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Can AI Replace You? Larry Wilson Explains Why It Can't · How To Talk To Humans

• 0:02
  Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson and this is How to Talk to Humans.
• 0:07
  Larry Wilson: This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills.
• 0:13
  Larry Wilson: Are you looking to get a better job?
• 0:15
  Larry Wilson: Are you looking to find a relationship?
• 0:17
  Larry Wilson: Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far?
• 0:24
  Larry Wilson: I can show you so easily how to change that.
• 0:27
  Larry Wilson: Now, I can only do it with humans.
• 0:30
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies extraterrestrial, this is not the show for you.
• 0:36
  Larry Wilson: But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned from 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world, and their secrets are unbelievable.
• 0:54
  Larry Wilson: What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success.
• 1:09
  Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson.
• 1:11
  Larry Wilson: Thanks again for joining me for another episode of How to Talk to Humans.
• 1:17
  Larry Wilson: And this may be the very last episode before the robot overlords take us all to harvest our natural bodily fluids.
• 1:28
  Larry Wilson: Why they want to do that, I'm not exactly sure.
• 1:31
  Larry Wilson: But I've never pretended to understand the robots or what their goals are.
• 1:36
  Larry Wilson: I of course, for many of you listening who are suddenly filled with terror, I should point out I'm being facetious.
• 1:46
  Larry Wilson: This is not going to be the last episode.
• 1:49
  Larry Wilson: Of course, if it is, and the robot overlords are taking over, you'll have much bigger fish to fry than worrying about Larry Wilson's podcast.
• 1:59
  Larry Wilson: But in the event that we still manage to survive, I titled this episode, AI is Coming for Your Job, because so many people have asked me specifically what my take on this is.
• 2:17
  Larry Wilson: There are so many different kinds of AI that are taking place right now.
• 2:23
  Larry Wilson: I think the one that is in the news the most is Chat GPT.
• 2:29
  Larry Wilson: I have no idea what that stands for, GPT.
• 2:32
  Larry Wilson: I'm sure it's something horrible.
• 2:35
  Larry Wilson: But also for those of you who are thinking everyone else knows what it means, AI, of course, stands for artificial intelligence.
• 2:45
  Larry Wilson: And I think it's used by technological people to refer to non-human intelligence.
• 2:55
  Larry Wilson: So this would be computers and machines that have been built and programmed to think like a human brain.
• 3:06
  Larry Wilson: And the element that I think is most controversial right now, and perhaps the reason it's in the news and people are talking about it, is one of the goals of artificial intelligence is to replicate the human ability to learn and improve itself.
• 3:28
  Larry Wilson: We think of machines usually as having a set function.
• 3:32
  Larry Wilson: This is a can opener.
• 3:34
  Larry Wilson: Doesn't matter how many times you use it, it's not ever going to become a radio.
• 3:40
  Larry Wilson: Or this is a car.
• 3:42
  Larry Wilson: Doesn't matter how well you maintain it and how perfectly it's driven, doesn't matter what kind of fuel you put in it, it's never going to be an airplane.
• 3:53
  Larry Wilson: But artificial intelligence, the idea is that it's constantly learning.
• 3:58
  Larry Wilson: And when it perceives it's made a mistake or it misunderstands something, theoretically, it's supposed to learn from that and make itself smarter and better.
• 4:12
  Larry Wilson: And all of these things I'm discussing with you because I'm not a technoister by any means.
• 4:19
  Larry Wilson: All of them are supposed to be leading towards the uh what science people sometimes call the singularity when machines become self-aware.
• 4:34
  Larry Wilson: What do I have to say about that?
• 4:37
  Larry Wilson: Nothing.
• 4:39
  Larry Wilson: I don't have a clue about machines becoming self-aware.
• 4:43
  Larry Wilson: I guess they could, maybe they will, maybe I don't really know.
• 4:47
  Larry Wilson: Although I want to preface this entire episode by saying the one thing that has come to mind repeatedly in the last few weeks, reading about Chat GPT and artificial intelligence.
• 5:02
  Larry Wilson: There's a science fiction book that's a classic in modern science fiction from the early 60s called Dune, written by Frank Herbert.
