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"Ai and Unintended Consequences" - #105 · How To Talk To Humans

• 0:03
  Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is how to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans.
• 0:30
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies, extraterrestrials, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned from 40 years in show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world. And their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during this course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use.
• 1:03
  Larry Wilson: To communicate toward success. Hi, this is Larry Wilson. Thank you for joining me for another episode of how to Talk to Humans. This will be a controversial episode. He says, only halfway believing that I. I say that because I made a note here saying, Bill Gates is an idiot. Now, I don't know Bill Gates. I'm sure he's not an idiot, but I know with the shorthand I was trying to learn, I must have seen something with Gates talking about AI in the most glowing terms.
• 1:50
  Larry Wilson: What could possibly go wrong? It's beautiful.
• 1:55
  Larry Wilson: And I know that you see people in the news and in social media who are tech giants who are involved in this, and I don't mean to take anything away from their extraordinary accomplishments, because they've done incredible things. I think it's important, though, to remember that just because you may have a certain facility with mathematics or computers or engineering, it doesn't mean that. That all your ideas are direct from the lips of God.
• 2:47
  Larry Wilson: It just means that you have a facility for these things. You're able to do stuff, and hopefully someone is involved who may also bring other things to the table as well. And I think the reason I was making fun of Bill Gates is because in the interview I saw, he seemed so oblivious to all the human elements that have to do with our lives. I understand technology is incredible. I'm using it right now.
• 3:29
  Larry Wilson: How? What kind of hypocrite would I be? I guess just the regular kind of hypocrite. But I have nothing against technology. I'm not a Luddite. But I do appreciate that there are boundaries in all facets of life. There are boundaries in our personal relationships, boundaries in business relationships, boundaries in ethical relationships, and questions of ethics having to do with machines and what machines can do.
• 4:12
  Larry Wilson: I. I said this was going to be a provocative episode. And it's not just for making fun of Bill Gates.
• 4:23
  Larry Wilson: It's also because with each passing day, with each new incredible technological breakthrough, and particularly with artificial intelligence, I become more and more convinced that there will be a reaction to this. AI seems to be able to do incredible things. A friend of mine just made a video with a bunch of famous magicians in it.
• 4:57
  Larry Wilson: And he's a very talented guy. He's a singer, writer and magician and all kinds of things. And he wrote this song. And in the video he created, there are famous magicians like Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston. We see them singing the lyrics of his song. Now, there's.
• 5:23
  Larry Wilson: There's some film of Houdini, but it's silent film. I'm not sure there's any.
• 5:30
  Larry Wilson: There may be some rare piece of film with a little bit of Houdini's voice on it. I don't know if there's any of Thurston or these other performers. So where did this come from?
• 5:42
  Larry Wilson: Well, it's somehow AI generated, I guess.
• 5:49
  Larry Wilson: You show them a still photo of Harry Houdini, and somehow you prompt the AI program to create lip movement that matches this song. Well, it's very entertaining and surprising and amusing and funny. It's great. It's fantastic. But I want to talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences, Some of my most favorite writing.
• 6:26
  Larry Wilson: I like all kinds of different writing, to be perfectly honest. Fiction, nonfiction. But when I was young, I remember I loved reading Robert Heinlein, who is sometimes referred to as the dean of American science fiction. Heinlein's such a great writer, and it's not because he's like Shakespeare.
• 6:54
  Larry Wilson: It's because of his ideas. And I've gone back as an adult and reread some of them. And some of it is a little corny, some of it may seem a little dated, but his ideas are still so visionary. He has a book called the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Hollywood has been trying to make it into a film for 50 years.
• 7:26
  Larry Wilson: I don't know why they haven't. Just bad luck. They can't get the right people together. I don't know why it's so cinematic. It's so incredible. It takes place at some unspecified time in the future where the moon has become a penal colony, where the Earth sends criminals to get them far away, where they can't do criminal activity. And like all penal colonies, they evolve over time. People meet and form partners and families and have children.
• 8:12
  Larry Wilson: And those children grow up and they may become very, very distant from their criminal past. Sometimes the children have no idea, don't know any of these stories at all. Immediately think of Australia, which was a penal colony for Great Britain, that people were transshipped from there and a lot of people died en route to Australia. So by Darwinian selection, the people who survived were tough. If you've ever met Australians, as a rule, they're pretty tough, they're pretty strong. They also don't seem to worry about things that people worry about in other people places.
