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100 Episodes In: What Humanity Working Has Learned About AI and the Future of Work · Humanity Working

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, everybody.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the one-hundredth episode of Humanity Working.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Woo! I'll give ourselves a round of applause here.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, or certainly the one hundredth episode of the podcast that has become Humanity Working.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go through a little bit of the history of it today.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I've brought with me one of my favorite guests that we've had over the whole series, and of course, the person who makes it all possible behind the scenes and often in front of the scenes, Matt Neal is here with us.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Matt.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it's amazing.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've been there for every single one.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then our other guest, the one that I mentioned, is somebody who had a profound impact on me when he was on the podcast before.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I know from feedback that he has for some other folks as well.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Author of the book Leading Change in the Era of AI.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Kurst is with me as well.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Bill.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_04: Great to see you, Paul.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks again, and excited for this.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_04: Congratulations on 100 for to both you and Matt.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: And today we're going to look a little bit at what that history has been, what we've been what we've been talking about through all these years.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then also we're going to look forward to see what is going to be happening with humanity working, not just the podcast, but also humanityworking.net or Substack.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not subscribed to that Substack, do go ahead and do it.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: You can listen to the podcast from there directly.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: You can get our long-form newsletters, which take some of the themes that we often talk about here on the podcast and go into them in some more depth, and plus, you know, a bunch of other goodies that we have on there as well.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And unless you're so minded to pay to subscribe, it's free for everybody.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So please, please do go over there and and check that out.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, let's start with reminiscing a bit, Matt.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: It would be inappropriate not to with given all this time.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we started this thing, if I remember rightly, as w with a different name.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: Way too busy, yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: In 2021, I think.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: March of 20, 2020.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: 21 was the first episode.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And back then, you you wouldn't really have heard Matt at all, but Matt was there behind the scenes producing everything.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was a little harder work to produce, I think, in those days.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have the same tools available to us.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: My colleague at the start that I had, Ryan Tubbs, was with me in a lot of those episodes.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then we were really kind of talking about this crazy new world of work.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: I looked back, we did our first episode, we were kind of mentioning AI and robotics and automation and what might happen, what was likely to happen.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: We started talking about that actually really early in like episode two or episode three.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to if you want to go back and remember what the world was like before November the 30th, 2022, which was when ChatGPT 3.5 launched, you can see it right there.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because all the episodes are mentioned back there.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: What if any memories do you have of those times, Matt?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think the most vivid thing is that we started talking about it when like just after COVID hit, and we were all just kind of working from home, and we and we're like, well, this podcasting, I think, is the way to go to get people to understand you know the depth of of what you're trying to do at Billion Minds.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: And my memory, my visceral memory is that when I started it with you guys, I was in my son's bedroom in his closet because it was the like it was one of those like open the doors and there's a desk in there, and my son's bunk bed was behind me, and you know, using the the fuzzy backgrounds and stuff on Zoom, and just like this is so wild.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: We are building the future of technology, figuring out how to navigate this landscape together, and I'm in my son's bedroom without even like a proper desk setup or anything, and it was just it was so chaotic, it really felt like a moment to really embrace like okay, this is how we're working now.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, as we talked about humanity working, part of it, I was living it.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, okay, we're in our our kids' bedrooms now, like just doing everything.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it was at around that exact time, we started with this idea of like way too busy because we called it way too busy because it that's what work felt like.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody felt too busy, too much to do, too little time to do it, and also that like busy became what really was a badge of honor, wasn't it?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, oh yeah, if you if you didn't tell people that you were too busy, then you weren't working hard enough and you weren't showing the hustle and stuff.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we were trying to be a little bit of a of a rebellion against that, even though we were sometimes better at saying it than acting upon what we did.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: But then, as you point out, this is happening during COVID, a lot of people working from home, and of course, that working from home thing was an enforced thing for many people, but of course, it led to a debate, which ultimately led to a bunch of people going, you know what, I kind of like this working from home thing, and I want to do this remote work.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the primary trend, if you like, in work, and we decided we needed to jump on that so much so that we needed to change the name of the podcast, which we did, we changed it to making remote work, I think.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Was that right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: That was to me, that was fascinating because it was like an indication as to how, even though it didn't feel like it at the time, how rapidly it went from this is the most disruptive force in the world of work to now today, it's like, well, I guess people kind of do that.