The AI Trap That's Killing Individuality

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

And we're different. Oh, we you know we're real because we have bad grammar. Yeah, we write poorly, we misspell words. Yeah, that's true. And we're not particularly handsome. That makes us not AI general.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Yeah, I mean you figure we're doing this and we don't have spell check. And it doesn't tell me what the right word would be. I I can't tell you how many times I I uh I'll I'll be doing like the exchanges with my uh with my chat bot friend, uh, which I'm now almost six months, um and it'll choose a word, you know, as to what it thinks is best, and it changes the entire meaning of the of or my intent. Um this is this is so scary as as we get my goodness, I and I I I look at Gmail again and uh Google could say two things. One, why does he keep talking about Google and Gemini? Or hey, here's an advertisement I use Google and Gemini. But first of all, you're not alone. I think it's a majority. I'm offended when it comes up and it says to me, Hey hey, you want to know what Will said in his email to you? No, I'll read it myself. Would you like me to craft a response? No, I would not like you to craft me a response. But I think we're talking about, you know, a new a new level of writing that is very milked toast, for lack of that term.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

I gotta admit, I am so guilty of using this. I know you are. I am this is just how my life so much. Yeah, where you love the chatbots, I love the worker bee that does this for me. I can't, I listen, I have to confess, it makes my life so much easier. It is so hard to sit there and come up with things sometimes. And this just does it for me. I know. And look, I'm really guilty. So, all right, so I've I I've said on many episodes, I've kind of alluded to my my working class background. That doesn't that that tone and that language doesn't always work for me in the in the higher education industry. I have literally in my props wrote, write this like some eggheaded academic and it comes out perfect. And I'm like, I'm like, or I have another problem. All right, among the many. Listen, I'm sarcastic, I guess, arrogant at times, at times, audacious, uh let's get volume two. Unschooled, uh, rude, overly direct. One one friend of mine said, You're so honest, most people just call that cruelty. Um so I take my responses and I'll say, All right, I wrote this. Now clean it up for me. I'm a regular human being, um, just so I don't offend as many people. Well, and it really, really is good for me.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

You know, I I have to laugh because, and and my wife said the same thing because you know, when I would get done, I would type a message up that I would be ready to send, and it pops up and it says Polish. And I'm thinking, why would I want to translate it into Polish? And then my wife and I are looking at each other and we both bust out laughing because it's Polish. No, I don't need to have it polished. I like the thought that it was Polish. But the the thing about the thing about it is, you know, it is it is creating a hate to say this, an alternative reality because who are you? Are you the sarcastic blunt will that I know? Or you do it to me, but you know, it's not appreciated. Well, I get it. I mean, you and I have both been put in a situation sometimes together where people have expressed how much they're dissatisfied with us. But nonetheless, you know, where is the individuality which is gone. And and, you know, by design, because individualists are generally troublemakers, because they have the audacity to think outside of the prescribed box, so to speak, of well, I like to think of outside the prescribed chains that chain you down like a damn dog. Well, you know, but you know, again, it's um I I I was it was interesting. Um, you know, one of one of the things I read, which I spend way too much of time reading, you know, talking about the mark of the beast, and that the mark of the beast is really just deciding to take the easy way. That it is convenience over initiative, that it is ultimately gonna get to the point if it is, if if the case of whether or not you're gonna have the ability to buy or sell, so to speak, um, may be whether or not you accept digital ID or whatever the case may be. And then there's gonna be a series of restrictions, if you wish. And you know, I go back to one of the very early, early episodes that we did, we talk about the power of the contract, and I'm gonna be going back into that in the future. Um, we are entering into agreements with private entities that are uh somewhat cumbersome, so to speak, because because they are private entities, and you do sign on a dotted line that you agree to all the terms and the conditions, then now you have a conditional means. Now, what does it offer for you? And I'm I'll use eBay because we use this as an example of one of the other segments. eBay is remarkably convenient, it's got a list of rules that's probably 50 pages long, but what it does do is it provides me a way to hit a marketplace with diverse products that I can reach into very, very easily. Um do I agree with all of the conditions? No, but I make a decision. You know, ultimately we're going to get to that point to where, you know, we're gonna have to make that decision whether or not we want to do things more in a conventional buyer-seller relationship or whether we're gonna want to accept, you know, the new form of monetary transaction, which would be perhaps created as a result of the fact that nobody has a job anymore and you have a universal income. So, you know, that's where that you know homogeneous kind of idea comes from. And I and I and I'm I don't mean to be judgmental, but when I I see us falling into the you know the ease, and there's no doubt about it, I I I could see like in a lot of cases, I could throw a basic idea out there and end up with something that you know would make it like a notoriety. Uh, I have a level of notoriety that I don't have because I don't have all the letters after my name, but it's gonna be beautifully written. Um, and that's that's the problem because that that it's not it's it's not gonna be beautifully written.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Beautifully written is that thing that shocks you. I'm good at that. That takes you out of your comfort zone. Yeah, that's where you find this is sameness. This is they call the beige voice. This is this is this is gray goo spewed out. But we're buying it up, aren't we? Well, I mean, we're told this is what people want. But which people? Well, no, the most uninteresting group of people I've ever seen. Yeah, but they're it's not interesting. It's easy.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

