cool hey hey everybody hi hi Brian hi
hey hello hello good to see you man yeah it has
been a while these we gotta we gotta fix that I know where where are you everybody's in someplace else now
Brett's finally back in the United States how about that after months our highly efficient reg
immigration system everybody's worried about AI we got to fix a few basic here first yeah absolutely yeah so I I did
say uh I did say to someone uh today that I finally got my Visa sorted out so I could come into the states and they
said oh had you tried MasterCard and I I yeah because was a
Visa master cut joke but anyway oh go sorry yeah you broke up there a bit your connection is not not helping you with
the punch line no yeah should be great right the connection should be Stellar
being in in the heart of Silicon Valley but yeah but you know don't can't trust the promises from Silicon Valley I think
that's going to be one of the key takeaways here they overpromise and underd deliver oh my goodness br br
where are you actually located right now no I'm I'm in uh I'm at the Sheran Palo
ala dude you wna you want to grab a beer later dude I am 15 minutes away from you
yes there you go all right well let's let's do it you guys could have met at a place that has better
bandwidth well he said Sheran you know it's amazing if you tour if you tour Silicon Valley this is just an aide if
you tour Silicon Valley there are very little buildings that would let you know that you're actually in Silicon Valley
it still very much looks like you're in the 1970s and 80s it's it's not a place
it's a it's a it's kind of like a state of mind yes yeah absolutely especially now when everybody's working from home
uh okay so let's talk the topics here today we've got a few that you've teed up Brett uh the first one is uh this
recent executive announcement from president bid the White House taking the lead on regulation of AI in the United States and of course uh they got that
one out in the nick of time just before the EU held it uh sorry the the UK uh
held its big Bletchley Park Gathering that brought 28 different countries together including China and the EU and
the US uh to talk about the risks of artificial intelligence uh so you got
kind of like musk was there it was quite a crowd actually quite a crowd yeah all the
luminaries um although there there's an issue we need to talk about which is that they keep allowing the same people in the room and nobody else and there's
a kind of a growing outcry about that and then in the background behind all this I guess trying to get what word get
a word in edgewise around all the kind of moral outrage and panic you've got a couple voices that have been very
skeptical um including meta uh you know where where um Nick cleg who's a former
deputy prime minister of the UK uh he's come out and he's like this is a moral Panic Yan laon who's in charge of AI
there actually one of the leaders of AI uh he's also been very dismissive about these exaggerated claims in his view um
and Mark Andre uh issuing his Tech techno Optimist Manifesto Manifesto oh
my gosh we have to get into that so we got quite a lot teed up for today's episode of the futurists for the folks
who are joining us live hi I'm Rob Turk and look at all the people that have joined us today my co-host Brett King hi
Brett get out Miss merse Katie King
happy to be back good to see you and of course Brian celiz hi Brian so good to see you again after a whole
summer met is already in the future she's in some smart city or something oh yeah look at that wow your background
has evolved I'm living at the line look at this really yeah
that's that's the work back that's the real work Brian's in the
simulation hi hi Denise thanks for joining us Denise hi Denise uh okay so
let's uh let's start with President Biden and this executive order so the first thing has to be said is why an
executive order and not say legislative action from Congress and I think we all know the answer to that one the US
Congress is paralyzed by gridlock and utterly incapable of functioning it has been missing in action for the better
part of a year it doesn't look like it's going to get any better anytime soon so President Biden decided to fill the
vacuum uh and show some leadership I think generally the response has been pretty positive about this uh you know
there's some issues people are quing about various things but the idea that the White House has taking the lead to say look we need to do something here we
can't just let this roll out um completely uncontrolled and uh they've issued some
guidelines and what's interesting to me about it is um you executive orders have to be rooted in some existing law
because the president can't make new law that's congress's job that they're not doing and so uh they had to point to
existing law and they used the defense production act which is like a wartime act from World War two where the
government can kind of Commander resources from Private Industry and that's what they're using to put some
teeth in this so they're now uh they're going to require big tech companies to show the results of their internal
testing previously they had asked them to voluntarily agreed to some guidelines about testing safety but now they're
putting a little bit of teeth into it with this defense production act um how does that land with y' like that sounds
like big government is stepping in in a notd subtle way into the tech world uh Brett you're up there in Silicon Valley
where they're famously averse to any kind of Regulation any kind of government interaction what's your
take look I you know I think um the the advantage the executive order gives is
it does put some um you know in place um and it leads to a more healthy debate on
how the regulation should be rolled out if we need licensing for AI firms and so forth and you know I think this is the
trend right now is that if you look at the EU regulation you look at China's regulation the UK regulation that's just
been released um you know the governments don't know where this is
going to end up but there is enough concern in the public that we need to
start putting some um uh you know some some uh rails you know think of the bumpers
you know when you go to the bowling alley you know in in place so that um you we don't get sort of runaway issues
there there are obviously some issues particularly with us version of Regulation which has clearly been um
heavily influenced by The Tech players themselves yeah and that is one of the big questions the same you know as you
as you pointed out the same issue in the UK is that um you know I think tech
people need to be in the room but you also need um you know people that are willing to to represent sort of the
ethical Frameworks that required other things that aren't necessarily just limited to the tech the tech Giants in
terms of their insights yeah right now they're kind of dominating the discussion like when you look at who attends those briefing meetings with the
Senate they they've had a couple uh Senator Schumer has held and uh it's always the same list of names you know
it always it's always Sam Alman um Elon Musk uh probably Somebody from Microsoft
sometimes satella not nandel not always uh you know so so uh it's kind of the usual C characters the risk there the
concern is um it's a very valid concern is uh regulatory capture and the
background of that is the United States government actually isn't very good at writing regulation we have a track record that's pretty appalling in terms
of when when the federal government tries to regulate industry it almost always backfires and what happens on the
other side of the regulation is more industry consolidation higher profits less good service higher prices like
like it's supposed to be the exact opposite outcome um they've been able unable to achieve that one of the reasons our government gets that
