Latest / 6 Ps in AI Pods (AI6P) / 🗣️ AISW #129: Margo Arrowsmith, USA-based psychotherapist and storyteller

Transcript

🗣️ AISW #129: Margo Arrowsmith, USA-based psychotherapist and storyteller · 6 Ps in AI Pods (AI6P)

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone, this is Karen Smiley.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to 6P's in AI Pods.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: This post is part of our AI6P interview series on AI, software, and wetware.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Our guests share their experiences with using AI and how they feel
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: about AI using their data and content.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm delighted to welcome Margo Aerosmith from the USA as my guest today on AI,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: software and wetware.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Margo, thank you so much for joining me on this interview.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Please tell us about yourself, who you are and what you do.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I am a therapist.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've been one for 45 years, which suggests my age a little bit.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I will tell you, most people don't, I'm sure.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 78 years old,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm very much obviously an advocate of keeping busy and active,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: and that solves a lot of problems that people are having.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I write.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Once a month, I do an open mic where I tell memoir-type stories that I've written.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And looking for more of that.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm pretty busy.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And recently I got a new patient,
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: actually at my office,
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing him online, but who had been using both chat and Claude for therapy.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Claude said to him one day, you know what?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: You sound like you're in trouble.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think you need a therapist.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't that shocked.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was actually more intrigued than shocked that intrigued me
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: because I'd never really encountered it before.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been doing a lot of research and thinking about it and talking to people.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I met you.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote a book about 10 years ago about how to keep your parents home,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: keep your job and your life, save your fortune and your sanity.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: But now I'm in the midst of writing another book.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: This one is about AI and therapy.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Big chunks of the book are written totally by me.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I am actually writing the book with chat.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I say my piece for a chapter,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: and then chat comments,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: and then we have, and I'm putting it in quotes, a discussion.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that is consistent,
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: which I find fascinating,
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: is chat keeps telling me that doing therapy with chat is dangerous.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we get into it a little bit in the book, but I will shut up and wait for your question.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: My next question is always to tell us about your level of experience with AI
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: and machine learning and analytics,
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: if you use it professionally or personally, or if you've ever studied it.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: In the first place,
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: we were the first people in town to get a TV,
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: so sometimes when I'm hiring some kid to teach me how to do something on
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: the computer, I say, We had the first TV.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one, so be patient with me.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was first in practice is when they invented this weird thing called
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: an answering machine.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And many of my friends refused to use it.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like if somebody left them a message, they wouldn't even pay any attention to it.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or if somebody asked them for a message, they wouldn't give one because it was this evil thing.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we had these big discussions about whether or not it was ethical for a therapist.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where I'm coming from, okay?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: I probably use the computer more than most people my age,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: certainly most people who've retired my age.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a little more experience,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: but as you probably experienced,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I got a little freaked out about making sure where is the link in all of this
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: because I'm still one of those people in that generation.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I had never even thought about chat as therapy until this patient walked into my office.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had started to use and now I'm not doing it anymore.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk to you about this later.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: I had started to use it for my open mics because they are limited as to how much time you have.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I went over a couple of times to my sugar in.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked chat to take out stuff so that I could fit it into seven minutes, which it did.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would say,
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: wait a minute,
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: you took out something important and you left in something less important.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't totally chat, but that's what I was using chat for.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now that we're writing a book together, I won't even let it do that for me anymore.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very particular, especially on Substack.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I am very meticulous that I am writing everything on there.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is not anybody but me.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I do use it for a lot of research or like I'm in a big fight with the town now
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: about on-street parking.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I use ChatWrites on my letters because it just does a better job than I do.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not personal.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's not coming from me.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I have a fight that I want to do and I'm happy to let it do it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: But my own writing, I don't do it anymore.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's interesting talking about the way that you write and not using it
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: for your writing, especially on Substack.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: So we're recording this one week after Substack announced
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: that they integrated this pangram AI detection function into Substack.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that is,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: but it doesn't sound, oh, they're detecting when people are doing that.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what you're saying?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what they're detecting is they're looking for certain patterns that they think
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: from their research has been associated with someone using an AI tool,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: a large language model to help them write it.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: They're more accurate than a lot of the other AI detections out there.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you saw,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: there was this case not long ago where a student
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: at Green Hope High School was falsely accused and she went to the Board
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: of Education,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: 14 year old kid,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: went to the Board of Education,