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: And some people do, some people don't.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Occasionally you'll read a story about, you know, employers hauling everybody back into the workplace, and you'll see some data showing what's actually happening.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And when you see what's actually happening is that it's more or less stabilized now, right?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: There are some jobs where people work remotely all the time, there are some jobs that are more hybrid in nature.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I gotta admit, like to me, I anticipated this being a bigger thing for a longer period than it has ended up becoming, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Not that people don't have necessarily mastered all of the skills that they need in order to be able to do it well.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, it's not number one on the list when people are talking about what's going on in the in the world of work today.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: You live this, Matt.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: So what what have you seen where you are and how attitudes have shifted?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think I'm in a really lucky spot because my company that I'm with now embraced this right away and ran with it.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: They recognized the capability that you could actually tap into talent globally if you don't have uh to have somebody in one office or be based in a certain spot.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been able to navigate that pretty well, and I was at a remote company prior to that.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I I'm used to it, but I think that the compression of people being pulled back into the office when you have this world where some people are not in the office, that's created this whole other weird thing where it's like, well, why do you want me there if when I go in, I'm having a meeting in a room where half the people are remote anyway.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not getting all those promises that you talked about.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the reality is really hitting people.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: And what I think's interesting is that now if you join a company that doesn't have this remote policy, people know what they can negotiate now.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: So it becomes a a different negotiating tactic.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the companies that still drive it is like, nope, you have to move to Boston, um, they're gonna they're they're gonna lose talent.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: The the new generation of people are like the freedom of it.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think they're losing the camaraderie, the stuff that we got growing up, being in offices and stuff, but I don't know, maybe they won't miss it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, maybe the traditionalists will start to kind of fade away a little bit.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's always just seemed like a real estate problem to me.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, Bill, you were not with us when we were going through all of these machinations, but you obviously have lived through all of that.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Weigh in on either of those things, the sort of feeling of overall busyness, what happened with the remote work, and why you feel that it's less of a big deal than it was before.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: What's been your experience during that whole period?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, I like the fact that Matt talked about the compression of time as we understand it and as we know it, because I feel like that was probably the first time in our lives that we had really kind of had this sort of undeniable compression of time.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_04: And and you're right, the way that we responded to that was this sort of busyness badge.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_04: I remember those early days.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_04: I was in consulting when COVID first hit, and you know, you went from thinking, I don't even know if I'm gonna have a job, to working about three jobs in one and being so grateful that you had a paycheck, and even though it was all remote.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_04: And I laugh when I think about the setups that we used to have, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_04: I would have my one laptop, forget screens, we'd have one laptop that would sit on, in my case, Russian dictionaries, Russian English dictionaries on my kitchen counter, right?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_04: So I would I would elevate it by putting it on top of books, and that would begin the day.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_04: And at the time we were doing a lot of work with financial institutions and banks, trying to get remember the COVID sort of emergency funds into the hands of small businesses.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_04: So we were certainly doing what some might say is heroes work.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um but then at the end of the day, I would close that laptop and I would put it away, like visibly away.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_04: My husband was very clear about like, let's lock it up in a cabinet so you don't see it, right?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_04: Because you were working in your kitchen, you're working in your dining room, and we needed sort of the segmentation.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_04: Otherwise, everything bled into one big blur.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_04: And for a while it did, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_04: It bled into one big blur.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_04: Fast forward a couple years, and I go to work at Microsoft and I joined Microsoft before anybody was back on the campus, and I remember the joys of that because I could go to this enormous campus, you know, here in where I live in Redmond, and it was like I felt like Goldilocks.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_04: I could just pick a building.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and I could say, I'm gonna go into this building today and that building.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_04: I got a choice of all the buildings, but there was also no one around.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I found I kind of enjoyed that, right?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: I didn't feel crowded.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_04: I felt like I could change the scenery for my creativity and I and I performed really well.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_04: Fast forward to today, literally, it's interesting we're having this conversation today.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_04: I was looking down on my odometer of my car.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I now go in by choice, probably three, four, sometimes five days a week, and I just passed 77,777 miles of the car.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_04: I thought, well, that's interesting.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_04: 777 all the way across.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I thought, how much is that in terms of circumnavigation around the world?