criticism so much is that we invite Private Industry the regulated companies to write the rules themselves you know
face it if you work in Congress if you're an elected official in Congress whether you're in the house or Senate most of what you're doing is raising
money you know they spend 30 hours a week raising funds for their next election uh so there very little time is
actually spent drafting legislation we tend to Outsource that to think tanks and as I mentioned the Private Industry
so the big risk here the big concern that's been expressed is that we're inviting Private Industry to write its own rules on a space that's just barely
emerging really it's in its infancy and that's exactly what Sam Altman called for when he testified to Congress a
licensing regimen similar to the atomic energy commission this is dangerous because you're saying the government's
going to appoint a group of experts gee where will they get the experts from who will those experts be who's going to
recommend the experts and then those experts are going to regulate industry but that looks a lot like is a way to build a regulatory Moe around an
emerging um now that that's we do have the tech right now where you can actually run an llm on your iPhone or
your smartphone so you know everyone could be in the AI game that's exactly it if you're GNA talk about you know
free market um you know for AI then you know what you know um I I do think that
National infrastructure wise if you have ai in healthare or you're having AI in banking you know I do think there
probably needs to be regulation of that but um you know where's the where's the
line right yeah that's exactly right look the uh the one thing you can say positive about the um the Biden
executive order is that he's kind of talking to half of it is to industry but the other half of his his executive
order is to agencies the agencies is under his control and um what he's saying is look
you know you've got to step up you've got to start hiring AI experts you got to start to manage AI within the
jurisdiction that you manage and um and he's directed that to the Department of Commerce Department of Homeland Security
because there are some weapons risks here that we have to recognize are real uh Healthcare and um Department of
energy because there's also Atomic issues that are raised by by some of these artificial intelligences so so
here I think Biden's doing a good job it's basically him getting on his bully pulpit which is something a president can do and saying to the people that
work for him in the agencies do your job do the job you're already appointed to do we don't need new laws or new regulation to do that uh get in there
and start managing this he also directed The National Institute of standards to develop national AI standards and I
think this is quite interesting and that includes uh a national process or kind of standardized process for red teaming
artificial intelligence so this suggests that the government's going to start to come in and verify independently the claims that are made by the private
companies and and try to to break things which I think is uh probably the most
important yeah get them do to do things they're not supposed to do which by the way is pretty easy like I've done that with gp4 where you can make it
hallucinate and make it say kind of silly stuff and so on uh you can you can hypnotize the the large language models
so I think it's actually quite good can we really trust them to put together you know the the kind of commission that's
actually needed I mean let's be honest here these guys didn't even know you know how Facebook worked you know I mean
they don't understand the the the foundations of social media let alone you know llms and Ai and implications of
such and we're just going to trust the corporations to to handle that right so well I think you're you're talking about
Congress and it is definitely true when when they bring Tech Executives in it often looks pretty bad it's a bunch of
geriatrics asking questions of guys like Mark Zuckerberg it a pretty big disconnect yeah yeah yeah I think in
this case actually people are given the White House pretty pretty high marks for putting together a task force and in in
the sense that they actually covered the issues they covered the real issues what they proposed is very vague they just
say there's going to be rules there's G to be guidelines they haven't actually specified that uh before I gather that's what was what was interesting though is
I don't know if you saw but in the minutia there was even rules about what data center should look like in terms of
compute power and stuff like that there was some really interesting sort of outliers there why they wanted to put
that sort of stuff in I'm not really sure this is the danger Brett this is what everyone's concerned about right so
uh Bill Gurley uh Venture capitals Bill Gurley has been outspoken on this subject and he keeps raising the Spector
regulation is the thin end of the wedge they'll start with AI and but we need regulation and the US is like only major
player that didn't have any regulation in this space right so regulate anything we don't have privacy regulations we
don't regulate social media it is also interesting that what was it a month ago
where Sundar U Elon Zuckerberg Alman they got together as as you were
mentioning earlier Rob that they did Welcome regulation uh and in some
speculated as to whether or not they were welcoming regulation to protect their own Moes uh in some way shape or
form and not necessarily uh the greater good of of of US citizens and and and
the rest of the world so there are always ulterior uh motives uh and danger
of letting the big companies write the rules right that's the big risk here is the big companies come in and they say okay we know exactly how we want to be
regulated so what Bill Gurley said I think it's really worth pointing out is he said the who's going to get
kneecapped in the process is open source AI because right now open source AI is the great alternative to AI from Big
tech companies you everyone knows that the big tech companies are integrating uh the most advanced language models you
not just their own homegrown ones but they're bringing in things like anthropic and open Ai and other companies uh into the cloud offering so
it's really a way to bolster up um AWS and Azure and Google cloud and
effectively they're going to try to turn those uh Cloud offerings into you know kind of like a roach motel where it's easy to check in you can learn how to
use a language model and it's very difficult to check back out once you've kind of optimized your process on say
Google's cloud or Microsoft's cloud and that strategy is perfectly obvious the alternative to that though is open
source and like you pointed out Brian the open source models they're pretty good they're advancing really quickly there are millions of people working on
them so there's tremendous amounts of progress and this is what meta favors meta's obviously famously leaked their
or allowed their their their llama model to leak out into the public whether or not that was intentional it actually
ends up being a big Advantage for them because it means they have a huge group of developers they probably have the largest group of developers now working
on their Ai and um and then by the way meta is the most skeptical about the need for regulation and the need for you
know any of these disaster scenario um that people have been portraying so you have a real split here between what big
Tech wants and what the open source Community wants and what Bill Gurley has said is be very careful because it's
quite likely that the regulations that are forthcoming or if there's a licensing body that come become uh comes