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: say, look, this other teacher disproved that the AI detection was wrong.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote this myself.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you need to have policies, you need to have rules.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a whole side branch there.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Pangram is more accurate than a lot of the tools out there,
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: but they are still very vulnerable to false positives for people
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: who didn't grow up speaking English as their first language or people
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: who have gotten used to writing in a more academic way.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: Or people who are neurodivergent.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Some of the patterns that they see are very much like the patterns that you see with AI writing.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: People talk about the use of M dashes and things like the other tells or use of certain words.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's flawed.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote an article last week about why I will not use that and I won't allow it
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: to be used on SheWrites AI or my own newsletters and just trying to get them
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: to make it less obtrusive because it's some people using the term witch hunt.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: What we're basically doing You can't really measure whether writing is good with
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: a score that looks at the patterns of the words.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Does it have a good idea behind it?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: Does it say something meaningful?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: There's human judgment that's needed, right?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's sort of substituting the score for the human
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: judgment.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I find the witch hunt AI.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's the whole thing.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: It is an AI based.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's not generative AI.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like a chat GPT.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's a different kind of machine learning.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: But it's still AI.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: So the idea that, well, AI is bad.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: So let's use AI to try to tell if other people are using AI and then use that
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: to make a judgment about the writer.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: That whole dynamic is just not healthy.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: You want to be able to have a sense of trust between writers and readers.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it just puts this scoring machine gateway in between.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I just feel like it's very unhealthy.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's an AI detection.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: Function and it's built into the platform now.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: You bring up something for me that I'd actually like to ask about
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: because I'm starting to use more Jungian in my work and my writing and my work
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: and there are two or three people although they don't have people names
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: that I follow that have great Jungian articles and it's all listed but
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: then I realized that it started to write the way chat writes
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: because there's short paragraphs like one or two sentence paragraphs And
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: then somebody said,
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: well, you know, a lot of that is, and I thought maybe that must be AI.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: But what you're saying is it may not be because chat's trying to weed that out.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then I'm wondering, well, how do I write?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because they certainly know more than I know.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then I realized that whether they're people or whether they're AI,
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: they don't talk about personal experience.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And my articles are about,
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: it's teaching people things,
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: but it's also the personal experience memoir type of thing that's very important.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So whether they're people or whether they're AI,
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: what I hope will set me apart is that I won't just give an academic dissertation
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: about what Jung did or said or was.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, could you just enlighten me a little bit on that?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's the controversy of the week and there's been a lot of discussion about it
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: and I've been posting a lot about it and people were finding me as a result
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: that never found me, so it's kind of weird.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: The main thing is that I don't write with AI and
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: so it's not like I feel like I'm going to disable it
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: because I don't want somebody saying,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: oh look, here's proof that you used AI when you didn't.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really think that's likely,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: but at the same time,
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: I know a lot of people who write who did not grow up speaking English.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: When you learn English as a second language,
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: You learn it with these simpler constructs and shorter sentences.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: So people who are already overcoming this burden to be able to write in English on
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: the site are more likely to be accused of using AI to do it.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to participate in that.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's just not right.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why I'm opting out and I'm not going to use it on anybody I read.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's like you said,
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: if someone writes and there's no personal experience, there's no human behind it.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think I can tell that when I read it and I don't need a machine trying to score it
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: to tell me if it's worth reading or not.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: But a fascinating conundrum here.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: And they did announce it.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give Substack credit for that.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: They announced that they were rolling it out.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: The article, well, I won't get into that, but they did announce it.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not like on LinkedIn where they just quietly said, we're going to start using your data.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like that,
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: but There's a lot of concerns about fairness and turning the culture
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: into something that's more distrustful.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: I can read it.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: If there's no person behind the reading, I'll just mute them, block them, whatever.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: I don't need to read that.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: There's plenty else to read.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, God, yes.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yes.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know you have some questions you want to ask,
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: so I don't know if this is the time to talk about the Santa Wicked Witch article
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: that I wrote,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: but that is something that kind of goes along with what we're talking about here.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Actually,
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: my next question is about sharing a specific story when you've used AI
