Speaker 1: Sleepwalkers is a production of my heart radio and unusual productions.
Speaker 1: Every day I go to work, I use my car.
Speaker 1: Every tag I talked to somebody is more than a
Speaker 1: few more feet away. I use my phone, so I'm
Speaker 1: using certain technologies that extend me beyond my physical normal range. Yes,
Speaker 1: so maybe I'm a cyborg. That Sebastian Throne speaking. He
Speaker 1: found a Google X and he's appeared on Sleepwalkers a
Speaker 1: few times. As far as we know, he's not a cyborg.
Speaker 1: If summer took all technology away from me, like refrigeration
Speaker 1: and everything, would I not survive? I have no clue.
Speaker 1: I good, I'm in catching deer here my neighborhood. But yes,
Speaker 1: I would be pretty miserable. You said something which I
Speaker 1: found quite interesting. You said, I would love to directly
Speaker 1: interface my brain to all the computers in the world,
Speaker 1: so I could be truly superhuman. I would know everything,
Speaker 1: every name, every phone number. If there was a button
Speaker 1: you could press to do that right now, would you
Speaker 1: have any hesitation pressing it? I would press it in
Speaker 1: a microsecond. Why I make sure the product of data.
Speaker 1: I went to college, I read probably four or five
Speaker 1: books in the time, and I build a scientific career
Speaker 1: on the shoulders of others. That data empowered me to
Speaker 1: who I am. If you took that data away from
Speaker 1: me and said, Sebastian, I'm going to put you into
Speaker 1: the China in the seventies, you're gonna work in the field,
Speaker 1: I would be less as Sebastian than I am today,
Speaker 1: because I would probably know how to plow a field.
Speaker 1: But that was pretty much it. To Sebastian's regret, there's
Speaker 1: been a hard limit on how much data he can
Speaker 1: actually consume his hardware. His physical body has held him back. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the human I owe the input out with the ears
Speaker 1: and eyes and smell and so on, voice are still
Speaker 1: very inefficient. If I could accelerate the reading of all
Speaker 1: the books into my brain, oh my god, that would
Speaker 1: be so awesome. We talked in the last episode about
Speaker 1: brain computer interfaces in the medical world, helping disabled pay
Speaker 1: ss like Jan Sherman move prosthetic limbs with their minds. Today,
Speaker 1: we look at trans humanism becoming cyborks. What happens when
Speaker 1: we merge with computers not just to restore function, but
Speaker 1: to upgrade and enhance ourselves. And as we head into
Speaker 1: this new future, who might get left behind. I musoloshin
Speaker 1: this is Sleepwalkers. So Carrot Sebastian was talking about cyborgs
Speaker 1: and whether we're already cy walks because we're so reliant
Speaker 1: on our technology, our cars, and especially our phones, which
Speaker 1: become kind of like a second brain, albeit a very
Speaker 1: distracting one. Yeah. I think what he was saying that
Speaker 1: if technology is required to keep us alive, that merger
Speaker 1: between humans and machines has already happened. We're already that's right.
Speaker 1: But let's be real, that's not really what people think
Speaker 1: about when they hear the word cyborgs. They think about
Speaker 1: more extreme cases like Sebastian having his brain directly connected
Speaker 1: to all the information in the world ever, you know,
Speaker 1: and there are already some people working on that. There's
Speaker 1: this guy named Elon Musk that you might have heard of,
Speaker 1: and he actually one of his new companies is called Neuralink,
Speaker 1: and he's trying to do is create a mesh that
Speaker 1: can be inserted in the brain that connects the brain
Speaker 1: to a computer. And I think part of his goal
Speaker 1: is to make humans competitive enough to take on machines
Speaker 1: if and when they out smart us. Well, this idea
Speaker 1: of humans and machines merging to create something superior is
Speaker 1: a great interest throughout Silicon Valley, and one person who
Speaker 1: kind of wrote the book on this transhumanism is you
Speaker 1: have al No Harari. He is a historian and a
Speaker 1: futurist and the author of Homodaeus, a book that explores
Speaker 1: the future of our humanity, and his writing is a
Speaker 1: major source of inspiration, not just in Silicon Valley but
Speaker 1: for this podcast. So I was rather excited when he
Speaker 1: agreed to have a conversation with us. Every generation in
Speaker 1: history thinks that they are on the verge of the apocalypse,
Speaker 1: and usually they are wrong. But as a story and
Speaker 1: I have the sense that we are on the verge
Speaker 1: of the most important revolution since the very beginning of life.
Speaker 1: You've all believes that right now we're actually looking at
Speaker 1: the end of history as we know it, the dawning
Speaker 1: of a new era. Something has changed. I wanted to
Speaker 1: know what we're really deciphering, the underlying rules of the
Speaker 1: game of life and now acquiring the ability to change
Speaker 1: these rules. I mean, previously, the expectations of the apocalypse
Speaker 1: were directed outwards towards the gods, towards some external entity
Speaker 1: that will come and intervene and change everything. Now we
Speaker 1: don't expect an external entity to do it. We expect
Speaker 1: ourselves to do it. And when you look really calm
Speaker 1: only and objectively at the advances that science has been making,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound so far fetched as you've all would
Speaker 1: have it. We no longer look to the heavens or answers,
Speaker 1: because we ourselves are becoming gods, and as technology improves,
Speaker 1: we're getting better and better at finding answers by looking inwards. Literally.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest misunderstandings about the whole AI revolution
Speaker 1: is that many people see it as a revolution coming
Speaker 1: out of computer science, but actually it comes equally from
Speaker 1: the life sciences, from biology, from brain science. It's not
Speaker 1: enough that computers are becoming smarter. It's also essential that
Speaker 1: we view humans as algorithms. If our feelings are not
Speaker 1: the product of some kind of extremely complicated algorithm in
Speaker 1: the brain, then no matter how smart computers will become,
Speaker 1: many things won't happen. If something like self driving cars
Speaker 1: to navigate a street full of pedestrians, the car must
Speaker 1: be able to understand human behavior and human feelings. And
Speaker 1: if you think that human feelings are the result of
Speaker 1: some spiritual soul or something which can never be deciphered.
