Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three oh six,
Speaker 1: Episode two of Alley's I Guys Day production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This is a podcast where we take a deep dive
Speaker 1: into America's shared consciousness. And it is Tuesday, September twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Ooh you ready.
Speaker 1: You know what this is?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Oh, you know what this is right? For all my
Speaker 2: pancake lovers, It's your day, is National Pancake Day. It's
Speaker 2: also National Shamoo the Whale Day. Shout out Shamoo. It's
Speaker 2: also for all my dumpling lovers out there, for me,
Speaker 2: specifically my Joza lovers out there, National dumpling Day. Okay,
Speaker 2: so you know, celebrate however you've seen fit depending on
Speaker 2: your cultural disposition. It's also National Johnny Applesey Day. And
Speaker 2: only bring that up because I remember in Christian school
Speaker 2: we were made to sing that as like a song
Speaker 2: before we went to lunch.
Speaker 1: Man. The amount of pro Johnny Applesey propaganda that I
Speaker 1: had to live with a lot of.
Speaker 2: Approach, Yeah yeah, yeah, it's like like John Chapman or
Speaker 2: something original.
Speaker 1: I just really liked it, really fucked with apples like
Speaker 1: the children must learn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet there's some dark ass ship probably behind
Speaker 2: you know, like some a story like that. It's got
Speaker 2: to be a milkshack.
Speaker 1: Though, Yeah, for sure, very problematic. But the way, like
Speaker 1: the amount of information that I consumed, Like I had
Speaker 1: one of those my family had one of those book
Speaker 1: sets where it was like important historical figures and like
Speaker 1: right next to Lincoln was like Johnny Appleseed, and you
Speaker 1: know they I was prepared for Johnny Appleseed to be
Speaker 1: like one of the major figures in my.
Speaker 2: Life, right and education. Did you know the song, No,
Speaker 2: the Lord is good to me, And so I thank
Speaker 2: the Lord for giving me the anxiety, the sun and
Speaker 2: the rain and the apple seed. The Lord is good
Speaker 2: to me, And then we could go eat lunch. But
Speaker 2: we had to sing that ship before wow from the
Speaker 2: from the Disney movie apparently.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't even I didn't even get all of
Speaker 1: the Johnny apples propaganda.
Speaker 2: I got the Christian, I got the Christian capitalist. Johnny
Speaker 2: apple Seed propaganda just mainlined into my little brain. He
Speaker 2: wore a pot on his head, right, I mean I
Speaker 2: think who sure like backwards kind of like Davy Rocket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyways, this is all don't know the ship that
Speaker 1: is probably specific to American audiences. Yeah, but my name
Speaker 1: is Jack O'Brien aka start spreading the news eating today.
Speaker 1: I want to eat a part of it pea can
Speaker 1: pecan pie. These chattering tea are longing to chew right
Speaker 1: through the nutty part of it, pig can pecan pie.
Speaker 1: That has courtesy of Maxer twelve sixteen on the discord,
Speaker 1: a little just real solid, right down the middle meatball
Speaker 1: of a weird al parody and reference to our conversation
Speaker 1: about peacock pie. For some reason, he was lobbing that
Speaker 1: meatball up to you. Yeah, I saw in the discord.
Speaker 1: I was tagging that, but you took that. Oh so
Speaker 1: you just do other people's a case. Okay, introting? All right,
Speaker 1: Well I'm throws to be joined as always by my
Speaker 1: co host mister Miles Gras.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you did my ak and I heard you
Speaker 2: do this one on Friday, so allow me to do
Speaker 2: it one more time, same Miles and Jackie.
Speaker 3: Have you seen it yet? Ooh, it's just flying around
Speaker 3: la la la, losing all my jets. Yeah, oh there
Speaker 3: isn't were and his sauce based out. Oh Jetty, she's
Speaker 3: a really neat. She's gotta stell the use a bomb
Speaker 3: and shoot so fazy you can't even be seen.
Speaker 1: Losing all my jets.
Speaker 2: Shout out to the Department of Defense for losing all
Speaker 2: of our multi million dollar killer fucking spacecrafts, and shout
Speaker 2: out to Johnny Davis and Blinky Heck, one more time.
Speaker 1: We're done. More time. Yeah, maybe we can like layer
Speaker 1: those because you went high, I feel like I went
Speaker 1: a little bit lower. Maybe maybe we could get a
Speaker 1: little little harmony harmony. Yeah, anyways, Miles, Yeah, you're thrilled
Speaker 1: to be joined in our third seat yes for today's
Speaker 1: expert episode by a truly brilliant guest who I felt
Speaker 1: especially stupid singing an aka in front of She's a
Speaker 1: research associate at the lever Home Center for the Future
Speaker 1: of Intelligence, where she researches AI from the respective of
Speaker 1: gender studies, critical race theory, and Asian diaspora studies. He
Speaker 1: is also a research fellow at the AI Now Institute,
Speaker 1: the co editor of the upcoming volume The Good Robot,
Speaker 1: Feminist Voices on the Future of Technology, and the co
Speaker 1: host of the Wonderful Good Robot podcast. Please welcome the
Speaker 1: brilliant The talented doctor Kerry mcinnern doctor Belly.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: How different has this been? So far from what you
Speaker 1: were expecting?
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, I don't have a song. I was like,
Speaker 4: how do I say? I definitely don't have a song.
Speaker 4: And I also don't know who Johnny Appleseed is. I
Speaker 4: grew up at a New zeal End and so I
Speaker 4: didn't have a book of like historical figures. I had
Speaker 4: a book called watch Out these Creatures, Bite and Sting,
Speaker 4: and it was like all the ways you could die
Speaker 4: being killed by like a jellyfish or a stay or
Speaker 4: like an octopus. I may leave you into Australia. And
Speaker 4: so it kind of like traumatized me for the good
Speaker 4: from childhood. But it does mean I didn't have the
Speaker 4: great apple seed song that you.
Speaker 1: Just say, yeah, yeah, did you guys have apples though,
Speaker 1: because I was under the impression that the only reason
Speaker 1: I had apples was a Johnny apple seed Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the Lord and the Lord provided It's just all Kiwi's.
Speaker 2: Right down there, pretty much.
Speaker 4: Kiwis kiwi fruit, no apples, no songs, just no music.
Speaker 2: It's just silent, is an excute. Part of my ignorance
Speaker 2: is the kiwi is that like a native New Zealand fruit.
Speaker 4: I'm hoping so the kiwi is a native New Zealand bird,
Speaker 4: and then the kiwi fruit is what we call that
Speaker 4: like fuzzy brown fruit. Yea, yeah, I feel like they
Speaker 4: kind of mix up the two or they you know,
Speaker 4: they're both brown and fuzzy and sort of.
Speaker 2: Bulbous ignorance incarnate here, folks.
Speaker 1: But if you do cut the bird in half, it
Speaker 1: looks exactly like the kiwi fruit. Right, A lot of
Speaker 1: people don't know that green with green with little horton
Speaker 1: seed seed core.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, doctor McNerney, we have you here today to
Speaker 1: talk to about AI. We've talked to last week's episode
Speaker 1: about AI. We're thrilled to ask you our follow up questions,
Speaker 1: but before we get to any of it, we do
Speaker 1: like to get to know our guests a little bit
Speaker 1: better and ask you what is something from your search history?
Speaker 4: This is pretty embarrassing. I just got a Nintendo and
Speaker 4: I'm like finally entering my game agol Era. I'm like,
Speaker 4: this is going to be so fun. But my whole
Speaker 4: such history, it's just me googling like very basic controls
Speaker 4: and Zelda Breath of the Wilds. It's like how do
Speaker 4: I jump? Like it's really awful. I went and look
Speaker 4: it's like how do I befriend a dog? Like how
Speaker 4: do I climb a mountain? And so it's not going well.
Speaker 4: I need to outsource my zilta plane to like children
Speaker 4: who will be much better than me.
Speaker 2: Wait, but is it? Is it? You're not forcing you
Speaker 2: to give up, right, You're just you're You're just acclimating
Speaker 2: to the new environment, right.
Speaker 4: I mean the kingdom is not going to be safe
Speaker 4: whatever I'm meant to be doing. I'm just walking in
Speaker 4: circles now for like an infinite amount of time. But
Speaker 4: I'm having fun, which I guess is the main point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And wait, why did you or were you?
Speaker 2: Were you like a game? Did you play games in
Speaker 2: childhood and you're kind of coming back or this is
Speaker 2: completely new, like this is all new territory for you.
Speaker 4: I did, but I was also bad in childhood, Like
Speaker 4: this isn't a story of like oh, I used to
Speaker 4: be like super into games and I like fell out
Speaker 4: of touch like how people were like amazing athletes his
Speaker 4: children and then like pick it up again, like I'm
Speaker 4: consistently awful a game such history is not a surprise.
Speaker 2: Got it? Got it? I mean you were doing, you know,
Speaker 2: worthwhile things like thinking about how to ethically deal with
Speaker 2: all this technology while I was laughing my ass off
Speaker 2: playing Donkey Kong Country, you being like, Aha, slap the
Speaker 2: ground and bananas come out. That's a little hack people
Speaker 2: didn't tell you about.
