Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / AI is SCAMMING you! Don’t let it. | Flynn Coleman

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AI is SCAMMING you! Don’t let it. | Flynn Coleman · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

• 0:00
  What do you think AI is mirroring about the collective soul?
• 0:05
  Another beautiful question.
• 0:06
  It reminds me when you were talking about a river.
• 0:08
  It also happens to be in the book, but Oliver Sacks has this quote that says something like, time is a river.
• 0:14
  And I love how you added the piece because that's exactly what it is.
• 0:17
  I mean, the river is always flowing and it's always water, but it's always different.
• 0:20
  Yet we're always connected.
• 0:22
  Yeah.
• 0:22
  And I think that that's another example of learning from nature.
• 0:24
  So I think, what is AI reflecting?
• 0:27
  I do, we spoke about this a little bit before, but I think for me, I don't, again, have a
• 0:37
  I stumbled into this field many years ago, and I think technology, and particularly AI, mirrors who we are.
• 0:45
  And we have always evolved alongside our tools.
• 0:49
  So technology, of course, we tend to think now about AI or digital tools, but fire is technology.
• 0:55
  Irrigation is technology.
• 0:56
  Celestial navigation is technology.
• 0:58
  And we've been evolving alongside our tools.
• 1:00
  There's some really interesting historical patterns about, for example, the human thumb, right, evolving alongside our language, alongside our tools.
• 1:09
  So we've always been shaped by our tools as they've shaped us.
• 1:12
  It's like a two-way street.
• 1:14
  So I think AI is interesting in the fact that it is mirroring who we are.
• 1:20
  And there is...
• 1:23
  what's happened with AI, especially with the speed and the scale, is that we're all touched by it, whether we are boycotting it, whether we hate it, whether we love it.
• 1:32
  We are all touched by these tools now.
• 1:35
  And so I think there are so many things that it's mirroring.
• 1:38
  And a lot of it, I really don't like what we're seeing, right?
• 1:42
  And I think that AI is different than technology, the speed and the scale.
• 1:46
  And the only other way it's really different is that it has this existential threat for us.
• 1:51
  in this potentiality to be smarter than we are or could ever be.
• 1:54
  So it's mirroring first and foremost the biases, prejudice, judgments of the people that are building it.
• 2:00
  And specifically, it's a very, very small group of people from a very, very small demographic that are essentially building these tools that are affecting all of us in our future.
• 2:09
  And that's a major problem because for me...
• 2:13
  As a student of human rights, what I study is power.
• 2:16
  And so when we think about these things, it's very important to think about who has the power, how do we redistribute power.
• 2:20
  So I think it's showing us our biases, our judgments, our fears.
• 2:25
  It has the potential to do some other interesting things, certainly in the medical field, certainly in terms of doing a lot of these things that can be useful if we work in partnership.
• 2:34
  But I think it's mirroring
• 2:36
  our deepest fears.
• 2:37
  And I think it's mirroring also the desires and wants of a very select few that will never have to live in the world that most of us live in.
• 2:46
  And the future is being built by a very, very small group of people.
• 2:49
  And regardless of how you feel about that on an individual level, that is a very, very dangerous thing.
• 2:54
  If any one person ever tells you,
• 2:57
  I'm building a future that we can all trust.
• 2:59
  Just sit back and let us do it.
• 3:01
  They're selling you a version of snake oil.
• 3:03
  And so I think it's mirroring our fears.
• 3:05
  I also think it's mirroring a lot of who we are as human beings in terms of being, you know, we are animals just like any other beast.
• 3:15
  We are one link in the chain of evolution.
• 3:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:17
  And so it's mirroring a lot of the societal feels we have about everything from war to capitalism or post-capitalist state to racism to sexism to also just our blind spots.
• 3:29
  You know, as a human being, we have to make some 35,000 decisions every day just to get out of bed and walk down the street.
• 3:35
  So we have to use heuristics or haptic learning or shortcuts.
• 3:40
  So human beings, we are designed to make assumptions.
• 3:43
  We are designed to make assumptions about each other.
• 3:45
  And we are designed that way because, you know, I mean, it's just one very ancient example.
• 3:49
  We had to immediately know, you know, back in the tundra, if this was a saber-toothed tiger, if we could trust it or not.
• 3:54
  Immediately make snap decisions.