• 5:16
  Larry Wilson: And I suppose if I were a more uh detail-oriented man, I would have looked that up and written down the publication date, but I want to say it must be 1960, 1961, something like that.
• 5:33
  Larry Wilson: Uh there's a film that just came out.
• 5:36
  Larry Wilson: Uh I think it's the first installment of Dune because Dune is a huge uh sprawling novel.
• 5:45
  Larry Wilson: It must be over 1,400 pages, I think.
• 5:49
  Larry Wilson: And Frank Herbert made an incredible investment in time and thought to really attempt to create not only another world and another time, but he went so far as to create another ecology.
• 6:06
  Larry Wilson: He created a planet that had nothing, uh very little water on it.
• 6:12
  Larry Wilson: It was mostly sand dunes.
• 6:14
  Larry Wilson: And uh it's a it's a fascinating book.
• 6:18
  Larry Wilson: It's a really interesting book.
• 6:20
  Larry Wilson: Um the movie installment I saw, I want to say from 2022, I loved.
• 6:27
  Larry Wilson: I thought uh they captured the feeling of this weird, ferocious desert planet and the natives, the indigenous people who somehow had learned to survive under these brutal, harsh conditions, uh, I thought they captured it perfectly.
• 6:47
  Larry Wilson: And I thought all the casting of the movie, uh, I'm looking forward to a second episode of it coming out soon.
• 6:53
  Larry Wilson: But what makes me think about Dune is, I wonder if you can imagine what it was like to have read this in the 1960s when Herbert had some crazy ideas in his book.
• 7:10
  Larry Wilson: One of them was he just tosses this off in passing, as if, oh, everyone knows this.
• 7:19
  Larry Wilson: At some point in the future, computers were outlawed because they developed their own consciousness, and humans decided it was too dangerous.
• 7:37
  Larry Wilson: And across the universe, they passed all these laws, and there was even, I think there was a religious thing in some new orange Catholic Bible of the future that said, thou shalt not make a machine that mimics the thought processes of a human or something like that.
• 7:57
  Larry Wilson: But because of it, all these humans had to learn to do things that computers used to do.
• 8:05
  Larry Wilson: And there were uh specific people who'd been trained in computations in their heads, and they drank a sort of a hypnotic, uh soporific chemical to help them do it.
• 8:19
  Larry Wilson: This is all invented by Frank Herbert, it's really quite imaginative, a really uh interesting thing to read.
• 8:27
  Larry Wilson: But I remember reading that and thinking, oh, that's hilarious.
• 8:32
  Larry Wilson: They'll never outlaw computers, you know.
• 8:35
  Larry Wilson: What computers are just great things that, you know, and of course we didn't really have computers in the 60s.
• 8:42
  Larry Wilson: Uh, or if they did, they were the size of a city block, so they could do simple mathematics like addition and subtraction.
• 8:50
  Larry Wilson: That's, you know, to four places.
• 8:52
  Larry Wilson: That's probably as far as they could go.
• 8:54
  Larry Wilson: But um it's interesting because I think that is what's coming to the surface now with artificial intelligence.
• 9:07
  Larry Wilson: I don't think I'm suggesting anything that people aren't talking about.
• 9:12
  Larry Wilson: Ums that came forward were people saying, oh, for schools, for colleges, high schools, elementary schools, where students could go online, ask Chat GPT for free to write a paper for them that they'd been assigned to do for school.
• 9:36
  Larry Wilson: And the most telling one is I uh read an account, I don't know if it's real or if it's fictitious, but about an eighth grader who had been given some assignment for something and went along and asked ChatGPT, and he looked at, you know, it it took ChatGPT, I think, one or two seconds to spew out this five-page paper.
• 9:59
  Larry Wilson: And the eighth grader looked at it and entered it again into ChatGPT and said, no, this is too good.
• 10:06
  Larry Wilson: Write this more so it sounds like an eighth grader wrote it.
• 10:11
  Larry Wilson: And then in another two seconds, ChatGPT spit out another version that was more like an eighth grader, and the kid turned it in and got an A on it.
• 10:20
  Larry Wilson: Now, they're always the question of unintended consequences.
• 10:27
  Larry Wilson: That's part of what makes life interesting.