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: or machine learning and how well it worked for you or didn't.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that fits, but yeah, please tell your story.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Gosh, probably about eight years ago, I was listening to NPR on the radio.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: They have a lot of storytelling shows, which I love.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the frustrating thing is when you're in your car,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: you don't get to write down who wrote it or anything.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you're just like, ugh.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a wonderful story.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Mrs. Claus had died.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Santa Claus was a widower and it was March.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the elves were very worried about him because he was very lonely.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was sitting in this room all by himself, drinking hot chocolate and very worried about it.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so they fixed him up on a blind date.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes to this local pub to meet his blind date and in walks the Wicked Witch of the West.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And basically what they learn is they were more alike than different.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was a lovely story.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the last line was,
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: what Santa learned was that sometimes it's better to receive than it is to give.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I have to have this story.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't doing open mic.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: This was before anything.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't even doing much writing back then, but I've got to have this story.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I called the office in Chapel Hill, the local NPR office in Chapel Hill.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they had no idea.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I called the corporate office in New York City.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: They had no idea.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: This was before AI stuff was a big deal.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, you know, you people really need to keep better track of stuff here.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Appalling that they couldn't give me that information.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: But years passed and years passed and then I'm working with chat.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I thought,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know what,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: maybe chat can tell me the author because it can go look up all these things.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: It can tell me who wrote this thing.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked and there's the story.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I said, oh, great.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's the story.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now who wrote it?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well, I wrote it.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: By that time it had been scrubbed so many times that it didn't know the difference.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: So what I did was I took it,
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I changed some things because I didn't exactly totally like the way it brought up.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: There were a few things I just changed around.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I had to make it a little shorter for the open mic.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I did the open mic,
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: we can do covers,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: which is somebody else's work, or we can write or most of what I do is my own.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, this is written by me, AI, and some unknown author.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if anybody knows this person's name, please give it to me.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then a few months ago,
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote a story for Substack about it and also said the same thing.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: But then the story was mainly talking about the ethics of this.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: First place,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have to say,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I feel terrible that one of the best stories I've ever read in my life.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: This story is out there without this person getting credit.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: But on the other hand,
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: if Chad hadn't found it for me,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: it would have died altogether and nobody would have ever heard of it again.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: There was just so much going around in my head about the ethics of this.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: I did make it clear who wrote it,
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: and I wrote this story here, but how I handled it was written by three entities.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it just brought up a lot of the ethical issues for me.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping and thinking that in the Substack article I handled it ethically.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: So ChatGPT said that it wrote the story that you were trying to find the author of?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: The author who wrote it and it said I did.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking from some memory bank somewhere it could have thought it put it together.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it isn't a person you know.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned that you use ChatGPT a lot.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things I was reading relating to the Pangram issue was that there's
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: a difference between using something as a tool,
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: the way we look something up in a dictionary or a thesaurus,
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: versus having it actually generated.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Or, you know,
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: say that you're at work and you're asking a colleague to read
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: and give you feedback versus asking the colleague to write part of this essay
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: with you.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so when people talk about the AI helping them do the writing,
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: there's a lot of different ways that could be interpreted
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: or what it might actually represent.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: When you say that you and ChatGPT are writing your new book,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: it sounds like you're offering the ideas.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm writing.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: I write a third of the chapter, actually.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then chat comes in and makes comments.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And often it'll be things like, well, you know, we can't do that because we're not really human.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: If anybody is criticizing AI, it's chat in these things because I don't know enough.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then after I've said my piece and then chat says it's piece,
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: they're very delineated from each other.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes I will use it
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: for like I'll write something I'll say well what do you think of this
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: and it might like an editor or like a English teacher and it will give me that
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: but I have to be very clear do not write anything I just want to know what you think
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: and it'll give me points so it's kind of like that and then the two of us have
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: a discussion like for instance when chat says having therapy
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: with AI is very dangerous like so explain that would you and then it says something
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: and then I'll ask it a question about what it said It's really weird
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: because it does feel like having a conversation,
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: even though it keeps telling me,
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a human,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot do this the way you do it,
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: but it feels like it's really the way I would do it.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a very odd experience.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: The first section, that's me, all me.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: The second section is chat makes comments about what I wrote, just like a person would do.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to say that.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I will say well all right chat let's talk about what you said I have a question
