Latest / Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant / Black Tech Green Money: Baratunde Thurston of Life With Machines

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Black Tech Green Money: Baratunde Thurston of Life With Machines · Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Will Lucas hearing Black Tech, Green Money, and I have.
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  Speaker 2: A special special episode. So I used to do a
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: different podcast called of Ten Podcasts, which I told you
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: guys about.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: On the show before.
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  Speaker 2: And one of the people who was on season two,
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  Speaker 2: which would have been like twenty eighteen twenty seventeen, was
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  Speaker 2: my guest today's Baritune Day Thirst and he's a storyteller,
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  Speaker 2: Emmy nominated host, writer, producer, public speaker. Most recently, his
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: work explores ai, nature and humanity. Welcome Bartune Day Brother.
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  Speaker 3: Will good to be back as a reunion man.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'm so excited for this because you have probably
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  Speaker 2: one of my favorite talks at this past years Afro Tech,
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  Speaker 2: and I'm like, we gotta get him back.
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  Speaker 3: On this show. Thank you man, and thank you that
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  Speaker 3: was a special gathering there. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So, actually, before I even get into my questions, like
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  Speaker 2: when you go to prepare for that audience, you know
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  Speaker 2: you're talking to you know, tens of thousands of black
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  Speaker 2: people all pushing to build the future, be part of
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  Speaker 2: the future, figure out with the features gonna hold what
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  Speaker 2: is that? What does your spirit say I need to
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  Speaker 2: bring to this audience.
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  Speaker 3: That's a good question, and I think, you know, I
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  Speaker 3: do a lot of talking. It's literally my job is
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  Speaker 3: just to put words together, to put them on a
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  Speaker 3: page or a stage. And for that gathering, I knew
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  Speaker 3: I had, like the spine set. There is a perspective
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: that I'm trying to bring to the conversation about tech
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  Speaker 3: and AI today that it's like, how do we live
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  Speaker 3: well with this tech and not just survive it and
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: endure it? I think feeling into the blackness of it,
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: it's like, how can I be even more relaxed? How
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: can I breathe and feel? And I don't know, it's like,
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: what's the cookout energy? I could bring what's the the
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: spades table kind of energy where it's like, okay, it's us,
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: you know, to us. And I think the tone was
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: set really well because I've walked into that convention center.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: It's just like it's so black. Jadenna went right before me.
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  Speaker 3: That set a tone and just walking out and feeling it,
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  Speaker 3: it's like, oh, this is family, So we could have
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  Speaker 3: a family conversation, right and we can be really like,
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  Speaker 3: how can I try to amp up the level of
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: realness and playfulness and just say say what we know
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  Speaker 3: to be true in this moment, whether it's about the
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  Speaker 3: political situation, about the perils of AI, or about the
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: promise to try to build something different this time around.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think about and this again, this is
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: not even part of my questions. That's when I talked
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: for a second. Yeah, so I remember the part of
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: your talk. You're talking about how your mother. I forgot
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  Speaker 2: how you phrased it, like she you know, creatively you know,
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  Speaker 2: escorted out a computer.
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  Speaker 1: From the way you said.
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  Speaker 3: I said, she leveraged excess inventory, liberated excess inventory.
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  Speaker 1: I like that. I like that.
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  Speaker 2: And so because I think about like the kind of
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  Speaker 2: the waves of industries that specifically young black people want
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  Speaker 2: to be in.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, in like generations.
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  Speaker 2: It's like when I was, you know, coming up, like
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: we wanted to be in the music business, and then
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: there was like this, you know, I may skip over
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  Speaker 2: some but then it was like everybody wanted to be
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  Speaker 2: in media. Then everybody wanted to be you know, in
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: you know, technology, and everybody wants to be in not
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: in technology any more because they realized technology is really
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  Speaker 2: just media companies and you know.
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  Speaker 1: Social media. Think about that.
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  Speaker 2: And so when you were coming up, I imagine you
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: probably didn't necessarily want to be like in tech, but like,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: what did you want to be in and how did
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: you find your way telling these stories?
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  Speaker 3: When I was very young, I wanted to be a gardener.