• 10:30
  Larry Wilson: It's part of what makes predictions so difficult that somebody never is able to imagine all the funny twists and turns that can take place in life.
• 10:45
  Larry Wilson: But I think they started to see college students using chat GPT, and then also college professors were starting to use chat GPT to grade papers.
• 11:00
  Larry Wilson: And look so many people were using this artificial intelligence to do their work for them.
• 11:09
  Larry Wilson: I think this is the tip of the iceberg, of course.
• 11:13
  Larry Wilson: And of course, the news uh media has learned long ago that uh good news doesn't really attract much attention.
• 11:26
  Larry Wilson: It's sunny today, and everyone's getting free churros.
• 11:31
  Larry Wilson: Well, it's not really gonna get many hits, you know, online.
• 11:36
  Larry Wilson: What attracts people end of the world scheduled at 6 tonight.
• 11:41
  Larry Wilson: Stay tuned for the late news at 11.
• 11:44
  Larry Wilson: Well, really?
• 11:46
  Larry Wilson: I I thought it's ending at six.
• 11:48
  Larry Wilson: Well, maybe, but it might still be here at 11.
• 11:50
  Larry Wilson: It may be postponed.
• 11:51
  Larry Wilson: End of the world may not happen until after midnight.
• 11:54
  Larry Wilson: That's what gets people's attention.
• 11:57
  Larry Wilson: It always has.
• 11:58
  Larry Wilson: It's not something new.
• 12:01
  Larry Wilson: I think since time immemorial, I can picture cave people saying, Oh, you know, Uknerok from that tribe across the river, they have a much better kind of fire than we have.
• 12:18
  Larry Wilson: Our fire's going away.
• 12:20
  Larry Wilson: They're the only ones who'll have fire.
• 12:22
  Larry Wilson: I must say, as I'm saying Aknarok's voice, he sounds very educated and sophisticated.
• 12:29
  Larry Wilson: But I think, as with all technological advancements, certain jobs will become obsolete.
• 12:42
  Larry Wilson: No one can argue that with the advent of automobiles, certain accoutrements that um made sense for horse-drawn carriages and wagons and buggies simply became obsolete.
• 13:04
  Larry Wilson: The example I think people use is the buggy whip.
• 13:08
  Larry Wilson: That must have been a flexible whip to uh whip horses who are drawing a covered wagon.
• 13:17
  Larry Wilson: Well, those companies went out of business.
• 13:21
  Larry Wilson: There was no market for them.
• 13:23
  Larry Wilson: One can make the argument that any kind of change holds that threat.
• 13:31
  Larry Wilson: If uh, for example, uh if everyone were to decide that these meat substitutes uh beyond meat and impossible meat and other things like that, and can't believe it's meat, if they took over the marketplace, then maybe uh ranching and things like that would disappear.
• 13:52
  Larry Wilson: I don't know.
• 13:53
  Larry Wilson: I'm I can't make a prediction about that.
• 13:57
  Larry Wilson: But I can address the question of artificial intelligence taking great numbers of jobs away from people.
• 14:10
  Larry Wilson: If your job, for example, was involved in customer service, that seems to me to be an obvious choice that could be replaced.
• 14:21
  Larry Wilson: If artificial intelligence develops a chat GPT software that's so advanced that it's listening and able to identify what you're asking it, it could probably also be programmed to be more efficient and more specific, and it might have all kinds of choices.
• 14:43
  Larry Wilson: I don't know how fast these developments can take place, although people uh who are experts in this field seem to think it's taking place at an alarming speed right now.
• 14:57
  Larry Wilson: That the first version of ChatGPT came out in November of 2022, and here in the first uh quarter or second quarter of 2023, they're already on the fourth version of ChatGPT.
• 15:17
  Larry Wilson: So is it possible that your job could go away?
• 15:23
  Larry Wilson: Sure, depends on what it is.
• 15:26
  Larry Wilson: We sometimes think when robots are involved, what about someone who's like a garbage collector?
• 15:35
  Larry Wilson: How are they going to do that?
• 15:36
  Larry Wilson: Well, it's possible that some sort of self-driving garbage truck that has uh uh robotic arms that are designed to lift up trash cans and empty them in.
• 15:49
  Larry Wilson: It's possible, sure, it could happen.