• 8:57
  Larry Wilson: They have a more kind of relaxed, devil may care attitude. And maybe that comes from having suffered some horrible, horrible experiences and. And being sent to a wildly inhospitable country so different than what they were used to.
• 9:20
  Larry Wilson: So this is what Heinlein envisions. The Moon has become same thing, that there's all kinds of people there and there's a whole society there. And in his book, one of the unintended or unforeseen consequences of this is that the Earth uses the people on the moon for mining operations, for valuable materials they need that are found on the Moon that are mined and shipped back to Earth.
• 9:55
  Larry Wilson: And at some point, the people on the moon decide they would like to be free, they would like to be independent, and so they stage a revolution against the Earth. It's a great book.
• 10:17
  Larry Wilson: Oh, my God, it's great. And I didn't even realize this when I brought this up, but one of the main characters in the book is a computer who somehow becomes alive. The computer's name is Mike. And this is being written, I think, in the 50s where it was unbelievable, the things that Heinlein was able to imagine that have come to be real.
• 10:48
  Larry Wilson: And at first, Mike is the leader of the revolution, but he's just a voice, of course. And then the computer suggests he could simulate a television image of himself speaking. This is like AI and he does. And so. And it's just a great scene where the. The conspirators are trying to get him to look more like what they want him to look like. And one point, someone says maybe a mustache. And he no, no, not that long. Sort of more cropped. One of the unintended consequences, of course, for the people of. Is that people on another planet mining for them who are productive members of society, even though they may have been sent there as criminals, they are now members of society and they're doing very valuable, important work.
• 11:47
  Larry Wilson: And the Earth is very dependent on the things they ship Down. Maybe those people would like to be independent and govern themselves. And the idea that no one would ever think about it, I remember that resonated so strongly with me as a kid and now as an adult. It's the kind of thing, of course, for storytelling, and you know from having listened to this podcast that I love telling stories for storytelling.
• 12:22
  Larry Wilson: There's nothing greater than something that comes in at a left field. We never saw this coming. We never imagined this.
• 12:35
  Larry Wilson: And of course, good storytellers who are sometimes called writers, sit and ponder this very question. They may set up a situation, or they may have a situation.
• 12:47
  Larry Wilson: This happens, this happens. These people come together, then they may sit and think, what's the worst thing that could happen?
• 12:55
  Larry Wilson: And if there's more than one rider in the room, they may try to outdo each other. What if this happened?
• 13:01
  Larry Wilson: Okay, that's bad, but I can top that. What if this happened? And the process of trying to come up with those horrible things are what makes stories fascinating. If there's no conflict, if nothing bad happens, there's no drama. I don't mean to suggest that we should seek out conflict or that we should venerate conflict, but it's what creates drama.
• 13:33
  Larry Wilson: I'll never forget. I want to say maybe in the 1970s, there was a cartoon. There was a comic strip in the newspaper, which was, of course, for you younger people, that was something that was printed every day to tell you about what happened yesterday. And there was a comic strip called the Darlings. I think that was the name of it.
• 13:57
  Larry Wilson: And it was about two people, a man and wife, who were married and who loved each other. And they're both very overweight, but they didn't seem to care about that. They just loved each other and really did nice things for each other, were happy together, and it was very popular.
• 14:15
  Larry Wilson: And someone decided, oh, we should make this into a TV show. So they made this TV show about the Darlings and cast two big overweight actors in it. And they captured the comic strip perfectly, and it was a colossal failure.
• 14:34
  Larry Wilson: I think it was canceled after three episodes aired.
• 14:39
  Larry Wilson: And the reason was because these two people loved each other and were nice to each other. There was no conflict, there was no drama, and there was sort of no place for the show to go. That conflict, that drama, sometimes we can come up with if we're trying to think of what's the worst possible thing. But very, very frequently we do not think about those unintended consequences.
• 15:12
  Larry Wilson: I can't say I'm giving poor Bill Gates a hard time Here, I don't know the guy.
• 15:20
  Larry Wilson: I don't know whether he tries to think of what could go wrong, but hearing him speak frequently, I don't know.
• 15:29
  Larry Wilson: Maybe he's just doing a PR job.
