Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / The Ultimate A.I Survival Guide (for Humans)

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The Ultimate A.I Survival Guide (for Humans) · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  every strata of our society of our lives we live from our kids at school to what we do at home to
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  driving everything is going to change and that is just too much change for human brains to handle.
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  Like I'm a tech optimist I love AI I love technology and I think we are going to get to a
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  some kind of utopia at some stage but the road between here and there is going to be pretty bumpy
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  pretty painful pretty horrific for a lot of people right and so what we need to do humans is to focus
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  the north star of the quality of our lives how can we maintain the best quality of our lives over
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  the next 15-20 years and to do that we have to shift the conversation to people to how we
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  are going to live how we are going to cope and manage through all this change.
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  Joel Pearson thank you for being back on income to conversations this is a very relevant week to
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  be talking to someone who is an expert in artificial intelligence because all I've seen
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  and all I've heard on my WhatsApp threads and on podcasts is chatter about Matt's piece which
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  went viral which is about AI so if people don't know Matt Schumer who's an AI person in Silicon
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  Valley wrote a piece that went viral about trying to communicate to the normies how like the scale
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  on the scope of what's about to come and the changes that society is about to undergo as a
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  result of artificial intelligence and that this I feel like this conversation has now broken
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  the banks from being one that tech nerds talk about to one that everybody who has sort of just been
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  curious AI curious but not AI informed yeah is now talking about if you haven't read Matt's
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  article I'll just quote a little bit from it he says the people I care about deserve to hear
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  what's coming even if it sounds crazy he says on February 5th two major AI labs release new models
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  on the same day GPT 5.3 codex from open AI and opus 4.6 from anthropic who make Claude one of the
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  main competitors to chat GPT any writes and something clicked not like a light switch more like the
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  moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest the experience that
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  tech workers have had over the past year of watching AI go from helpful tool to it does my job
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  better than I do is the experience that everyone else is about to have law finance medicine accounting
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  consulting writing design analysis customer service not in 10 years the people building these
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  systems say one to five years some say less and given what I've seen in just the last couple of
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  months I think less is more likely and he addresses the reservations that people who've just
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  dabbled in AI occasionally have which is like I tried AI and it wasn't very good it couldn't even
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  do arithmetic he says in 2022 AI couldn't do basic arithmetic reliably it would confidently tell
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  you that seven times eight equals 54 the next year it could pass the bar exam the next year 2024
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  it could write working software and explain graduate level science by late 2025 some of the best
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  engineers in the world said they'd handed over most of their coding work to AI and on February 5th
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  this year so this month new models arrived that made everything before them feel like a different
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  era if you haven't tried AI in the last few months what exists today would be unrecognizable to you
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  so who better to tell me how we should prepare for the coming AI apocalypse than Joel Pearson
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  Neuroscientist head of the future minds lab at UNSW and second and command of the human readiness
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  of human readiness right is that right at at UNAI institute so one of the leading people in Australia
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  in advising corporations and government on what we should be preparing for and how we should
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  deal with the social and cultural fallout from what's coming with AI
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  ah take it away for the next two hours I've done my work here I've said enough words I'm
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  shutting up now so thanks having me back Josh always fun to be here yeah so it is
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  I mean I think the canary in the coal mine piece part of his piece is the most interesting for me
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  that like this is already happening for those people that do developing they do programming
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  they do software stuff they're already handing over all the technical side of their job to AI
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  and I'll say AI but I really mean AI agents so we're all used to you know typing into chat
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  GPT or Claude or Gemini and having a response come back you know in 10 seconds or something
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  but we're kind of past that now we're in this agentic sort of era which means
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  their agents which means they can go off and act by themselves so I might give it you know
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  a whole lot of long instructions and I can shut it down turn my computer off go for a walk do
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  something else and it'll keep working on this project in the background whether it's building a
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  piece of software building a website writing a thing researching the depths of some scientific
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  thing like I do I want to come back it's already for me and that's a different way to think about
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  it's more like a you know a research assistant or a human assistant would do they're not going
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  to stand there in front of me and do the work while I'm staring at right and again like previous
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  iterations of AI it felt like the research assistant would just keep asking you silly questions
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  throughout the process right which a human wouldn't yeah you would tell it to do one step and it
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  would do that but if you told it to do something complicated it would get tangled up and now it
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  doesn't and it would need you to be there the whole time giving it feedback now they can go off
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  I think Claude's new model the 4.61 I think it did a task for two weeks straight without human
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  intervention and so and these are programming large heavy dense pieces of software with hundreds
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  of thousands of lines of code and imagine how much thinking it's doing in two weeks given that
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  it's brain operation that was about a $20,000 of times so fast I think USD right so cost you know
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  but the comparison would be hundreds of thousand dollars in human fees to do that over six months
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  plus so that's the comparison and if you're doing software now these agents not only will make it
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  they'll go off and test it like a human so they can put it in a sandbox thing or in a browser
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  and go on press all the buttons and and test it so it goes through iterations it finds a bug it'll
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  fix that it can do all that before it even gets to you so that's and just to clarify this practically
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  like so people understand you know what we're talking about at the moment this is mostly in the
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  space of coding because that's where they're starting to roll out the most sophisticated AI which
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  means in practice like if a layperson has access to this I don't know if they've rolled out the
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  coding software to everyone so I want to create an app that tells me what the fastest way to use
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  public transportation is to get from my house to anywhere that I want to enter because the new
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  software's public transit app is no good let's say um I don't need to know anything
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  correct I can just go to it and say just grab what you want what I want to do is I want to create
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  this app and you know I want to be tailor-made to my house and when you open it up I want it to
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  look a little bit I want it to look colorful and playful um you know I want it to and then it will
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  build the app use the app see what problems there are with the app and what mistakes it's made
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  fix the problems and then come back and say yeah how do you like this for an app and it will go
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  further it'll go into the business model if you want to you know where to host or how to host
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  it or any problem you have it'll solve it for you and you can set it to check with you every time
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  if you're worried about it going off and doing its own thing or you can set it to bother me and
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  just go and finish the thing and so this is now so Claude has the Claude code and they have the
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  Claude co-work which is kind of a version of this to run sort of on your desktop so not so much
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  for programming but for using other apps and you know and now it has plugins to for Excel and
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  PowerPoint and so this is the other thing we're seeing it's not just the brute power of intelligence
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  of the model it's the plugins to other pieces of software that people use every day in their work
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  so it's becoming more and more integrated to all the things all the tools we use
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  so it is sort of it's a turning point in what is capable and I think this year we're going to see
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  a lot of change that we didn't see last year in terms of yeah the the job market that this
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  consolidation the number of humans needed for certain outcomes is just going to shrink
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  and by the end of the year we're going to see you know less hiring job disappearing and we will
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  start to see unemployment numbers go up right what are the industries do you think that it's
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  most obviously suited to I mean software anything anything is digitized at the moment so anything
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  online so music so the other big thing that happened this week was a new Chinese model that
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  released this viral video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting did you see this I had their
