AI and The Return to Being Human

0:00 We have a new technology coming in that's going to change the world.

0:05 But it also changes what skills are necessary to be productive.

0:11 How do you make the most of it?

0:12 You look at it as how do I become more wise?

0:14 How do I have how do I be more human in this situation?

0:18 Tell me what you mean by wisdom and how does that show up in a new era.

0:21 Wisdom at its core is what are the decisions you're making?

0:24 Are you able to see the patterns behind yourself

0:27 and others that allow you to make great decisions?

0:29 Are you able to do the hard thing?

0:31 Are you able to feel the difficult thing?

0:34 And I would to some degree call wisdom being really good at being human.

0:40 Joe, you coach the founders of Open AI and we work

0:42 with a lot of people from Anthropic and Deep Mind and all

0:45 the main AI labs and we've done a lot of talking about

0:48 AI behind the scenes and we haven't brought that to the podcast yet.

0:51 Yeah.

0:52 Yeah.

0:52 And I' I'd really love to have a conversation about AI.

0:56 I think this is a really good time to do that because it's a we're raising AI.

1:00 Humanity right now is raising AI and in some ways like AI is now raising us.

1:07 And so I think this would be a very cool conversation to have.

1:10 Yeah.

1:10 Great.

1:11 Well, let's do it.

1:13 Yeah.

1:12 So, how do you see AI right now?

1:14 Let's just start very general.

1:15 Yeah.

1:16 What is it that we're we're dealing with on a societal scale right now?

1:21 Yeah.

1:21 There's a couple ways I see it.

1:23 The first way that I see it is we have a new technology coming in, a new tool,

1:28 a new technology that's coming in that's going to change the world.

1:32 Th this we've seen before many, many times.

1:34 We've seen it with television and with radio and with the industrial revolution,

1:39 the information revolution.

1:41 And that does some things that are, you know, generally pretty typical.

1:44 It creates some sort of gap between the halves and have nots.

1:48 It creates a whole bunch of new jobs and opportunities.

1:51 That turmoil allows for a lot of people to have a lot

1:54 of success or to change their life in a really positive way.

1:58 But it also changes what skills or what parts

2:02 of us as humans are necessary to be productive.

2:06 Right?

2:06 Before the industrial revolution, there was a lot of strength that was

2:11 necessary potentially to be successful in life.

2:13 Physical strength.

2:14 Physical strength.

2:15 Yeah.

2:15 Right.

2:15 And then it was uh some skills that you could learn.

2:18 And then there was intelligence like the more intelligent you had

2:21 the the more intelligent you were the easier it was to be successful.

2:26 And I think now we're moving into wisdom where the more wise you

2:31 are the more easy it'll be

2:32 to be successful especially as intelligence gets outsourced.

2:35 Yeah.

2:35 Tell me what you mean by wisdom and how does that show up in a new era.

2:39 So what do I mean by wisdom?

2:40 The most basic I think about it as the story and my two girls they were young.

2:46 I have two nieces, all about the same age.

2:50 And the nieces were speaking two languages, three languages,

2:54 French, English, and Spanish by the time they were six.

2:58 And our kids, because of the education that we had

3:00 with them was weren't really even learning how to read

3:03 and write at that time because we believed that this idea

3:06 was like really teach them how to be in themselves,

3:10 have their will, get things done, learn how to like be with themselves.

3:15 that's more important and the intellect will just come along for the ride,

3:18 which has panned out true.

3:19 They're both really smart kids who have

3:21 learned physics and chemistry and all that stuff.

3:23 So, it's all great, but I was worried.

3:27 And I said to my friend, I was like really worried, you know,

3:31 I might be screwing up my kids cuz like three languages, one language.

3:37 Mhm.

3:36 Reading three languages, reading no languages.

3:38 You know what?

3:39 And he said, 'You know, Joe, you can hire someone to speak a language for you,

3:43 but you can't hire someone to be yourself.

3:47 And that is the basis of wisdom.

3:50 Right now, you can hire something for free to write your emails for you

3:54 or speak a language for you and speak a language for you,

3:57 but it can't make the decision on whether you're going to scroll all day,

4:00 and it can't make the decision on whether you're going to get addicted to AI,

4:03 and it can't make the decision on what

4:05 relationship you're going to have with your mom,

4:06 and it can't make like none of that stuff.

4:08 it's going to be able to do for you.

4:11 And so wisdom at its core is what are the decisions you're making?

4:15 Are you making decisions?

4:16 Are you able to see the patterns behind yourself

4:19 and others that allow you to make great decisions?

