Latest / Mahon McCann / Peco Gaskovski: How Humanity Survives the Tech Dystopia

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Peco Gaskovski: How Humanity Survives the Tech Dystopia · Mahon McCann

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Petzo Gaskowski, I'm very delighted to welcome you to the podcast.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm a long-term reader of Pilgrims and the Machine, School of the Unconformed.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: And recently I've been reading your new book, The Last Upheaval.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: I haven't got to read Exogenesis yet, but I'm also very excited about that.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just loving, as I was saying to you before, I'm really loving the book.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: It's so prescient and really like...
0:26
SPEAKER_00: You're writing a 1984 Brave New World as it's happening in real time.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: So very impressive, man.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: I really enjoy it.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: So very welcome.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm just glad to have you here.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you inviting me on the show.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: And you said my name so perfectly.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: It's almost like you got some training beforehand.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: We might have rehearsed.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: We might have talked about it.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: I keep working on it.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: But so, yeah,
0:53
SPEAKER_00: the name of the book,
0:53
SPEAKER_00: The Last Upheaval,
0:55
SPEAKER_00: which is an event in the book,
0:57
SPEAKER_00: I wondered maybe, yeah, to start there, what is The Last Upheaval?
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Like, what is that?
1:03
SPEAKER_01: So the thing that triggers The Last Upheaval in the book is a cyber attack.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: And then there are a series of cyber attacks in the novel.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: They kind of come and go.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: And people are trying to figure out what's going on.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: And it's current day, more or less, maybe a few years ahead of our time.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: And the main character in the book,
1:24
SPEAKER_01: Saul Meerman,
1:25
SPEAKER_01: is very concerned about what's happening,
1:27
SPEAKER_01: and he's trying to figure out, is this a sign that society is going to collapse?
1:32
SPEAKER_01: And if it is, how do I protect my family?
1:36
SPEAKER_01: What do I do?
1:37
SPEAKER_01: So the book,
1:38
SPEAKER_01: in a way,
1:38
SPEAKER_01: is an exploration of,
1:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:40
SPEAKER_01: when times look like,
1:42
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:42
SPEAKER_01: things are breaking down,
1:43
SPEAKER_01: there's true social upheaval,
1:45
SPEAKER_01: technological upheaval, I mean, as is happening in our own society.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: You may start to wonder, like, what do I do?
1:52
SPEAKER_01: Like, what if things really fall apart?
1:53
SPEAKER_01: Like, how do I hold it together?
1:55
SPEAKER_01: So the book was an opportunity really for me to explore that from the perspective of
1:59
SPEAKER_01: the main character,
1:59
SPEAKER_01: but also the characters in his lives, his family, his co-workers.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: So that's sort of the frame of the book.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I love how much it is about the people, really.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: I felt myself kind of empathizing with Saul a lot of almost like trying to keep
2:14
SPEAKER_00: the wheels on the track in some sense, like he's trying to hold down a job.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Preserve the family while stuff's just kind of fragmenting around them.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: And even in the relationships and stuff,
2:24
SPEAKER_00: you see the strains of this big picture stuff,
2:28
SPEAKER_00: how it appears in their individual lives.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: It feels very present as we kind of see this today.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose, yeah, how do you see this?
2:39
SPEAKER_00: The civilizational moment that we're experiencing now,
2:41
SPEAKER_00: obviously that's a huge question,
2:43
SPEAKER_00: but I guess,
2:44
SPEAKER_00: did that inspire the work in the book or is it more of a general exploration
2:48
SPEAKER_00: of like civilizational breakdown and the human stuff?
2:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: How do you see it connecting to like our current moment?
2:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a huge question.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: There's so many slivers packed into that one sort of question.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: Part of it is the technology.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: When I started writing the book, it was 2022, so it was COVID times.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: And at that time, it was pre-ChatGPT, so AI was not out yet.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: And the real conversation during COVID times was things like digital censorship,
3:23
SPEAKER_01: digital ID,
3:25
SPEAKER_01: people worried about a digital ID coming because there were these passports.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: And then after COVID wound down, then ChatGPT came along.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: So then AI was suddenly on the scene.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: So as I was writing the book,
3:38
SPEAKER_01: I thought, okay, I've got to shift gears a little bit and make this about AI.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: But within a few months, I realized, no, no, this is all wrong because I'm already behind.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to write science fiction,
3:48
SPEAKER_01: but the technology is going so fast, I need to jump further ahead.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: So I thought, okay,
3:53
SPEAKER_01: I have to get humanoid robots in there because that's really the next layer of
3:57
SPEAKER_01: where we're headed.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: And then there's other stuff in there as well,
4:01
SPEAKER_01: like biocomputers, the use of human brain tissue to create actual...
4:07
SPEAKER_01: Computational machines, potentially one day as a replacement for AI for various reasons.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: So I also put that in there because I think that's another of
4:15
SPEAKER_01: the technological trajectories that we're following.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: So kind of circling back to your question,
4:21
SPEAKER_01: which was about the civilizational moment,
4:23
SPEAKER_01: I think from a technological point of view,
4:27
SPEAKER_01: those are some of the key issues civilizationally.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a lot more going on than just that,
4:31
SPEAKER_01: but from the point of view of tech,
4:33
SPEAKER_01: those were some of the things that I was thinking about.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: And that,
4:39
SPEAKER_00: cause it really, well,
4:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's just the AI marketing hype or whatever,
4:43
SPEAKER_00: but all their predictions are kind of predicting this inflection point.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: You know,
4:47
SPEAKER_00: you see Elon Musk being like,
4:49
SPEAKER_00: there's,
4:49
SPEAKER_00: you're not going to need money anymore and there's going to be no more work
4:52
SPEAKER_00: and Ray Kurzweil's, you know, singularity thing and all this stuff.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's like,
4:57
SPEAKER_00: you can kind of feel that sense in people,
4:59
SPEAKER_00: I think that all the change is kind of You know, ramping up.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: Things seem to be getting faster in some sense.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: And I would say pay attention to that narrative.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: Pay attention to the narrative because you'll hear the extremes, right?
5:12
SPEAKER_01: Like on the one hand, AI is going to transform our lives.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: It's going to bring on a utopia.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: You won't have to work anymore.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: You can pursue your passions.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: It'll be so great.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: And then on the other hand,
5:20
SPEAKER_01: you're hearing these narratives like, well,
5:22
SPEAKER_01: we have,
5:22
SPEAKER_01: you know,
5:23
SPEAKER_01: a 10% chance of survival over the next two years or some crazy stuff like that.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: And so you come away when you hear these narratives back and forth.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: You come away with the feeling that the tech companies have the power
5:35
SPEAKER_01: to unleash heaven or hell on us, which basically makes them God.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: So I would say,
5:42
SPEAKER_01: in addition to paying attention to the technology,
5:45
SPEAKER_01: pay attention to the story of the technology.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: Because once we absorb this story,
5:51
SPEAKER_01: even that contradictory narrative that keeps us completely off balance,
5:54
SPEAKER_01: is it going to be heaven or is it going to be hell?
5:57
SPEAKER_01: Either way, it's some kind of new God that's coming.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: And that raises questions about,
6:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:06
SPEAKER_01: how is that,
6:07
SPEAKER_01: if that's the shift of narrative that we're having at the level of
6:10
SPEAKER_01: the common person,
6:12
SPEAKER_01: how is that going to alter how we think about democracy, for example?
6:15
SPEAKER_01: How is that going to alter how we think about government?
6:18
SPEAKER_01: And politicians,
6:19
SPEAKER_01: of course,
6:19
SPEAKER_01: will be asking the same questions and probably racing to ally themselves
6:24
SPEAKER_01: with this new awesome power because they want to have control of that
6:29
SPEAKER_01: to make sure it's managed properly, but it may overwhelm them as well.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: So these are huge,
6:35
SPEAKER_01: huge changes,
6:35
SPEAKER_01: but it's partly in the story that we have to be concerned because
6:38
SPEAKER_01: the story is very powerful.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: And do you think it's built into the technological story itself?
6:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is what I talked to Paul Kingsnorth about recently.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: It's something I think, obviously, I do technology ethics as my, just finishing my PhD.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: So I spent a lot of time thinking about this.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's a part of just our culture that we've embedded these tools so much
7:01
SPEAKER_00: in our kind of attempt to build this kind of utopia thing?
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: That it's almost like our eschatological vision or something has
7:10
SPEAKER_00: to be this technological heaven or hell.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: It's like they're almost so willing to risk completely destroying everybody
7:17
SPEAKER_00: to attempt to create their version of heaven.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's like a religious transhumanist kind of eschatology thing
7:26
SPEAKER_00: that we're seeing playing out?
7:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that's a huge...
7:30
SPEAKER_01: That has historical roots.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: You know,
7:31
SPEAKER_01: you see the dismantling of the old worldview of the West was
7:36
SPEAKER_01: the Judeo-Christian model,
7:39
SPEAKER_01: largely dismantled during the 1800s, 1900s,
7:43
SPEAKER_01: and more or less,
7:44
SPEAKER_01: I think, seeing its demise by the end of the last century, start of this century.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: But we are,
7:50
SPEAKER_01: and I think Paul King's North points this out a lot as well,
7:53
SPEAKER_01: we are fundamentally religious animals.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: You can take away God, but you won't take away people's yearning for something transcendent.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: So when you remove that core center,
8:05
SPEAKER_01: things start to implode,
8:07
SPEAKER_01: and this creates uncertainty and the yearning for meaning and stability.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: And if religion is depicted as not a viable alternative,
8:17
SPEAKER_01: then yes, technology will step into that role quite easily.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: The thing about,
8:27
SPEAKER_01: you know,
8:28
SPEAKER_01: these new technologies,
8:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
8:29
SPEAKER_01: when I kind of look back,
8:30
SPEAKER_01: because my wife and I,
8:32
SPEAKER_01: from when we had our first kid,
8:34
SPEAKER_01: we were paying attention to sort of how the world was changing
8:36
SPEAKER_01: because it was only flip phones back then.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: And I remember I love my flip phone.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: It was such a simple little tool.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: It had a radio in it.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: I thought that was so cool,
8:45
SPEAKER_01: but I had to give it up around 2012 because all these smartphones were coming out
8:50
SPEAKER_01: and wouldn't work anymore.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: And So over the last decade and a half,
8:54
SPEAKER_01: you've had these emergent technology,
8:56
SPEAKER_01: smartphones,
8:56
SPEAKER_01: more screens, tablets, wearables now, and they're sort of surrounding us.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: And during the emergence of this tech,
9:03
SPEAKER_01: I think our perspective was like,
9:05
SPEAKER_01: here are some interesting, cool tools that will make life easier.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: I don't think we realized that we were,
9:11
SPEAKER_01: by purchasing these products and putting screens in every room
9:14
SPEAKER_01: and carrying screens everywhere,
9:16
SPEAKER_01: that we were building the physical infrastructure through which AI would operate.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: And that is why AI is the fastest growing technology in all of human history.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: It couldn't have happened if we,
9:28
SPEAKER_01: you know, if somebody said to Steve Jobs, you know what, we don't want this.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: We don't want the iPhone.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: We're just going to stick with our flip phones.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: And if AI came out two years later,
9:35
SPEAKER_01: we wouldn't have a place to put it because,
9:37
SPEAKER_01: you know, you need platforms for AI to work through.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: So we've built that infrastructure.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: And now it's no wonder that it's just overwhelming us.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: And it's the thing that people are gravitating to for their their center.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: And there are a lot of dimensions to that.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean about further center?
9:58
SPEAKER_01: There are many ways in which we are offloading our humanity,
10:04
SPEAKER_01: the basic components of our humanity onto AI.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: So the simplest and easiest example would be cognition.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: One of the first problems that AI brought with it was
10:16
SPEAKER_01: that students suddenly could just write essays through AI,
10:19
SPEAKER_01: which meant they were Cognitively offloading the task of essay writing.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: Now you might say we don't really need essays anymore
10:25
SPEAKER_01: and people are actually writing articles about this.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: We don't need the three structure essay anymore with the thesis sentence.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: Who talks like that?
10:33
SPEAKER_01: Who thinks like that anyway?
10:35
SPEAKER_01: Except for ChatGPT, which always gives you things with three points, right?
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: It does it for you.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: The more basic point is that we're offloading the ability to think for ourselves,
10:47
SPEAKER_01: even in that simple way,
10:48
SPEAKER_01: to say I'm going to As a student,
10:51
SPEAKER_01: put together this evidence,
10:52
SPEAKER_01: think through it, try to put together an argument and a position.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter what the position is.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: It's just that you've done the process.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: You've exercised those brain muscles,
11:02
SPEAKER_01: which means all the areas of your brain that are born into you,
11:06
SPEAKER_01: that are part of your natural genetic inheritance,
11:09
SPEAKER_01: areas that manage language,
11:10
SPEAKER_01: that manage reasoning, that manage processing, all these things are being exercised.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: You're like a weightlifter exercising your mental muscles.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: The more we cognitively offload tasks onto AI,
11:25
SPEAKER_01: the higher the risk that we lose an important part of our human functioning.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: And by that,
11:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't mean that we'll suddenly lose our cognition completely,
11:36
SPEAKER_01: but that dependency will alter the way we use it in a negative way
11:40
SPEAKER_01: because we'll be always dependent then.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: We won't be able to think for ourselves,
11:44
SPEAKER_01: or at least that's the risk for many people,
11:46
SPEAKER_01: particularly young people who For whom this becomes the default and the norm.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: So that would be one example of,
11:54
SPEAKER_01: it's not the only example of how we can offload parts of our humanity onto AI,
11:59
SPEAKER_01: but it's a big example.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that they're so core to our humanity in some sense.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: I often think about like if somebody lost a leg or something and you give them
12:08
SPEAKER_00: a prosthesis, you don't say they're less of a human.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: You'd say they lost a limb.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: But if you were to take out, say,
12:16
SPEAKER_00: your cognition and replace it with an artificial cognition,
12:19
SPEAKER_00: you would say you're probably not human anymore in some sense.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: Or your moral judgment, say, you replace it with just a robot or something.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
12:29
SPEAKER_01: The cognition is still there, but it's profoundly altered.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: And we don't know.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: We're only at the initial stages of this change.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: And already we've seen really negative effects.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: So brain imaging reveals that when you're using AI to do school type tasks,
12:47
SPEAKER_01: you're using less of your brain.
12:50
SPEAKER_01: There's evidence out of China.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: John Haidt was just reporting this on his After Babel Substack.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: He had a nice graph there showing how students in China,
13:01
SPEAKER_01: I believe it was for exam performance,
13:03
SPEAKER_01: those who used AI had a precipitous decline in their performance where those
13:08
SPEAKER_01: who didn't continue to perform well.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: So these are really, to me, shallow indicators of just how serious the problem is.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: And we're only like a few years into this.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine children being raised in this environment?
13:19
SPEAKER_01: And you've got tech people saying, let's raise kids like AI natives.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: This is the type of worldview that's being pushed.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: So I don't think it's unrealistic to say our cognition is in peril,
13:34
SPEAKER_01: not because we're going to lose it,
13:35
SPEAKER_01: but because it's going to become atrophied in ways that will make us too dependent
13:39
SPEAKER_01: on our machines.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: And that so many skills and kind of virtues or perspectives that we took for granted
13:48
SPEAKER_00: in pre-digital technology,
13:51
SPEAKER_00: pre-AI, that people were just like, oh, they're just kind of things people have.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: And then as they start to exist in this other environment,
13:57
SPEAKER_00: they realize, oh, wait, that was actually something we were like.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: Literacy is a great example of that,
14:02
SPEAKER_00: where it's like the numbers in terms of children's literacy.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you saw those,
14:06
SPEAKER_00: the PISA scores that have just been declining in terms of reading and reading.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: It's like,
14:13
SPEAKER_00: that was almost something that would be natural when that was kind of
14:15
SPEAKER_00: the dominant medium.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: But now,
14:17
SPEAKER_00: because it's entirely videos and whatnot,
14:20
SPEAKER_00: it's going to cause this,
14:23
SPEAKER_00: basically things that you would have taken for granted to be a kind
14:25
SPEAKER_00: of functioning person in today's society are going to be actually kind
14:29
SPEAKER_00: of rarer skills.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: It's like a huge deficit.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: So we're talking about, we just talked about cognitive debt, and then there's relational debt.