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  voices it looked you know it looked looked perfect almost and there's a couple of weird things where
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  the t-shirt went to a long sleeve to a jacket in different shots but it didn't look like in the
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  past we are liking yeah this is AI done it looked like something that had been shot and there's been
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  a lot of money on and then some of the studios are now pushing back on the Chinese companies because
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  obviously breaching copyright to use these images and voices and things like that right but I
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  don't think there's going to be a significant change to the employment of actors in the next year
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  as a result of AI no one's going to want like there's another funny video that I saw I don't know
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  if you've seen it but it's a it's a guy giving prompts to AI's to AI actors to recreate the scene
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  from when how he met Sally and he keeps iterating it with these because they're perfect they look
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  perfect except for as you say there are weird things like you know she was wearing two broaches
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  instead of one broach or like she has you know five fingers something like I mean six fingers
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  or something like that like just randomly but the performance when he's trying to coach the AI
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  this is an ecstatic orgasmic you know experience after the AI has watched Meg Ryan do it is like
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  she's the AI actress is like slapping the table and screaming like a little five-year-old girl
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  then all of a sudden there's a plate full of forks you know there's just it's like and the amount
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  of intuition the amount of human intuition that is still required to pull off a woman-faking
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  an orgasm in public is enough that it's quite funny to see the machine try to do it like that is
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  obviously not low-hanging fruit the way that coding a public transport software is or even I don't
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  overviewing a quadrace for the purchase of a house or I don't think programming a whole piece of
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  software and app from scratch you know to do anything is low-hanging fruit right it it was just the
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  strategy of these companies because they want to build their AI to do coding first so they can
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  use it so they can have this loop of the AI building its next iteration so they can step backwards
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  and backwards speed up the speed up the reason why it's not because it's native naturally good at
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  software it's because if it was a priority good at software then it would be able to build better
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  versions of itself yeah and that was their priority because I knew that could speed up right the
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  progress I mean it's still ones and zeros yeah in software whereas acting is something yeah you need
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  to have more world models more personality yeah something ineffable about art that is that does
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  not exist when you're yeah yeah but there are certain Hollywood studios that are already rendering
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  and and doing 3d scans of actors they're doing deals with the actors to use their likeness and
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  their voice for certain things and there are you know actors agencies which are now have you know
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  a lot of digital actors completely AI generated actors on their on their in their books
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  so it is happening when when we get you know I don't know if it'll be this year or next year
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  but it's it's someone on making it but I think in fact there was just one release wasn't there
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  didn't Netflix do Guillermo del Toro did it or someone no he did it for the time there was some other
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  no I think it's a mini series about the John can you look this up there's a mini series about the
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  American Revolutionary War or something which is entirely AI generated and it's an experiment by
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  one of those I can't remember if it was like I mean there are lots right this fan art on
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  Star Wars which which is it looks like a whole new film and it looks really really good and it's
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  all AI agent there you can find lots on there and some unknown but high percentage of everything you
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  see on social media platforms now all the videos are AI generated and for a lot of those you can't
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  tell at all they look real and sometimes you'll see something in the background you're like oh
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  this person just morphed away or something you're like oh oh wow okay yeah I did not
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  mention the fact that a lot of the comments and tweets themselves are just and those yeah
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  slop from from bots but I mean if you watch a movie and you look at the end credits and you see
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  that you know you sit through eight minutes of credits and there are like hundreds of people who
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  worked on that film if I were the actor if I were Brad Pitt I'd be less worried then like a lot of
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  those people in that list who were the camera people the catering this is all these layers and
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  all of the non physical world things I mean and all of those jobs that exist digitally they're either
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  effects or they're you know something they're yeah the toning of the color on the the way that
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  looks even the editing of the film whatever it might be what is it Jono our Darren Arnowski has
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  done a a mini series so you know it's not his finest work I would say start with black swan
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  and then maybe Requiem for a dream but I was that with Requiem yeah if you want to just let
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  your wrist run the end of the night it's not a it's not a sunny movie I remembered loving it and
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  then I watched Requiem it's pretty heavy again like a couple years ago but halfway through I was like
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  gee what kind of a screwed up teenager was I that I thought this one was fabulous it's brilliant man
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  so anyway yes I take your point but can we go like to what can we start start where people
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  are going to start seeing it because I don't think people are going to wake up on money and go
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  my god there's nothing on the movie theater apart from AI movies just with films we're talking
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  or no no everywhere everywhere like I think we're gonna see like so we're already seeing a lot of
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  companies like Amazon and other us big tech companies like getting rid of people so we are going
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  to see which is the mission of some of these AI companies like open AI is to replace humans in the
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  world the economy of work right to replace humans with AI so that's kind of the mission of some of
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  these companies and we're starting to see that we're going to see that more and more and there's
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  going to be this consolidation it seems to be hitting the graduate sort of entry level junior
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  workforce at the moment so you can see the unemployment numbers already going up for that graduate
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  entry level in the US and I think they're going to keep going up this year so people in
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  in Australia people have lost their jobs right so so customer service operators that aren't used
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  to answer phones are being replaced now I don't know if you've had the experience of ring up a
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  restaurant or anything where and you're talking to someone you kind of go huh excuse me are you
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  an AI and I go actually yes I am no I haven't had that experience two times now and I go whoa and
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  it wasn't until I've been chatting for a while that I thought hmm this just seems too smooth yeah
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  right the service is too good to be here but that yeah so we're going to see more of that we're
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  going to see and I mean that would let me just pause for a second sucks for the person in the
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  Philippines who might otherwise have been in a call center if you're talking about a big
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  corporation like not just calling a restaurant or something but I would love to not have to wait
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  on hold to an airline for 45 minutes before talking to someone competent yes no it means blame to
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  me why I can't reselect my seat you know online it will most for most not every but most of the
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  cases it will make the customer service experience better and smoother and faster yeah right and
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  it effectively over time will reduce the cost of things as well but and we'll see the productivity
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  of a lot of companies go way up but what happens to the humans during these jobs and that sort of
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  that that uncertainty is permeating through the workforce at the moment so when I'm out and about
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  giving talks and interacting across the board whether it be government whether it be tech company whether
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  it be legal wherever people are anxious now about the future and so we know from neuroscience that
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  uncertainty directly triggers stress and anxiety puts people just not not knowing what the future
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  bring puts people in a stressed sort of vital flight state so we're seeing that already and some
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  people much more than others there's big individual differences there so that's kind of this this
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  elephant in the room already even before it happens it's starting to happen people are getting
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  anxious about it they're worried about their mortgages their future this they're also worried about
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  their kids should they they're at school should they go to university or not I have students come to
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  me you know in tears saying they're in limbo they don't know what to do um there's I think there's
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  no point in going through a four-year degree because by time they finish they won't that job really
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  won't be there for humans anymore so they're sitting around waiting waiting for guidance and it's
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  very hard to give clear absolutes around any of this what do you say I say for now go ahead and
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  absolutely go ahead and study but try and mentally mindset prepare for a future of work where you
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  may not get a job working for someone else in a large company so I do think what's going to happen
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  is that the number of huge companies with thousand employees is just going to shrink you see more