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  Speaker 3: I really liked the idea of playing in dirt. Surprise, surprise,
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: little boy playing in dirt. And I had worked in
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  Speaker 3: a community garden. I grew up in DC, Chocolate City,
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  Speaker 3: and I was a member of the little community garden.
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  Speaker 3: And it's so satisfying to pull something out of the
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  Speaker 3: earth that is different than what you put in the earth.
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  Speaker 3: It's a different type of investing. But you're like watching
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  Speaker 3: something grow that's not in an account. It's like in
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  Speaker 3: your hands, and then you could put it in your
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  Speaker 3: body and the deliciousness, like I can still taste the radish.
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  Speaker 3: I can taste the first radish I ever grew, and
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  Speaker 3: mustard greens spicy, and it was just like I was
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  Speaker 3: so small and to be able to contribute. I think
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  Speaker 3: this is probably clearer now than when at the time,
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  Speaker 3: but my mother was doing a lot of work. She's
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: raising me and my sister on our own, were entering
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: levels of the crack wars and all the nonsense that
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: has you know, hit a lot of our communities and
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: still does in so many ways. And so there was
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  Speaker 3: also a sense of witnessing how much she was investing
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  Speaker 3: in sacrificing and being able to add to that. So
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  Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, I got you. I got to
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  Speaker 3: be a gardener, you know, that was it? That that
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  Speaker 3: was very obvious to me. And I get to be dirty,
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  Speaker 3: and no one can be like you're dirty. I'm like,
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  Speaker 3: it's my job.
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  Speaker 1: It's job.
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  Speaker 3: I'm actually working here, ma'am sir. So from that to
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  Speaker 3: this quite a journey, quite a journey. I know that
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  Speaker 3: I liked mouthing off. I knew that I had like
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  Speaker 3: a little gift of gab. Also because of that same mother.
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  Speaker 3: My mom had a shorter temper than I did, and
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  Speaker 3: she had kind of a higher standard for humanity I
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: think than I did, but mixed with lower tolerance, which
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: is like a hard place to be, especially if you're
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  Speaker 3: doing a lot of this parenting work alone. So she
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: had trust issues based on her childhood and a lot
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: of things. She was violated in various ways by society,
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  Speaker 3: but also lived by her own family, and so I
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: was often deployed to communicate this neighbor did something I
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: don't like, if I go over there, it's probably gonna
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: get worse. Can you write a letter? Can you make
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: a call? Can you? And so I started being deployed
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  Speaker 3: almost like a diplomat, which is a lot of work.
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  Speaker 3: So it's a mix of like her self awareness and
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  Speaker 3: also maybe some premature assignment of responsibility through this child
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  Speaker 3: to interact in the world of adults and in the
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  Speaker 3: world of language and communication. But I was good at it,
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: and I could feel the response that people had to
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  Speaker 3: me relative to her, and I think that probably helped
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: set me even more on the path of all this
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  Speaker 3: narrative and storytelling and performing and mouthing off work did
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  Speaker 3: I do.
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  Speaker 2: What is your perspective on how academic institutions how they
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  Speaker 2: should embrace AI for education and kids learning, because I imagine,
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  Speaker 2: you know, some are in the category of we just
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: don't want you using it at all. Others are like,
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  Speaker 2: you know, we're okay, but these are the parameters, and
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: but like, I don't necessarily need to learn, you know,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: a diition. I can have a calculator, And they said,
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: you said, what has When I grew up, it was like,
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  Speaker 2: what if you don't have it available?
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: What it goes everywhere with.
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  Speaker 2: Me, you know, and so like that day that they
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: imagined has never happened, it's never arived. And so what
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  Speaker 2: is your take on how parents and educators should embrace AI.
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  Speaker 3: That's that's a big one. We're actually for life with Machines.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: We're in the midst of making a mini series about
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: youth and AI our next episode. I just recorded the
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: voice over yesterday about education in particular, and it's really fraud.
