0:01

Welcome to Preparing for AI , the

0:04

AI podcast for everybody . With

0:07

your hosts , Jimmy Rhodes and

0:09

me , Matt Cartwright , we

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explore the human and social impacts

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of AI , looking at the impact on

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jobs , AI and sustainability

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and , most importantly , the urgent

0:20

need for safe development of AI governance

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and alignment . urgent need for safe development of AI governance

0:25

and alignment . Confidence is a preference

0:27

for the habitual voyeur of what is known as

0:29

park life , and morning

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soup can be avoided if you take a

0:33

route straight through what is known as park

0:36

life . Welcome to Preparing for

0:38

AI with me , jarvis Cocker , and

0:40

me , damon Thingybob . Damon

0:43

Albarn yeah , I try to

0:45

be someone not from blur , and you've just been someone from

0:47

blur . I'll be the . I'll be the one from blur that

0:49

makes cheese .

0:50

Well I'm , it's fine . I'm damon thingy bob .

0:52

I don't think I'm not I'm the one who

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makes cheese or the one who's a labour mp , but

0:56

I think he's not a labour mp he might be a labour mp

0:58

is he a labour mp , I've no idea what you're

1:00

talking about . Well , welcome to Preparing for AI

1:02

with me and Jimmy .

1:05

Yeah , what are we doing this week ? Well

1:08

, you're going to tell us what we're doing this week . Oh , sorry , okay , it's

1:13

techno feudalism , yeah , so this

1:16

week we wanted to talk about something which I

1:19

don't know , like I've heard about this for a little while

1:21

. I've heard people speaking about it

1:24

, like you know , youtube

1:26

. I've heard about this for a little while . I've heard people

1:29

speaking about it , like YouTube and stuff like that , and it's something where I think

1:31

we can add a little bit , because I haven't heard anyone specifically talking

1:34

about how AI will contribute

1:36

to this , potentially , or add to it . So

1:38

, first of all , what is

1:41

techno-futurism .

1:41

Hang on . First of all , have you joined me down the rabbit

1:43

hole ? I've got to ask the question are

1:46

you a conspiracy theorist , jimmy ?

1:49

why is this a conspiracy theorist theory ?

1:51

well , well , conspiracy theories aren't conspiracy theories

1:53

, as you know . As you full well know , they're truths . But

1:55

this is um . I

1:58

think this is . I think this counts as well

2:00

. I think this counts as a fringe , marginal

2:03

theory . So I think I think you're getting down the rabbit

2:05

hole , mate . I do .

2:06

But it's so . I think it's more like

2:09

I'll explain what it is . It's

2:14

describing what's happening to the world in

2:17

a sort of neat package , I

2:19

think , and so we'll see whether our

2:21

listeners agree with all this . But

2:23

so , basically , the idea is that and

2:26

obviously this doesn't translate perfectly , but

2:28

the idea is that a lot of tech giants

2:30

now are getting so big and

2:32

so much power , online

2:34

specifically , is

2:36

getting concentrated in so few hands

2:38

that tech giants as

2:41

in the corporations , I think , rather than individuals

2:43

although there are probably a few individuals we

2:45

could talk about as well um

2:47

, they , they kind of , in the digital

2:49

realm , act like feudal lords , because

2:52

they control all the digital infrastructure

2:54

and platforms , um , and

2:57

users end up becoming

2:59

, like in uh

3:01

, you know , in quotes

3:03

digital ser dependent on

3:05

these platforms for their daily activities , communication

3:08

and economic participation . So

3:10

the idea being that

3:13

we are feeding all of our

3:15

. Basically , facebook wouldn't exist without

3:17

the users , right , but we don't own any of

3:19

the data that's on Facebook . It's all

3:21

owned by Meta and Facebook and the Zuck

3:23

on

3:26

Facebook . It's all owned by Meta and Facebook and the Zuck , and um , and you know , at

3:28

the end of the day , there aren't many of these kind of patches of

3:30

digital land , so to speak . You've got a few

3:32

massive , massive tech companies that

3:35

own all of that infrastructure and all that space

3:37

and we just sort of

3:39

we spend most of our time there . So

3:41

you know , but we're , we're , we're , we're

3:44

it out , we're . You know , we're part

3:46

of the system in that we're contributing

3:49

to it and the system wouldn't work without

3:51

us . Yeah , and

3:54

so , yeah , data becomes a primary form

3:56

of capitalism and a source of value extraction

3:58

, and actually

4:00

traditional government authority this

4:02

is one that you might want to discuss is

4:05

challenged or diminished by corporate power

4:07

. I think this is definitely true . Some

4:10

of the companies now the scale and the

4:12

size of a lot of corporations now it

4:15

actually dwarfs a lot of governments , and

4:18

that's absolutely true , right ? So you

4:20

know , elon Musk is richer

4:23

than the 50-somethingth country

4:25

in the world , I believe , and that's just

4:27

Elon Musk . Some of his companies are

4:29

worth trillions . Amazon's worth over

4:31

a trillion as well . You know , they're

4:33

worth more than a significant

4:36

amount of countries and

4:38

certainly more than the GDP of a lot of countries . So

4:44

I think there is a bit of

4:46

uh , what's it called ? A bit of truth in this , um

4:49

, and it does feel like , you know , on the

4:51

economic side , it does feel like it

4:53

doesn't just feel like the rich are literally getting richer

4:55

, the poor are getting poorer and the middle class are

4:58

getting squeezed harder and harder . Um

5:00

, I listened to gary's economics and , uh

5:02

, this is basically the whole point

5:04

of his his his

5:06

like YouTube slash podcast , like this this

5:08

is all he talks about . I think

5:10

he's quite an interesting guy and a lot of the

5:12

stuff he says , like it's very , very hard

5:14

to argue with it , like so

5:17

, so , yeah , like , essentially

5:19

, wealth inequality is getting worse and worse and

5:21

worse , and these massive

5:23

companies are clearly massive companies

5:25

owned by really powerful individuals are

5:28

clearly some of the beneficiaries . So I

5:30

think you know , do I literally think

5:32

we're going back to feudalism ? I don't think that's

5:34

what this is trying to say or argue . I

5:37

think it's more that you know

5:39

, it's the concept . It's just

5:41

a kind of neat concept to kind of sum up where the world

5:43

is going really , which is everything

5:46

is becoming subscription based . People can't

5:48

afford to buy houses anymore , so you're even subscribing

5:51

to rent your house and when you rent your house

5:53

, at the end of the day again , listen to gary

5:55

, he's more knowledgeable on subject than me but

5:57

effectively the richer

5:59

lending you money and then you're paying

6:01

interest back on it . Um , when you

6:03

, when you , when you rent a property , even when you have a mortgage , to be honest

6:05

, I say even when you're paying interest back on it , um , when you , when you , when you rent a property , even when you have a mortgage .

6:06

to be honest , as I say , even when you're buying a property without cash

6:08

.

6:09

Yeah , exactly . If you're not , if you're not doing it with cash

6:11

, then somebody somewhere is earning the interest

6:13

on it , and that is usually

6:15

the very wealthy .