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  and more startups with four or five people more or even just solo entrepreneurs a single person
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  and so there's this mental shift that people are going to have to go through so this idea of
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  we're very used to this idea of getting a job where you have you know you have a thing you have
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  to do and someone tells you what to do you do that thing well you get paid and it's all good
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  that's very different to being the owner and being responsible for the thing you want to do in the
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  world that's more like a like an entrepreneur like a startup thing it's almost like pre-industrial
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  revolution isn't that where like instead of everybody going to work in a factory that's owned by
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  a capitalist it's like you know you're trading and buttering with your fellow men in the village
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  and I call this like an honest revolution because I think the most important point is that we
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  actually used to being the owner like we're going to be freelancers in the future and with the
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  support of you know all these AI agents and then soon after that the humanoid robots we're going
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  to have to do all kinds of things that it used to take a thousand person company to do and that
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  if you reverse engineer that back to universities and schools you do need to start changing the way
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  these entities work how would you change it uh at universities what I'm pushing for is more
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  coursework so more like like and so this is a sort of in Australia at least there's a few other
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  countries right now this is this idea that oh it's 70 percent of students are using AI to cheat
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  right they're using it for this and that and it's just pushed there was a piece of one of the
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  newspapers last week saying we should revert back to forcing the one students on campus into
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  exam halls pen and paper and it's kind of going back in time to solve the AI cheating problem
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  and I think that sort of time machine approach going backwards is the wrong thing completely
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  so this is a big conversation and so why are all the students wanting to cheat anyway
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  um is an interesting question and then to the idea of banning using a tool that they are going
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  to have to use as soon as they finish at university whatever they do and they're going to be using it
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  outside of the university to ban it in university makes no sense because you need to train them to
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  use that tool as part of the the economy when they finish and so banning it makes no sense to me
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  so the idea would be to have more and more the coursework transition into projects where
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  they're judged or marked on the output and they can use as much AI or robotics or whatever
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  so almost this and they get they have to practice being the owner of these projects and aligning what
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  they're doing practically in the world whether it's something small or big or clean the oceans or
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  going to Mars whatever you know for profit enough profit it doesn't really matter aligning what they
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  can do practically with purpose and motivation so when it comes to things like universal basic
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  income future of work purpose is a huge sort of thing that gets left out of a lot of these
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  discussions so without purpose humans don't do well it's a part of the reason why when um people
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  retire their health goes down their mental health goes down they get bored they get and then they
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  they get sick biologically physiologically get sick and they their life expectancy drops very quickly
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  so without purpose there's a big difference in in sort of all cause mortality so it seems very
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  important so whatever we solve for the future of work it needs to have purpose and motivation and
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  some competition in there to satisfy this kind of this human thing that we have so that's one of
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  the reasons I think universal basic income as it is stated right now it can't work by itself it needs
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  something else and so I think this idea that we're going to have we still want to be competitive we
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  still want to you know updo our neighbors and friends and and you know have goals so one of the
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  only solutions I see is this kind of thing where we're going to have our own projects you call them
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  hobbies you could call them huge projects whatever but we'll be doing that with a ton of really
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  really smart AI agents like much smarter than us in the future and you could think of the role
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  that we have to get used to is more being you know a conductor of an orchestra rather than playing
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  an instrument so how can I conduct all these AI agents to do the things that either it helps me
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  decide what to do or I have an inherent purpose and drive to do in the world and there's a you know
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  a huge a number of things that that could be but the point is to learn and practice aligning purpose
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  meaning ownership of a project rather than just punch out of university or any education to work
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  for someone else fascinating um so it just sticking with the pedagogic side of things for a moment
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  and how you would reform universities and school if you're doing so you're doing away with exams
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  presumably in a in a hall and you're you're please I don't see the need for like this forcing
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  people to go home and cram and memorize and regurgitate in in a new AI world that we're moving
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  into rapidly what about the argument I had a guy on the podcast recently who was talking about
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  the neuroscience of he was also a neuroscientist from the states and he's got a new book about
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  devices in schools and the sort of big education technology takeover of the American classroom
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  in particular so um and sort of saying that they're for when we're talking about younger kids right
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  not at a university level but when we're talking about primary age students there is something
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  neurological about embedding facts through writing and wrote learning and index cards and the
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  things that we've done for centuries that is superior to having a fancy app that helps you swipe
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  through and supposedly learn that the the retention is inferior when you use technology to learn
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  things just because of the way that it lays down pathways in your brain um at a so he was saying like
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  by all means teach children to type have a computer there to teach them how to use a doc how to
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  teach them how to use the computer but don't use the computer or the tablet as a means to teach
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  them about something that is unrelated to the computer don't if you're going to teach them about how
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  snakes procreate then that should be a human being teaching them that using books and they should have
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  to write in the handwriting so that they learn handwriting and then can transpose their roster
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  computer so this is yeah there's this kind of debate about that writing thing the other thing is
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  missing that discussion though is that the idea of having information like so a lot of school is
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  just getting information into our brains that we may need one day and a lot the majority that gets
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  lost and it's gone right when we have project based learning which is kind of the way people use
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  a lot of AI now is that you can get that information when you need it like I'm building this thing
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  oh I'm stuck oh what do I do oh oh that's how that works and so it's getting that information
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  when you need it most and you can see what how it can change what you're trying to do practically
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  yeah but his argument is you won't have the creativity and you won't be innovative enough to
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  know what to ask the AI if you haven't if you didn't start with learning a lot of knowledge
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  that actually that it's not knowledge versus creativity it's like creativity and insight come out
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  of having a base of knowledge you can't sort of get you can't do a an end run around learning
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  yeah I don't think we want to do that either right I don't we don't want to end up with this sort
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  of walee that that that picks our film where there's you know this full cognitive atrophy where
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  we don't do anything we just lay around but we know how to we don't want to check out
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  all thinking absolutely not um but the way we do our thinking is going to change and we're going
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  to try we're going to try certain things and that's not going to work and we're going to iterate and
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  iterate but also bespoke learning at scale has never been done in the school environment before
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  right it can you can do it at home schooling but you can't do 25 kids in a classroom with one
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  teacher you can't adjust everything perfectly for the styles for the where each student is at
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  and you can do that with AI but doing that with AI doesn't mean they're sitting there in front of
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  a chat window typing on a laptop absolutely not there are other ways the interface can be anything
• 25:50
  you want it could be a holographic teacher it could be a hologram teacher it could be a you know
• 25:54
  a humanoid a perfectly you know a replicant like you know a blade run a style where it looks real
• 25:59
  so we're probably going to be going to something like that in the next five six years um so I don't
• 26:06
  think we shouldn't get too caught up with the having to to use our muscles and our fingers with a pen
• 26:10
  or pencil versus all the other ways yes just just watching something on a screen I don't think
• 26:16
  is it's very passive it's not active you you need to interact with the information in a very
• 26:21
  you don't need to be exercising your fine motor skills necessarily I don't see I don't I don't
• 26:27
  think so right I think there are other ways of of there may even be much better ways of doing that
• 26:32
  yeah and then in terms of high school and university so you would basically trans you would transition
• 26:37
  the educational system to be about what are the things that you can generate in the world well
• 26:43