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: about what you said in your third paragraph and chat will answer and then I will say
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: but how about this and we actually are having
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: a conversation it's not like I'm relating what chat says
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: yeah so what part of
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: that ends up in the actual book The
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: entire, just as it was written.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want people to see this is what it's like to have a conversation.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is the thing.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Those three sections all become a chapter.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right now I'm in this stage,
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: we'll see what happens eventually, but where I'm looking for an agent.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So Chad is helping me with that, finding and telling.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, actually, God, I hate to say this.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like a collaboration because it does certain jobs.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes I think we're in this thing where I do this,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: then you do that, like when it comes to looking for the agent.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next time it'll say, well, here's a name, go do whatever you want to do.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, no, no, wait a minute.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is what you're supposed to do.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have to train it.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: I did three interviews,
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: one with a woman, one with a man, and then I interviewed the two of them together.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: That was just us.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling Chad about this.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: It might be in the book because it's part of my experience.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: So Chad says, well, I'd be sure to thank them afterwards.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to tell you,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: if Chad had been standing right in front of me,
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I would have slapped it in the face so hard.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you think you're talking to?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was so angry.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: This machine telling me how to be a human.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was really annoyed.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: But we talk about stuff like that.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's weird.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is weird.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: So again,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: it wasn't that long ago in my mind that I thought that
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: an answering machine was this thing from the devil
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: and now here I am doing it straight.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well,
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: it sounds like you're making good use of ChatTBT for your writing and marketing
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: and other aspects of what you do.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I will do things like with my battle with the city of Raleigh.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell it what I want to have said and it'll find the people that I should write it to.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually do let it write those letters because it'll say,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: well, you know, you were a little emotional there.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And often I was.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: But now we're at the stage where we're writing different people where I think being
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: a little emotional is more appropriate.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because originally I was writing to the mayor.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't want to be emotional when you're writing to the mayor.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: The people that I'm writing to now, I might want to be a little more emotional.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I will say, no, leave me alone.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do it.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or write it the way I would write it.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: One of the issues,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: and this keeps coming up,
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: is the expression that if you ask John what time it is,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: he'll tell you how to make a clock.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, chat will tell you how to make a clock.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: It'll tell you the entire history of clocks back to the sundial and the future of clocks.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I always have to say, I want two sentences from you.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking what you think of this.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want two sentences.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: I do not want you to change anything.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: I just want you to give me two sentences.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then it'll say, yes, I understand.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: It gets very robotic when I do that, but that's fine.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it sounds like you're making good use of it for some things,
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: maybe for many things,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: but are there any things that you specifically avoid using AI-based tools for?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like you won't use it for your own writing.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Would you use it for images or for creating videos or music or anything like that or
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: for writing?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need music.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I do use it.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at my Substack,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know, if you write an article, it's always nice to have a picture.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I would go into Google,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: and at one point I belonged to one of these services where you paid,
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: it seemed to me like a lot of money,
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: like $30 a month, and you could get pictures from them.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And a couple of times I lucked out and found a picture that was really right,
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: most of the time I didn't.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you asked, because I want to be real honest here.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: What I have done for my Substack articles is I will say,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: this is what I want in a picture.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for instance, the Santa Claus Wicked Witch one.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: It made a picture of Santa Claus and her sitting in a bar having a drink together.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a creepy picture, but it's also cute.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: A weird thing happened.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing an article on the invisible woman.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter, and do women really become invisible when they're older?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I said to her, I want a picture of an invisible woman.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it gives me this naked young girl, and I'm like, mm, nope.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: It changed to what I wanted.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: But then later on, I asked it for the same article.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this thing in it about how I had met this very nice young man.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was at the top of Machu Picchu in Mexico.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever been there.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy going up, but on the way down, it's a sheer drop.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, that's it.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to live here the rest of my life because I'm not doing that.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was in my 40s and this young 17-year-old kid was there and we were both terrified.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: We somehow got together and we worked our way down basically on our bottoms,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: but by talking to each other we worked our way down together.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted a picture and it thought that sounded like I was doing something