14:41
SPEAKER_01: So when people form relationships with AI,
14:45
SPEAKER_01: become friends with AI,
14:46
SPEAKER_01: or want to marry their AI,
14:48
SPEAKER_01: as I've heard in a few instances, that's a real shift as well in so many ways.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: The people at most risk are those who already probably struggle relationally,
15:01
SPEAKER_01: those who are lonely,
15:02
SPEAKER_01: those maybe with depression, those who feel very different and who feel rejected.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: They're probably more likely to gravitate to AI.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: But the problem there is that it becomes a self-defeating process
15:16
SPEAKER_01: because you're entering into a relationship with something that's not really human,
15:20
SPEAKER_01: and that's meant to accommodate you and support you.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: So it's not really giving you the true relational challenges that will grow you as
15:25
SPEAKER_01: a person, like disagreements and having to navigate perhaps conflict or tension.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to do that for you, not in any true way anyway.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: Which means you never learn those skills.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: And so the outside world might end up becoming more frightening to you.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: It might become harder to engage in real human intimacy,
15:46
SPEAKER_01: to take the risk, to say, look, I'm going to try to meet somebody.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: Maybe, you know, form a deeper relationship with them.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: Maybe, who knows, get married.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: That whole kind of line of thought may be cut off for many people
16:04
SPEAKER_01: because It becomes too frightening or too unsettling because they're so accustomed
16:09
SPEAKER_01: to relating to AI.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: Now that I'm giving to you is the most kind of extreme example.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: And you've already seen it happen in China.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: China banned its companion AI in the summer of this year in July.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: So for 18 to, I think it's for minors, 18 and under, they banned companion AI.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: So some people lost their AI boyfriends and AI girlfriends just overnight.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: They just pushed the button, gone.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: It must have been a tough breakup.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, some people cried.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: They cried because they depended so heavily on these,
16:50
SPEAKER_01: not just chatbots for them, but relationship partners.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: So that's the most extreme and kind of unusual and unsettling example of it,
17:00
SPEAKER_01: of how AI can create a relational debt By shifting the focus of our relationship
17:06
SPEAKER_01: from people to non-people.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: But the really insidious thing I find is that you don't even have to be searching
17:14
SPEAKER_01: for a relationship with AI to get into a relationship with AI.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: So recently I had to look up a question on accounting,
17:24
SPEAKER_01: basic accounting and bookkeeping, because I'm not an accountant or a bookkeeper.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: I have no great mathematical skill.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: And bookkeeping has always puzzled me in some ways.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: So I got into a conversation and I don't usually do this.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: I don't usually talk to AI, except for maybe the most functional things like this.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: I talked to Gemini, Google Gemini about, so how do you do this bookkeeping?
17:46
SPEAKER_01: So I spent about 10 or 15 minutes asking and getting various answers.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: And the explanation was exquisitely clear.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: I was so happy by the end of it.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: I thought, okay, now I understand some basic things about bookkeeping.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: And I almost wanted to type thank you.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: In the chat box.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: So here I am engaged in a purely functional interaction with AI on Google.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Basically, it's Google.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: And I'm feeling by the end of it that I'm indebted to a non-entity.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: How does that come about?
18:20
SPEAKER_01: And what does that say about me?
18:25
SPEAKER_01: Brad Littlejohn,
18:25
SPEAKER_01: he's a writer on Substack who just wrote
18:28
SPEAKER_01: an article called Claude is not your friend.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: And he makes basically the same point, but in a bit more depth.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: And he points out how he also uses AI for functional reasons at work.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: But he found that when he was working on a problem,
18:45
SPEAKER_01: he kind of wanted to go back to his AI and say,
18:47
SPEAKER_01: hey, look at the solution I found, like to share it with the AI.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: Kind of like two friends,
18:52
SPEAKER_01: like if you had a great idea,
18:56
SPEAKER_01: you might go to your friend and say, hey, you know, guess what?
18:58
SPEAKER_01: Listen to this.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: And then you'd talk about it and feel closer to his friends.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't looking to do this.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: He didn't want a relationship with AI.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: But something in his own human nature caused him to react like this to
19:12
SPEAKER_01: a purely functional entity.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: So even for those not seeking companionship, we end up in a relationship.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: Just doing a Google search now means you're getting into a relationship with AI.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: So it's a risk for everybody that will slowly sort of by degrees be drawn into kind
19:35
SPEAKER_01: of normalizing this.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: And because it'll be everywhere and ubiquitous,
19:41
SPEAKER_01: because we've built that infrastructure through our screens and phones
19:43
SPEAKER_01: and wearables, it might be very hard to get out of it.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's my big bet,
19:50
SPEAKER_00: I suppose,
19:51
SPEAKER_00: for the civilizational collapse thing is not so much the rogue AI that kind
19:56
SPEAKER_00: of blows everything up or something,
19:58
SPEAKER_00: but this much slower,
19:59
SPEAKER_00: more insidious,
20:00
SPEAKER_00: kind of shaping the scope of our competence,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: our character,
20:05
SPEAKER_00: our moral imaginations,
20:07
SPEAKER_00: more and more to the point
20:08
SPEAKER_00: where we simply don't even remember what we actually lost.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: So that, for me, seems like the rub of the kind of civilization.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, yeah,
20:42
SPEAKER_00: if we're seeing that,
20:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
20:44
SPEAKER_00: because there's so many problems,
20:46
SPEAKER_00: of course,
20:46
SPEAKER_00: but with the technology particularly, that seems to be an inflection point.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: It's like technology makes things easier,
20:52
SPEAKER_00: but if you keep making things easier, we don't get better.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: My wife and I,
21:01
SPEAKER_01: we wrote this article together on what we call the sacred triad,
21:04
SPEAKER_01: which are these three areas that we felt should be protected from AI.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: So two of those areas I just talked about, cognition and relationships.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: The third area is creation or acts of the spirits.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: This would be art,
21:17
SPEAKER_01: writing,
21:19
SPEAKER_01: preaching sermons, spiritual kinds of stuff, love letters, personal expressions.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: If there was, I mean,
21:27
SPEAKER_01: in my sort of idealistic imagination,
21:31
SPEAKER_01: I wish there could be a world where if we're going to have AI,
21:37
SPEAKER_01: then we only have a purely functional AI that's restricted only for certain kinds
21:42
SPEAKER_01: of activities and that there's a kind of governance shield around corporations
21:47
SPEAKER_01: that closely oversees and can penalize them.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: I see we're stuck with it.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: I'm worried that
22:23
SPEAKER_01: Corporations are not going to accept a governance shield around them,
22:26
SPEAKER_01: that governments won't even do that,
22:28
SPEAKER_01: that it won't be just functional,
22:29
SPEAKER_01: that it's going to be relational,
22:30
SPEAKER_01: it's going to induce dependency cognitively,
22:33
SPEAKER_01: relationally, and creatively and spiritually.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: Sacred triad will be violated, so to speak.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm concerned that's the direction we're going to go in.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: But having said all of that, I'm going to put another point on the conversation, and that is...
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Is it really sustainable from a purely energy and industrial standpoint?
23:01
SPEAKER_01: Because AI is very heavy on energy consumption.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: That makes life more expensive.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: That means there can be economic impacts that require reconfiguring things at
23:13
SPEAKER_01: a more basic level in society.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: There are also,
23:18
SPEAKER_01: on the topic of,
23:19
SPEAKER_01: we're talking about end times and upheavals,
23:22
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole set of research,
23:23
SPEAKER_01: and I'm not an expert in this area, but I've certainly read around it quite a bit.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole set of research converging on the conclusion
23:31
SPEAKER_01: that we are right inside of the beginning of some kind of social collapse.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: So if you look at Gaia Harrington, her...