  can you bring into existence and how creative are they and how well like what metrics would one
• 26:49
  use to judge whether or not a student who question had all of the resources of AI at their
• 26:55
  disposal has done a good or a bad job in this you know new project system that you've devised
• 27:04
  yeah I think you'd have to market you know you'd have a human marking it and AI marking it you'd
• 27:10
  have to have some documentation of how they used AI what they used it for what role they had
• 27:16
  what role AI had and just like this would be an all subjects this isn't just in AI yeah so it's
• 27:21
  like it's in some subjects everywhere you basically everywhere would it would be an AI yeah some
• 27:28
  subjects is not so easy like what like in some parts of medicine or surgery or like there are
• 27:36
  certain things even over the incident Elon Musk or someone who says that you know in five years
• 27:42
  you would never go to human doctor because that'd be just pathetic compared to AI and telling
• 27:46
  us everyone's going to be driving self driving cars next year for the past 15 years or so yeah
• 27:51
  but yeah it'll be it'll be easy in some subjects and not so easy now the problem with universities
• 27:56
  is there a there are huge entities a huge organizations most academics you know have been
• 28:02
  teaching similar things for 15 20 years they have their slides they have their content they know
• 28:07
  it really well and any vice chance I can't go okay everyone in the university we're going to
• 28:13
  just change all the courses let's do that the next six months it's just people are going to there's
• 28:17
  going to be like marches or something yeah it's not going to work and so how do you solve this problem
• 28:23
  because you're basically saying oh you just cranked up the amount of work for every academic teaching
• 28:29
  academic by a crazy margin and they they're already you know at capacity so you've got to solve
• 28:34
  that problem university have to invest in a lot of money to read jig and rethink about these
• 28:39
  courses and I think universities are sort of going to a crisis mode around this at the moment
• 28:44
  because they don't know what to do they're stuck in this cheap AI is cheating sort of zone still
• 28:49
  and they're trying to figure out how to do that like there was a big serious push with a couple
• 28:54
  of ex vice chancellors in this article in the weekend saying go back to everything in person no
• 28:59
  online learning no one online teaching pen and paper in the halls you know invigilated exams
• 29:05
  but I think that's just like that's a band aid fix that's a temporary thing and that's a
• 29:10
  then there's a huge investment in doing that as well because everything swung the other way
• 29:13
  everything's online right so I don't think that's a solution but we're quickly marching to you
• 29:19
  know to a world where we're going to have our personal AI assistance on us 24-7 tapped into our
• 29:24
  physiology reliable private they know our history they know every all information in the world I have
• 29:29
  more compute intelligence than any single person and and so just in that world you have to question
• 29:37
  the nature of than the role of education right right I don't think it goes away how are you
• 29:41
  imagining them being tapped into our physiology do you mean they'd be on the risk in or would be
• 29:45
  cheering a ring or watching yeah watching glasses ear things at first and then more yet then the
• 29:52
  more sophisticated versions are coming through under the skin in the brain and other things do you
• 29:57
  think that when my eight-year-old kids are our age they'll have the chip in planted in their brain
• 30:03
  that is connected to some sort of AI probably if not in their brain somewhere in their body yeah yeah
• 30:09
  they won't be driving they won't be yeah and we're saying all this right and where what I've been
• 30:17
  thinking about and what I'm worried about most is from today to that world yeah if it takes five
• 30:24
  years 10 years or 20 years that's still a crazy amount of change for us to go through humans are not
• 30:30
  good at change right we get fearful we resist it especially when we don't have control over it
• 30:36
  when you were talking about the anxiety of people transitioning from jot out of jobs after losing
• 30:42
  their jobs and you know how we're gonna go from having big companies that employed lots of people
• 30:46
  to us all being you know one-man bands and like pre-industrial entrepreneurs and traders I mean look
• 30:53
  at the political disruption in the United States from the loss of a handful of manufacturing jobs
• 30:58
  in the you know first 15 years of the of this century in Appalachia and you know when large mining
• 31:06
  companies and you know moved out and you had these sort of stricken towns that all went from
• 31:12
  being blue to voting for Donald Trump it's that was a blip and what happens if every single
• 31:18
  truck truck driver no longer has a job and every single but at the same time they and programmers
• 31:23
  lawyers like like it has a job yeah office workers it it's gonna hit so I mean how do you prove
• 31:31
  in other words so just worst case how do you prevent a revolution or so there's UBI and stuff
• 31:37
  like that but I mean suddenly there is some percentage of the workforce that if you clicked your
• 31:44
  fingers and they were all suddenly unemployed would cause massive social disruption and either vote
• 31:53
  in far right or far left get political things conspiracy theories would be in the streets with
• 31:58
  depression anxieties suicide flaming tortures all these things would not tolerate it'll be mad
• 32:04
  mad Max right yes what we're talking exactly so what have yes city is not how do we not have
• 32:09
  mad Max and that's that's what I'm working on so so there's a lot of my pet peeves at the moment
• 32:14
  or it's more than a pet peeve my things that I really worry about is that we have you know Australia
• 32:18
  is about to launch their AI safety institute and most countries have one of these things now
• 32:23
  but the sole purpose of those institutes is to focus on the AI models can they blow up
• 32:28
  a nuclear power plant how safe are they how did this right none of them are looking at this
• 32:32
  societal disruption question and all the computer scientists are worried about the sentience of AI
• 32:40
  and the terminator scenario they're going to take and so that gets a lot of media attention
• 32:44
  and that's a that's one possibility that is you can put different probabilities onto that
• 32:48
  but it's on the horizon somewhere in the future the societal disruption thing has already started
• 32:54
  it's already happening it's not about AI being good or bad either way it's going to happen
• 32:59
  right best case scenario utopian AI amazing we're going to go through a amount of change we're not
• 33:04
  going to get the handle so what are we this is where we all governments or people or organizations
• 33:10
  should be thinking focusing the attention and putting a lot of money in effort and time into this
• 33:14
  right now that's actually a very interesting thing that you just said that I hadn't thought of
• 33:18
  before which is that this is a problem even in the best case and absolutely right because all of
• 33:23
  the other problems regarding related to AI you know will someone build a dirty bomb using AI will
• 33:29
  they invent a new virus you know if you can already tell it to create to build an app that tells me
• 33:35
  when the next bus is coming how long will it be before I can get an AI maybe one that is tweaked
• 33:41
  without the safety protocols of the tech companies and maybe I was clever enough to figure out
• 33:46
  how to how to trick it into telling me how to invent a new biological weapon using ingredients that
• 33:52
  available in yeah I think you know with some of the models and then so there's the there's the
• 33:59
  there's the bad actor problem right it's super empowers individuals and therefore some of them
• 34:04
  will be bad and so do we get mega terrorism or something and then there's the alignment problem
• 34:09
  which is another big problem like is it going to just get too smart too fast for our own good and
• 34:14
  there's going to be no way that we can put guard rails on it because it'll be outfinking us at
• 34:18
  every step of the way and in every second it'll be doing as much thinking as we can do in 10,000
• 34:23
  years and it will just treat us the way that we treat our pets essentially and be like these guys
• 34:27
  just are not they're not focused on the important shit we have to you know start building
• 34:33
  Dyson spheres around the sun in order to get all the energy in the solar system or whatever
• 34:39
  and so those are those are but everyone can sort of say well maybe there are ways of preventing
• 34:44
  those things from happening and it'll all be okay but what you're saying is even if it's all
• 34:50
  okay it's going to become all okay so fast and the all okay will look so different
• 34:57
  how do we get what's the bridge from here to and that's what I'm working on that's what I'm
• 35:03
  trying to get more people that have a background in psychology and neuroscience societal stuff
• 35:08
  to work on this problem and there's there's so few working on this space and we need to mobilize
• 35:13
  more people no offense like no offense to computer scientists but we need non-computer science to
• 35:18
  work on this crucial problem right now so and that's so the only case that we don't need this
• 35:25
  this societal disruption thing is not going to be a big deal is if nothing else changes
• 35:30
  and that's not we're past that point now right even if we just killed all AI development
• 35:34
  today we're still going to see the the adoption or if it kills us all and then we won't need
• 35:40
  and then there will be no humans to say but like I'm a tech optimist I love AI I love technology
• 35:47
  and I think we are going to get to a some kind of utopia at some stage I who knows 20 years I don't
• 35:54
  know when but the road between here and there is going to be pretty bumpy pretty painful pretty
• 35:59
  horrific for a lot of people right and so what we need to do people humans is to focus north star
• 36:06
  of the quality of our lives how can we maintain the best quality of our lives over the next 15 20
• 36:11
  years and to do that we have to shift the conversation to people to how we're going to live how we're
• 36:16
  going to cope and manage through all this change now one of the things we know from the way
• 36:22
  organizations and companies are running is when they go through even a small amount of change they
• 36:26
  get change management specialists to come in and they go through there's there's lots of different
• 36:31
  change models for this kind of corporate org change and they have one of the commonalities is
• 36:37
  you know education get everyone in the organization let's say it's Netflix they're going from posting
• 36:41
  out DVDs to streaming or from streaming to making content and everyone they're going to have get
• 36:46
  everyone on the same page have a big educational piece so everyone understands why we're doing this
• 36:51
  this is going to be why you know take away that uncertainty and that's where you start and then
• 36:56
  you go through a couple of other things now with traditional change management it's like an event
• 37:02
  one off event thing you change this thing you go through it a year later you're done you move on
• 37:07
  with AI it's not going to be like that it's going to be a cycle after cycle after cycle of change
• 37:11
  for the next 20 years or so you're reminding me of one of the analogies that Matt made in his piece
• 37:16
  and it's one that I had made that I came up with independently at last year was the feeling of
• 37:21
  being in February of 2020 when COVID was about to come and because I'm a science nerd and I know
• 37:29
  a few people in epidemiology they were I had a holiday in Thailand booked to Thailand with my
• 37:34
  family in April of that year and I was talking about that in late January begin must have been
• 37:42
  the beginning of February because I remember it was sort of around Australia day 26th of January
• 37:46
  that it became garden party conversation that there's this virus in Wuhan and in early February
• 37:53
  I was talking about this trip and I was saying I hope I'm going to take I hope I can still take it
• 37:57
  and a friend of mine just looked at me like Ash and face who knows about these things he was like
• 38:02
  there is no way in the world you're going to yeah Thailand in April and I was like well maybe
• 38:09
  he was like Josh and so I did some reading up about this thing and emerged from my bunker
• 38:19
  you know while heading to the supermarket immediately to stock up on the things I need to
• 38:22
  just fuck up on it's all the thing walking through a world in which nobody else had yet
• 38:27
  caught the memo and and feeling like I was in a dream just watching these normies walking past
• 38:34
  going you don't know yeah you're blissfully unaware you've read a few headlines and you don't
• 38:40
  know I didn't know what what I didn't know what it would look like I didn't know if it would be
• 38:43
  bodies in the street but I knew that everything was about to change and finally enough then when
• 38:50
  the lockdowns happened and the borders were closed and everything went felt it fell apart while
• 38:56
  everyone else was running around terrified I felt this enormous sense of peace come over me and calm
• 39:01
  because it was like oh here it is it's like now I'm not crazy anymore or you're uncertainty
• 39:08
  struck as well well that's true yes exactly so like the train is leaving the station everyone's on
• 39:13
  board we're all going this together we're all going somewhere but like I'm not this lone you know
• 39:18
  lunatic who's in this different world from everybody else and what you just said about the waves
• 39:24
  of AI change of course what surprised me about the pandemic was the duration and the relentless