Speaker 1: Our AI guests on last week's Expert episode was saying
Speaker 1: the video games are one of the ways that he
Speaker 1: thinks that the future, the future of AI is going
Speaker 1: to impact our day to day lives. Is that Is
Speaker 1: that something that you think about as you're out there
Speaker 1: kind of just walking in circles in Zelda Breath of
Speaker 1: the Wild.
Speaker 4: I mean, I feel like I performed so poorly they
Speaker 4: probably think I am like an NPC. I think it's
Speaker 4: just like that is not a person with free will
Speaker 4: like that following a fox around.
Speaker 2: It just it just rotated seven hundred and twenty degrees
Speaker 2: over and over for no reason. I guess.
Speaker 1: So have they made games more fun for people who
Speaker 1: suck at video games? That that's the innovation that I'm
Speaker 1: looking for, because I was never very good at them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I liked playing them, I like hearing about them. I
Speaker 1: think I'm ready to enter my gamer girl era and
Speaker 1: come back.
Speaker 2: But yeah you should. I mean, yeah, look, Jack, they
Speaker 2: already know you as the switch God because you've been
Speaker 2: on Nindado so much. The controllers basically fuse to your body.
Speaker 2: But there are like a lot of new or like
Speaker 2: new like the new Star Wars game. You could just
Speaker 2: set it to like, man, I'm not trying to do
Speaker 2: all this like fancy shit. I just want to beat
Speaker 2: people up or just mash the keypad over and over
Speaker 2: and win like that, and you can you can't do
Speaker 2: that because I think you know it is like it
Speaker 2: is about being able to play at different skill levels
Speaker 2: rather being like, oh, you don't know how to multi
Speaker 2: use the force while you know you're doing your melee attacks.
Speaker 2: Come on, some of us just want to be the kids.
Speaker 2: Unraveled is good for that too, of like a fun
Speaker 2: video game that is not like really requiring you to
Speaker 2: have like these sort of highly developed video game skills
Speaker 2: and it's an easy play.
Speaker 1: Nice doctor mcinnerney, What is something you think is overrated?
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm not gonna win myself any friends.
Speaker 4: It'll be like how let lose friends and stop influencing people.
Speaker 4: But all the Disney live action movies, I've hit a
Speaker 4: stage where I'm like, no more live actions, Like The
Speaker 4: Little Mermaid is beautiful. I love the original Cinderella, but
Speaker 4: you know I don't I don't want to see more
Speaker 4: and more of like the same movies again, Like it
Speaker 4: makes you a bit sad and like what other stories
Speaker 4: could be told if it weren't like always making these
Speaker 4: live actions. But you know, maybe I'll be proven like
Speaker 4: totally wrong and the next ones will be amazing, But
Speaker 4: I'm ready for something else.
Speaker 2: Just yeah, based on everyone's first like sort of reaction
Speaker 2: like oh you saw how it wasn't like yeah it,
Speaker 2: No one was like it was so good, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: see it nine times. Everyone just kind of I think
Speaker 2: they're they have to reconcile like their love for the
Speaker 2: original source material with that and not fully be like
Speaker 2: I didn't like it. They're like yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 2: it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like their voice just goes up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it was like I spent my afternoon going
Speaker 1: to that. I think that's right. I've never been more
Speaker 1: confident in a prediction about the future of a like
Speaker 1: subgenre of movies than in saying that they're not going
Speaker 1: to suddenly figure something out about the Disney live action
Speaker 1: reskins of the animations, like we we know what the
Speaker 1: original cartoon UNEs look like and what happens in them.
Speaker 1: We know what is possible here, right. I can't I
Speaker 1: can't imagine a version like what they're gonna pull out
Speaker 1: where we're like, oh, no, that is not did not
Speaker 1: see that one coming?
Speaker 2: Whoa that bear is talking and singing? Hold on, oh,
Speaker 2: they already did that. That was the best one I
Speaker 2: think was Jungle Book, and that was the first one
Speaker 2: they did, and ever since, I feel like, yeah, been
Speaker 2: diminishing returns man, although I didn't see The Little Mermaid,
Speaker 2: so I cannot speak to that one.
Speaker 4: Is you?
Speaker 2: What's your favorite genre of film though, doctor carry Ooh?
Speaker 4: I mean okay, so I really have a soft spot
Speaker 4: for like old school superhero movies. But my like most recent,
Speaker 4: most amazing film I film was the latest into the
Speaker 4: Spider Verse film what was it? The Spider Verse? And
Speaker 4: I just I love animation and that film It's so
Speaker 4: witty and the visual is extraordinary, just great films. So
Speaker 4: I oracle about how much I love these films at
Speaker 4: work and everyone has to deal with me being like,
Speaker 4: go watch it, So anyone listening, go watch it.
Speaker 2: Amazing favorite favorite Spider character, Spider person in the universe.
Speaker 4: Oh my goodness. I can't remember the name of it.
Speaker 4: But the Light really like the really like dark noir
Speaker 4: run for the first one. He's like from like all
Speaker 4: those like nineteen thirties kind of like mystery films, you know,
Speaker 4: in black and white. I kind of love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was it just spider Man Noirs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think nor Spider Man. Maybe I don't know, or.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry spider Man, nor Nor.
Speaker 1: What is when you say old school superhero movies? Do
Speaker 1: you mean like Christopher Reeves Superman? Or are you talking
Speaker 1: about like the first Iron Man? The first Iron Man?
Speaker 4: I think it's almost like less like specific films. I love,
Speaker 4: like almost films that have that like really cheesy like
Speaker 4: origin coming of age story, like you know me, it's
Speaker 4: just really just about like they're discovering themselves and it's
Speaker 4: such a simple narrative, and like I feel like I
Speaker 4: should crave more complexity than that, and I should want
Speaker 4: it to be a more nuanced stories. But sometimes it's
Speaker 4: just really satisfying and you want this clean cut narrative
Speaker 4: of this like good guy to beating all these bad guys.
Speaker 4: When I want to relax, I really enjoy that. In
Speaker 4: my day job, I think about lots of like complexity
Speaker 4: and nuance and like what we do with the future
Speaker 4: of society, and so you know, right, sometimes I find
Speaker 4: it very relaxing just to be like sonless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, yeah, I love a Joseph Campbell type
Speaker 2: and flick. Just give me that hero's journey in everything.
Speaker 4: It's gonna be okay, Yeah, it's gonna.
Speaker 2: Go wrong, challenge your old self to become your new self.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but DOCC is an example of what we're facing
Speaker 1: with AI like in the immediate future. I think we
Speaker 1: can all agree on that, right, Spiderman two, in.
Speaker 2: A way, you're like, it's giving me the equivalent of
Speaker 2: like eight arms. In a way you're like, oh boy.
Speaker 1: What, what's something you I think is underrated?
Speaker 4: Oh? Underrated? I mean I'm a big like cozy knight
Speaker 4: in person, like I want to be one that's fun
Speaker 4: party people who are like you know, is out raving.
Speaker 4: But realistically at ten PM, I'm like the day is over,
Speaker 4: I'm in bed, like I think a cozy knight in
Speaker 4: especially Ortumn is coming. Like that's just my happy place,
Speaker 4: me at home, my husband. Life is good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that, that's my That's my whole thing.
Speaker 2: Especially we don't get seasons here, so the second there's
Speaker 2: like just the feeling of like a chill, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I need to start nine fires and just being near them.
Speaker 1: And that is a problem that Miles has, and he's
Speaker 1: working on his therapy.
Speaker 2: I guess legally it's called arson or something, but what
Speaker 2: I say is I just want everyone to be cozy.
Speaker 1: Around the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Speaker 2: I'm yeah, I cannot go within four miles of the
Speaker 2: Angelus National Forest.
Speaker 1: But whatever, they must see my light. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love coziness. I love a are you are you cozy?
Speaker 2: Are you summertime Jack? If you had to pick between,
Speaker 2: would you raither be summertime Jack or cozy Jack?
Speaker 1: I do. I do love a summer especially I'm in
Speaker 1: my swimming phase where I just I really like getting
Speaker 1: in a body of water, get running into the ocean,
Speaker 1: even when it's a little cold ocean. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: I think I'm like in a summer phase. But I yeah,
Speaker 1: I am feeling the need to get cozy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll always take cozy over summer. That's just me.
Speaker 2: I know you you It's it's.
Speaker 1: Like you fetishize winter. I do.
Speaker 2: It's problematic, like that's why I would only date like
Speaker 2: like women from the Northeast. Ye're like, I feel like
Speaker 2: you're dating me like for this like exotic sort of life,
Speaker 2: you think, I like, what's it like with the snow.
Speaker 1: You're appropriating menace like Minnesota culture?
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, well, hey, look we're all trying.
Speaker 1: Hey, I heard that. He said, Hey, all right, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and we'll come right right back
Speaker 1: and talk about AI. We'll be right back and we're back.
Speaker 1: And doctor McNerney as mentioned, I am an idiot on
Speaker 1: this AI stuff. I think I generally have like my
Speaker 1: version of AI up until last week. I guess like
Speaker 1: researching for our last expert episode was what I had
Speaker 1: read in you know, mainstream articles that went viral and
Speaker 1: films move like Hollywood films, and then like messing around
Speaker 1: with open AI and or chat GPT. So I had
Speaker 1: this kind of disconnect in my mind where it was
Speaker 1: like from an outsider's perspective. We have this C plus
Speaker 1: level like copywriter thing with like in chat GPT GPT
Speaker 1: for and then like the Godfather of AI, who I'm
Speaker 1: just trusting people is the Godfather of AI. But that's
Speaker 1: what everyone uses that same phrase though, like the Godfather
Speaker 1: of AI just quit Google and says we're all fucked
Speaker 1: in the next couple of years. And I think it's
Speaker 1: confusing to me because I don't know exactly, like I
Speaker 1: can't even like picture the way how he thinks we're fucked.
