To AI or Not To AI . . . Wait, What's The Question?
Welcome to another episode of 2 Parachutes Podcast. As always, I'm your co host, Sean Baker Garcia, the happy accidental CEO and global security enthusiast. And with me, as always, is my partner, Scott. Over to you.
Scott:Yeah. I'm Scott Olson, the other co host of the 2 Parachutes Podcast. I'm a retired FBI agent and a private investigator. I find things that are hidden, and we are gonna dive into something that's hidden today. Sean, what's and it's kinda hidden in plain sight.
Scott:What's on your mind? What's got you going today?
Shawn:I love it. So thanks for asking. And as you know, there are always all sorts of things on my mind. But earlier this week, I was gobsmacked by what were essentially two consecutive Facebook posts, because I'm old, so I'm still on the Facebook kids, so don't panic. And one of them was a post by someone that you may or may not be familiar with in the audience, a gentleman by the name of Steven Bartlett.
Shawn:He is the genius behind The Diary of a CEO Podcast, and if you haven't checked it out, I strongly suggest you do so. He's one of the most just fascinating voices right now in podcast media to listen to, and his guests are usually really interesting. He put out a sort of optimist view of what he perceives to be the potential of artificial intelligence, so AI, as it increasingly becomes a force and a presence in human life. And within seconds after reading that, and we'll get to in a minute here what his thoughts were on it, almost within seconds after that, the next thing that popped up on my feed was a- in startling contrast was Tucker Carlson. He likes to summarize his monologue.
Shawn:He'll give like a podcast monologue, but then he'll take like a- he'll either summarize it or he'll take out, extract the first part of it. And then say, for the full monologue, you can see the rest here. So he did that. And what struck me was just how insanely related the two posts were, but also equally how insanely contradictory in terms of their different worldviews and perspectives. Although it wasn't quite apples to apples.
Shawn:They are talking slightly about different things. But of course, Tucker's view was much more, you know, if Bartlett was optimistic and sort of ideologically like, you know, oh, we have so much potential. You know, Tucker came in as like, you know, the sky is falling, Chicken Little like alarmist kind of catastrophizing a bit. And so, well, not a bit totally, you know, if I'm going be fair. And so anyway, so I got to thinking, man, like, this is such a big deal in everyone's sort of mind right now.
Shawn:Even people who don't use it, Scott, they're trying to figure out what is everybody on about. Like, what even is this whole AI thing? And you know, so I'll pass it back to you because I kind of, like I bombarded you with a bunch of information about the of course, I sent you the two links to see their Facebook posts. But more importantly, I thought, you know, where can the 2 Parachutes Podcast, or you know, Scott and I are working on a book concept that I don't know if we've revealed or not the name Scott, and you can choose to hold that back if we haven't discussed that. So I don't want to surprise you.
Shawn:But essentially, we've been talking, this is something that is a focus of that book process. And so that's why Scott and I felt very compelled to kind of look at what Bartlett was saying, look at what Tucker Carlson was saying, and say, what do we think about that, and what do we think it's important for you all to be thinking about as these two narratives surrounding AI unfold? Go ahead.
Scott:Yeah. And the reason we're talking about this today is because it is right in the middle of the lane for what we're doing with the 2 Parachutes Podcast, which is to provide a place where people can think about and understand better what the public discourse is so that each individual can have a better interaction with the public discourse. Because in my opinion, that's how the public discourse is going to change. And that's how the technology that affects our lives is going to change. It's not going to effectively change if we have a group of people who we think are really smart get together and create rules, whether you call that government or industry or whatever.
Scott:The reason that doesn't work is because the feedback isn't quickly enough. What everybody, I think, needs to begin thinking about, not necessarily understand, but begin thinking about and debating is there's this idea that people who don't vote talk about, where, you know, it's just one vote, my vote doesn't count. And I would suggest that people need to think about that or rethink that because every bit of data aggregates, every bit of feedback aggregates. There's a reason why all of the big engines ask you for, or all the big companies in the economy ask you for feedback, they ask you for stars. It's because every data point matters.
Scott:And so when we look at something that is too diametrically opposed opinions on something that is absolutely current, which is artificial intelligence, our approach is what we're going to take today at the 2 Parachutes Podcast. So we have Steven Bartlett in the diary of the CEO who's looking at artificial intelligence as something that will take over the mundane tasks, the sweeping of the floor and the cleaning of the mirrors and that sort of thing and free people up to be human. Fundamentally to be creative but to be human, not to be bored, not to sit around and do nothing but to do the things that are interesting instead of the things that need to be done. And then you have Tucker Carlson who takes 180 degree the opposite opinion and says that AI is dangerous because it's going to rob us of our humanity. And I want to start with Carlson first, because Carlson does something that is a huge red flag for the 2 Parachutes Podcast, which is he starts with a fact that is incorrect and then he spends the rest of his post and quite probably the rest of his monologue talking about how bad this fact is going to be.
