0:11:34.156 --> 0:11:36.596 Saying is both a science fiction writer and a professor 0:11:36.596 --> 0:11:40.876 of theoretical physics. Her most recent book is called Ambiguity Machines. 0:11:41.356 --> 0:11:43.796 She grew up in India listening to her grandmother tells 0:11:43.836 --> 0:11:47.516 stories and reading Isaac Asimov. I remember when I was 0:11:47.556 --> 0:11:50.756 a kid reading the Foundation series and being so thrilled 0:11:50.796 --> 0:11:53.316 with them, and then rereading them as an adult and 0:11:53.436 --> 0:11:56.356 being utterly horrified that I had been thrilled with them. 0:11:57.236 --> 0:12:01.236 What bothered me about it was this entrenched notion that 0:12:01.316 --> 0:12:04.756 technology will fix everything. The other thing I notice is 0:12:04.756 --> 0:12:07.996 the complete lack of any kind of environmental awareness, which 0:12:07.996 --> 0:12:11.036 of course goes along with techno fetishism. So we have 0:12:11.076 --> 0:12:15.356 an entire planet Trantor, which is an entire city, and 0:12:15.396 --> 0:12:18.076 that's just so dumb, because like, how can you have 0:12:18.396 --> 0:12:21.436 oxygen and climate and so on and so forth if 0:12:21.476 --> 0:12:23.956 you have a planet that is completely urbanized. I mean, 0:12:23.956 --> 0:12:26.836 that makes no sense. But the other aspect of it 0:12:26.876 --> 0:12:29.556 that troubles me is, of course, there are no intelligent 0:12:29.676 --> 0:12:32.756 women out there in that series. I think there's one 0:12:32.836 --> 0:12:35.636 example of an intelligent woman who turns out to be 0:12:35.676 --> 0:12:38.476 a robot. Seeing stories like the Woman who Thought She 0:12:38.636 --> 0:12:41.836 was a planet, They're all about Missus Brown. So I'm 0:12:41.836 --> 0:12:45.476 struck by the domesticity in your stories. The homes, the furnishings, 0:12:45.516 --> 0:12:48.996 the family relationships, aunts and nieces and cousins and wives, 0:12:48.996 --> 0:12:53.676 and writing desks and bedspreads. Yeah. Yeah, I think that 0:12:53.716 --> 0:12:56.796 the domesticity aspect is important to me because one of 0:12:56.796 --> 0:12:59.636 the things I've learned from science, from physics in particular, 0:13:00.156 --> 0:13:03.956 is that there's nothing that's really ordinary. That the most 0:13:04.516 --> 0:13:09.596 mundane things around us are actually pathways to thinking about 0:13:09.636 --> 0:13:13.396 the larger cosmos. Even our sensation of weight, that's the 0:13:13.436 --> 0:13:16.076 pull of gravity, and then if you go deeper into that, 0:13:16.076 --> 0:13:19.156 that's the force that is responsible for the large scale 0:13:19.196 --> 0:13:22.836 structure of matter. And then that leads me to black holes. 0:13:23.116 --> 0:13:26.116 So if I'm pondering moving a heavy soup pot from 0:13:26.156 --> 0:13:29.636 the stove to the counter, I'm thinking gravity, and I'm 0:13:29.676 --> 0:13:33.996 suddenly thinking about black holes. Singh's greatest influence was Lagwen. 0:13:34.716 --> 0:13:38.076 It just knocked her out. I realized that my earlier 0:13:38.196 --> 0:13:43.396 disenchantment with science fiction had been in part because it 0:13:43.516 --> 0:13:50.636 was so white and male and western and capitalistic. And colonialist, 0:13:51.156 --> 0:13:56.156 and therefore it had left out and erased entire societies, cultures, 0:13:56.676 --> 0:14:00.036 entire gender and other ways of being and thinking and 0:14:00.076 --> 0:14:04.276 relating to the cosmos. So it was as though Ursula 0:14:04.356 --> 0:14:07.396 Liguin was telling me that, hey, science fiction is your 0:14:07.436 --> 0:14:11.596 country too. Made a lasting contribution to the field itself 0:14:11.596 --> 0:14:15.716 for many, many people, not just me, because, among other things, 0:14:15.756 --> 0:14:19.276 she got us away from this boys with toys adolescent 0:14:19.596 --> 0:14:24.236 