Speaker 1: And there was this letter that was like, we need
Speaker 1: to pause development on AI for in the near future,
Speaker 1: and I guess I'm just curious to hear your perspective
Speaker 1: on that pause letter and what the kind of dangers
Speaker 1: of AI are in the near future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because to Jack's point two, also, we were talking
Speaker 2: with Juao Sadoc last week at NYU about it, and
Speaker 2: like at the end of it, we're like, okay, so
Speaker 2: it's not sky Net right from terminator, and they're like,
Speaker 2: oh great, But then we realize there's a raft of
Speaker 2: other things that come along with just not being the terminator.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's I'm also from a similar perspective where
Speaker 2: I always assume sky Net.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think you're totally not alone in
Speaker 4: the dominance of ideas like sky Nee the Terminator, because
Speaker 4: so much of our cultural framework for understanding what AI
Speaker 4: is comes from a very narrow set of movie It's
Speaker 4: like the Terminator, like the Matrix, which always positions AI
Speaker 4: is something that's going to dominate us, it's going to
Speaker 4: take over the world, and it's going to control us.
Speaker 4: And it's important to, I think highlight that that's definitely
Speaker 4: not the only ideas that we have about AI. We've
Speaker 4: got thousands of years of thinking about our relationship with
Speaker 4: intelligent machines, and there's a lot of different cultural traditions
Speaker 4: that have really different ways of thinking about our relationships
Speaker 4: with AI and intelligent machines that could be much more positive,
Speaker 4: much more harmonious. And so I do think our immediacy
Speaker 4: of jumping to this idea of sky net is reflective
Speaker 4: of very much where we are right now. Right I'm
Speaker 4: in the UK, you're in the US. These are countries
Speaker 4: that have a really long history of thinking about AI
Speaker 4: and very binary terms. So yeah, I think it's important
Speaker 4: that we think about these long term risks of AI.
Speaker 4: And you mentioned the pause letter calling for a wholt
Speaker 4: to generating more large language models like chat GPT until
Speaker 4: it had a bit more of a moment to think
Speaker 4: about to the long term consequences of these models. But
Speaker 4: I think it's really important not just to think of
Speaker 4: the long term risks, but to think about which long
Speaker 4: term risks we prioritize, because I think the sky net
Speaker 4: terminator fantasy eats up a lot of oxygen about how
Speaker 4: we talk about AI's risks. But there's a lot of
Speaker 4: different risks to AI poses. So another long term risk
Speaker 4: that we don't talk about very much at all is
Speaker 4: the climate cost of AI. Right because AI it's hugely
Speaker 4: energy intensive. Data centers require a huge amount of water
Speaker 4: to function, and we have this massive problem of e
Speaker 4: waste produced by a lot of electronic systems. But that
Speaker 4: long term problem of climate crisis is much less exciting.
Speaker 4: It's really scary, it's really grounded, and a lot of
Speaker 4: our experiences and so it just doesn't seem to get
Speaker 4: as much airtime. So that's something that I think is
Speaker 4: really important. It's changing the conversation a bit to say, Okay,
Speaker 4: it's sometimes interesting, sometimes scary to think about the terminator option,
Speaker 4: but what are some of the other long term options
Speaker 4: that could really shape our lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the degree to which the deck is being
Speaker 1: stacked towards the terminator option was surprising to me. Like
Speaker 1: we dug in last week a little bit to the
Speaker 1: two stories I had always heard that are like kind
Speaker 1: of put into the terminator version of AI taking over
Speaker 1: a category. There's the AI that killed a person in
Speaker 1: a military exercise that decided to like eliminate its controller.
Speaker 1: And then there's the AI that hired a task rabbit
Speaker 1: to pass the CAPSHA test. And like in both cases
Speaker 1: those are like the AI that killed a person in
Speaker 1: the military exercise, like that was somebody claiming that, and
Speaker 1: then when they went back they were like, oh, I
Speaker 1: was just saying it could hypothetically do that.
Speaker 2: It was a thought experiment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a thought experiment of what an AI
Speaker 1: could do in the right circumstances. And the task rabbit
Speaker 1: one was more similar to the self driving car elon
Speaker 1: musk thing, where it was just there was a human
Speaker 1: prompting it to do that thing. That seems creepy to
Speaker 1: us when we start thinking about oh, it's like scheming
Speaker 1: to get loose and get overcome the things that we're
Speaker 1: using to keep it hemmed in. So it does feel
Speaker 1: like there is an incentive structure set up for the
Speaker 1: people in charge of some of these major AI companies
Speaker 1: to get us to believe that shit, like to think
Speaker 1: to only focus on the AI v. Humanity, Like AI
Speaker 1: gets loose of its control of our controls for it
Speaker 1: and takes over and starts like killing people version of it.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious, like what are your thoughts on, Like
Speaker 1: why why why are they incentivized to do that when
Speaker 1: it would seem like you, well, you don't want to
Speaker 1: make it. You don't want it to seem like this
Speaker 1: self driving car will take over and.
Speaker 2: Start kill your family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, start killing your family. It's so powerful. But it
Speaker 1: seems like with AI, they're more willing to buy into
Speaker 1: that fantasy and like have that fantasy projected to people
Speaker 1: who are are not as closely tied to the ins
Speaker 1: and outs of the industry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think that's such an important point
Speaker 4: because it's a weird thing about the AI industry, right,
Speaker 4: Like you would never have this kind of hypewave around
Speaker 4: something like broccoli where you say, oh, the broccoli, if
Speaker 4: you eat it could kill you or it could like
Speaker 4: transform the world, and then you wouldn't expect that to
Speaker 4: somehow get people to buy a lot more broccoli and
Speaker 4: just be like, I don't want to eat broccoli now.
Speaker 1: It's so fucking good and powerful you explode like maybe.
Speaker 4: Makes it even worse broccoli that you can then also eat,
Speaker 4: you know what broccoli would be doing. But I do
Speaker 4: think that we see this real cultivation of hype around AI,
Speaker 4: and that a lot of firms explicitly use that to
Speaker 4: sell their products, and it gets people interested in it
Speaker 4: because on the one hand, people are really scared about
Speaker 4: the long term and short term impacts of AI. On
Speaker 4: the other hand, it also scared then though, of getting
Speaker 4: left behind. So you see more and more firms saying, well,
Speaker 4: now I've got to buy the latest generative AI tool
Speaker 4: so that I look really tech savvy and I look
Speaker 4: pick forward and I look futuristic. And so it's part
Speaker 4: of the bigger hype cycle, I think, to a lot
Speaker 4: of tension towards their products, but also to make them
Speaker 4: seem like this really edgy, desirable thing. But I think
Speaker 4: what's also interesting about both the stories that you raise
Speaker 4: is when you looked under the hood there was human
Speaker 4: labor involved, right, There were people who were really central
Speaker 4: to something that was attributed to an AI. And I
Speaker 4: think that's a really common story we see with a
Speaker 4: lot of the type around AI. Is often the way
Speaker 4: we tell those stories erases the very real human labor
Speaker 4: that drives those products, whether it's the artists who originally
Speaker 4: made the images that train the generative AI through today,
Speaker 4: the labelers all sorts of people who are really central
Speaker 4: to those processes.
Speaker 2: Right, And I know, like in your episode of The
Speaker 2: Good Robot when you're discussing the pause letter, you know,
Speaker 2: I think the I think the version that we see
Speaker 2: as like sort of these short term threats, at least
Speaker 2: in the most immediate way is like for me working
Speaker 2: in and around entertainment and people who work in advertising
Speaker 2: and seeing like an uptake in that section, I go, okay,
Speaker 2: that's easy. Like I can see how a company immediately goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a tool, and then suddenly it's like and now
Speaker 2: you're on your ass because we'll just use the tool
Speaker 2: now and we don't even need a person to prompt it,
Speaker 2: or we need many we just need fewer people to
Speaker 2: operate it. So to me, I'm like Okay, that's an
Speaker 2: obvious sort of thing I can see like on the horizon.
Speaker 2: And you did talk about, well, there was a lot
Speaker 2: of talk of these sort of long term existential or
Speaker 2: quote unquote existential threats, that there were a lot of
Speaker 2: things in the short term that we're actually ignoring. What
Speaker 2: are those sort of things that we need to bring
Speaker 2: a little bit more awareness to, Like I know you
Speaker 2: mentioned the climate, and I look at it from my perspective,
Speaker 2: I see like the just massive job loss that could happen.