Scott:And the problem is he starts by alleging that artificial intelligence is creative and by being creative will rob humans of the need to be creative and we will all sit around and be unemployed. When people sit around and they're unemployed, that's when society falls apart. Now, as an aside, what's interesting to me is, he's saying something that's actually true, when society sits around and is unemployed, it falls apart, which is what socialism tries to do. Socialism wants everyone to sit at home, take their little government paycheck and do nothing, and you know, watch TV, and then society falls apart. So that's me with my opinion about socialism, and we're probably not going down that rabbit hole today.
Scott:But the problem with this allegation that AI is creative is that it's demonstrably false, and it's demonstrably false as follows. AI is all of the different versions of it, they are what they call large language models. They are really sophisticated algorithms that go out into all written word, and by crunching all of that data, everything that's been written, when you put a query into AI and AI gives you a response, it is as it constructs its word strings, as it constructs its sentences, it is analyzing everything that's out there and predicting what the next word in the sentence that it's building should be. So what it's giving you is the average of everything that's already been written. Now people who know about AI and how sophisticated it is and how it operates, They're all getting lined up right now to quarrel with Scott Olson on the 2 Parachutes Podcast because what I've said is so simplistic.
Scott:They're gonna come back at me with expertise that is way beyond me and I will be taking notes during that debate, I'm during that debate, but I'm not going to win it. But the bottom line is for our purposes, they're large language models. Their raw material is everything that's already been written. So it is necessarily by design, not creative. It may appear to be creative, but it's still a prediction model, and its prediction is always based on the average.
Scott:There's no such thing as a crystal ball. You can't know what's going to happen in the next minute, the next day, or the next year. What LLMs are doing, which is AI, is simply looking at what has happened in the past and predicting what comes in the future. What that means is when you get something back from AI, it is average quality. It's not low quality, but it's not high quality.
Scott:It is not a new wonderful poem. It is not creative genius because all it's doing is attracting the average. Now, do we have problems? Sure we do. People will use that to cheat on exams because it's good enough for that, But that says more about the quality of the grading and what we expect from students than it says about large language models.
Scott:So the problem I have with Tucker Carlson's approach is he starts with a fact that's false and then talks about how terrible things are going to be based on that false fact. Our recommendation to everybody who's listening, for those who haven't shut it off by now, is when you see something out in the world that outrages you, back up and look at the facts. When you look at the post that Steven Butler put up, there are a lot of comments that are attacking his facts and that's great. I mean, did this chart and this overlay and it was pretty interesting, but it's great that people are attacking his facts. The challenge, and I was thinking about this the other week and I wrote something down and I am going to read this off because I think it's important.
Scott:The challenge for everybody when you see something that offends you, you're now in your amygdala, and we talk about the amygdala a lot, the reptile brain, the reactive brain, and it is harder to learn something when you're outraged by it. When you lack self control, it's harder to learn. When a thing causes outrage, it's easier to reject it than it is to understand it. It's the outrage that prevents you from learning. And so understanding is the key to all of this.
Scott:So when you see something that outrages you, let the outrage come, let it go. Move over to your, analytic brain, and now start looking at the facts, and then start understanding, you wanna weigh in? Weigh in. But weighing in with outrage doesn't make us better. Weighing in with reason does.
Scott:I don't know if that shakes anything loose for you, but I've been talking for a while, I'm gonna shut up.
Shawn:All good. No, well, and it just shows the passion behind the topic, right? Because I think there, instinctively, we understand that how human beings embrace or grapple with artificial intelligence and the role that it may or may not play in our lives in the coming years is of high consequence. And, you know, just a quick correction for the record, the diary of a CEO, his name is Steven Bartlett, and I think you said Butler. I just want to make sure the audience gets that Yeah.
Scott:And that's great. I have it as Steven Bartlett, but
Shawn:Yes.
Scott:My enthusiasm, I
Shawn:probably think that
Scott:was my words.
Shawn:So You threw some other Steven Butler got the credit. So, yeah.
Scott:It is Steven Bartlett, so I appreciate that correction. See, we're talking about facts. The facts that matter.
Shawn:Does matter. It does matter. And, you know, I think that this, for me, shakes loose a number of things. But I just think that the primary thing I pull from Steven Bartlett's optimistic viewpoint and to be fair to both gentlemen, I think they're well, Tucker was definitely hand wringing in a little bit of panic. Like, that I sensed deeply.
Shawn:And so I think that it comes from a well intentioned place of not wanting society to fall apart. But part of doing the hard work of interacting is to actually present things in a way that, perhaps especially at the early stages of something as consequential as AI technology, as questions instead of like, know, alarmist sort of fire alarm. Like, oh, the whole world's gonna fall apart. There's a lot of anxiety out there is what I want to say to people. People that are dear and close to my heart, smart people, educated people, people who are hardworking and may not be proximate to AI yet, you know, who just, other than maybe they've come across a ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini as kind of a, I don't know, fun little tool to create funny graphics, and to answer interesting questions that Google doesn't really do as much.