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: that was,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: maybe it thought I was being a pedophile or something,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: but it wouldn't make the picture.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to explain to it.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had to tell it in words as to why I wanted that picture and what kind of picture I wanted.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then I said to it,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: but earlier on when I wanted this picture, you gave me a naked young girl.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this doesn't make sense.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it explained to me how their minds work.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then it kind of made sense.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be very careful how you talk to them, by the way.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm learning how to do that.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I do use them for pictures because I don't know how to do it.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, a lot of my articles wouldn't have pictures.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I could never afford to pay anybody to do that.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the photographs that I found, again, a couple of them were pretty good.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them were not.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I do do that.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm clear about it.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't pretend.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would think that it would be difficult to find a stock picture
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: that had Santa Claus and the Wicked Witch sitting at a bar having a drink.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: So they could see that.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: But usually I can find something.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: I've never paid for an image website yet.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: There are a lot of free ones.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: There's Unsplash.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: Which is built into Substack and a bunch of others
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: and different historical societies that offer them.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: There are a lot of sources, but yeah, for something that specific.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way,
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ask you to send me a list of those because I didn't know about any
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: of those.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I just went on Google and said, I want a free picture.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times you didn't get any free pictures, which is why I started paying.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do that anymore.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Google search results prioritize the people who are paying them to put them higher
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: in the search rails, which only really happens if they are taking money.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: But I have a list.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: I call it my ethical shoestring list.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's things that you can do on a shoestring budget that are ethical and that don't cost money.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a whole list.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of it is image sources,
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: but some of it is just other tools that I consider to be at least more ethical than
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: the majority of what's out there.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: In a lot of cases,
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: it's being able to get images from sources that are free and are respectful of
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: the rights of the people that created them.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I'll share that.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'll put the link into the interview too.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I do have a member in a very small writers group,
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: and she's an artist who's writing a memoir, and she's not very happy with that.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't blame her.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: I totally understand.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: But again,
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not depriving an artist of the work because I would either do this
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: or I wouldn't have the pictures, period.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I do understand nobody could do the work she does.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: She's amazing.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I understand that.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a perfect situation.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, definitely not.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: There are actually a couple of illustrators and artists on Substack who
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: at one point said, look, I'll draw you a picture for free.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: Just please don't use some AI generated crap.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very kind people we had offered.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously they can't do that at scale.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: They need to make a living, but they offered to do it, which I thought was pretty nice.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Your artist friend, it sounds like maybe her work has been used against her will.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she's smart about anything that's online.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Her website is putting the thing across it so that you can't,
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: although I suppose AI probably could remove it, but they'd have to work.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It couldn't be just a scrub and then an accident.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: They'd have to actually work at doing it.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't think she's had that.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's more just that nobody's going to hire artists when they can get it for free.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: But then again, the pictures that you use are free too.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think in a lot of cases,
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: authors or creators of the images,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: they're hoping that people will donate if they like the picture.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's the Wikipedia model, like I use in my newsletters.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: There are musicians who do very well by only having people donate when they come to concerts.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: I know some people that are concerned about the fact that musicians can't make money
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: from their music streams like they used to,
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: so they will go out of their way to go to live concerts and buy their CDs
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: and such in-person events, and so there's compensation, at least in part, for that.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: This is one of the big questions that I always talk about in these interviews is
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: where these AI machine learning systems get the data and the content
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: that they trained on.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: They'll use things that were published online.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: They've used books,
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: which were copyrighted or images or videos and movies and such
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: that were copyrighted, but available.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of questions about whether or not that is ethical.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's a concept called the three C's, consent, credit, and compensation.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: For creative rights.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: Their work shouldn't be used without their consent.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: They should be credited if it's used and in many cases they should be compensated if it's used.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: You wrote a book.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: If your book was pulled into a system and trained and then people use that instead
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: of compensating you as the author, how would you feel about that?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: How would you feel if your new book comes out and someone puts it into an AI tool
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: and then you don't get any more I
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: wouldn't like it.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't like it.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand,
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: the book that I wrote about taking care of your parents is a book
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: that I would like more people...