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  Speaker 3: And so I would start with a lot of empathy
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  Speaker 3: for parents, for teachers, and for students, because everybody's wrestling
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  Speaker 3: with choices that none of them made. We're all we've
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  Speaker 3: all been forced to react to the choices of a
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  Speaker 3: very small group of people that have unleashed something that
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  Speaker 3: is affecting all of our lives well beyond technology and sore.
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  Speaker 3: If anybody's feeling overwhelmed by it or inadequate to the task,
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  Speaker 3: that's not on you, and you're not alone. And so
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  Speaker 3: we all need to give ourselves some grace and some
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  Speaker 3: forgiveness for not having figured it out. What we're facing
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  Speaker 3: is absolutely ridiculous. I think that there's something in the
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  Speaker 3: middle where we need to land here outright banning these
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  Speaker 3: technologies and tools does not feel realistic to me. I
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  Speaker 3: think the radical embrace of just like give every kid
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  Speaker 3: access to an AI is highly irresponsible. These tools are
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  Speaker 3: not intelligent. They are you know, the large language model
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  Speaker 3: editions of them. I should be more specific, but these
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  Speaker 3: are statistical models that are predicting math and converting that
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  Speaker 3: math into language or images, et cetera. Very convincing, often useful,
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  Speaker 3: not intelligent, and there's a lot of risk built up
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  Speaker 3: in them. So what I've seen that works. I heard
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  Speaker 3: Clay Cherokee, he runs take AI and tech education program
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  Speaker 3: for New York University, and he was saying, you know,
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  Speaker 3: if you measure a tire company, you're going to look
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  Speaker 3: for them to produce more tires as a measure of success.
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  Speaker 3: And so you add technologies, you get more tires, like
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  Speaker 3: you're winning. If you measure a history department, you might
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  Speaker 3: be tempted to measure production of history papers as a
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  Speaker 3: measure of success. But we educational institutions should not be
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  Speaker 3: in the business of like producing history papers. They should
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  Speaker 3: be in the business and really the civic mission of
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  Speaker 3: producing historians and people will understand history. And so I
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  Speaker 3: think there's I would advise people to think not just
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  Speaker 3: about the output and and generating high scores, but about
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  Speaker 3: thought process, about community membership, about self awareness and introspection.
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  Speaker 3: What are we actually trying to create here? If we're
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  Speaker 3: trying to create little robots, then keep it up and
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: talking to another one, Avi Folek, She's got a radical
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  Speaker 3: new school concept called the flight School, and it's really
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  Speaker 3: just about self discovery and mentorship and community and these
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  Speaker 3: things that could be a bit harder to train a
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  Speaker 3: model to replicate. And so with the young people say
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  Speaker 3: what kind of humans are we trying to create and
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  Speaker 3: raise and grow? And then less work backwards from that? Okay, well,
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  Speaker 3: what kind of educational system do we need to put
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  Speaker 3: in place to get that output? And I think that
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  Speaker 3: will get us off the path of efficiency scoring. How
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: fast can a kid regurgitate a data point? A human
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  Speaker 3: will never win that race? And should we should concede
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  Speaker 3: that now and tap out right. I'm not even going
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  Speaker 3: to try to play that game. That game is unworthy
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  Speaker 3: of me as a spiritual being, you know, me as
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  Speaker 3: a as a member of the community of life. And
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  Speaker 3: I think it gets real philosophical and moral. Are we
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  Speaker 3: going to define ourselves? By our output, whether it's financial
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: or textual. How many tokens did you generate today? Will
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  Speaker 3: You're gonna lose? You're already done lost, like I've lost
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  Speaker 3: by even asking you that, because my expectations of you
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  Speaker 3: are machine like as opposed to like, what did you
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  Speaker 3: learn about yourself today? Will? What did you learn about
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: or how did you contribute to your loved ones today?