Speaker 2: But what are sort of like the more short term
Speaker 2: things that kind of maybe are less sexy or interesting
Speaker 2: to the people who just want to write about killer
Speaker 2: terminators and things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think less sexy is exactly the
Speaker 4: right phrase for this, which is a lot of the
Speaker 4: short term issues. I very much about entrenching existing forms
Speaker 4: of inequality and making them worse. And that's often something
Speaker 4: people don't really want to hear about because they don't
Speaker 4: want to acknowledge these inequalities, or because it takes away
Speaker 4: from the shiny units of AI. It makes it very
Speaker 4: much like a lot of other technological revolutions that we've
Speaker 4: already seen, and that's super boring. Like you don't want
Speaker 4: to hear about how the wheel somehow brought about some
Speaker 4: kind of inequality. We all know the big heart take
Speaker 4: from today, But yeah, I mean something that I look at,
Speaker 4: for example, are like very mundane but important technologies, like
Speaker 4: technologies used in recruitment and hiring. So I look at
Speaker 4: AI powered video interview tools and look at how that
Speaker 4: affects people's particular you know, likelihood of being employed and
Speaker 4: how they go through the workforce, and yep, it's less
Speaker 4: exciting seeming than the terminator. But again, when you look
Speaker 4: under the hood and dig into them, you're like, oh wow,
Speaker 4: this could actually really really compound inequalities that we see
Speaker 4: in the workforce under the guise of the idea that
Speaker 4: these tools are going to make hiring more fair. And
Speaker 4: that's a massive problem.
Speaker 2: Right, so because like the idea with those hiring tools
Speaker 2: like it will actually take away these sort of like
Speaker 2: demographic cues that someone might use to like you know,
Speaker 2: they apply their own biases to So in fact, it
Speaker 2: is the most equitable way to hire. But is it
Speaker 2: because of just the kinds of people that are creating
Speaker 2: these sort of systems, Because they tends to be a
Speaker 2: bit one note that that's inherently where like sort of
Speaker 2: that like it begins to wobble a bit.
Speaker 4: It's a mixture. So of course, yes, the lack of
Speaker 4: diversity in the AI industry is like very stark. It's
Speaker 4: also sadly in the uk an industry, where for example,
Speaker 4: women's representation is actually getting worse, not better. So that's
Speaker 4: a sad slap in the face for a lot of
Speaker 4: the progress narrative that we want to see. But sometimes
Speaker 4: it's not even necessarily that the people creating these tools
Speaker 4: have bad intentions, maybe not even that they're using faulty
Speaker 4: data sets or biased data sets. These are two of
Speaker 4: the really big problems that are flaggs. But sometimes the
Speaker 4: underlying idea behind their product is just fogus, Like it's
Speaker 4: just a really bad concept and yet somehow it gets
Speaker 4: brought to market again because of all this hyper AI.
Speaker 4: So with the video interview tools that we look at,
Speaker 4: for example, they basically claim that they can discern a
Speaker 4: candidate's personality from their face and from their words, so
Speaker 4: how they talk, how they move, They can decide how
Speaker 4: extroverted you are, or how you know open you are,
Speaker 4: how neurotic you are, how conscientious, you are all these
Speaker 4: different markets of personality, to which I would say, firstly, no,
Speaker 4: there's absolutely no when AI can do that. This is
Speaker 4: just a very old kind of racial pseudoscience making its
Speaker 4: way back into the mainstream, saying Okay, we can totally
Speaker 4: guess your personality from your face, Like it's like your
Speaker 4: friends looking at someone's profile picture on like Pinder or
Speaker 4: whatever and being like they look like they'd be really
Speaker 4: fun at a party. Like it's about that level of.
Speaker 1: Accuracy, you know.
Speaker 4: And then second, is that even a good way of
Speaker 4: judging if someone's gonna be good for a job? Like
Speaker 4: how extroverted do you want a person in the job
Speaker 4: to be? Maybe in your job that's really really helpful
Speaker 4: in my job, I don't know how helpful. So this
Speaker 4: just kind of a lot of blow is at the
Speaker 4: very you know, bottom of these products that we should
Speaker 4: be worried about.
Speaker 1: Just like a C minus level job hiring process, Like
Speaker 1: that's what I feel like so many of the things,
Speaker 1: like when you get down to them and see them
Speaker 1: in action, they're like not that good. Like it does
Speaker 1: feel like the whole thing is being hyped to a
Speaker 1: large degree, and like that's something I heard from somebody
Speaker 1: I know who like works in you know, like all
Speaker 1: of my friends who work in finance or like any
Speaker 1: of those things. Like my brain shuts off when he
Speaker 1: starts talking about what he does. But he was saying,
Speaker 1: like he pays attention to the market, and he was saying,
Speaker 1: there's like a big thing propping up the stock market
Speaker 1: right now is AI. And it really is like that,
Speaker 1: that's where so much of people's wealth is tied up,
Speaker 1: is in like the stock market, and it's just tied
Speaker 1: to like what you can get people excited about in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases. Really like that. From that perspective,
Speaker 1: the incentive structure makes sense, Like you want people talking
Speaker 1: about how your AI technology can do all these amazing
Speaker 1: things because that literally makes you have more money than
Speaker 1: you would have if they knew the truth about your
Speaker 1: your product.
Speaker 2: Without being like, yeah, wait, how many seven fingered Trump
Speaker 2: pictures can we create? And right be like yeah, man,
Speaker 2: fucking millions into this.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I mean that's kind of something that's really
Speaker 4: come out of the last few years of how many
Speaker 4: fans just use the label of AI to get funding.
Speaker 4: Like I think there was a study a couple of
Speaker 4: years ago that said like of European AI startups didn't
Speaker 4: use AI, which I point, you're like, well, what are
Speaker 4: you doing.
Speaker 1: Well, we could though this podcast is actually an AI
Speaker 1: podcast because eventually it could use AI. And before we
Speaker 1: were recording, Miles was actually putting in. He asked an
Speaker 1: AI to pitch him an episode of Friends in which
Speaker 1: the cast and you know, the people on the the
Speaker 1: friends on the show deal with the fallout from the
Speaker 1: events of nine to eleven. And it wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: So we can't quite claim that we are an AI
Speaker 1: podcast yet, but but we did it.
Speaker 2: Did do it when I said, do it, pitch me
Speaker 2: an episode where Joey and Monica drive Uber from Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it did so clearly it because you can see
Speaker 2: where these guardrails out. They're like, don't do nine to
Speaker 2: eleven stuff. Though that's right now.
Speaker 1: But I mean, so yeah, I think there's two things
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, Like from from one perspective, like, yes,
Speaker 1: you could put it in the category of like, well, yes,
Speaker 1: the wheel makes racism or colonialism more. Frictionless is a
Speaker 1: word that gets used a lot, but like literally in
Speaker 1: the case of the wheel, frictionless. But AI and like
Speaker 1: a lot of technology is designed to make groups of
Speaker 1: people and like our interactions and the things that make
Speaker 1: people money more frictionless. And that's something that you guys
Speaker 1: have talked about on recent episodes of Good Robot. Like
Speaker 1: there's this one example that really jumped out to me
Speaker 1: that I think was from your most recent episode, or
Speaker 1: at least the one that's up most recently right now
Speaker 1: as we're recording this, where you guys were talking about
Speaker 1: a company that asked a regulating body to make an
Speaker 1: exception to a law around like a high risk use
Speaker 1: of AI, and the law said that people had to
Speaker 1: supervise the use of AI like just because it seemed dangerous,
Speaker 1: and the company appealed to the regulating body by saying, well,
Speaker 1: we just like that would cost too much and we
Speaker 1: would never be able to like scale this and make
Speaker 1: a profit. And it feels to me like our answer
Speaker 1: as a civilization to that complaint needs to be that's
Speaker 1: not our problem, like that then you shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 1: But instead it seems like the answer too often, not
Speaker 1: just in AI, but just across the board, especially in
Speaker 1: the US, is like, Okay, well we have to make
Speaker 1: an exception so that they can make a profit around
Speaker 1: this technology, or else the technology won't get developed because
Speaker 1: the only thing that drives technological progress is like the
Speaker 1: profit motive. But that's, you know, as I think you
Speaker 1: guys talked about in that episode, that's never been the
Speaker 1: best way to develop technology, Like it's it's been a
Speaker 1: good way sometimes to democratize existing technology, but like that's
Speaker 1: I don't know, I feel like that idea of you
Speaker 1: have to make it profitable, you have to make it
Speaker 1: easy on these companies to keep trying different things for
Speaker 1: AI to become profitable is baked in at a like
Speaker 1: cellular level at this point in how a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, Western colonial civilizations operate.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think too often a lot of the
Speaker 4: technologies that shape our daily lives are made by a
Speaker 4: very narrow set of people who ultimately aren't beholden to us.
Speaker 4: They're beholden to their shareholders or to their boss and right,
Speaker 4: so they don't really have our best interests at heart, right, Like,
Speaker 4: for example, take this whole rebranding of like Twitter to
Speaker 4: X by Musk. I remember waking up and finding my
Speaker 4: little Twitter bird replaced with this huge X and just
Speaker 4: being like, oh, converirstly because it was part of you know,
Speaker 4: Twitter's low decline. But secondly it maybe you feel pretty
Speaker 4: disappointed or really aware of the fact that one guy
Speaker 4: could have such a huge impact on how literally millions
Speaker 4: of people use a social networking platform that's actually super important,
Speaker 4: you know, to their daily lives and has played a
Speaker 4: huge role in activist movements and fostering different communities. And
Speaker 4: I think that's a story we see time and time
Speaker 4: again with some of these big tech companies, which is
Speaker 4: not only do they have their own profit motive at heart,
Speaker 4: they also they're not beholden in any way to the public,
Speaker 4: and they're not being compelled by regulation to make good
Speaker 4: decisions that necessarily benefit the public. So I think a
Speaker 4: really important question going forward is how do we support
Speaker 4: kinds of technology development that are very much based in
Speaker 4: the communities that the technology is for. I think one
Speaker 4: really big part of that is recognizing that so many
Speaker 4: AI models, as you mentioned right, they're designed to be
Speaker 4: scalable and that's how to make money, this idea that
Speaker 4: you can apply them globally and universally, and I think
Speaker 4: that's a big problem, partly because it often is really homogenizing.