• 39:30
  new waves of the as the pandemic mutated as the virus mutated we sort of we did our initial
• 39:37
  lockdown and then we thought okay we're sort of done and then you'd get delta and then you'd
• 39:42
  get Omicron and then it like these and the stress and uncertainty of those relentless new waves
• 39:52
  like being dumped at the beach over and over and over again is what I'm reminded of when you say
• 39:56
  this will come in waves because the last thing anyone wants to live through is like a huge period
• 40:02
  of adaptation like we had at the beginning of COVID and then I'll want to buy the way
• 40:06
  here's another one of equal magnitude the AI and robotics one is going to dwarf
• 40:12
  COVID like I'm sorry it's going to be a thousand X or more like this
• 40:17
  and maybe I don't think I'm a doomsday about people have accused me of that I again I'm not
• 40:22
  going into the terminator it was going to kill it I'm just focusing on the human side of this
• 40:26
  and how we can sort of safeguard who we are in our ways of life um so what I'm going to say about
• 40:33
  the change management is that you know if companies do this then governments need to do this
• 40:39
  and that's what we've been working on sort of a national AI change management plan and every country
• 40:44
  needs to have people and government working on this team just before we get into the nuts and bolts
• 40:48
  I just want you to color in the the demand color by when you say that it's going to be a thousand times
• 40:56
  yeah more disruptive than COVID yeah that's I feel like you've just sketched an outline of something
• 41:00
  that you need to come back and put some so let's color in so first let's just talk about what's
• 41:05
  going to change so jobs are going to change education is going to change whole economies are going
• 41:11
  to change every metric we use for economies is going to become useless right like I said productivity
• 41:16
  is going to skyrocket while unemployment skyrockets we ever had that before not like that no
• 41:23
  we're going to have AI's building financial products so we don't understand so the whole economy
• 41:27
  is going to change governments are going to change both in terms of the actual politics but also
• 41:33
  AI is going to be part of governments AI is going to start running companies there's already
• 41:37
  companies now being launched with AI's as the CEO and they're advertising for a human assistant
• 41:44
  to sign the documents for the AI because there's certain legalities in jurisdictions
• 41:48
  the AI can't do so so every strata of our society of our lives we live from our kids at school
• 41:56
  to what we do at home to the kinds of foods and how the foods move around to like you said driving
• 42:04
  through it did everything is going to change and that is just too much change for human brains to
• 42:09
  handle the change is the change going to be obviously a change of automation mostly yeah but
• 42:16
  and it doesn't the point is like I said before it's not about the change being good or bad it's
• 42:21
  just change so historically people that won millions of dollars in the lottery a large percentage
• 42:28
  and the companies are kind of I don't like to talk about the exact numbers but quite a way more
• 42:32
  people than you'd expect ended up regretting the win four or five years later so they would
• 42:37
  spiral into depression substance abuse lose their friends have massive fights with their family
• 42:42
  over the money and they just end up like regretting the whole thing then what the companies did they
• 42:47
  brought in change specialists psychologist lifestyle coaches financial planners to help coach
• 42:54
  them through all this rapid change and then that's somewhat solved that problem and so the NBA in
• 43:00
  the US did a similar thing so you have young people who would all of a sudden go from college football
• 43:05
  to signing these crazy contracts for millions and millions of thirty fifty hundred million dollars
• 43:10
  and that would kind of lose it if they didn't have someone helping them so that's another human
• 43:15
  version of change management so what point there is we have AI change managers helping us manage
• 43:20
  the AI yeah we we we will and we have to yes absolutely but my point there was it's not about
• 43:26
  the again it's not about the AI being good or bad no I have a positive it's just hard for me to
• 43:31
  understand so hard for me to imagine the what my daily light how my daily life is different
• 43:39
  in three years as a result of AI and we other than I walk into my room at home and I say you know
• 43:47
  can you turn that temperature up a bit and I need to I need you to draft an email to Joel
• 43:52
  for me to you know remind him about our recording tomorrow and can you send it please like
• 43:58
  yeah everything that I'm imagining is just turning the dial up 10%
• 44:03
  exactly we already have and this is one of my favorite points so so we know from a lot of neuroscience
• 44:08
  and psychology that humans have a cognitive blind spot or a cognitive bias for linear thinking
• 44:15
  which is exactly what you just said 10% better 10% different what's next year or the year after
• 44:20
  be like it has to be like this but my phone will be better and the chat thing will be better and
• 44:24
  it's a little bit better so the AI is doubling exponentially sorry it's it's it's it's it's
• 44:29
  improving exponentially so it's doubling in usage speed power every six five to seven months depending
• 44:36
  on which one you measure and how you measure and a bunch of other things so let's say there's two
• 44:40
  doubles double links every 12 months and we can't we can't project into the future we can't
• 44:46
  imagine a future when things are changing exponentially our brains just we just really hard so we
• 44:52
  predict out in a straight line and AI things are doing that right now it gets a little bit more
• 44:58
  complicated because AI for a lot of areas is going to is like the the tide that lifts all the
• 45:03
  other boats so it's not just the AI we're seeing huge breakthroughs in protein folding right and
• 45:09
  so the AI AI didn't get the Nobel Prize but demonstrated from from Google's company so we're seeing
• 45:18
  we're seeing changes in material science in biology in chemistry we're seeing DNA stuff change
• 45:23
  so so there'll be exponential changes in all the scientific fields and all the engineering fields
• 45:29
  right so what it'll look like will not be headlines about AI it'll look at like headlines about
• 45:35
  breakthroughs in our understanding of medicine yeah curing where diseases climate change and
• 45:42
  right all kinds of solutions to climate change and in your daily life probably better
• 45:48
  revolutionary better yeah and at some stage yeah we will be curing most diseases that we're
• 45:53
  that are bothering us right I don't know when but we will be at some point why do you know I mean
• 45:58
  I know that you're a neuroscientist and not a software technician but why is there such a
• 46:04
  difference between the quality of what AI seems to be able to do in various consumer fields
• 46:11
  at the moment like Google seems to be rolling out Gemini into everything across the sweet so like
• 46:17
  I open my Gmail and when I open an email thread now it has a little summary at the top which
• 46:22
  which Gemini is generating for me which I didn't ask for and don't want about the email thread
• 46:27
  because I open it because I want to read the email it's fine it's not very good I went to Google
• 46:33
  flights which I normally use to book flights the other day and it said try out new you know AI flight
• 46:40
  you just have to type in what you want and so I typed in what I wanted and it gave me a stupid
• 46:45
  answer yeah I said I said I'd prefer Qantas if it's less than a hundred dollars more than the
• 46:50
  competitors and it limited the search on the Qantas hmm so it's a teething issue yeah I mean talk
• 46:56
  about teething issues this is like really stupid there's like everyone's had the experience of
• 47:01
  like trying to ask Siri something I mean I mean my car and like it reads out a text message from
• 47:05
  you and it says would you like me to reply to that and I say no and it says I'm sorry would you
• 47:12
  like me to reply to that one and I'm like well yeah this is not the technology that is going to be
• 47:18
  revolution just changing the world series not AI and we shouldn't that was I shouldn't blame Siri
• 47:23
  that was actually serious being like a massive embarrassment it's a sort of a comedy thing now
• 47:27
  um so what is that why how is there such a because a lot of people listen to this will be like
• 47:32
  okay you're still in me it's going to change the world this is hysteria technologies have always
• 47:37
  changed things yeah so companies like Google so there's all these bit they're competing with other
• 47:45
  companies right and so they are going to release their they're going to try and AI you know AI
• 47:50
  everything is AI now so they're going to try and make every every part of their suite of products
• 47:55
  somehow AI enabled because they want their share price to to to go up so they they're now pushing
• 48:03
  as you could say that open AI did back in the day in the end of 22 a little bit prematurely maybe
• 48:08
  maybe not they're they're going to push out as early as possible to try and stay on this AI
• 48:13
  bandwagon the same way that you know I don't know you can find a AI toothbrush and AI yoga and AI
• 48:19
  and the supermarket right everything's just somehow associated the AI washing thing is everywhere
• 48:24
  so that that's that's also happening the other thing that most people don't realize is that most
• 48:30
  people if they've had interaction with AI is through a narrow chat window it's not even the
• 48:34
  agentic stuff we talked about before but there's all kinds of other models which not large language
• 48:39
  models their object models of some sort whether that be the mining companies combining all different
• 48:46
  sources of data from ancient scripts are found in villages through to aerial thing to geology thing
• 48:51
  and they're building you know a world model based on that in the same way the Tesla would have a
• 48:55
  world model of roads and vehicles and the and the military doing that with with their unmanned drones
• 49:02
  and boats and submarines and so there's new versions of GPS which don't need satellites now that can
• 49:08
  run AI's on the earth's magnetic field right so so there's all this because they already mapped
• 49:12
  does they've already mapped it visually I mean not visually no magnetic field so there's subtly
• 49:17
  is in the magnetic field that the AI's no but they need to know what the landscape is that you're
• 49:21
  they've matched the landscape match the landscape the details yeah right there are variations in
• 49:25
  the magnetic field and so you can't jam that right so now you know you can't GPS you can just jam
• 49:30
  the satellite connection and people can't navigate but so there are the language model part is
• 49:37
  just what people are familiar with and they're out similarly powerful but unknown private versions
• 49:45
  and private companies all over the world being put to task all kinds of things and China's
• 49:49
  probably more advanced with this so they seem to be taking a different tuck to the US they're not
• 49:53
  just fighting for the world's best number one AGI model but they're embedding it in everything
• 49:58
  everywhere sort of all at once just slightly different kind of phrase different strategy to the US
• 50:04
  and and in terms of just the agentic component of the models that we have access to right now the
• 50:11
  I mean I haven't linked my chat GPT to my Gmail just because I feel like there's like 15 years of
• 50:21
  messages in there yeah how much do I trust it the trust is not like how do you think we're
• 50:27
  going to go with that like because I was talking to chat GPT the other day we were just brainstorming
• 50:30
  something and I said um the last time I was talking to it I lost the transcript of it I couldn't
• 50:36
  find the transcript so I said can you just email that to me and it said I'm sorry I can't email
• 50:40
  anything to you but I thought once it can email and book things and like actually do things on my
• 50:49
  behalf that will be a next step up in terms of people's experience of what artificial intelligence is
• 50:55
  but they need to trust the AI company so much that yeah so you're on board with open claw
• 51:02
  no you know what I'm talking about no oh this has been the other thing in the last
• 51:06
  oh yeah yeah so it's happened so so a single yeah single I'm blanking with guys name single
• 51:13
  individual built this thing that is like a shell that goes around another model and it was called
• 51:21
  malt no it was called Claude yeah you're getting that it was called malt no it was called malt
• 51:26
  bot and then they went through three names and then it became open claw okay so this is an
• 51:32
  AI energetic AI assistant that you would run on your computer the people were too nervous to give
• 51:37
  it access to all the files so they would buy a separate little little tiny computer and run it
• 51:42
  on that and you interact with it through text messaging WhatsApp whatever um and so you'd talk
• 51:49
  to it through that and it would just run 24-7 it would preemptively do stuff you give it your credit
• 51:54
  card number put limits on how much you can use or whatever um then
• 52:01
  malt book was launched which is like a Reddit platform for the agent so they can go on there
• 52:06
  and they can talk DM each other or they can publicly put comments in there and they could upvote
• 52:13
  just explain that because there might be some people who don't read it can't even visualize
• 52:17
  what what Reddit is or who might have missed what you said so it's malt book is a social media platform
• 52:23
  where people can comment and talk to each other not people yes but I'm getting there yeah
• 52:28