• 3:56
  So as a result, we make so many snap decisions now, which is why eyewitness testimony across race, for example, is notoriously unreliable.
• 4:04
  Yeah.
• 4:05
  Because our brain is making judgments all the time.
• 4:09
  And so the goal is not to be a blank slate.
• 4:11
  No one is.
• 4:12
  But I think to be able to look in the mirror, just like relationships are a mirror.
• 4:17
  So I think it's an opportunity for us to look in the mirror and say, well, if I don't like what I see, how can I build a better possible future?
• 4:24
  And I do think that in the decades since I started working on this book, I can't believe it's been almost that long.
• 4:30
  I think we are really starting to not like what we see.
• 4:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 4:33
  And I think that the opportunity there is to say, okay, whether or not we've crossed the Rubicon in terms of these tools becoming so powerful that we don't have a choice not to live with them.
• 4:46
  I think we always have a choice to being able to be willing or brave enough to look in the mirror and say we still have an opportunity to live.
• 4:56
  take a different path.
• 4:57
  Because I think what also happens and what's endlessly important to me is this idea of imagination, moral imagination, societal imagination, creativity.
• 5:06
  I mean, that imagination we have as children and recapturing that.
• 5:09
  And part of being imaginative is realizing that we can always build a better future.
• 5:14
  So Rebecca Solnit in a recent interview did this thing I love because I think it's becoming really relevant, this concept of hope.
• 5:19
  I used to be the one coming in with all the hope and this is how we can build these tools.
• 5:23
  I am a lot
• 5:25
  less hopeful now but rebecca solnick gave this great interview and she says and she wrote hope in the dark this incredible book about hope she goes well you know if you don't like the word hope how about the words never fucking surrender
• 5:38
  So I was like, okay, we don't like what we see.
• 5:41
  There's a lot of, you know, there's so many over, there's patriarchy, there's war, there's AI, there's climate crisis.
• 5:47
  There's so many horrors.
• 5:48
  Ironically, that of course, we can now see because of these screens in front of us, right?
• 5:52
  The algorithms are allowing us to see these things across our screen, but we can still say no matter what, I will never surrender.
• 5:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:00
  I will always try to build a better future for our children's children.
• 6:04
  And I love that because even if we don't have hope or we're anxious or depressed and we're seeing these horrible things, we can say never, never surrender.
• 6:13
  Oh my goodness.
• 6:14
  Wow.
• 6:14
  Never fucking surrender.
• 6:16
  I am obsessed.
• 6:16
  I love that.
• 6:17
  Thank you for sharing that.
• 6:18
  That's so powerful.
• 6:19
  There was so much generosity in what you just shared.
• 6:22
  I'm not even going to pretend to be able to capture all those magic or reflect all that magic.
• 6:27
  But this metaphor of this looking glass, this mirror and what it's showing back to us, I found so powerful and compelling and poignant in your work because it's...
• 6:37
  It feels more, you know, we don't necessarily, there's other technologies like an airplane.
• 6:41
  You don't feel that mirror effect as strongly.
• 6:43
  But like with this specific set of technology, this mirroring effect that it has is so powerful and potent to see.
• 6:50
  And I also adore what you are saying in that.
• 6:53
  I love where you started, where you said that, you know, you said fire is technology.
• 6:57
  And then in your book, you also write about language being technology.
• 7:00
  What I loved about that is it makes us all remember we are technologists because the image of what a technologist is, it's such a narrow white, went to Stanford, Harvard, you know.
• 7:11
  male, Western American, probably from, you know, wealthy person who is creating our digital infrastructure.
• 7:19
  And that's the problem because it's like, we all use the digital infrastructure.
• 7:23
  There's no local solution when we're all on it.
• 7:26
  You know what I mean?
• 7:27
  And so it's really powerful how you've framed it.
• 7:30
  And I think what you're saying about, I love how you started where you're like, I have no interest in AI really.
• 7:34
  I care about people.
• 7:35
  Can you tell people how ironic
• 7:42
  My last book is The Human Algorithm.
• 7:45
  And I did stumble into this world.
• 7:48
  And then, of course, as we all know, the world exploded in terms of thinking about AI.
• 7:54
  But yes, I mean, I've always had an interest, a deep interest in humanity and what it means to be human and also what it means to be humane.