Speaker 4: It can involve like explitting a model from the US
Speaker 4: usually out to the rest of the world, it's probably
Speaker 4: not actually appropriate to using those contexts. But also a
Speaker 4: lot of really exciting and good uses of technology I
Speaker 4: think come from these really localized, specific, community based levels.
Speaker 4: So sometimes I think it can be about thinking smaller
Speaker 4: rather than bigger.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that was like another thing that struck me
Speaker 2: about like just all the warnings and even in that
Speaker 2: pause letter is sort of like the presumption that it's like, well,
Speaker 2: all you motherfuckers are going to use this, so we
Speaker 2: got to talk about it where it's like I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't even fucking know what it is, Like a
Speaker 2: second ago, I thought it was Skynet, and now, like
Speaker 2: you know, you have your company being like, yeah, we
Speaker 2: now have enterprise AI tools like welcome. You're like, but
Speaker 2: what am I huh like? And I think that's what's
Speaker 2: an really interesting thing about this as like a sort
Speaker 2: of technological advancement is before people really understand what it is,
Speaker 2: there is like from the higher the powers that be
Speaker 2: sort of going into it being like, well, this is it,
Speaker 2: Like everyone's using it, but I'm still not sure how.
Speaker 2: And I guess that probably feeds into this whole model
Speaker 2: of generating as much you know, excitement market excitement about
Speaker 2: AI is by taking the angle of like everything's different
Speaker 2: because everyone is going to be using AI mostly y'all
Speaker 2: don't know what that is, but get ready. And I
Speaker 2: think that's what also makes it very confusing for me,
Speaker 2: as just like a lay person outside of the text sphere,
Speaker 2: to just be like, wait, so are we all using it?
Speaker 2: And even now, I really I still can't see what
Speaker 2: that is and how that benefits me. And I think
Speaker 2: that's a big part of I'm sure your work too,
Speaker 2: or even like any ethicist, is to understand like, well,
Speaker 2: who does it? Ben Like, first, we're making this because
Speaker 2: it benefits who and how? Yeah, And I think yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean right now, it benefits the companies that are
Speaker 2: making it. And it sort of feels like that's the
Speaker 2: way it's being preserved or slightly being like, yeah, you
Speaker 2: guys are gonna love this, but really we're going to
Speaker 2: benefit from the adoption of this technology.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think that's this crucial question, is
Speaker 4: this stepping back and saying, actually, is this inevitable? And
Speaker 4: do we even want this in the first place? And
Speaker 4: I think that's what really frustrated me about the pause
Speaker 4: letter and about a number of kind of big text
Speaker 4: figures signing on to it, is that they're very much
Speaker 4: pushing this narrative of like, oh, this is like unstoppable
Speaker 4: and it's inevitable and it's happening, We've got a fine
Speaker 4: way to deal with it.
Speaker 3: And it's like.
Speaker 4: You're making it like you're the people literally making these
Speaker 4: technologies and a lot of cases, so if you really
Speaker 4: think it's an existential risk to humanity, stop, it's honestly
Speaker 4: could even be that import But that's you know, what
Speaker 4: makes me really then question their motives and sort of
Speaker 4: coming forward with a lot of this kind of very
Speaker 4: doom and gloom language. I think it's also interesting if
Speaker 4: you look at, for example, countries as national AI strategies.
Speaker 4: So if you look at say like China and the
Speaker 4: UK and the US and these countries that are now
Speaker 4: thinking about what their national long term AI strategy is
Speaker 4: going to be, they also very much frame it around
Speaker 4: the idea that AI is completely inevitable, that this is
Speaker 4: going to be the transformative technology for imaging the future,
Speaker 4: for geopolitical dominance, for economic supremacy. And again, I think
Speaker 4: as an ethesis. What I really want people to do
Speaker 4: is step back and say, I think we're actually at
Speaker 4: a crossroad, so we can decide whether or not we
Speaker 4: think these technologies are good for us, and whether they
Speaker 4: are sustainable, whether they are a useful long term thing
Speaker 4: for our societies, or actually whether the benefits of these
Speaker 4: technologies are going to be experienced by very few people
Speaker 4: and the costs are going to be borne by many.
Speaker 1: Right. We talked last week about the scientific application that
Speaker 1: you know, used deep learning to figure out the shapes
Speaker 1: of proteins, the structures of proteins, and that could have
Speaker 1: some beneficial uses, will probably have some beneficial uses for
Speaker 1: you know, how we understand disease and medicine and how
Speaker 1: we treat that. But there are ways to probably differentiate
Speaker 1: and think about these things, like it's not you don't
Speaker 1: just have to be either luddite or like AI pedal
Speaker 1: to the floor. You know, let's just get out of
Speaker 1: the way of the big companies. You know, it feels like,
Speaker 1: but it is such a complicated technology that I think
Speaker 1: there's going to be inherent cloudiness around how people understand
Speaker 1: it and also manufactured cloudiness because it is in the
Speaker 1: overall systems benefit the overall system, being like capitalism in
Speaker 1: their benefit to generate like market excitement where there shouldn't
Speaker 1: be any basically.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think it's easy to generate this
Speaker 4: kind of nebulousness around AI because to some extent we
Speaker 4: still don't really know what it is. It's still more
Speaker 4: of a concept than anything else because the term AI
Speaker 4: is like stretched and used to describe so many applications.
Speaker 4: Like I spent two years interviewing engineers and data scientists
Speaker 4: is a big tech firm, and they would sort of grumble, well,
Speaker 4: fifteen or twenty years ago, you know, we didn't even
Speaker 4: call this AI, and we were already doing it. It's
Speaker 4: just a decision tree, you know. Again, it's kind of
Speaker 4: part of that branding. But also we have these again
Speaker 4: thousands of years of stories and thinking about what an
Speaker 4: intelligent machine is, and that means we can get super
Speaker 4: invested in super cloudy very very quickly. And yeah, I
Speaker 4: don't want people to feel bad for being scared of
Speaker 4: being cloudy about these technologies, like it is dense and confusing,
Speaker 4: But at the same time, I do think that it
Speaker 4: is really important to come back to that question of
Speaker 4: what does this do for us. So, you know, the
Speaker 4: question of like Luddism or being a lude I think
Speaker 4: is really interesting because I you know, personally, I do
Speaker 4: use AI applications. There's certain things about these technologies that
Speaker 4: really excite me. But I'm really sympathetic to some of
Speaker 4: the kind of old school ludyet who weren't necessarily anti technology,
Speaker 4: but we're really against the kind of impacts that technology
Speaker 4: we're having on their society. So the way that new
Speaker 4: technology is like I think it would be things like
Speaker 4: spinning and weaving, we're causing mass unemployment and the kind
Speaker 4: of broader rammifications that was having for people in the
Speaker 4: UK socially, and that kind of has quite a scary
Speaker 4: parallel to today in terms of thinking about maybe what
Speaker 4: AI will bring about for the rest of us who
Speaker 4: maybe aren't researchers in a lab, but who maybe might
Speaker 4: be replaced by some of these algorithms in terms of
Speaker 4: our work and our output.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you talk at all about open source like
Speaker 1: models of because you know, when we talk about this
Speaker 1: idea that corporations have all power and are incentivized to
Speaker 1: do whatever is going to make the most money, which
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases is going to be the
Speaker 1: thing that removes the friction from consumption decisions, and you
Speaker 1: know just how people interact and do these things, which well,
Speaker 1: as you guys talked about in your episode, like removing
Speaker 1: the friction, Like friction can be really good. Sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: your system needs friction to stop and correct itself and
Speaker 1: recognize when bad shit, when things are going wrong. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's also a history in even in the US,
Speaker 1: where corporations are racing to get to a development and
Speaker 1: ultimately are beat by open source models of technological organizing
Speaker 1: around like getting a specific solution. Do you have any
Speaker 1: hope for like open source or in the future of AI.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think I'm really interested in community
Speaker 4: forms of development, and I think open source is a
Speaker 4: really interesting example. I think we've seen other interesting examples
Speaker 4: around things like collective data labeling, and I think that
Speaker 4: these kinds of collective movements, on the one hand, seem
Speaker 4: like a really exciting community based alternative to the concentration
Speaker 4: of power in a very very narrow segment of tech companies.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, though, I think community work is
Speaker 4: really hard work. We had doctor David Adlani on our podcast,
Speaker 4: who's very important figure in Mascana, which is a grassroots
Speaker 4: organization that aims to bring some of the over four
Speaker 4: thousand African languages into natural language processing or NLP systems,
Speaker 4: And he talks a lot about how the work he
Speaker 4: does with Marskana is so valuable and so important, but
Speaker 4: it's also really really hard because when you're working in
Speaker 4: that kind of collective, decentralized environment, it can be much slower,
Speaker 4: and as you said, there can be a lot more
Speaker 4: friction in that process. But counter to this move fast,
Speaker 4: break things kind of culture, sometimes that friction can be
Speaker 4: really productive and it can help us slow down and
Speaker 4: think about, you know, the decisions that we're making very intentionally,
Speaker 4: rather than just kind of racing as fast as we
Speaker 4: can to make the next newest, shiniest product.