Speaker 1: Then you can't have self driving cars. In order to
Speaker 1: create so many of the technologies we talk about on Sleepwalkers,
Speaker 1: from self driving cars to targeted ads to parole algorithms,
Speaker 1: we have to assume that human behavior can be modeled,
Speaker 1: that our habits, routines, even our personalities could be expressed
Speaker 1: as mathematical formulas. But even if you don't take things
Speaker 1: that far. Uv OL's key point about the transformative potential
Speaker 1: of combining computer science and biology is shared by people
Speaker 1: in the business of building the future. You may remember
Speaker 1: Arthur Provoca from earlier in the season Arthur round the
Speaker 1: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Dark. But we're living in
Speaker 1: a time in which the biological sciences are converging with
Speaker 1: information technology. The DARPER We are always looking for these
Speaker 1: areas where we see these seeds of technological surprise, and
Speaker 1: today I think this intersection of biology with technology is
Speaker 1: one of the most fertile seed beds for surprise. And
Speaker 1: when these advances are coming from the ability to autobiology
Speaker 1: with computer science, it may be hard for us to
Speaker 1: predict what surprises might bloom. You've always argued that advances
Speaker 1: in AI and gene editing will lead to new forms
Speaker 1: of life. We are now gaining the ability to break
Speaker 1: or bend or change the rules of life. We are
Speaker 1: about to create the first inorganic life forms after four
Speaker 1: billion years of evolution. We can't really imagine how the
Speaker 1: new entities would look like because even the wildest dreams
Speaker 1: are still subject to natural selection and organic biochemistry. So
Speaker 1: according to you of our Cara, it's rather difficult to
Speaker 1: say what might come next because it's somehow out of
Speaker 1: our frame of reference. It's almost like saying what aliens
Speaker 1: look like. And I know if you ever watched movies,
Speaker 1: but in movies, aliens and cyborgs tend to look remarkably consistent.
Speaker 1: I actually watched Men in Black last week, and it
Speaker 1: is alien central casting. You know, a lot of representations
Speaker 1: of cyborgs tend to have this element of cliche. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a pitiable robot, the robot that's hell by love.
Speaker 1: You can think of Wally c three p O, the
Speaker 1: tin Man from the Wizard of Us. The Wizard was
Speaker 1: my favorite movie. It's kind of a fantasy film. We've
Speaker 1: actually talked about real life people who may meet the
Speaker 1: qualification of cyborg. Already on this show, we spoke about
Speaker 1: Jan Sherman in the last episode using a robotic arm
Speaker 1: with her mind, but the research didn't actually end there.
Speaker 1: In a subsequent experiment, Jan flew a simulated plane with
Speaker 1: our brain waves. Remember this research was being funded by
Speaker 1: Darper and it raised big questions for Arthur Prabba Car
Speaker 1: who was running the agency at the time, about the
Speaker 1: ethics of transhumanism. When Jan went from moving a prosthetic
Speaker 1: limb to controlling a flight simulator, that was the moment
Speaker 1: that it became visible that these technologies that allow you
Speaker 1: to restore function by harnessing motor control signals also mean
Speaker 1: that now we have a way for a human brain
Speaker 1: to engage with the world in a completely different modality.
Speaker 1: It was a very eye opening moment. I think for
Speaker 1: all of us, what did you feel in that moment?
Speaker 1: It's creepy, it's powerful. It makes you realize that as
Speaker 1: hard as the technology is, it might be the easiest
Speaker 1: part of figuring out how we harness these capabilities for
Speaker 1: good in the future. As we've said, this technology remains
Speaker 1: firmly in research labs at least for now. Andy Schwartz
Speaker 1: is the neurobiologist at the Universe. You have Pittsburgh who
Speaker 1: led the project with Jan and he's very clear that
Speaker 1: his mission was to restore function, not enhance it. The
Speaker 1: idea was, can we help paralyze people coming back from
Speaker 1: war zones regain function? So I think that was very
Speaker 1: good motivation for the kind of research we are doing.
Speaker 1: And despite the huge potential of Andy's research, he's quick
Speaker 1: to point out that the brain computer interface he built
Speaker 1: is much less efficient than our existing connection to the world.
Speaker 1: At present, our bodies are the best we've got right now.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to control the computer with brain activity,
Speaker 1: it would be ten times slower. That would be if
Speaker 1: you were typing with your own fingers. Things move so
Speaker 1: fast that we've gotten accustomed to the idea that if
Speaker 1: you see it once, it's just going to become pervasive.
Speaker 1: That's actually not true of a medically invasive procedure that
Speaker 1: involves putting implants on the surface of the brain. We're
Speaker 1: going to need all of that time to figure out
Speaker 1: what we were we want to go with these technologies.
Speaker 1: So it's a perfect moment to ask where do we
Speaker 1: want to go? For many in Silicon Valley, the principle
Speaker 1: of a more direct interface between humans and computers is enticing.
Speaker 1: But here's Sebastian again. At this point, I don't think
Speaker 1: customers would love having surgery to get an implant in
Speaker 1: their brain just to be lived smarter. But there are
Speaker 1: other ways to approach the problem. You may remember Google Glass.