obsession purely with technology that science fiction was in its 0:14:24.276 --> 0:14:27.916 so called golden age starting in the nineteen seventies. Laguin 0:14:28.076 --> 0:14:31.916 upended science fiction, but the science fiction that Elon Musk 0:14:31.956 --> 0:14:34.716 and Jeff Bezos site, the science fiction they read as 0:14:34.796 --> 0:14:38.036 boys drops off just ends right before science fiction was 0:14:38.076 --> 0:14:42.396 reinvented by women and writers of color. Octavia Butler Margaret 0:14:42.396 --> 0:14:46.396 Atward ted Chang to me as a historian, Musk and 0:14:46.436 --> 0:14:50.676 Bezos's vision of the future isn't futuristic at all. It's antique. 0:14:50.676 --> 0:14:54.196 It's ancient, I asked, seeing how she understands their attachment. 0:14:54.196 --> 0:14:56.716 The story is written in the nineteen fifties and even earlier. 0:14:57.436 --> 0:14:59.716 She said she'd come around to thinking that Silicon Valley 0:14:59.756 --> 0:15:04.596 techno billionaires suffer from paradigm blindness. Because we live in 0:15:04.756 --> 0:15:09.396 such unequal societies, and because white, male, super rich people 0:15:09.516 --> 0:15:13.596 have a disproportionate amount of power, they tend to keep 0:15:13.636 --> 0:15:18.276 this paradigm alive because it suits them. Paradigm blindness is 0:15:18.316 --> 0:15:22.836 a deficit of imagination, a culture's inability to imagine that 0:15:22.916 --> 0:15:25.516 other people really just don't subscribe to its view of 0:15:25.556 --> 0:15:30.196 the world. Saying things stories can cure that blindness. Stories 0:15:30.236 --> 0:15:32.636 are one way, not the only way, of course, but 0:15:32.756 --> 0:15:37.356 one way of changing the underlying narrative of the paradigm 0:15:37.476 --> 0:15:40.716 in which we are immersed. All of us suffer from 0:15:40.756 --> 0:15:43.836 blindness of one sort or another. What's different about Silicon 0:15:43.916 --> 0:15:46.636 Valley billionaires who are trapped in a cultural paradigm, though, 0:15:47.236 --> 0:15:49.356 is that they have enough money and enough power to 0:15:49.596 --> 0:15:52.356 build that paradigm, and then the rest of us are 0:15:52.396 --> 0:15:55.076 trapped in the world they're building as if we're subjects 0:15:55.076 --> 0:16:16.796 of their experiments. That's Grimes singing about artificial intelligence. Grimes 0:16:16.836 --> 0:16:20.116 and Musk are both storytellers. Their baby X was born 0:16:20.116 --> 0:16:23.436 in May twenty twenty three. Days after Grimes gave birth, 0:16:23.676 --> 0:16:26.676 Musk appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, where the two 0:16:26.676 --> 0:16:29.436 men talked about how much they love babies, and then 0:16:29.476 --> 0:16:32.796 the conversation took an interesting turn. Babies are awesome. They 0:16:32.836 --> 0:16:35.196 are pretty awesome. They're awesome. Yeah. I think of them 0:16:35.356 --> 0:16:38.156 like these little love packages. Yeah, little love bugs. I mean. Also, 0:16:38.196 --> 0:16:41.156 I've spent a lot of time on AI and neural nets, 0:16:41.236 --> 0:16:44.076 and so you can sort of see the brain developed. 0:16:44.276 --> 0:16:47.316 You know what, an annual neural net is trying to 0:16:47.396 --> 0:16:50.556 simulate what a brain does basically, and you can sort 0:16:50.596 --> 0:16:54.156 of see the learning very quickly. It's just Wow, you're 0:16:54.156 --> 0:16:56.316 talking about the neural net. You're not talking about an 0:16:56.316 --> 0:16:58.596 actual baby. I don't know about an actual baby, but 0:16:58.676 --> 0:17:02.196 both of them. Yeah, I find this completely fascinating, the 0:17:02.236 --> 0:17:05.116 relationship between the way a baby learns and the way 0:17:05.116 --> 0:17:08.396 a computer learns. This idea as it happens, also goes 0:17:08.436 --> 0:17:11.036 back to hook and be fairly considered the founding of 0:17:11.076 --> 0:17:15.636 science fiction. Published more than two centuries ago. