Artificial Intelligence and Chat GPT: Promising the World, but for the "Better?"

Vince Kern  
Ever since Joe and I were walking our dogs as children, we always like to look at things on the horizon and wonder about how they might be in the future. And after a lot of years of doing that, I think we've gotten pretty good at it. So today, we're going to wonder about something that is on the horizon. It's artificial intelligence. And we're going to tell you a little bit about what it is, what we found out about it, and where we think it might be going. And we think it's an important topic, because it definitely already has an impact on many people's lives, and sooner or later, will have an impact on all of our lives. So Joe, you've done some research into definitions of what it is maybe you can kick us off with that.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, we're not friends and everything you need to know about a particular topic. We are friends in wonder, and we are certainly wondering about the impact of AI. And, you know, it comes to us in a in a package that it's going to make our lives better. And probably to some degree, whatever we're going to define as artificial intelligence has made things easier for us. But the question is, where is it going? And and as you said, it's, it's been in the news lately, because there are billions of dollars being invested in this technology. And my guess, is Vance, that people investing in this technology are not doing it strictly for altruistic reasons to make the human experience easier. My guess is there might be some money to be made, or some. I don't know, control control was the word I was thinking of. But I was trying to come up with a euphemistic way of saying it. But let's first start with what is the definite definition of artificial intelligence? And why are we talking about it today? Because first of all, artificial intelligence Vince goes back as far as calculators, you know, are simple computers when we were kids. And in they have like, a definition that is that really breaks down like there's this concept of weak AI and strong AI. And weak AI is more of a single function thing. They even say that automated driving vehicles is a form of weak AI, because it doesn't have to do any real deep learning. It's just taking a computer program and functioning according to a certain set of rules. Siri is another perfect example, or Alexa, you know, the personal assistants, there's learning thermostats that we're all becoming familiar with. And then there's strong AI. And that's really what's in the news today, this chat. GPT is a perfect example of it. And those are, you know, we've we've also are all aware of the robots that are out there on the internet that are capable of learning our habits and giving us advertising and that kind of thing. Those are a little more sophisticated learning bots,

Vince Kern  
and physically mimicking humans, physical robots, not just computer robots,

Joe Luther  
right. So the, the chat GPT is more along the lines of this, this language type robot that you can talk to, and will actually go very deep into learning what it is you're asking, and in answering accordingly.

Vince Kern  
And we're gonna give some examples of where that is today. But I wanted to circle back to the weak AI examples and start talking about some of the things we're wondering about, which I guess could be described as unintended consequences, in some ways, or maybe its intended consequences. You know, and that's what I think we're wondering about today. And not taking a stance. I know, we sound maybe a little cynical about this at this point. But let's talk about some of these weak AI examples. So a calculator is more of a one function tool. And basically what it's doing is a function of the brain for you and giving you as a result, okay, that's fine. But personal assistants like Siri and Alexa and learning thermostats, and self driving vehicles, which are all now part of many, many, many people's lives are examples of data collection that can be used for other things as well. And that's where weak AI examples. Start us wondering about some of the things that might be on the horizon. Now, I think it was Colorado. You mentioned when we were researching this podcast that literally took control of smart thermostats during a power outage and to conserve energy so that they could get back on line easier. You know, that begs the question. And okay, well, what if we sign an agreement with our energy provider that gives them control and down the road, they just decide that our house needs to be this temperature. And that's it. And we don't have control over our thermostats anymore.

Joe Luther  
Right, right. Yeah. And I remember Vince, when we were talking about this, there was somebody described this, as, you know, these these technologies as kind of trying to parse out the difference between an interesting and fun toy that brings, you know, brings convenience to our life, or a trustworthy tool. And I think that thermostat example is a perfect breakdown of that dichotomy.

Vince Kern  
Smartphones, okay, the phone was a one function device for I don't know how many years, hundreds, at least 100 years, it was a one function device, you pick it up, you call somebody, and you talk to them. And that's all it could do. Steve Jobs comes along and says, I got this new shiny thing. And it's a phone, but it's also a camera. And there are these things called apps. Remember, when you didn't know what a phone app was. And this app can tell you what the weather is, oh, my, how convenient. And, and, you know, we all glommed on to it, and look at how habitual our relationship with the phone has become. Now, if Steve Jobs had come out, and said, this, this thing in the future of this thing is your eight year old child will be able to access videos of people scantily dressed. And they are trying to imbue them with a self image that they want to share for marketing purposes or cultural purposes or whatever. I don't think we would have been so eager to embrace the technology, certainly, we would have asked a lot more questions, which is what we're doing today. Right? Right,

Joe Luther  
exactly. It breaks down that idea. Is that a great ploy for improving our life? Or is it a untrustworthy tool that's monitoring our every moment, you know, when we're on the internet, or talking or searching or doing anything? So yeah, that's what we're getting at with this.

