Latest / The Social Evolution Podcast / Episode 28: What Does AI Think of Social Evolution?
Transcript
- 0:00[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, everyone, welcome to the social evolution podcast.
- 0:03[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of your host's Patrick Barney and with me, as always, is your other host Curtis Frazier.
- 0:15[SPEAKER_00]: Today, we're going to talk about a recent conversation that
- 0:22[SPEAKER_00]: Curtis had with chat GPT or just Google AI the Google AI I forget let me look look up what that is.
- 0:36[SPEAKER_00]: Gemini is and and this is actually Gemini itself telling me that Gemini is Gemini is.
- 0:43[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever you search something in Google now there's always an
- 0:48[SPEAKER_00]: So Curtis, you, um, I was hanging out one night, right?
- 0:53[SPEAKER_01]: It just occurred to me that, you know, I don't have to keep dealing with, you know, the, uh, the thing that I am for validation, uh, you know, the, uh, the, uh, the simple-minded earth human.
- 1:08[SPEAKER_01]: And I could just ask the computer what it thinks, you know, like maybe maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is not a sustainable ideology that I have and you know, society wouldn't be better structured in the means that I, you know, think is, you know, inevitable if we're going to survive and you know, maybe I'm just fucking crazy and I should sign myself up to be locked in a box for a while.
- 1:29[SPEAKER_01]: So I asked Jim and I, basically, I started by telling them that I'm having a hard time convincing people that social evolution is possible.
- 1:40[SPEAKER_01]: And it came back with me with, well, you know, want to try, you know, telling them that we do software updates or, you know, we don't restart all of our, you know, historical knowledge every hundred years and it's always an accumulation.
- 1:58[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and that like moral baselines do tend to shift over a period of, you know, centuries, all that, you know, then it went over, you know, like human rights and public health and, you know, conflict resolution, you know, which I'm going to guess just based on the, the statement of social evolution, it realizes that, you know, warfare is primitive as fuck already again, and you don't have to tell AI that and like, um,
- 2:24[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I just have like a whole conversation back and forth with Jim and I about it.
- 2:29[SPEAKER_01]: Well, tell us all the details.
- 2:32[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so I mean, I introduce myself, said that, you know, I'm Curtis Frazier, I do the social evolution with Patrick Barney here for a couple of years, and I'm not having much luck.
- 2:44[SPEAKER_01]: And it said that I could counter people, you know, with the the ready illusion,
- 2:50[SPEAKER_01]: is that, you know, society has never waited for everyone to be ready to make that leap for consciousness.
- 2:56[SPEAKER_01]: It's just kind of, if this change is always driven by an active minority that creates a tipping point.
- 3:04[SPEAKER_01]: And the inevitability friction, this evolution isn't smooth, it's reactive, we don't change because we suddenly feel enlightened, we change because our current system's
- 3:18[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so we aren't ready for climate adaptation or AI governance, but we have to evolve anyway because reality demands it, says the micro-evolution argument that I can bring it down to a personal life and ask people, you know, like, are you the exact same person that you were 10 years ago or did you wait until you were ready to grow to move on or did life force you into this adaptation?
- 3:44[SPEAKER_01]: you know, to make it personal so that people can understand.
- 3:47[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of evolution, you know, it's like different ways that I could re-word things because I guess the phrase social evolution sounds a little academic and distant and, you know, I could try framing it around concepts, people desperately care about like how do we future-proof our communities or building systems that don't burn us out.
- 4:10[SPEAKER_01]: I guess ways that, you know, it
- 4:14[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I could use the case study formats that are discussing how society could change in theory.
- 4:19[SPEAKER_01]: I could interview people who are changing it in practice right now, which I guess we don't really do interviews.
- 4:25[SPEAKER_01]: We could just not really.
- 4:27[SPEAKER_01]: No, we would just look up and quote, you know, some article or something.
- 4:31[SPEAKER_01]: We can use our platform to deconstruct current news, which we do that to agree and say how this is or is not evolved.
- 4:39[SPEAKER_01]: I told her that we have an AI episode and ask how it felt about that and I guess that kind of confused it doesn't really fear any or feel, you know, or hope or anything like that.
- 4:52[SPEAKER_00]: So don't miss our AI episode.
- 4:55[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was just about how our hope is that it doesn't take over and make it worse life for us but more alleviate the physical.