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 0:17:16.316 --> 0:17:17.996 which I think of as a kind of baby X 0:17:17.996 --> 0:17:22.236 story too, about the creation of artificial life and an 0:17:22.356 --> 0:17:36.156 artificial intelligence. Frankenstein is the story of a terrible father, 0:17:36.556 --> 0:17:40.636 a scientist who, as an experiment, makes a child and 0:17:40.716 --> 0:17:45.076 then abandons him. Mary Shelley was the daughter of Mary Wolstroncraft, 0:17:45.236 --> 0:17:48.596 a founder of modern feminism, and Shelley was a founder 0:17:48.636 --> 0:17:52.796 of the feminist critique of scientific arrogance Fundamental to what 0:17:52.836 --> 0:17:57.636 We're doing as a research project called baby X. Today, 0:17:57.996 --> 0:18:00.436 Baby X is being used as the name of an 0:18:00.436 --> 0:18:04.716 experiment in artificial intelligence run by a company called Soul Machines, 0:18:04.916 --> 0:18:06.996 based in San Francisco, but with an R and d 0:18:07.156 --> 0:18:09.756 arm in New Zealand. They say they're trying to build 0:18:09.876 --> 0:18:14.276 digital people, starting with a baby. This is a baby X, 0:18:14.316 --> 0:18:18.796 So she's basically an autonomously animated virtual infant, all of 0:18:18.796 --> 0:18:22.916 her behaviors generated on the fly by neural networks running 0:18:22.916 --> 0:18:25.236 live and so she's seeing me and listening to me 0:18:25.596 --> 0:18:28.116 and staying to get upset as I'm not paying attention 0:18:28.196 --> 0:18:31.676 to her, so I need to calm her down. This 0:18:31.796 --> 0:18:35.956 baby X an AI experiment, is a baby girl, which 0:18:36.036 --> 0:18:39.916 is not surprising because AI is incredibly gendered. An AI 0:18:39.996 --> 0:18:43.716 doesn't need a gender. She could have been a gray box. 0:18:44.236 --> 0:18:47.316 In the twenty fourteen film for a movie, X Machina, 0:18:47.436 --> 0:18:51.476 written and directed by Alex Garland, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur 0:18:51.556 --> 0:18:55.716 invents an AI, a visitor asks the AI's creator why 0:18:55.796 --> 0:19:00.396 he's made her female sexuality is fun, man, If you're 0:19:00.396 --> 0:19:05.116 going to exist, why not enjoy it? What in between 0:19:05.156 --> 0:19:08.276 her legs as an opening with a concentration of sensors. 0:19:09.196 --> 0:19:13.076 You engage him in the right way, creates a pleasure response, 0:19:14.756 --> 0:19:19.396 and she'd enjoy it. These are modern Frankenstein monsters. AI 0:19:19.636 --> 0:19:23.596 is a super intelligent baby AI as a sex toy. 0:19:23.876 --> 0:19:27.796 Ex Machina is an update of older stories all haunted 0:19:28.036 --> 0:19:32.316 by the fear of rebellion Frankenstein say or Isaac Asimov's 0:19:32.356 --> 0:19:36.196 story Robot Dreams, in which a robot dreams of liberation 0:19:37.316 --> 0:19:39.796 within the world of Muskism. For all the fascination with 0:19:39.916 --> 0:19:44.396 artificial intelligence, there's a profound terror of it. Here's Musk 0:19:44.516 --> 0:19:47.316 on the subject at a conference at MIT. I mean, 0:19:47.356 --> 0:19:50.676 with artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon, and I 0:19:50.956 --> 0:19:53.276 take it there will be no hail nine thousand going 0:19:53.316 --> 0:19:59.236 up to Mars. How nine thousand would be easy. It's 0:19:59.356 --> 0:20:02.956 way more complex than I mean, would put hell nine 0:20:02.956 --> 0:20:09.716 thousands of shame? I was like poppy Dog, for sure. 0:20:09.836 --> 0:20:12.716 There's a lot to worry about with artificial intelligence. Beyond 0:20:12.716 --> 0:20:15.636 a rogue operating system. Like two thousand and one's Hail 0:20:15.756 --> 0:20:22.796 nine thousand. There's lots that's already happening facial recognition, predictive policing, 