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: That that's you, chatchybt ain't got nothing on that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm interested in this so many places I
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: want to go with this, but I'm interested in your
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: take on because you think about humanity a lot. You
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: think about technology and AI as it relates to humanity
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  Speaker 2: and has has humanity relates to AI? And you know,
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  Speaker 2: I wonder I'm gonna explore this while I'm saying it
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  Speaker 2: so with me, I think about how we could get
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  Speaker 2: to a day where AI has rights, robot attacking rights,
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  Speaker 2: And because you know, people today would just say, you know,
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  Speaker 2: if it goes, hey ryer, just unplug it. And I
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  Speaker 2: don't know if that works because number one, like it's
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  Speaker 2: bigger than that, but more so, like you can just
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: unplug a human you know, so while they're not biological beings,
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: they there is some there's something there, and I'm trying
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: to formulate, like, like what is the line that we
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: could approach, you know, X I, I don't know if
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: you know x X I A so x X was
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: talking at to somebody and she was saying, how there
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  Speaker 2: is something more spiritual that we are not including when
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: we talk about how robots can take over humans. You know,
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: we haven't figured out how the those works she was
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: talking about. And she was like, this is more than
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: just biology. There's something spiritual there. And I just wonder
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  Speaker 2: what you take from all that stuff.
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  Speaker 3: I just said, that's a bunch. Let me offer something
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: on the previous one before we get to the big
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  Speaker 3: spiritual existential question.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Of what is life.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: In the educational context, there are there's a value for
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: students who need a different learning style or have language
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: skills that are different from their teacher or the raw
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: material a I can really help with that. There's a
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: lack of judgment in the interaction that I know a
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: lot of young people find helpful, and humans often don't
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: know how to check that part of ourselves when we're
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: dealing with each other. That can be really useful. And
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: I've seen teachers find ways to create more adaptive lessons
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: with these tools that help them reach their students and
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: make something relevant. So I just want to name that
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: there is a positive opportunity here while also challenging the
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: assumption that everything's got to be AI, and that we
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: also need to be very get clear on our definitions,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: because the large language model model of what AI is
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: is really slippery nonspecific slope that we end up on,
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: and all the hallucinations and whatnot. The fact that these
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: tools announce constantly like I'm reasoning, I'm thinking now. It's
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: like the lady doth protest too much, bro, Like that's
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: not it's not how thinking works. Like when I'm I've
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: been thinking with you this whole time. I'm not just
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: you will now, I'm thinking now, I'm processing. If you're
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: like over, you're trying too hard and you're trying to
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: convince yourself. You know the people who built these things
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: as much as convince us that this is a truly
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: thinking machine. On this big question of and x AI
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: x I E S, how do you pronounce that name?
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: I x I A thank you. I think that we
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: have a lot of work that we could do to
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: honor the rights of the already living, the already living humans,
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: and the already living plants and animals and Meba and
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: and all of the life that's already here. And that's
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: an ancient way of being that we have we have forgotten.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: But it's not just that we have like passively forgotten.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: There's a whole economic, dominant model that has severed us
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: from this earth and allowed us to not see the
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: dignity in all life. And so the AI moment is
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: an ironic one because you see people skipping ahead to like, wet,
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: we're gonna have to be respecting the rights of these machines.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: And I'm part of me invites it because I'm like, well, yeah,
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: everything is just energy at the end of the day.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: Even those machines are just resonating at a frequency not
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: that much different from us. We're all products of the
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: big bag.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Ask my question, I was trying to figure out you
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: just really asked it better than I said it.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Yes, but we're both we're thinking out loud here look
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: at it. We should have a little transcript of our
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: thought process, I chain of thought, just to prove that
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: we're sentient. So so I want to see this the
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: rise of these machines as an invitation to respect all life.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: I don't think these machines are alive, but I do
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: acknowledge that they are part of the same energy field
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: that everything that alive is also a part of. And
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: I don't know what that distinction is, or if it's
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: just like a fuzzy gray zone between what I feel
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: comfortable with and what I feel uncomfortable with. They're the
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: I have a I have a problem with the leap
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: so on the idea that we are more than we
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: don't know how the nose works or the earny. I
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: think we've been hoodwinked to a great extent by the
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: language of those selling us AI, like let me just