4:22 Are you able to do the hard thing?

4:23 Are you able to feel the difficult thing?

4:26 And and are you able to just walk

4:28 into the thing that everybody else is avoiding?

4:30 That's where wisdom comes from.

4:32 But it's also a sign of the wisdom.

4:35 Yeah.

4:35 and those decisions and that and making decisions

4:38 like that is what I'm talking about with wisdom.

4:41 And so at the end of the day, if I can get 70 people to run a company for me,

4:46 they're all free and they're all AI agents, then the question is,

4:50 what are the decisions I'm making to make that company successful?

4:56 What advice am I taking?

4:57 How am I listening advice?

4:58 How do I create alignment between the five or six people?

5:01 That's all wisdom.

5:02 One thing that resonates with me about this is that yeah,

5:04 in the industrial revolution,

5:05 we were learning like the the entire school

5:08 system was built around becoming factory workers, right?

5:11 Ultimately becoming sort of a machine in a factory,

5:14 becoming a computer, accounting,

5:16 all these things that we've learned to do as humans where we basically

5:18 over the past century and longer have

5:21 essentially been training ourselves to become computers.

5:26 Yeah.

5:25 And once we got really really good at doing that, we finally invented computers

5:28 who can really be computers in the way that we want them to be.

5:31 Right.

5:32 And that's just starting.

5:33 It's not like we've got that under control yet or ever will.

5:38 Yeah.

5:38 But one of the things that that's doing is in my view,

5:41 it seems like it's opening up the capacity to step back

5:45 and be human the way we want to be again in new ways.

5:49 So there's this opportunity in front of us

5:52 that is of all of this knowledge is outsourced.

5:55 We can actually just focus on being human.

5:56 And I would to some degree call wisdom being really good at being human.

6:01 But it's also an opportunity and it's also

6:03 a time where we can really hurt ourselves.

6:08 Yeah.

6:07 And so I really don't like this framing that is AI is going to hurt us.

6:12 No one's going to hurt us but us.

6:14 Like I think the first sociology book, if I have this right,

6:17 was the science of what happens when there's a whole bunch of people

6:20 that don't have any purpose in a society and they create revolution.

6:25 Right?

6:25 So if you look at, you know,

6:28 countries where there's a large male, young male population that is jobless,

6:34 that doesn't have a sense of purpose,

6:35 that's usually where revolution and turmoil starts cracking into society.

6:40 And so if we do not find a way to take all

6:44 the extra time that's potentially created

6:46 to create a deeper level of purpose like

6:48 how to be more human then the alternative is oh we could actually

6:53 have a society that starts imploding on itself because it's lacking that purpose

6:59 right and what's interesting to me is this story

7:00 that I heard recently which I which I absolutely

7:03 adored and it was basically a story of an of an of an indigenous people who came

7:09 to the west like you know when there

7:12 was like housing and everything and they were living

7:14 in as a tribe and society and they were

7:19 basically asking like where do you go 8 hours

7:22 a day to this person who had taken them in he's like oh I go to work

7:26 well why do you go to work do you like work more than your family like nope no

7:31 I like my family more but I go to work to take care of my family and they

7:35 were like well why don't you take your family

7:37 with you to work if you like your family.

7:40 Well, because it doesn't it doesn't like they

7:42 don't let me take my family to work.

7:45 So, and they the the the folks the the indigenous folks

7:49 were so confused because well like why would you do that?

7:53 So they asked and he's like, "Well,

7:54 I got to buy a house." And they were like, "Well, if somebody needs a house,

7:58 we just all get together and build a house for them and then they have

8:01 a house and they can be in the house with their family." And you know,

8:04 it's like if they need something, we just get it.

8:06 We just do it and then they get to be with their family,

8:08 which is what they like.

8:10 And we have been in a society that is so long been

8:14 we have to go abandon ourselves in some way to get what

8:17 we want that we have forgotten this idea that oh we can

8:22 actually be where we want to be who we want to be.

8:26 We don't have to make that sacrifice for work.

8:27 And I think AI has the promise of that, but it also has or the potential

8:33 of that, but also has the potential of societal rupture, right?

8:38 Which also might be the necessary step to get

8:41 to or get back to what is it to be human again.

8:45 Yeah.

8:46 One one thing I'm struck by is how, you know,

8:48 one of the one of the primary fears of AI is that we'll lose our jobs.

8:51 Yeah.

8:52 And I think that fear really speaks to the the way that we value work,

8:56 the way that we value productivity,

8:58 the way that we value ourselves based on this lens of productivity.