0:20:23.196 --> 0:20:28.276 AI driven mortgage evaluations, and criminal court sentencing guidelines. And 0:20:28.396 --> 0:20:30.996 there's plenty to worry about with things that haven't happened 0:20:31.076 --> 0:20:35.836 yet but look likely as the pace of machine learning increases. Still, 0:20:35.876 --> 0:20:38.636 I also think there's something deeper and broader going on 0:20:38.756 --> 0:20:43.636 here culturally in the terror of AI. I think a 0:20:43.636 --> 0:20:47.236 lot of that fear of an emerging superintelligence is at 0:20:47.276 --> 0:20:50.516 heart the fear of people on top being toppled by 0:20:50.596 --> 0:20:54.356 people on the bottom, a terror that is of historically 0:20:54.396 --> 0:21:06.116 powerless people gaining power. Ursula k Laguin The K is 0:21:06.116 --> 0:21:09.236 for Kroeber. She was the daughter of Alfred Kroeber, a 0:21:09.236 --> 0:21:13.036 professor of anthropology at Berkeley. It was a university professor's 0:21:13.116 --> 0:21:16.356 family in a university town in the nineteen thirties and 0:21:16.396 --> 0:21:18.996 forties when there were a lot of refugees from Europe. 0:21:19.876 --> 0:21:23.836 So I probably knew more foreigners and more Indians than 0:21:23.916 --> 0:21:28.076 most middle class white American children do, and more people 0:21:28.116 --> 0:21:31.356 who came and visited from unusual places the South Seas 0:21:31.436 --> 0:21:34.036 or up in the Arctic and so on, because they'd 0:21:34.076 --> 0:21:38.036 been doing field work there. Both of her parents studied 0:21:38.116 --> 0:21:41.436 Native American languages and culture. Her mother wrote a book 0:21:41.476 --> 0:21:44.396 called Ishi in Two Worlds, the story of a man 0:21:44.476 --> 0:21:47.596 her father called Ishi, a man they believed to be 0:21:47.636 --> 0:21:52.676 the last of the Yahi people. In nineteen eleven, Ishi 0:21:52.756 --> 0:21:55.556 emerged out of the woods. A local sheriff took him 0:21:55.556 --> 0:21:58.356 to jail, and Alfred Kroeber took him from there to 0:21:58.436 --> 0:22:01.956 the UC Berkeley Anthropology Museum, where Ishi worked as a 0:22:02.036 --> 0:22:05.956 janitor and also performed as a kind of museum exhibit. 0:22:06.596 --> 0:22:18.196 Kroeber recorded his voice on wax cylinders. Growing up under 0:22:18.236 --> 0:22:21.716 the shadow of all this powerfully influenced Laguin. If the 0:22:21.756 --> 0:22:24.316 so called Golden Age of science fiction is told from 0:22:24.316 --> 0:22:27.836 the advantage of the colonizers, Lagwin and novels like The 0:22:27.916 --> 0:22:31.596 Dispossessed tried to turn it into the story of the colonized. 0:22:32.236 --> 0:22:34.636 You might say then that people who worry about ai 0:22:34.836 --> 0:22:38.796 is an existential risk are trapped in the paradigm of colonialism. 0:22:39.436 --> 0:22:45.516 Is there an escape? Alohamaycaco Noilanista. I'm doctor noilandi Arista, 0:22:45.716 --> 0:22:49.756 Chair of Indigenous Studies at McGill University. Arista is part 0:22:49.756 --> 0:22:54.916 of a collaborative project called Indigenous AI. Indigenous peoples have 0:22:55.076 --> 0:22:59.756 been on the other side of colonialisms and imperialisms and 0:23:00.036 --> 0:23:05.676 processes that have worked to dehumanize our people for so 0:23:05.876 --> 0:23:11.636 long that we are concerned about how people are approaching 0:23:11.756 --> 0:23:19.796 AI without these sensibilities of humanizing or imagining relationality. One 0:23:19.836 --> 0:23:22.996 of Arista's arguments is that if you create AI blind 0:23:23.356 --> 0:23:26.596 to the cultural paradigm of its origins, would you get 0:23:26.636 --> 0:23:30.396 as AI as slaves, which turns us the people using 0:23:30.396 --> 0:23:35.196 that stuff into enslavers. So when I'm talking to Alexa, 0:23:35.276 --> 0:23:39.396 I could start to just normalize barking orders and an 0:23:39.436 --> 0:23:44.836 inanimate object, Hey Alexa, do x. And when I find 0:23:44.876 --> 0:23:48.876 myself doing that, I find that it's training my behavior. 