Vince Kern  
So the way this became news, bigger news to us, is that it's becoming bigger news all over. And Microsoft has just announced in the last couple of weeks at Davos, a $29 billion investment in open AI, which is the research lab that built chat GPT. Interestingly enough, open AI was founded by Elon Musk. And so Microsoft has invested a huge amount of money in chat GPT, which was released in November. And as part of the Davos convention, Wall Street Journal has actually had a forum on artificial intelligence and the Microsoft CEO was talking about how we should all embrace this, because it's going to make our jobs easier, it's going to eliminate tasks that has already been done for us. And then we'll be able to do other important tasks and create higher paying jobs. Now, I am not so sure that's been the way technology has, has been, you know, proven to do for the worker. But that's a whole nother podcast. But there were many headlines that came out of that in the Wall Street Journal and stories that we took a deep look at. And we're gonna mention a few of these. And this kind of tells you where it's at today, let's talk about the education aspect of it. Because unbeknownst to me, artificial intelligence is already being used by students to write essays and other things in various disciplines in the classroom. This is a vulnerable time for students because literacy has declined. And according to this company that is called Copy links, which is a company that sells tools to detect plagiarism and AI. Plagiarism appeared in nearly 50% of all academic submissions during the pandemic, as opposed to 35% before the pandemic. Now, one could say that might just be because AI has developed at a faster pace that more people are using it, but it's giving students a tool to to cheat. Now, there's a big debate about whether one should use AI and find its value or whether it should be banned. And in fact, it's currently banned in some school districts like in New York and Seattle and Los Angeles. And, but there was a professor in one university, and this is what he did. He wanted to have to see if it could be a valuable tool. So he had students write a 600 word essay using chat GPT in Then think of stronger questions to elicit a stronger response by Chet GBT to make it better. And then finally edit the essay for tone and tailor it to the intended audience. And his goal was to hope to inspire students to learn to incorporate the tools rather than to cheat better

Joe Luther  
to actually use your mind when you're using the tool rather than using the tool to supplement or, or replace your reasoning process.

Vince Kern  
Exactly. And he had a great quote, he said, just because there's a machine that can help me lift up a dumbbell doesn't mean my muscles will develop. In the same way, just because there is a machine that can write an essay, doesn't mean my mind will develop. And another article talked about what what jobs people should fear, replacement in, right out, flat out sort of replacement. And some of them, I'm going to read this list and we can chat about them real quick. One of them is near and dear to my heart, which is publishing. And in AI has been proven to do a pretty good job with copy editing is something that it can it can summarize and making an article concise and grammar. And it really does a pretty good job.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, I think we all have familiarity with that when we write a text in get told, you know, the underlines or the italics or whatever, come up to show us. Yeah, and it has to do with grammar as well. Yeah,

Vince Kern  
absolutely. But when you ask it to do an essay, it will produce a story with citations. But people have found that more often than not, and this is a quote, the citations are just made up. And that's a known failure right now. And the guy says, honestly, we don't know how to fix it. But let's move on. There's Wall Street, people who do you know vast amount of works in Excel sheets that could be done by by AI? interns who do all kinds of research, graphic designers, graphic designers, this was interesting. You could literally tell a AI to build a website, and have it returned to you. And it's a pretty good one, that that could have value. I'm not saying again, we're not saying these things don't have value. We're wondering about where they might go now. Near and dear to your heart, Mr. Counselor, Esquire, Joe Lulea. Lawyers, lawyers, I mean, they're talk I you know, think about it from your perspective. How do you see that?

Joe Luther  
Well, I don't think I'm ready to let a computer defend me if I'm being charged with something in a court of law. But I can imagine that if it can reason together any kind of a legal argument, it would probably do a pretty good job of it.

Vince Kern  
And there is right now a company that is offering an attorney a million dollars, if they put an earpiece in in a case in front of the Supreme Court and use the chatbot to argue their case.

Joe Luther  
I'm not sure that the Supreme Court would be a part of that theatrics yet, but maybe, who knows?