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: I gotta. I want to repeat as much as possible
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: that there's people and organizations that need us to buy
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: into their vision because they have spent trillions of dollars
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: on their vision and people want their money back. So
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: this is not a civic enterprise, This is not a
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: charitable cause, This is not a nonprofit human rights spiritual even.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: This is a financial driver. And then it's getting wrapped
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: up in all this outher language about human potential and growth.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: Some of that couldn't be true, but the primary driver
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: both need to get their money back, and in service
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: of that, there have been some sloppiness with the language.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: You know, neural networks, the AI works like the human brain.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: This is not a true statement. This is not a
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: true statement. And I think for those who are I'm
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: not even that deep in the tech, but I'm closer
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: than the average person. Because you use the word neural
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: does not make it like our brain. It is a
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: radical simplification the relationships between these digital neurons and the
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: ones that are actually in our bodies, and the relationship
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: and the models that we have versus the models that
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: they have. Just because you use the word model doesn't
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: mean it's the same thing. And so our minds are
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: more than neurological connections. The way we learn has to
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: do with being embodied. We are relational, we are social.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: We literally lose our minds without connection. And the premise
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: of so much of this tech is be alone and
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: rely on us instead, rely on our models. Have bots
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: and say you don't need a person, you don't need
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: to hire people, you need to talk to people, you
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: don't need to build with people, you don't need to
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: be in love with people. You need to be friends
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: with people, right, just choose the machine versions of all
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: those things, which serves the people selling the machine versions
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: of all those things. So the robot rights conversation to
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: me cannot be separated from the big financial and economic
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: incentives of those pushing the robots. While also everything is
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: light and everything is energy, so I can't fully dismiss it,
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: but I want I want us to get to that
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: kind of universal respect for light in a high integrity way,
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: in a way that we're choosing rather than being backed
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: into a corner by it from a real narrow definition
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: of life, which is this kind of centrally controlled set
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: of agents and robots that serve a profit motive. That
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: that's not what a true is. Bro Like, we're mixing
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: too many things and calling them the same thing.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: That's really good. That's really good.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: So I know you have a take on this, and
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: I want to set a foundation here.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: So I've heard people like Bill Gates.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Satya Nattella sam Altman say, you know, well, what happens
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: when I don't have to do my work anymore, Oh,
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: I'll have more time to paint. And what I hear
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: from that is you won't have a job because you
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: got to read between the lines there, like, yeah, so,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: and I know you have a take on this, and
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: I want to give you like one more layers. I'm
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: cautious when I talk like this because it sounds like
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: I'm like a doomsday is but I do believe that
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: we have not been honest with people on There.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Will be jobs lost.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: And because people will say, you know your job, won't
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: You won't lose your job to AI, It'll get lost
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: to somebody who knows how to use AI. And I'm like,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: because AI, I may not need that job anymore online
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: or a chart. Yeah, and so the job may just
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: not exist. It's not that somebody using AI is doing it.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: I just won't need it anymore. And so I wonder
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: what your take is on the level of honesty we're
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: having with this conversation.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: And what you really believe will unfold And.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: We're all guessing here, but yeah, you know, thanks for
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: the wide margin of allowance to no one actually knows right.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: We're all speculating, guessing, bullshitting whatever. I agree that we
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: are not being honest in many ways. I have a
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: critique that I offered up to the Afrotech audience but
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: I've done it elsewhere that AI is not taking your job.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: That that sentence is not very helpful because it's not accurate.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: AI is not self conscious, it doesn't make its own choices.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: It is operating under directives and goals set by people,
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: and people are making decisions to not hire folks and
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: have robots or software do those jobs instead, and those
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: people are accountable. There's people who created these tools, there's
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: people who are hiring and firing and everything in between,
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: and so I think it's just important to maintain the
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: appropriate accountability. Otherwise we set up this awkward situation where
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: people hate robots and they hate chatbots and software and
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: the irony is like and this is getting into that
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: fuzzy zone. But like, those entities did not choose to
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: be here, right Like jem and I didn't ask to
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: be made, chat GPT didn't ask to be made. Pie
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: didn't ask to be here. We invoked them a very
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: small subset, but humans invoked them, and business leaders choose