Shawn:You know, we all used to Google. Now we're ChatGPTing, right? And, you know, so I don't remember honestly the last time I said I Googled something, because I tend to not actually go to Google anymore, for better or for worse. And now I'm gonna get attacked by all the environmentalists who are like, you're causing like, you know, you're destroying our resources. Fair enough.
Shawn:And I probably am. So I apologize for that. But so I just think that what it presents us with is a spectrum on which to think about AI in our lives. On the one hand, there are these utopian, idealistic perspectives about what it can do for us, and how all the different ways that it benefit humanity. And on the other side of that coin, as with all new emerging technologies, there's another there's a darker side, and a potential for something darker, which is, you know, ultimately, like we all turn into The Matrix, you know, the movie The Matrix, and we're all just plugged into something and living fully artificial lives.
Shawn:And our bodies have reduced to nothing, you know, other than just a vehicle for the AI or for the cyber intelligence or whatever that was called at the time. I think that what we need to be looking at here is, there's terms and references that we've been referencing throughout the course of this conversation and that Bartlett's and the Carlsons of the world are using. I think also it's important to look at the terms that they're talking about. Like, what does it actually mean when Tucker Carlson is referencing create? Like, what does that mean?
Shawn:Are you talking about produce? Is that production? Or is that artistic expression? Like, what does he mean by that? And then, you know, for Bartlett, he's talking about, AI could free us up to become more human, which means maybe to spend more time on doing the interesting part of what our jobs require us to do, or even just to free us up to do more artistic expression.
Shawn:But that's an interesting premise as well. We got into this a little bit before the podcast session started to record, Scott, which is that I think that I think that it's a mistake for humanity to quite simply avoid or think or aspire to a struggle less existence, if that makes sense. Yeah. And maybe that's not what Steve Steven Bartlett is saying or doing, and I'm sure it's probably not. But I think that it would be wrong to assume that if ChatGPT or Quad or Gemini are taking over or whatever the next iterations or expressions of those technologies are, take over things, you know, like taking notes and again, the drudgery that somehow we're all going to have it easier and that somehow that's going to lead to more self realization and and to will lead to more creativity or expression of creativity.
Shawn:I don't know that that's true either, because I think there's a lot of value, and I think a lot of artists and composers and the like, or even people who are just producing work. Like there is, you know, remember Karate Kid where he was teaching him to paint the fence and wax on and wax off? Those were very mundane, tedious struggle tasks that he did not want to do. He did not feel like he was exercising his, you know, athleticism or his creativity or whatever the case was. But then when he realized that it was all part of the choreography that actually gave him the ability to do the thing he was ultimately aspiring to do, which is to become a master martial artist, then all of a sudden, was like, oh, right?
Shawn:Like, you know? And then he could and oh, by the way, that same kid, not only did he go through the mundane, boring, tedious parts of training, but he also got his butt whooped on the regular. And, like, you know, he had a lot of emotional charge that fueled his passion. And I'm not saying that to be great, we all have to get our butts whooped on a regular basis or be bullied or, you know, that we all have to be poor or have to be in pain. But suffering is a big part of creation.
Shawn:You know what I mean? And so I think there's value there that, you know, we're not all just going to be sitting on clouds painting like Bob Ross. It's You know? Because what will there be to paint about, right, if we haven't, like, you know, overcome, or if we are not And I think it's a fact that people, when they're too exposed to leisure, and they're too exposed to comfort, they actually start to lose gratitude for some of the natural wonders and beauty that surround us, and we see that all the time.
Scott:Yeah, that's true, and that's, I mean, it's an interesting balance, right? As things get better, and the list of things that is better over any time period you pick. Last year, last five years, last ten years, last fifty years, it makes life better and it makes life easier. It's so easy to say, Oh, that's bad, or Oh, that's good. I think that there's a deeper level to engage with it because you know, when you had soap, well, it's easier to be clean, and so isn't that awful because we don't have to spend all of our time being clean?
Scott:Yeah, but you also get sick less, and and you know being sick less frees up your time. Oh, well if you're not sick all the time, it frees up your time to go and do bad things. It also frees up your time to do good things. You know, we don't have the infant mortality rate that we used to have. We don't have mortality rates that we used to have, and people are going to sharpshoot, right?
Scott:We just had COVID. We just have all these things. We have this ongoing issue with vaccines, and it's funny to me that the vaccine issue has been brought forward, but when my kids were little thirty years ago, people were talking about the same issue. And so the point that I'm settling on here, the little puff of wind that I want to drive us a little bit, is we have a tendency as humans to look at the issue of the day and think that it's unique, and we as humans have never dealt with it before. But it's not true.
Scott:We have never dealt with AI before, but we have constantly dealt with technology and new things that will change our life and some people love it and some people hate it. The term Luddite, if any of our listeners out there have heard or not heard the term Luddite, it's based on nineteenth century textile workers in England who went into the streets to protest mechanized looms, the machines that weave textiles, because weavers on non mechanized looms, it was skilled labor, and you had to spend a lot of time doing wax on wax off to learn how to make good quality textiles on a hand loom. And then the mechanized looms came in and they were doing it faster and cheaper and better quality and there was outrage. So now we have the term light, which is, you know, somebody who believes that any new technology will be a disaster, but that's from mechanized looms. I had to look this up as another example.
