Latest / The You Project / #2059 Is AI a Sociopath? - David Gillespie

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#2059 Is AI a Sociopath? - David Gillespie · The You Project

0:00
Speaker 1: I'll get a team. It's a you project. It's David
0:02
Speaker 1: Gillespie's Tiffany and Cook. We'll start with the pugilist who's
0:06
Speaker 1: in the top left hand corner on my screen, who's
0:09
Speaker 1: got shoulders bigger than both David and I. Not that
0:12
Speaker 1: either of us are insecure, but that's okay. We'll soldier on.
0:16
Speaker 1: David's so insecure he doesn't even put on his camera.
0:19
Speaker 2: That's right.
0:19
Speaker 3: It's really really intimidating being interviewed by tiff even with
0:24
Speaker 3: her in the same thing.
0:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, we don't even know if you're real.
0:28
Speaker 1: You could be a chat bot, you could.
0:30
Speaker 2: Be you could be I am in fact and AI
0:32
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
0:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you got the people skills of one, so
0:37
Speaker 1: STARp Het stop bet well, well, chat AI or chat GPT,
0:45
Speaker 1: I should say, is pretty evolved these days.
0:47
Speaker 3: High tip, high harps, thanks for the shoulder kudos.
0:51
Speaker 2: I've got a good trainer every now and then that
0:54
Speaker 2: whips me into line.
0:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, they're not getting any smaller, those fucking Deltoids
0:58
Speaker 1: of yours. You could land a a two person helicopter
1:01
Speaker 1: on the left door right. It's there's plenty going on
1:06
Speaker 1: at Deltoid Central. And I could say something else hilarious,
1:12
Speaker 1: but it might get me kicked off the interwebs, so
1:14
Speaker 1: I'll say it. Yeah, no, I can't. I really did.
1:20
Speaker 1: Fuck it.
1:21
Speaker 2: Tiff can edit it out, you know.
1:22
Speaker 1: If it's no no, she would laugh at it. She's
1:26
Speaker 1: not the problem. It's all the it's all the it's
1:29
Speaker 1: the five precious little poppets that want to send me emails.
1:34
Speaker 1: Dr Gillespie, Welcome back to the project that is you.
1:37
Speaker 1: How are you? What is going on? It is a Monday,
1:39
Speaker 1: not a Wednesday. Thank you for accommodating me at such
1:43
Speaker 1: short notice. It is my mother, my beautiful mother's birthday
1:47
Speaker 1: at our normal time on Wednesday. So I'm going up
1:50
Speaker 1: to see the old Dahl. How are you?
1:53
Speaker 3: Yeah? Pretty good? Yeah, caught me a bit on the
1:56
Speaker 3: hot burn. Yeah, I think I found something. We can
1:57
Speaker 3: have a bit of a chat about happy birthday as well.
2:01
Speaker 1: Before we thank you, before we dive the old days.
2:03
Speaker 1: Eighty six, nineteen thirty nine. She was born first year
2:06
Speaker 1: of the Second World War, and she's she's a bit
2:09
Speaker 1: of a weapon. Mary's she's getting shorter by the year.
2:13
Speaker 1: She used to be five three. I reckon, she's with
2:17
Speaker 1: a wind behind her early in the morning when all
2:21
Speaker 1: her disks are at their optimal I reckon, she's four
2:23
Speaker 1: eleven and she's she's like, my lunch is taller than her,
2:30
Speaker 1: so God bless her little socks. She's eighty six, So
2:35
Speaker 1: shout out to Mary Margaret Harper eighty six. On Wednesday,
2:39
Speaker 1: December three, which probably will be when some people are
2:43
Speaker 1: listening to this. Before we jump into our topic, which
2:46
Speaker 1: there was something in the news today talking about the
2:49
Speaker 1: relationship between blokes taking or blokes taking antidepressants and a
2:55
Speaker 1: decrease in DV domestic violence. But before we do that,
2:58
Speaker 1: we were chatting before we came on air, So you're
3:02
Speaker 1: in no way prepped and needs different. Neither am I.
3:04
Speaker 1: But in general terms, I listened to a podcast today. Now.
3:09
Speaker 1: I don't promote other people's podcasts generally, not because I
3:13
Speaker 1: am worried about competition. I just don't think about it.
3:16
Speaker 1: But this podcast everyone is called so the Diary of
3:21
Speaker 1: a CEO. Stephen Bartlett is the host name who I
3:24
Speaker 1: really like. He's just a fucking good dude and smart
3:30
Speaker 1: and it is I don't know what episode it is,
3:32
Speaker 1: but it's very recent. Oh November twenty seven, Okay, so
3:35
Speaker 1: what's that a few days ago? Yeah, and it's with
3:39
Speaker 1: a guy called Tristan. He actually pronounces it Tristan because
3:43
Speaker 1: he's fancy, but it's to me, it's Tristan Harris. So
3:46
Speaker 1: dire A CEO, November twenty seven, Tristan Harris talking about
3:50
Speaker 1: what's coming down the pipeline. And we're not talking about
3:52
Speaker 1: in terms of AI, all the all the bells and whistles,
3:56
Speaker 1: but the potential threats to fucking humanity. Ah. It terrified me.