about it's going to forbid the open source models and he said if that's the beginning that will be the beginning of
the end of Open Source in the United States because it will just expand its jurisdiction it'll expand its purview
and it'll start to Outlaw um open source Ms I know that sounds like a doomsday scenario but if you think about why
would big Tech be involved why would big Tech care so much about regulation that's a perfectly valid reason to get into the regulation game is to knock out
the single biggest uh threat disruptive threat from open source
yeah you think it it's pretty crazy to think that you know AI is in many ways
the equivalent of software that has already broadly impacted you know the world um you know Rob on it right um but
you know you now have the most advanced form of software and we're saying only the leading tech companies can playing
that game I mean you know the fact is the the the whole us value system is
been built on um you know these small startups being able to attract venture
capital and come up with these new types of business models and if if we say only
licensed providers can play schem how do you get licensed well you know the rules
for that are determined by the biggest tech tech Giants then you know obviously that is no longer a free you in the that
you know we've always seen the USS right yeah they could affec snuff out small companies just by making the the testing
and certification process so expensive that a start startup company can't afford to do it so if they just start to
use these regulations as a way to build barriers to entry at least that's the worry that we're hearing about from
Silicon Valley venture capitalists I think it's a legitimate thing to be concerned with the solution's pretty
clear though don't let big Tech write the rules and don't let big Tech appoint people to these advisory panels or
regulatory bodies easy to say tough to do historically the us has been terrible at
this almost every industry some 75% of Industries in the United States have been concentrated highly concentrated in
the last 20 years and those Industries get the regulation they pay for and they tend to be able to choose The Regulators
uh basically they use that regulatory position is kind of like a prize go in be a regulator for a few years if you do
things the way we want then you're going to get a great job on the other side uh yes so Brett you're wondering
it's a good question what are the risks we should be concerned about what are the what are the threats that people are so worried about why did the EU why did
the the UK call this Summit Rishi sunak the prime minister of I I think one of
the the reasons um the UK it is a lot of people are talking about the existential
risk of artificial intelligence but the bigger risk the more the more
significant risk and Rob you I have debated this on the show a number of times but I think the bigger risk is
disruption to Human Capital right and the fact that you know AI can so easily
replace humans in so many areas of the workforce is a much more immediate risk
than you AI is taking over the planet you mean people losing their jobs to AI right absolutely that's definitely a big
risk although I think they did talk about that in the UK uh this week and and Katie you're familiar with another
big risk which is disinformation right so like AI power deep fakes is a real
thing it's not something that people are making up there's also the ability to use this uh for hacking you know so they
that came up as well in the UK they showed examples of how hackers can use artificial intelligence basically to
streamline to streamline their process they're using it like co-pilot in a way it's kind of the promise of
AI right right right us about the impact on social media because that's a probably that's probably one that hasn't
come up as much but it's a big it's a real present risk ah well do we remember the T AI that got released on Twitter it
did not well it did not go well um so I mean
yeah we're going to be seeing more of this stuff I mean it it's going to be happening uh you know with every
advancement there's going to be people who use it for uh for for bad means right um but yeah I mean hopefully uh I
think that the AI regulation is intended on capping some of that and also too I mean chat gbt there's a lot of people
that already frustrated with the services of Chad gbt because they feel that they're not
receiving the same results that they had initially in earlier versions that's true they kind of neutered it like it
doesn't do the outrageous stuff anymore yeah you know and now you have people going over to Claude you know Claude
versus Chad jbt because they say oh well this is the other one this one's going to give me what I want right so people
are going to be choosing different brands uh of AI based on what information they're looking for what
results they receive and I think we'll be seeing more competition in that space uh very soon it's already happening now
and I think you're right so so circling back to what Brett talked about the job displacement uh challenge or the the
fear of it uh does anybody know anyone who's lost their job to an AI yet I know we keep hearing about this right there's
this theory that some 3 ask Microsoft um I I do know one area um
which uh you know um is in our our industry as speakers um which is I know
translators that have lost their job to AI particularly in China um you know so
because real translation in China you know the tech is very good now to translate from English Chinese Chinese
to English in particular so like real time translation the thing in your ear that's oh that's okay okay that's a very
good illustration of it those are good jobs too those are not small jobs uh you know because the one thing
I've noticed about these uh the generative AI systems is is they still kind of require a human being even
co-pilot it's great everybody I know who writes software is using it apparently some SE 60% of coders are using co-pilot
in some way or another but if you ask any of them they'll say well yeah it makes mistakes I'm a good enough coder I
can spot them error and I can fix the eror but to me that's like okay the promise of AI is not complete well you know I I I would say
um you know one of the really interesting things right now is the UAW um strike you know um I think the UA the
United order workers strike in the US I think that is about AI I think they're
they they're thinking that um you know they like success that tlers had with
their automation at the factory level and I think these Factory workers are really concerned about that I think
there's you know fairly broad concern about it well know if I can if I could share just a quick a quick bit of this
there was a really interesting uh Wall Street Journal Tech live event that was in Southern California a couple weeks
ago and venod kosla had shared that he he he believed that within 10 to 20
years AI would be able to perform 80% of 80% of the jobs uh and that's phenomenal
if you look if you compare that with also Accenture research that recently came out that showed that the
workforce uh to the to the point of this comment that we just received that in every major Revolution there's there is
a great reinvention of human capital but right now there's a great resistance
from the workforce that accent data found to embrace AI for
probably all of the reasons that we see in sensationalized media add to that the lack of leadership
the lack of Standards the lack of Regulation from officials from Business Leaders uh you you don't have the top
down push necessary and lastly you add to that the lack of sweeping education
reform to prepare the Next Generation Workforce for essentially what's going to be a completely new era of work of