Scott:There is a movie that came out in 1948, 1948, and it's called Sorry, Wrong Number, And it stars Barbara Stanwyck as a woman who gets driven insane by the telephone. So the telephone is this new technology and the movie story is how this new technology actually caused her to have a mental break from reality. Happened. Nobody remembers it, except for guys that watch old movies thirty years ago, but what we're talking about with AI, I think part of it needs to be recognition that we're talking about AI and how it's going to impact who we are as humans and how we live our lives, but that is actually a very, very old question, and we're going down a red herring road, we're going down a dead end road if we're talking about how new and unique this is because every time humans have dealt with new technology, it's always new and unique, AI is not, and I think if we clear the decks of that, we get, and maybe I'll circle back around to our book, we are unrepentantly using AI to do the grunt work, early drafts organizing of our book, but we also recognize that the the purpose behind the book, the use behind the book is driven by your brain and my brain and I apologize because at the moment I can't remember our working title and it doesn't matter what the working title is because it's probably not going be the title of the book when it comes out but for for me personally, for Scott Olsen, the hardest part of writing is the first draft and I remember when I was a supervisor and then a a mid level executive with the FBI, one of the things that I would generally always do is assign somebody else to do a first draft for me, so that then I could edit, because I would make it my own, but I had something to start with, and it was a much better use of my time as an executive, and it was learning for them.
Scott:But we're going to use AI for the first draft, so what you're going to all see in the book, should you choose to buy it, is going to be an academic work, a useful work written by you and me, but it's going to be written using modern technology. Just like we're not going to go back to clay tablets to write this thing, we're not going go back to electric typewriters, we're not going to write it on an Apple Macintosh, we're going to use spell check, you know, we're not going to have proofreaders, well, we'll have proofreaders for content, but going to use modern technology, but it is still going to be a creative work out of your brain and mine, and that matters. What matters more than is it good or bad to use AI to write a book, is what you're telling people. I mean, if you go back to the Luddite example, the question isn't, is this better fabric? The question is, is it handmade or is it machine made?
Scott:And that way the customer can decide what the customer wants. Immediate feedback. It's like the culinary industry, you know. This is our homemade sausage, it's homemade sauce of this kind or that kind, and that's marketing to say we didn't get this out of a can, it wasn't created in some large industrial food factory, it was created on the stovetop here in the back of the restaurant, and customers can choose. Do we go to this restaurant and keep it in business because we keep coming back, or do we go to McDonald's?
Scott:McDonald's is a great example because it is industrial food, and it stays in business because people go there and buy the food and eat it, and I'm one of them. You know, Jim Gaffigan has a great bit about how nobody admits that they go to McDonald's, but everybody goes to McDonald's.
Shawn:Heck yeah.
Scott:It's still in business, and there are people out there that would, you know, would criticize the business and say the food is terrible and it's not good for you and it's killing everybody, but the the weight of public opinion is against you, and and that's what the market is. So I'm, I feel like I'm sort of scattershotting you.
Shawn:You're okay, because I'm following along. You know, what I would say is, because I want to go back one step to just two different sort of, I'm going to call them articles. They're Facebook posts, right? You know, with some of their thoughts on AI. Because I want to make sure the audience, I don't know if we gave them a very fair baseline understanding of what each of them were saying, and why this mattered so much to us.
Shawn:Steve Bartlett was saying that AI, if you were to summarize or paraphrase what his post was saying, is that AI may actually reduce the need for humans to behave like machines. Which, what he meant by that, his last sentence in his post was, you know, perhaps this is what the future looks like. Not necessarily us merging with the machines, but machines becoming so capable that humans can finally fully be human again. And that's a direct quote from his post that was made, I think, on either May 16 or May 21. I get the two dates between him and Tucker's post confused.
Shawn:But I happened to see them back to back on the same day, which was like two days ago. But basically, he was saying is that, you know, because AI, at least for now, Anthropic put out a study that was saying that the majority of, well, first of all, that AI use by way of chat, like ChatGPT, Quad, and Gemini platforms are massively underutilized currently. Like, they're not nearing anything close to the potential they have to be utilized. And that among those who are the highest exposed to these and using them are people where literally, it was me as a demographic. Older, educated, higher paid female, knowledge workers whose tasks involve a lot of writing and analysis, which goes to your point, Scott, for how we are using these mechanisms for our book drafting.
Shawn:Because that's exactly the kind of work you would want to use it for, is some of the more rote, like just organizing your thoughts as opposed to doing the hard work of the interacting and drafting itself. No, we will you know, these are our ideas. These are our, you know, concepts. These are our points. But just, you know, who wants to spend hours formatting and typing out each sentence in the way, you know?
Shawn:So I mean, so I think that that is so, so valid for you to reflect upon. And that's quite possibly one of the best uses you could have for it. Because, you know and I understand that people are gonna again, you said Sharpshoot. They are gonna be like, well, you have to develop your brain to, you know, keep it fresh to do well, okay, maybe. You know, I've spent a lifetime doing it.