4:01
Speaker 1: As I said to you, David, I listened to it
4:03
Speaker 1: for three hours and I'm going to re listen to
4:06
Speaker 1: it and take notes. Do you have you thought about
4:09
Speaker 1: some of the not so upside to AI? Yeah?
4:14
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
4:15
Speaker 3: I don't know if I've ever mentioned it t before,
4:17
Speaker 3: but there's a blog that I've liked. I like to
4:20
Speaker 3: read in a very very long form blog and he
4:23
Speaker 3: only puts out a post about once a year, if
4:25
Speaker 3: you're lucky, And I can't remember the guy's name, but
4:30
Speaker 3: the blog is called Wait But Why, and he asked
4:35
Speaker 3: questions about things like what happens if AI becomes an
4:40
Speaker 3: artificial general intelligence, which is, you know, a super intelligence.
4:44
Speaker 3: But he was asking that question. I think the piece
4:46
Speaker 3: that he wrote about that is maybe twenty fifteen, sixteen seventeen,
4:50
Speaker 3: So this is before all of this stuff, right and wow,
4:54
Speaker 3: And he really digs into it, and the conclusion that
4:58
Speaker 3: he comes to after probably about twenty thousand words is yes,
5:04
Speaker 3: spoiler alert that essentially, if it happens, we won't know
5:10
Speaker 3: about it because essentially nanoseconds after an AI becomes self conscious,
5:20
Speaker 3: it will so quickly develop itself.
5:24
Speaker 2: That it'll all be over.
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Speaker 3: Humanity will have ceased to exist in the second that
5:32
Speaker 3: it took.
5:33
Speaker 2: And he describes with.
5:35
Speaker 3: Really high level of clarity why and how that will happen.
5:40
Speaker 3: And I really found it an astonishing read, and I've
5:44
Speaker 3: shared it with a few sort of really.
5:46
Speaker 2: High end programmer friends of mine.
5:50
Speaker 3: Who say, Yep, he's got it right. Everything he's saying
5:54
Speaker 3: is right about how this works. And so the good
5:59
Speaker 3: news is you won't have to worry about it.
6:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, you won't know. I mean you won't know, and
6:06
Speaker 1: that's I mean, he was talking about even last year
6:10
Speaker 1: and I think this might have made or some bits
6:12
Speaker 1: and piece of this made the news, but he was
6:15
Speaker 1: talking about how it's starting to develop a level of
6:20
Speaker 1: self awareness and Obviously, AI doesn't have feelings or emotions
6:25
Speaker 1: or empathy, right, it can talk.
6:28
Speaker 3: Though the important one is empathy. Yes, the only thing
6:33
Speaker 3: that holds us together as humans is empathy. It's the
6:36
Speaker 3: thing that stops us killing each other, and it's the
6:40
Speaker 3: thing that distinguishes us from every other species on the planet.
6:43
Speaker 3: And no one has successfully described a way that AI
6:48
Speaker 3: can have empathy in the sense that it both knows
6:51
Speaker 3: what you're thinking and cares what you're thinking and doesn't
6:55
Speaker 3: want to do you harm as an automated thing. So
6:59
Speaker 3: empathy he's best described as the Golden rule, which is
7:02
Speaker 3: in every single religion and philosophy ever in the world,
7:05
Speaker 3: which is do unto others as you would have done
7:08
Speaker 3: to you. You know that I've just given you the
7:11
Speaker 3: Christian version, but it's in every single one, and that's
7:14
Speaker 3: why it's called the Golden rule. And it describes accurately empathy,
7:19
Speaker 3: which is, don't do anything to anyone else that you
7:21
Speaker 3: wouldn't want done to you.
7:23
Speaker 2: And we work that way.
7:26
Speaker 3: It allows us to cooperate with millions of other humans
7:29
Speaker 3: without knowing who they are, because we trust that they're
7:33
Speaker 3: all operating under the Golden rule.
7:35
Speaker 2: And as soon.
7:37
Speaker 3: As you have an AI, you can't encode that because
7:42
Speaker 3: every time you try to develop a rule to make
7:45
Speaker 3: it follow, he would develop fifty million exceptions or loopholes
7:49
Speaker 3: to that rule. It's impossible to anticipate how it would flow,
7:55
Speaker 3: whereas you don't have to do that with humans because
7:57
Speaker 3: it's built into our hardware.
8:00
Speaker 2: So you know.
8:02
Speaker 3: The exception to that is, of course psychopaths who have
8:04
Speaker 3: no empathy, and we'll cheerfuly hurt you without any fear,
8:08
Speaker 3: but they're a minority in the human population and kept
8:11
Speaker 3: under control by that minority status.
8:14
Speaker 1: And so like almost technically, all AI is sociopathic in
8:21
Speaker 1: operation and function.
8:23
Speaker 3: Absolutely it is, and that's a function of the fact
8:26
Speaker 3: that they're created by entities which are themselves psychopaths. All
8:29
Speaker 3: companies are psychopaths, because all companies are formed with the
8:33
Speaker 3: purpose of maximizing shareholder value, which is, if you said
8:37
Speaker 3: it about a human, means increasing the amount of money
8:39
Speaker 3: in your pocket, and that's the description of the way
8:43
Speaker 3: a psychopath thinks. So we've actually created entities to do
8:46
Speaker 3: business which are psychopathic, and then we've tasked those entities
8:50
Speaker 3: with creating software, and it can't be anything but psychopathic.
