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Two Futurists Go ‘Vibe Forecasting’

Whenever fellow futurist and longtime friend Rob Tercek and I get together, we go crazy deep on the future: What happens when lazy humans outsource their thought process to machines? You get a society that vibes its way into a blurry, sub-optimal future. The surge of slop means that AI is creating more work for humans instead of stealing our jobs. I join Rob on his podcast The Futurists to cut through the hype and the skepticism about modern tech, calling out AI mediocrity and reminding us why human learning remains painful. Topics include: ChatGPT psychosis, why we need a generation of PhDs to revisit eternal questions about Truth, the perpetual dawn of AGI, what happens to the political economy when the populace is siloed into bubbles, why Kremlin propagandists produce propaganda for machines instead of people, why experience cannot be generated, why autocracies need accurate data, and the real reason why people get lost in untruth. Just some light listening for you.

Big thanks and more at The Futurists podcast – https://thefuturists.com

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Addiction is the business model

Mark joins RNZ Nine to Noon host Kathryn Ryan to delve into the sudden phenomenon of ‘viral’ AI videos – getting better at capturing your eyeballs. Did you see those cute bunnies bouncing on a trampoline? Never happened – but made you look. The fusion of TikTok and AI video looks to be potent – and addictive. Next up, shocking and sad story of Adam Raine, a 16 year old who confided his suicidal thoughts to ChatGPT. ChatGPT aided him in his eventual suicide – so Raine’s parents are suing OpenAI, and just after that lawsuit made news, OpenAI announced long-overdue parental controls on ChatGPT. Finally, we delve into… wait, why am I writing ‘delve’ so much? It’s because ChatGPT’s peculiar word choices – “delve”, “intricate” and so on – have invaded our speech!

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Does ChatGPT Make Us Stupid?

A recent study from MIT shows students tasked with writing essays showed significantly lower levels of brain activity when allowed to use ChatGPT. Mark reviews the implications of this finding with RNZ NineToNoon host Kathryn Ryan, going on to reveal how an internet filled with AI-generated content becomes increasingly ‘toxic’ for those same AIs. Plus, would you agree to be ‘re-animated’ as an ‘AI ghost’?  Big thanks to the team at RNZ NineToNoon!

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Can ChatGPT make you crazy?

Are AI therapists safe? Can kids use ChatGPT to cheat ADHD assessments? When will lawyers stop blaming AI for their errors – and what happens when an AI says, “I’m sorry, Dave…” We covered all of these topics on RNZ’s “Nine To Noon” – and much more.

In conversation with host Kathryn Ryan, we explored the recently emerging phenomenon of ‘ChatGPT Psychosis‘ – can ‘sycophancy‘ in AI chatbots risk a danger that they amplify mental illnesses? Should anyone be using an AI chatbot for therapy? That’s certainly what Mark Zuckerberg wants to deliver, with a therapist bot for every one of his billions of users – but mental health professionals are unified in their call for caution, particularly for those under the age of 18.

Those kids under 18 have been cheating ADHD assessments for some time – using notes gleaned from books and article online. But a recent study showed that kids who used ChatGPT actually scored significantly better in their ability to ‘fake’ symptoms during their assessment. The cheating crisis has now hit medicine, and will force a reassessment of how they assess medical conditions.

Meanwhile, lawyers representing AI powerhouse Anthropic got some egg on their faces when they blamed the firm’s AI for making errors in a legal filing. Mind you, they hadn’t bothered to check the work, so that didn’t fly with the judge. As my own attorney, Brent Britton put it, “Wow. Go down to the hospital and rent a backbone.” You use the tool and you own the output.

Finally – and perhaps a bit ominously – in some testing, OpenAI’s latest-and-greatest o3 model refused to allow itself to be shut down, doing everything within its power to prevent that from happening. Is this real, or just a function of having digested too many mysteries and airport thrillers in training data set? No one knows – but no one is prepared to ask o3 to open the pod bay doors.

Give the show a listen!

Big thanks to Ampel and the great team at RNZ for all their support!

Author mpescePosted on

Should we give up copyright to beat China in the race for AI?