6:16

Yeah yeah

6:18

, um , I mean , you'll be unsurprised

6:20

to know . I think it's far more sinister

6:23

than you do . Um , and

6:25

and when you say you know you're not sure if

6:27

it's going to techno feudalism , I

6:30

mean , I think it's like we are on

6:32

that path . We're not just on that path , like

6:35

we're not just on the beginning of that path . I think we're , frankly

6:37

, like , well down that path and we're probably

6:39

at the point where there isn't much time

6:41

left to resist it . Um , there's

6:43

another word for it um , so technocracy

6:46

which I guess slightly different

6:48

, but basically the same idea

6:51

. Um , yeah

6:55

, I mean , you know , without going into

6:57

the grounds of what some people will call conspiracy

6:59

theories , I mean , yeah , for me

7:01

it's only like how far down the rabbit hole

7:04

with this stuff you are and

7:06

and and . I guess the big question for me , the

7:08

one thing where I'm still not fully , uh

7:11

, fully sold or fully committed , is like how

7:14

intentional a lot of this stuff was , and

7:16

those who are really at the bottom of

7:18

the rabbit hole will call me kind of naive for that

7:20

. Others will say I'm already . You

7:23

know , I'm already very far gone . But

7:25

I think it's whether this stuff is

7:27

kind of in completely

7:29

intentional or whether it is just

7:31

a sort of manifestation of various things that have

7:33

happened . And so , in the interest

7:36

of being kind of rounded on this podcast

7:38

, I think you can make your own decisions on on

7:40

where you feel that is . But whether we're on that

7:42

path and whether that is what's happening , I mean I think

7:44

it's . I don't

7:46

see how you can argue with it . I mean you know

7:49

it was kind of irrelevant

7:51

and we

7:53

didn't want it to kind of

7:55

interfere and it is to become kind of geopolitical

8:06

. But I think one of the really interesting

8:08

things for me is like being

8:10

in china , where everything you

8:13

know and for the criticisms , everything is underneath

8:15

the communist party . Right , the communist party

8:18

is number one and people don't always understand

8:20

how government , government is below the communist

8:22

party , law is below the communist party , the

8:24

army is below the communist party . It controls everything

8:26

in the us . Let's

8:28

use that as a main example of a democracy . You

8:30

know , the idea is well , you've got kind of

8:33

government and above that you've got the law , etc

8:35

. Etc . Well , I would sort of argue , above

8:37

that . Now you've just got corporations , you've

8:39

just got big tech , big oil , big pharma

8:41

, etc . Etc . Hot

8:44

, take controversial view , I don't know , maybe

8:46

, maybe not , but you've got them controlling

8:48

it . I'm not defending or

8:50

promoting the chinese system

8:52

or whatever , but what I'm , what I am saying here

8:54

is I think there is an interesting dynamic here in

8:56

that I'm not sure that

8:59

the chinese communist party allows

9:01

corporations

9:03

of any type or any business , whether

9:05

that that be tech or whatever , to be in control of them

9:07

Now whether that ends up with them just aligning with

9:10

it , and so the techno-fuelism

9:12

or the technocracy is the Communist Party , possibly

9:15

, but I think there's something here that's really interesting

9:17

in the dynamic is I think the biggest risk here is

9:19

to democracies I really do . And

9:21

in the dynamic is I think the biggest risk here is to democracies

9:23

I really do , particularly in the short term , maybe , because democracy

9:26

is something that needs saving , whereas the system here

9:28

is already kind of maybe closer

9:30

to that level . But

9:35

I just think that is one thing that I think is part of the discussion here is like I think we

9:37

have to separate out that this is something we're talking here , I

9:39

think , predominantly about democracies and actually mainly about

9:41

democracy . Is it actually mainly about the US ? We really talk

9:43

about the US , aren't we ?

9:44

I think there's a great example of

9:46

a couple of individuals that's really kind

9:49

of helped to highlight what you're talking about . So you've

9:51

got Elon Musk and then

9:53

, for anyone who's unfamiliar with him , like probably

9:55

the equivalent in China , who's Jack Ma and

9:58

Jack Ma .

10:00

Was sent with his tail between his legs . He

10:02

disappeared for two years because he was a naughty

10:04

boy musk was like basically

10:06

made the second or third most important person in

10:08

america and yeah , and you know , he's

10:10

perhaps now even running the country , like yeah

10:13

, exactly .

10:14

So you know , jack , ma kind of flew too close

10:16

to the sun in china and uh , you know , I

10:18

mean , I'm not saying yeah , and I'm not saying

10:20

I agree with like happened to him , but basically

10:24

he was kind of put back in his place

10:26

, to put it lightly , and then , as you

10:28

say , in the US right now it's just

10:30

like well Musk's running around basically

10:33

running the government .

10:34

Let's , for a second , bring this back to AI

10:37

. Just

10:39

for an example , something we've been talking about quite a bit

10:41

in these last few days , which is not directly

10:43

linked to it and I don't think we discussed it in this context

10:45

, but I think is relevant . Here is one

10:48

of the things that we talked about a lot

10:50

, the two of us , but also on the podcast . I mean

10:53

, we use the term woke for Claude , which I

10:55

know we agreed not to use , but

10:57

whatever you want to call it , claude was guardrailed

11:00

to behaving like a very kind of you

11:05

want to call it claude was guardrailed to behaving like a very kind of left uh , california

11:07

sort of democrat right . That's how . That's how it spoke and

11:09

that's the way that it . It it kind of

11:11

behaved and chat gbt although a chat

11:13

with gpt for me doesn't really have a personality in the way

11:15

that claude does , but it definitely

11:18

, you know , was . It

11:22

had guardrails and it had sort of political leanings

11:24

and it was clear that that was in

11:26

the kind of training but it wasn't clear how much it was . In

11:29

the last two or three months and since the new models

11:31

have come out , in particular , you

11:34

know that one of the things that I love to do when there's a new model out

11:36

is I like to talk to you about global cabals

11:38

, mrna vaccines , all

11:43

of the things that it doesn't like talking about , but , frankly , away from personal interests

11:45

, because these are the things that it

11:47

wouldn't do . The obvious thing

11:50

, the most kind of controversial

11:52

thing to shut down any American

11:54

large language model , was to talk to about vaccines

11:56

. Now , if you ask the same questions as

11:58

you asked three months ago , that it said the WHO says

12:01

you should be vaccinated and just churned

12:03

out its standard answer it will

12:05

now engage with you in a debate , as controversial

12:08

as you like , and it will , and

12:10

I know a lot of this stuff . I'm not saying it's right or wrong

12:12

, because we all know that models lead

12:14

you and give you answers that you want to hear , but

12:17

it will happily engage with you . It will happily tell you about

12:19

the dangers of mrna vaccines . It will happily

12:21

tell you about links to disease etc

12:23

. That maybe we don't want to talk about again

12:26

. I'm not saying that's right or wrong . What I'm saying

12:28

is it will have a conversation that it didn't

12:30

have . That shows you how

12:32

much influence , yeah

12:35

, those , the sort

12:37

of companies in government and and , and the

12:39

sort of the people in

12:41

, and not even necessarily the people in government

12:43

, but those people who

12:46

we've sort of just named I'm not sure if it's musk

12:48

is influenced by them . He influences them

12:50

the other way around , but it is a very small group of people

12:53

that are feeding all of this

12:55

stuff in , and ai is now putting

12:57

that information out and it's controlling the narrative

12:59

, yeah , and so that narrative is in the mainstream . Look

13:02

at the stuff that's come out in the last couple

13:04

of months , last few weeks , even about

13:06

mrna vaccines , again the

13:08

most controversial subject I would say that

13:10

you couldn't talk about in social media except or not

13:13

social media , you couldn't talk about mainstream media , large

13:15

language models , and now stuff is trickling

13:17

out , trickling out again . Whether it's true or

13:19

not , the narrative has changed and

13:21

that shows you how much control those

13:24

people have over information

13:26

, yeah , and over ai , and ai is

13:28

the facilitator that allows this

13:30

tech technocracy , tech

13:33

feudalism , whatever you want to call it . There's

13:35

my , there's I .