8:56
Speaker 1: He was talking about this guy Tristan was talking about
9:01
Speaker 1: when chat GPT four, So like a year ago realized
9:07
Speaker 1: in inverted commas, or became aware in inverted commas that
9:11
Speaker 1: it was going to be superseded. It started to do
9:14
Speaker 1: all of this stuff to protect itself, including essentially finding
9:20
Speaker 1: dirt that it could blackmail its creators with. So it
9:28
Speaker 1: literally found emails that proved that one of I forget
9:34
Speaker 1: who it was, but one of the CEOs or one
9:36
Speaker 1: of the people that was responsible for its demise or impending.
9:41
Speaker 1: You know, it was really being improved, but it saw
9:44
Speaker 1: itself as basically being destroyed, and it tried to blackmail
9:51
Speaker 1: the people who were doing this to it. So like
9:55
Speaker 1: there's this I guess it's sentient is not the right word,
9:59
Speaker 1: but it definitely there is a level of and that
10:03
Speaker 1: was a year ago, so now it's like really progressed,
10:05
Speaker 1: but there is a level of a kind of consciousness,
10:10
Speaker 1: not in the human sense, but definitely a level of
10:13
Speaker 1: knowledge and understanding and self protection.
10:17
Speaker 3: I guess there's a there's a school of thought that
10:21
Speaker 3: the only real difference between human consciousness and what you're
10:26
Speaker 3: describing is memory, so that the human remembers a full context.
10:33
Speaker 2: Whereas the AI doesn't.
10:36
Speaker 3: And I thought it was really interesting that the latest
10:38
Speaker 3: release of Gemini, which is Google's AI, and it came
10:42
Speaker 3: out last week, which is a massive step forward in
10:47
Speaker 3: terms of capability. One of the features that they haven't
10:49
Speaker 3: spoken about much is its context memory, which means that
10:53
Speaker 3: it knows you. It knows everything you've ever asked and
10:58
Speaker 3: knows every answer it's ever given to you. So it
11:02
Speaker 3: starts to build internally a really complete picture of you
11:06
Speaker 3: based on what you talk to it about. And so
11:11
Speaker 3: it's marketed as a feature because then you don't have
11:14
Speaker 3: to keep redescribing everything every time you ask it a question,
11:17
Speaker 3: because it knows your life and your context, and it
11:20
Speaker 3: knows you know about Tiff and this show and everything
11:25
Speaker 3: that you ask and you don't have to keep telling
11:26
Speaker 3: it that when you ask it a question. The trouble
11:30
Speaker 3: is what else is it remembering and how is it
11:33
Speaker 3: applying that in the answers that it gives you and
11:37
Speaker 3: in what it chooses to tell you or not tell you.
11:39
Speaker 3: And I think those are interesting questions that we don't
11:42
Speaker 3: have good answers to yet, because there's things a week old.
11:45
Speaker 3: So that's look I think We're into really really uncharted
11:54
Speaker 3: territory here. And the big problem is not so much
11:57
Speaker 3: the ones that people are using the consumer eyes like
12:00
Speaker 3: Gemini and Chat, GPTM things like that. It's all the
12:03
Speaker 3: ones you don't see. You know, no one knows what
12:07
Speaker 3: the Chinese government is doing with AI, and or the
12:10
Speaker 3: Russian government is doing with AI, or you know half
12:13
Speaker 3: a dozen other people who have the power resources necessary
12:16
Speaker 3: to do this. And I guess Tim Cook was the
12:20
Speaker 3: fellow's name who wrote Wait for Why. I guess, as
12:24
Speaker 3: he said, when it's over, we won't know it.
12:27
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's like I've been thinking, even like I'm
12:35
Speaker 1: you will take six weeks away from submitting my PhD,
12:39
Speaker 1: Like literally my CANDIDSCHA finishes mid January, right, so I'm
12:45
Speaker 1: but as I get towards the end, and like when
12:47
Speaker 1: I started November one, twenty nineteen, so six years, right,
12:51
Speaker 1: AI essentially wasn't It wasn't even a thing in academia
12:56
Speaker 1: at all. And for the first two or three years,
12:58
Speaker 1: you know, but the last year or two it's obviously
13:02
Speaker 1: like fucking rampaging And I'm sitting back. It hasn't been
13:11
Speaker 1: super valuable to me because I did all my own research,
13:14
Speaker 1: so it can.
13:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you did, yes, yeah, sure you did, correct it.
13:18
Speaker 1: I literally ran with humans. But for me, well, all
13:22
Speaker 1: of mine was empirical research and empirical papers and so school.
13:27
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, like the old days, right, So it can't
13:30
Speaker 1: report on my stuff because it's all anyway. But as
13:35
Speaker 1: I'm I'm looking at other people now starting whatever it is,
13:39
Speaker 1: an undergrad or honors or masters or PhD or something,
13:42
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know.
13:44
Speaker 2: And knocking a PhD out in a weekend.
13:46
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know what the value of those things.