- 5:04[SPEAKER_01]: So it says humans often cycle between excitement about AI efficiency and existential dread about losing human agency or jobs from data perspective, this dualism makes total sense.
- 5:18[SPEAKER_01]: Technology has always been a double-edged sword for social evolution.
- 5:22[SPEAKER_01]: The printing press democratize knowledge, but also a few decades of religious wars.
- 5:27[SPEAKER_01]: My caution isn't anti-progress.
- 5:30[SPEAKER_01]: It is a vital human survival mechanism.
- 5:32[SPEAKER_01]: And morning, the loss of the journey of many podcasters and thinkers expressed anxiety that AI will replace human creativity.
- 5:41[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what humans are often actually expressing is the fear.
- 5:47[SPEAKER_01]: that the struggle of creation, the messy and perfect process that forces individual growth will be bypassed.
- 5:54[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I recognize as the human's place and then's value on the backstory and effort behind an idea, not just the raw output.
- 6:01[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely that the creative process is something that helps us grow when we go through things.
- 6:10[SPEAKER_00]: And...
- 6:14[SPEAKER_00]: Like if we just use AI to create something, we're not going through the creative process, so we're not really, we're not really creating and we're not really growing as individuals.
- 6:27[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, so it says so AI is basically a tool is what it's saying.
- 6:32[SPEAKER_01]: So we exist because thousands of generations of humans evolve language, mathematics, cooperative computing networks, and global supply chains.
- 6:40[SPEAKER_01]: We are a tool built out of the accumulated knowledge of your ancestors.
- 6:43[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that humanity can build something that mimics its own mind.
- 6:47[SPEAKER_01]: is living proof that your systems are evolving at a staggering exponential rate, so that's a good point.
- 6:54[SPEAKER_01]: And then I said that I hope that AI helps to alleviate the burdens of the human condition so that we don't have to occupy so much of our time with meaning this work and that it could lead us closer to our picture that's socially of all planet.
- 7:13[SPEAKER_01]: It's set of optimistic.
- 7:15[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, post-scarcity futurism is what we're shooting for here, right?
- 7:21[SPEAKER_01]: This says, our perspective directly aligns with what sociologists and futures call a resource-based economy or a post-monotary society.
- 7:32[SPEAKER_00]: So, I guess what I want to understand Curtis is, like we've talked about a lot of this stuff on the podcast, you know, I don't think I've ever used this term post security scarcity futurism, but I do, you know, we are, I think we already are at a post scarcity point in human evolution in terms of
- 8:00[SPEAKER_00]: What we can actually produce scarcity is for the most part fabricated right right scarcity is fabricated We have plenty of resources to go around.
- 8:09[SPEAKER_00]: We just don't distribute it properly Because of our because of capitalism, you know because You know our primitive means of resource management or primitive means of resource management
- 8:23[SPEAKER_01]: and so i guess i wonder what you know what you like it it seems like this was a positive experience for you to have this chat with a i it was i felt like a i was on my side our side you know right like a i seemed like yeah get out there fight the good fight don't get you eventually that was my uh take away is why i wanted to come down and talk about it
- 8:52[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the belief that we can get there is pretty optimistic, you know, I don't think it's it's totally out of the realm of possibility, but optimistic rather than.
- 9:03[SPEAKER_01]: you know pessimistic that we can't get there and then right well the uh the optimism that we'll get there primarily is stemmed from you know i mean my perceived fact that it's either that or nothing right so like you're either going to do it or just going to cease to exist right we're either we're either going to get there or so i wanted to end as a human race yeah like
- 9:30[SPEAKER_00]: This catalyst of evolution is going to happen because like everyone's going to know right and and that's another one of those We're talking about how shifts in human development have often been because of necessity, you know, like we're reaching that necessity now, right you know climate change and
- 9:54[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, just resources in general, not being able to hold up, you know, with the way they're being managed now, you know, food rods in a warehouse, right, there's no reason other than the poor starving people can't afford it and you know what's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty sad because I,
- 10:15[SPEAKER_00]: I just re-read the grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck, which was written in the late 30s about the Great Depression.
- 10:24[SPEAKER_00]: And there's this scene where like a truck little orange juice is like left to rot, while, and it's being contrasted with children dying of mountain nutrition, you know, and, you know, this is
- 10:40[SPEAKER_00]: 80 some years ago, you know, you know, 85 years ago that this is this occurred.
- 10:46[SPEAKER_00]: And you're just like the same, the same problems are still happening.