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: to deploy. And there's a lot of incantatives that make
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: it feel like an obvious, inevitable choice, but it's still
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: a choice, you know, foam all being a really big
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: one financial pressure signaling to Wall Street that you're being innovative.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: But it's still people, that's all.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: People.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: Machines haven't done anything. So that's a that's an important
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: like major asterisk.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: You're saying choices will take your job.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Then, yeah, a human choices, human choices, and it's it
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: is somewhat inevitable, and that we have set up a
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: system where we measured a health of our economy on
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: this made up number called gross domestic product, which measures
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: certain amounts of economic activity which have nothing to do
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: with well being.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so we're already we've.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Like got ourselves play a game to achieve a high
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: score that is meaningless to the things we actually care about. Right,
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: GDP don't say anything about how your family feels about you,
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: or how you feel about yourself, or if you are
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: sick this morning or thriving this morning, if you have
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: a stomach ache, or if you feel alone, and so
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: there's other measures of happiness and contentment. And I don't
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: know how many people are dependent on snap benefits. I
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: think I think the percentage of your population dependent on
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: government assistance for basic food is a significantly more important
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: metric than gross domestic products. I think we flip the
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: world upside down in a second if we just, oh no,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: we're changing every measure to just based on what the
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: least of us can afford. So okay, all right, so
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: that's all RANTI on jobs, there's gonna be massive impact
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: on jobs, and I think it's because it's what the
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: people who've designed these things intend. There's such a funny
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: thing happening here where the folks pushing or warning us
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: about the thing that they're pushing. Right, It's like if
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: I'm standing at your house pouring gasoline all over it,
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: lighting matches, and I'm like, you know your house has
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: a high risk of learning down, I'm just like grow.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: It's you like, just stop pouring gas But then you
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: say it in such like an erudyite way, and you
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: say it in front of like a senate panel, so
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: it makes you feel you get to like cosplay responsibility
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: when you're actually playing out recklessness. And they're so intertwined,
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: and it's not I don't think it's as simple as
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: like bad people. But it's also not as complicated as
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: they're making it out to be. So they have said,
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: and I think specifically Sam Altman at Opening Eye has
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: said that their goal with artificial general intelligence is to
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: create technology that can perform, achieve, deliver, and and accomplish
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: all economically viable human labor. That's a pretty clear goal, right,
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: So you're actually so you're coming from my job, right.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: You just said you put it in your like investor
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: statements and your slide. It's all over YouTube. It's not
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: a conspiracy. So you said that the loud part out loud.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: So given that, I think we have to take that seriously.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: And then this idea that okay, we're just going to
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: have machines and software, you know, hard and soft machines
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: do all this work, which is going to liberate us
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: to be poets and gardeners and pastors and parents. I
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: think that is beautiful. I also think that as bullshit.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: I think every technology in the modern industrial era and
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: the modern capitalist era has people promoting that have promised
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: that women won't have they'll be freed from domestic work
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: because of a washing machine, will be freed from our
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: desks because of the BlackBerry. So now we're free to
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: work on our smartphones in bed and not talk to
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: our partners, and both partners have to work because we
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: have an economic system that doesn't provide enough for a family,
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: so we're I don't know. I have this poem that
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: I have this lines like, we're going to use these
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: technologies to produce too much, so we'll have to use
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: these technologies to consume too much. And I think there's
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: a cycle here where for a company head, they face
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: a very rational choice reduce your cost to maintain or
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: increase your output. Therefore, install machine labor force and shift
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: your orger chart to more synthetic than biological. And if
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: you have a bunch of people out there, there's still
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: humans out there who are not earning money anymore. Who's
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: going to buy your service or your product? And I
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: feel like a lot of folks aren't seeing that. And
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: I do love the idea of an art filled, family
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: filled community gardening future where all the mundane and dangerous
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: stuff is taken care of by some synthetic entity which
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: frees us. I just don't trust these people to get
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: us there.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because they have billionaires who want to be trillionaires
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: as their primary financial objective. They got to return that money.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: So there's no evidence that these humans are going to
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: be the ones to lead us to that promised land.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: We could create that promise land together. I think there's