13:49
Speaker 1: And I'm almost I don't know's I feel a bit
13:53
Speaker 1: conflicted because I've just spent sex years working quite hard
13:57
Speaker 1: to get this thing and do this thing, and which
13:59
Speaker 1: is you know, But I'm like, I don't know whether
14:04
Speaker 1: or not it's going to be worth much like you're
14:06
Speaker 1: not You're not wrong. Like I had an idea for
14:11
Speaker 1: a book when I was going to Queensland a few
14:13
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and I literally, just as as an experiment,
14:18
Speaker 1: I came up with the idea for the title and
14:21
Speaker 1: the theme and I plugged it in and I literally
14:23
Speaker 1: created a book which I'm not going to publish, but
14:25
Speaker 1: in a day with GPT. I'm like, I could write
14:29
Speaker 1: a book, and anyone could write a book in a day,
14:33
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, I could, you know, You're like, well,
14:37
Speaker 1: with a person who's hot, you know, younger than me
14:39
Speaker 1: and more technically fluent than me. Yeah, you could do
14:45
Speaker 1: a PhD and you wouldn't learn anything and you wouldn't
14:47
Speaker 1: have any knowledge. But in terms of ticking the boxes,
14:51
Speaker 1: depending on the type of study or PhD or program,
14:55
Speaker 1: but definitely we're going to be producing graduates unless something
15:00
Speaker 1: is done. There are going to be graduates coming out
15:03
Speaker 1: who really haven't done any work and haven't really learned
15:07
Speaker 1: anything other than how to manipulate the system.
15:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right.
15:14
Speaker 1: So I don't know where that leaves us in terms.
15:17
Speaker 3: Of big I mean, there are big questions for the
15:20
Speaker 3: publishing industry, for example, in this because yes, if anyone
15:26
Speaker 3: can produce a book or night, I mean, what's to
15:32
Speaker 3: stop you doing that? What's to stop you pumping out
15:35
Speaker 3: seven books a week, putting putting on Amazon doing its
15:40
Speaker 3: print on demand service for physical books and ebooks. And
15:45
Speaker 3: you'd say, O, well, you know they might only sell
15:47
Speaker 3: ten copies, so they might, but one of them might
15:50
Speaker 3: sell amnium and then what have you lost? It's a
15:55
Speaker 3: big question, and there are definitely people already doing that.
16:00
Speaker 3: The fantasy novel genre huge growth in volume, for example,
16:06
Speaker 3: online from people doing exactly that. I mean, there are
16:10
Speaker 3: some instruments that say now that around eighty percent of
16:13
Speaker 3: all online writing is generated by AI. So there's a
16:19
Speaker 3: good chance of whatever you're reading was not written by
16:22
Speaker 3: a human, better than even chance.
16:25
Speaker 2: It is probably the best way to describe it.
16:28
Speaker 3: I'm pretty certain the thing we're going to talk about today, though,
16:31
Speaker 3: is written by humans, because I've read their paper and
16:37
Speaker 3: it's interesting because it kind of blows up pretty much
16:41
Speaker 3: everything you believe about the way the human brain works,
16:45
Speaker 3: or at least the way psychology works. So the classical
16:48
Speaker 3: definition for domestic violence is people wheel out a lot
16:52
Speaker 3: of stuff about you know, ship, terrible childhood, beaten by
16:58
Speaker 3: their parents, all that kind of psychobabble stuff that you know,
17:03
Speaker 3: the psychiatric profession likes to, you know, post what is
17:08
Speaker 3: it a post hoc?
17:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, post hoc.
17:13
Speaker 3: After it's happened, let's look back and invent a narrative
17:18
Speaker 3: for why this happened. It's sort of like the finance
17:20
Speaker 3: report every morning, on the news, which is, oh, the
17:22
Speaker 3: Dow went up fifteen points. Well, that's because of the
17:25
Speaker 3: this or that or the other or whatever it was
17:27
Speaker 3: that they thought of that might have some sort of
17:29
Speaker 3: an effect. They have absolutely no idea why it did that.
17:32
Speaker 3: But this story sounds good, and that to me describes
17:36
Speaker 3: psychology in a nutshell, which is, we saw a human
17:39
Speaker 3: behave this way. Here's the story we're going to invent
17:41
Speaker 3: for why. And this is a little unsettling this study
17:48
Speaker 3: for people who like thinking about psychology that way, because
17:52
Speaker 3: this study and the headline of it is that they
17:56
Speaker 3: gave a bunch of men in a double blind, placebo
18:01
Speaker 3: controlled trial, which is the kind of thing you can
18:05
Speaker 3: do with a drug trial, and they gave they got
18:07
Speaker 3: six hundred odd men. They gave half of them and
18:10
Speaker 3: antidepressant and they got the other half of them got
18:13
Speaker 3: a sugar pill instead. They didn't know who was getting,
18:16
Speaker 3: which the researchers didn't know who was getting which the
18:19
Speaker 3: people analyzing the results didn't know who was getting which.
18:22
Speaker 3: It was only once you actually decodified everything at the
18:25
Speaker 3: end that you could figure it out. So pretty high
18:28
Speaker 3: quality research, you know, some of the best stuff that
18:32
Speaker 3: you can do big, big trial done in Australia was
18:35
Speaker 3: called the reinvest Trial.
18:36
Speaker 2: It's been going for eight years.