• 15:31
  Larry Wilson: Maybe his PR job is everything is great. Microsoft is great. AI is great.
• 15:38
  Larry Wilson: It's going to make everything great. Yeah, that sounds fine. But you know what?
• 15:43
  Larry Wilson: I don't believe you. I know there's things you have not considered, and I know there's things that I can't even imagine that may come as a result of this fantastic technology you've created. In fact, since this is supposed to be a controversial episode, I'll go so far as to say I believe at some point in the future, I don't know if it's this year or next year or 20 years, I believe there will be a revolt against the machines. I'm not talking about Skynet or the Terminator, although I love those films. And of course, James Cameron shows his power as a storyteller. The first Terminator is so great, so brilliant. You're supposed to have some machine that's indestructible, that's larger than life, and he casts a guy whose speaking voice sounds a little bit like he's a machine. Arnold Schwarzenegger, that's so brilliant. And he's bigger than life and he's just muscles. I mean, it's everything about the film.
• 17:14
  Larry Wilson: If you haven't seen it, you should go see it. If you haven't seen it recently, you should. You should look at it again. A lot of Cameron's genius as a filmmaker, as a storyteller, he doesn't need words at all. Some of his greatest moments are just images.
• 17:32
  Larry Wilson: And also he's very clever with the way he uses lighting. Sometimes he's able to use lighting in a very subtle way that creates a feeling of whatever it is he's looking for. Attention. Suspense, horror, whatever it is. God, he's. He's a really talented filmmaker. And that's not what I'm talking about. Although that's a great story about indirectly, it's about unintended consequences of these incredible machines. I'm not picking sides with Skynet or Arnold Schwarzenegger and those people, but I feel in my gut, it feels like the pendulum swinging back and forth, that at some point, as a direct result of something that I can't picture now, I can't tell you what that is. I think there will be a revolt against machines.
• 18:36
  Larry Wilson: And whether that will be widespread, whether it means everyone will abandon machines or restrict their use or limit what AI can do.
• 18:50
  Larry Wilson: I don't know. I'm not a futurist.
• 18:54
  Larry Wilson: My feeling is that the antidote to AI is my Wilson Method. My engineer is laughing now at me. Can't anyone take Larry seriously? Yes, I really do think that. Because at the most fundamental level, Wilson Method, of course, is about teaching you advanced communication techniques so that you can connect with people and create authentic bonds. But at its most fundamental level, it's about harnessing your humanity. This is why I emphasize it is not about tricks.
• 19:45
  Larry Wilson: It is not about hacks. It's about skills. Simple skills. Anyone can do them, any and they work. But they are not hacks. Where you take a piece of technology, it's intended for one purpose and suddenly manipulated to do something different.
• 20:06
  Larry Wilson: They're not tricks that involve deception or deceit. Not that at all. They're straightforward.
• 20:14
  Larry Wilson: They're unencumbered. They're open for everyone to see in the light of day. And what they hopefully see as you become more adept at using these Wilson Method techniques, is they reveal your humanity. And when they do, other people are drawn to you. They may recognize why they are. I talked in a previous episode about meeting a guy named Vinnie at his pizzeria and how I just felt such a connection because of the way he interacted with us. But they might also be unconscious. You might not be aware of why you feel a certain way about someone or something, but they do feel it.
• 21:07
  Larry Wilson: And for people who are involved with business, I cannot emphasize this enough. I don't think people make purchase decisions based on logic. There might be a handful, but in my life experience, people buy things, hire people, engage services from people they like, and the people they like are the ones they feel authentic connection with. This has been my experience. You may come up with a dozen examples of why I'm wrong where people buy from people they hate, but I've never seen it.
• 21:58
  Larry Wilson: I've never seen it. I've seen people come up with really complicated explanations of why they're not going to buy something.
• 22:07
  Larry Wilson: That may be the best, best possible item, maybe the best possible price. But the bottom line is they don't like the person. That's what I'm hoping you will be able to avoid. If you embrace the tenants here of Wilson Method, I know that you will be able to create authentic bonds, and it will be reflected in the success of your business.
• 22:35
  Larry Wilson: This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope.
• 22:42
  Larry Wilson: You found this information useful.
• 22:44
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking for more. You can find it@thewilsonmethod.com There's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info@wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey and you'll be with me for the next episode of how to Talk to Humans.