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: And it's about three and a little trips around the world.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_04: And I just in that moment, as I was listening to music on a commute to go in, I thought about that.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_04: Like, had you said to me in 2021 that I'd be driving in as much as I am now, I never would have believed you.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_04: And yet, here I am by choice.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_04: I like my screens, I like my desk, I like the cafe, I like the camaraderie.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um but it's all so different.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_04: Every one of those chapters, Paul, is so different.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_04: And now we're kind of back in this weird compression of time thing with AI, where we're finding ourselves with this badge of busyness, but a very different kind of badge of busyness because of how much people expect us to do with the tools we have in our hands.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Which leads us to the last, I hope, name change of this podcast and to our newsletter as well, which is the change to humanity working.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: We started thinking about, okay, we've looked at this from the perspective of the behavior of the human in isolation, if you like, the humans that being too busy.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: We've looked at it from the perspective of like this external force.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: But what we started to realize is that actually what this is ultimately about is that work, the experience of work, actually the experience of just participating in society, is not just radically different to what it was, it's changing fast and is very unpredictable.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so the goal of the podcast, the goal of the newsletter as well, was to be our attempt to try to help ensure that humans have agency as these new chapters are being written.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I will admit, you know, speaking personally, all that time back in 2020, I'll see if I can find the the original YouTube video that I recorded on this in 2020.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I was banging on back then about what I saw then as robotics, AI, and automation, and how there could be like this convergence of these three forces, and how if we don't pay attention as humans, we could be all kind of like sleepwalking into irrelevance.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very concerned about that then, and probably as more concerned about that now, but we really felt like humanity, remember, you know, you were in some of these discussions, Matt, and humanity working was the attempt to capture that.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And since then, that's basically all we've been doing.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: The one thing I will say that has been a massive, massive shift though, is the degree to which now AI kind of is the conversation.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I gotta say, I think that's I think that's important.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: I just wrote uh an article about this that the three of us were sharing before, and I think we're in an interesting spot right now.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're recording this what, four or five days, I think, since that story exited the world of X.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Believe you me, if you guys are not on X following the AI conversation, there is a very, very vigorous, very robust conversation that is happening every single minute of every single day.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: But the conversation about AI in the mainstream is much more muted than that and is competing with all of the other things that are going on in the world.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: But over the course of the last four or five days, it's been the story, right?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason it's been the story is we're recording this just after the person left Anthropic said that there were conversations inside Anthropic about there being a likelihood of, or well, there being, let's say, some form of likelihood that the AI that we're building could destroy humanity.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then fuel being thrown on the fire by a current Anthropic employee who's fairly senior, saying, yes, we think it's at least 10% likelihood that it's going to kill all of us in the next decade.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then over the course of the weekend, we had Dario Armadi, who's the CEO of Anthropic Weigh-in, say, this is very serious, they are all thinking about it, here are the steps that we think should be taken.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then in a really surprising move, Sam Altman and Elon Musk all saying, Yeah, agree with all that.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the only thing that these people generally agree on is that they like suing each other.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: But in this case, they were like, Yep, agree with all of that.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And since then, we've seen some subtly different takes.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you you guys saw Satya Nadella's contribution on this, which is subtly different.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: But right now, we're seeing this.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the dominant conversation right now.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: AI is the dominant conversation.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to get your guys' view on this.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I will say about this is that regardless of the specifics of this conversation, I do think that there we might have reached an inflection point whereby a year ago the conversation might have been a little bit about deep fakes and political contributions and so on.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: About six months ago, or even three months ago, the conversation was about data centers and the impact on the environment.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Today the conversation is about this.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've now entered an era where um AI is becoming a full part of the overall narrative of the world, as it were.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, it's the discussion about AI itself is starting to be mainstreamed with all of the positives and negatives that are associated with that.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys agree with that?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think this is now like a we're still gonna be talking about AI in a year's time, in two years' time, as part of mainstream conversation versus just a thing that people like to witter about on an X?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that's right?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna say yeah.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think Matt, you might have a different take on it, but I do think what once felt like edge case is now more mainstream.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think, Matt?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think we were early.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: But once it like hits the Today Show and the morning news coffee chats kind of thing where everybody has a take, that's why this story about an existential threat, for better or worse, is going to throw it into the mainstream because it's m easier to get that story going with fear than the potential, maybe.