Speaker 1: Sebastian lad that project when he ran Google X, and
Speaker 1: in fact, when I first met him in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: he was wearing a pair we bet Google glass because
Speaker 1: I wanted a camera right next to your eye, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to speak of right next to your ear,
Speaker 1: so the computer could perceive the same sensation, the same
Speaker 1: stuff you see every day. I think these technologies become
Speaker 1: closer and closer to us. When I first met Sebastian,
Speaker 1: he was wearing these weird Google glasses carra It kind
Speaker 1: of looked like a cyborg, and he told me that
Speaker 1: these glasses might solve the problem of people constantly having
Speaker 1: to look down at their ownes because the information could
Speaker 1: be at eye level. But that really hasn't solved the
Speaker 1: problem of tech neck. Technic women and men are now
Speaker 1: getting this like very you know, unsavory under neck, fatally
Speaker 1: from looking down at their phones. Yeah, and then there's
Speaker 1: turtle posture, which is people hunting forward because they're sitting
Speaker 1: at their computers so much so we don't know if
Speaker 1: these are going to have an impact on us evolutionarily speaking,
Speaker 1: but I imagine they might. Or thumbs if you think
Speaker 1: about it, well, our bodies are already being changed by
Speaker 1: our interaction with our phones. Absolutely. There's actually really quickly,
Speaker 1: there's this fake video that was going around called Lookout,
Speaker 1: where this guy invented a product where your phone basically
Speaker 1: had the same camera it does, except it would face out,
Speaker 1: so you never had to look away from your phone.
Speaker 1: You could just look at your life through your phone,
Speaker 1: which is essentially what everybody is already doing well, And
Speaker 1: that was kind of the insight behind Good Last was
Speaker 1: what if you could overlay kind of augmented reality over
Speaker 1: what you saw And there's something very promising cool about it,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't mostly viable because you had to wear
Speaker 1: something on your face that made it like a cyborg.
Speaker 1: But for consumers and the benefits of a computer at
Speaker 1: that proximity just weren't enough to make up for the
Speaker 1: inconvenience of wearing something on their face. There is one
Speaker 1: group of people who are willing to put up with
Speaker 1: inconvenient technology. You know, people like Jan who had her
Speaker 1: skull opens that she could move an arm again. Right
Speaker 1: as Andy said, this wasn't about letting her fly planes
Speaker 1: with her mind. It was about restoring function. When we
Speaker 1: come back after the break, we look at a much
Speaker 1: less invasive technology that hopes to be as miraculous as
Speaker 1: Jan Sherman's robotic arm. Okay, let me do you want
Speaker 1: to test to test it with the tambourine or whatever. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's Noise Toka. He's an award winning Italian blues guitarist
Speaker 1: who lives in New York. When Noi came to play
Speaker 1: for Julian and I in the studio earlier this year,
Speaker 1: he asked that I need him at the bus stop.
Speaker 1: I went to Berkeley College of Music in Boston to
Speaker 1: study jazz guitar performance and Noise the real deal. Well
Speaker 1: he was at Berkeley. He was given the Jimmy Hendricks
Speaker 1: Award for being the school's leading guitarist, as well as
Speaker 1: the Billboard magazine and owed scholarship. And now he plays
Speaker 1: a consistent roster of shows around New York. But he's
Speaker 1: working to reach a digital fan base as well. Every
Speaker 1: day Noi posts a video to help build his audience.
Speaker 1: This is how I found him. What you wouldn't know
Speaker 1: just listening to this podcast is that no Way also
Speaker 1: happens to be blind. I was born three months early,
Speaker 1: so they put me in the colbator, but there was
Speaker 1: too much oxygen in his infancy. Noi suffered from retinopathy
Speaker 1: of prematurity known as r o P. He needed surgery
Speaker 1: to reattach his retinas and now he has very limited vision,
Speaker 1: totally blind, like blind. Technically, I guess it's called light
Speaker 1: and shades or something. I mean, I can see colors,
Speaker 1: I can read really large print only out of one eye,
Speaker 1: but my vision field is small, so I still use
Speaker 1: the k and I still read brail. This is why
Speaker 1: no I asked me to pick him up at the
Speaker 1: bus stop. Getting to and from new destinations is a
Speaker 1: huge pain in the ass. But here's the thing. There
Speaker 1: are some companies that are trying to fill the gap
Speaker 1: and make smart glasses for people with visual impairments. Their
Speaker 1: hope is that with the right technology, blindness could become
Speaker 1: a thing of the past. When we were researching for
Speaker 1: this podcast, Julian came across a new technology company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: after a few months, I had a pretty AI focused
Speaker 1: search history, right, so my Instagram ad started to reflect that,
Speaker 1: which is convenient, you know, AI helping us make a
Speaker 1: podcast about AI. Yeah, super consider it, right, So I
Speaker 1: got an ad for east Site presented itself and east
Speaker 1: Side build themselves as creators of the world's most advanced
Speaker 1: site enhancing glasses for the visually impaired and medical tech
Speaker 1: can be pretty expensive, but the sites recently lowered their
Speaker 1: prices from hundred dollars for appair of these glasses down
Speaker 1: to fifty what do they call that? A price slash?
Speaker 1: All Hans glasses must go. So it's still pretty steep,
Speaker 1: but east Side as payment plans and health insurance can
Speaker 1: help people out as well. Yeah, but even so, I
Speaker 1: mean I'd rather spend money on guitars, you know, like
Speaker 1: that's what I do in my life. Like, why would
Speaker 1: I spend money on something that is still so experimental?