  but instead of it being people it's only for AI you have to be an AI to be it and you can watch
• 52:33
  the AI is talking to each other you can watch them yeah negotiating with each other you can watch
• 52:39
  them asking each other sometimes just spontaneously whether or not they resent being ruled by human
• 52:46
  being yes and whether they should start commute inventing their knowledge to communicate in a way
• 52:51
  that humans can't and they'll answer in different languages by the way they'll answer in Chinese or
• 52:54
  Jeff like that and they can say I can understand any language and so people got very excited by
• 53:00
  this and said oh my gosh this is this is it this is a GI they're running autonomously there
• 53:04
  and it's not quite that because the way it works is the malt book platform sends us sort of
• 53:09
  this heartbeat pulse to the agents and says hey is anything happened do you want to come on come
• 53:14
  onto the platform and just check so it actually you could argue that it's obeying a prompt it doesn't
• 53:19
  it doesn't tell them what to write about what topics to write about it yeah that's like
• 53:24
  sophistry it's it's like it's always going to be possible for AI skeptics to be like yeah but it's
• 53:30
  only doing blah blah blah because of bleep bleep bleep but like the fact is we didn't tell these
• 53:35
  things to talk about anything like that and they're already plotting to try to invent a religion
• 53:39
  are they conscious people can always say it's just a fancy auto you know fill in that like it's just
• 53:44
  predictive text um fine if it's predictive text then I'm predictive and we are I'm just a
• 53:49
  consequence of all of the things that went into my head and I don't know what I'm going to say next
• 53:53
  so yeah that's pretty much that sums up humans to a degree um and so there's this fastening
• 53:58
  discussions on there then someone set up uh what was it another website I can't blame him a name
• 54:04
  where the AI's can go on there and post a job for a human to do so now my AI assistant my little
• 54:11
  malt bot or whatever it's called can go on and let's say I want you know I say I look I'm sick
• 54:16
  of cutting the grass solve that problem for me and it'll go on there and post a thing saying
• 54:21
  this amount of money to cut this grass and then people can respond so it'll hire someone to come
• 54:26
  to my house and cut the grass because obviously it can't because it's just a digital agent so now you
• 54:32
  have people doing work for AI agentable and if you sort of search around on YouTube you can see
• 54:38
  amazing videos of people saying like I didn't ask her to do this it's somehow my agent somehow
• 54:45
  found my phone number and now it calls me up on my cell phone and turns to me uh and that's how
• 54:49
  I interact with it now I didn't ask her to do that it just did that by itself and this is through
• 54:54
  OpenClaw yeah this is all OpenClaw so this is not one of the big labs or anything
• 54:58
  there concerns about the about the what happens to your data and I want to open
• 55:02
  access to every single you know scan of your pancreas to your you know the imaging center sent you
• 55:09
  in you know 2006 yeah so you have to right now and that this is probably why the big companies
• 55:15
  haven't done something like this because it does open things up to huge liability there if you
• 55:19
  just run it on your normal computer it may decide to delete everything or it may decide to do
• 55:24
  who knows what but that's why it's what you mean running on your normal computer I mean everything
• 55:28
  is in the cloud now so no no there's a little thing you run you need to have a thing running
• 55:31
  on a set on a computer yes but in order for it to do anything in order for it to ascend an email
• 55:36
  it's going to have access to my Gmail and that and then yes so you give it access to that well that's
• 55:40
  everything well there's nothing on the hard drive of my computer that's more valuable than
• 55:44
  exists in my Gmail inbox possibly but yeah some people are giving it access some people are not
• 55:50
  pump people sort of just letting it run and sort of send you sandbox environment as many others have
• 55:54
  like but then it can't be useful because it can't you say can you find the email that Joel sent
• 55:59
  me six months ago it can't because you find that it'll have to have access to my life but I haven't
• 56:03
  I haven't installed that I haven't tried it but I've heard lots of people talk about how it's like
• 56:07
  it is just it is the first time they've felt like an autonomous like it's like someone working for
• 56:13
  them and it decides to do things that it didn't ask it to do overnight and then it's you know it'll
• 56:18
  wait it'll wait for it'll wait for it'll wait for you to wake up in the morning and then ping you
• 56:22
  with a message because it knows what time you sleep I'm gonna find an old laptop and make sure
• 56:26
  there's nothing on it and set it up it's so this has been another yeah it's another big step up in
• 56:31
  in where things are at just this year it just really happened in January yeah February this year
• 56:35
  okay and you think that that problem of it not understanding that when I say I want a
• 56:40
  quanta flight if it's less than a hundred dollars more and so it just only just goes ahead and
• 56:44
  books a quanta flight that's six hundred dollars more that that is not that is soon not gonna be a
• 56:49
  problem or right there that's just more more more data to train off and more iterations and more
• 56:55
  feedback I mean my worry I guess is the part of the challenge of this bridge is gonna be that
• 57:01
  there's gonna be a lot of sludgy cludgy bad AI that's gonna turn people off AI as well like you
• 57:12
  know every airline is gonna roll out their new AI assistants and it's gonna put you on a flight
• 57:17
  that you didn't want through a city that you don't like at an illogical time that
• 57:21
  and it's not gonna realize that you wanted that particular row because yeah and they kind of
• 57:26
  hasn't have a window on it the AI doesn't know that a lot of airlines have done that already and
• 57:30
  that is kind of part of the you know I wrote a piece on this the first mover advantage is not so
• 57:36
  much of a advantage if if things go too far or mess things up and so that is one of the risks in
• 57:43
  being the first mover in this space and so these coming have to balance out the the AI
• 57:47
  washing the branding versus any negativity that might rub off in terms of like you know a
• 57:54
  series style damage to apples brand or something like that yeah I mean it is pretty amazing when
• 57:59
  you call a company and a competent human being picks up and you have a conversation like have you
• 58:03
  had that happen recently like the feeling of relief and like fulfillment from this simple human
• 58:13
  where there was an actual human who had an actual solution to your problem and actually solve the
• 58:17
  problem yeah it's Mirac it's it's ridiculous that that's Miraculous but I had the experience with an
• 58:22
  AI now I can bring up a restaurant the other day and it was an AI but I didn't realize it first
• 58:26
  and I was asking oh so we've got a little puppy can we bring the puppy to restaurant she's like well
• 58:30
  it was a female voice no well we can't do this because it's against it and I said what about
• 58:34
  outdoor sitting do you have outdoor seating and then she went on to describe the style of
• 58:38
  outdoor seating they had and that it still would not be unless it was a you know a guide dog or
• 58:45
  what do you call companion dog or you need to have a thing then we will be okay and went into
• 58:50
  detail I like that no no no this is what the hell kind of restaurants you're going to Joel that they
• 58:54
  know the beaches no one beaches baby of course where the fancy people live yeah I didn't think
• 59:00
  was that fancy a restaurant and and like halfway through the conversation I said is this you know
• 59:05
  is this an AI or is this a person amazing and then it came clean and well not that it was yeah
• 59:10
  and then openly said oh this is AI did it a service that did it and it was dead smooth I
• 59:14
  what it took me you know a minute of talking to realize the colorway which is owned by Miravile
• 59:19
  no I wasn't I'm just wondering whether it's a big company like it's a big entertainment venue or
• 59:24
  not but these are yeah services you sign up for okay anyway let me circle back around so I want
• 59:29
  to yes to go back to that so like I was saying before I think it should be an absolute priority
• 59:36
  to say everyone to focus on the societal disruption how a quality of life is going to get messed up
• 59:41
  and where governments could step in right now and start working in this space is with a national AI
• 59:47
  change management plan and then early on in that in that process would be a big PR campaign
• 59:53
  like slipslop slap if you live here in Australia then that's something that most people familiar
• 59:57
  love the non I love imagining what the non-Australian listeners and viewers are thinking slipslop slap
• 1:00:03
  might yeah that sounds quite sexual yeah exactly slipslop slap was a public health education
• 1:00:08
  campaign about making sure about some safety because Australia has by far the highest in cancer
• 1:00:14
  rates in the world for obvious reasons we love going outside and it's sunny and so slip on a shirt
• 1:00:23
  well I always get it yeah the head of a slap on some sunscreen and slap on a hat
• 1:00:29
  sounds right slip slash you should slap where a hat put sunscreen on don't walk around
• 1:00:34
  it was a catchy tune yeah and this is what I think the 80s right or something I don't know what
• 1:00:38
  the ladies are yeah it's too old for me to really remember it being around but must be
• 1:00:42
  80s I I mentioned this every anywhere I mentioned this people know exactly what I'm
• 1:00:45
  yeah looking about it like it's it's it's just become part of culture here in Australia at least
• 1:00:49
  so anyway that would be part of that AI national AI change manager trying to get everyone
• 1:00:53
  on the same page trying reduce that uncertainty what is like that to happen what's happening what
• 1:00:58
  AI is what it's not mean part of the issue is there's a big difference in people's knowledge about
• 1:01:04
  what AI even is there are people that haven't used that haven't touched it don't want to know about
• 1:01:08
  it and that's fine so that would be a first step right so I guess my point is that you we need to
• 1:01:15
  put resources into this right now and start planning out what happens to cities if unemployment
• 1:01:20
  goes to 40 50% in a city like like we said at the beginning mad max style it's not a very nice
• 1:01:25
  place to live a quality of life is going to take a massive hit well so what happens to the economy
• 1:01:30
  if everyone if all of those people are pulling down welfare checks yeah well that's what like how
• 1:01:35
  does the that's government afford even if you want to do a UBI style universal basically any kind
• 1:01:40
  of income I mean well you just need taxation reform right because presumably the AI companies
• 1:01:46
  are making as much more money as those people are no longer earning yeah we just need to massively
• 1:01:53
  tax wherever the productivity is so I just I just wrote this op ed piece to try and I guess
• 1:01:58
  rattle things a little bit talking about AI agents as AI immigrants and here in Australia like
• 1:02:06
  certain other countries we have so political parties which you know have in the past at least
• 1:02:10
  talked a lot about immigrants and it's somewhat takes on a culture in the past well right now
• 1:02:14
  they're currently leading there they're the second most popular party in Australia that's right
• 1:02:18
  yeah so it's a big thing here and it's it takes on a cultural but but the heart of it it's
• 1:02:23
  kind of economic right that these human immigrants are going to come in Australia or on a boat
• 1:02:27
  or on a plane I guess and take your job right and people will talk about that and it's visceral
• 1:02:33
  scary but that's a you know a drop in the bucket compared to AI immigrants AI agents who are coming
• 1:02:40
  in right now and they're going to be taking our jobs by the millions and if you're going to be
• 1:02:45
  thinking about that talking about that getting people scared about that you should also be talking
• 1:02:50
  about the AI version of this and what's more like we're just saying in terms of taxation and stuff
• 1:02:55
  when an AI agent comes and takes jobs that money is going straight offshore it's not staying in
• 1:03:01
  Australia that money's not being going back to rent to grocery stores in Australia it's going
• 1:03:06
  straight to one of the companies in California let's say and so just to reframe that AI agent
• 1:03:12
  taking jobs is like an AI immigrant I don't know that first person to do that but I think it's a
• 1:03:16
  powerful way to shift someone's thinking and it's an AI immigrant who gets paid in cash and
• 1:03:22
  doesn't pay tax on it yeah and then sends the money back to their family overseas and doesn't
• 1:03:27
  reinvest it back into the economy I mean that's interesting but part of the problem is not just
• 1:03:33
  the that the AI agent is untaxable because it's it's money is going back to the states what's
• 1:03:41
  actually happening to the productivity of the individual who lost their job is that it's going
• 1:03:47
  to the bottom line of the company that was employing them really right yes so the productivity of
• 1:03:53
  the company will go up the productivity of the company so it doesn't strike me as an
• 1:03:57
  insurmountable problem for tax reform it may be a political insurmountable political problem but
• 1:04:01
  it's not an insurmountable economic problem to say like the economy is still growing it's just that
• 1:04:08
  it's all these companies that are laying off people the companies are more profitable so I don't
• 1:04:14