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: So there might be some truth to the fact that it's more common now, but I don't know if it's because it's perceived.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably the mainstream, it's probably the modern day, if it bleeds, it leads, you know, that kind of thing.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: But do you see a world whereby in six months or a year's time we're going, no, actually it turns out it's really safe.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing that you know, nothing to see here and we don't and we don't bother talking about it for another year or something.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's like him.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well, does it become like the new Y2K?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like we thought all the computers were gonna explode.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this one isn't that whole thing is very tricky, right?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because a friend of mine has done research into like black swan events and things like that.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that he points out to me is when things are perceived by experts to pose an existential threat, there aren't that many of those.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like even across if you were to go back for, you know, since the dawn of civilization, right?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: There have not been that many where whereby real existential threat was seen as as something possible, right?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: The nuclear age is the obvious parallel.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if you study the history of the nuclear age, maybe two or three times ever did we come really close.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: But we did come really close in the 80s.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: We did.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it took the actions of an individual to prevent what would have been effectively a nuclear apocalypse.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the weird thing about predicting apocalyptic events is that if they happen, we wouldn't be here talking about it.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: If they don't happen, once I don't know, five, six, seven, eight of them stack up, we go, ah, we're fine.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it's only five, six, seven, eight.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like eight thousand possible apocalyptic events, and we've dodged all of them, so therefore we must just be good at dodging them, right?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's the challenging thing with all of this, isn't it?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I say to people about this, like, I don't know.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: I can't make a statement that there's a 10% likelihood, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: I can't make a statement that there's a 1% likelihood.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Not realistically.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have the data to show that.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that annoys me about this debate is like when when people are estimating the likelihood of this thing, that's bollocks, right?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know, right?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're making a whole bunch of assumptions associated with this.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not possible to know.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're forward-projecting probabilities, and you're doing so in a system which is complicated to the point whereby we don't know what actions of governments will happen as a result of this.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know what the actions of individuals will be as a result of all of this.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know how we're going to adjust and adapt to society, we don't know what any of the individual players are going to do, and we don't know collectively what the players are going to do.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't know what the likelihood is.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: But what we do know is that it's not 100% and it's not zero, right?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you guys and I were talking offline about this.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like any if anybody tells you that the likelihood of anything is zero, that's telling you something about that human versus the versus the reality of the world in which we live.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, Matt, you were on the call the episode that is in our feed just before this one with Jeffrey Moore, and Jeffrey was rationally pointing out that this stuff does sell, right?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Utopian narratives sell, dystopian narratives sell.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: The sort of boring in the middle stuff doesn't really sell.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're policy making, doing so on the basis of either extreme is probably not a great way to make a policy.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's the challenge that that I think we we face among all of this.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think too, the piece that's really interesting is our our limitations of what we can imagine are caged in a little bit by our example.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Right, so if you think about AI before two years ago, it's Terminator, Jarvis, Hal, and the Borg.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's what comes to mind for me, right?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: So if you take the idea that most of the examples that we have, yeah, it gets the best of us.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's not the help that we thought, you know, iRobot, the the apocalypse robotic apocalypse, they always kill us in every story.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: And you're just like, but then what do they do?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Because if if we're not here to interact with, what what are they doing?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: We we have to take it that further step, like unless we know that they're mining the planet for resources or something like that for some other alternate universe.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: But we created this one on Earth.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: So what's the point of the thing?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose it really depends on how important we think we are.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if we think we're important, then we project that as to being important to them.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: These are interesting questions, right?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know whether we have zero examples of a highly intelligent, artificially created civilization.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: So Except us, what do we do to things that we deem useless?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I just saw the Odyssey, right?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: And they're in the cave with with the giant, and they're like, you should talk to it now.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, it's a little late for that, and would you talk to Ant?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like so and I know Bill, you've spoken about the more personal examples of these stories as well, things like her and you know, and so on, which approach this from a very different angle, right?