Shawn:Maybe others after me will need that and benefit from that because, to jump right into use of this tool, you may be skipping the wax on, wax off, paint the fence phase that is essential to developing your critical thinking skills. I don't deny that. But for where you and I are sitting, we're good. Like, I don't think our brains are going to dull because we're using this, you know? Yeah.
Shawn:The other thing I would say, and so what I think Steve Bartlett was trying to say is that, you know, do me utilizing it in that way or us utilizing it in that way is good because we're going to create that book faster, and we're gonna get it out to the people more quickly. And, you know, and I think he sees that as as an overall benefit, net benefit to AI, as a technology and a tool. Where Tucker was coming in well, and where he got the whole, it allows you to be more human. And I actually liked his take on this because it was fascinating to me. Is he was saying that this is the first time in history where we don't need to learn the language of the machine.
Shawn:Like, in other words, if you wanted to interact with a machine in a meaningful way like this, you had to learn coding. You had to learn those languages. Right? The machine has learned our language. So you don't even have to tell it.
Shawn:Like, you can go into a full on rant. You know what I mean? And just, like, you know, word vomit into it. And and as long as it's, like, you know, at least stringing together coherent sentences with the occasional verb in there, it can into it it it's about 85 to 90% accurate in what it intuits with my word salad. You know what I mean?
Shawn:But it just puts it into an organized fashion. So I think he was saying we can be fully ourselves, the messy, chaotic, irrational, you know, and it just gets us all and that's the part where he's saying we're more we're able to be more human rather than if we were in a work setting, you know, with a colleague, we would have to be much more, we would be doing a lot more work on shaping the right words, and the right framing, and being sensitive in how we're putting something to not offend somebody, you know. So I thought it was a really interesting, his take on that was very, very fascinating. And that's where he sees us as, you know, allowing to be more human than not. And then just to summarize then for Tucker's piece, you know, his concern, you know, because I think he's a red blooded American who cares deeply about this country and wants it to succeed, wants humanity succeed, is a bit alarmist, though.
Shawn:Because what he's saying is like, well, you know, what if AI in its full glory ends up killing 50% of all high paying American jobs, you know, which are largely, you know, going to be intellectual jobs. So kind of like the job that I was just describing to you that, you know, I do. Right? Which I would fall into that category for which Steve Bartlett is saying, no. No.
Shawn:No. But these people are using it, but they're actually using it to be more efficient in their job. They're not gonna lose their job. They're just actually being better at their job because they're spending less of their mental energy on fussing with, you know, like you were saying in in in the context of my job, the sweeping and the cleaning of the windows is that whole like, ugh, I've gotta like draft this perfect email. It's gonna take me ten minutes because, you know, you know, because you have different audiences.
Shawn:Need to Now I know what I need to say. So my email writing time has been cut down from, like, you know, ten minutes an email. Well and maybe not ten minutes. Like, you know, even if it's five minute email, that's if I can do it in forty five seconds, that's a huge time savings throughout a day. I get hundreds of emails that I have to respond to.
Shawn:Right? So, you know, so so I think I think that's where you're seeing the disconnect between the two pieces is Tucker's talking about, like, losing all of these 50% of jobs and then because and then, oh, by the way, he assumes we're all gonna go riot in the street. So if I if I don't if I'm not employed, I'm gonna go riot in the street. So that's that's what his concern is. You know what I mean?
Shawn:And we're like, well Yeah. I mean, I might be sad and eating a lot more McDonald's, like, to your point. But I don't think I'm ready to go riot. Like, you know, you're not gonna have CEOs out in the street, like, you know, looting and burning, like, shops down or anything like that. Like, you know, I don't know.
Shawn:So it was kind of a weird, like, his assertion was a little bit weird, and I thought unfounded. And then for the rest of society, right now at least, you know, AI hasn't really yet, anyway, hit the sort of blue collar sector. Right? Like, they're still doing you know, you still gotta have people to come do the the landscaping. Like, Greg and I just had people come out and cut our big trees.
Shawn:We live on a acre property, lots of big trees. As it's not gonna, you know, you're still gonna need guys to come out. You know? I mean, look, I I could have a Roomba in my house. That's sort of, like, the in home equivalent, right, of of automating everything because I know people who do have those little discs.
Shawn:You know what that is. Right? It's like disc thing that crawls around on the floor. Do you know how I just I'm like, I see that, and I'm just like, really? It could like, I can't like, you know, I have animals, and and it sounds nice from time to time to have, but I don't have any faith that that thing does a great job.
Shawn:You know what I mean? Like, I have no and I don't I'm not gonna pay $400 for some stupid robot to, like, circle my floor, you know, and it's not even gonna fundamentally do it, like, do the actual job. Right? Like Yeah. Still got to clean the house, or, you know, you still got to get housekeepers to help, like whatever.