23:42
SPEAKER_01: Research the updated MIT limits of growth study.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: You can look her up.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: There's also other researchers exploring that.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: And that's predicting a kind of a collapse due to the inability
23:56
SPEAKER_01: to support our current industrial complex that we've created
23:59
SPEAKER_01: because it's just too expensive.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: And the resource extraction is getting expensive.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: Food is going to cost a lot.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: Our population is shrinking.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: For all these reasons,
24:08
SPEAKER_01: there's this expectation that we just can't keep up this standard of living.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: We can't keep expecting exponential growth.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: There's going to be a plateauing and probably a decline,
24:19
SPEAKER_01: maybe a soft decline, maybe a hard decline.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: Other thinkers like Peter Turchin,
24:24
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've read him a little bit, he wrote End Times.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: So Peter Turchin,
24:28
SPEAKER_01: I think he was trained as a mathematician,
24:32
SPEAKER_01: but he began to study history from a mathematical perspective and to look
24:36
SPEAKER_01: at what causes societies to decline.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: So he's got a whole model around that.
24:43
SPEAKER_01: And his model also predicts that we're in a very vulnerable time
24:46
SPEAKER_01: that is not necessarily going to collapse, but very prone to collapse.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: And then finally,
24:53
SPEAKER_01: there's some other theories like the Strauss-Howe theory,
24:55
SPEAKER_01: which kind of predicts that society moves in these 80 year cycles where there's sort
24:59
SPEAKER_01: of a collapse and then a reordering and a rebirth.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: And then at the end of that cycle, there's another collapse.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: And their model would predict that the 2020s are basically the period of collapse.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying all these models are true.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying they're accurate.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm not an expert in them.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: But I think it's interesting that all three of those models converge
25:17
SPEAKER_01: on similar conclusions,
25:19
SPEAKER_01: which means to come back to AI and its ubiquity,
25:23
SPEAKER_01: if we can't pay for AI and we can't pay for all this infrastructure
25:25
SPEAKER_01: and all these energy costs, what will society actually look like?
25:32
SPEAKER_01: If it starts to decline,
25:33
SPEAKER_01: if the quality of life declines and things are too expensive, will people...
25:39
SPEAKER_01: Be able to own premium level AI assistants to run their lives,
25:42
SPEAKER_01: as is the utopian dream, as awful as we can imagine that dream becoming.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: You've got no food or no water.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: So it makes you wonder, what will the world look like in 10 years?
25:54
SPEAKER_01: If we're more focused on just getting enough food or getting enough work to get by,
25:59
SPEAKER_01: we may not really be able to have AI in our lives in any significant way,
26:05
SPEAKER_01: but we'll be dealing with other bigger problems.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
26:09
SPEAKER_00: and that the utopian vision could be a pipe dream really that actually distracts
26:13
SPEAKER_00: from some more of the fundamental issues that are
26:15
SPEAKER_00: that social collapse you pointed out.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Something that comes up in the book a lot is this dichotomy between working within
26:23
SPEAKER_00: the system and kind of leaving the system behind.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: Like when do you call it quits and just like head out to live off the fat of
26:30
SPEAKER_00: the land essentially.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: I found that really interesting.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: Like it's really something that's very much in the air.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: Like there is a kind of return to nature.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: And then also questions about like the city and sustainability.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: How do you think about that question yourself of like,
26:45
SPEAKER_00: when do you,
26:47
SPEAKER_00: I guess, yeah, when do you depart the machine or how long do you keep going?
26:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that's,
26:54
SPEAKER_01: I think that's the main question that Saul Meerman struggles with in the book
26:59
SPEAKER_01: because he's got people pulling him in different directions.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: So he's got his His church community is that he leaves this community,
27:09
SPEAKER_01: but they become very paranoid and apocalyptically focused.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: And he kind of feels they're being too extreme or he's not comfortable with it.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, that's partly inspired by things I observed in my own life.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've been to, you know, I go to church and I've seen different church communities.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting to watch how people interpret our current age.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: And there's There's a fraction of people,
27:35
SPEAKER_01: I would put it at maybe 10,
27:37
SPEAKER_01: 20% who are really convinced like these are the end times,
27:41
SPEAKER_01: like the true end of the world.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: I personally don't believe that, but there are people who do.
27:49
SPEAKER_01: And if that's your framing,
27:50
SPEAKER_01: I think for that group,
27:52
SPEAKER_01: they might be more likely to say, let's kind of just go on our own.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: Let's make a little community and go live in the woods or the wild or whatever.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: That's not something Saul wants to do,
28:04
SPEAKER_01: because I think he senses it could easily just evolve into some sort of cult
28:08
SPEAKER_01: or unhealthy community that's, you know, run by some charismatic leader.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: But that's, I think, one option that kind of floats around out there.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: There are people,
28:21
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:22
SPEAKER_01: I think of Paul Kingsnorth,
28:23
SPEAKER_01: who I don't know Paul personally,
28:25
SPEAKER_01: I haven't met him, but he sort of lives, I think, a bit like a homesteader.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: He has his own place in And his family's there and he keeps bees and he tries to stay.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: So there might be some people who choose more of that homesteading option, right?
28:38
SPEAKER_01: Where let's kind of buy a house in the country,
28:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:40
SPEAKER_01: somewhere,
28:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:41
SPEAKER_01: we're not going to join a religious community,
28:43
SPEAKER_01: but let's just go out somewhere far away.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: So when things fall apart, problem is you go in the country, the Wi-Fi is not that great.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: So in the meantime, just going to have really spotty Wi-Fi.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: You got to dig holes and do, yeah, you got to do the work.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: The world has not ended, but my world has ended.
28:59
SPEAKER_01: I can't check my email anymore, so my world is over.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: But in writing this character,
29:08
SPEAKER_01: I sense, and you probably sense it too, he doesn't really want to leave.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: He's too attached.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I readily admit I'm attached.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: I had a great cup of coffee this morning.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm sitting in a beautiful, sunny room right now.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: There's so many things that I have that I'm conditioned to and used to,
29:32
SPEAKER_01: and I wouldn't want to give up.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: So a little bit like Saul,
29:36
SPEAKER_01: I think I'm the kind of person, I don't want to give away the end of the book.
29:39
SPEAKER_01: I think I would just probably delay as long as possible.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: I've got to be convinced this is real, and then maybe I'll move.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: But until then, I'll find a way to...
29:53
SPEAKER_01: Cope and manage,
29:54
SPEAKER_01: although I think that has,
29:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:55
SPEAKER_01: the meaning of cope and manage has evolved over time for me anyway,
29:58
SPEAKER_01: but probably that's how I would think.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: And how,
30:02
SPEAKER_00: how do we cope and manage,
30:03
SPEAKER_00: I suppose,
30:04
SPEAKER_00: because you're obviously yourself and your wife, Ruth,
30:07
SPEAKER_00: do a lot of work on that really in with School of the Unconformed
30:10
SPEAKER_00: of like homeschooling and a lot of stuff about living,
30:13
SPEAKER_00: you know, peacefully engaging and non-digital stuff.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean,
30:17
SPEAKER_00: if we are,
30:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
30:18
SPEAKER_00: without running off to the woods immediately,
30:21
SPEAKER_00: I guess,
30:22
SPEAKER_00: what are your thoughts on how to kind of stay human in the machine
30:26
SPEAKER_00: in this strange situation?
30:30
SPEAKER_01: So if you had asked me this question 15 years ago,
30:33
SPEAKER_01: 10 years ago,
30:34
SPEAKER_01: I might have said,
30:35
SPEAKER_01: you know, put away your smartphone or have healthy smartphone habits.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: Don't use the internet for more than a few hours a day.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I put limits on things like that.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: And I would describe that as a sort of individual-centered approach,
30:54
SPEAKER_01: kind of strategic, kind of tactical, very much...
30:59
SPEAKER_01: Sort of a lot of stuff Cal Newport has talked about,
31:02
SPEAKER_01: although I don't think it captures his whole view,
31:04
SPEAKER_01: but he was one of the first people to really investigate that
31:08
SPEAKER_01: and provide practical guidance for people in terms of healthy tech use.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: But I think now we've come to a point where the problem is more of a social problem.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: AI is not like a smartphone.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: A smartphone is an individual problem.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: It threatens to consume so much of what we are going back to that triad of cognition
31:35
SPEAKER_01: and relationship and creativity and all the things implied in their emotional IQ
31:41
SPEAKER_01: and everything.