• 23:33
  unknown: Yeah.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, I think about the the list that you gave Matt of of those either TV series or movies.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_04: The other one I would add, which is a little bit more intriguing and terrifying at the same time, is Battlest Galactica.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um to your point around right, to what end.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_04: You know, when you think about the Cylons, it got really interesting to the point where humans couldn't necessarily detect who was a Cylon and who wasn't.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, at the same time you think about movies like her or even the creator, and there are these elements of people believing that there is sort of a a benefit, possibly, of placing consciousness in something that is otherwise deemed by us as unconscious.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_04: And I think I'll go back to the word that you used, Paul, in your example.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_04: You know, what spared us in the 80s from that apocalyptic outcome, you said was one individual.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_04: An individual.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm gonna go back to that aspect of there's something about the human dynamic, the consciousness, whatever it is that caused that person to say, Hey, let's take a different approach, or let's pause, or whatever.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_04: My worry, you know, reading some of this stuff and reading about the hugging face incident and open AI and even you know anthropics agents of breaking out a little bit is I don't know if these entities have the ability to sort of pause and reflect.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_04: I know we say that they can do reasoning, I know we say they can do reflection.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_04: I've never been bought into that.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: Because the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and that's all they see, right?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um we we're speed bumps in a way.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think about that, I think about shows like Foundation on Apple TV.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, mate the Matrix, we were talking about that before.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think all of us are kind of revisiting these books we've read, these movies we've watched, these TV shows we've watched with a different eye.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_04: And I can't say I'm upset about that because I hope we make it different choices personally.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, gonna agree more.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of talked about where we've where we've got to, and Bill and Matt and I have over the course of the last few months had a variety of these of these types of conversations, which led me to think, as we're kind of getting to our hundredth episode here, as I mentioned, what I want to do with this podcast, and then what I want to do with with humanity working more broadly.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so that led me to thinking that we need more voices.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm delighted to say that both as as well as Matt playing more of a role as in addition to sort of like questioner and kind of bringing thoughts out of me, Matt's gonna be participating much more actively, doing more external interviews, things like that as well.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: And Bill's joining us too.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm incredibly excited about that.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: You will know if you've heard the episode where I interviewed Bill about his excellent book.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think his thoughts on this are phenomenal and needed.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll repeat what I said when I interviewed you the first time on this, Bill, that I think your book is the first book everybody should read on AI, and if they haven't read it, they need to go back to your book and then read the and then read the other ones again.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because it is a powerful view.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: It is a view that is more timeless in nature.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: It causes you to go back and ask, in some cases, some age-old questions about what is important to us.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: What this technology can do is amazing, but what it can't do is probably at least as important.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: And as we're inviting this technology into our lives, as we're replacing some of the things that we do with the things that that it does, we have to think seriously about how we do that so that we get the right outcomes.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you pose all of the questions that that should be posed about that.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you agree with that, Matt, because I know that you have purchased copies of Bill's book and given it to people because you believe in that so much.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: So Bill's going to be more a more active part of that conversation.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think we'll have other three-way conversations like this, but then also bringing in external voices and have them contribute as well.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: So basically what that means is that if you are listening to this podcast and you don't subscribe to our Substack Humanity Working, I'd urge you to do it because you're going to see a lot more than you would there previously.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can get this podcast on there as well, by the way.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to be like all in on Substack, you can do that, and the podcast will be delivered just at the same time as it would with any of your favorite podcasting platforms.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: We'll still broadcast to the other podcasting platforms we're on as well.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: But you'll see a lot more articles there, and I know that you'll see additional things on top of that as well.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if we find people that we would like, in addition to us, if we find people that that would be interested in contributing to the humanity working Substack and bringing in yet another voice in, we'll invite them in and get them to contribute.