Shawn:Anyway, off my rant. I just wanted to contextualize the two gentlemen, and what they were trying to say, and how we saw the interrelation of their commentary. And, you know, and then kind of throwing into that what our perspectives were on both what they were reporting, but then also just generally, what does AI mean to us? So I'll turn it back to you now, Scott. We're both
Scott:rambling Yeah, well, and you know, the thing is, in 2 Parachutes Podcast world, rants are good. Yeah. It's your thinking by talking sometimes, and sometimes you think by thinking, not you, I mean you, but a person, everybody thinks, and I think that what I see here is in the Bartlett paradigm, he is taking an approach where he doesn't know the future, he is hopeful for the future, he sees moves that individual people can make, and even though in his post he doesn't say this, you get a little feel, at least I got a little feel, he's excited to see what people are going to do with this tool, and then the Carlson approach really used the Luddite approach, which rejects the notion of change, and his presumption is that change is going to be bad, and I see that in his statements that half of people are going to be thrown out of work and what are they going to do now? And I think that that is a unduly negative view of your fellow human being, because yeah, we tend to be lazy. It's easier to sit than it is to stand.
Scott:I get that part, but at some point everybody gets bored and when they get bored they start doing stuff. Now what the Luddite is gonna say is, well, when they're bored, they start doing stuff, know, idle hands or the devil's workshop, they're gonna do bad things, and my answer is no. You know, some people will do bad things, but some people are gonna do great things, and you know right now it's pick your historical figure, somebody is in a garage somewhere, creating Amazon, creating the iPhone, doing all of the things that we now take for granted because they've already happened and I think it takes a little more maturity and a little more discipline to look at new things and say, I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but I'm hopeful. And I do think that people are going to come along and start playing around with this thing. And they're going to play around with it and start doing great things, and the reality of it is AI is better suited to do some things.
Scott:One of my pet peeves, stoplights that aren't synchronized. Know, when you are driving down a city street and every single light turns red as you come up to it, that is a fail for me because stoplights exist to enhance traffic flow, not to impede it. And you can have a human on the corner with a button and have it not flow traffic more quickly And you can have AI look at an entire system and crunch the data and it'll be better. And that's just one example and that's just because it's my pet peeve. But we are gonna see good things and bad things that come from this, it's okay.
Scott:It really is okay. For Mr. Carlson, I understand maybe why he's living in the amygdala talking about how horrible it's going be because we're helping him succeed. We're talking about him right now. And it's easier to be outraged at what he said than it is to be happy about what Bartlett said.
Scott:And that's just the amygdala brain. But the point is, we're interacting in the public dialogue. We're not engaging in ridicule. We're describing not just that we disagree, but how we disagree, and we're taking ownership of the things that we just don't know, and so if you're a Luddite, okay, that's a legitimate way to be in the world. I don't agree with it, because I think that there's always gonna be progress.
Scott:I don't see how AI is uniquely disruptive. It's disruptive, but it's not uniquely disruptive. Humanity has been disrupted in this way with progressive technology throughout the course of known human history. And I think we really were too self indulgent if we say, well, this is different. No, it's not.
Scott:And I remember telling my kids this. It's different because it's different to you, but just because it's different to you doesn't mean that no one else has seen it. They would come home from school when they were in grade school with this great joke, and they would say the joke, and I would tell them the punchline, and they'd be like, how do you know that? Well, I was in fourth grade too.
Shawn:Yeah, but
Scott:that's that's what it is, and it's it's a lot of fun when it's your kid. It's it's not as fun when you're trying to debate a Luddite, because it's a real feeling. Yeah. I think just like people who, this experiment that we're seeing in New York with Mayor Mandanny, and the experiment that's going on in Seattle with the mayor here, where she says, Well, if you don't like my policies, you can leave. All I see is someone who's really hurt.
Scott:Know, that hurt and angry and unsure and lashing out. It's not that I feel sympathy for them, I do, because they're hurting people, but they are themselves hurt. And I don't know the answer to it other than be in the public debate. Be on the 2 Parachutes Podcast. Share your opinion.
Scott:Be thoughtful. Be open to being changed.
Shawn:All of the things. Yeah. Well, so I'd like to build on like, maybe what ends up kind of hopefully bringing us to full circle of this. What I think I would offer is people, human beings, are inherently wired for, and will instinctively work toward preservation of their autonomy and their agency. They don't like being controlled.
Shawn:They don't like being sort of invaded, their privacy, their choices. And I don't care where you're at. You may live in a command economy or a dictatorship, but that doesn't mean that your humanity isn't still telling you that this is what you want. And whatever way you can, you'll work towards preserving that autonomy, agency, and control, or at least choice, if not always control. And I think that we have a lot to be hopeful for.
Shawn:I think you're right. You know, and I'm not going to pretend like these are perfect analogies, you know, because I think AI is actually much more ubiquitous and invasive than perhaps the examples I'm going give. But, you know, the ATM did not fundamentally eliminate banking. The, you know, the invention of the spreadsheet did not eliminate accountants. You know, these became tools that are innovations that amplified human functions.