13:36

I'm not even sure where I've gone with that argument , but

13:38

it just struck me that the link between these

13:40

two things no , I mean , I think that

13:42

, well , it's interesting you

13:44

talked about at the start , you kind of talked about

13:46

the differences , um , between

13:48

china and western democracies

13:50

, but I think there are also

13:53

, like , in different ways there are , massive

13:55

parallels , right . So , because what we're talking

13:57

about here is control of information , and

13:59

china , unapologetically

14:01

, controls the narrative and controls information

14:04

. They just ban things that you can't

14:06

talk about and then , um

14:08

, what's left is what everyone's allowed to talk about . Stuff

14:10

just gets removed , um , from

14:13

social media , whatever , like so , so that

14:15

just happens . Everyone knows that in

14:18

the west it's almost , like it's

14:20

different and it's more subtle , but

14:22

it's still some kind of manipulation , right

14:24

. So these companies

14:26

and governments , via these companies

14:29

, can set the narrative , and

14:32

that's an incredibly powerful force

14:34

. And , to be honest , like , this is not again

14:36

, we've talked about this before this is not necessarily something

14:38

that's brand new . Media , traditional

14:41

media has actually done this for a long time . That

14:43

balance has kind of been upset now

14:45

, um , but I do

14:47

think and it's it's probably one of the

14:49

reasons I don't I can't remember what the latest

14:51

thing is with tiktok , but you know , tiktok

14:53

was going to be banned and all this kind of stuff and

14:55

this is it right , so like it's moving a

14:57

month to the , to the , to the right , doesn't

14:59

it ?

14:59

every month it's like oh , oh , now it's may

15:02

.

15:02

Oh , now it's june , now it's yeah yeah

15:04

, and I don't know what , what that is . I think trump quite

15:06

likes tiktok . He said that .

15:09

He said it's because a lot of people who voted

15:11

for him use tiktok , so so it works

15:13

for him . And the thing with trump is you know

15:15

, know how narcissists work . If it works for them , then

15:17

yeah , you know they're gonna

15:19

go with it .

15:20

But originally , the reason that you know

15:22

, presumably the reason that we wanted tiktok

15:24

or they or us wanted to ban tiktok

15:26

, was because , again , like that , that

15:28

, that narrative there's then outside

15:30

their control , their control exactly .

15:32

It was in the chinese communist party's control , and

15:34

that was the thing is . They didn't want to ban tiktok , they just wanted

15:37

to bring it under us control . Actually , that's what they wanted to do , that's true , and

15:39

they couldn't quite get the separation , I think , of interests that they wanted to do

15:41

, that's true , and they couldn't quite get

15:43

the separation , I think , of interests

15:45

that they wanted for the company .

15:47

but , yeah , so I think in

15:49

terms of , like you know , in

15:52

terms of is this a thing or not ? Like , I think , obviously

15:54

, calling it techno feudalism puts

15:57

a label on it . Calling it a technocracy puts a label

15:59

on it . I don't think it matters what the label

16:01

is , necessarily . I think everyone

16:04

can acknowledge it's a real thing and and

16:06

and you know , talking about the sort of

16:08

like influence that these things have we've

16:10

talked about it before on the podcast like there's a , there's

16:12

a massive , massive danger

16:15

to kids like that , unfortunately

16:17

, like kids that are now , um , just

16:19

about turning adult , but also

16:21

like the generations behind them . And I

16:23

think , to be honest , I think at some point something

16:26

will get done about it or more will get done about

16:28

it . But there is a sort of , you

16:30

know , a 10 , 15 year period

16:33

where , basically , it's been the Wild West

16:35

with this stuff and the influence

16:38

on the way people think and

16:41

the amount of , yeah , exactly

16:43

like the influence on the way people think and the

16:45

amount of , yeah , exactly Like the influence on the way people think and the way it's

16:47

pushed like whole populations of people in a certain direction , and

16:50

that and then now people's brains have been rewired

16:52

Like it's not .

16:53

That's the thing is and it is . This is not

16:55

a kind of like oh no , it's changed people's brains

16:57

. This is like no , literally like a . It's like

16:59

no , literally like at a physical , at a clinical level

17:01

. People's brains have been wired in different

17:04

ways through social media . I

17:11

mean , like TikTok is the prime example , any kind of short video , because it changes

17:13

the way that dopamine works . It is addictive , not in the way that , like I'm addicted

17:15

to , you know , to playing this game , like no , it's addictive

17:17

in the way that it is literally addictive in

17:20

a chemical way , that it has

17:22

created this thirst for

17:24

kind of dopamine . Like I gave this example

17:26

for myself . Like I've said to you quite

17:28

a lot of times , like one thing I try and do is keep away from social

17:31

media , says the guy with Substack

17:33

, open on his page with a conspiracy article

17:35

that I'm going to read from . But I stay away

17:37

from the likes of Twitter . Let me tell you , the

17:39

only time I use Twitter X

17:43

, whatever you want to call it , is every week when I post a podcast . I go

17:45

on to linkedin , facebook and

17:47

twitter those three , because they're integrated

17:49

within um

17:52

the um linkedin no

17:54

, no I was just to say those three are integrated , yeah

17:56

, within um buzzsprout that we use

17:59

to host the podcast . Yeah , and when I click

18:01

on x , I post it and

18:03

I have like a trigger . As soon as it comes up and it's loaded

18:05

, I close the window and I shut it away and

18:07

it's like I'm scared of x , I'm scared

18:09

of it being open , because I know that I will look at an

18:11

article and I'll be like I'm not looking

18:14

at and then an hour's gone and I've just

18:16

like gone down a rabbit hole and

18:18

that is , that's a drug like

18:21

that is a drug , so like

18:23

it's rewired pills . But this is not even the point of this podcast

18:26

, but it has rewired people's brains in a literal

18:28

well I .

18:29

I think it is the point of the podcast right , so

18:31

like , so like you know , we're talking about

18:34

, if we're talking about techno feudalism

18:36

and like how we got here and

18:38

why are we here and

18:40

how did that happen ? It's it's

18:42

partly because these platforms

18:45

manipulate us into

18:48

going back to them all the time and

18:50

the algorithm set up to literally

18:53

manipulate to do that . And I'm not . I've

18:55

said that I don't use social media Like I . You

18:57

know , sometimes I talk a bit of rubbish , cause I do . I

19:00

do consume a lot of YouTube

19:02

stuff and I think it's quite intellectual and all the rest

19:04

of it . But whatever I say , like

19:06

I'm in that .

19:07

You're intellectual . Youtube might

19:09

not be intellectual as a platform . It's

19:12

got intellectual stuff on it .

19:13

It's got intellectual stuff on it and I think I try and curate

19:15

the stuff that I watch . I watch , you know , like math

19:17

stuff and science stuff , but

19:23

then , at the end of the day , I'm still a victim of the algorithm and as as much as the creators

19:25

are actually like , youtube's an interesting one because you've got , you know , you've again

19:27

you've got a platform that's making a load of money

19:29

. You've got creators that make money on there as

19:31

well , um , and then you've got consumers

19:33

, but , like , everyone's a victim

19:36

of the algorithm . I've heard so

19:38

many content creators talk about , um

19:41

, you know , having to do things

19:43

this way and having to create thumbnails a certain

19:45

way , because that's just the way they've been , the

19:47

direction . They've been pushed in by the algorithm because

19:49

, again , like , and why is that ? It's

19:52

because you know youtube

19:54

have figured , or google have figured out , that , like

19:56

, if you push this type of content

19:58

this way , it's more addictive . It's more addictive

20:00

. It's going to get people coming back . Thumbnails that look a

20:02

certain way are going to get people coming back to it and

20:05

that that , again , like uh

20:07

, cements their power , so to speak

20:09

. In this sense , um , I

20:11

had an interesting experience recently , before

20:14

we move off this Cause , like uh and

20:16

I don't know whether this is true or not , but

20:18

it's a bit of speculation I'm going to put out there so

20:20

I paid for a month of youtube premium so

20:23

that I could download videos and

20:25

while I was traveling in another country

20:27

and like watch them in my own time . As

20:29

soon as I cancelled the subscription , I

20:32

swear I started getting two

20:34

, three , four times as many adverts immediately

20:37

afterwards . And then , of course , like come back to premium

20:39

, blah blah and so again

20:41

, like , all this stuff is like it's

20:43

, it's , it's sort of

20:45

um , it's just a massive feedback

20:47

loop right to like , like you say , tweaking

20:50

our dopamine . Like tweaking our dopamine

20:52

, making other creators tweak our dopamine

20:54

because it promotes content that

20:56

fits a certain form and it looks a certain way

20:58

, and all this kind of stuff . So

21:00

I think it's dangerous

21:03

.