Vince Kern  
Well, and the name of the company is something about fixing tickets. So I think there may be dabbling in Okay,

Joe Luther  
so I might let a robot handle my ticket citation, but I'm not sure if I'd want anything to more serious than that. At this point. When we were talking about this, you said this is like an octopus with a million different arms? I'm my guess is it's probably more than a million dead in arms.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, yeah, it is. And then that's part of the problem of it being I want to use the word insidiously inserted into human culture. You know, and then in frankly, that's what kind of like, that's what scares me a little bit. Here's another point that that article made, which I think is interesting. They were talking about the fact that artificial intelligence can now render drawings and artwork and all kinds of things. And music that that artificial intelligence can create music. So how does that impact things like ownership of music? If, if somebody uses artificial intelligence to do a cover of my hit song, and turns it around? You know, am I gonna get paid for that? I mean, there are definite royalty laws and things that are out there right now. Or better yet, if a person uses an artificially, or an AI created piece of art to start with, and then paints it into their own canvas. Is it? Are they really an artist? Or are they an editor or what you know, what do they become? Now? Those are all sort of real philosophical questions, but

Joe Luther  
and ethical and you know, this idea that computers can create music. I have no doubt that computers can create music, whether it's something that speaks to the soul of a human is a whole different topic. There was a great musical that I think Brian May from Queen had running in I'm in London for I don't know, for at least 10 years, I know I saw it when I was there is I think it was called We Will Rock You. And in the whole idea is it was this futuristic setting where humans had become like robots, and they had become devoid of emotion and a little bit like a dirty dancing, kind of a thing where if you outlaw you know, fun and passion, you know, this is what the human experience looks like, of course, in that musical, they ended up finding some old CD or whatever of Bohemian Rhapsody and, and slowly these, this resistance of kids started embracing music with an actual human beat to it instead of this computerized, human computerized music. And I guess my feeling is, that is an interesting topic, or an interesting way to transition into the next topic, and that is, what do we do with this Ay ay ay? And what, how does this really enhance the human experience? And are we engaging in transhumanism?

Vince Kern  
All technology has been managed to be scaled up, so this is definitely going to get scaled up, it's gonna get better, it's gonna get faster, it's gonna get less expensive. But you know, you have people like Microsoft behind it. You talked about, you know, you don't know if it's the correct answer. You also don't know what, what is the input, so you get this garbage in garbage out? concept. And that, to me jumps to the question of who's controlling the information that's input. So, you know, I'm just gonna jump hypothetically, 510 years from now to say, I use Chet GBT, or, or any other AI, anything that's out there AI thing that's out there. And, and am I going to get a slanted answer based on things that are censored, like ideas that we just don't want people to talk about five to

Joe Luther  
10 years from now, that's already happening, Vince. I mean, we already know that search engines and, you know, any kind of information that we try to get on the internet is going to have the slant of whomever programmed it that's just, to me, that's the that's the other fundamental issue is that if we're going to turn over decisions, and some, some people, some philosophers and in political scientists think that we should be turning these kinds of decisions over to machines? Yeah, I'm very concerned about that. Because we, you know, we don't know who's programming these things and with what biases. So yeah, and I think that's the big issue, before we just embrace this new shiny toy of AI, we have to wonder about it a little bit. And that's, I guess, that's the point of today's episode,

Vince Kern  
I want to talk about one more article, quickly, because it really kind of gets to the, to the deeper conversation about where AI might be headed. And there was a Princeton professor of psychology and neuroscience, who specializes in consciousness. And we talk a lot about consciousness and this.

Joe Luther  
Well, yeah, I think I think we should actually do an episode on consciousness one day, but that's another story.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, and I agree. But he talks about the dangers of building machines that are smarter than us, and giving them control over our world. And he talks about whether machines need to be programmed with empathy, and all of the things that humans have that computers don't necessarily exist from a psychological perspective. And what he says is, for humans, consciousness is not just about self, but part of an evolutionary tool that helps us create an empathetic, pro social behavior. His take is basically that, why he thinks they should be programmed in that way. Because without consciousness AIS will be sociopaths,

Joe Luther  
right? That's the whole thing. I had a feeling that's where you're going with this. And of course, talking about how the computer is a perfect example, you know, in the Space Odyssey movie, that's a perfect example of how a non empathetic computer can take over functions and, and dole out sociopathic behavior. And I think that's the big issue here. Because what we're asking in a wandering way is how much do we want to give to artificial intelligence? And there's many people out there that think that we should start turning over decision making to artificial intelligence. And I say, Wait a second, because these answers are not

Vince Kern  
what kind of what kind of decisions are Are you talking about Joe?

Joe Luther  
Well, what I was gonna say is that these answers aren't black and white, a perfect example would be in talking about Davos, one of the fellows who's instrumental in some of the, the agendas and and policies of, of the World Economic Forum is Yuval Noah Harari. And he gives along example, you can you can YouTube it, but he gives a long example of how if we just want to decide what kind of car should I buy? You can, some people would say that you should let artificial intelligence make that decision for you rather than do it yourself. And that it would figure out all the things that all the data points that you need to know about you personally, as well as what's going on in the world geopolitically, and give you the best informed decision. And I say, Wait a second, I want to make that decision, I don't want to be turning over a decision that isn't black and white, to a machine that's only capable of black and white.