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: something closer to it, but not with this bunch. I
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: think we had to swap out some of the casting.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: So I hate to ask two two layered questions of
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: double layer questions, but I think you can you can
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: handle this one. So there is so study I can
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: find it. Maybe putting the show notes, I found that
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: was talking about like use in AI and demographics and
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Asians are like the highest users of AI technologies, and
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: second is black people and.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Like white men were like way down on the list.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, that's astonishing to me that we use
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: them at such high rates. And so I want your
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: take on that and be because I think about you know,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: we it's like social media. We over index on social media,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: but we just use it. We don't necessarily buy and
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: large this is broad strokes by and large economic opportunity
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: in it. We just contribute our dances and et cetera.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: So that's part A.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: I want you to like just opine on that, okay,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: And then part B is I was having this conversation
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: last night with an artist, UH visual artists, and he
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: was talking about who he works a lot in the community,
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: impoverished people in you know, inner city neighborhoods, And he
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: was talking about how they use AI. They do use
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: shat GPT to do things, but they don't use it
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: to help them broaden their worldview to get out of
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: the situation that they're in. So they use it for
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: task orients. I need to fill out a form. It
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: helped me to figure out what to put in this line.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: But they don't think about, in his experience, why do
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: I have to fill out this form? I film in
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: this form for food stamps or whatever, and I need
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: to get off food stamps, you know. And I could
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: use it as my sparring, my mental sparring partner to
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: help me get out of the situation. So I want
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: you to appine on those two things if you want,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: Oh this is this is very thoughtful, and that it's hard, right,
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: it's not. I don't have like pre baked. That's a
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: good job for you. And I'm just gonna I'm gonna,
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna think out loud and and see what emerges.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: We black people, we are we've been in survival mode
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: in this country for a couple of hundred years and
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: just trying to survive of America, not supposed to be
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: here like this. Yeah right, we're kidnapping victims. We had
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: our language taken, we've had our families taken, we've had
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: our identities taken, our names taken, and we're still here,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: and we have contributed to and helped the nation that
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: has officially hated us become a better version of itself.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: We're caring a lot, Caroline. I think a lot of
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: that gets wired in. I think there's probably some epigenetic thing.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: There's generational trauma. There's all kinds of stuff. We're not
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: the only people to experience it. Jewish people have generational trauma,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: like all kinds of folks do. But for this question,
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: in this time, I think our Black experience in this
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: country may explain part of it, which is that we're
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: always looking for an angle. You know, we're trying to
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: find some shortcut because we were the shortcut for America.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: We were the shortcut to become an economic and military
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: and cultural power. That was us. We were the cheat code,
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: we were the machines, we were the AI And so
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: how do we try to find our own advantage and
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: our own angle. I think it explains hustle culture. I
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: think it plays a whole bunch of things like why
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: should we respect your rules? So the idea that we
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: would take up AI to help us survive and reduce
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: the pain and the time and the expense of how
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: to make it in America, that doesn't surprise me. This
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: next level required to not just play the game better,
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: but redefine the game, change the rules altogether. Be like
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: this whole game is bs. We need to shift to
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: a different field and a whole different set of plays.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: That requires spaciousness, that requires a level of group creativity,
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: that requires confidence and in a major bold vision and
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: aspiration for what's possible. And that's rare. That is rare,
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: and a lot of people probably don't feel like they
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: have time for that. When you want you want me
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: to think about to change the game, I'm just trying
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: to get on the field, right I just I just
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: want to play a little bit. I want to reduce
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: the rate of injury while I'm on the field. I
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: can't be thinking all the way up there. I don't
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: have time. I'm trying to eat, I'm trying to sleep,
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to provide and so in the system broadly,
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: speaking creates those conditions, so we don't feel like we
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: have the time to think about changing the rules of
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: the game. But that is what's required. And my hope,
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: my hope. You know, we're in a Kalulambitu's time. Man.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: We've got a lot of crises going on the climate.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: The earth is trying to shake us off, holding a
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: shoney on daga chief or a lions and he's like,
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: you know, the earth is a dog and where the
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: flees and the dog is shaken. The dog is shaking
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: real hard and that's happening in climate. Obviously, democracy in