which isn't design isn't isn't set yet right this is all going to start playing
out now we we are witnessing a time where there is already this level of conversation this there's this level
there's is an executive order when AI is the dumbest it will ever be yes and it will only augment and
accelerate now EXP finally from this point forward to which we're already
behind and the problem is government doesn't work proactively government can only regulate retroactively right it can
only respond it can't make rules about stuff that hasn't happened yet I mean they can try but the problems with the
whole regulatory supervisory model today is that Regulators have to be responsive
to what's happening they can't know Regulators aren't innovators you know right they sure aren't uh you know I was
in the I was was in Jordan this week uh and I had the opportunity to speak to some government ministers while I was
there and I said look this is the time right now to set up a training center
for future managers you can't wait five years because it'll be too late by then and they're going to need more than
software developer every Everybody focuses on software developers and that's true like AI coders are currently
in demand although who knows how long that's going to last if the AI can write its own software and improve itself um
but you need managers who understand how to use artificial intelligence and I'd say manager we also understand how to use how to deal with Virtual Worlds and
digital twins immersive media all the new things that are emerging uh it's almost like an emerging technology track
for an MBA that would be a useful thing for some country to take the lead on because I think they'd be gener building
the next generation of Business Leaders but let's address the substance of the question so someone on LinkedIn whose
name didn't pop up but there was a good question they said you don't need to be worried about um yeah the risk to human
capital or the displacement of human workers there'll be plenty of jobs um this is this is the argument
traditionally all of these new te produce all of these jobs but the thing that's different with AI and this is at
the heart of the debate we've had on this before is we've never had a technology that can simultaneously
disrupt every industry at the same time you know look at things like the internet it was mainly retail and
e-commerce you know you look at Computing it started in sort of you know um you know for for office functions and
things like that but it wasn't it wasn't simultaneously in service industry the manufacturing sector all of these things
at the same time electricity did but it did in a good way right it sort of it made it sort of was a superpower for
manufacturing and and Retail okay so Jim vanover is the LinkedIn person who who
posted the question and what he wants us to talk about is how will AI be mishandled or misused by terrorists and
dictators that's a great question you know really weaponizing AI but quite deliberately um and you know one way
that's already happening is people are are creating deep fakes and they're
weaponizing them to disrupt elections this is not new this has been going on since 2015 although it's quite clear AI can do
a better job of it Rob one one of the interesting things that came out of U of Biden's move was uh the idea of
watermarking uh and suggested the watermarking as a way to sort of deter what what is what is a deep fake and
what and what is real but everybody's going to find it we're not even talking about AI let's talk about social media
for a second look how much that disrupted the world and it's only going to be uh incredibly more Paramount as as
creative uh Bad actors uh figure this stuff out so the defense mechanisms uh
let alone uh the the the offense necessary to do anything about this is
is we're incredibly vulnerable and I do want to say just one thing I I read this powerful quote Rob just even the United
States not even the rest of the world uh it was from Anu Bradford law professor at Columbia univ University and she said
that Congress is so deeply polarized and even dysfunctional to the extent that it
is very unlikely to produce any meaningful AI legislation in the near
future so as a voter I I think voters
unite we're gonna have to stop this BS between you know the right and the left
and understand that right now what we actually we sit at probably one the most profound moments in history where
computers can literally outsmart Us in real time and most of us in America and
around the world don't even know how to prompt generative AI yeah and our kids
aren't learning about it this is this is like this is an
incred important point china is producing eight stem graduates for every one that the US produces today the only
way the US can compete on AI is to make broad artificial intelligence education
freely of societies that's my view but Brett we've got some of the world's best influencers coming out of
America oh yeah we sure do it's great this tast yes
you know Brian I take what you're saying really seriously I I've um I've organize an event next week in Santa Fe where I'm
gathering a bunch of people who are thinkers uh who people who think about Community online but also real communities people from um Civic
communities and also Native American communities as well as people from the technology industry and the reason I'm convening this group together is to
answer the question how can AI help us build resilient communities I bring that up because right now the way AI is
framed is it's useful for individuals we all get that you can use chat GPT to generate an email or generate a paper
quickly or it's going to be beneficial for corporations right that's uh and and that's an that's you know that's
obviously the big push for AI in the cloud um but we don't talk too much about is what's between corporations and
individual people is communities in fact people exist in communities individuals don't exist without a community unless
you're some kind of hermit and so uh this is a question that frankly hasn't been answered so it's it's whites space
no one seems to understand how AI can service in a beneficial way and I'd add to that the reason I decided to organize
the event is that what I perceive as I travel around the US is people are being
conditioned to fear AI because because they're hearing so much about the threat they're hearing people testify in front of Congress and so on we're being
conditioned to fear it as this omnipotent Force that's going to determine our future and we're g to be subject to it and so forth and actually
the teting that yeah they really are they're promoting that because it it certainly adds to the myth that Silicon
Valley is all powerful right um I want to get people past that fear and the reason I organized the event is I want
to get people to to sort of lean in to Ai and discover and explore the possibilities um we don't know the
answers yet but but hopefully next week I'll have some answers for you I'll certainly share that with you I think we're going need to start to do more of
that and I guess the point there is people have agency here individual people can self-organize communities can
self-organize we don't have to be the play things of social media uh or sorry the big Media or big technology
companies the the um individual groups can actually start to take a a lead on this I think they need to otherwise
they're going to be under receiving in asking Congress to figure out how to do it for American people is not going to work that leads me to another point one
of the things that people have said very critically are the meetings in uh at Congress also the White House meetings
and the the meeting that just happened Sunni reacks meeting in um in the in the UK um uh sorry Rishi Sun I got his name