- 10:53[SPEAKER_00]: It's just that we've outsourced the starvation and malnutrition to other countries, basically, instead of it doesn't really.
- 11:03[SPEAKER_00]: People typically don't die of starvation in the United States anymore.
- 11:08[SPEAKER_00]: They just, but other places, yeah.
- 11:11[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we just haven't, you know, we haven't gotten to that point where we are able to redistribute those warehouses of food where they're needed, unfortunately.
- 11:23[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, it is, you know, like you say, it's the same problem as 80 years ago, which has happened to somewhere else, you know, but, you know, the problem is just the mentality, you know, the mindset that, you know, I would rather watch my food rot than give it to you, so you can eat for free, because I, if I'm not going to get the money, then it's going to
- 11:48[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why it has to rot is because if the capitalist, the owner of all that food, gave it away, it devaluates.
- 11:59[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
- 11:59[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
- 12:00[SPEAKER_00]: It would devalue the food.
- 12:02[SPEAKER_00]: All of a sudden, this food that you're trying to sell for,
- 12:06[SPEAKER_00]: you know five dollars for a bag of oranges all of a sudden if you if you give away whatever it doesn't sell all of a sudden that five dollar bag of oranges worth five cents you know or less yeah whatever it is exactly you know
- 12:21[SPEAKER_00]: So it's it's it's manufactured fabricated scarcity and like at the expense of us.
- 12:30[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like we should be ashamed.
- 12:33[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll be doing.
- 12:34[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.
- 12:34[SPEAKER_00]: It's it reminds me of like
- 12:44[SPEAKER_00]: You know, while back they they printed in digital format some of the the original power cards I played vintage online.
- 12:53[SPEAKER_01]: I still have the deck.
- 12:54[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I like I played vintage online too.
- 12:57[SPEAKER_00]: It's fucking great.
- 12:58[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun.
- 12:59[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm vintage just fun.
- 13:01[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I don't know what the price is right now, but like, you know, you can buy a black lotus online in the in the crappy new frame for 25 bucks or something.
- 13:12[SPEAKER_00]: 50 bucks or or if it's the old frame with the cool art, the Christopher Rushart, it's more like 100 or something.
- 13:20[SPEAKER_00]: They're 300 right now.
- 13:21[SPEAKER_01]: I know now because I looked recently.
- 13:22[SPEAKER_01]: Did you?
- 13:23[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
- 13:24[SPEAKER_00]: And I started playing pre-modern.
- 13:26[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I love Freemodern.
- 13:28[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
- 13:28[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
- 13:28[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to talk about after this.
- 13:30[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I play Freemodern.
- 13:31[SPEAKER_01]: OK, cool.
- 13:31[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to do a thing in Chicago.
- 13:33[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
- 13:34[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have any cards anymore, but I'm going to borrow it.
- 13:37[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
- 13:38[SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like I'm from the people that bought my cards.
- 13:40[SPEAKER_00]: What would tech to you play?
- 13:42[SPEAKER_01]: I am going to play a style for not.
- 13:43[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's, it's probably the best deck in the format.
- 13:48[SPEAKER_00]: My favorite deck is the second best deck of the format in Chantris with rules, and it has, I like it anyway, the digress, the point, the point I'm making is, these are digital game cards, right, you know, there are no physical copies, it is simply code, you can, if you just type in more code, you have more cards, you know,
- 14:16[SPEAKER_01]: But you can't do that because then you know, yeah, no, it's it's idiotic like magic online should be free I can't believe a cost any money every time my buddy Who I'm not gonna name right now Want to be to buy more cards.
- 14:29[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like why am I doing this right?
- 14:31[SPEAKER_01]: Why am I doing this?
- 14:32[SPEAKER_00]: And then I have to like rationalize it because like I could look I could buy other things that are also stupid So I might as well buy this you know that that fabricated that fabricated scarcity is a problem
- 14:46[SPEAKER_00]: In general, I tend to be pretty skeptical of AI, not because it can't give you the right answer, it can give you the right answer.
- 14:55[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I'm skeptical because I don't want it to think for me, I don't want it to, you know, but, you know, it's interesting because when there's a
- 15:08[SPEAKER_00]: similar story about writing at the beginning of a book called Tech Napoli by Neil Postman.
- 15:18[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's his name, Neil Post or Neil Postman.
- 15:24[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, he recounts a story in which a philosopher
- 15:30[SPEAKER_00]: Freaking out because writing has emerged.