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: our political situation is nuts. You know, we have a
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: secret police force, not so secret police force, but hiding
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: their faces, snatching people off the street, tackling folks at target.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: That's not normal, right, That's not a healthy way to live.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: And then nobody has faith in the economic situation. You know,
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: our sm P five hundred and third of it is
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: seven companies as a highly leveraged situation for an economy
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: to be in, to put it gently, So with all that,
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: I predict, I speculate that this system is not going
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: to hold and we will be forced into higher thinking
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: because the thinking that got us here, don't work no more,
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: and we're going to have to change the rules of
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: the game. And there are people who are already doing
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: that against us, you know, against against humans, against black people,
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: against life itself. They want ceo monarchs, and they're saying
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: it out loud. They think if you criticize them and
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: want to put rules on business behavior, that literally makes
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: you the Antichrist. That's Peter Teel, Like that's who that's
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: He's on a lecture circuit talking like that, like this
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: is the big thinker, right, this is this is their
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: best and he's saying pretty clearly that he wants monarchy
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: and that his critics are the Antichrist. Okay, so I
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: don't think the system's gonna I don't think that system
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: is gonna like hold. So we might as well take
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: the opportunity as as they're going to destroy a historical
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: choice is going to lead to the destruction of so
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: much of what we have known. Let's figure out what
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: we actually want to build here. Let's let's see can
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: we make a democracy that works. Can we make an
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: economy that is just and is fair? Can we give
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: this land back to the original people. Can we get
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: the reparations that we are owed.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Can we.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: Have dignity for all of us? And what would that
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: look like? That? So I hope that we choose that
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: and are violently forced into that level of creativity. But
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: either way, I think that level of choice and that
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: level of creation is what's required and is what's coming.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: I'd just rather do it in a nice way like
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: when a podcast.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Would you.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: Than facing down somebody who thinks that I'm not Antichrist
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: because I don't because I think it's business should pay taxes.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: What are you smoking? Bro?
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: So I officially asked zero of the questions that I
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: have prepared. But yeah, you're easy to talk too.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: I love this. So in closing, like what are you
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: working on? So just do we know? Like what's where?
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Where can we find Baritune day?
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: Working on so many things? Life with machines is the
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: main thing. This is, This is our show about us
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: more than it is about technology and and prompting us.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: You know, what do we want and how do we
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: take this moment to try to set us on the
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: best possible path with all the momentum that's that's already
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: underway in terms of this AIE. So that's life with machines,
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: with YouTube channel, we're on substack, we're in your podcast app.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: And then me, I'm Baratunde b A r A t
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: U n D. I live on all the platforms under
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: that name. And the other thing I'm working on is
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: it's not so much a business thing. But I've hinted
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: at it but not been elicited that we have this
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: big co creative opportunity ahead of us in the United States.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: But I think in the world more broadly, in light
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: of the two hundred and fifieth birthday of US in
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty six Declaration of Independence, about to celebrate a big, beautiful,
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: awkward birthday party given the current circumstance, and I think
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: we have a truly, a legitimately beautiful opportunity to press
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: a kind of reset button and say, all right, what
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: are we about now? Why are we together? What vows
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: would we take to renew our bonds with each other?
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: And what is our vision for what this place should become.
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: Somebody else is already thinking about that. They want it
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: to be a dark, racist Texas place where a few
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: people hoard all the benefits I'm going to go out
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: and the limits, say most people don't want that. So
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: let's get together and let's remember who we are. And
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: so I've been working on a project that restores some
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: of the knowledge of democracy that was indigenous to this land,
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: practice here by the first people still here doing it.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: And there'll be more on that through those channels. But
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: that is about centering interdependence and remembering who we really are,
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: not who they need us to be so they make
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: more money off of them.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Black Tech Green Money is a production to Blavity, Afro Tech,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Black Effect podcast Networking Night Hiart Media.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: It's produced by Morgan Debaun and me Well.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Lucas, with the additional production support by Kate McDonald, Sah
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: and Jada McGee. Special thank you to Michael Davis and
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Love Beach. Learn more about My Guess Other Technish Off
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: is an innovators at afrotech dot Com video version.
• 38:56
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• 38:57
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• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Peace and love,