mixed up uh is that they're leaving out all the critical voices who's not being heard who's not attending these meetings
are people who talk about social justice who talk about the way AI can be used today to discriminate how B bias can be
baked into the training data and end up with a biased or even a prejudiced Ai and the outcome uh these groups have
been raising these concerns strident but they've been left outside of the door in other words it's a very real concern
that when these regulations get baked they won't even have consulted with the groups that are most concerned about
about the way this technology might disadvantage people let's talk about that some too because I think the voices
outside the door need to be heard we do good and you know we can bring in the andreon stuff into this conversation as
well but yes yeah yeah he calls villains right he calls them the enemy the voices
of reion it's just insane I mean it's
villain yeah yeah yeah absolutely he's got the got the hairstyle um to go with it but the
bullet head yeah um but he looks like a cone
head yeah yeah oh wait I know that's a sensitive subject Brett sorry oops
oops I'm not old too for my hair um now I will say well Brian before
before you jump in you know will say one of the things that's really going to become clear and this comes back to Brian's common earlier is that we're
going to have types of people in the workforce over the next 10 years those that are incorporating artificial
intelligence into their career into their corporations and those that are um in danger of being displaced by by the
technology I mean it think it's that binary I was I was presenting last
evening uh in menow park uh to a delegate or delegation uh from
Innovation Center Denmark and this is the exact point that we
brought up which is you know we we stand at sort of the intersection of of our past experience and education and
opportunity uh and that opportunity is something that can be self you know self-defined uh you know what is what is
the role you want to play in the future of society in a role where uh I could
just share some really quick stats that 1/4 of current work tasks could be automated uh in the US and Europe uh by
2030 uh and it it spans everything office office uh and admin support legal
architecture engineering uh Sciences uh which is which is incredible business
and financial operations and so to your point BR if it's binary uh so we have an opportunity you know so as leaders you
know people don't know what they don't know right they've spent their entire life learning a certain way in a linear
way and now it's all just sort of changed uh here's here's an exponential platform for you to sort of augment
everything that you've learned and everything that you can do and everything you couldn't do now yesterday that you can now do today that's
overwhelming for any human being if you think about just how difficult change itself is right now here's a superpower
what are you gonna do with it uh we've all as human beings dreamed of having a superpower well here it is and so now
now that it's overwhelming people don't necessarily know what to do right and and we could we could lock ourselves in
paralysis so that then Brett in in that in that binary equation then says well
who's going to say what I need to do who's going to inspire me who's going to motivate me who's going to teach me who's going to Mentor me or coach me uh
into what I need to do next and this is that opportunity for I think if we're going to have techno optimists uh then
we need uh human optimists in order to be able to sort of champion what we do next right uh that starts with us I
posted something I was just so inspired the other day I posted something on Instagram that said but what can I do
I'm just one person said eight billion people this is that moment now where we
have to individually and collectively take control of our own future Destiny because we saw what happened with social media 42 states are suing meta for The
Addictive nature of social media uh so right we gonna wait for that to happen
with AI I hope not probably steps what steps do you
think people should be taking right now because you know I've noticed in my Social Circles both online and in the
real world uh because I'm here in Hollywood right so like half the people I know are in the mov movie business and
they're literally against AI like they're it's like it's evil I don't want to touch I'm not kidding like they've said that to me it's evil and I don't
want to learn about it and i' sit down and show chat GPT in mid Journey I'm like actually these are kind of benign you can do a lot of cool stuff and after
a half hour people start to get and they're like oh this is actually pretty cool and they're curious the other people I know though are people who lean
in and they say okay this is new and I see what I see all the trends that Brian's just talking about in the future
if I don't get on top of this thing I'm going to be underneath it so they're trying to learn and they're testing and they're posting and sharing and there's
you know online communities that are very supportive at teaching people how to how to use these skills you know I
guess you can tell from my comment you can see which direction I'm leaning in uh I I think you need to I need I think
you need to master these skills but candidly a lot of people in the United States and probably all over the world
they're not going to do that they're not going to spend their nights and weekends teaching themselves how to do AI how to use it so what is the solution is this
something an HR department should be teaching people to do is it some kind of adult training should the government get involved should this be part of the
regulation I I think from this point forward um you know we all all are going to have to be lifelong Learners I think
it's going to be about adaptability you know thing change is speak up slowing
down and that re to be highly adaptive our kids are not going to have a job for life you know that's that's not going to
be the way things work talent agencies and lawyers are already getting involved with all this I
mean uh I mean how many people watch the Jonas awful episode of black mirror
right now everyone's all freaked out because they think that their image is going to be taken after uh signing some
contract or some term you know something they didn't notice and all of a sudden there's a whole series being based off
of uh somebody else's life but using their image and uh you know it's already
happening now you know there's so many ads that come out these days with uh you know different celebrity appearances and
it they it may seem real I mean uh Scarlett Johansson was just in the news
because there was a some some ad that was using her likeness and without per
send in the lawyers you know but she's right to do it right because that's an implied endorsement then they didn't get her
permission didn't pay her to do it so they they should get sued I mean that that's you don't need new laws for that
that's you selling bitco like that every you know like all day every day on Twitter but
you know it's all it's all fake Elon Elon though you know I we
talked about this yesterday at the Innovation Center Denmark event someone asked you know could AI be used for good
uh and the answer is absolutely but uh you know I said it's just not profitable enough right now look at look at the uh
we we'll go nameless but he just happened to acquire a big social platform uh and is wondering why uh why
the advertisers are fleeing the network or the platform and yet he's the number one troll on the platform pushing
advertisers away it's sort of sad it's like we're watching the world's richest guy have a kind of middle-aged crisis he
said on he said on Joe Rogan the other day that's all you have to say yeah yeah