It's boring. It's easy. Well, easy is boring. I mean, what when some some of the best things that I've done were not easy. I I mean, adventures. I mean, there's adventures I've had in my life. Whew, you know, I mean, they they stepped out of the easy. There was nothing easy about it. There's nothing easy about hopping in an airplane and flying to Alaska. That's not easy, but it was remarkably rewarding. You know, if we take and we give away our life experiences to the machine to be able to express what we feel theoretically, um, and and smooth it out for us, we've lost that expression. I think that's one of the things when when I look at the beige voice, are we as a species beige? And my answer to that is uh I'm not.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

I I I well I like to go back to some of some some great philosophers, and one of my favorites is Paris Hilton. Oh love me, hate me, just don't ignore me. Okay. Well, how can you not be ignored? Because you didn't say anything. I mean, in all honesty, if you're sending me an email written by AI, and I'm gonna already admit it I'm guilty of this, why why bother reading it? It's not you. It's not your message, it's not what you're really trying to tell me. You've toned it down, it's not interesting. You've you basically told a machine, hey, express this idea, but it's not really your idea. Well, the base idea, it's an idea. And more importantly, but it isn't really what I want to say to people. It's it's what it's what they want to hear. Did it I take it and I literally say, okay, this is what I want to say. Now make it make it what they want to hear.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Did it express what the original idea actually was? That's the other thing, too. I mean, if you if if you're not gonna sit there and proof it, which I've been like somewhat shocked, and and I proof them all.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Okay, because I have to. Yeah. But I also know that it's like you feel good about it when you're done? It's not me. It's uh yeah, it's a thing. But there is a there's a a it got the well, it sent the message, I guess, but not the way I wanted to send it.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

The practical reality to it because of the volume of stuff that you have to deal with, but at the at the same time, you know, the creative component of it. You know, I go back to when you did your interview, for instance. And uh, this is this ancient history. But you you came in and you you had a distinctly different approach. You had you know done a uh a map showing where everybody came from and you know how we could do the marketing perspective and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah, we used to call it original thought. Oh, right, original thought.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

That's that's right. Oh, that's what it is, original thought. But you had done something different. So many of the other applicants that they came in were the milk toast variety, the beige voice, if you will, because they wanted to make sure that they weren't gonna offend anyone. Um and as a result, they really didn't bring anything to the table either. Because that that well, the good news is you're not gonna need leaders in the future because we're all just gonna be led by this machine.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Well, that's that's true. Into a swampy morass of sameness.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Did you did you ever see the uh there was a story about how they capture wild boar? They they start, they put a pile of corn in the center of the woods, and then they just put one fence up, and then they put another fence up, and then they put another fence up, and each time they keep refilling the corn, and then finally the last time they throw all the corn in there and they close the gate. We're getting very, very close to having the gate closed on this.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

I think we're probably there. What's the secret to the original people? We send each other bad grammar to prove that we actually wrote it. And we offended people too. Spelling errors, yeah, and offensive, something of that. Well, I mean skin was a sticker. What what what qualifies as offensive now? It's like well, it's like, oh, you didn't you should have grew up in the 80s.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