Speaker 1: Still No, I was curious to test out east Sides technology,
Speaker 1: so I reached out, explained noise condition and we got
Speaker 1: an appointment. Yeah, don't do anything crazy when you put
Speaker 1: them on to start jumping around like a crazy person. Yes,
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work, just make it up. I'm I'm doing.
Speaker 1: The east Side glasses basically look like Cyclops from X Men,
Speaker 1: except without the blinding laser beam that shoots out from them.
Speaker 1: The glasses capture high quality video with a camera above
Speaker 1: your nose, and then project the video to a high
Speaker 1: definition screen in front of each eye. The footage is
Speaker 1: enhanced by software designed especially for people with vision impairment.
Speaker 1: You can also zoom, change focus, and do things like
Speaker 1: boost contrast or go to gray scale. And east Side
Speaker 1: rep named Nigel helped No. I get fitted with a pair,
Speaker 1: but it can be a little hard to get used to.
Speaker 1: I mean, I am trying to see. Isn't it like
Speaker 1: right here where I should be looking like? Yes, it's
Speaker 1: it's it should be right in front of your people. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little it's a little high. Let me see
Speaker 1: if I can just adjust that. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: That's better? Is better? Yeah? That seems like I get
Speaker 1: more details out of things, but I don't really know
Speaker 1: what I'm looking at. Nigel also asked, no way to
Speaker 1: identify me. Let's let's see if you can recognize characters.
Speaker 1: I see, I see it. Do you know what I
Speaker 1: look like? No, I like, do you have a sense
Speaker 1: of what I look like? I mean from what I
Speaker 1: saw when I was close to you, like have like
Speaker 1: light hair, like the light brown or something like that.
Speaker 1: That's right, And uh yeah, I mean it's cool. I
Speaker 1: just don't know, you know, we have to see how
Speaker 1: useful it would actually be, Like, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think I would use it to recognize people like there,
Speaker 1: because I would have no way of I don't know
Speaker 1: what anybody his face looks like anyway, you know, because
Speaker 1: he has been blind for his entire life. Nobody doesn't
Speaker 1: have a point of reference for the details in people's faces.
Speaker 1: Imagine that you have no idea what any of the
Speaker 1: people in your life really look like. You learn to
Speaker 1: identify them in other ways, like their voices. So no
Speaker 1: is ambivalent about the prospect of seeing people clearly, but
Speaker 1: he would like it to be easier to get around.
Speaker 1: Recognizing people's faces would not be one of my priorities,
Speaker 1: but reading where the bus stop is or when it's
Speaker 1: coming will be a priority. I mean, it's cool, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I would just have to see how it actually practically
Speaker 1: will be because I mean here's the thing, Like, when
Speaker 1: you're outside, it's not that you have time to stop
Speaker 1: and figure stuff out, especially when you're walking on the
Speaker 1: sidewalks of New York. Like, I'd rather just use blind Square.
Speaker 1: Nobody first told me about blind Square when I picked
Speaker 1: him up from the bus. He just the most popular
Speaker 1: iOS navigation app for blind people. It describes the environment
Speaker 1: you're in, the intersection you're crossing, and announces points of interest,
Speaker 1: all using GPS noise. Point in mentioning blind Squared to
Speaker 1: Nigel is that it is a tool that he can
Speaker 1: work with within his set of limitations. Now, he spent
Speaker 1: his whole life navigating the world one way, his way,
Speaker 1: and east Site would actually change that, maybe more than
Speaker 1: he would want. I've never really seen a subway map anyway,
Speaker 1: so I would have to get a hang of how
Speaker 1: it works first, and then because your brain needs to
Speaker 1: recognize it and then know what it's looking, that's hard
Speaker 1: for human beings to comprehend. I think, yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: imagining a new color, right. Yeah, So Julian east site worked,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't perfect for no Way, And I think
Speaker 1: it's important to know that east is actually really a
Speaker 1: cool technology, whether or not, it worked for him. Nigel
Speaker 1: mentioned that many elderly people who suffer from macular degeneration
Speaker 1: losing their sight due to old age, have been able
Speaker 1: to see their grandchildren for the first time, which is
Speaker 1: really cool. I mean it does restore site for a
Speaker 1: lot of people who have seen before. Noways said, the
Speaker 1: sacrifices he makes to get around to his gigs as
Speaker 1: a blind person aren't so bad, but there is one
Speaker 1: part of his career that's less easy to navigate. Like
Speaker 1: many musicians, no Way uses his social media channels as
Speaker 1: his primary way of connecting to his current fans and
Speaker 1: hopefully reaching future ones. The problem is it's pretty hard
Speaker 1: to reach your fans on Instagram if you're blind. Instagram
Speaker 1: needs to listen to me right now. Uh No, Basically
Speaker 1: the issue is this editing videos and putting the part
Speaker 1: that you want is not accessible on Instagram. You know,
Speaker 1: thankfully the Apple app is accessible. So I edited on
Speaker 1: the iPhone app because there is like sliders and he
Speaker 1: tells you like current positions zero seconds of like two
Speaker 1: minutes and thirty seconds, and so basically you slide with
Speaker 1: your finger up and down. If it wasn't for that,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to post on Instagram. I would
Speaker 1: only be able to post the first minute, which is
Speaker 1: not what I always want to post. On the songs,
Speaker 1: sometimes I post some other part, you know. But Instagram
Speaker 1: has implemented the app because you know, black people aren't
Speaker 1: supposed to be on Instagram. I've never thought about this.