true he he made the comment um on on Rogan that you know it's quite shocking
how politicized Twitter had become previously because you know um that um
Democrat Le news items were you know or times more likely to be featured on on X
than Republican news items because Republican news items were were um you know punished for being um you know fake
news and information but that is ratio that the news organizations apply to
those two sets of communities in terms of disinformation republic Le disinformation is like seven or eight
times of democrat so I mean that's what the that's what the data shows so yeah
it's because what they're reading and talking about is make belief I mean we have one political party that's rooted in fiction and they they have fantasy
you they're they're chasing these fantasy issues instead of dealing with real issues um okay so let's talk about
this uh we talk about Mark we can talk a little bit more about Elon Musk we got to get to Mark Andre before we run out of time let's get into Andre get that my
own view on Elon Musk is gu kind of conflicted right because he he is the most the loudest voice about the danger
the existential threat of AI right he's been banging that drum for years uh he's a big Nick Bostrom fan he's a big
supporter of Max tgar these are all the people involved in future of Life Institute that wrote that pause letter
um but there's something weird about Elon mus because remember he's a CEO of Tesla which is one of the most advanced
AI companies in the world in terms of like real world deployment and Tesla vehicles when it comes to like automated
or autonomous vehicles uh killing humans well they take the cake like they are the number one killer of humans when you
talk about Killer Robots so maybe the guy is a little bit conflicted in his own feeling about AI because he sees
what his work is doing but he can't say it that way so he wants to point the finger at somebody else okay Mark
andreon the Techno Optimist uh Manifesto what kind of middle-aged man writes a
Manifesto like doesn't the guy have better things I've written my fair share I'm sorry oh my
God but as an optimist they were always meant to inspire and rally people to
bring about the change that we're always waiting for well the problem I have been
sort of trying to you know think about why this is is um you know Andre
basically said you know he talks about the fact that the the the in that
players because they have access to all of the best technology are the best people to be in charge of the way that
technology should be implement imped and the way it should influence Society that's one of his argum in the
manifesto but any no but but um you know and he's
saying all of the greatest innovations that we've seen have all come through uh you know use of technology that humans
of techology and while that's true um you know we do have some disparity we we
had technology like solar solar energy Hydro energy nuclear and so have made us
you know uh green energy uh capable by the year 2000 if we' committed to that
in the 60s and 70s we could have been completely off fossil fuels by the year
2000 we wouldn't have climate change risk like we do today why didn't we it
wasn't the technology it was policy and so when you look at the problem of the
misuse of technology that is not a tech you know that the technology Architects aren't
necessarily you know driving that a lot of it is policy based and and that's where we have our big problem problem
the disparity in world based on technology as infrastructure you know
you know and the inequality that comes from that um we haven't solved that you know the US is getting more
unequal isn't even talking about that stuff in his Manifesto right that's the problem right it's basically just
triumphalis screed of the Silicon Valley group don't call it the Techno Optimist Manifesto call it the tech billionaire
Manifesto because that's really what it's about it's like we know better than you do shut the [ __ ] up we're going forward the worst part about it a worst
part about that Mark andreon techno Optimist screed in my view is that he
villainized anyone who disagrees with him this is like the worst form of rhetorical debate instead of like
honoring the other person's Viewpoint and then you know deconstructing it or dismantling the the arguments against he
dismisses them entirely and says no you're the enemy he labels them as enemies and the enemies here are people
who promote ethics ESG environmental guidelines like really those are your enemies not only that he doesn't stop
there he calls them Killers he does read the thing he actually goes out and says if you w if you don't support AI right
now the way I suggest you support it then you are a killer you're responsible for future deaths that are going to happen because we didn't deploy AI in
healthcare that's what Mark andreon is saying honestly folks this is not a very persuasive argument if you disagree with the guy obviously if you agree with them
if you're a Libertarian billionaire in Silicon Valley that just wants completely untrammeled access to new technology and you want everyone to be
adopting it of course you love this Manifesto to me if I could just build on that right
like some of the other killers and enemies were things like Tech ethics trusted safety social responsibility I
the of that is if you look at andrees and hitz's website they have their own Tech ethics posted there so like well
okay which way you want to have it Mark you can't have it both ways are you for this stuff or against it and if you're against it then you're a gigantic fat
hypocrite in my opinion well we you you and I talked about this recently Rob that it's really it's really just meant
to be a top of the funnel piece to bring together all of the Leading Edge
entrepreneurs and Founders through his company for investment consideration uh
and if you buy into this then you you're you demonstrate ambition to change the world just like he wrote actually in a
quite meaningful piece many years ago that software is eating the world um but this takes it to an an entirely new
James Bond level yeah I agree with that it's a uh it's it's a big change from
the mark and dreon of the past you know in the past he was an optimist and he was actually quite a thoughtful guy I thought he's quite an intelligent guy
now he's kind of bombastic and arrogant and it's not a good look honestly uh I found it a little difficult to read uh
to me it just seemed to me like um well the New York Times called it refrigerator magnet poetry and and to me
it was like he took a bunch of right-wing uh so bullet points if you will you know kind of like free market bullet points almost like bumper
stickers and stuck them together as you get toward the end of the thing you're like dude get an editor you're a billionaire you could hire someone
actually to come and scrub this it doesn't really have coherency it doesn't seem to hang together particularly the latter half of that do but I think this
is this is a broad problem we see with all of these billionaires you know in look at look at Bezos look at musk you
know um moral G do fairly good job at sort of
navigating broader social issues and so forth but he wants that as his legacy you know he wants to be um the the
Andrew Carnegie of Our Generation many of these te you know Zuckerberg and so
forth included increasingly the position Peter teal you know the positions they're putting forward you know are
disconnected from the larger social isues you know mus talks about the fact
that you know for examp example you know two big items that mus talks about right now one is population decrease the lack
of birth rate um you know because the US has fallen below the uh sustainable birth rate now and also you know he's