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I sold very few copies because I'm zero good at marketing.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: I would hate that I wasn't getting something out of it.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: I would also like that more people were making use of it.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And sitting on Amazon, very sure
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: people are making use of it.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't mind other people benefiting from it,
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: but you don't want somebody else profiting from your work instead of you.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: Would that be a fair say?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like if someone took your book and sold it and made money from it.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: like that.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, people go to libraries and get books.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember when I was in graduate school, nobody had computers.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: There was no internet at the time.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: I remember having a book from the library and standing in line at a Xerox machine
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: with a lot of quarters.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: The authors were not getting anything from that.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever owned that Xerox machine was making a fortune, because there was always a line there.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting worse, probably, but that's always been part of the game.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: But if your book's in a library,
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: people are going to read it for free,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: and they're
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: going to use it for free.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: Libraries do pay for the books that they put into circulation, even if it's an e-book.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: I found this out when I was working on mine.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's a way you set up the pricing for libraries so that if you have an ebook
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: and they give it out so many times,
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: it's set up to try to compensate for that, which I thought was kind of interesting.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: So they pay for the hard copy once,
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: but if it's an ebook, then they pay for it for how many times?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's different ways that it can be done.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Different pricing models, I guess is the best way to put it.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I haven't really dug into that because I'm not too concerned about that.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just mostly still learning the mechanics of how do I get my books into libraries.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: And just going wide as they call it through a company called IngramSpark
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: and I'm still learning those ropes.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know all the details on the
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: libraries as eBooks.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: I've had a lot of people tell me that they would love to be able to get my book
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: through a library, through a service they call Libby.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's okay.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: How do I actually get my book there?
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm still trying to figure that part out, but I think it is possible.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like primarily chat GPT is the main one that you use.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: The people that I interviewed were using it to talk about relationship issues.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I came up with it and I went to a different chat, although it didn't seem to know me.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to Claude and I asked each one the same question.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was just interesting because both of them went totally different ways,
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: which of course is what often happens with human therapists too.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: That was a little disconcerting.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is the issue.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not hurting, but it's possible that I could someday be put out of business by Chad.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Although again,
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have to say Chad keeps telling me that would not be a good thing
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: because we can't do what you do.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not sure that that's true because again,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: because sometimes they make with or sometimes they don't have the history
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: that I have.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a lot of therapists don't either.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: One comment that I saw about the debate around using an AI tool as a therapist is
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: that some people feel that it's a difference between,
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: am I going to pay Margo to be my therapist or am I going to use ChatGPT?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: And in a lot of cases,
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: someone doesn't have the means to pay for a professional therapist,
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: just like you didn't have the means to pay for images or for an illustrator
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: to draw you a picture.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's not a choice between do I pay a therapist or do I use the tool?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's a matter of it's two in the morning.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have anybody I can call.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: I need help.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the only thing I've got available.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's a choice between in some cases.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: No care and support versus using that tool.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of compelling to say it's better than nothing.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: We need to make sure it's better than nothing and not actually worse.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody told me this because when I told them how I got this first guy
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: and it was Claude that sent him to me and somebody said,
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: well, that's because there was a lawsuit apparently at the beginning.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some kid was on there and talking about,
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: gee, I'd like to kill myself, and Claude basically told him how to do it.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because you ask, I'm telling you.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a big lawsuit.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: So now they're much more careful.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: So every once in a while we're rolling along together and we're talking and I get
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: an answer and it's like, no, that's just, it's like it's from somewhere else.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's an odd feeling.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the issue with therapy is it's happening.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: I have a woman who desperately wants her husband to get into therapy and he's a IT person.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, well, maybe he trusts chat.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't trust a person.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he would try and it might actually help him.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've actually referred some chat.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think chat would have done that, but I did it.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: There are,
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think a couple of products out in the market,
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: which are designed to be therapy tools.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you've ever seen any of any thoughts on them.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: For therapists to use.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: I just recently heard of them.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like they sell them to therapists to use.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's like for a consultation, I think.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: The ones that I saw, that's what it was.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've never done that per se.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: But some of my clients,
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: like today,
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: some guy,
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: he's all anxious because he can't sleep because he's hearing sounds in his building
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: and he's had his ears checked and everything and the people at
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: the counter aren't helpful and he's freaking out.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I go in and I'm Dr. Chet and I'm telling him, this is it, where do we go?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it told me the name of the place and who he should go to and the laws