Speaker 1: Digital technology is almost exclusively visual. I don't think about
Speaker 1: how easy it is for me to use an iPhone
Speaker 1: every day. I just use it. And when you have
Speaker 1: these technologies like iPhones being designed by people in Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley who fit pretty healthily within the norm, it's not
Speaker 1: really doing no way any favors. And when we focus
Speaker 1: on the next big thing in tech, we can leap
Speaker 1: frog past uses for these existing technologies. So we say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: when you're starting next big unicorn, we want to do
Speaker 1: these miraculous, gigantic ideas. But you don't think about subway maps.
Speaker 1: You don't think about things like blind Square unless you
Speaker 1: actually need that app. And I think it's we're not
Speaker 1: anti technology or anti unicorn. Those things are important, you know. No,
Speaker 1: I actually said something really funny, which is that like
Speaker 1: he would love a self driving car. Of course he
Speaker 1: would so we all benefit from these moonshot innovations, but
Speaker 1: it's really important I think that everyone thinks about who
Speaker 1: is forgotten. When we innovate too quickly, we don't all
Speaker 1: benefit in the same ways. We began this episode debating
Speaker 1: what defines a cyborg and asking how close we are
Speaker 1: to being transhuman. These are important philosophical questions, and they
Speaker 1: may even become practical questions in our lifetime. But as
Speaker 1: we wrestle with them, it's important to remember that a
Speaker 1: huge number of people still don't have access to technologies
Speaker 1: that most of us take for granted to expand our
Speaker 1: horizons and what we can do. There are billions of
Speaker 1: people in the world who don't have smartphones, and millions
Speaker 1: of people in the US, like Noah, who can't take
Speaker 1: full advantage of them. Briany Cole is tackling this problem
Speaker 1: head on. After working at Microsoft, she founded The Future
Speaker 1: of Sex, and as part of her work, she produces
Speaker 1: sex tech hackathons around the world. I think it's so
Speaker 1: important is because no one's talking about it. We all
Speaker 1: got here by having sex sexual identities so core to
Speaker 1: who we are, and the concentration of people innovating in
Speaker 1: this field is quite small. So Carol, I was a
Speaker 1: bit nervous to talk about sex in this episode because
Speaker 1: I don't want people just think we're being sensational for
Speaker 1: the sake of it. But it is an area where
Speaker 1: we can see the tangible consequences of what happens when
Speaker 1: one group designs for the rest. Like with No Way,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's sensational at all. It's like with
Speaker 1: Gillian and episode one, when people programming ads for Facebook
Speaker 1: do not understand different outcomes for pregnancy. They don't know
Speaker 1: that an outcome for pregnancy could be still birth, and
Speaker 1: that's how Gillian's ads were making her life worse because
Speaker 1: of people programming them a man by and large, By
Speaker 1: and large, now it takes these edgu cases like Gillian
Speaker 1: being haunted by targeted ads for us to notice that
Speaker 1: more of from than not. We don't have a counter factual.
Speaker 1: We can't make a comparison to a version of technology
Speaker 1: that wasn't built by Silicon Value. And that is exactly
Speaker 1: why Briany Cole organizes events to design new sex tech.
Speaker 1: While hackathon sound really geeky and typically you're going to
Speaker 1: attract just people involved in technology, we're really careful in
Speaker 1: structuring the hackason, inviting other people in from other classes,
Speaker 1: from other ethnicities, from other genders to allow us to
Speaker 1: build different sorts of products. What was the surprise that
Speaker 1: we didn't design for was people with disabilities that showed up.
Speaker 1: And with these new groups of people came new kinds
Speaker 1: of products. One team came up with a voice activated
Speaker 1: vibrator for people in wheelchairs. Another team in Singapore, a
Speaker 1: deaf man a blind man built a sex intimacy education
Speaker 1: platform about bringing a woman back to their dorm room
Speaker 1: and really not knowing how to read intimacy ques because
Speaker 1: they've never been taught. These people just showed up on
Speaker 1: my thank you um. We feel invisible technology very quickly
Speaker 1: becomes part of our homeostasis. We take for granted the
Speaker 1: fact that we have a supercomputer as our constant companion,
Speaker 1: and that we can summon the entire corpus of human
Speaker 1: knowledge with the flick of a finger. But as we
Speaker 1: constantly focus on the next frontier, what's new, it's easy
Speaker 1: to forget that many people don't get to share in
Speaker 1: the fruits of what we've already built. Other populations that
Speaker 1: also resonate with the hackathon's people in remote areas or
Speaker 1: rural populations that have trouble finding a mate, and of
Speaker 1: course women, which is predominantly who turns up to these hackathons.
Speaker 1: It's people that typically don't have access to this providing
Speaker 1: input into how we build it. Briani's hackathons allow people
Speaker 1: who feel invisible to create products directly for themselves, people
Speaker 1: who may even be invisible on the campuses of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: For Briany, access begins at the design phase and including
Speaker 1: new voices can create new products and technological surprises that
Speaker 1: otherwise might not exist. So perhaps our hackathons could serve
Speaker 1: as a model for tech innovation. More broadly, I think
Speaker 1: where I'd most like to see it go is too
Speaker 1: sort of the trickle down effect across the world in
Speaker 1: terms of how that technology reaches other populations because it
Speaker 1: is so concentrated in these like Silicon Valley types. It's
Speaker 1: the access that I'm more excited about. We actually have
Speaker 1: incredible technology available to us, and yet the US is
Speaker 1: right now are so clunky, you know, and we're we
Speaker 1: just need to figure out how we're going to use
Speaker 1: it and who we're going to invite in Briani paints
Speaker 1: the picture of a world whether benefits of god like
Speaker 1: technology spread to all people. But as we've talked about
Speaker 1: before on Sleepwalkers, there's a very real possibility that technology
Speaker 1: will be co opted by the rich and powerful. So
Speaker 1: we have to ask who gets to become a cyborg?