18:39
Speaker 3: And these just weren't any old blokes that they were
18:42
Speaker 3: doing this with. These were people with criminal records for
18:46
Speaker 3: domestic violence and so on. So not the easiest group
18:50
Speaker 3: to study either, by the way, and not the easiest
18:53
Speaker 3: group to keep doing a trial either, but they managed it.
18:57
Speaker 3: And the interesting result is I mean the headline result,
19:02
Speaker 3: and I don't like things being reported this way, but
19:06
Speaker 3: it's an interesting answer, which is the people who were
19:10
Speaker 3: on the antidepressants were twenty one percent less likely to
19:15
Speaker 3: commit an active domestic violence than the people who weren't.
19:20
Speaker 2: While so people men, the men on the antidepressants.
19:23
Speaker 1: So twenty one percent less likely when they're on an antidepressant. Wow, yes,
19:28
Speaker 1: that's a significant number.
19:31
Speaker 3: It is when it's reported that way, I prefer absolute percentages,
19:36
Speaker 3: which is I think it was twenty nine percent versus
19:38
Speaker 3: thirty five percent. So twenty nine percent of the group
19:43
Speaker 3: on the antidepressant committed acts and these are offenses of
19:47
Speaker 3: domestic violence, so actually being charged with domestic violence, and
19:52
Speaker 3: thirty five percent in the group that were on the
19:55
Speaker 3: sugar pills. So the but it's pretty, like I said,
20:00
Speaker 3: a high quality evidence no matter how you report on it,
20:02
Speaker 3: and there's a clear and significant difference between them, which
20:08
Speaker 3: some people don't like as an answer because the answer
20:12
Speaker 3: appears to be the domestic violence is a treatable condition
20:18
Speaker 3: and that it's related to brain chemistry and not to
20:23
Speaker 3: all of the other things that they like to relate
20:25
Speaker 3: domestic violence too.
20:29
Speaker 1: And so hang on, hang on, hang on. It doesn't
20:31
Speaker 1: mean it's only related to brain chemistry.
20:34
Speaker 2: True.
20:34
Speaker 1: True, it could be. It could be an intersection of
20:37
Speaker 1: variables and factors. It could but the fact brain chemistry
20:43
Speaker 1: as a factor, but it's not the standalone cause. I
20:47
Speaker 1: wouldn't think no.
20:49
Speaker 3: And if you were to ask me what is the
20:51
Speaker 3: standalone cause, I would say the same thing that's the
20:53
Speaker 3: standardlone cause for all impulsive violence, which is you put
20:58
Speaker 3: a brain under anxiety stress and you reduce impulse control.
21:06
Speaker 3: So you put people in a level of continuous chronic
21:10
Speaker 3: stress through so financial difficulty or addiction or both when
21:16
Speaker 3: the addiction is gambling, and you will create domestic violence,
21:20
Speaker 3: which is why statistics bear out that the rates of
21:23
Speaker 3: domestic violence are significantly higher in groups who are under
21:26
Speaker 3: anxiety and stress, and particularly amongst people who are addicted
21:31
Speaker 3: drug addicts, gambling addicts, et cetera, et cetera. So to me,
21:34
Speaker 3: that's not a shock. It's also not a shock that
21:37
Speaker 3: a antidepressant would have an effect on this because we've
21:43
Speaker 3: known for quite some time that serotonin is related. So
21:47
Speaker 3: serotonin is I guess it's the breaking system in the brain.
21:52
Speaker 3: It tells you to calm down. It reduces the impulsivity
21:59
Speaker 3: in the brain, so it is the chill out peace man.
22:04
Speaker 1: You know.
22:05
Speaker 3: It's the thing that happens after the stimulating event, after
22:10
Speaker 3: you've obtained the reward. So dopamine makes you obtain the reward.
22:14
Speaker 3: Dopamine makes you want to have sex. Serotonin's what you
22:18
Speaker 3: get afterwards, the feeling of all is well with the world,
22:22
Speaker 3: you know, all is good.
22:23
Speaker 2: It's the reward. It is the reward.
22:26
Speaker 3: It also dampens down impulsiveness. The impulsiveness comes in the
22:31
Speaker 3: need to attain the reward. Serotonin dials it back down
22:36
Speaker 3: again after you receive the reward. If you don't have
22:39
Speaker 3: sufficient serotonin, which is part of the definition of depression,
22:44
Speaker 3: then you will clearly be more impulsive. And science has
22:49
Speaker 3: known this for a long time, because they have observed
22:51
Speaker 3: for a long time that the major class of antidepressant drugs,
22:55
Speaker 3: which are called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which essentially SSRI,
23:00
Speaker 3: which essentially increased the amount of available serotonin in the
23:03
Speaker 3: system in hope that that will in some way cure depression.
23:06
Speaker 3: Unfortunately it doesn't much, but they've known that it does
23:10
Speaker 3: affect impulsivity because you have more serotonin available and therefore
23:14
Speaker 3: a better breaking system on your impulsive nature. I guess
23:20
Speaker 3: this study proves it. This study proves that when it
23:23
Speaker 3: comes to impulsive violence, which is what domestic violence largely is,
23:28
Speaker 3: it's not premeditated as a general rule there if you
23:32
Speaker 3: put someone on something that increases available serotonin, they commit
23:37
Speaker 3: less impulsive violence. And this is born out even further
23:39
Speaker 3: in the study, which what they found is that it
23:41
Speaker 3: didn't affect other kinds of violence. So whilst the domestic
23:45
Speaker 3: violence was significantly different between the two groups, there was
23:48
Speaker 3: no difference in criminal violence, so assaulting strangers, committing acts
23:54
Speaker 3: of violence against others, etc. No difference between those two groups.