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: that back him up and I got all this great information to give to him.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: But chat starts to make like therapeutic comments and I'm, I don't need that from you.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what I asked you.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to help this guy get these noises ended.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: When it's at its best and in the book,
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: what chat says,
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: the biggest problem with people doing therapy is they get so sucked into it.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I know it's easy to do because it feels so real sometimes.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then every once in a while, it'll hit you in the face with how it's not real.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: But somebody really has to be able to discern the difference.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: One of the two people I interviewed is a musician,
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: very nice looking young musician at a nightclub.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this woman was hitting on him and I don't want to be that kind of guy.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: So he goes into the men's room and Chad's like, now you know you don't want to do this.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Chad helped support him to not do it.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he would not have been able to call a therapist at two o'clock in the morning.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: That was not going to happen.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: As long as it's not going to tell you when you say I'm suicidal how to do it.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: It has its benefits.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not totally against it, but I've never used the therapist tool.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Although sometimes chat will give me advice and I'm like,
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: well, that's nice, but I wasn't interested in doing that.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Basically just because I've been around for 45 years, I do know more than it does.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: So thinking a bit about us and our data,
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: we're consumers,
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: we sign up for accounts,
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: we're streaming videos and for all kinds of other purposes for social media accounts
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: and as members of the public we interact with government systems
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: that have our data make use of our data so it's pretty safe to assume
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: that our data is being used by different AI based tools
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: and systems do you know any cases where your data has been used either in a way
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: that you were okay with or a way that you were not okay
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: with well I have no
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: knowledge that that's ever happened.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: My thought about that has always been,
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: even back in the day,
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: was it Daniel Ellsworth who they stole stuff from his therapist,
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: they stole the therapist's notes from the office?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I could understand that.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Was he the one that was working with Nixon?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why would anybody want this stuff from my people?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Of course,
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: nowadays with what's going on,
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: things have changed,
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: but I can't imagine them being very interested in what we're talking about
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: unless I had some very famous person or some government person.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: The one that I suggested to his wife that he use AI,
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: she's like, well,
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: he works for the government,
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: so he isn't going to do it because he really doesn't trust him.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's fine.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: But whether there are like 160 million people in the country,
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: they can't keep track of all of us.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm being naive to think that.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe each year it becomes more naive to think that.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: But no, I've never knowingly had the experience.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: For one thing, I write notes.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact,
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: one of the places that I contract with,
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: the most notes I have to write is characters, not even words.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: I have always written as little as possible.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: If someone were to come in and read my notes, they would know nothing about anybody.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I've just always done that,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: partly because I hate writing notes,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: and partly because it's none of anybody's business.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Every once in a while an insurance company will want to know a little more,
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: and I can always give them more, but they're not going to find it in my notes.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe one of the reasons why I'm not as concerned because go ahead and read my notes.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to learn nothing.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's very interesting.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever had any issues with any use of your data,
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: your phone number,
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: your email address, anything like that causing you problems, phishing attacks?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: Has it ever cost you any money or caused any other problems for you?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Constantly,
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about phishing,
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: probably,
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm constantly getting calls about following up on good news,
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: your application for a personal loan.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I just hang up and sometimes I said, really?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: My personal loan?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Huh?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I give them a hard time.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: I get a lot of that kind of stuff, but I think everybody does.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even think you have to go online much to have that happen.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was at a woman's house once and her daughter's taking all her mail
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: and all her magazines and taking off the address and throwing it away.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say anything,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm thinking, honey,
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: if they want your mother's address,
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: they don't need to go through the garbage and find magazines.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna have it if they want it.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the way it is.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's no point getting yourself crazy about it.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Do be careful, but stuff is gonna happen.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a different world.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: I know some people who purposely will keep a telemarketer or a scammer on the phone
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: for as long as possible and try to fool them because they figure that's
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: so much less time that they have to try to go after somebody else who might fall
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: for it.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have done that.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's harder to do that these days because they're getting smarter, but I have done that.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorites was I'm calling from Washington.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I said, oh, how's the weather?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or I'll say, well, who are you?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite is they ask me a question.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't give information to strangers who call me, oh, we're not a stranger.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: I know your name.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: My name is John Smith.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, and where did you, did we meet at a party?