Speaker 2: I was almost like in your work too, you know,
Speaker 2: you talk about how, you know, like looking at these technologies,
Speaker 2: especially through a lens of like feminism and intersectionality and
Speaker 2: you know, bipop communities and things like that, and I like
Speaker 2: broadly in science there's like, you know, there's an issue
Speaker 2: of like language hegemony in scientific research, where if things
Speaker 2: aren't written in English a lot, sometimes studies just get
Speaker 2: fucking ignored because like I don't speak Spanish or I
Speaker 2: can't read Chinese. Therefore I don't know if this research
Speaker 2: is being done, and therefore it just doesn't exist because
Speaker 2: the larger community is like we all just think in English, like,
Speaker 2: so how do you like, you know, specifically because you know,
Speaker 2: in hearing the description of your work, help me understand,
Speaker 2: like and the listeners too, like, of how we should
Speaker 2: be looking at these things from that also from that
Speaker 2: perspective too, because I think right now we're all caught
Speaker 2: up and like it's talking sky at and it's not
Speaker 2: you know, hold on, like there are other subtleties that
Speaker 2: actually we should really think deeply about because to your point,
Speaker 2: I feel like those are the dimensions of an emerging
Speaker 2: technology or trend or something that gets ignored because to
Speaker 2: your point, it's like the thing, well, of course it's
Speaker 2: it's unequal, of course it's racist or whatever, But what
Speaker 2: are those like what are those ways that people need
Speaker 2: to really be thinking about this technology?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think English language hegemony is a
Speaker 4: really good example of this broader problem of the more
Speaker 4: subtle kinds of exclusions that get built into these technologies.
Speaker 4: Because I think we've all probably seen the cases of
Speaker 4: AI systems that have been really horrifically and explicitly racist
Speaker 4: or really horrifically sexist, from you know, Tay the chatbot
Speaker 4: that started spousing horrific right wing racist propaganda and had
Speaker 4: get taken down through to Amazon hiring tool that's systemically
Speaker 4: discriminated against female candidates. These are really I think, avert
Speaker 4: depictions of the kinds of harms a I can do.
Speaker 4: But I think things like English language hegemony are also
Speaker 4: incredibly important for showing how existing kinds of exclusions and
Speaker 4: patterns of power get replicated in these tools. Because do
Speaker 4: an English language speaker, very crucially, they might use chat
Speaker 4: GPT and think this is great, this is what my
Speaker 4: whole world looks like if they only speak English. Obvious
Speaker 4: to anyone who is not a native English speaker who
Speaker 4: doesn't only speak English, it's going to be an incredibly
Speaker 4: different experience. And that's where I think we see the
Speaker 4: benefits of these tools being really unequally distributed. I think
Speaker 4: it's also important because there's such exclusions in which kinds
Speaker 4: of languages and forms of communication can get translated into
Speaker 4: these systems. So, for example, I work with a linguists
Speaker 4: at the University of Newcastle, and she talks about the
Speaker 4: fact that there's so many languages like signed languages and
Speaker 4: languages that don't have a written language, but they're never
Speaker 4: going to be translated into these tools and never are
Speaker 4: going to benefit from them. You might think, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: do these communities want those languages translate into an AI tool?
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe not, I'd argua, of course that's up to them.
Speaker 4: But those communities are still going to experience the negative
Speaker 4: effects of AI, like the climate cost of these tools.
Speaker 4: And so I think it's just really important, like you say,
Speaker 4: to think about what kinds of hegemony are getting further
Speaker 4: entrenched by AI powered technologies.
Speaker 1: All right, great, let let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: we'll come back and finish up with a few questions.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back and we're back and all right. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing that I want myself to just
Speaker 1: like get out of this conversation is just a sense
Speaker 1: of like ways that we like what we think AI
Speaker 1: might look like, how it might impact what the world
Speaker 1: around us looks like in the not too distant future.
Speaker 1: And we've we've already talked about like some ways that
Speaker 1: AI is being overrated as like a autonomous killbot, like
Speaker 1: terminator style kilbot. You know, there's there's some other examples,
Speaker 1: like on one of the episodes of your podcast, an
Speaker 1: AI expert talks about getting an AI enhanced cancer scan
Speaker 1: and assuming the scan was like taking three D video
Speaker 1: and doing or doing like three D modeling, and it
Speaker 1: was just putting a box on a two D image.
Speaker 1: And I believe the guests like admits that they were
Speaker 1: influenced by like Hollywood movies, and it seems like that's
Speaker 1: what people who are trying to make money off of
Speaker 1: this one. So like that we're going to have this
Speaker 1: steady push to make us overrate misunderstand what the actual
Speaker 1: promise of AI is going to look like, how what
Speaker 1: tools are going to be given to us in the
Speaker 1: near future, and like what are the tools actually able
Speaker 1: to do? So I'd just be curious to hear from you,
Speaker 1: like what do you think ways that AI might intervene
Speaker 1: in our lives in the near future might already be
Speaker 1: intervening in our lives? Well, what are those things that
Speaker 1: we're underrating, Like what and what are the things that
Speaker 1: you think are probably taking up too much of our
Speaker 1: bandwidth in terms of how we're picturing AI.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's a great question. I think to start with
Speaker 4: the second half, to start with what I think is
Speaker 4: maybe a little bit overrated, or maybe you'll take a
Speaker 4: bit longer to pan out. I would say some of
Speaker 4: these really high tech applications, things like AI and medicine,
Speaker 4: for example, I think that we might not see them
Speaker 4: expand beyond a very narrow set of controlled circumstances. I
Speaker 4: think this idea that you know, soon every hospital will
Speaker 4: have this tool, or say AI and education, that every
Speaker 4: classroom is going to have access to this tool, I
Speaker 4: think unfortually just really grossly over its demanding the kinds
Speaker 4: of resources only in this country that schools and the
Speaker 4: hospitals have. I was talking to a friend who's a
Speaker 4: doctor here and she was saying, oh, well, what do
Speaker 4: you think about AI in medicine, And then she kind
Speaker 4: of stopped for a moment and just laughed and said, well,
Speaker 4: I don't know why I'm asking you that, because my
Speaker 4: hospital uses paper notes. And I said what, and she said, yeah,
Speaker 4: our whole hospital is not computerized. And that was a
Speaker 4: good reality check for me because it made me realize, like, wow,
Speaker 4: actually some of the stuff that I'm thinking about is
Speaker 4: so far away from the reality of what people like
Speaker 4: my friend the doctor is having to deal with on
Speaker 4: the ground. And same with schools. You know, here a
Speaker 4: whole hundreds of schools I think have had to be
Speaker 4: closed because there's some kind of issues with the concrete
Speaker 4: that I might collapse, which is a horrific But b
Speaker 4: is such a different level of infrastructural problem that thinking
Speaker 4: about AI in the costume is really not on the
Speaker 4: radar in that scenarios exactly. Yeah, autonomous, Yeah, it's like
Speaker 4: a low Yeah, people like what if students cheat? And
Speaker 4: you're like, look, yeah, you know. So those are things
Speaker 4: that I think are maybe a little bit on the
Speaker 4: overrated side. I think a way things are underrated, Like
Speaker 4: I'm really interested in how AI can change how we
Speaker 4: see the world and how we see ourselves, like I think,
Speaker 4: you know, take for example, something like TikTok. You know,
Speaker 4: I have to confess I'm a big TikTok user. I
Speaker 4: love grolling a lot of mind list diarbage. It brings
Speaker 4: me a lot of joy and peace. But even things
Speaker 4: like AI powered beauty filters, right, like, I think that
Speaker 4: has such a profound effect on how you just understand
Speaker 4: and see yourself and your own faith. They're often really
Speaker 4: imbued with gendered and racist kinds of assumptions as well.
Speaker 4: I often look a lot whiter when I use a
Speaker 4: beauty filter, even though I'm multiracial. Like all of those assumptions,
Speaker 4: I think they get baked in that seep into our
Speaker 4: lives and like really subtle ways, but I think collectively
Speaker 4: can have quite a big impact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was talking about the I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is technically AI, but then again, I don't know
Speaker 1: what AI is or if there's like a specific argument,
Speaker 1: but like the the way that like iPhones take forty
Speaker 1: pictures like consecutively and then like choose the best one
Speaker 1: from the forty, and like the live photo setting like
Speaker 1: feels like a thing and like it's really good at it,
Speaker 1: and it's something that I had, like just it happened
Speaker 1: on my phone with like an update and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just how you take pictures now, and like
Speaker 1: pictures are way better than they used to be. I
Speaker 1: think I saw somebody speculate that like some of the
Speaker 1: software like Photoshop and other things that have traditionally had
Speaker 1: sort of a difficult learning curve will suddenly get much
Speaker 1: easier for people to use. So yeah, I like those
Speaker 1: are like having actual tools that are like kind of
Speaker 1: easy to use and like very simple, straightforward. We know
Speaker 1: what the goal is here, and we're able to use
Speaker 1: these enhanced kind of programs to achieve that goal. Like
Speaker 1: that that feels more possible to me and like something
Speaker 1: that we might see in the not too distant future.