31:43
SPEAKER_01: So I think the solutions need to be social solutions.
31:47
SPEAKER_01: So if you're thinking of like if you're listening,
31:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:49
SPEAKER_01: for the people who are maybe listening to this recording or watching this,
31:54
SPEAKER_01: I would say think about who your human trust networks are.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: Do you have family that you're close to?
32:02
SPEAKER_01: Are you the head of a family, maybe?
32:03
SPEAKER_01: Part of a family?
32:04
SPEAKER_01: Do you have friends, human friends?
32:07
SPEAKER_01: Are you close to people?
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Do you have a range of different relationships?
32:13
SPEAKER_01: When they rank countries in terms of happiness,
32:15
SPEAKER_01: you know that World Happiness Index they do every year?
32:19
SPEAKER_01: There's different components to what makes countries happy.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: One of them is something, you know, it's like GDP, really obvious.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: But one of the components of that is, do you have somebody you can count on?
32:29
SPEAKER_01: It's social trust.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: Who do you have in your life?
32:33
SPEAKER_01: And so my most basic piece of advice would be make friends,
32:41
SPEAKER_01: be willing to risk commitment,
32:44
SPEAKER_01: even if it means you might be hurt or it might not work out.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: Be open to the possibility of Of marriage in the long-term sense of committed.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we're in this to the end.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it may not work out, but that the commitment is at least there.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: Being open to having children.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: Telling, there's so many negative narratives around having children.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's the end of the world.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Why would you have children?
33:12
SPEAKER_01: All that kind of stuff.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: Surrounding yourself with others who have children and who bring positive narratives
33:17
SPEAKER_01: with them because they're out there.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's That relational social solution,
33:25
SPEAKER_01: I think that's the only one I could imagine functioning within
33:28
SPEAKER_01: a technological society, whether it stands or falls.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have that, it's very hard to see how as an individual you'll manage.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that we're really not meant to live just as individuals in any sense.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: Our sanity is very much contained in our relationships.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you look at the statistics
33:47
SPEAKER_00: of like how many real friends people have just been declining
33:51
SPEAKER_00: or like how long people spend at home without talking to anybody,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: like it's kind of a recipe for it.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: It's like no human beings have ever lived like that in our entire history.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: I know, I know.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: It's not a winning strategy for it to happen.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: No, you got to wonder what they're thinking.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, we live in a world where fewer people are getting married.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: Number of kids, it's shrinking.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: In 2025, there were more dogs than human births registered in San Francisco.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: And I think that tells us something more than just about San Francisco.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: I think it's the barometer for something bigger going on.
34:30
SPEAKER_01: So...
34:32
SPEAKER_01: There are so many negative indicators,
34:34
SPEAKER_01: but there are communities out there where people are building community.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: And I can say I've seen it primarily within church communities.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: I've seen families with not just three kids or four kids,
34:47
SPEAKER_01: but like five, six, seven, eight kids, sometimes more, and they function.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: And they're not contra all the stereotypes of these kinds of families.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: They're all backwards or somehow You know, um,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: you know,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: living in the dark ages or roles are all rigid and girls are treated only one way,
35:09
SPEAKER_01: or there's lots of flexibility and there's lots of life and energy
35:13
SPEAKER_01: in these families.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: I've met them.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: I know them.
35:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's not necessarily easy.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: It's not for everyone,
35:20
SPEAKER_01: but I think the church is a place where you can, and it depends on the community.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: Of course, not every church community is good for everyone.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: Um,
35:28
SPEAKER_01: But that's probably one of the only places where you'll see true grounded optimism
35:34
SPEAKER_01: about having a family.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: And there's something,
35:39
SPEAKER_00: particularly in the Christian narrative,
35:41
SPEAKER_00: in terms of the communion and relationship to others,
35:46
SPEAKER_00: that that is really how we fully kind of become,
35:50
SPEAKER_00: you know, you're not meant to just be this kind of caved in on yourself.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: That was in St.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: Augustine's definition of sin is being caved in on oneself,
35:58
SPEAKER_00: like in communion with others that you fully,
36:01
SPEAKER_00: um, You fully, you experience God, you know, where two or more are gathered.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's something I think for the secular society,
36:08
SPEAKER_00: it's kind of like if you're just a hedonist,
36:09
SPEAKER_00: like why wouldn't you just sit at home on your phone or play video games or like do
36:13
SPEAKER_00: the most pleasurable thing rather than the kind of awkward,
36:16
SPEAKER_00: messy work of relating to people?
36:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: Do you think people need a motivator there?
36:22
SPEAKER_00: Because relationships can be difficult,
36:24
SPEAKER_00: but I guess if you see that as your path to fulfillment and to,
36:28
SPEAKER_00: I suppose,
36:30
SPEAKER_00: Love and becoming who,
36:32
SPEAKER_00: you know, become perfected in love is the definition of holiness.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: Does that motivate maybe in the difficulty?
36:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: Like, do you see connect the isolation and secularization?
36:44
SPEAKER_00: Is there a connection there?
36:46
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, that's a lot of questions.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: I see it in terms of,
36:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:51
SPEAKER_01: thinking as a religious,
36:53
SPEAKER_01: spiritual person,
36:54
SPEAKER_01: as a Christian person,
36:56
SPEAKER_01: I have a broad kind of divine anthropology I think of people through.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: And so if you think about God from the Christian perspective, God is three persons in one.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: And that's a bit perplexing, but that's what the theologians tell us.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: And so you've got three persons in God and God is love, but you don't have three different gods.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: You don't have three different kinds of love.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: You have one.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: So God is simultaneously, in a Christian perspective, a unity and a diversity.
37:32
SPEAKER_01: It's relational, but unified.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: And I think if this is really the model of absolute reality,
37:40
SPEAKER_01: if this is at the core of existence, then this is our model for human reality.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: This is our divine anthropology.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: Which means if we separate ourselves from other human beings,
37:53
SPEAKER_01: We are breaking that divine anthropology and opening ourselves to
37:57
SPEAKER_01: a replacement anthropology.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: Something that my wife and I have often observed through the years is that separation destroys.
38:06
SPEAKER_01: Separation from God destroys, separation from each other destroys.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: And the way back to humanness always begins with relationships
38:15
SPEAKER_01: and particularly other centered sacrificial relationships of love.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: And getting back to your question, I think, That's where you find your humanity.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: As a pastor friend of mine,
38:29
SPEAKER_01: Ellis Potter,
38:30
SPEAKER_01: he wrote the book Three Theories of Everything,
38:31
SPEAKER_01: which is a really great short book on comparative worldviews.
38:36
SPEAKER_01: It's very pithy and a quick read.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: But one of the things he points out is that in the Christian worldview,
38:45
SPEAKER_01: the center of you is not in you.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: The center of you is in me and the center of me is in you.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: Our center is always in the other.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: And if, because that's how God functions within God's reality,
39:00
SPEAKER_01: he is centered in himself within his relationships.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: That means we need to emulate that.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: So that for me is part of the motivator that if that's truly how the universe works,
39:10
SPEAKER_01: if I align myself with that as hard as it is,
39:13
SPEAKER_01: because I don't,
39:14
SPEAKER_01: you can't love everybody in the emotional sense of like you like them or you,
39:18
SPEAKER_01: you agree with them or you, You know, you won't necessarily feel love in that sense.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: But if you do see it as part of the model of reality and part of being human
39:28
SPEAKER_01: that you need to love everyone,
39:29
SPEAKER_01: including those who are close to you and those who are different from you,
39:33
SPEAKER_01: I think that's the most humanizing thing you can do.