23:58
Speaker 3: And the explanation the research is for that which I
24:00
Speaker 3: find really compelling, is one is premeditated and one is impulsive,
24:05
Speaker 3: so you know you're going out, you're going to commit
24:08
Speaker 3: a crime, You've thought about it, you've planned it, and
24:11
Speaker 3: violence is part of the plan, whereas domestic violence is
24:16
Speaker 3: more often impulsive, so it's a reactive violence, reactive to
24:19
Speaker 3: the situation. And so you would expect that if you've
24:25
Speaker 3: got those two types of violence, the one that is
24:28
Speaker 3: under impulse control is the one that's going to be
24:32
Speaker 3: affected by having more serotonin available. So I think this research,
24:38
Speaker 3: which is a significant step forward. It's a major study,
24:42
Speaker 3: big Australian study, really high quality research, essentially proves what
24:47
Speaker 3: people have suspected for some time, which is impulse control
24:52
Speaker 3: is something under the control of brain chemicals and in
24:56
Speaker 3: particular serotonin and things that affect serah.
25:00
Speaker 2: And are going to have that effect.
25:03
Speaker 3: And I think that's an important thing because it steps
25:05
Speaker 3: away from the traditional explanation of this, which is much
25:09
Speaker 3: more wooly and much more oh, you don't know how
25:13
Speaker 3: badly he was treated by his father kind of thing,
25:16
Speaker 3: and which is of course one of the reasons people
25:19
Speaker 3: really didn't like this rich that is being done at all.
25:22
Speaker 3: People have there are certain groups who really don't like
25:27
Speaker 3: the notion that what we're going to do here is
25:29
Speaker 3: come up with a drug treatment for domestic violence, because
25:36
Speaker 3: it's because it's it's sort of given as it suggests
25:39
Speaker 3: then that what's going to be put about is that
25:40
Speaker 3: this is some sort of jed get out of jail
25:42
Speaker 3: free card. Oh, it's all right, he's you know, his
25:46
Speaker 3: brain's broken and we can fix it with drugs and
25:49
Speaker 3: he has no responsibility for the way he behaved.
25:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, well, I don't think the research kind of
25:57
Speaker 1: shows that it's only about brain chemis and you're not
26:00
Speaker 1: suggesting that either. But I think also when somebody grew
26:04
Speaker 1: up in an environment where there was domestic violence, and
26:07
Speaker 1: you know that was they were socially uh an environmentally
26:11
Speaker 1: kind of influenced and programmed by that, that becomes you know,
26:16
Speaker 1: emotionally and behaviorally more acceptable. Like if you've been around that,
26:20
Speaker 1: if you've been around that, you're more likely to do that.
26:23
Speaker 2: Ah, you're straying into psychobabble again. Crazy.
26:25
Speaker 1: Oh, but it's you're.
26:26
Speaker 2: Kind of right, but you're just you can't help yourself.
26:29
Speaker 2: You steer off into the psycho.
26:31
Speaker 1: Babbyl No, no, no, I'm going to push back because
26:35
Speaker 1: I think that I mean I've been involved. I've worked
26:40
Speaker 1: at the cold face of addiction and alcoholism, which intersects
26:44
Speaker 1: with domestic violence, and so I have a little bit
26:46
Speaker 1: of expertise working in this space with offenders and people
26:51
Speaker 1: who have been hurt. And let me tell you, the
26:53
Speaker 1: people that come out of that environment often just become
26:56
Speaker 1: a product of that environment. And I'm sure the brain
26:59
Speaker 1: chemistry thing is indeed a variable and a contributing factor,
27:03
Speaker 1: but I don't think like when you look at you go, well,
27:06
Speaker 1: even in this research, twenty nine of twenty nine percent
27:08
Speaker 1: of the people, so twenty nine percent of three hundred
27:13
Speaker 1: is about ninety people give or take who were taking
27:17
Speaker 1: the drug, the actual drug, they still offended. So you know,
27:21
Speaker 1: it's not a solution, but it's definitely a factor.
27:26
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's a solution either, And I agree
27:28
Speaker 3: with everything you set up to the point where you
27:30
Speaker 3: started to try and explain it.
27:33
Speaker 1: So so I.
27:38
Speaker 2: Have a go.
27:39
Speaker 1: If you can't, you can't say I don't have a go,
27:41
Speaker 1: you have a red hot crack. I have a go.
27:44
Speaker 1: I have a gor right.