Speaker 2: Totally, that's like a pitch you can understand, like this
Speaker 2: will make it easier for you to photoshop a friend
Speaker 2: out and just put someone else in. You're like, okay,
Speaker 2: rather than right now, it's like this shit will end
Speaker 2: the world and you're like, well, what is it? I
Speaker 2: don't know, I don't know, I don't know, but it
Speaker 2: will fuck you up. And you're like huh, and I
Speaker 2: guess that's such a different proposition up front and earlier,
Speaker 2: doctor Carry was saying, like there are things that genuinely
Speaker 2: excite you about like this sort of like these emerging
Speaker 2: technologies from I, and I would love to hear from
Speaker 2: your vantage point because you are looking at this and
Speaker 2: a like like what is ethical and what is going
Speaker 2: to bring meaningful value to people? Like what are those things?
Speaker 2: That I can feel like, oh, yeah, yeah, I can
Speaker 2: get down with that future.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I recognize that I sound very doom
Speaker 4: and gloom a lot of the time that I speak,
Speaker 4: and for all my friends have to deal with my
Speaker 4: sort of constant existential anxiety about technologies. But at the
Speaker 4: same time, you know, I'm an active user of a
Speaker 4: lot of them, Like I use a lot of voice
Speaker 4: dictation software, voice editing software, you know, for when we
Speaker 4: record our podcasts, and these are things that genuinely make
Speaker 4: my life so much better and easier. I love being
Speaker 4: able to transcribe, you know, what I'm saying and have
Speaker 4: it appear on the screen and not have to type
Speaker 4: out my emails and have them a pair. I recognize
Speaker 4: you they're like, all very boring. I should have said
Speaker 4: something like I DJ not at all I write email
Speaker 4: of using voice. It's very you know, but I think
Speaker 4: kind of, you know, extrapolating out from that, you know,
Speaker 4: there's really amazing applications and accessibility, and when it comes
Speaker 4: to the kinds of access people can now have online
Speaker 4: because of advancements and aipowered tools, and so I think, though,
Speaker 4: you know, what's really central, there is kind of that
Speaker 4: broader vision of you know, what is the kind of
Speaker 4: benefit this is meaningfully bringing to society? What problem is
Speaker 4: being solved? And are the people who are like most
Speaker 4: affected by that problem the ones leading the conversation and
Speaker 4: saying what they need? Because too often I think we
Speaker 4: see tech developers creating stuff that actually no one really
Speaker 4: asked for. I'm sure you have like all seen that
Speaker 4: thing on Amazon when you're like, you're asked for that
Speaker 4: banana holder or avocado peeler or something. And too often
Speaker 4: I think tech add on to be a little bit
Speaker 4: like that. Whereas I think when we have like really
Speaker 4: interesting conscious development of say, for example, feminist tools that
Speaker 4: are designed to encourage good conversations things like that, that
Speaker 4: really makes me excited about the kinds of futures we
Speaker 4: could have with technology.
Speaker 2: Right, it almost feels like the danger here is when
Speaker 2: someone has like a technology and go and this is
Speaker 2: gonna be in every home, and you're like, this is
Speaker 2: a sales pitch. Actually yeah, because if you're not saying
Speaker 2: this is how we will work less and have more
Speaker 2: time to frolic, to enjoy our human existence, to connect
Speaker 2: with our families, then then like miss me with that,
Speaker 2: because it reminds me of Crypto. It reminds me of
Speaker 2: the metaverse, and it reminds you of Zuckerberg being like
Speaker 2: every worker will have this fucking headset on no no,
Speaker 2: but nice fucking tri asshole. And I feel like this
Speaker 2: is kind of like it has a similar tone of like,
Speaker 2: get ready, folks for this thing. And granted they have
Speaker 2: some a shiny toy in the form of these large
Speaker 2: language models that are fun to do, like do and
Speaker 2: really they're just skimming the internet and just giving it
Speaker 2: to you in a nice, tidy sentence. But yeah, like
Speaker 2: I feel like that is just kind of like I'm
Speaker 2: seeing that dimension when you see the hype around it,
Speaker 2: which feels a little more like y'all are talking about
Speaker 2: this to make money, whereas the other things that you're
Speaker 2: talking about, like accessibility and trying to democratize certain applications.
Speaker 2: With things like that, less there's less less scale involved
Speaker 2: with something like that, So me, yeah, it hasn't talked.
Speaker 4: About exactly, and I just think it's really important to
Speaker 4: recognize that. You know, I'm not saying that say things
Speaker 4: like smart home technology is like Amazon Alexa and things
Speaker 4: are like inherently bad products. I'm sure gaps of people
Speaker 4: like love having those technologies in their home. They find
Speaker 4: them useful. But I just think whenever you bring in
Speaker 4: a new technology, you also bring a new vulnerabilities, and
Speaker 4: you bring a new costs. And sometimes the hype wave
Speaker 4: means we focus on the benefits. You know, Oh, if
Speaker 4: you bring this to every home, everyone's life will be easier,
Speaker 4: if everyone will have a more seamless home experience, when
Speaker 4: actually that's not the case. There's real costs to bringing
Speaker 4: those tools into a lot of people's homes. Everything from,
Speaker 4: for example, the way that certain kinds of elder care
Speaker 4: is getting replaced by technological tools in the UK care system,
Speaker 4: through to the fact that those tools can really easily
Speaker 4: be used for the purposes of domestic abuse, into a
Speaker 4: partner violence, It can be used to control or trap
Speaker 4: someone in their home. And these are really ugly truths
Speaker 4: about those technologies, and they're often not the ones that
Speaker 4: are put at the heart of technology development. And so
Speaker 4: that's a lot of my job, I guess, is just
Speaker 4: to say, how do we put those vulnerabilities in those
Speaker 4: costs at the forefront, and then judge holistically whether or
Speaker 4: not we really want this product to exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but here's the thing. I got a lot of
Speaker 2: my stock portfolio tied up in these companies. I need
Speaker 2: these I need these fucking things to moon, if you
Speaker 2: know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I want to end the episode just doing something
Speaker 1: that you guys do on The Good Robot, which is
Speaker 1: talk talk about some like books that are recommended or
Speaker 1: you know what works you recommend. You know, you talk
Speaker 1: on an episode earlier, I think it was in the
Speaker 1: summer about how a lot of the ideas and fears
Speaker 1: and hopes that we have currently are very similar to
Speaker 1: what we've seen in movies and like those like when
Speaker 1: you look at Elon Musk's ten favorite books, they're all
Speaker 1: like fed by this same like Isaac Asimov, like I
Speaker 1: robot thing I'd had coot. A lot of Kubrick's ideas
Speaker 1: are around AI are go back to this very specific
Speaker 1: verse version of technology where it inevitably turns into a
Speaker 1: mean psychopath who is set on dominating all of humanity.
Speaker 1: So as an alternative, because we do like to talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the importance of expanding our imagination, Like you know,
Speaker 1: with regards to climate, a lot of it is like
Speaker 1: either it's either apocalypse or business as usual capitalism. There's
Speaker 1: not like people have a hard time imagining the alternative
Speaker 1: on AI. On the subject of AI, like, what are
Speaker 1: is there? First of all, is there any like mainstream
Speaker 1: kind of popular movie that you feel like actually like
Speaker 1: that example of AI like got it right? And then
Speaker 1: are there other kind of more obscure works that you
Speaker 1: would send people to in order to sort of feed
Speaker 1: their imagination of like what what a world with AI
Speaker 1: technology could look like?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean that question of the imagination and how
Speaker 4: our current imagination of AI is really narrow is super key,
Speaker 4: And you know, I think it's fascinating that, yes, you know,
Speaker 4: Musk and these folks have like a very narrow set
Speaker 4: of stories that they refer to. In those stories, it's
Speaker 4: always like, oh, the type of masculine take Bro makes
Speaker 4: an AI and then it looks like him and it
Speaker 4: takes over the world, and you're like, are you okay
Speaker 4: that you're like your bedtime story?
Speaker 1: Soopath bent on world domination thinks that all AI is
Speaker 1: going to be a sociopath bent on world domination. That's
Speaker 1: so weird, right, Yeah?
Speaker 4: Who would have guessed that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean, and something that I really like
Speaker 4: us stories, particularly science fiction stories that I love sci
Speaker 4: fi and fantasy. I'm like a huge believer in like
Speaker 4: the way that it can help us imagine different worlds.
Speaker 4: In terms of like mainstream films, I guess the one
Speaker 4: that I comes to the top of my head is
Speaker 4: Big Hero six. So the Disney Pixar film where you
Speaker 4: have an AI powered kind of we're about healthcare buddy
Speaker 4: called Bamax, And I think that's a really interesting example
Speaker 4: of an AI that you know, at one point in
Speaker 4: the film, he gets dressed up in armor and you know,
Speaker 4: the kid here to starts to try and use him
Speaker 4: as a kind of weapon. But like, this is an
Speaker 4: AI that so has it been designed to be a
Speaker 4: weapon that kind of resists being weaponized a lot of ways,
Speaker 4: And in that sense, it's really countercultural to a lot
Speaker 4: of the AI we see in Western film and cinema,
Speaker 4: which is often very weaponized. It's often either this like
Speaker 4: kind of sexy cyborg figure or it's this hyper masculine
Speaker 4: terminator figure. Yeah, so I find be Max is kind
Speaker 4: of gender lid and like just.