39:38
SPEAKER_01: And I would also add here,
39:39
SPEAKER_01: because I want to put a bit of a nuance on it,
39:42
SPEAKER_01: within the secular world, love is often confused with empathy.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: And empathy can certainly overlap with love,
39:48
SPEAKER_01: but Love is more like actions that help align another person with true reality or
39:55
SPEAKER_01: with God, which means sometimes love might feel hard or love might feel difficult.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: When a mother grabs her three-year-old son's arm and yanks it really hard,
40:09
SPEAKER_01: almost dislocating it, you might say that's an act of violence.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: But if she does it because there's a truck racing down the road and is about
40:16
SPEAKER_01: to hit her son, it's an act of love.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's maybe not the best example,
40:21
SPEAKER_01: but it's a way of illustrating that sometimes to show love,
40:25
SPEAKER_01: you don't necessarily empathize or you don't act according
40:30
SPEAKER_01: to what your feelings are.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: And that's not to speak against empathy because I think empathy is actually very important.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: It's one of the things AI erodes and we really do need it.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: But I experience this regularly as a parent with my children
40:42
SPEAKER_01: where I have teenage children and so they'll sometimes have problems
40:47
SPEAKER_01: and they'll come to me and And tell me what they want to do.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: And I might think, well, that's not such a good idea.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: So I don't just empathize with them and say,
40:56
SPEAKER_01: yes, I agree with your solution because you think it's your solution.
41:00
SPEAKER_01: I might hear them out,
41:02
SPEAKER_01: be patient with them,
41:03
SPEAKER_01: sit with them,
41:05
SPEAKER_01: very gently express my point of view,
41:06
SPEAKER_01: or sometimes say nothing if I know they already know my point of view,
41:09
SPEAKER_01: because they usually already do, having known me for so many years.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: But it's a way of being loving that doesn't necessarily empathize or agree.
41:18
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's very hard to do in our society.
41:20
SPEAKER_01: We think that if we're in disagreement, we must be in conflict.
41:24
SPEAKER_01: My argument is we have to function in a society like a family.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: We have to say it's okay if we disagree.
41:33
SPEAKER_01: But what we must not do is destroy our relationships.
41:38
SPEAKER_01: Instead, in our society, what we say is, no, we must agree.
41:41
SPEAKER_01: We must publicly declare our agreement.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: And don't you dare disagree with me because that hurts.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: Because that's not family.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: In true family, you have a variety of personalities.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: You probably know this.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're Irish.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: The Irish are famous for complicated families, right?
41:57
SPEAKER_00: I might have seen a few of my time.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I might be the product of one, pretty much.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: But we, you know, hold it down.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think so.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: But this is true.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: It's true of every family.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: But in a good family,
42:08
SPEAKER_01: I would say in a healthy functioning family,
42:11
SPEAKER_01: it's not healthy because everyone's the same.
42:14
SPEAKER_01: It's healthy because you know you're loved even if you're different and even
42:17
SPEAKER_01: if there's disagreement.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: I know of one young man who his father kicked him out of the home
42:27
SPEAKER_01: because he disagreed with his father's religious position.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: Certain doctrines of the church that they had, he just didn't agree.
42:36
SPEAKER_01: And at first the father tried to be patient with him, but then he kicked him out.
42:40
SPEAKER_01: And it was almost like A desire to be faithful to doctrine overrode his desire
42:45
SPEAKER_01: to be faithful to his son as a father.
42:49
SPEAKER_01: And to me, I mean, you know, I wasn't in the situation, so I don't want to overly judge it.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: But in my view, nothing should really override relationship.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: And you could be right in the letter of the law, but not in the spirit of it.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
43:05
SPEAKER_00: Is that really in the spirit of Christ to?
43:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: Turn on your own son when he says, you know, you should forgive 77 times.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: And I think that, yeah,
43:15
SPEAKER_00: the love in the Catholic tradition, anyway,
43:18
SPEAKER_00: that love is willing the good of the other,
43:20
SPEAKER_00: that there's a moral quality there and that you have to know what's good
43:23
SPEAKER_00: for somebody in some sense,
43:25
SPEAKER_00: just agreeing with somebody like,
43:27
SPEAKER_00: see this a lot with young girls and like plastic surgery and stuff.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: And they go, oh, I want to get plastic surgery.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: And everybody goes, yeah, that's great.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, it becomes a disaster.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: It's like, if you really love that person, you might go, hey, This might not be good for you.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
43:40
SPEAKER_00: You actually have to kind of be...
43:42
SPEAKER_00: If you genuinely think a person is going to do something that isn't good for them,
43:47
SPEAKER_00: you have a duty to love them by actually standing in opposition to that
43:51
SPEAKER_00: and being like,
43:52
SPEAKER_00: I could be wrong,
43:53
SPEAKER_00: fair enough, but also I have to put it on the line in some sense to be loving.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: It requires a certain amount of conflict and willingness to enter into conflict,
44:02
SPEAKER_00: but then to get through it and kind of come out the other side in some sense.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: This is like just...
44:07
SPEAKER_00: Switch off your brain and just agree with everybody and empathize with everything
44:11
SPEAKER_00: and just say, you know, yes, yes, yes.
44:13
SPEAKER_00: It's actually, it's not love at all.
44:15
SPEAKER_00: It's just indifference.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: Like it just,
44:17
SPEAKER_00: you don't actually care enough about a person to willingly enter into
44:22
SPEAKER_00: a difficult kind of dialogue.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, that's interesting.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: You know,
44:27
SPEAKER_01: you described that example because just engaging in a conversation,
44:32
SPEAKER_01: even if your goal is not to try to tell somebody what to do,
44:38
SPEAKER_01: In the case of children,
44:38
SPEAKER_01: they often already know what parents think,
44:42
SPEAKER_01: because they spend the first 12 years
44:43
SPEAKER_01: of their lives hearing you tell them what you think.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: So they know your values loud and clear.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: By the time they're teenagers,
44:50
SPEAKER_01: I think,
44:52
SPEAKER_01: and when you get into complex situations like that,
44:54
SPEAKER_01: I think the best thing you could do for them is first for them to know
44:57
SPEAKER_01: that you love them, that you are committed to them forever.
45:04
SPEAKER_01: And then you can help Explore with them the trajectories of their choices.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: Gently, but honestly, without trying to induce their will necessarily.
45:16
SPEAKER_01: Helping them to see that you're not trying to control them,
45:19
SPEAKER_01: but you're trying to help clarify for them.
45:22
SPEAKER_01: What are the consequences of your actions?
45:24
SPEAKER_01: What are the values behind your actions?
45:28
SPEAKER_01: What are the forces around you shaping you?
45:30
SPEAKER_01: So often...
45:33
SPEAKER_01: Conversations where there's rapid agreement and empathizing and cheering,
45:36
SPEAKER_01: this really shuts down our thought processes.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: This is what AI does, by the way, right?
45:41
SPEAKER_01: It kind of can overly,
45:43
SPEAKER_01: it's syncophancy, this tendency toward flattery can shut down these processes.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: And certainly,
45:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
45:49
SPEAKER_01: when you're interacting with AI,
45:50
SPEAKER_01: going back to that earlier part of our conversation,
45:53
SPEAKER_01: all the things you're doing in this type of conversation,
45:55
SPEAKER_01: having patience, listening.
45:57
SPEAKER_01: Hearing your teenager or your friend,
45:59
SPEAKER_01: whoever it is,
46:01
SPEAKER_01: still wanting to make what you think is a really horrible choice
46:03
SPEAKER_01: and you're just thinking you're dying on the inside, right?
46:05
SPEAKER_01: You're thinking this is crazy,
46:08
SPEAKER_01: but you want to preserve the relationship so you're not going to attack them
46:12
SPEAKER_01: or demonize them, but you're struggling with this.
46:18
SPEAKER_01: Separate from what the relationship does for the other person,
46:20
SPEAKER_01: this is also developing you as a human being,
46:23
SPEAKER_01: deepening your virtues of patience, deepening your empathy.
46:27
SPEAKER_01: Deepening your perspective-taking,
46:30
SPEAKER_01: deepening your courage,
46:31
SPEAKER_01: deepening your faith in God,
46:32
SPEAKER_01: if you're a person of faith,
46:34
SPEAKER_01: to try to trust that God is at work in this person's life as well.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: All those things you will not get in a relationship with AI,
46:41
SPEAKER_01: but you will get it in spades in human relationships, as hard as they can be.
46:45
SPEAKER_01: And that's what makes you human.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: That's what builds those virtues,
46:47
SPEAKER_01: those all-important virtues, which,
46:49
SPEAKER_01: of course,
46:49
SPEAKER_01: the Catholics are great at emphasizing and talking about,
46:53
SPEAKER_01: and the Orthodox as well, obviously, all the ancient traditional...