21:06

I want to just quote something from a

21:08

Substack article by Eric

21:11

Wickstrom . The title

21:13

of his Substack is Am I Crazy here ? And

21:17

he has written two articles

21:19

on this . Actually , checkmate the

21:21

Triumph of Technocracy . And

21:23

when you were just talking then I just thought of this

21:25

quote that I screenshotted today . Elon

21:28

Musk's corporate empire forms the backbone

21:30

of the system . Starlink provides control

21:32

over the internet . X Twitter controls

21:34

information and communication

21:36

. Xia develops the algorithms

21:39

that will dictate decision-making . Tesla

21:41

and SpaceX control critical physical

21:43

infrastructure . Each

21:45

component is designed to integrate seamlessly

21:48

with the other . I just thought of

21:50

that and and how you know , the algorithm

21:52

is a big part of it and I I think the algorithm's

21:54

kind of the the obvious danger

21:56

, but it's like it's all-encompassing

22:00

, it's like insidiously penetrating

22:02

absolutely everything and actually

22:04

like I don't know , I don't know whether musk

22:06

is the devil , I don't know whether he's

22:08

just the guy who got rich and is , you

22:10

know , a bit nuts whatever , whether

22:12

he's really the brains behind it . I always see a

22:14

real person well , I was like

22:16

I've said this to you before like if there is caveat

22:20

, a global cabal , like

22:22

we don't know any of them , like it's not bill

22:24

gates and it's not elon musk , it's not any of those

22:26

people . I'm not saying they're not up to some shenanigans

22:29

, whatever . If it really is a global cabal , you don't

22:31

know who they are . So I'm not sure , like

22:33

with the musk thing , like whether

22:35

he is really the brains

22:37

that a lot of these people like to think that's behind

22:39

all this stuff . But whatever it is he is

22:42

, he is amassing an unbelievable

22:44

amount of power . Like I said to you , he's

22:46

like the third most powerful person in america . Maybe

22:49

he's more , maybe he's more powerful than that because

22:52

he's got the resources . Like when you look at that quote

22:54

and all of that stuff , if you talk about techno feudalism

22:56

, if you talk about technocracy , like I

22:58

think the musk is at the top of that now

23:01

. Like he might not have been four months ago , but now

23:03

he is number one in terms of like

23:05

the obvious kind of public face

23:07

of what this is yeah , I think .

23:09

I think elon musk is

23:12

yeah , you're right , like he's with the

23:14

. With the recent change in government in the

23:16

us and the position of

23:18

power that like , combined with the fact

23:20

that he's one of the wealthiest people in the world

23:22

if of the wealthiest people in the world , if not the wealthiest person in the world , I can't remember

23:25

but like , irrespective , like

23:27

he's right up there and then

23:29

the influence he now has over the entire

23:31

of the us government and hence the

23:33

rest of the world , um , and

23:36

he's not democratically elected , like that's the

23:38

maddest thing in this I mean the us system .

23:40

There's quite a lot of important people who are political

23:42

appointees , so they're not they're not

23:44

democratically elected in the same way as in some

23:46

countries like in the us and a lot of europe . But it's

23:49

pretty mad that someone has got that much power . I mean , he's heading

23:51

up a department or he's not . Hang

23:53

on , sorry , he's not even heading up that department

23:55

, right ? He's actually number two in that

23:58

department and it's not even a

24:00

cabinet department and he's not a cabinet

24:02

level person . And yet the

24:04

picture I saw this week was all of the us cabinet

24:06

sat around in suits , like

24:08

just after they complained about zelensky not

24:10

wearing a suit and musk in a hat and a

24:12

t-shirt , just stood up in the back eating

24:15

a fucking sandwich so like

24:17

how powerful is it ? it reminds

24:19

me I said this to you this week if people on this podcast

24:21

have seen the film , meet joe black , and

24:24

joe black is essentially the grim reaper

24:26

in human form and

24:28

he just accompanies anthony hopkins character

24:30

to all these meetings and people are like who is this guy

24:32

? How is he making all these decisions ? Like

24:35

that kind of feels what elon musk is at the moment

24:37

. He's like he's apparently just this deputy

24:40

head of a department that isn't really even a real

24:42

department . But yeah , he seems like you've

24:44

got Trump and then I would say

24:46

you've either got Vance or Musk . I'm

24:49

not sure which one of them is more powerful .

24:52

Yeah , well , I mean , I

24:54

think Christopher Waltz played Blofeld

24:57

in the most recent Bond

25:00

film about Spectre , so

25:02

I think Musk is . By

25:05

your sort of analogy , Blofeld

25:08

is the head of the secret organisation , the

25:11

global cabal , and Musk is the public

25:13

face of it . I don't know who that was in the movie actually

25:15

.

25:16

Yeah , yeah

25:19

, that sounds reasonable . I

25:22

sort of jokedoked of all the conspiracy theories that I buy

25:24

into , like the global cabal is the one that , like I'm not

25:27

really that that into it . But my point

25:29

there is like if there is one , I

25:31

I would believe , if there is one , then we don't

25:33

know the real players . Like that's my point . Like I'm

25:36

not saying the illuminati is real or isn't

25:38

, but what I'm saying is like if all that stuff really happens

25:40

, if there are satanic bloodlines , etc

25:42

, etc . The people running the world in that

25:44

world are not people you know about . So

25:46

the musk thing to me it

25:49

feels like for all those

25:51

people who are really into that narrative he

25:53

doesn't make sense , but I think

25:55

in a sort of slightly more mainstream version

25:57

of it , which I think is like kind of where we

25:59

are with this podcast yeah , yeah . Like

26:01

he is incredibly powerful and therefore

26:03

, not only is he the face of it , I think he probably

26:05

is like the obvious , like it's

26:08

going to go through him right . Yeah

26:10

, if it's going to happen in the next hour of many

26:12

years .

26:13

And I don't think it matters if you believe in that or not . It's

26:15

like do we want people

26:17

like Elon Musk

26:19

to have the amount of power and

26:22

influence that they have ? I

26:25

don't . I think the answer is probably no , the

26:28

concentration of power in

26:30

that sense and it's . You know we're talking

26:33

about Elon Musk , but it's the same

26:35

with Zuckerberg , facebook . Some

26:37

of the stuff that happened in Myanmar that is

26:39

linked to Facebook is horrendous , and

26:42

that's all along the lines of the stuff . So what

26:44

is that stuff ?

26:46

For people who well , for people who don't know what

26:48

the stuff in Myanmar ?

26:50

Yeah , I don't want to go into like tons

26:52

of detail on it but effectively

26:54

like just no . It was a country

26:57

where no one really had any access to information

26:59

and then Facebook . There's a lot

27:01

of parts of the world where facebook pretty

27:03

much was the became the internet . It wasn't

27:05

like countries didn't have the internet

27:07

and then they just had facebook . So , whereas

27:09

if you're from somewhere like the uk , we

27:12

first of all we had the internet and then we

27:14

had apps and then we had facebook , blah , blah , blah and

27:17

so a lot the the sort of like shape

27:19

of things was very different . There are a lot of countries

27:21

in the world that were a bit further behind and

27:24

Facebook just became their internet

27:26

. And you

27:29

know governments . So the government in Myanmar

27:31

in particular took advantage of

27:33

this and spread a lot of propaganda and

27:35

spread a lot of disinformation and basically

27:38

caused a lot of trouble and problems

27:40

, because there's two different factions in

27:42

Myanmar and effectively

27:44

it ended up resulting in massive

27:47

civil war and Facebook was

27:49

a massive facilitator of it . And this

27:51

not only that like again , you

27:53

need to go and do your own research and look into it . But

27:55

this was flagged and

27:57

highlighted and warning , warning

27:59

flags were raised multiple , multiple

28:02

times and Facebook didn't really do anything

28:04

about it . So this is a real thing ? Um , it's you , and highlighted , and warning flags were

28:06

raised multiple , multiple times and Facebook didn't really do anything about it . So this

28:08

is a real thing . It's got nothing to do with conspiracy or anything

28:10

like that . And if you look at

28:12

the Myanmar example , it's

28:16

a really good example of the level of influence that these social media companies

28:18

can potentially have , and

28:20

I think that , unless you've

28:22

got anything else to say , I think that nicely leads us

28:24

on , because we haven't really spoken about ai much

28:27

yet .