Shawn:That I think if you drill it down, there's probably, you know, a core group of human functions that throughout time have always existed. And each era, you'll see those humans using different types of tools to help them perform or do those functions, right? So whether it's to feed yourself, or to shelter yourself, or to, realize your own humanity from cave art painting to communication. So those are the big musts for humanity. And whatever innovations come, whether it's the invention of fire of the wheel or AI now, millennia later, theoretically, they should all be supporting the actual human functions that we all need to live, thrive, and grow.
Shawn:Now, I will say the other thing that gives me optimism is that I see the next generations coming up behind us every single day, just surprising me in the most wonderful ways. So one of my youngsters, baby birds, I like to call them, was telling me the other day, oh, I'm getting a Walkman, because I hate having to walk around with my phone. Right? And so for those of you who don't know what a Walkman is, like that is a little music player. It used to be either tape cassette or CDs.
Shawn:Later, they came out with the what was it called? Was it The iPod. The iPod, right? Yeah.
Scott:Still have one that works.
Shawn:Not to be confused with the AirPods, not your headphones kids out there listening. This was an actual little device that held your music and you listened to it. It wasn't connected to a phone or anything. So things like that and and her wanting to get a flip phone, not a smartphone. So something that so that is what I mean when I say humans are inherently wired to protect their independence.
Shawn:And as soon as they start to feel oppressed by the technology, they start the demand for it will start to drop, because they're going to start rejecting it. And they will start like looking for other options. So yeah, I mean, you know, I think those are those are two, hopefully, examples of why, you know, I understand you always have to be concerned about, you know, making sure that your population is gainfully and meaningfully employed, because that makes sure that the economy is strong. A strong economy means that your chances for societal violence and crime and debauchery, general debauchery, hopefully go down. Although debauchery is claimed remains to be seen.
Shawn:I think debauchery might actually go up if the Epstein files or any any indication of what the wealthy do, you know, or what affluence does to to that part of your life. But but, you know, I think I think it's important. I think, you know, and maybe that's the function that somebody like Tucker Carlson services, right, you know, is is be the alarmist to get the conversations rolling, so that, you know, people like us and others, and people who actually may have some control over the policies and technology sector development, or workforce sector development, are actually paying attention, and start to have, and just be like, okay, okay, okay, okay, let's just settle down a minute. This is not the, you know, the catastrophe that everybody is expecting. And trust me, it's not that I don't think AI has the potential to destroy humanity.
Shawn:It absolutely has the potential to destroy humanity. I just don't think that's gonna be the problem. That's not gonna be where it happens. You know? It'll be more like a war games Matthew Broderick 1980s, like, know, where it decides it doesn't like the game, and it's gonna unleash the nuclear weapons.
Shawn:Right? Like, you know, that is vastly more likely to happen than than fifty percent of Americans being unemployed and all deciding they're gonna revolt in the streets and burn the country down. So yeah, that's just my very, you know, one humble man average citizen Joe's opinion, you know. But yeah, so I don't know if that kind of resonates with you at all. But you know, I think the point here is this is an important discussion.
Shawn:We do need to be looking at it. And if you aren't already engaged in the conversation, you know, pick some things to start. You know, just Google or, you know, AI platform chat. Do insert a query that, you know, start to become AI educated. Yeah.
Shawn:Because it is going to be important, you know, for you to know how it does or not will, will not, does or does not impact your life.
Scott:Yeah. Well, I think what you've shaken loose from me is the idea that we actually do have access to a lot of data. And my observation for everyone who's still listening is there is very often a big difference between what people say and what people do. And I think it's interesting to look over the course of recorded history, what we know, and to see what people have said about these technology disruptions, and then to see what people do. And people always respond.
Scott:Mhmm. People in the aggregate always figure it out. And there are so many examples. The telephone, the power looms, the whip makers who were out of a job because we were driving cars instead of driving horses. Over and over, the population bomb, The population bomb was an interesting theory, but humans looked at it and they changed their behavior, and we survived.
Scott:We're even seeing the same thing with global warming. We're seeing that the premise facts are being revealed to be not true, but people responded, the planet isn't going to burst into flames. Again, that's our version of clickbait, I guess. We're going to get a lot of people annoyed at us. It's interesting to see what people say versus what people do in the aggregate.
Scott:And I think you're right. People don't wanna be oppressed. But I also think people don't wanna be blamed. And people do want to feel good and that means that there are a lot of people who want to be morally superior. They want to feel morally superior.
Scott:And it runs us into problems because the best mechanism for not being oppressed and not being blamed is to say, well, I don't like this and I don't like that and so there should be a law. The government should deal with this problem. Because if the government deals with it and they screw it up, then it's not my fault and I could say I told you so and I can be morally superior. But if you actually have to take responsibility for what you think and what you do, if there is a problem out there, there aren't enough jobs in the history, the recorded history, when people haven't had enough jobs and government, you know, the village chief or you know, the government, the state government, the federal government hasn't stepped in to do this job creation thing, people figured out how to eat. They went and got, you know, found a job somewhere.