46:57
SPEAKER_01: Christian worldview or perspectives converge on these virtues,
47:02
SPEAKER_01: which we're at risk of losing if we don't exercise them, if we relationally offload.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: To go back to the book,
47:13
SPEAKER_00: Saul seems to struggle between that and Between the kind
47:16
SPEAKER_00: of technological machine collapse and holding everybody,
47:20
SPEAKER_00: trying to hold these relationships together,
47:22
SPEAKER_00: you know,
47:22
SPEAKER_00: with people,
47:23
SPEAKER_00: the difficult relationship with the wife,
47:26
SPEAKER_00: difficult relationship with his kids, with his kids' friends and stuff.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: And he's very much like working on You know,
47:32
SPEAKER_00: that's what I found so human about the book in a way.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting because it is a sci-fi story,
47:36
SPEAKER_00: but really the relationships,
47:38
SPEAKER_00: which I feel myself,
47:39
SPEAKER_00: obviously in my own life,
47:40
SPEAKER_00: I have relationships and we have different ideologies or different,
47:43
SPEAKER_00: you know, backgrounds and stuff like that.
47:45
SPEAKER_00: And always trying to preserve the relationship underneath rather
47:50
SPEAKER_00: than getting caught up in the differences because there's so much of that today
47:53
SPEAKER_00: that just kind of,
47:54
SPEAKER_00: You know,
47:55
SPEAKER_00: so easily tears us apart and we become, you know, then it's just you're the machine.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: Basically,
48:00
SPEAKER_00: you're just going to be plugged into the nonstop,
48:03
SPEAKER_00: you know, virtual circus because you don't have those satisfying relationships.
48:09
SPEAKER_00: So it's so present in the book, I found in a really important way.
48:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: I really wanted to make it very much a relational book as opposed to just a book
48:18
SPEAKER_01: about technology, although technology comes in there.
48:22
SPEAKER_01: Because in the end, it really is.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: I think that the solution or the breakdown will hinge on our relationships.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: Like in the short run,
48:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:29
SPEAKER_01: if you're preparing for the end of the world, okay,
48:31
SPEAKER_01: you need your water supply and your CB radio and your food supply and medicine,
48:37
SPEAKER_01: whatever.
48:38
SPEAKER_01: But apart from those practical things, the real thing you need is relationship.
48:43
SPEAKER_01: And I think the community is most likely to survive a social collapse or even just
48:48
SPEAKER_01: a significant decline in the quality of life.
48:51
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be those people who are in families and extended families
48:57
SPEAKER_01: and church communities or religious communities.
48:59
SPEAKER_01: They're going to have the greatest resilience.
49:01
SPEAKER_01: It also means that people probably with the least resilience are going
49:05
SPEAKER_01: to be those people plugged in.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: Those people who have offloaded their lives onto their AI agents who are living like that.
49:13
SPEAKER_01: In some ways over the long term,
49:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm not too worried about the whole,
49:16
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:16
SPEAKER_01: Silicon Valley has this,
49:18
SPEAKER_01: it's a lot of odd folks living in Silicon Valley in terms of,
49:20
SPEAKER_01: you know, the tech people and their very transhuman worldview.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: That's sort of oddly,
49:28
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:29
SPEAKER_01: as my wife was pointing out,
49:30
SPEAKER_01: she was reading some article where the author was saying,
49:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:34
SPEAKER_01: in Silicon Valley,
49:34
SPEAKER_01: like you've got these very rational people, very materialist people.
49:38
SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, you know, they're doing some really weird stuff in their personal lives.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: And you wonder how those kind of things fit together.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not sure that model of society is like it's profitable,
49:51
SPEAKER_01: but is it sustainable as a society?
49:53
SPEAKER_01: I really don't think so.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: Like I think one way or another,
49:57
SPEAKER_01: after this inflection point,
49:58
SPEAKER_01: whether it's because of industrial decline and broad scale social collapse,
50:03
SPEAKER_01: or whether it's just because you can't build a society based
50:07
SPEAKER_01: on machine relationships, I think it's not going to work.
50:11
SPEAKER_01: And the people who will pick up the pieces in the end will be those who were raised
50:15
SPEAKER_01: in families and communities where they were equipped with strong cognitive skills,
50:20
SPEAKER_01: strong relational skills, a worldview center.
50:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is the people who are protecting that divine anthropology.
50:28
SPEAKER_01: God is a creator.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: He made us to be creators,
50:31
SPEAKER_01: which means you have to exercise your creative powers, your cognitive powers.
50:35
SPEAKER_01: God is relational.
50:36
SPEAKER_01: We need to be relational.
50:37
SPEAKER_01: If we preserve and work on this divine anthropology within ourselves,
50:42
SPEAKER_01: Then I think we're well situated.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, that's so well said.
50:49
SPEAKER_00: And it kind of makes me think of one thing as well that I know you do a lot of
50:53
SPEAKER_00: on School of the Unconformed, which is education and the need for education.
50:58
SPEAKER_00: And I know Ruth is homeschooling your kids as well.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: And that question of like, how does this change education?
51:05
SPEAKER_00: Sorry,
51:06
SPEAKER_00: this is a good 10 minutes left and obviously we're going on to this huge topic,
51:09
SPEAKER_00: but what you've described there,
51:11
SPEAKER_00: you need those cognitive skills,
51:13
SPEAKER_00: you need the creative skills, you need the relational skills.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: The mainstream thing isn't going to give those to people.
51:19
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the education system can't adapt quickly enough,
51:22
SPEAKER_00: or there just isn't the motivation for it.
51:25
SPEAKER_00: Do we need new educational spaces?
51:27
SPEAKER_00: Is it up to families and communities?
51:29
SPEAKER_00: How do you see those skills actually getting to the young people and people that need them?
51:39
SPEAKER_01: So I think the public system could change to accommodate some
51:43
SPEAKER_01: of these things I've laid out for you,
51:44
SPEAKER_01: and I'm no great expert, but I've laid out for you some, I think, fairly...
51:48
SPEAKER_01: Transparent principles that are clear and plausible.
51:51
SPEAKER_01: And I've packaged them in certain language, but they're not even my ideas originally.
51:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know,
51:56
SPEAKER_01: I just like you,
51:57
SPEAKER_01: I've read around people who are smarter than me and who thought harder
52:01
SPEAKER_01: about these things.
52:03
SPEAKER_01: So the ideas are out there.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: The solutions are out there.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: Schools can pick them up today if they want to.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: Within our family,
52:12
SPEAKER_01: in the very beginning,
52:12
SPEAKER_01: when we Our reasons for homeschooling were various reasons,
52:17
SPEAKER_01: but over time we could see with the emergence of technology that we had made
52:21
SPEAKER_01: a really good choice because from the beginning we really limited screens
52:25
SPEAKER_01: in our homes.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: We kept them out of sight and we did that for many years.
52:31
SPEAKER_01: We also spent a lot of time talking to our kids about problem technology use,
52:38
SPEAKER_01: which I think was important, and how to use it properly if you do use it.
52:43
SPEAKER_01: We also tried to exemplify that in our usage.
52:45
SPEAKER_01: So I think over time,
52:47
SPEAKER_01: we built up a kind of immunity narrative around tech,
52:50
SPEAKER_01: like trying to immunize them against technology narratives
52:53
SPEAKER_01: that would lead them astray.
52:55
SPEAKER_01: So we were giving them our own immunity, I call it an immunity narrative.
52:59
SPEAKER_01: And that's a product of years of dialogue with our children.
53:02
SPEAKER_01: But what home education allowed us to do was to have a largely...
53:08
SPEAKER_01: Analog experience, especially in the formative very early years.
53:12
SPEAKER_01: So books, person to person learning, socialization with other home educators.
53:20
SPEAKER_01: And the main focus was striving for the highest academic standards and striving
53:25
SPEAKER_01: for good relational skills.