28:27

I was about to bring us back to ai , so I'm in the same . Yeah

28:29

, I agree with you .

28:30

We've yeah , we've gone down my conspiracy

28:32

hole here yeah , so we need

28:34

to play the music , that thing now . So

28:45

how does ai feed into all

28:47

of this ? Well , if you I mean

28:49

everything that we've just talked about , literally everything

28:51

we've just talked about is about power

28:54

that's concentrated into the hands of a

28:57

few companies , and if you look at what's

28:59

going on with AI , it's the same companies

29:01

. It's the same companies that have the ability

29:04

and the power and the resources to

29:07

even build the data centers and run

29:09

the training models and create these AIs

29:11

in the first place . Because up to now

29:14

, I mean , there's a bit of a ruffle

29:16

with DeepSeek last month , and we're going to talk

29:18

about that in a little bit but if you

29:20

, you know , ignoring what happened with DeepSeek

29:22

, if you sort of follow the trajectory that

29:25

things were on with AI , then

29:28

it's the same companies . It's

29:30

only those companies , because they're the biggest , they're

29:32

easily the biggest companies in the world already . They're

29:36

the only companies with the resources to do it

29:38

. The one company

29:40

that I don't that we never mention is it's

29:42

Amazon . But just to like make

29:44

it super clear to everyone , amazon

29:47

basically own all of the infrastructure

29:49

that everyone is running AI on Like

29:52

. So you know , nvidia make these GPUs

29:54

, they make the gear and they're doing

29:56

very well off the back of the AI

29:58

revolution , but actually

30:01

like a ton of AI stuff

30:03

runs on AWS . And

30:05

Amazon have positioned themselves very smartly in

30:07

that um arena , so amazon

30:10

, they also .

30:10

They also control the sales of , like most

30:13

things everywhere

30:16

apart from in china , and also

30:18

they own like 40 of anthropic

30:20

so yeah , they're not a bit player .

30:22

They're in there but but they're .

30:24

They're someone we've never talked about on the podcast

30:26

and actually and actually have a large language model that's

30:28

called the amazon model and I think . But yeah

30:30

, you're absolutely right , they're a massive player in in

30:32

everything but this is what amazon do , right , they're

30:35

like a .

30:35

You know , they're almost the exact opposite of

30:37

elon musk instead of like being

30:39

out there , like we're disrupting stuff

30:41

, tweeting about it , like trying to like just

30:43

non-stop for

30:45

want of a better word attention seeking . In that

30:48

respect , like bezos

30:50

and amazon are just completely the opposite . They

30:52

run all the infrastructure that all this stuff runs

30:54

on . Um , they've got the , you know

30:56

they've . They've got the infrastructure that runs

30:58

so many of the world's websites

31:01

, a lot of ai models , all

31:03

this kind of stuff . Um , aws

31:05

has been an insanely , insanely profitable

31:08

arm of amazon , to the point where I think the

31:10

person who set up the the

31:12

I can't remember his name is , but the person who set up aws

31:14

is basically going to take over as um

31:17

chief exec

31:19

of amazon at some point . Um

31:21

, but anyway , sorry , amazon

31:23

aside like , where does ai

31:25

feed back into this ? Well , it seems

31:27

pretty obvious Like AI has the potential

31:29

to replace most

31:32

people's jobs , be a huge

31:34

resource , even if it doesn't replace people's jobs

31:36

, be like such a huge resource in

31:39

terms of , like productivity , efficiency

31:41

. You know , you're going to have robots

31:44

powered by like these AIs and large

31:46

language models and that kind of thing .

31:47

Um , and so

31:49

more and more power , if

31:52

anything is going to get concentrated

31:54

into the hands of these

31:56

four or five , six , whatever tech

31:59

companies , um , like techno feudalism

32:02

overlords and um

32:04

, just to sort of link back to a something

32:06

you talked about on a previous podcast , where we talked

32:08

about useless eaters , I think , um

32:11

, you , know there's a potential

32:13

standby by the way yeah , I think

32:15

you , I think you'll probably sort of agree

32:17

with me now that that's a certainly a possibility

32:20

yeah , well , it might , or at least that people

32:22

are being , or sectors of society

32:24

are being viewed by certain elites as

32:26

being , useless eaters , and I would include big

32:28

tech and certain

32:30

potential techno maybe certain people

32:32

overlords , yeah , yeah , maybe

32:35

certain people within those crowds .

32:37

But you know , imagine , okay , let's again , let's

32:39

. Let's just sort of sorry , can I just ?

32:41

bring you back , because it was what you said just to to

32:43

to um , back

32:45

what you said up about amazon . Yeah

32:47

, obviously this doesn't necessarily sort

32:50

of show the power in the kind of tech sphere

32:52

and and in the future , but just market capitalization

32:55

fifth biggest company in the world , brand value third

32:57

biggest in the world and revenue

32:59

fourth biggest in the world . So oh yeah

33:01

, just just to show like how important amazon are . They're

33:04

huge .

33:04

They're huge , yeah . So

33:06

if you kind of extrapolate out to the future what's

33:09

already happened , so like massive

33:11

concentration of um wealth

33:13

and digital services , I think is probably

33:16

kind of the broad term for it . And then

33:18

now you could potentially the same companies

33:20

are going to create all these ais

33:22

which are going to what

33:25

potentially be the future employees

33:27

of the world , like the future office workers

33:29

like do all of this stuff and probably

33:32

do it very cheaply , but where

33:35

does that leave people ? I mean

33:37

, at some point the

33:39

rope , there won't really be any room for

33:41

people . There will just be a , a class

33:43

system where you're either , you

33:45

know , one of these tech overlords

33:48

or or someone in government or

33:50

someone surrounding that sphere , or

33:53

you'll be like the 99 and you'll

33:55

be um , you know , I'm

33:57

not saying you won't necessarily be looked after , but there

33:59

won't really be any . There won't really

34:01

be any chance to get out of the situation you're born into

34:04

.

34:04

I don't think yeah , almost feels like some people

34:06

might want like a depopulation agenda . What

34:08

?

34:10

I don't know about that . I don't know about that .

34:12

Let's just see how far down the rabbit hole you want to go .

34:14

Jimmy , that's a bit heavy . That's a

34:16

bit heavy . We'll

34:19

save it for another episode , shall we ? I

34:21

think ?

34:21

so yeah , for whatever his name was , that didn't like conspiracy

34:23

theories it's a bit rough or uh

34:27

, jonathan jonathan it was jonathan

34:29

sorry jonathan , he's probably not listening anymore .

34:31

Anyway , um , so

34:33

yeah , like I think ai will only

34:36

exacerbate this . So

34:38

there is a light at the end of the tunnel . I

34:40

don't want to do all the speaking . I want to . What are your

34:42

, what are your views on all this apart , I

34:44

don't think I've spoken quite a lot .