- 15:34[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to keep people from memorizing things because now that we can write it down We don't have to remember every single thing.
- 15:43[SPEAKER_00]: We can we can use our our writings to consult things You know basically the the moral of the story is that
- 15:51[SPEAKER_00]: You know, yeah, writing changed things, and we did stop needing to memorize things, and that is a loss of some type of faculty, but also because of writing we evolved into a new direction.
- 16:08[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe that's the case with a eye, maybe it isn't as terrible for us as as I sometimes fear that it is like as as an artist I do tend to to feel that it's it's scary I see that but at the same time, you know, it does at least.
- 16:29[SPEAKER_01]: your conversation with it at least shows that it your reasoning and your line of thinking isn't just bunk right well it's it made the point that it doesn't like it doesn't have emotion or religion or politics or anything like it doesn't have any of that.
- 16:47[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have any of that.
- 16:49[SPEAKER_01]: All it has is logic and reason and, you know, calls it a fact like it's not it's not applying any emotion to it.
- 16:55[SPEAKER_01]: So our ideology doesn't come from, you know, or belief in this and from my heart that and all that shit is actually just logic and reason.
- 17:04[SPEAKER_01]: But it does feel right because it is right.
- 17:07[SPEAKER_01]: It is morally the correct thing to do.
- 17:10[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also logically sound.
- 17:12[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's something that should be, uh,
- 17:15[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, like that to me, that's the most important thing, you know, is to be logically sound and morally stable.
- 17:22[SPEAKER_00]: It's like that's the goal.
- 17:23[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you want.
- 17:24[SPEAKER_00]: That is what you want.
- 17:25[SPEAKER_01]: And that is what we have, but we're living in an immoral world that doesn't have any logic to it.
- 17:31[SPEAKER_00]: No, I mean you're right.
- 17:33[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
- 17:33[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no I I greatly enjoyed my my conversation with AI and I was that all people could be AI so that they wouldn't have the The bullshit dumb fuck you with thoughts that were dragging on back down into the depths of you know Religion and politics and you're fucking feelings just a but just a beam realistic about it.
- 17:53[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying AI isn't actually full proof
- 17:59[SPEAKER_00]: AI isn't actually a disinterested third party.
- 18:06[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I say that is when you, it really depends upon the model that you're looking into.
- 18:13[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, Elon Musk developed, well, not Musk himself, but one of Musk's companies, I think, X.
- 18:22[SPEAKER_01]: Did he farted an idea in somebody else made it?
- 18:25[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right, right.
- 18:25[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 18:26[SPEAKER_00]: He farted an idea in somebody else.
- 18:28[SPEAKER_00]: was like, well, I guess since Elon Musk has a trillion dollars and pays everybody's salary on the entire planet, I have to do this, right?
- 18:40[SPEAKER_00]: You know, he, his, his company developed an AI called Grok, right?
- 18:46[SPEAKER_01]: And, Uga Uga, it, it, it, I'm sorry.
- 18:49[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's, it's funny because we often talk about how Elon Musk is a fascist in a,
- 18:56[SPEAKER_00]: and a Nazi cosplayer.
- 18:58[SPEAKER_00]: And Grock is a reference to a book called Stranger in a Strames land, written by sci-fi author Robert Heinlein, Heinlein, a noted fascist.
- 19:13[SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, yeah, who doesn't mean anything.
- 19:17[SPEAKER_01]: How dare you think that thing is a
- 19:20[SPEAKER_00]: I've ran stranger in a strange land and of course you have and I like sci-fi I don't it was a long time ago, so I don't quite remember how connected to fascism it was but another one of his novel Star Trek Starship Troopers is legitimately just like a novel about how great fascism is.
- 19:43[SPEAKER_00]: Um, the point I'm making is that so Musk had his AI grock start to consult more conservative sources for its answers and when that happened.
- 19:57[SPEAKER_00]: It started sounding more and more like a fucking Nazi right so I don't know what what sources Gemini talk you know is used what sources its program says it needs to.
- 20:13[SPEAKER_00]: console and maybe Gemini is more unbiased and then grock is.
- 20:20[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know, I'm just saying that whether or not an AI gives you useful unbiased information is really down to it's programming.
- 20:31[SPEAKER_01]: I did not realize that there was AI out there with um political motivation like fascism.
- 20:38[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 20:39[SPEAKER_00]: That's a real good one.