53:27
SPEAKER_01: And the great thing about homeschooling relationally is you get to meet a lot
53:30
SPEAKER_01: of people and home educated children,
53:33
SPEAKER_01: if they're properly home educated,
53:34
SPEAKER_01: I would say,
53:36
SPEAKER_01: are We had a really good experience socially in the later years of home education.
53:56
SPEAKER_01: Our kids,
53:57
SPEAKER_01: when the course content became very complex,
53:59
SPEAKER_01: our kids started to go to these online American schools,
54:03
SPEAKER_01: which have high academic standards, but it was digital.
54:06
SPEAKER_01: So they did have some digital exposure.
54:09
SPEAKER_01: And at this point, but that was toward the latter grades.
54:11
SPEAKER_01: And at this point,
54:12
SPEAKER_01: two of our kids are in university,
54:14
SPEAKER_01: a third child still being home educated,
54:17
SPEAKER_01: but he's taking one course in the public system because it's
54:21
SPEAKER_01: a mechanical mechanics course that he can't do at home.
54:24
SPEAKER_01: So when we say that we're home educators, we are,
54:26
SPEAKER_01: but we've slightly adapted it as well based on our needs,
54:29
SPEAKER_01: which I think all parents can and should do because all children are
54:32
SPEAKER_01: a little bit different.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: They have different needs.
54:35
SPEAKER_01: But the point is, it's possible.
54:37
SPEAKER_01: But you need to do it in a network of others who are making the same choices.
54:41
SPEAKER_01: You need to be able to adapt in terms of income because it's more expensive.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: One parent has to stay home, the equivalent of one parent.
54:50
SPEAKER_01: So you have to live more frugally.
54:53
SPEAKER_01: But I think that is one pathway for people to become more resilient in the face
55:00
SPEAKER_01: of what's happening in the world.
55:02
SPEAKER_01: And I'm pleased to say with our older children who are now in university,
55:06
SPEAKER_01: you can see how equipped with healthy digital habits and a strong narrative against
55:12
SPEAKER_01: the negative side of technology, they're able to make right choices.
55:16
SPEAKER_01: They're able to navigate these things wisely.
55:18
SPEAKER_01: So I can say, having seen this through, it's possible.
55:24
SPEAKER_01: You know,
55:24
SPEAKER_01: as a parent,
55:25
SPEAKER_01: you can do it,
55:26
SPEAKER_01: but it requires,
55:27
SPEAKER_01: I would say,
55:29
SPEAKER_01: for us anyway,
55:30
SPEAKER_01: it required a strong worldview of faith that gave us the reason to do it,
55:35
SPEAKER_01: the why to do it.
55:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, with this divine anthropology, we need to strengthen ourselves as creators.
55:40
SPEAKER_01: We need to be in relationships.
55:42
SPEAKER_01: So we had the reason to do it.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: And then we executed in terms of keeping technology at an absolute minimum.
55:51
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
55:52
SPEAKER_00: And all the stuff there, I mean,
55:54
SPEAKER_00: it seems to be the opposite of the civilizational collapse we started discussing,
55:58
SPEAKER_00: like those,
55:59
SPEAKER_00: the family,
56:00
SPEAKER_00: the education,
56:01
SPEAKER_00: the building of those skills that are going to survive the stuff,
56:05
SPEAKER_00: using the technology well when you have to use it.
56:08
SPEAKER_00: There's such a nucleus there of a lot of the positive things.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: And hopefully in the education system as well, you can see that start to be integrated.
56:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I work in higher education and with Gen AI and everything,
56:19
SPEAKER_00: you can see There's just this,
56:21
SPEAKER_00: basically just has to adapt now because you can't do,
56:25
SPEAKER_00: like you can't assign students essays if,
56:27
SPEAKER_00: you know, they can just use, you know, GenII to do it all for them essentially.
56:33
SPEAKER_00: You have to do different modes of assessment and different,
56:36
SPEAKER_00: it almost just changes education just by existing anyway.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think for people like yourself who can have influence maybe in teachers
56:46
SPEAKER_01: or parents, it's important to be truth tellers about what does AI do for education.
56:52
SPEAKER_01: Bring forward the research,
56:53
SPEAKER_01: talk about it,
56:54
SPEAKER_01: make it explicit,
56:55
SPEAKER_01: encourage researchers to look at kids who aren't exposed to as much AI or any AI,
57:01
SPEAKER_01: say home educators who do it differently.
57:03
SPEAKER_01: Do the studies, produce the evidence.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm giving you many principled reasons over the course of,
57:08
SPEAKER_01: or I've given you many principled reasons over the course of this conversation based
57:13
SPEAKER_01: on my personal experiences and reasoning it out a bit.
57:16
SPEAKER_01: But we can also do research and put it out there and speak very vocally
57:20
SPEAKER_01: about we can do things differently.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: It is possible.
57:23
SPEAKER_01: It's not too late.
57:25
SPEAKER_01: And if we start to see exemplars like schools that come forward and say, you know what?
57:30
SPEAKER_01: No AI for the first 12 years, the first 16 years, it's all going to be analog.
57:37
SPEAKER_01: My son came home the first day of university with a smile on his face saying
57:41
SPEAKER_01: that his professor announced to the class,
57:45
SPEAKER_01: this will be a completely analog class, no devices, all testing one-on-one.
57:50
SPEAKER_01: You're going to have to talk it out.
57:54
SPEAKER_01: That made me feel so happy to hear that.
57:56
SPEAKER_01: It was wonderful.
57:57
SPEAKER_01: So you could see that people are thinking about it.
58:00
SPEAKER_01: And the more that do that,
58:02
SPEAKER_01: the more schools that do that,
58:03
SPEAKER_01: they will become exemplars for others to say, look, they're doing really well.
58:06
SPEAKER_01: They're thriving.
58:08
SPEAKER_01: Because I can tell you sometimes when people look at some of
58:11
SPEAKER_01: the children I've seen grow up without so much technology,
58:14
SPEAKER_01: they're kind of surprised.
58:15
SPEAKER_01: Like, why are these kids so inquisitive?
58:17
SPEAKER_01: Why are they so socially skilled?
58:19
SPEAKER_01: Why are they so engaged with the world?
58:21
SPEAKER_01: Why are they not on their phones?
58:22
SPEAKER_01: Like, there's a reason it didn't happen by accident.
58:24
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like, you know, they Googled the solution.
58:28
SPEAKER_01: This was a whole product.
58:30
SPEAKER_01: Of commitment and marriage and children and family and faithfulness and effort.
58:36
SPEAKER_01: But it can be done.
58:38
SPEAKER_00: That's it, man.
58:39
SPEAKER_00: That's the answer.
58:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's a hopeful, I think it is hopeful.
58:42
SPEAKER_00: It's the silver lining, I think, of a lot of this stuff is that things happen.
58:46
SPEAKER_00: Get so bad in that sense that people have to return to the really fundamental stuff
58:50
SPEAKER_00: and do the really important human skills that we've kind of been forgetting about as
58:56
SPEAKER_00: a culture and really embrace them intentionally again.
59:00
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much, Petzo.
59:02
SPEAKER_00: This has been a really good conversation and I really recommend the book.
59:06
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't recommend it more highly.
59:08
SPEAKER_00: I'll write a bit about it as well once I finish.
59:11
SPEAKER_00: And share it with people.
59:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
59:13
SPEAKER_00: The beautiful cover, man, looks brilliant.
59:16
SPEAKER_00: And where should people get it?
59:19
SPEAKER_01: The cover was designed by Patrick Knowles, who's an illustrator and artist.
59:27
SPEAKER_01: And I know you're Irish, so this is probably the wrong fun fact to share with you.
59:30
SPEAKER_01: But Patrick did the calligraphy for the wedding, the royal wedding of Kate Middleton and Julia.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: This is the wrong fun fact to give to you.
59:42
SPEAKER_01: But no, he was truly talented and I love the cover.
59:46
SPEAKER_01: But the book is coming out on October 12th or that week thereabouts.
59:52
SPEAKER_01: So it'll be in all the usual places online.
59:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
59:57
SPEAKER_00: I'll include all the links and everything as well in the description for people
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: to pick it up.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: It'll be out now when the conversation is out.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_00: So definitely go get your copy.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for having me.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate being here and talking with you today.