Speaker 1: And what if the new gods don't want to share
Speaker 1: their divinity? Here's you all again, m One disturbing thought
Speaker 1: is that there is no us, There is no we.
Speaker 1: Different groups of humans have a very different future, and
Speaker 1: they should prepare themselves in a different way. It could
Speaker 1: lead to the creation of a new cost system with
Speaker 1: immense differences in wealth and power, much greater than we
Speaker 1: ever saw before in history. It could even lead to
Speaker 1: a speciation, Homo sapiens splitting into different species with different capabilities.
Speaker 1: So the descendants of Elon Musk will be a different
Speaker 1: specie then the descendants of people who are now living
Speaker 1: in some Favella in some Paolo. So it's a big
Speaker 1: question always what is the future of humanity? What should
Speaker 1: we do? What is our future? What is the future
Speaker 1: of our humanity? What we sleepwalking towards. It's tempting to
Speaker 1: look for the dramatic ways technology is changing us. Might
Speaker 1: we be able to physically merge with computers? Will computer
Speaker 1: vision help the blind, sea or the marginalized experience intimacy?
Speaker 1: They're big questions, but there's one that's even more urgent.
Speaker 1: How is the AI revolution already changing the way we
Speaker 1: think about and perceive the world. What are the algorithms
Speaker 1: we interact with every day doing to us, and how
Speaker 1: are they changing our society? More on those questions with
Speaker 1: you all know a Harrari. When we come back, until
Speaker 1: I was twenty one, I didn't know I was gay.
Speaker 1: And I look back at the time when I was
Speaker 1: I don't know, fifteen or seventeen, and I just can't
Speaker 1: understand how I missed it. I mean, it should have
Speaker 1: been so obvious, But the fact is I didn't know
Speaker 1: an extremely important thing about myself, which an AI could
Speaker 1: have discovered within you know, like two minutes. For you
Speaker 1: all know a Harari, AI could have made a big
Speaker 1: difference to his early life, and that got him thinking.
Speaker 1: When we talk about AI, we tend to greatly exaggerate
Speaker 1: the potential abilities, but at the same time we also
Speaker 1: tend to exaggerate the abilities of humans. People say that
Speaker 1: AI is not going to take over our lives because
Speaker 1: it's very imperfect and it won't be able to know
Speaker 1: us perfectly. But what people forget is that humans often
Speaker 1: have a very poor understanding of themselves, of the desires,
Speaker 1: of their emotions, of their mental states. For AI to
Speaker 1: take over your life, it doesn't need to know you perfectly.
Speaker 1: It just needs to know you better than you know yourself.
Speaker 1: And that's not very difficult because we often don't know
Speaker 1: the most important things about ourselves. So let's say you
Speaker 1: could turn back the clock to being fifteen, would you
Speaker 1: have wanted to live in a world where there was
Speaker 1: sufficiently sensors to monitor your eyes, your eye movement, you're breathing,
Speaker 1: you know, while you're going about your daily life, and
Speaker 1: then to interpret that and say to you you've all,
Speaker 1: more likely than not you're gay. That's a very good question,
Speaker 1: which will become very practical questions in a few years.
Speaker 1: And the way that I grew up and developed it
Speaker 1: would have been a very bad idea. I wouldn't like
Speaker 1: to receive this kind of insight from form a machine.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how I would have dealt with it
Speaker 1: when I was fifteen, you know, in Israel, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and maybe proudly it was, you know, a
Speaker 1: defense mechanism in the future to it. It depends where
Speaker 1: you live. Brunei has instituted a death penalty for gay people,
Speaker 1: at least for people engaged in homosexual sex. So if
Speaker 1: I'm a teenager in brune I, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be told by the computer that I'm gay, because the
Speaker 1: computer will then be able to tell that to the
Speaker 1: police and to the authorities as well. Looking to the future,
Speaker 1: say ten twenty years, the danger is if I still
Speaker 1: don't know that I'm gay, but the government and Coca
Speaker 1: Cola and and Amazon and Google they already know it.
Speaker 1: I'm at a huge disadvantage. So it could be something
Speaker 1: as frightening as the secret police coming and taking me
Speaker 1: to a concentration camp. But it could also be something
Speaker 1: like Coca Cola knowing that I'm gay, they want to
Speaker 1: sell me a new drink, and they choose the advertisement
Speaker 1: with the shirtless guy and not the advertisement with the
Speaker 1: girl in the beginning, and next day morning I go
Speaker 1: and I buy this soft drink and I don't even
Speaker 1: know why, and they have this huge advantage over me
Speaker 1: and can manipulate me in all kinds of ways. What
Speaker 1: you've all suggests is that once we become reducible to data,
Speaker 1: we become predictable to algorithms, and once we're predictable, we
Speaker 1: can be manipulated. We talked in the last episode about
Speaker 1: how AI is helping us decode life's fundamental histories brain waves,
Speaker 1: health outcomes based on genetics, time of death. But the
Speaker 1: next frontier could be our very behavior is off the again.
Speaker 1: We have tools to evaluate vast volumes of data that
Speaker 1: we have previously collected or that we've always collected. We
Speaker 1: have new sources of data. Think about everything from fitbits
Speaker 1: and those kinds of measurements that you can make on individuals,
Speaker 1: to the volume of data that people are spewing out
Speaker 1: into the online environment every day. The implications of spewing
Speaker 1: this data onto the internet is where we began the series.