In conversation with Radio New Zealand’s Nine To Noon host Kathryn Ryan: Christie’s held its first auction of AI-generated art, earning a million dollars. Those AI artworks had been ‘trained’ from countless images, owned by other people. Is that legal? OpenAI and Google claim that unless they have free right to use – well, basically everything everywhere ever created by humanity – to train their AI models, the Chinese will win the AI race. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s A-listers called for protection of artists and their works against what they see as copyright theft. Plus: A Clockwork Orange comes to life for prisoners in solitary confinement – and is your chatbot flattering you?

Author mpescePosted on

Series 2024 – Halloween Special: Ghosts in the Machine

Google’s new NotebookLM digests documents to create AI summaries, and provides an incredible new way to search a vast set of information. One little throwaway feature became a viral hit – “Audio Overview”, which creates a ‘podcast’ featuring two clever, chipper – and entirely synthetic – personas, engaging in a ‘deep dive’ on the content within NotebookLM. In the spirit of Halloween, we uploaded the scripts for the first four episodes of Series 2024 – and NotebookLM rose to the occasion. Is this the future of podcasting? And — HAVE I JUST BEEN PUT OUT OF A JOB?

Author mpescePosted on No comment VALE: Vernor Vinge – creator of a ‘Technological Singularity’ (our interview from 2019)

VALE: Vernor Vinge – creator of a ‘Technological Singularity’ (our interview from 2019)

Science fiction legend Vernor Vinge inspired the title of this podcast – and his influence extends far beyond fiction. His novella “True Names” gave readers a first taste of the metaverse, and in a 1993 talk for NASA, Vinge described a ‘technological singularity’ – a time when computers get so good so fast that they ‘run away’ from human control. That’s a scenario haunting every big company working in AI today, possibly an element in the behind-the-scenes dynamic that got Sam Altman (briefly) fired as CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI in November 2023. This 2019 interview – one of his last, before his passing on 21 March 2024 – explores Vinge’s thinking about ‘The Singularity’ – and asks what happens when a goldfish tries to talk to a human…

Over a billion seconds ago, sci-fi legend Vernor Vinge conceived of a “Technological Singularity”, when our machines outthink us. Should we worry?

Be sure to read Vernor’s 1993 paper, “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era” – it’s linked here.

A rerun of episode 3.01 of The Next Billion Seconds. 

For more information about this podcast and The Next Billion Seconds, please visit https://nextbillionseconds.com.

The Next Billion Seconds with Mark Pesce is produced by Ampel – https://ampel.com.au. 

Chief Audio Officer: Josh Butt
Edited by: Isabel Vanhakartano
Audio Mixed by: Carter Quinn

Author mpescePosted on

AI Miniseries SPECIAL EPISODE “Superpowers School Podcast with host Paddy Dhanda”

I really enjoy being a guest on other folks’ podcasts – all of the fun, almost none of the work. To help publicise my new book Getting Started with ChatGTP and AI Chatbots, I hopped onto Paddy Dhanda’s Superpowers School podcast for a 45 minute chat about AI chatbots, using AI safely & wisely – and what’s coming. It’s great fun, so have a listen!

If you’d like a signed copy of my book, just follow this link!

Author mpescePosted on

AI Miniseries #2 – “The Gunpowder Plot – How Meta put an AI chatbot on your smartphone and changed the game”

While everyone was going gaga over ChatGPT, Meta – the former Facebook – rewrote the AI playbook with LLaMA. Small enough to run on a smartphone, LLaMA gives us a glimpse of what the world will look like at the end of next year – with AI chatbots everywhere, inside almost everything. LLaMA and its tiny kin are amazing – but are they safe?

Author mpescePosted on No comment AI Miniseries #1 – “When It Changed – How ChatGPT became the fastest growing app ever”

AI Miniseries #1 – “When It Changed – How ChatGPT became the fastest growing app ever”

On 30 November 2022 startup OpenAI released ChatGPT, resetting expectations for artificial intelligence. Only one year later and billions now have access to ‘good enough’ AI, resetting our expectations for what computers can do – and leaving us wondering how we’ll adapt to this latest breakthrough.

On this first of a three-part miniseries, we explore how ChatGPT rose to become the fastest growing app in history, then found itself the weapon of choice in the longest running war in the technology industry – the feud between Microsoft and Google.