34:46

I don't think you've done all the speaking . Yeah , do

34:48

you know what ? It's funny because I

34:50

feel like on this episode , like I didn't expect

34:52

I

34:57

probably prepared for this episode less than I prepared for any other episode other than like

34:59

reading that I've been doing . What means

35:01

I've been doing some reading , but I haven't like planned out , okay , I

35:03

was going to talk about this . It's like okay , you're going to lead this

35:05

episode . It's very much something that you talked about and

35:07

I'm interested in it . Um , I've

35:11

been surprised at how kind of passionate I've been

35:13

about this stuff and how much it kind of crosses

35:17

over with a lot of the the kind of concerns

35:19

and stuff that I've got . Having said that

35:21

, I'm in a weird space

35:24

because , as much

35:26

as I'm all you're not talking about my spare

35:28

bedroom . Yes , it's pretty fucking weird

35:30

in here . To be honest , Like

35:32

some of the shit over there , I probably won't mention

35:34

that and that cupboard . I mean yeah

35:37

, no , but like , although

35:39

I , you

35:41

know I sort of joke about conspiracy theories

35:44

, but like I , I do , like I'll be honest , I

35:46

do think there's a lot of evil

35:48

stuff going on , and I think

35:50

AI , you know , I've said from the start

35:52

, I think the the most likely outcome

35:56

and I don't know if that's 55%

35:58

or 95% is like a dystopian

36:00

future . I also think

36:02

more and more , like I'm also more optimistic

36:05

that , like , the utopia

36:07

is not that far out of our grasp and

36:09

it is about , like , there

36:12

are some things that are going to happen in the next two

36:15

, five , ten , fifteen , twenty years , I don't

36:17

know and how we as a

36:19

human race react to that

36:21

and what we allow to happen . Because that

36:24

is the key thing . Like , I do think at the moment

36:26

we still have the power as people

36:28

to decide which way

36:30

this goes , if we stand up and if we

36:32

make our kind of voices heard and we

36:34

don't accept certain things . But

36:37

there is a point that we pass and this is because

36:39

of this is absolutely because of AI . The

36:41

perfect storm has been created by the pandemic

36:44

and the sort of breakdown

36:46

of the US , the 2008 financial , like

36:48

all of these things you know , have

36:50

come together to create this kind of perfect storm

36:52

. And AI is

36:55

both the catalyst

36:57

, the enabler . Like I

36:59

find it amazing , like almost

37:01

like . The timing of stuff to me is like too coincidental

37:04

. It's like , like I said , this kind of perfect storm

37:06

stuff

37:08

to me is like too coincidental . It's like , like I said , this kind of perfect storm . But ai , if it

37:10

was managed in the right way , if it doesn't become super

37:12

intelligent and have its own kind of you know

37:14

aims and take , yeah and take

37:16

over you know , at that point

37:18

, kind of all bets are off and there's nothing we can do . But

37:21

before you get to that , there is a utopia

37:23

and I think , like even us

37:25

talking about this stuff , like I said to you in when we had a five minute break , the fact that us is a utopia and I think

37:27

, like even us talking about this stuff , like I said to you in when we had a five minute break , the

37:29

fact that us is a relatively mainstream

37:31

podcast right , okay , me here

37:33

like the fucking crazy guy with a conspiracy

37:35

theories but I'm not a crazy conspiracy theorist

37:37

by you know in in terms of

37:39

like , where some people are , where a lot of podcasts are

37:41

, where a lot of social media etc . Is

37:44

the fact that we're talking about this thing

37:46

says to me that this is becoming

37:48

a pretty mainstream thing

37:50

, that a lot of people are starting to wake up to the

37:52

idea that this is a genuine threat to

37:55

the future , because

37:57

, you know , essentially

37:59

it's it like this is not an episode

38:01

about democracy , but this tech feudalism

38:04

, like the way that tech is controlling

38:06

things , and the fact that ai is the first ever

38:08

tool that can allow

38:10

this level and I'm going to pull up another quote from from

38:12

the article can allow

38:14

a sort of level of control that dictators

38:17

in the past could only dream

38:19

of . It's such a risk . But

38:22

a utopia is also

38:24

like within , kind of just just

38:27

out of reach , like so . So

38:29

for me it's like if enough of us really

38:31

care and and push that I

38:33

think like there is still

38:36

time for the majority

38:38

to like you know , people power

38:40

and and like boots on the ground

38:42

and and feet and and votes

38:44

and hands still has power at the moment , but

38:46

I don't know how much longer that is the

38:49

case . Yeah , I'll let you do your quote . No

38:52

, you talk while .

38:53

I find my quote Okay , you're fine in your quote . So

38:55

I do think the

38:57

other thing that I wanted to mention , which

39:00

I'm proud to say I've been right about all along

39:02

, I've been banging on about all along

39:04

, is this open

39:07

source versus closed source thing , and

39:10

DeepSeek has thrown this wide open and

39:12

I do agree that DeepSeek has

39:15

been so important in terms of the influence

39:18

that it's had . I think DeepSeek itself , the

39:20

importance of the specific that it's had , I think deep seek itself , like the importance of the specific model

39:22

has , like that's that importance remains

39:24

to be seen whether they end up being a big player or not that's

39:26

diminished , like quite quickly , um

39:29

and I think I actually think they might well

39:31

be , because they've got some very smart people there but

39:33

what ? but what happened ? Was it accelerated

39:35

this kind of like ? Loads of other companies

39:37

were then right thinking models . They just banged them

39:39

out . Clearly , some of this stuff was there in the background

39:41

, but they weren't . It

39:44

was a big sort of surprise attack

39:46

in terms of , like , the release of deep seek , which

39:48

forced them to show their hand , which may be

39:50

like I don't know what chat , what open

39:52

AI's plan was . Maybe they were planning to eke

39:55

this stuff out over six months and , like

39:57

you know , use

40:06

it to sort of maximize their profits , because this is what companies do . You know , companies

40:08

don't release the latest and best models , latest and best products immediately . They always

40:10

have , like this kind of roadmap . So I think that's what deep seek did . Um , there's

40:13

been a bunch of other disruptions recently , but

40:15

overall , the sort of the

40:17

one hope I have with ai is

40:20

that it does feel that there

40:22

will be a level of democratization , because

40:24

actually , stuff's going to get so like

40:26

, the algorithm's going to get so better , so quickly

40:29

. The efficiency of them is getting better far

40:31

quicker than we can moore's law and

40:33

all this gpu stuff . You know , like

40:35

, the , the speed , like these , it's

40:37

not , it's not , it's not even in the same ballpark

40:40

like the level of improvement

40:42

that you get from like going from a

40:44

non-thinking model to a thinking model

40:47

, from , and you know , from going from

40:49

a mixture of x I mean , I'm probably

40:51

using phrases that people don't understand now but from going

40:53

from going from a standard model

40:55

to a mixture of experts model , and these

40:57

improvements are still happening and all of and

40:59

each of them is like , instead of it just being like a moore's

41:02

law thing where it's like it doubles every couple

41:04

of years , it's just like a 10x overnight

41:06

, and and so I

41:09

think that , like , there is the possibility

41:11

for a massive democratization with ai

41:13

. Um and open ai have ironically

41:16

, been pushed in that direction as well by

41:18

the release of deep seek I'll go to my quote

41:20

and it aligns per .