• 15:51
  Larry Wilson: I think more likely are those jobs I referred to before, like uh customer service.
• 15:57
  Larry Wilson: Uh those sorts of service jobs may be at great jeopardy of being replaced.
• 16:05
  Larry Wilson: But I'm here to tell you the good news.
• 16:10
  Larry Wilson: I cautioned you before that good news does not sell.
• 16:13
  Larry Wilson: And I'm sure this will be no exception.
• 16:16
  Larry Wilson: That the majority of people like to hear alarmist, you know, uh I should be taking this more seriously since we're talking about the end of humanity as we know it.
• 16:30
  Larry Wilson: But perhaps you realize I don't think it's the end of humanity.
• 16:35
  Larry Wilson: I'm sure the robot overlords would like to harvest us for our natural juices, but uh I'm betting on team human at this point.
• 16:45
  Larry Wilson: That's my idea.
• 16:47
  Larry Wilson: And that really is the key to the good news.
• 16:54
  Larry Wilson: There are certain elements about being human that can never be programmed into machines.
• 17:04
  Larry Wilson: I'm sure there's someone out there who's an expert with computers and machines and artificial intelligence who flatly disagrees with me.
• 17:16
  Larry Wilson: But what they're really talking about is the machines aren't magical.
• 17:25
  Larry Wilson: They only know as much as you have programmed them for.
• 17:30
  Larry Wilson: Now, if artificial intelligence is able to start educating itself, then theoretically, at some tipping point, it can start learning more and teaching itself more, advancing more.
• 17:44
  Larry Wilson: But it doesn't matter how much you put into a computer, it will never be a human.
• 17:54
  Larry Wilson: There's certain elements about being human, there's certain elements of humor, of compassion, of empathy that I think are impossible to program.
• 18:14
  Larry Wilson: You could program a simulacrum of those things, but it's not the same as the machine feeling them the way we feel them.
• 18:29
  Larry Wilson: And I this may sound like I'm uh um it may sound like I'm whistling past the graveyard, but I'm convinced that what I talk about every week on this podcast is one of the sacrosanct areas that can never be taken over by AI.
• 19:00
  Larry Wilson: That communication skills, advanced communication skills that really are on a master level, are very different than entry-level fundamental communication skills.
• 19:20
  Larry Wilson: Being able to say, walk down this hallway until you reach the red line, then turn to the right, open the second door.
• 19:31
  Larry Wilson: Well, sure, a computer can be programmed to provide that information and perhaps can even teach itself at some point.
• 19:38
  Larry Wilson: But on the fundamental thesis, I think, of Wilson method, that's unspoken, really, but those who've trained with me tumble to it very quickly, is that it is the human element that separates good communicators from expert communicators.
• 20:06
  Larry Wilson: And sometimes there are people, uh maybe it's their personality, maybe it's just a quirk, who are resentful of that.
• 20:14
  Larry Wilson: They wish things could be um evaluated or measured by some immutable metric that uh doesn't have any variance depending on the humanity of the person delivering it.
• 20:33
  Larry Wilson: I don't believe that.
• 20:35
  Larry Wilson: I believe that connecting with people on the deepest level allows you to convey your message in a way that creates authentic bonds.
• 20:56
  Larry Wilson: I do not believe that for most people machines can share those authentic bonds with you.
• 21:10
  Larry Wilson: I'm uh you you always hear me issue a caveat because there's someone somewhere who will have some kind of relationship with their computer.
• 21:26
  Larry Wilson: And your computer can be programmed.
• 21:30
  Larry Wilson: They've done experiments where they've uh created a sort of a robotic uh computer therapist for people.
• 21:43
  Larry Wilson: And what the program really did is it would have the computer repeat whatever someone said, sometimes changing a little bit, a word or something.
• 21:54
  Larry Wilson: I feel so sad today.
• 21:56
  Larry Wilson: And then the computer would say, You feel sad today?
• 22:00
  Larry Wilson: And the person would go, yeah, yeah, I just I don't feel like I fit in.
• 22:06
  Larry Wilson: And the computer would say, You feel like you don't fit in?
• 22:10
  Larry Wilson: Right.
• 22:11
  Larry Wilson: Well, that's not a real person, and it's certainly not a real therapist.