Speaker 1: A well, puffy balloon person. But that's also so accurate
Speaker 1: of what a young boy would do immediately with that
Speaker 1: is like a weapon. It's like the tweet I can
Speaker 1: tell you me and my friends would have killed et
Speaker 1: with hammers. It's like little little boys are monsters. But
Speaker 1: that that's a great example.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in terms of like some alternative like stories and ideas,
Speaker 4: started to do a really shameless self plug but we
Speaker 4: have a book coming out called The Robot Why Technology
Speaker 4: Needs Feminism, and I'm plugging it because it's really beautiful.
Speaker 4: We worked with a science fiction illustrator because Sinjon Lee,
Speaker 4: and there was myself and doctor Elinoaldrage, my co host.
Speaker 4: And the whole thing is these two thousand word essays,
Speaker 4: so they're really short and really punchy by lots of
Speaker 4: different guests with had on the podcast, and they all
Speaker 4: respond to this idea of good technology dot dot dot,
Speaker 4: So it might be good technology is free, or good technology,
Speaker 4: you know, challenges power, and the idea is you can
Speaker 4: just dip in read one. They're also illustrated, and then
Speaker 4: just dip out when you need a break or a moment.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I really would encourage you to pick that
Speaker 4: up because it just contains the most incredible feminist philosophers,
Speaker 4: technologists and vendors, activists who are really pushing forward different
Speaker 4: ideas of the kinds of technological futures we could have.
Speaker 4: I mean, apart from that, I read a lot of
Speaker 4: like Chinese, diasporic Asian American sci fi as well, particularly
Speaker 4: sci fi that's like thinking a lot about the climate
Speaker 4: crisis and AI and insects of that, and so I
Speaker 4: think a lot of those stories have really interesting and
Speaker 4: different perspectives on what AI is it can be from
Speaker 4: like Elliott de Badad's work, which explores, you know, the
Speaker 4: relationships between like humans and sentient mind shifts in this
Speaker 4: base Opera universe. Through the like lyrical lized Faltfish Girl,
Speaker 4: which is like a very dystopian imagining of like a
Speaker 4: future society based on labor from clones. Like all of
Speaker 4: these novels, I think just if they're like a lot
Speaker 4: more love and a lot more could ask, they're just
Speaker 4: absolutely interesting and imagine have been gorgeous ideas about the future.
Speaker 1: Amazing. Well, this has been such a fascinating conversation. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for taking the time. At what I
Speaker 1: have to assume is midnight where you are right now,
Speaker 1: it's almost nine almost nine, Okay, yeah, that's too late. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you doctor McNerney for doing the show Where can
Speaker 1: people find you? Follow you, hear you all that good stuff.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, thanks so much for having me on. It's
Speaker 4: been a bluff. Yeah, check out the good Robot. We're
Speaker 4: on YouTube, Apple's Spotify, and then keep an eye out
Speaker 4: for the book coming in February twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll have to have you back for that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And is there a work of media that
Speaker 1: you've been enjoying?
Speaker 4: Ooh, media in terms of like a show, like a pot.
Speaker 1: Show, a podcast and tweet.
Speaker 4: Oh, I feel like I should choose something like really intellectual.
Speaker 4: But I actually just sent my husband this tweet that
Speaker 4: really got me because very me, which is it was
Speaker 4: it's actually a bit dark, but with this news headline
Speaker 4: about this hiker had been missing and the rescuers couldn't
Speaker 4: get in contact with them and they didn't get rescued
Speaker 4: for twenty four hours because they wouldn't answer their phone
Speaker 4: it was an unknown number. And this is just exactly me,
Speaker 4: like my husband like please, fuck you know what I'm like,
Speaker 4: I will not I will not answer it under a number.
Speaker 4: And so that brought me a little bit of joy today.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I feel like that's a great way that
Speaker 1: a great example of how technology has marched forward and
Speaker 1: completely real and like something that used to work phone communication,
Speaker 1: but we can't answer our phones anymore because the fucking spots. Miles,
Speaker 1: where can people find you? What's the work media you've
Speaker 1: been enjoying?
Speaker 2: Yeah at miles of Gray wherever they got at. I'm
Speaker 2: there soon to Blue Sky, shout out ill Will Christy Main. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you and you and I were hopping in okay codes
Speaker 2: we got we got the invite, just ch the blue Sky.
Speaker 2: So yeah there shortly. I'll also check Jack and Eye
Speaker 2: out on our basketball podcast, Miles and jackout man mas
Speaker 2: pease check me out on my ninety day Fiance podcast
Speaker 2: for twenty Day Fiance and also the true crime show
Speaker 2: The Good Thief, which has all episode eight episodes out,
Speaker 2: So please stream those binge those talking about the Greek
Speaker 2: robin Hood, the man who legitimately was kidnapping millionaires and
Speaker 2: doing some old fashioned wealth redistribution in the in a
Speaker 2: positive way, never hurting people either, never hurting people, like again,
Speaker 2: an ethical criminal if they're is such a thing. Some
Speaker 2: tweets I like, first one is from you know, shout
Speaker 2: out to the WGA and all the negotiators, because it
Speaker 2: looks like the WGA strike is they're close to getting
Speaker 2: something ratified. So we like that. This tweet is from
Speaker 2: Jeff Yang at Original Spin, tweeted just underscoring how WGA
Speaker 2: negotiators told the studios the union wouldn't go back to
Speaker 2: work until SAG also has a deal, because if the
Speaker 2: last five months proved anything, it's in together, win together.
Speaker 2: And there's this snippet from it might be a deadline,
Speaker 2: but it says quote the studios also inquired if once
Speaker 2: a tentative agreement is ratified by the scribes, if the
Speaker 2: writers would pick up their pens and hit their keyboards
Speaker 2: again very soon afterwards, the guild, from what we understand,
Speaker 2: made it clear that they would not be going back
Speaker 2: to work until SAG AFTRA also had a new agreement
Speaker 2: with the AMPTP, reflective of the wj WGA's feeling of
Speaker 2: solidarity between the two unions that has characterized their first
Speaker 2: mutual strikes since nineteen sixty love the solidarity, and I
Speaker 2: know AYATSI is also going to have a contract that
Speaker 2: is going to need to be renegotiated next year, and
Speaker 2: it looks like guess what, folks they did. It only
Speaker 2: listen to one thing, Yeah, putting your putting the tools down.
Speaker 2: Put the tools down and pick them other tools up,
Speaker 2: which is getting in your solidarity back. So we'd love
Speaker 2: to see that. And another tweet I like is from
Speaker 2: t Pain at t Pain just put bartender just doing
Speaker 2: her job. Me just this prudo of Kevin James.
Speaker 1: At the butt of Kevin James. It's going going, but it.
Speaker 2: Is trying to be like, hey, hey, can I get
Speaker 2: your eye content? Just just a ginger beer if you can.
Speaker 2: Those are my tools.
Speaker 1: Uh tweet I've been enjoying at b r n bn E.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to pronounce that, but their display
Speaker 1: name is bbbbbbb space bbbbbbb, which I have to assume
Speaker 1: stands for bone bone bone bone bone bom bone boom boom.
Speaker 1: But the tweet I usually don't use for my tweet
Speaker 1: the ones that things that I've retweeted, but this one
Speaker 1: got me so much I had to reshare it. The
Speaker 1: tweet is what if you went to ET's planet and
Speaker 1: all of the other ET's were wearing clothes that really,
Speaker 1: oh really fucked up? How I thought about Et?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yo, what.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien
Speaker 1: and on threads at Jack Underscore, Oh Underscore Brian, and
Speaker 1: on Blue Skill. I'll have a username there eventually soon.
Speaker 1: And you can find us on Twitter at daily Zeikeeist
Speaker 1: d Daily Zekeeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan
Speaker 1: page on a website daily zeikeist dot com where we
Speaker 1: post our episodes and our footnotes. We link off to
Speaker 1: the information that we talked about in today's episode, as
Speaker 1: well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles,
Speaker 1: what's the song people might enjoy?
Speaker 2: H This is an artist, Detroit's very own John FM,
Speaker 2: and I just figure out what an appropriate title. It's
Speaker 2: called White Science, and the track is like very It
Speaker 2: feels like if, like like I don't know, like if
Speaker 2: Prince was making a shit in like the Late Nights.
Speaker 2: It has like a frinsy vibe like it's frincy and
Speaker 2: it's kind of got this like vocal modulator on it
Speaker 2: that feels a little bit princy. So and also it's
Speaker 2: just a really good track. So this is John FM
Speaker 2: with White Science.
Speaker 1: That's what Jack FM's mom calls him when he's in trouble.
Speaker 2: John FM, Get in here Now.
Speaker 1: The Daily ZEITGEI is a production of by Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio is the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast. Wherever you listen to your favorite shows, that
Speaker 1: is gonna do it for us this morning, back this
Speaker 1: afternoon to tell you what is trending and we'll talk
Speaker 1: to you all then.
Speaker 2: Bye bye