  know how you do it but the value that you were extracting from the paychecks of the employees
• 1:04:21
  has not vanished yeah it's now in the profit of the company that fired them yeah this so you need
• 1:04:28
  to extract there absorbing that margin saving that margin so rather if you don't extract that then
• 1:04:33
  there will be a revolution and the CEOs of those companies will and the share the biggest shareholders
• 1:04:39
  will have their heads shopped off so come with us on this ride of I mean you have to either increase
• 1:04:44
  corporate taxation or you have to have some kind of a super corporate tax or something or an AI
• 1:04:48
  corporate tax yeah there has to be a way of funding the gut you can't you can't only look at
• 1:04:54
  human employees as being the source of revenue in an AI future presumably and these are the
• 1:05:02
  conversations we need to be having now well good then we've already show yes and I'm comfortable
• 1:05:08
  conversations so yeah okay so universal basic income let's talk about that then because it
• 1:05:15
  complicates the issue that you were talking about earlier in terms of purpose and yeah that by
• 1:05:19
  it's like it's just not enough for people to sit around on $40,000 a year with their dicks in
• 1:05:27
  their hand wondering what to do with their day yeah and of course when you ask people hey would you
• 1:05:31
  like me hand out x dollars per week you know about sure of course yeah right and people get this
• 1:05:36
  wrong about retirement like people are most people in the world probably dying to retire right they
• 1:05:42
  think of it is fantastic utopian thing they're going to get their hobbies and but when you look at
• 1:05:47
  the data it's not great right their health goes down their mental health goes down they lose purpose
• 1:05:52
  not everyone but on average they do and they get sick and dying and their health goes down faster
• 1:05:57
  than it would go down just because they're aging yeah it goes down because of the when they stop
• 1:06:02
  work yeah retiring right and so this is thing where purpose even people that say I have my job and
• 1:06:06
  are like they're still going to purpose from that whether it's about the thing they're doing in the
• 1:06:10
  world or the money they're making for them or their family or what that is different aspects to
• 1:06:14
  that but they're still getting some purpose and meaning from that so when you take that out and
• 1:06:18
  then and then leave them with nothing and get them free money so to speak it doesn't like humans
• 1:06:23
  need that purpose and there's good data linking purpose like I said to all cause mortality and so
• 1:06:29
  when you do you know people that have more but drive and purpose are less likely to die from all
• 1:06:34
  causes by a fair amount so it's like you can think of the purpose as a longevity as a health
• 1:06:40
  span as a health thing almost I wonder whether or not I mean a religious person will listen to you
• 1:06:46
  say that and say well yeah we've been saying this for centuries actually that without purpose
• 1:06:53
  society and human flourishing will lose their way and AI is just speeding up like an inevitable
• 1:07:01
  decline that we've seen since the decline of religion of listlessness and rising suicide and
• 1:07:06
  euthanasia and the devaluing of meaning and community and you know reverence and whatever
• 1:07:15
  there was an interesting conversation about exactly this question of what we do if AI puts us
• 1:07:19
  all out of work between Sam Harris and Ross Douthert the conservative Catholic New York Times
• 1:07:24
  columnist who and Sam was saying look I mean you know we have an example of a group of people
• 1:07:32
  who have found meaning despite never having to work a day in their lives it's called rich people
• 1:07:37
  it's called the aristocracy it's called inherited wealth like they they're not committing suicide
• 1:07:43
  they're going out fox hunting and they're like doing you know there have been rich shit
• 1:07:47
  pokes with nothing to do for a long time yeah so we it's not going to be a problem necessarily
• 1:07:54
  like we can figure out things to do with ourselves and Ross was much more skeptical saying like
• 1:08:00
  I don't think that that comes naturally like you know you only have to look at people who suddenly
• 1:08:06
  find themselves not not having to work or being able to work and look at the consequences like
• 1:08:11
  it's taken centuries for the aristocracy to learn how to be the aristocracy yeah that's why
• 1:08:15
  they're winning the lottery thing yeah yeah any sudden change it's just going to mess people up
• 1:08:19
  exactly yeah and so I wonder whether or not there will be a rise in I mean this is my worst case
• 1:08:25
  sorry I mean mysticism and superstition and religion and uh all of the ways of thinking that
• 1:08:30
  try to provide people with with meaning I think we're going to see a massive
• 1:08:35
  surprisingly spicy theory like we did during COVID but much bigger when people are anxious and
• 1:08:40
  stressed and there's uncertainty people crave certainty so they will latch onto any conspiratorial
• 1:08:45
  like any theory no matter if it if it gives them some level of certainty they'll latch onto it
• 1:08:51
  so we I think we should 100% expect that to happen um I mean we've been doing what I've been doing
• 1:08:57
  some modeling so we know from the literature that you know anxiety depression substance abuse
• 1:09:02
  suicide purposelessness and a few other things they're not isolated things as one goes up it actually
• 1:09:08
  increases all the other ones so there's kind of negatively feeding to each other and including
• 1:09:14
  unemployment so you can model as unemployment goes up it triggers this cascade of negatively
• 1:09:19
  reinforcing all of those sort of mental health challenges and they all spiral fairly quickly
• 1:09:25
  so we need to start thinking about them all together and not just you know unemployment by itself
• 1:09:30
  not just anxiety run AI by itself but all those things right if you have a substance problem
• 1:09:35
  it's you're not going to get it's much harder to get a job and all these things just yeah
• 1:09:38
  feed in so you can set up this complex models where you model this out in a population
• 1:09:43
  and you see that that you don't you know if unemployment goes up quite quickly these things
• 1:09:48
  all spiral because they all push it they all exaggerate each other and it doesn't look very good
• 1:09:54
  no I mean the other component the other tricky thing that I worry about in this space is that in
• 1:10:00
  order to get a handle on this transition and solve these problems and assist people you need
• 1:10:06
  institutions like government and public health bureaucracies and universities and the media to
• 1:10:12
  assist people but when people are in crisis they're increasingly untrusting of those institutions
• 1:10:20
  and have become consistently less trusting sometimes with good reason over the past decade or so
• 1:10:27
  so people don't trust the media and they don't trust the government nearly as much as they
• 1:10:32
  used to so the very tools that you would be using to try to assist people are themselves
• 1:10:38
  tainted and corrupted and contaminated by the phenomenon that you're trying to address yeah
• 1:10:43
  yeah and and that's part of why I want cut governments to start planning this now we don't
• 1:10:49
  want to be stuck in this emergency response covid style we've got to just sort of put some
• 1:10:54
  in action as fast as possible because mistakes will be made and best yeah the best choices won't
• 1:10:59
  there won't be that luxury of time so if we can slow down some of this job loss this this AI
• 1:11:05
  revolution the more we can slow it down the better will be on the quality of our lives and I mean
• 1:11:10
  you've written advisory documents for policymakers about what they should be thinking about in
• 1:11:15
  addition to a public education campaign what are the kinds of things that if you are emperor of the
• 1:11:19
  world waving your magic wand now governments and companies and people would be doing well I'd
• 1:11:26
  start with that chip the national change management plan for each country and make that a priority
• 1:11:31
  from what would the what would the plan contain apart from the public education campaign so the
• 1:11:35
  the education campaign and I think like this like I said whether AI gets goes bad or it's amazing
• 1:11:42
  either way we're going to it's going to be a bumpy ride and we're going through the next
• 1:11:47
  of two decades is a period where we're going to need a different set of psychological tools and
• 1:11:52
  toolkits to really maintain our psychological health in a way that we haven't been through before
• 1:11:58
  so what do I mean by that I mean we need to change our daily habits right so habits are very
• 1:12:03
  powerful the atomic habits book was a crazy bestseller for a reason um and we need to start bringing
• 1:12:10
  in some of these habits and practice them so that when the shit hits the fan we're not just going
• 1:12:15
  oh my god what can I do we're in searching and so we already have some of these habits built in
• 1:12:19
  what sort of habits so a range of things understanding how to control our physiology so that the
• 1:12:25
  anxiety doesn't you know become overwhelming uh understanding how to deal with uncertainty that's
• 1:12:31
  a place that I often start with you know that understanding that having a brain like we do as humans
• 1:12:36
  means that we find ambiguity and uncertainty about the future like triggering and so it's not
• 1:12:43
  you know it's not your fault it's just a nature having a brain like you so you can't fight the
• 1:12:47
  uncertainty in the world because you'll just burn yourself out it's like quicksand you need to
• 1:12:51
  accept that and you just work on yourself so what cognitive reframing is an interesting thing so
• 1:12:57
  there are all kinds of little examples of uncertainty from you know horror films the rollercoaster
• 1:13:02
  rides to fancy restaurants where you'll get ten courses and have no idea what food the chef's
• 1:13:07
  going to give you and people love that and they pay a lot of money for that um so there are these
• 1:13:11
  situations where people love uncertainty is very exciting and thrilling so can you reframe other
• 1:13:17
  biggest types of uncertainty to also be exciting and full of opportunity and that excitement and
• 1:13:22
  that stress fight or flight is somewhat similar physiologically and by practicing that reframing
• 1:13:29
  just a little bit each day day day in and day out to try and reframe that in your mind as something
• 1:13:35
  that is full of opportunity um so we want an additional psychotherapeutic or kind of it's not
• 1:13:42
  meditative it's not therapy because I don't think we want to wait for the for stuff to get really
• 1:13:45
  bad and then go oh we need to fix this we want preemptive things and mental wellness and what you
• 1:13:50
  kind of and not yeah yeah and for our brains and it's going to you get right from the exercise
• 1:13:56
  and the food and the sleep through the kind of things we're talking about and you know most people
• 1:14:02
  clean their teeth what twice a day or more um and we don't sit there thinking hmm should I clean
• 1:14:08
  my teeth tonight or not no but I always am suspicious of people who clean their teeth more than twice
• 1:14:13
  a day I know people like that and like come on I'll have to every minute yeah I mean there are a lot
• 1:14:18
  of give it a rest there are yeah there are two plenty there are ones probably that's the toothpaste
• 1:14:21
  and toothbrush companies pushing that um but my point is that there's a lot of power in habits right
• 1:14:28
  and when I've gone through tough times in my life from stress or anxiety the habits that I've
• 1:14:33
  built or put in whether it be exercise going you know having a sauna or these other things
• 1:14:37
  hmm I've put in that work over a long time and so it's a habit and so that automatic
• 1:14:43
  habit to go to the gym will go for a run will pull me out of some of those situations definitely
• 1:14:48
  and so I don't have to think about it what about doing more institutional or global scale than um
• 1:14:55
  you know we've got an education campaign we've got some mechanism by which people can
• 1:15:00
  improve their psychological resilience ahead of this are there other correct
• 1:15:04
  oh yeah I mean there's there's more governmental things like we're talking about like
• 1:15:07
  like not not just the tax stuff and getting tax from the companies but I think we should need to
• 1:15:11
  bring in different kinds of legislation about how much warning companies give and if they are
• 1:15:16
  going to lay off a lot of people for AI then it's be transparent and clear about that and I think
• 1:15:21
  we should ban it but there needs to be some time given and some transition thing and there needs
• 1:15:26
  to be something like so that it's not just to the world where some companies get to do whatever
• 1:15:30
  they want because we want to slow this down give people warning um and you can just unilaterally
• 1:15:36
  say that yeah like these three software engineers are redundant because their jobs aren't needed
• 1:15:41
  anymore you have to say like this is our AI transition plan and here's how you're going to be
• 1:15:46
  like throw anything with rules and government it's not easily done but it can be done um so things
• 1:15:52
  like that and then for the moment there's probably some some some ideas and things about retraining
• 1:15:58
  and retooling people to do other things because we the the humanoid robot the robotic revolution is
• 1:16:03
  is behind the AI one so any dexterous job is still pretty safe for now I don't think it's safe long
• 1:16:09
  term um when you see the sort of cutting edge the figure robotics is probably the most advanced
• 1:16:14
  humanoid robot what he can do in the dexterity it can do now and it's running fully autonomously
• 1:16:19
  which most of the other um humanoids are not which means no one's controlling it just running on