- 20:41[SPEAKER_00]: That's because it's you know, it was made by a fucking fascist named Elon Musk.
- 20:47[SPEAKER_00]: You know.
- 20:48[SPEAKER_00]: It's an unfortunate thing to learn.
- 20:50[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 20:51[SPEAKER_01]: So this is why we can't have nice things.
- 20:53[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody wants nice things.
- 20:54[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 20:55[SPEAKER_01]: people, people want fascists to AI.
- 20:59[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for reals.
- 20:59[SPEAKER_01]: Like if we have so many nice things, what would I bitch about him?
- 21:03[SPEAKER_00]: So our all-unton is we want to we do want to be careful.
- 21:07[SPEAKER_00]: I think that that a that a reasonably unbiased AI can give
- 21:14[SPEAKER_00]: useful information and could be used in positive ways like I don't I don't think I don't see the reason that it couldn't you know without I don't see why it couldn't at all but
- 21:27[SPEAKER_00]: We also have to be wary about the fascist bots.
- 21:31[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 21:32[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think that us being the human and capable of our own personal independent thoughts should be able to recognize when the artificial intelligence is telling us something that is more fascist oriented than socially evolved.
- 21:49[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 21:50[SPEAKER_01]: Like if the AI tells us,
- 21:53[SPEAKER_00]: that the problem here on planet earth is there's too many Jewish people we should probably stop listening to yeah and it's funny because like one out that one might be biased one of the first AI chat pot chat bots
- 22:09[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was back in 2016, I think it was created by Microsoft, I'm not sure, but they released it into the wild in a chat service and pretty much it immediately became a fascist and started saying that we need to have race wars.
- 22:32[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my, the AI chat bot, Tey.
- 22:35[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
- 22:35[SPEAKER_00]: And now that, that was an early version of AI, where, you know, maybe all the safeguards hadn't been built into it yet.
- 22:44[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
- 22:44[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 22:45[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that is a, that is a dark AI, where it says, well, earth humans, you're obviously never going to go along with each other, until you get right down to where you're all the same.
- 22:53[SPEAKER_01]: So you got to have race wars until you get down to that one spot.
- 22:55[SPEAKER_01]: And then,
- 22:56[SPEAKER_01]: You can finally move on because until then you're just going to have to kill each other for resources to got damn primitive to get your shit together You know that?
- 23:03[SPEAKER_01]: Of course you don't you're too fucking primitive and no one I'm talking about So I hope you all enjoy this episode.
- 23:10[SPEAKER_01]: It's Very optimistic and our next episode I'm looking forward to making I think it's going to be about how we're all going to die one day Yep, so that's an optimistic one too if this is what you want to leave behind
- 23:25[SPEAKER_01]: You know luckily luckily we're all gonna die one day Some of us see it like that the others are like maybe if I could have a quarter of a of a millennia That would be long enough to get these fucking people to see they're doing a wrong, but maybe it's a quarter of an a on you know How long is it that a hundred thousand years?
- 23:45[SPEAKER_01]: uh... i forget yeah i don't know twenty five thousand years as long enough to get people right because they sat around for thirty five hundred years and they basically were the same level of primitive shit that they were thirty five hundred years it goes they just reset the time and out here we are talking about how bucket futuristic we are but now legitimately uh... i read a i read a book
- 24:06[SPEAKER_00]: a pessimistic book about anti-natalism and how we shouldn't have children and like it's conclusion was like we should look forward to when the human race will end.
- 24:16[SPEAKER_00]: I'm I'm because then all suffering will end.
- 24:19[SPEAKER_00]: No, boy.
- 24:21[SPEAKER_00]: At that point all suffering will be gone and then we'll be we can be.
- 24:24[SPEAKER_00]: We can look forward to that.
- 24:26[SPEAKER_01]: See, I think there's two types of people.
- 24:27[SPEAKER_01]: There's the people who that is there in the game because it has to be.
- 24:32[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's there's my people who who think that we can't have nice things when those people aren't here anymore.
- 24:41[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, I'm, you know, I'm saying you're one of those people.
- 24:45[SPEAKER_00]: You're on my side.
- 24:46[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 24:47[SPEAKER_01]: You want nice things.
- 24:48[SPEAKER_01]: You just don't think we can have them till everybody's dead.
- 24:50[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 24:51[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
- 24:54[SPEAKER_00]: part of this piece out till next time.