he's very critical of what's happening at the southern border and the immigration well choose one you know but
you can't you know you can't you can't you know if you want population to economy then if you don't have that
happening how do you make that happen well you can't incentivize people to have kids unless you bringing you know
those kids are being brought into an economic environment where you to for children so the problems of equality
that are you know in some ways determined by um you know the The Innovation that's occurred in the market
and the changes to uh W growth and so forth that have gone toward the tech
industry the biggest companies in the world today um you know our tech companies generally apart from Saudi
Arco you you so it exuse all of the sort of wage
Tech the people that that you know would typically be having kids in the the middle class and the uh the the LMI
segment they now are saying we can't afford to have kids you're not gonna have immigration
right to to to to spur on growth so it's happening in every country in the northern hemisphere that absolutely
because families can't afford to have kids it's expensive absolutely po you
mention go ahead they talk about abundance and Innovation that's the thing with these guys it's always
abundance and Innovation we're just going to innovate everything and it's going to be great but is it going to be great and for who right I mean and and
the abundance the abundance I mean what does abundance even mean you know he tries to break this down and make it
sound like it it's it means something uh this is some call to action to you know
bring people together and believe in the future again but is that really what this is about I mean at the end of the
day it's it's a lot of these people their own companies that are actually holding back some of this progress uh
you know so I don't know it just seems very um hypocritical in in a lot of ways and uh you know I I I I'm all for
abundance you know I always describe myself as a techno Optimist but uh I think we need to be realistic about this
at the same time I think that turns in tarnished now there's a question Denise hold asked which Manifesto we're
referring to the one that's posted on the Andre its website and it's called the Techno Optimist Manifesto it got a
lot of news aot lot of play in The Press particularly in the Wall Street Journal last week it just came out October 16th
Brett you raised something that I think is important to come back to I want to underscore you brought up Andrew Carnegie and it's certainly true that
the time we are in today is starting to resemble the Gilded Age of the late 1800s where you had unprecedented wealth
in the hands of a very few very few people and also money trusts which is a whole separate subject that we can get
into uh but that's also happening now as well in the United States where a handful of companies have controlling interests in businesses so it starting
to look like another version of the guilded age and as you recall if you know your US History 1875 to 1890 was a
pretty rough time for the average working person things got worse before they got better but by the late 1800s of
the turn of the century the so-called captains of industry or the robber barons as they were also known they
started to have a change of heart and that was led by Andrew Carnegie who wrote the Gospel of wealth it was the first thing I thought of when I read
Mark Andre's uh screed because candidly if you compare the two you see how far we've fallen and how little imagination
today's Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have what Andrew Carnegie wrote about in The Gospel of wealth is why billionaires
should give their wealth away during their lifetime and he said it was an absolute moral responsibility that he
said it was absolutely wrong to hand it to your family and create a kind of royalty and he pointed to Europe at the time said this is what will happen
you'll have a culture like that um you know here in the US we we've got income inequality but we have wealth inequality
is a much bigger problem it's less publicized this accumulation of wealth is bad and the accumulation of wealth by
the 1% of the 1% is the scariest thing of all and in many respects what we're seeing in this Tech techno Optimist
Manifesto is uh is a is kind of a a validation if you will or a
justification of the accumulation of great wealth they're basically saying hands off we want we know what you're doing what we're doing here you guys
don't stay down in the engine room we're going full steam ahead here we know where we're driving this bus to me
that's a little dismaying I would rather see some real leadership from Silicon Valley that's about giving away wealth
empowering people you know the two people that you see doing this are Loren jobs Steve Jobs's Widow and and Jeff
Bezos his ex-wife who intends to get all of her billions and has done a remarkable job so maybe we need to let the women take the lead here because
they certainly amen you know there is um there is actually I don't know if you
ever watched Christopher Hitchens but you know Chris Hitchens said you want to create economic growth and economic
wealth you you give money to women and if you look at mean Bank out a Bangladesh and so
forth you know we we've seen that time and time again that the more the more you Empower women in the economy the the
more uh the mor effects um you know broad broader sustainab not
sustainability but Equity but um you know one of the really interesting things is we have got this sort of
runaway inequality wealth inequality happening in the United States right now it's it's also happening in the UK
it'sing in places Australia Europe generally is fearing a little better and part of the argument
here is that um the US has yes a free market but it has a free market Society
whereas Europe has a Democratic Society and so what happens in the US is we
don't really have democracy you've pointed to this Rob that Citizens United and the way lobbing groups affect
policymaking in the United States is that's that's how society's rules are determined in the United States now it's
not we the people it's we the corporations you know we the corpos actually there's a
book by that title we the corporations that is so worth reading it's a history of how corporations in the United States
got the same rights as Citizens and and it leads up to of course citizens united
here's Denise Holt saying the idea of abundance that's being ushered in through this next wave of tech comes from the projections that we'll be going
from last year's Global GDP of 90 trillion to a projected Global GDP of 900 trillion big number hundredfold a
10-fold increase by 2025 and it'll be largely in the growth of the data sector
okay so there's there's the foundation for the optimistic Viewpoint that this is going to lead to unprecedented
growth uh sorry I have a little trouble swallowing the problem the problem is still wealth distribution yeah right if
you have guys like Andre you know holding the ion not billionaires yeah well who's going to be the first tech
trillionaire it's a race between Bezos and musk right now you know but it could be you know Sam malman might think he's
got a shot at it um you the panel why does society tolerate trillionaires or
billionaires why do we TR well this is you know in in in the last book that you know Richard Petty and I did the rise of
technos socialism we actually we actually um proposed it should be a cap
and we we're not sure what the cap should be should it be 200 billion um you know should it be 300 billion but
there is a logical cap in terms of because that sort of world cap means
very inefficient resource allocation you know particularly in terms of the broader economy I'm with you resource
allocation there's something you look at Congress right being as divided as it is it's it's it is a money issue right they