Speaker 1: And knowing that your data is being used to build
Speaker 1: an accurate model of you make if you pause about
Speaker 1: putting it out there. But it's a combination of that
Speaker 1: data with advances in AI that's allowing us to start
Speaker 1: to see into the future. Data plus that deep knowledge
Speaker 1: now allows you to form hypotheses and to design experiments
Speaker 1: that allow us now to start a journey of building
Speaker 1: better models of these complex systems. This is at the
Speaker 1: core of the revolution that we're seeing. But I think
Speaker 1: the next wave, after starting to understand biology, is about
Speaker 1: a transformation in the social sciences. Of course, in some ways,
Speaker 1: that transformation in the social sciences is already here. It's
Speaker 1: what you' I was talking about in terms of computers
Speaker 1: that understand us better than we understand ourselves. And we've
Speaker 1: already seen the real world consequences altering the course of
Speaker 1: history with Cambridge Analytica, Brexit and the six presidential election.
Speaker 1: But Uvou believes that was just the beginning, and this
Speaker 1: revolution in biology and computer science will shake the very
Speaker 1: foundations of how we live. The ideology of humanism basically
Speaker 1: says that the human experience is the ultimate source of
Speaker 1: authority and meaning in the universe. If you look at polity,
Speaker 1: then if originally political authority came from the gods, now
Speaker 1: political authority comes from humanity. The idea is that the
Speaker 1: voter is always right. You look at economics, they're the motto.
Speaker 1: The slogan is the customer is always right. If the
Speaker 1: customers want something, then, however, irrational and illogical it is,
Speaker 1: this is what the entire system is geared to provide.
Speaker 1: And you have the same idea in ethics, Why is
Speaker 1: it wrong to murder? Not because some God said so,
Speaker 1: but because it hurts other people? So we already view
Speaker 1: yourself in this sense as kind of divine entities that
Speaker 1: provide meaning and authority to the world. The big question
Speaker 1: is what happens once some algorithm can decipher and manipulate
Speaker 1: human feelings and experiences, then they can no longer be
Speaker 1: the source of authority if it's so easy to hackn
Speaker 1: manipulate them. And this is part of the crisis which
Speaker 1: we are already beginning to see today. This crisis is
Speaker 1: the intersection, the culmination of many of the ideas that
Speaker 1: we've spoken about on this first season of Sleepwalkers, and
Speaker 1: it's why it's so urgently important not to ignore the
Speaker 1: changes going on around us and to wake up if
Speaker 1: we refuse to see it. If we just hold on
Speaker 1: to this liberal belief that humans are free agents, we
Speaker 1: have free will, nobody will ever be able to understand me,
Speaker 1: nobody will ever be able to manipulate me. If you
Speaker 1: really believe that, then you are not open to the
Speaker 1: danger and you won't be able to reinvent the system
Speaker 1: in a better way. Not everyone agrees that we've reached
Speaker 1: the point you've all describes. According to Arthie, there's a
Speaker 1: world of mystery that we've barely begun to penetrate. I
Speaker 1: think we are so far from having a full understanding
Speaker 1: of any of these systems. The fact that we are
Speaker 1: making this rapid accelerated progress, I think sometimes leads to
Speaker 1: a hyperbolic sense that we're going to know everything and
Speaker 1: it'll all get reduced to a bunch of algorithms. And
Speaker 1: I don't think we're anywhere near that. And I'm not
Speaker 1: even sure that's the endpoint, not the end point in
Speaker 1: a sense that that will never happen, or there maybe
Speaker 1: an endpoint beyond that. My own view is that what
Speaker 1: it means to be human is so much richer than
Speaker 1: these mechanistic components that we're talking about. You know, if
Speaker 1: you said to me, when do you think we will
Speaker 1: fully map and be able to predict behavioral systems, my
Speaker 1: answer might be never. The incredible depth of these systems,
Speaker 1: how messy and organic they are, means we've got a
Speaker 1: long way to go before we've understood everything. The uniqueness
Speaker 1: of our humanity lives to fight another day. But as
Speaker 1: you've out said, the AI to profoundly influence us, it
Speaker 1: doesn't need a perfect understanding. It just needs to know
Speaker 1: a little bit more than we do, and that's become reality.
Speaker 1: So what should we do on the individual level. It's
Speaker 1: more urgent than ever to get to know yourself better
Speaker 1: because you have competition. Once there is somebody out there,
Speaker 1: a system out or an algorithm out there that knows
Speaker 1: you better than you know yourself, the game is up.
Speaker 1: You can do something about it, not just by beholding data,
Speaker 1: but above all by improving your own understanding of yourself.
Speaker 1: The better you understand yourself, the more difficult it is
Speaker 1: to manipulate. You know thyself. You have our references the
Speaker 1: ancient Greek maxim and last episodes to Dartha called our
Speaker 1: attention to the Hippocratic oath in the midst of the
Speaker 1: incredible upheavals of modernity, with being urged to remember the
Speaker 1: wisdom of the ancients. But how do we get to
Speaker 1: know ourselves better? I meditate, some people go to therapy.
Speaker 1: Whatever works for you, do it, and do it quickly.
Speaker 1: Get to know yourself better, because this is your best
Speaker 1: protection against being hacked. If you're an engineer, then one
Speaker 1: of the best things you can do for humanity is
Speaker 1: build AI sidekicks that serve individuals and not corporations or governments.
Speaker 1: AI systems that yes, they monitor you and they analyze you,
Speaker 1: and they hack you, but they serve you. They reveal
Speaker 1: that what they find to you, and they work like
Speaker 1: an antivirus, just like your computer has an antivirus, so
Speaker 1: your brain also needs an antivirus. And uh and and
Speaker 1: this is something that that a I can do for
Speaker 1: us to protect us against other malevolent Aiyes. Of course,
Speaker 1: one of the problems we've talked about on the series
Speaker 1: is that the vast majority of talented engineers work for
Speaker 1: the very corporations Val says we need to be protected from.