9:02 Cuz you know, let's say truck drivers lose their jobs.

9:06 Yeah.

9:05 If in an in a world where we're considering the GDP

9:09 of the truck being driven and also including in our value,

9:13 the father there for their family, not on the road all the time.

9:17 Yeah.

9:17 Then we would have a value system that adjusts properly.

9:20 But I think people who have that fear,

9:21 they're accurately reflecting that our society doesn't have

9:24 the value system at this time that reflects that.

9:27 So the fear is if I lose my job, I won't be able to care for my family.

9:33 Even though a with AI, we might have the capacity for additional abundance.

9:38 I don't trust that I'm going to be a beneficiary of it.

9:43 Right?

9:43 And that's a that's a valid concern,

9:46 right?

9:45 And so how do how do you see us addressing that as a society?

9:49 How do I see us addressing that?

9:51 Like turmoil and dysfunction typically is how we address anything

9:54 that see that seems how we how we do it.

9:57 And and somehow we often find the rebalancing.

10:01 So one of the things that I see is that you know

10:05 if I look at America for like seven or eight generations every generation

10:09 feels like and we'll say it's getting worse in my generation but every

10:16 generation has actually gotten better like a standard of living has gotten

10:20 actually better for every not as far as dollars but we're not

10:24 as cold we're not we're warmer we have the food we have the education

10:28 system that like what's available to us has gotten after even though

10:32 we tell ourselves it's getting worse

10:33 and worse and worse generation after generation.

10:36 So there's this weird thing that happens in society

10:39 and I recognize it because I see it happening in people

10:42 where they're oftent times in a coaching practice with me.

10:45 They're sitting there saying I'm not changing but they are changing.

10:50 Everything is horrible but their life has gotten better.

10:52 So there's something in our brain that likes to say this is tough,

10:56 this is bad, it's going wrong.

10:59 we see these transitions that are full of turmoil

11:03 as bad instead of oh these this is part

11:06 of transition this is part of the creative pro

11:08 process so I I mean I do think we have

11:11 the opportunity to do something horrible and something great

11:15 but the the thing to do I don't know what's

11:18 the societyy's going to end up doing but I know

11:20 for the individual how to make the most of it

11:24 and and that is like how do you make the most of it you

11:27 see it as a time of transition You see it as a time of opportunity.

11:31 You look at it as how do I become more wise?

11:33 How do I have how do I be more human in this situation?

11:37 And that's what's going to make you more capable.

11:39 Yeah.

11:39 And that's fascinating because there's a a couple of trends that we

11:42 see happening right now are that it used to be that you'd have

11:46 very large companies with very tight bureaucracies having to operate at scale

11:51 in order to do the same thing that now a small team can do.

11:54 Yeah.

11:54 And now that you have a small team doing big things with AI moving very fast,

12:01 yeah,

12:00 it's all about how that team interacts with each other,

12:03 how people trust each other.

12:05 And if people can outsource a lot of the uh information collecting,

12:09 but not the decision-m but the info gathering,

12:12 the learning to AI or use AI to assist themselves in that then

12:17 a lot more of the importance comes down to the human relationships.

12:20 Who do you follow as a human?

12:21 Who do you follow in a team?

12:22 Who do you follow as a leader?

12:24 who do you recruit to work with you on a project

12:27 and how do you do that together and that's going

12:29 to be I think the thing that ch transforms the way

12:32 that organizations and businesses run in this AI powered era.

12:37 Absolutely.

12:37 I mean so you're already seeing this happen.

12:40 So I think about the transition is going to be from company to NBA sports team,

12:48 right?

12:48 So what used to take 10,000 people to run is

12:52 going to take maybe two or 300 people to run.

12:55 So how important are those two to 300 people?

12:57 They are highly important.

12:59 So it's going to be a whole bunch of capital behind

13:02 very few people when it comes to creating companies and creating startups.

13:07 And those few people are going to be incredibly expensive people

13:11 and they are going to be how talented are they?

13:14 So what makes talent?

13:15 Well, talent used to be knowledge and they used to have knowledge,

13:18 but now that knowledge can be outsourced to AI.

13:21 So now what makes really good people

13:24 and it's the quality of the relationships they hold.

13:27 It's the quality of the decisions that they make and that is

13:32 like really what you're starting you're going to start hiring for.

13:35 Even the CEO of Nvidia has a famous video on this where he

13:38 says like it's not about how well you score in the SAT anymore.

13:42 It's about can you see around the corners which is wisdom.

13:45 Can you understand what's happening what the patterns are that are occurring?