Vince Kern  
So, on one hand, you have the aggravating steps of selecting a car, which it could be a convenient tool to help you narrow down but on the other hand,

Joe Luther  
some people think it's aggravating, but some people think it's exciting, right? Yeah, exactly. It

Vince Kern  
takes away the joy of making a personal decision about something that is so expensive. Now, that's a that's a, you know, it's maybe a stretch to say that a computer will mandate what kind of car you should drive. But then again, maybe it's not.

Joe Luther  
And then there's another example that I saw in my research on this topic, and that's this. There's this company out there called ever after a i and it's a, it's a service that's out there right now, so that if a loved one dies, you can program that you there's a program you got to fill out or whatever, and input the data, and it will create a avatar that becomes your deceased loved one. And some will say, Oh, okay, that's a great idea. You'll give an example like the the couple that's been retired for 30 Some years and lived happily ever after. And then sadly, one of them dies. Well, you can continue on with that loved one with this avatar. And some people might say that's a great idea. What do you think?

Vince Kern  
Well, let's play that out a little bit. So if you can create a virtual avatar on a computer and have a conversation with a loved one, whose past, that might be a very soothing and helpful tool in your grieving process, I suppose. I wonder about the combination of a physical avatar, a robotic avatar, and imbuing it with that same personality, if you will,

Joe Luther  
well, and we're getting there with technology. And my concern is that if, if you if you say, Okay, this is fine for helping people with grief, well, then what about the lonely hearts that don't know how to have a relationship in the first place? There's going to be a program out there for virtual avatars to have relationships with. And I think that speaks to this whole idea of trans humanism, and whether we let this technology go too far in the human experience?

Vince Kern  
Well, okay. Transhumanism is something I'm not as familiar with, as I think I should be. It's something I'm going to continue to learn more about and wonder about, but can you help me out with the definition of transhumanism?

Joe Luther  
Well? Yeah, I mean, there's probably textbooks I'm sure there are textbooks and in courses in college on transhumanism, so again, no expert here. But I think the fundamental issue with Transhumanism is this idea that we there, these people who promote it, think that technology can help raise the human experience to a to a higher level or a better level. And so you really start out with this concept, that the human experience is something that requires technology so that it can be improved. I think, one of the early examples of it, because this goes back, this idea goes back a long way. One of the early examples of it is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, where you use kind of a hybrid human with technology that creates this creature that I think is an apropos example to us today. Because it's this whole idea of be careful what you create with technology. And of course, Frankenstein came back to bite its creator. And I think that's a good way to continue asking the question, what do we want to do with this technology and how do we want to allow it into Our lives. Well, Arthur,

Vince Kern  
didn't you define I think was interesting when you talked about the different types of tools that are being used in trends, transhumanism philosophy, and it's not just like computer to computer artificial intelligence, there's other things that

Joe Luther  
right anything that can help improve the human experience. So they say, there's like these force super technologies out there that can that can help with that nanotechnology.

Vince Kern  
That's like where where you would in just something into a bloodstream? And it goes, and yeah,

Joe Luther  
I might, I might say, Gene, gene therapy, or whatever, you know, there's biotechnology, which is a hybrid of that. And information technology, which is what we're talking about today. And in cognitive science, all of these things are about kind of turning the human into something different, like a superhuman is what they what they say. And again, I'm not here to debate whether that's a good idea or a bad idea. It's just that when you talk about artificial intelligence, and in this new form of super deep learning, but that's out there, aren't we looking at it with our eyes wide open? And in? Do we really want this coming into the human experience? And our relationships? And, you know, there's all sorts of discussion about virtual this and virtual that? How far do we want to go with this?

Vince Kern  
Right, and there are some apps out there and tools that can detect essays or other things generated by artificial intelligence. So, you know, even that I wasn't aware of until we started looking into this. So I think you know, to sum it up, this is something that with our busy life, again, with our jobs, our parenting, all the things that take our time away from looking into some of these things. We just wanted to bring it out, look on the horizon and say, Whoa, this thing is coming at us fairly quickly, faster than I think we realized until we got hit in the face with some of this news. And we hope that by exploring it today, you have a better understanding of what's out there and are going to continue to wonder with us about this topic.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, there's a lot of sub topics that we discussed as well, that could become future episodes, because we're gonna keep an eye on this. And I think it's something worth wondering about, and we'd love to hear any feedback about it as well.

Vince Kern  
Absolutely. So hit us up at talk at friends in wonder.com. Share your thoughts on this concept. Tell us if you've had experience with us, and thank you for listening today. We'll be back next time with more interesting topics, from friends and wonder