can fund raise off of this division uh and the the thing the rest of the world
is is is not dissimilar I mean corruption has been a and greed have have been part of the the root problems
for a lot of society's ills going back as far back as you want to look but if
if in reality we tried to put a cap on it the very people who would fight it are the people who who benefit from it
look one of one of Mark Andre's enemies in his list were those who prop who
support stakeholder capitalism I want you to think about that essentially yeah he's he's he's
he's the enemy Brett to what you're proposing uh and yet he's going he
stands to benefit from this firsthand uh especially with his Manifesto operating
as sort of a lead generation device actually it's what's interesting is Jamie Diamond has said exactly the
opposite yeah we need more stakeholder capitalism which I admire because you
know you're right that's not like a cool thing for a CEO to say anymore it's it's no longer cool ESG is no longer cool or
ad mble it's it's just you get you get villainized if you bring it up um but we're going to need to do something
because the alternative to that if the split gets too far is an awful lot of dispossessed people and we know if you
have a lot of unemployed people who aren't making any money you're going to have social problems you might say we're
already on the brink of that here maybe this wave of populism not just in the US but in Europe and other countries as
well is a reflection of the growing inequality it's a way people Express themselves not too articulate maybe not
too successful as a political policy or political movement but it's kind of an angry Cry of people saying hey my
future's been stolen from me and I can't seem to build wealth and I can't afford to have a family and I can't afford to
to educate them uh those are the priorities that frankly are going to keep Society stable I'm not quite sure
that the Techno optim Optimist Manifesto is going to satisfy any of those requirements or meet any of those needs
Mark views that just if you go Tech run it's going to be it's going to generate great abundance and somehow that
abundance will magically filter down to the rest of society you know we do enjoy these
Technologies and they do give us superpowers I don't disagree with them on the fundamental point I just don't think the redistribution of that wealth
has happened or is is likely to happen we we saw distributed what about we put it
towards Merit you know a merit-based society and all that I mean it shouldn't matter if it's just a female who's
leading or blah blah blah blah blah the labels I mean let's just try to if we're going to do these changes we should try
to put it back into society in a way that fundamentally helps rebuild uh
people's drive to become better and and contribute to society we don't have that
right now you know it's kind of broken I I think we can do better it shouldn't matter what we are you're so right Katie
one of the things I'm reminded of is that the the jobs today that we value the least are the ones that require the
most human touch they're the least likely to be automated and I'm thinking of caregiver for elderly a teacher for
children someone who takes care of you in the hospital these are jobs that are not particularly well paid now they are
jobs that probably restaurant experience stuff ENT you know like
theat tourism yeah so like high touch human touch uh and high contact human
touch these are jobs we don't pay very that don't pay very well today I wonder if that's going to change in the future if it's going to get worse because
candidly these are the last jobs that are get automated they require a human in the loop um so we'll certainly see
what happens with the trend line there unfortunately is pretty grim gosh Brett how do we make this optimistic we've
been bashing on AR andreon which has been a pure pleasure for a little while well you know I I I will say this um let
me sort of finish with this is that some of the greatest challenges we face as a
species um fixing the problems of climate change um curing diseases you
know Health Care uh you know efficiency in general understanding the mysteries
of the Universe um you know and finding much more more efficient ways to um you
know um to use resources to be more sustainable as a society these are
things that AI will definitely help us with but but where where AI is in
conflict with the existing system is the more we rely on artificial intelligence
the more it gives us these tools to uh revolutionize Human Society the less my
view is the less likely capitalism Will Survive because it's a different value system
wow right on well where I was leaning to is maybe the feeli we should focus AI on
is is governance uh because we certainly doing such a great job of it that's a place we yeah well you know I think you
know you could get better governance as well you know like and one of the really interesting effects of AI well couldn't
couldn't be worse than what we've got now right but one of the realest interesting elements of AI is you've
seen that um regulation from for AI is becoming a global thing and I think
that's one of the things that AI is actually going to help us do is sort of bring bring standards for for regulation
globally you know that on that i' I'd just like to just ask what would a young
Mark andrion do you know I I just I just believe that
you don't you don't believe you don't become uh the opposite of an optimist
but billions have a way of doing that to you and maybe what we need are some
young Mark and greasons right now that's the danger of the AI regulations that if they come down in a way where they
protect big big PEC they put a moat around the current leaders and make it difficult for startup companies then
there won't be future Mark andreasons that's a real risk I mean this is the concern that we've heard articulated by Silicon Valley VCS I think it's a
legitimate concern because when you have big comp is encouraging the government to write rules what they're typically seeking to do is prevent disruption From
Below uh so let's try to make sure that that stays open and and and the best way to do that in my view is to make sure
that the open source models are still viable that those are not carved out or somehow uh banned or regulated Beyond
use so we we have run out of time um but but and we could continue obviously but
I know Brian has to go I've got to as well but um um I think uh let's let's
continue this conversation online in the community and see see what everyone thinks but um you know I guess if you
want to continue to follow this conversation make sure to check out the podcast the futurists um number one
futurist podcast in the world today all of us are hosting there regularly so join us there and uh you know we should
finish with that tagline guys yeah well then we have a new host we have a new a
new futurist on the show every week every every Friday uh we interview one person in depth about how they're
influencing the future and so until next Friday I guess we will see you in the in
the future future that is so lame we get it wrong
every time I know but that's the art give a big shout out to Kevin heror and
elizeth who organized and produce our show for us and um and thanks Jim Van over and Denise H for joining in and
giving us questions live interaction with the audience always a fun thing to do thank you Katie and thank you to
Brian siss for joining the show from wherever you are and Brad of course it's always a great pleasure to see you and
I'm very happy and gratified you finally got back into the United States I know thank you welcome back thank you US
Customs and Border Patrol all right all right everyone we'll see you next week bye now see
you