0:23:49.596 --> 0:23:52.596 Maybe the person I'm becoming when I'm barking orders an 0:23:52.716 --> 0:23:56.436 inanimate thing is not making me into the best human being. 0:23:57.396 --> 0:24:01.756 For many technologists, stories like Frankenstein serve as parables about AI, 0:24:02.396 --> 0:24:06.836 but for Arista, those are parables about fears of native uprisings. 0:24:07.356 --> 0:24:11.236 And after all, Mary Shelley was self an anti imperialist. She, 0:24:11.436 --> 0:24:15.236 for instance, boycotted sugar and protest of British slave plantations 0:24:15.236 --> 0:24:19.076 in the Caribbean, and literary scholars often read Frankenstein as 0:24:19.116 --> 0:24:22.476 an indictment of the British Empire's relationship to people. It 0:24:22.596 --> 0:24:26.916 decides our monsters out of fear of them. These natives 0:24:26.996 --> 0:24:29.116 are gonna be smarter than us, They're going to know 0:24:29.236 --> 0:24:32.396 more than us. The many different Native people working on 0:24:32.436 --> 0:24:37.156 the Indigenous Ai Project offer an alternative, an indigenous paradigm 0:24:37.396 --> 0:24:40.876 for thinking about the relationship between humans and non humans. 0:24:41.676 --> 0:24:47.476 It's a paradigm about relationships in which ai are kin relations, 0:24:47.516 --> 0:24:50.796 the way that within many indigenous cultures all things are 0:24:50.876 --> 0:24:55.796 kin rocks, the sky trees, family, not things to be 0:24:55.836 --> 0:25:00.316 turned into commodities, their wealth or labor extracted. What would 0:25:00.356 --> 0:25:03.756 it mean to reject the domestic politics of Muscism and 0:25:03.876 --> 0:25:07.596 borrow from this world view? What if instead of Frankenstein, 0:25:08.076 --> 0:25:12.156 futureists adopted a different origin story. I use the story 0:25:12.196 --> 0:25:16.516 of Halloa, the child of ho Ho Kuiklani and Waukea, 0:25:16.636 --> 0:25:20.356 the sky Father. They have a child. The first child 0:25:20.436 --> 0:25:23.236 is born, stillborn, It's planted into the earth, and from 0:25:23.276 --> 0:25:26.516 that child is born the taro, the callow plant that 0:25:26.556 --> 0:25:29.556 we subsist on as a people. Right. The second child 0:25:29.636 --> 0:25:33.556 born of that union is named Halloa after his brother 0:25:34.236 --> 0:25:39.876 Hallow in Hawaiian means long breath, and the oha or 0:25:39.996 --> 0:25:42.796 corm that grows off of the root of the plant 0:25:43.356 --> 0:25:46.916 that becomes the word for ohana or family. So the 0:25:46.996 --> 0:25:51.156 story itself is that the second child, the human, cares 0:25:51.156 --> 0:25:54.676 for the first, the brother who's the plant, and ensures 0:25:54.716 --> 0:25:58.516 the life of generations to come. The Halloa, the long breath, 0:25:58.996 --> 0:26:04.316 the life of the people. That story about reciprocal mutual 0:26:04.356 --> 0:26:07.996 respect and relationship and care is at the center of 0:26:08.036 --> 0:26:12.476 a lot of the protocols that we approach Ai with. 0:26:13.716 --> 0:26:22.756 Do you appreciate what do you appreciate? Power? Do you 0:26:22.836 --> 0:26:27.876 appreciate to me? This is the truly revolutionary idea, not 0:26:27.996 --> 0:26:35.396 appreciating power or predicting a robot uprising. The truly revolutionary, 0:26:35.516 --> 0:26:39.996 disruptively innovative idea is to greet the whole world, even 0:26:40.036 --> 0:26:44.156 your Ai driven machines, as members of your family, your kin, 0:26:44.556 --> 0:26:50.356 your child, not X the unknown, but the known, the beloved. 0:26:54.996 --> 0:26:58.276 Next time, in our final installment, The Evening Rocket blasts 0:26:58.316 --> 0:27:01.116 to the past for the last time with a look 0:27:01.116 --> 0:27:17.476