I'll show you offensive. We're we're two offensive guys can stay on it. But I it it is a um it is a a difference in the mindset as well. I mean, so many things that I would have expressed in the 70s or the 80s, um, I dare not do that now. Again, and and the ability to have it tracked, too. I mean, I've actually I've thought about this, you know. For instance, we we send this out, pops up on YouTube, it's got subtopics underneath where it did a uh, you know, voice the text, and it can be done, you know, in numerous mediums, and that's all been thrown out there into that great void called the cloud. But everything that I say here um is recorded now. There's no doubt about it. I mean, it didn't go away, it's it's in the ether zone. Um, um I try to be careful in terms of what I say, and and and I'm sure I bounce into the red zone every now and then, but I I have uh welcome to humanity. Well, there you go. And and through all of this, and I've done some pretty outrageous things through my life, um, I have not actually been punished, if you say, Um, you know, through my my legal exploits, for instance, you know, suing the chief justice pro se. I mean, that would be something that normally you would think uh you would get spanked for, but I didn't because I was right. Um well you like to think so. I like to think so. And I mean, actually, they never said I was wrong, they just dismissed me. But but the the arguments that get put out, um, what we're doing is we're throwing out a perspective that is not funded by the monetary system, it's not funded by the oligarchs, we're just only using the tools that they so graciously have provided us to send a message out that can go worldwide. And and it's difficult to understand even how wild that message has gone. I mean, first of all, there's so much stuff out there, and then you know, we're not ranked because we don't throw you know all kinds of money into it, and we don't necessarily follow a uh a prescribed menu per se, but it's out there, it's independent thought that's out there.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Yeah, I I guess here it's here's where I struggle with all of this value systems, all right, and I know there are there are a myriad of them out there, and I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm just gonna give the one I grew up with. My the first thing wrong or right in human existence that was taught to me is the Adam and Eve story. Where, you know, I I I would argue that never really happened that way. It was a it was a metaphorical story, but as a child, the first thing taught to me was your free will and the importance of it. And that is a value system that is the basis of Christian Judeo-Christian thought. Well, I I don't know enough about Islam to know whether the Adam and Eve story is there, but here it is. It's I gave you free will. We just gave it away.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Well, agents and I don't know that we is is a good term. I I think that from a generic standpoint, humans certainly are doing it, but I don't necessarily know that they're aware of the fact that they're doing it or they're just being mesmerized into it because of the beige voice. I mean, look how easy it is. And and this this goes back to the comment that I had made earlier is that, you know, when we when we talk about the day when the mark is there, is the mark when we surrender our agency for ease of life, for for creature comforts, whatever the case may be, when we are willing to accept a conditional sustenance based upon the decisions of others and then forced to live in the hell it follows.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

It's totally boring to me.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Well, no doubt about it. And I think if there's anything that I'm trying to do when we're doing this, um, and I mean we'll put a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

I mean, I've lived below average life and I've lived above average life in one lifetime. Right. Both of those were in are were are memorable to me. Right. And and invariably having gone through both those spectrums, I must have spent some time average. Yeah, but your your life.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

But I don't remember it. But your life has been based on significant decisions. I mean, you've made you're you're a leader as a president of a college. You you are a leader, you make decisions every day. Um, I made decisions every day when I was in elected office. I made decisions when I ran a business. We Well, I would call that an above-average line. Right. But we made decisions, you know, and even in terms of as you get as you go down that, I mean, so here let's let's look at this another way. If people say, oh, well, you know, well, what what's the advantage? The the less decision-making component there is to your life, most likely the lower you are on the economic ladder.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Because if you're just mundane, you get paid mundane, and that's but but but here's what I'm gonna say: even in that lifestyle, and I grew up in it in an Atlantic City area, and I knew people who their economic system was crime. It was interesting. The worst part of my life when I think back of it was middle management.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Yeah, it was horrific for me because all you were doing was enforcing regulations that were laid down to you. You weren't setting policy, you've been setting policy. Well, of course. Because you're people you're a bureaucrat. You're a bureaucrat. Don't call me that, but at that point, when you were in middle management, yeah, I mean it was horrific. I hated it. Yeah, but you know, from the other perspective, you know, you're in a leadership role now. And and you have been a leader of the majority of your life now.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

You've been in a leadership role. If I if if my choices were three lifestyles, and I had you were gonna either be one or three of these, but you can only pick two, I would pick the bottom and the top. I would never pick that middle again. It was awful because you sold your soul in the middle.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Well, I well, you did. I didn't exist. Well, that's right, but I mean you did it for a paycheck, and a paycheck didn't exist, it was worse.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Like, I think back to the stoicism. I think back to somebody like Epicurus. He was a slave, but gave us some amazingly transformational ideas of how to deal with like situation people, but he made decisions.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Who who he made decisions? He was the exception to the rule, and and so exceptionally. And so with Spartacus, I mean I can name tons of them.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Sure. Heroes that rise up. Yep. Yep. So where does it decente if you want to go through to roots?

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Where does that human evolutionary process flourish when we go into a world of mediocrity? Well, that's my point. Well, exactly. It's the death of humanity. That's right. Stop letting AI write your stuff because it's doing it. It's doing it to you, it's sucking the life out of you and giving a milked toast version of who we are. And I, you know, I don't mean to be combative here, but we're we we make this decision all the time. I am scared to death of the surveillance society that takes and herds us all into mediocrity, you know, and then monitors us with a series of data centers and cameras, and then is able to correlate all of that into a file on you and then determine where you stand in the social order as to whether or not you complied. And that capability is just around the corner. And that is the market of beasts right there. Because once you get sucked into that system, it's game over because you no longer have agency. That's what we've been talking about through all of this. It's the surrender of agency, and they're gonna do it by making it easy. Well, because you're gonna get likes and clicks. Oh, oh boy, whatever the answer is. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

I haven't checked, but I don't know how to do that. That's gonna be your I I'm convinced that's gonna become currency somehow.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