Speaker 1: But there is something compelling about using technology as a
Speaker 1: tool to protect ourselves from other technology. And brianie Cole
Speaker 1: also sees avenues for technology you to help us get
Speaker 1: to know ourselves better. We can explore in virtual worlds
Speaker 1: without shame. It's pushing us to reveal ourselves, even things
Speaker 1: we didn't even know about ourselves. If we think about, Wow,
Speaker 1: this dark and wacky world of sexuality that we haven't
Speaker 1: even explored ourselves because we've been too afraid of what
Speaker 1: we might discover. You put technology in there where you're
Speaker 1: suddenly able to create any world that you want, These
Speaker 1: totally fantastical edges of our minds that we can go
Speaker 1: to thanks to technology. And according to Briany, this is
Speaker 1: not just about seeking thrills. Our sexuality is actually driven
Speaker 1: by something much more profound, the core of our humanity.
Speaker 1: We want to connect, we want to belong, we want
Speaker 1: to feel like we're part of something that's sort of
Speaker 1: like the core part of that right down to our sexuality.
Speaker 1: What is the future of sex? The answer has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with technology, and it always has to do
Speaker 1: with being human. We can take great strides personally to
Speaker 1: get to know ourselves better, but we also have to
Speaker 1: recognize the limits of what we can achieve as individuals.
Speaker 1: To create a technological future that is fair and positive,
Speaker 1: we need governance and policy. Here's you again. We need
Speaker 1: to regulate things like the ownership of data and the
Speaker 1: immense power the divine powers of creation, of being able
Speaker 1: to engineer and create life. This this should be a
Speaker 1: major political issue of who owns these kinds of abilities.
Speaker 1: This is not something you can do by yourself. So
Speaker 1: here that my best recommendation is join an organization. Fifty
Speaker 1: people in an organization can do far, far more than
Speaker 1: five hundred individual activists. So whatever cause seems to you
Speaker 1: the most important, join a relevant organization and do it
Speaker 1: this week. The AI revolution isn't far off in the future, Kara,
Speaker 1: as Uval says, is here with us, and we have
Speaker 1: this personal and political responsibility to make sure that the
Speaker 1: future is a future we want to live in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's actually a good place to leave Season
Speaker 1: one of Sleepwalkers, don't they're breaking my heart? Ye. It's
Speaker 1: been incredible to hear you say, Karma, Kara. But also
Speaker 1: it's been incredible to report on you know, to meet
Speaker 1: people like no Way and Gillian brock Hell or Glenn Rodriguez,
Speaker 1: and to understand how this new technology is affecting people's lives.
Speaker 1: It's been a real privilege to hear those stories and
Speaker 1: also to get access to some of the people who
Speaker 1: are building the technologies we live by, people like Yasmine
Speaker 1: Green at Google's Jigsaw, Nathaniel Gleitscher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity,
Speaker 1: and Ben Singleton director of Analytics at the NYPD. We
Speaker 1: got to hear firsthand what these leaders in the world
Speaker 1: of technology is thinking about and how hard they wrestle
Speaker 1: with the ethics of their creations. And there's so many
Speaker 1: more areas that AI is transforming and that we're going
Speaker 1: to look at in season two of things like money
Speaker 1: and climate change and some of the problems that I've
Speaker 1: noticed even since we started doing this podcast, like what
Speaker 1: happens if your boss is an algorithm. Well, that's why
Speaker 1: we're doing a season two of Sleepwalkers, So please join us.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, we'll be keeping our Instagram, Twitter
Speaker 1: and website updated. That's at Sleepwalker's Podcast on Instagram and
Speaker 1: at Sleepwalker's Pod on Twitter. And if you have any stories,
Speaker 1: suggestions or criticisms, send us an email at Sleepwalkers Press
Speaker 1: at I heart media dot com. That Sleepwalker's p R
Speaker 1: E s s at iHeart media dot com. Well, that's
Speaker 1: all from us. I'm Ozveloshin and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Sleepwalkers is a production of I Heart Radio and Unusual Productions.
Speaker 1: For the latest AI news, live interviews, and behind the
Speaker 1: scenes footage. Find us on Instagram at Sleepwalker's podcast at
Speaker 1: Sleepwalkers podcast dot com. Special thanks this episode to the Forward,
Speaker 1: the digital news and culture website and Jonathan and Cody
Speaker 1: from the SEO Agency make it all work here in
Speaker 1: New York City. And thanks to Noise So Hard That's
Speaker 1: s O. C h A for his involvement in this episode.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to hear more of Noise Music, you
Speaker 1: can find him on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram at Simple
Speaker 1: blues Boy. Thanks also to Allen Ullman, author of Life
Speaker 1: in Code, and Gary Marcus of Robust dot Ai, who
Speaker 1: gave generous interviews which helped shape off thinking for this series.
Speaker 1: Sleepwalkers is hosted by me Ozveloshin and co hosted by
Speaker 1: me Kara Price, with produced by Julian Weller, with help
Speaker 1: from Jacopo Penzo and Taylor Shakoyne. Mixing by Tristan McNeil
Speaker 1: and Julian Weller. Our story editor is Matthew Riddle. Recording
Speaker 1: assistance this episode from Joe and Luna and Sabrina Boden.
Speaker 1: Sleepwalkers is executive produced by me Ozveloshin and mangesh Hat Tigetter.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Art Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite show, simly for the wing of they would
Speaker 1: be for the DA