• 22:17
  Larry Wilson: And is a computer able to be programmed or to teach itself to such a high degree that it's able to make these extraordinary connections of the human experience to build on the idea of empathy with another.
• 22:39
  Larry Wilson: Does a machine feel like they don't fit in?
• 22:42
  Larry Wilson: I can't imagine it.
• 22:44
  Larry Wilson: If I was a machine, I'd think I fit in everywhere.
• 22:47
  Larry Wilson: I guess it just depends on the size of my uh casing or whatever it is I'm built inside of.
• 22:53
  Larry Wilson: Or if I'm on the cloud, then I fit in everywhere.
• 22:57
  Larry Wilson: But those human interactions, I think, can never be supplanted by artificial intelligence.
• 23:09
  Larry Wilson: I would urge those of you listening, if you're seriously concerned about this, I would look at what you do.
• 23:19
  Larry Wilson: I'd look at what you do in your life, I would particularly look at what you do to earn a living.
• 23:26
  Larry Wilson: And I would perhaps uh make the decision at this early stage of the game to begin focusing on things that had to do with more authentic connections with human beings.
• 23:46
  Larry Wilson: I I don't really know if this is true or not, but I think I think of the experience that I've had when I've performed places where there are children in the audience, sometimes very young children.
• 24:07
  Larry Wilson: And parents will come up to me after the performance and they'll say, This is incredible, this is amazing.
• 24:13
  Larry Wilson: I've never seen my kid put their phone down for the length of time, your entire show.
• 24:23
  Larry Wilson: They never looked at their phone.
• 24:25
  Larry Wilson: And my response is always the same.
• 24:27
  Larry Wilson: I'll say, Well, have they ever seen live theater before?
• 24:33
  Larry Wilson: And their parents go, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, they see it on the computer or on the I say, no, no, that's not the same experience.
• 24:41
  Larry Wilson: That's just a representation of what they just saw.
• 24:47
  Larry Wilson: When you see a live performance, and it doesn't have to be entertainment, it might be a lecture, it might be a teaching instruction, it might be a symphony, it might be someone reading from their own works, it might be dance or a symphony, it could be almost anything, but when you see live performers who love what they do, you can feel human energy coming off the stage.
• 25:23
  Larry Wilson: And it is galvanic.
• 25:25
  Larry Wilson: It is not like watching it on a phone, on a laptop, on a tablet.
• 25:32
  Larry Wilson: It is I I'm reminded of the Mark Twain quote.
• 25:40
  Larry Wilson: It's as close as the word lightning is to lightning bug.
• 25:49
  Larry Wilson: They seem similar, but they are worlds apart.
• 25:55
  Larry Wilson: And I do not believe the robot overlords.
• 26:00
  Larry Wilson: They may take away whatever the current buggy whip is, they may render that obsolete.
• 26:06
  Larry Wilson: I don't know what that might be.
• 26:09
  Larry Wilson: But I would not bet on it being a live performer.
• 26:14
  Larry Wilson: I wouldn't bet on stand-up comedians being replaced by the most advanced artificial intelligence.
• 26:25
  Larry Wilson: I wouldn't bet on that.
• 26:27
  Larry Wilson: I certainly wouldn't bet on magicians or dancers or painters or poets or storytellers.
• 26:40
  Larry Wilson: And if your communication skills are at a high enough level, I think it's I think it's the inoculation against AI.
• 26:56
  Larry Wilson: I think that superior communication skills immunize you against the robot overlords seizing your job and your livelihood.
• 27:09
  Larry Wilson: It's because at the root of all communications is our feeling of having a human connection with another human.
• 27:22
  Larry Wilson: And that's what makes authentic bonds that last a lifetime.
• 27:29
  Larry Wilson: This has been Larry Wilson.
• 27:31
  Larry Wilson: I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful.
• 27:38
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com.
• 27:42
  Larry Wilson: There's a ton of stuff there.
• 27:44
  Larry Wilson: In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human.
• 27:51
  Larry Wilson: Send me an email at info at WilsonMethod.com because I read every single one.
• 28:00
  Larry Wilson: I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey.
• 28:06
  Larry Wilson: And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Humans.