That and water. Who knows? Whoever has control of water. Well, that's true. Yeah, that's true. I mean, and and and even there, um, is it necessarily the control of water or what they can do with the data they have? Absolutely that are gonna matter. You know, and and I it was funny because I and there will be a black market. And I may be on gold, but I love seeds and water. Well, yeah, but you know what? Let's let's go let's let's look at that. Let's look at seeds. This is something that really hit me over the head the other day. Do you realize that heirloom seeds have been destroyed to make it so they are not reproducible? We're talking about generic sterile seeds that have been modified, that you can't take those seeds and replant them. They just don't work. What type of mine does that controlling? Yeah, no kidding. You control the food supply, you control the water supply. When you're looking at all these basic essentials, so I mean, actually, when when we start to talk in terms of universal income, it's whether or not you're gonna get your borscht in a little bit of water. That's it. And you're not gonna have to.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

I know, and everybody thinks they're getting a private jet.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Like it's the craziest thought I've ever seen. You're getting average or less because average is defined based upon where there was still exceptionalism making it grow. We've discussed already that right now AI is not gonna be able to excel beyond. What humans have been capable of doing because they can only mimic. I agree. You know, so so what is, you know, is it amazing? Am I still dazzled when I deal with the LLM and the chat bot at how intellectually it responds to me? Responds is the key word here. If we surrender ourselves to where we're no longer providing the impetuses to how it thinks, then we have now made ourselves submissive to something that's reactive. And if we're not able to provide the input, I guarantee you somebody else is going to, and it may not be in our best interests.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

And it's inevitable. Because here's why. If I grow up on this, and this is all I know, I I can't I have to become almost soulless. I wouldn't be able to deal with an unfiltered human opinion. I wouldn't understand it.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

I had I had an interesting discussion with my son, uh, who's now in his mid-40s. And um it was over the flock cameras, uh, which is a surveillance system that's you know being put along our roadways, and that's that's another episode in itself. Um, but I said, uh, you know, how do you feel about the fact that you know you're you're being surveilled all the time? And he just shrugged his shoulders. That's just the way it is. It's like, no, it's not the way it is. I agree with them.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

I agree with him in this regard. And I saw this when with the draw, you're gonna look at me with your camera, and I'm like, you just walk past 50 ring video cameras to get here. You walk through all the surveillance cameras in every building that exists now. Right. Like, when are we not on camera?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

I got well, well, yeah, wait a minute. There's a difference between being on camera and having the data that's there and then taken with facial recognition technology or your license plate and making that into a data file on you. And it's not so much a case. I look, there I don't consider myself to be of criminal activity, but absolute power corrupts absolutely. If there's any one thing that works, so if you're I do I do value my privacy without committing crime at all, I do value being a private human being. So that's what would happen. I mean, are we entitled to privacy? Are we ultimately the direction that we're going right now? Was George Orwell prophetic? And you know what? I think he was either that or he knew what was coming. But you know, big brother was in the house with a screen, and you sure better make sure you don't even say anything in the house. Oh, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, we have this little black box here. Um, who surprisingly will come up with the strangest comments. And it's interesting how the advertising now all of a sudden will correlate to whatever I have been talking about.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Yeah, I'm I'm and look, I I s I made my home a smart home, so I'm guilty of this. I you know, I like to I like to confess a little bit, I guess too much Augustinian education. Um I know that thing is listening to me. Of course it is. Because somehow, somehow all my all my YouTube commercials are exactly what I've been. It knows, I know it is. I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but I mean it's just like like I'm a lover of synchronicity and I the concept and and and coincidence, but some coincidences are too strong to not be something else.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

I have not posted on Facebook. Well, I never have. So so that said, that said, apparently, through it keeping track of how long I may be on a screen, it has started to pick up preferences to provide information. And so now suddenly, you know, things that are more conspiratorial based or monetary based, or of course, I have my Model A and it's picked that up because I, you know, obviously anything that pops up on there, and I'm like, I got my head into it because it tells me how the thing worked a hundred years ago. But it's amazing how even just there, because I it's not like I typed in and and said anything. I did I did click that I would like to follow the Model A stuff, but I didn't click that I you know I wanted to find out about you know what's going on with AI. How does it know? How does it know? Does it know I'm one of two guys against AI? Does it know that? And I mean, we're the only two because there's only two guys against AI. So so that said, you know, so it is it's surveilling. Now, is that information shared on broader field? Of course it is. It's sold, it's monetized. Exactly. And here's a great question as we you know look at this. Is that monetization by private entities does it circumnavigate the privacy protections that we have in the Constitution of the United States of America? And that said, does it breach that level when the government becomes a buyer? Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. It's gonna be going to court because I think the flock cameras are gonna get challenged.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

I think a lot of this is gonna get challenged. But then and it you know who's gonna do it? The people who don't speak with a wage voice.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

That's it!

SPEAKER_01 27:38

We're there. They're gonna be the heroes of tomorrow. We'll see you in the next episode.