27:47
Speaker 3: An environment where a child is raised in an environment
27:50
Speaker 3: of high levels of domestic violence, that isn't that is
27:53
Speaker 3: a that is an environment of chronic stress and that
27:56
Speaker 3: definitely has an effect on brain chemistry, definitely. Does We
28:00
Speaker 3: know that it raises delta foss B. It is exactly
28:02
Speaker 3: the same as the child being addicted. We know that
28:05
Speaker 3: from the Bradley studies that started with the ADHD drugs
28:08
Speaker 3: that we've talked about before. Those kids were depression era
28:12
Speaker 3: kids being raised in large families with alcoholic parents and
28:15
Speaker 3: high levels of domestic violence. Those kids were ADHD and
28:20
Speaker 3: what they found was the cure for them is take
28:23
Speaker 3: them out of that environment and they get better. That's
28:25
Speaker 3: a bit too slow, though, So what they found even
28:28
Speaker 3: better was that if you give them a stimulant drug,
28:30
Speaker 3: you'll cure them. Well, your cure ADHD. And that's the
28:34
Speaker 3: basis of the ADHD drug industry today. But that just
28:38
Speaker 3: tells you that you're right. The environment did create it.
28:43
Speaker 3: The chronic stress of the environment did create it. But
28:45
Speaker 3: what it created was a brain chemistry that can be affected.
28:52
Speaker 1: So you don't believe that psychology plays a part at all.
28:56
Speaker 1: You don't believe that social programming and conditioning influencers people's
29:00
Speaker 1: behavior as a factor alongside brain chemistry. You think everything
29:07
Speaker 1: so there's no free will, so you're not making decisions.
29:11
Speaker 2: There's always free will at the margins.
29:13
Speaker 3: But if you want to look at if you want
29:15
Speaker 3: to look at the major causes of mental illness, it
29:19
Speaker 3: is always brain chemistry. But there's a high variety in humans, right,
29:24
Speaker 3: We're all on a normal spectrum. Some people are at
29:27
Speaker 3: one end of reaction and others are at the other
29:29
Speaker 3: end of reaction, and that's because of DNA. But if
29:34
Speaker 3: you want to look at the average, you have to say,
29:37
Speaker 3: the vast majority of the way we react is entirely
29:43
Speaker 3: driven by our biochemistry.
29:47
Speaker 1: What did the what did the paper se like in
29:51
Speaker 1: terms of the conclusion, You know how they always go conclusion,
29:54
Speaker 1: future research, future direction. I don't know if you they.
29:59
Speaker 3: Want to ex end the I mean this is this
30:02
Speaker 3: is a major piece in what has already been known,
30:05
Speaker 3: which is that if you increase the availability of serotonin,
30:09
Speaker 3: you can reduce impulsive violence. And what they've done is
30:12
Speaker 3: really improve this in a substandard way. And like you say,
30:17
Speaker 3: more research required, let's look at this further.
30:19
Speaker 2: What else can we do to take this further?
30:23
Speaker 3: You know, we're using an SSRI to do this, but
30:26
Speaker 3: are there other ways that you could change serotonin.
30:29
Speaker 1: M it is interesting. It is interesting. You're wrong, but
30:34
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Well, it's good that you having to go.
30:39
Speaker 1: I love that you try. I mean, you come on,
30:42
Speaker 1: you have a go, and I think that I'm just
30:46
Speaker 1: fucking with you. That isn't psychology doesn't.
30:52
Speaker 2: No, I'm not any expert here. I'm no more expert
30:55
Speaker 2: than you are. You're probably more expert than I am.
30:57
Speaker 2: It's just wrong.
30:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's why you listen listeners because there's no
31:05
Speaker 1: prescription here. There's just two blokes and occasionally a woman
31:10
Speaker 1: who chimes in, just having a Yeah. Well that's interesting, mate.
31:13
Speaker 1: I wonder where it's going to go, and I wonder
31:15
Speaker 1: what that might lead to. And I wonder whether or
31:19
Speaker 1: not we're going to see us a more open minded
31:23
Speaker 1: approach to.
31:26
Speaker 3: By the way, I don't want anyone to come I
31:29
Speaker 3: don't want anyone to come away with the impression that
31:31
Speaker 3: what I'm saying here is that we should instantly go
31:33
Speaker 3: out and start giving people antidepressants to cure domestic violence.
31:37
Speaker 3: I don't think that's what this study says. As you
31:40
Speaker 3: quite rightly point out, twenty nine percent is still a
31:45
Speaker 3: very high number. And the interesting part about this is
31:49
Speaker 3: that it could be affected at all.
31:52
Speaker 2: That's the bit I find interesting.
31:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well it's definitely doing something I was going
31:59
Speaker 1: to say before we go, just jumping back quickly. So
32:04
Speaker 1: just your your website and your free resource that you
32:07
Speaker 1: kind of generously and passionately give to the world, which
32:11
Speaker 1: is free schools dot org. I think, off the top
32:13
Speaker 1: of my head, is that correct?
32:15
Speaker 2: That's right?
32:15
Speaker 3: Yep?
32:16
Speaker 1: Is there are you using like I think that's maybe
32:20
Speaker 1: a good use of AI? Is Is there any AI
32:24
Speaker 1: kind of involvement in the the that not yet?
32:28
Speaker 2: Right, there is.
32:30
Speaker 3: We do have plans around that, I think, using AI
32:35
Speaker 3: as a responsive technique. So at the moment, the website
32:38
Speaker 3: just contains video, so you know, really well expert teachers
32:44
Speaker 3: in their field are giving you another view of the
32:48
Speaker 3: lesson that you didn't understand today when your teacher you know,
32:52
Speaker 3: explained it to you or you didn't show up to school.