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is that how, I've done that.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've kept them on the line for quite a while.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's harder to, and not as much fun as it used to be, so I don't do it.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm in a bad mood when they call, I say some mean things.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then I feel bad because these are just people trying to earn a living,
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: but they're not the ones making all the money, right?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, last question.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: So when we think about these different AI and tech companies,
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: we don't trust them as much with our data or know that they'll behave ethically.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm wondering how you feel about that.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: Are there any companies that you do trust or do you feel that trust is possible
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: or what would it take for you to trust one of them?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know there are people who don't trust the government,
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: but I would trust a company a whole lot more that was owned by the state
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: of North Carolina than by Elon Musk.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: That I wouldn't trust.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand that is where Claude comes from, but it depends on who's making the money.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we can't always know, but it depends on who's making the money.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't totally try.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sometimes I do and say stupid things,
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: so I don't even totally trust myself, but it depends on the source.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we need some good laws.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, all that's happening now is that regulations are being destroyed.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: At some point,
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: we have to do some of it unless we're all going to go live on
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: a mountaintop somewhere.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: And even then I'd want to have my internet.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: I like my internet.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Margo, for this interview.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: Is there anything else that you would want to share with our audience?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: Any final thoughts about AI or using it ethically?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's just being really careful what you ask them for.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, one story I did want to tell you earlier, and now I just remembered it.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: At the open mic that I do,
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: some guy got up,
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: the black guy,
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: and he got up and he did this story written like 50 years ago by another black guy,
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: and it was called Whitey on the Moon, and it was wonderful.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're aware of the story,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: but it was talking about how here we are trying to feed our kids,
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: and oh, Whitey's on the Moon, isn't that great?
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: He gave the name of the guy, but I missed it.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I came home and I said to AI, can you give me this?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it comes back and it gives me the name.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, thank you for the name.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I just want to have somebody read it tonight.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: I would just like to have the whole thing.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: We can't do that.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's unethical.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if they're taught to say that, but they do kind of have their ethics.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: When I was doing the article,
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: even though it had given me a naked girl,
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that I was starting to sound unseemly about these boys that I wanted
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: the picture of.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them anyway, they're kind of struggling to have their own form of ethics.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the reasons why it's important who's running them
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: and who's owning them.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: Always follow the money, right?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good frame of reference right there.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Follow that money.
• 38:29
  Okay.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Margot.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate this.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: Can you just say for our audience,
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: if they are interested in your memoir or your writing or anything
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: that you're doing online, where would they find you?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of my memoir stuff, including the Santa Claus Wicked Witch ethical article.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the story.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: I have the ethical article.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's on Substack, margoarrowsmith at substack.com.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: I used to have a blog and the only comments I got were like this long list
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: of people trying to sell me stuff.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I took everything from my blog and put it on Substack where I'm not getting
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: that anymore, knock wood.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: So they can find me there.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can keep your parents home is the name of my book.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: The AI book is long coming out, but thank you for asking.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: You're welcome.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: I enjoy your stories and I think other people will as well.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: So happy to help them connect with you.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoy this.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Margo.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: About this interview series and newsletter.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: This post is part of our AI 6P interview series on AI software and wetware.
• 39:33
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• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: brains and human intelligence,
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: with AI-based software tools who are being affected by AI.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we're all being affected by AI nowadays in our daily lives, perhaps more than we realize.
• 39:50
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