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you're listening to this and you say, you know what, I really believe in this mission of ensuring that humans have agency as we move towards a future of work that is evolving, get in touch with us, right?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Let us know.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can reach out to us on the on the Substack itself, and we can look at how we can collaborate with you as well.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: But my real hope is that when having you guys on board, we'll be able to get this in front of more people.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just really happy and grateful that you guys want to join me on the ride.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you, Matt.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Bill, for everything you've done already to help us.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Particularly, Matt, as I say, a hundred episodes.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's a serious commitment.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: So want to thank you for that, and just really, really happy that we're going to be building this further.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Before we wrap it up for today, any thoughts from from either of you guys?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_04: I would just uh say congrats again on the hundred.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the things I realized, I went back and looked at when my hundredth was, I think it was September of 2022.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the things I did, you guys probably don't know but one thing I did is I treated myself that summer to going back and listening to all hundred episodes in some form or fashion.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_04: And what was really fascinating is you go back, as you said, Matt, you understand this beautiful body of work that you've created, but you go back and the things you talked about then, it's amazing how much of an oracle you are and you were because you realize, wow, we predicted this so many years ago.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_04: So again, time is a compression challenge, but if you have time to dedicate to your both of you, go back and listen to some of those episodes.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_04: It's a nice walk alongside the work that you've created.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm glad in the summer of 2022 I took time out to listen to All 100.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, mainly because of the guests, right?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_04: The guests that you had as well.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's a beautiful exercise.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_04: So I encourage you to possibly consider that.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Plug for Bill's other podcast while we're at the while we're doing that.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: So Coffee and Change is is the podcast that Bill's referring to there.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Super interesting, and as well as reading Bill's book, that made me aware of the podcast, and I just love live listening to episodes of that.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And as you point out, right, it's the it's the guests.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes the guests that on paper seem the most ordinary are the ones that are the most interesting.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the other really cool thing about it.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then what about you, Matt?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Any other any sort of closing thoughts for us here?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to thank you, Paul, for the conversations, because the ones that we did together, the interviews that you had transcend so many ideas and really bring together so many ideas, every one of them a learning experience from my view, whether I was participating or producing.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: It is an incredible body of work, and I think uh important to talk about these things and and really have long-form conversations about them because it's not easy, it's not straightforward, and it's something that humanity working is dealing with across the board, and people get that out of it and can really think about these things.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Bill, your stuff as well like brings together just just philosophical, very thoughtful, uh present uh voice that we have to have going forward if we can't trust our leaders, if we can't trust tech CEOs across the board, maybe more conversations with more people in a broader sense is is where we can find the through line to navigate this well.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm excited to be a part of this.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Matt's gut operations utopia, which is you like to call it your niche podcast, Matt, because it's uh yeah, because it's really centered around regulatory operations and and things like that.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: But still very fascinating.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you like going deep on something, then then that's the one.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then what has become one of my favorite ones, not least because I'm a guest on it, but Peace of Chaos, P-E-A-C-E, Peace of Chaos.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um delightfully eclectic, I guess would be the way you should talk about it.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you like tuning into something where you've got like literally no idea about the thing you're gonna listen to, then Peace of Chaos is a great way, a great one to listen to.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: So congratulations on those ones as well, Matt.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we're at 100.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we indulged ourselves a little bit looking back, but really this is a looking forward thing.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be much more, and we're all really excited about that.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks guys for joining me today, and thanks everybody for listening.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced by Matt Neal.
• 33:00
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• 33:06
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• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget, you can find all episodes and get our weekly newsletter at humanityworking.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.