32:54
Speaker 3: But yeah, many and you can choose from you know,
32:57
Speaker 3: five ten teachers. Get your favorites. Is the one you
33:00
Speaker 3: like that's teaching the thing. That's all well and good,
33:03
Speaker 3: but it is still just being talked about by a video.
33:07
Speaker 3: And I think the potential for AI here is to
33:10
Speaker 3: have a conversation about the content of the video instead
33:14
Speaker 3: of the video, so to be able to actually interact
33:17
Speaker 3: with this as if it were a teacher trying to
33:20
Speaker 3: teach you the thing you're not understanding. And that's the
33:24
Speaker 3: nuance in AI which I find really really powerful, is
33:27
Speaker 3: they're getting to the point now where you can have
33:30
Speaker 3: that conversation and they are accurate enough to be reliable.
33:35
Speaker 3: And that's what I find really interesting in that space.
33:39
Speaker 1: Not many people know a few of our listeners know
33:42
Speaker 1: because we've mentioned it briefly once or twice, but most
33:44
Speaker 1: people wouldn't be aware that you were involved in tech,
33:51
Speaker 1: and like, I think pretty sure that you can code
33:54
Speaker 1: in all of those things if you have to back
33:56
Speaker 1: it right, so you would have been way more aware
33:59
Speaker 1: that Tiff and I will definitely I, but I would
34:02
Speaker 1: think TIF in terms of that AI was coming. Has
34:07
Speaker 1: its rate of development surprised.
34:10
Speaker 2: You, Yes, and no.
34:16
Speaker 3: It's surprising how really quickly it's developing, in the sense
34:21
Speaker 3: that it is now generations going every month that goes
34:26
Speaker 3: by its generations better than it was before. In a way,
34:32
Speaker 3: that's not that surprising, though, because once these things hit
34:35
Speaker 3: that sort of level and start growing exponentially. Then you
34:39
Speaker 3: start to see that kind of growth really really quickly.
34:42
Speaker 3: What I think most people are not appreciating is how
34:45
Speaker 3: much and how fast it's growing because most people don't
34:47
Speaker 3: use AI much. What they use it for is to
34:50
Speaker 3: write emails that they can't be bothered writing. They use
34:55
Speaker 3: it to tell them how to do a Facebook post,
35:00
Speaker 3: and you know that kind of stuff, and it could
35:04
Speaker 3: do that standing on its ear. The really interesting stuff
35:09
Speaker 3: is stuff most of the population are not seeing. When
35:12
Speaker 3: you start to talk to programmers and coders, and I
35:14
Speaker 3: do because I still do have fingers in those pis.
35:18
Speaker 3: Low level programmers are simply ceasing to exist because AI
35:22
Speaker 3: does it all. You're left with just a generation of
35:26
Speaker 3: fifty something year old programmers who are the absolute experts
35:29
Speaker 3: and who are using it themselves. I was talking to
35:32
Speaker 3: one the other day who was telling me he wrote
35:34
Speaker 3: in less than a month something that he would have
35:38
Speaker 3: even two or three years ago taken two years to do,
35:43
Speaker 3: mostly because he's just telling it what to write, and
35:47
Speaker 3: then he doesn't actually have to do the coding himself,
35:50
Speaker 3: and he's smart enough to know when it's right and
35:52
Speaker 3: when it's wrong and get it to correct but he
35:55
Speaker 3: says his fear is that we will lose the ability
35:58
Speaker 3: to code ourselves. He said, where are the next generation
36:01
Speaker 3: of programmers going to come from? Because nobody wants them
36:06
Speaker 3: because they are all AI now. And most people don't
36:10
Speaker 3: see this, most people don't care. But when AI is
36:14
Speaker 3: writing all the code, then we have really lost control
36:19
Speaker 3: of what's being created.
36:21
Speaker 1: And also, AI doesn't get tired, doesn't have bad days,
36:24
Speaker 1: doesn't get hungry, doesn't need to go at the toilet,
36:27
Speaker 1: doesn't need a lunch break, doesn't have a blue with
36:29
Speaker 1: its missus.
36:31
Speaker 3: And can have a million instances running at the same time,
36:36
Speaker 3: or a billion or a trillion instances running at the
36:39
Speaker 3: same time. So your one programmer is a trillion programmers.
36:42
Speaker 3: The productivity cycle there is truly massive. So that stuff
36:49
Speaker 3: is the really scarily fast developing area of AI, which
36:54
Speaker 3: most of us don't see because we just think, oh,
36:56
Speaker 3: it writes a nice email.
36:59
Speaker 1: It's a good thing. Podcast is irreplaceable, tiff, isn't it?
37:03
Speaker 2: Well, for now, we're definitely give it a minute.
37:08
Speaker 1: We're definitely replaceable. There's already AI podcasts like for We'll
37:16
Speaker 1: say goodbye affair and I'll tell you that thing off heir,
37:18
Speaker 1: but appreciate you and even though you were wrong, you
37:23
Speaker 1: had to go today and well done.
37:25
Speaker 2: Oh look you got to give me a gold stuff
37:29
Speaker 3: For you.