Scott:Some guy decided I'm gonna open a business and I'm gonna do these things and I think people will come and buy what I'm selling and I'm gonna need people. It's the innovation of the individual that leads to the response of the group. Right. That's what we're talking about on the 2 Parachutes Podcast about how to interact with this public dialogue. And I think a new thing that is settling out of our conversations is this notion that people don't always do what they say.
Scott:They say based on their amygdala, they do based on their rational brain.
Shawn:I love that.
Scott:And it gets sort of touchy feely, but what I would say to Tucker Carlson if I was talking to him is, dude have faith in the future. Don't be, and I don't mean think everything is gonna come up roses and then be surprised when there are difficult times. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying back off on this. It's gonna be an unmitigated disaster Because it's just life.
Shawn:One just quick thing I'd point out too, while you're on that, is I didn't appreciate that Well, and maybe I didn't actually listen to his full monologue, and I might now have to go do that. Because I don't wanna accuse him of something that he's not guilty of. He I didn't like that in his summary on the Facebook post, he just said, if they are to be trusted or believed. Well, who the hell is they? Like, who's telling you?
Shawn:Who who is actually who is he drawing from, Scott, is what I want to know that's making him feel so alarmist. Yeah. Because he didn't come up with that himself. He, like, he made it clear that he's hearing things. Right?
Shawn:So like, who are his sources for thinking on these issues that will matter?
Scott:Oh, yeah. I I agree. And I you know, at at some point, he's in media, and so he's a performance artist. And he knows what his niche is, he knows the personality that he has built and he is saying things to keep a business going and that you know I'm pointing a finger and three fingers are pointing back at me because that's what we're doing Yeah. We're we're maybe taking a different approach but we're we're doing the same thing.
Scott:We want people to pay attention, to be thoughtful and to engage in the debate. That's what we want, but I think hope is important and I think seeing the best in people until it's been demonstrated otherwise
Shawn:is
Scott:important and it's not because it's fair for them, it's because it's better for you. If you engage with the world by thinking that everybody is bad and they're out to get you, that hurts you. That doesn't necessarily hurt them. Yeah. And so I think there's a way to be better, which is also happier for each individual.
Scott:You don't have to doom scroll and go crazy. You can doom scroll and check facts and, you know, think about things. And that's, it's good to think about things. Get out of your amygdala. Like I said a little while ago, you can't understand a thing if it makes you angry.
Scott:And I'm not saying don't be angry. I'm just saying let the anger pass, and then revisit and think about it.
Shawn:Yeah. That's the whole, is that one? We learned it in my international theory class about, was it called the Hunter's Dilemma, maybe? Which is, you know, do you or well, they called it prisoner's dilemma. But like, it was basically, you have a cave or a hunter gatherer.
Shawn:Like, in hunter gatherer times, have a hunter, and he is with a group of hunters. And the question is, like, you see the rabbit out of the corner of your eye, and you're the only one who sees it. And you know if you grab that rabbit, and it is within arm's distance, and you have a high level of confidence you can get it, your family will eat that night. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Shawn:But if you work and trust your co hunters, you guys can surround the woolly mammoth, and you can all eat for a week. You know what I mean? That's what trust does. Trust in your fellow human, or humanity is is saying that I trust that together we live longer than I live just trusting me, you know, kind of a situation.
Scott:Yeah. And I think part of what makes a better decision is recognizing that it's a string of decisions, not a one off, and that your interaction with humans is going to rise and fall, and you're going to be friends, and then you're not going to be friends, and it's we're human, we interact, and it's dynamic, and it's okay. It's okay even though it's hard, it's okay. And the hardest thing of all is, the hardest thing of all is wrapping up a 2 Parachutes Podcast.
Shawn:It's true.
Scott:We we are at our hour. And I don't know about you, but I would like to keep going. But we're we're at our hour.
Shawn:So We are.
Scott:Your last word.
Shawn:I think the last word is one of the last things you said is actually opening the door to a whole other podcast episode, you know, which is, you know, the fundamental oh gosh, now I lost it. What were you just what was the last thing you said before we went in?
Scott:Being human is
Shawn:Well, not and you said it's hard. And again, that is sort of the crux of it all, which is, you know, we want it to be hard. We need it to be hard, because hard is what shapes humans. It is always what has shaped humans from the very beginning of our origins. And so that is something to embrace, not to reject.
Shawn:And of course, we're not advocating for just unnecessary torture or suffering. But you know, embrace the hard. Embrace the hard work of interacting with each other, guys. It's so, so important, and it's messy, and it's imperfect, and it's sloppy. But it is ultimately what makes us who we are.
Shawn:And if we start abandoning that, then that is going to get that's going to rob us up our humanity vastly faster than some stupid AI platform. Amen. Yeah. That's the end of my prayer. I'm like, that's it.
Shawn:I'm done.
Scott:Thanks everybody for spending another hour with us. Thank you, Sean, for the great summary, and we will see you on the next episode, everybody.
Shawn:Sounds good. Looking forward to it. Bye, guys.