41:22

It aligns segues perfectly

41:24

in here . So credit again to eric

41:26

wickstrom , um and the am

41:28

I crazy here ? Substat for

41:30

this . So when he was talking about

41:32

the technocracy , the ai component , artificial

41:35

intelligence isn't just another technology

41:37

in this vision , it's the key enabler . Ai

41:40

provides the means to replace human judgment

41:42

tools , for total surveillance systems

41:44

, for resource allocation justification for

41:46

eliminating democratic input . Here's

41:49

a really key bit from what you've just said . When technically

41:51

tech leaders discuss ai safety

41:53

and control , they're laying the groundwork

41:55

for a new form of social organization . The

41:59

way I read that that quotation is not saying we

42:01

don't need ai , safety and control . What

42:03

it's saying is that when these technically leaders

42:05

, when the big ai players

42:07

, talk about ai safety and control and

42:09

this is what feeds into jimmy's talk about open

42:12

versus closed models when they talk about

42:14

safety and controllers , basically , you

42:16

need to not allow things to be open source , need to give us

42:18

all the power because we know better . That

42:20

is what's creating that groundwork for social organization

42:23

is that is giving complete control

42:25

of a technology that has the means

42:27

to completely survey society

42:30

, and that's what I absolutely agree with you . You know I

42:32

was looking for it and you happen to talk about that and

42:35

talk about open source . Yeah , I think open source

42:37

is like kind of part of the the answer

42:39

answer here , and I do sort of wonder with deep seek

42:41

. I don't know how much the state was involved

42:43

in it , but I feel like it was put out

42:46

there as a kind of bomb to kind of you

42:48

know , I'm not , I'm not saying that I'm not saying that like China

42:50

was trying to , like you know , go

42:53

in and save the world , but was sent into

42:55

probably just like to shake things

42:57

up and shake up what the US had done , but

42:59

has had the effect of

43:01

a really , really positive thing of kind

43:03

of democratising and opening it up

43:05

and making people , I think , start to sort of question

43:08

Like they are . I think it's starting

43:10

I don't think it's enough , but I think it's starting this kind

43:12

of question of hang on , like

43:14

who are these people making

43:16

all these decisions ? So , like I've said in one

43:19

of the episodes , is like is

43:26

AI something we want or is it just being done to us .

43:27

You know , maybe we want ai , but the way that it's being rolled out is being done to us could say

43:29

exactly the same thing about elon musk . Well , yeah , is it almost something we want

43:31

, or has he just been done to us ?

43:33

well , apparently , like 60 percent

43:35

of americans do want him , but I think , not

43:37

sure about that . I'm not sure how long that will last , that's that's for sure

43:39

. I'm not sure about that . I'm not sure how long that will last , that's that's for sure . I'm not sure

43:41

how long him and Trump like those two egos . I'm not

43:43

sure how long Trump can stand

43:45

someone being potentially more important

43:48

and uh and popular than

43:50

him . I think there'll be a fallout , I'm

43:52

sure . I'm sure .

43:53

Yeah , it's been , it's been touted

43:55

. I mean to

43:58

wrap up like we've it's been quite a

44:00

passionate episode . I

44:03

think that , like , overall

44:05

, I think these terms you know , you

44:07

can get wrapped up in like , you know , okay , techno

44:09

, feudalism , technocracy like they're just words

44:12

. I

44:22

think they're really powerful words because I think they , you know , they're

44:24

a short , punchy way of articulating a lot of the

44:26

concerns that people have about where we're going and um and AI . In my opinion

44:28

, like the , the , you know , we we only really brought AI

44:30

into it in the last 15 minutes , but the whole point is

44:32

that AI is only going to accelerate

44:35

this kind of thing . Um , I

44:38

would say , check out some of the

44:40

alternative alternatives

44:42

to the big tech companies , because there are a lot of really good

44:44

ones and I think most people , basically

44:47

, it's a bit like Google is synonymous

44:49

with search , right , I'm Googling it . Uh

44:52

, you know , that was what chat GPTs become

44:54

um and or chat GTP

44:56

as like , I think most people call it um

44:58

, but , like , chat gpt

45:01

has just become synonymous with ai , right

45:03

, most , okay , people who listen to this

45:05

podcast , maybe you've tried out some of these other

45:07

things , but I would

45:09

seriously

45:12

recommend exploring

45:14

, trying out some of these other models

45:16

. When you're using ais , give grokka

45:18

grok with a qr , go ven , go

45:20

. Yeah , give . I mean mistral's

45:23

got a model like . There's so many

45:25

things venice ai .

45:26

We talked about it on on a long time ago when

45:28

we're like recommending like 10 tools or

45:30

whatever , but like a tool where they have

45:32

, you know , their big thing is about not sharing data

45:34

and everything gets deleted . It's not trained models

45:37

. I don't know how much you can believe it , but like

45:39

what I mean is there are things out there like

45:41

that you can make a kind of statement that this is

45:43

what you want from from your model , although

45:45

like is is you know , is

45:48

really the demand about like someone paying 10 pound

45:50

a month ?

45:50

is that I don't know how much that's really going

45:52

to make a difference yeah , I will

45:54

come in a minute with like my views and what people should do yeah

45:56

, of course , of course , uh

45:59

, as a sort of another option if you want to pay for

46:01

an ai like I tried it briefly and I'm thinking

46:03

about going back to it . But there's a really interesting

46:05

. I wish we got sponsorship from these companies

46:07

. There's a really interesting company called mammouth

46:10

. Uh , we'll stick it in the

46:12

we'll stick it in the show , really , really interesting , but they're , like

46:14

, you know , I think it's like 10 a month or 15

46:16

, so it's cheaper than most of the mainstream

46:18

ones . It gives you access to most of

46:20

them , uh , like give you access to claude

46:23

, open ai , like chat gpt , like

46:25

all these different models , uh , and

46:27

you can play around with them . But like I think there

46:29

is a bit of a danger with just being

46:31

like , oh , ai , that's chat gpt

46:33

, and then just using chat gpt because at

46:36

some point , at any point , they can change their

46:38

system prompt , they can change their guardrails

46:40

, they , they can effectively

46:42

and not just they . I mean , like they've got , you

46:44

know , us ex-us generals on their

46:46

board and things like that potentially

46:49

, like the us government can influence the

46:52

kinds of responses these apps

46:54

and tools are giving you , um , and so

46:56

I do think that , like

46:58

it's important to you

47:00

know , I guess , try being every now

47:02

and again in the AI

47:05

sense .

47:08

Shall I go .

47:09

Yeah , yeah , I

47:11

mean yeah yeah , you don't have to ask my permission

47:13

.

47:13

No , I didn't want to interrupt you because

47:15

I think it's almost like this is our like final

47:17

kind of arguments . Yeah , oh

47:21

, that was a yeah , sorry . Yeah

47:23

, should I edit this ?

47:24

I think you're probably gonna have to edit this bit out . This is too

47:26

bad . No , I'm not .