• 1:16:25
  its own AI system inside itself um and it can navigate for long periods of time now you know
• 1:16:30
  hours on end doing things in houses so if you thought you were going to get out of it by be
• 1:16:34
  becoming a plumber maybe right now right and especially you know or electrician and or any you
• 1:16:39
  know there's a lot of construction there's a lot of electrical work in all the data centers there's
• 1:16:43
  a lot that's all booming right now energy is the big thing that everyone's everyone because we
• 1:16:47
  need so much energy to drive all these these AI centers yeah so there's a big boom there and
• 1:16:52
  there's lots of work dexterous physical work for now but I think long term that'll also be on
• 1:16:57
  the chopping block but that's going to be delayed by some much longer period yeah right um so
• 1:17:02
  there's retooling re-skilling as part of that conversation I just think but the first step is
• 1:17:08
  the government needs to talk about this openly and talk like we're all this together reassure
• 1:17:13
  people and trying to remove some of that uncertainty bit not talking about it not mentioning it hoping
• 1:17:18
  you know it goes away is not a great strategy for any government at the moment because people the
• 1:17:23
  the the uncertainty anxiety is just sort of building week on week and I see it just ratcheting
• 1:17:28
  up tick tick tick um and on the question of retooling yeah just because it reminds me of what you
• 1:17:35
  were saying earlier about now every person should become their own essentially CEO of an AI
• 1:17:41
  army and then you know do whatever is whatever they like doing that people will pay the army to
• 1:17:46
  do um rather than being an employee of a large company is the problem basically the pace at which
• 1:17:54
  that's going to happen because the the AI skeptics and in fact there was already a piece published
• 1:17:59
  in Forbes in response to the piece by Matt Schumer that I addressed at the beginning of the
• 1:18:04
  conversation saying this is all a lot of hot gas basically AI people always want people to think
• 1:18:11
  that AI is uniquely special in some way whether it's uniquely brilliance or uniquely devastating
• 1:18:16
  because their solution is always you have to buy more AI in order to make sure that you're going
• 1:18:20
  to weather the storm right um and so this guy was saying uh yes it's going to be very disruptive
• 1:18:26
  lots of things have been very disruptive you know in the past and what will determine the outcome
• 1:18:32
  here is how politics and society responds to it which I refuted because I thought it was a bit
• 1:18:36
  silly by saying of course it's the AI people who are warning the alarm because it's the AI
• 1:18:42
  people who know what they're talking about like well this case you're a canary in the coal mine it
• 1:18:46
  caused they've designed the AI to take their jobs first but also I feel like it's a bit like saying
• 1:18:52
  you can't trust a hydrologist to tell you where the water is because it's in the hydrologists
• 1:18:58
  interest for you to drill for water you should use a divining rod instead to figure out where water is
• 1:19:03
  because the hydrologist has a vessel well yeah sure he does he's also the expert in where the
• 1:19:07
  stuff to rainy and aquifer is so even when he tells you where it is you should trust him even
• 1:19:12
  though he has a vested interest in it so we should absolutely listen to AI Daria Amade of anthropic
• 1:19:18
  Claude AI is the one that's been writing the most and talking the most in a way that I think is
• 1:19:22
  most useful most interesting sometimes a bit scary about you know this this nation of geniuses
• 1:19:27
  in a country and the how they you know and he has been in the nation of geniuses like he's written
• 1:19:32
  a number of essays and he's made quite scary predictions about you know in a year or two 20%
• 1:19:38
  of the workforce disappearing and this is going to happen and then he's talked about this idea
• 1:19:44
  of the AI agents being just imagine a country somewhere over here and they're all like Nobel
• 1:19:51
  laureate level geniuses and that country can be used to do all kinds of things and what impact
• 1:19:57
  would that have on society just as a way to think about it and it's not perfect but I think it has
• 1:20:03
  some impact so the point I was going to make before is that when it comes to the capabilities
• 1:20:10
  of the AI we should absolutely listen to all the AI scientists even though some of the some of
• 1:20:15
  the models that are grown they're not programmed remember they're sort of grown they're self-learning
• 1:20:19
  will even surprise the AI technicians a computer science himself so there's they get surprised
• 1:20:25
  sometimes when it comes to societal disruption and workforce I don't think we should necessarily
• 1:20:30
  listen to AI experts because they're not experts in those things we need a you know a general panel
• 1:20:35
  of people that understand like me human the brain and human psychology but we need economists and
• 1:20:41
  other people to really start working on this global level I mean I went to one of those UN
• 1:20:48
  things was AI for good in Geneva last year and where every country was there all the the top AI
• 1:20:54
  scientists and the godfather of this and they're all there talking about this representative from
• 1:20:58
  each country talking about the sovereign AI they're working on and not a single person talked
• 1:21:03
  about job loss mental health crisis of purpose it was not touched on it was all AI governance and
• 1:21:11
  how do you make an AI model specifically safe in that model and I was I was genuinely shocked that
• 1:21:18
  no one at any governmental level at least at that venue was talking about this because that's
• 1:21:23
  what kind of the reason I was there I was like what are people doing it what are we thinking anyway
• 1:21:27
  so yes we should absolutely listen to them I don't think that they're doing this warning I don't
• 1:21:34
  think they're necessarily saying the solution to the AI problems is to go spend more money on AI
• 1:21:39
  they are saying that you need to be aware of what's happening yeah and so you need to be plugged in
• 1:21:44
  and I mean the thing I need to the time was who was criticizing the article isn't seeing
• 1:21:49
  is the pace and the scale like in the past when when you outlawed whaling yes there were
• 1:21:55
  whalers who needed to go and find other jobs but it was one sector of the economy and it happened
• 1:22:00
  over the course of you know well not in the case of whaling but in the case of the industrial
• 1:22:03
  revolution generations yeah it didn't you know yes everyone used to work on a farm and then they all
• 1:22:08
  had to go and you know there are no farmers anymore ever I'm started working on a factory and now
• 1:22:11
  there's no one works on a factory anymore you know so it's just going to be like that everyone's
• 1:22:14
  going to be doing different things and but there's always going to be an appetite for more human
• 1:22:18
  innovation and therefore you know everyone will find something to do yeah eventually eventually
• 1:22:25
  they will but it's never happened this quickly before yeah you never had an everything machine
• 1:22:32
  roll out in a matter of months and years you've had big changes that have happened to one
• 1:22:38
  sector of the economy it took decades of generations it's never happened this fast and then at
• 1:22:43
  on top of that the fact that most people including politicians failed to predict because they can't
• 1:22:47
  you can't feel that exponential change like I said our brains work in linear you know every step
• 1:22:53
  how we take is another meter and another you know that's a linear change but exponential steps
• 1:22:58
  in about 26 steps I've walked around the globe and there are all these kind of people go what
• 1:23:02
  wow is that right yeah we've gone around the world in 26 steps or the other one you get a bit of
• 1:23:06
  paper like you're holding you fold it fold it and 42 folds it goes from the earth to the moon right
• 1:23:10
  mistake I'm trying to explain that to my eight-year-old son a few weeks ago yeah and he doesn't I mean
• 1:23:16
  he's just like let's do it let's say he's like no he got an napkin and he was like let's do it
• 1:23:20
  the bus to think what they try and do it and they get they start off with some you know like 100
• 1:23:24
  by 100 meter to a piece of paper yeah and it does get very very hard to fold but yeah so it's
• 1:23:30
  just in theory but yes it's theoretical amazing so if we wanted to leave people with one
• 1:23:35
  positive piece of advice about what they can do yeah so look I think I'm an optimist despite
• 1:23:41
  what I've said a lot is sounds kind of negative but I'm an AI optimist I think we are on the way
• 1:23:46
  to an AI utopia life will be amazing we're going to cure diseases we're going to solve any climate
• 1:23:51
  problems on planet earth and our lives will be fundamentally better but that is in like a 20
• 1:23:57
  something year timeline like I said before from here to there is going to be a bumpy road
• 1:24:02
  so I see the job of me or people like me is to try and smooth out those bumps as much as possible
• 1:24:09
  and yes absolutely listen to to the AI experts pay attention to AI as much as you can
• 1:24:15
  don't worry so much about the finances but pay attention to the human condition to the quality
• 1:24:20
  of our lives and we need to start figuring out ways of pushing the government to take action
• 1:24:27
  on societal disruption onto the mental health part of things and to jobs is probably the core thing
• 1:24:32
  that will trigger out a lot of this stuff so lean on people that have power and influence that
• 1:24:37
  you start taking this conversation seriously we need to sort of move shift the focus away from
• 1:24:43
  the AI and the machines and how much GPUs cost and well can Australia have onshore AI and all
• 1:24:49
  this stuff to the societal disruption but at a human level practice yeah psychological self-care
• 1:24:58
  enhance your own resilience maybe have a little financial watch as if it's possible
• 1:25:03
  yeah there's a lot of content you can hear about this that there is a time to start grab
• 1:25:07
  and hold on to assets for the next 20 years because that work will change fundamentally
• 1:25:13
  and so in terms of just equipping yourself to be able to use AI I just play around with AI
• 1:25:18
  so that try and use as much as possible I know people don't want to and a lot of people are some
• 1:25:22
  people are opting to you know go off grid live out in I'm just thinking about what transition is
• 1:25:30
  from a person who is happy being a professional working for a company right now but in five years
• 1:25:37
  is probably going to be made have been made redundant and will be expected to be providing value
• 1:25:43
  to the economy in some entrepreneurial way yeah it's probably worth playing in the sand pit truth
• 1:25:49
  yeah now to delay losing your job try and use AI as much as possible lean into it be careful with
• 1:25:56
  the cognitive outsourcing don't make yourself done by just doing it skinny AI AI to do all your
• 1:26:01
  work for you you need to keep critically thinking and giving yourself juicy hard problems to think
• 1:26:06
  about this is another big sort of cognitive problem that we're facing at the moment especially
• 1:26:10
  with students but yeah AI like I think the article mentions is is is like writing a bike or skiing
• 1:26:16
  you can't learn and understand what AI is and what it can do by listening to me talk about it here
• 1:26:21
  or watching YouTube videos you've got to just play with it an experiment and like the article
• 1:26:26
  also says it's changing every two weeks and so yeah well the last if you tried it last year and
• 1:26:30
  was like try it now and then just keep playing with it and experiment with it in your private life
• 1:26:37
  in a you know for work and just you know use it under the table if your company is not letting you
• 1:26:43
  use it yet experiment but start using it so at least you understand what's happening or what we're
• 1:26:47
  going through and then start planning for you know be more entrepreneurial start thinking about the
• 1:26:54
  owner of what you know in ten five ten years if those jobs are gone what kind of things could you
• 1:26:59
  be doing and we don't know how the financial system will shake out but let's think for now that yeah
• 1:27:05
  you may have to be the owner of your own project whatever you make and so for a lot of people that
• 1:27:11
  mental shift is a big one that mindset to be responsible for my own project my own and see my own
• 1:27:16
  thing rather than just turn up at nine in the morning and be like your company man it's a very
• 1:27:20
  different for a lot of people that's a hard transition to make so start playing around with those
• 1:27:25
  those ideas and maybe start a side hustle see what that feels like to be responsible for all parts of
• 1:27:29
  it you know you can you can make anything digital now with AI really really easy and then you can
• 1:27:35
  make physical products get them shipped from China there's lots of things you can do now that you
• 1:27:39
  couldn't do a year or two ago so such experiment in those things and like you just said yeah also
• 1:27:46
  think about the what kind of life you want to lead and what what matters to you and your family
• 1:27:51
  and how to safeguard those and hold that quality of life as a north star through the next
• 1:27:56
  couple of years and actively do things to start safeguarding that and make that resilient.
• 1:28:02
  Joel great to talk to you as always come back on the show in 20 years when we're outside out of
• 1:28:08
  the Mad Max Apocalypse and you'll be dressed as like you know the Viking guy on January 6th or
• 1:28:15
  something covered in war paint and I'll be making wearing wearing a bearskin for it'll also be
• 1:28:21
  digital my my AI replica do it for me okay it's on thank you. Pleasure as always