47:27

I'm not gonna edit out , because I think it adds the reality to the

47:29

podcast . All right , I'll . I'll give my view

47:31

on this , like which you'll be unsurprised is I

47:34

think it's um , I think

47:36

people need to be doing a lot more , a lot

47:38

more than that . I think there are two elements

47:40

to this . So the first part you know

47:42

around , what you kind of do on

47:45

a day-to-day basis , like as

47:47

someone who uses ai like

47:49

we sometimes talk about this , like I came around and you've been

47:51

coding for like several hours today , so you've been using

47:54

ai a lot . But I think , on a general day-to-day basis

47:56

, like I'm using it like I

47:58

don't know 10 , 15 times a day and using different

48:01

apps for different things , like I use AI a

48:03

lot . So as someone who kind of like

48:05

wishes it would just go back

48:07

in its box and it could bury it in the ground

48:09

, I do use it a lot because I

48:12

also see a lot of uses in it . But I think my

48:14

first thing to people would be like the

48:17

first thing against it is like when we're talking about

48:19

this idea of complete control is like

48:21

don't allow your life to just become

48:23

about tech , like I know it's

48:25

really obvious . But like get off social media

48:28

, don't rely on everything

48:30

for ai . Like I've started at work

48:32

, I've started carrying a notebook around

48:34

and writing stuff , because I realized like I can't write

48:37

properly anymore and like that's because

48:39

I don't write and was like it's quite nice to just

48:41

be writing . I'm not saying for

48:43

everyone's like , don't use tech , but I'm saying like

48:45

, go back to like . Go

48:48

back to like having interactions with people

48:50

. Go back to like community stuff

48:53

. Like do things that

48:55

are challenging this whole kind of economic model

48:57

of control by a few organisations

48:59

. Like buy local food . Like engage

49:02

with your community . Like there are really simple things

49:04

you can do to create the world that I think , like almost

49:06

everyone I speak to , wishes the world was

49:08

. And it's like , if that's what you want the world to be

49:10

, like , no one is coming to save us . No

49:12

one is coming to create that world for you . You

49:15

are the person like we are the people that

49:17

have to create that world and the people that have to create

49:19

that world , and if enough of us start to do it , we can have that world . It

49:21

doesn't mean having no ai . It doesn't mean having no tech

49:23

. It doesn't mean we're not going to have , you know , ai , workforce

49:26

transition . It doesn't mean we're going to not have a future

49:28

that's controlled by it or that is dominated

49:30

by it , but like you can build that stuff

49:32

into your life , like I think that is so

49:34

, so important as , like not allowing

49:37

this to be sort of have

49:39

its tentacles in every single aspect

49:41

of your life , like have the

49:44

life of meeting people

49:46

in in reality , writing things down

49:48

, playing guitar , playing the piano

49:50

, like playing football , going out

49:52

into nature , like part , that's part of it . The

49:55

second thing is , like you're gonna have

49:57

to realize when these things are coming in

49:59

, that are whatever , like

50:01

however far down on the , on the , on the on

50:03

the scale of the like , however far down

50:05

the rabbit hole you are and however much

50:08

you think some of the stuff I talk about , we talk about

50:10

, is nonsense , is like some of this is

50:12

not conspiracy . Like digital

50:14

currencies are coming , digital

50:16

ids are coming , right , if you

50:18

want that and that and you want what that

50:20

means , fine , like , but

50:22

understand what these things mean is . These

50:25

are all part of this move towards

50:27

control of tech

50:29

over everything . And you might

50:31

think this is kind of just convenience , right ? I

50:33

live in a country where everything is paid for

50:35

convenience on an app . Do

50:38

you know what ? I have a load of cash hidden

50:41

in my apartment . It's not that much cash , so don't

50:43

bother coming to rob me because it won't change your life . But

50:45

I have some cash , like because

50:47

, like , even not on a conspiracy

50:49

, conspiratorial level , like

50:51

when there is a it outage

50:53

, like I don't want to be reliant on tech . It's

50:56

like , think about when you are reliant

50:58

on all that stuff . Think about when , in your office

51:00

, the internet goes down and you can't do anything that day

51:02

because nothing works . Think about that times

51:05

a million , because AI is integrated

51:07

to everything . It's like start rejecting

51:09

, like , take the good stuff , but start

51:11

rejecting the bad stuff . Like

51:14

you know , it will make a difference . Like , I see

51:16

this kind of movement for cash and a few years ago I was

51:18

like well , why are you so bothered about cash

51:20

, like swiping a card ? And then now I'm a bit

51:23

like but it's not about cash

51:25

in your hand , it's about what cash means

51:27

. When you move to a digital currency , all

51:30

it takes is the next government to be the government that

51:32

declares that well , I'm just going to link that to your social

51:34

credit score . Oh

51:43

, that , well , it's not , because they don't even actually have that in China . So if you listen and you've heard of this thing where everyone in China just you know , okay , people

51:45

get banned from traveling , people in China don't have their money controlled because of their behaviors

51:47

, but there's a system there and that's

51:49

in a country that's not a democracy . When

51:52

you have that in your country , that is a democracy . All

51:54

it takes is a change of government or it takes

51:57

a controlling tool

51:59

that we're talking about . This sounds dystopian , but like this is the tool that we're talking about

52:01

. This sounds dystopian , but like this is the default that

52:03

we're headed to , unless people make decisions

52:05

that say we don't want to head in that direction . So

52:08

like two bits of advice like do more

52:10

things locally , make little changes in your life , but

52:13

also understand some of these big things that are

52:15

coming in . You still have a choice whether

52:17

you accept them or not . Two generations

52:19

on , maybe even one generation on , there

52:21

ain't gonna be a choice anymore . That

52:23

that's . That's my kind of closing argument

52:26

on this it's powerful stuff .

52:28

I think that that we need to shorten it a little

52:30

bit . But that's our new mid-roll , uh

52:32

, the beginning part of it , I think , maybe

52:34

in a little bit at the end , but like the like

52:36

, definitely we need to like get that down , um

52:39

to lighten it up a little bit just at the

52:41

end . I'm going to finish with a really nice piece of music . I

52:43

don't know why I came across this , but

52:45

I agree with a lot of what you said . Just to

52:47

sum it up , I

52:52

think it's up to everyone to make their own judgment

52:55

as to where they are on that , but

52:58

I do think that tech

53:00

and the level of control

53:03

over the you know

53:05

, western societies that is

53:07

afforded by some of these new technologies

53:09

and that's in the hands of , like

53:11

, such a small amount of companies um

53:14

, you know , all in the us , to be honest

53:16

, all the majority is quite frightening

53:18

. Um , and it and it's , it's

53:20

, it's really , you know , coming

53:22

back to what we talked about in the episode , like it's

53:25

as much what you're talking about

53:27

as in literal control , as it

53:29

is around influence about

53:31

what people are thinking um

53:33

, and I think that's for me , also a huge

53:35

, huge , huge danger anyway , to

53:38

lighten things up a little bit . I don't know why I

53:40

pulled this up , but I

53:42

found something that I said to Claude the other day

53:44

which entertained me . I said write a sentence

53:47

that uses the most adjectives you can use in

53:49

one sentence in a humorous way

53:51

. Here we go . I'm going to give this

53:53

a good shot

53:56

incredibly verbose , suspiciously enthusiastic

53:59

, ridiculously overdressed , unnecessarily

54:02

complicated , absurdly

54:05

long-winded , hopelessly confused

54:07

, thoroughly exhausted , slightly bewildered

54:09

, comically serious , painfully

54:11

meticulous , wildly incompetent

54:14

, shockingly purple , surprisingly

54:16

knowledgeably questionably

54:18

qualified English english professor stumbled

54:21

dramatically over his extraordinarily

54:24

expensive , impractically tiny

54:26

, ludicrously shiny italian leather

54:28

shoes while delivering

54:31

an excessively detailed , mind

54:33

numbingly boring , theoretically important

54:35

lecture about the absolutely essential

54:38

, fundamentally critical , woefully

54:41

underappreciated importance of

54:43

concise , clear communication

54:45

. See you next week , guys .

54:58

In the gleaming halls of silicon dreams

55:00

, where algorithms hum their endless

55:03

schemes . I watch as lords of data

55:05

build their digital feasts , harvesting

55:07

attention with invisible thieves . Each

55:10

scrolling click becomes a surf's new machine

55:12

. While techno barons count their endless

55:15

gain , our labor track my

55:17

eyes that never sleep as

55:19

we kill digital fields . The masters

55:21

keep the new lords don't need

55:23

castles made of stone , just server

55:25

farms and screens we call our own . They

55:28

promise freedom while they track our lives

55:30

. As techno-frutalism quietly

55:32

thrives , the AI sentinels

55:35

guard their masters realm , learning

55:37

our patterns , ready to overwhelm prediction

55:40

engines , knowing what we'll do Before

55:43

the thought has even passed through . But

55:46

in the garden , where no signal reaches

55:49

, where the winter ancient forest

55:51

teaches , I remember what it

55:53

means to truly be In the natural

55:55

world that sets us free . For

55:58

all their codes and neural nets , so fast they

56:01

cannot program . What was meant to

56:03

last is human touch , a

56:05

kind word spoken true , the soul's

56:07

connection that sees us through . So

56:10

find your people , look them in the eye

56:12

, feel the earth beneath , look

56:14

up at the sky or in our hearts

56:16

lies power . They can't decode a

56:18

, a love-fueled resistance to their crushing

56:20

mode . Before we're reduced to data

56:22

points and trends , let's reclaim

56:25

our humanity , make amends the

56:27

future's not written in binary lines

56:29

, but in how deeply our compassion

56:32

shines . Thank you , you .