13:50 Like this is the thing.

13:51 And so you're going to see a whole bunch of people together.

13:54 That means that there's three components that are going

13:58 to help a person be successful or a team be successful.

14:03 The first component is how well they can play what I would call the outer game.

14:07 And the outer game is can I eat well?

14:10 Can I exercise well?

14:12 Can I feel good in my body?

14:14 Can I do the longterm play of writing the book or being in this company?

14:22 And and do I have the endurance?

14:24 Like that's the outer game.

14:25 The inner game is how you talk to yourself, right?

14:29 So there's this great book called the inner game of tennis.

14:32 He talks about how basically most people who keep

14:36 on messing up like their forehand swing or their backhand swing,

14:39 it isn't because they don't know how to do it.

14:41 Their body does know how to do it.

14:42 It's cuz they get in their head about it.

14:44 So, how much can you not get in your head

14:46 when you're playing the game and just play the game?

14:49 That's the inner game.

14:51 But then the third part is the game of the team.

14:54 How well does that team work together?

14:57 We've all been in companies where the hard conversation wasn't had.

15:01 It cost three years, three months, three weeks,

15:06 hundreds of thousands of dollars because the hard decision wasn't made,

15:10 because the conflict between the CEO and the COO wasn't resolved,

15:14 because they wouldn't have the hard conversation that they needed to pivot.

15:18 Every single massive downturn in a company or even long-term decline

15:24 of a company is based on teams not working together well.

15:29 And when teams work together great,

15:32 they execute wonderfully and and they have a massive competitive advantage.

15:36 And so what's going to be happening in the work is

15:39 these are the three things that are going to be important.

15:42 Are you able to actually take care of yourself on an external way?

15:46 Are you able to have flow,

15:48 not be secondguessing yourself all the time internally?

15:52 and are you going to be able to work together in a team

15:56 without all that friction and really address

15:58 a difficult thing over and over again?

16:00 Yeah, that brings up something else that's interesting

16:02 about what's going on right now is there's there's

16:04 a way that having access to all this information

16:06 is sort of a sort of a great equalizer.

16:10 Not fully, but it reduces the information asymmetry.

16:13 Like I I'm going through a legal situation right

16:15 now and the both myself and the other party

16:18 all have access to AI law speak and that can

16:22 lead to a lot of really interesting places.

16:24 Yes.

16:25 But one of the things that it seems to do is that

16:28 it makes it that if one of us had

16:30 a lot of experience with law before and one didn't,

16:34 you just get completely bowled over.

16:36 But now we both have access to Gemini chatgbt law.

16:40 And so there's actually a way that it like

16:42 makes the interaction more honest because it's as though

16:45 you had a bunch of poker players at a table

16:47 and one of them's really good at reading cards,

16:49 one of them's really good at reading people,

16:50 another one's just really statistically masterful.

16:54 But if everybody had access to all three of those things,

16:56 you'd be much more inclined to play the straight game.

17:00 Yes.

17:00 A and the other thing about that game knowing the story.

17:04 So you sat with this person that you have have a lawsuit

17:08 with and they tried to intimidate you and that was their internal game.

17:14 Like there was a guy one of the people there was trying to intimidate you.

17:16 That was their internal game towards you

17:19 and your internal game was oh I recognize

17:22 that you're doing this thing of trying to like

17:25 make me feel small so that I'll bend.

17:27 I'm not even sure he was recognizing it.

17:28 I just noticed a body language thing happening.

17:31 I notic I'm I'm taking care of this person

17:32 in case they're watching the podcast right now.

17:40 And you were like, "Yeah,

17:42 I see that thing." Which gave you the competitive advantage

17:44 in that negotiation because you understood yourself and you understood them.

17:47 You understand them enough to even have compassion,

17:50 even to understand that they might even not recognize what they're doing,

17:54 but you're like, "Oh, I get that.

17:55 I get I see what you're doing whether you know

17:58 it or not and I know how most people react

18:00 to that and I'm not going to react that way

18:02 and that is the competitive advantage

18:05 of wisdom when that great equalizer happens

18:09 and what I see when I think about

18:10 those three forms those you know the the external

18:14 work the inner work and the team work is what we see at the council what we saw

18:17 at the council whatever it was a month ago is that when those teams feel like oh

18:24 we can have those hard convers ations and we

18:26 can get closer and we are more human together.

18:29 We are more wise together.

18:31 You just see them thrive.

18:33 We got to see all those CEOs who didn't have their team go, "Holy crap,

18:37 I need my team here." Because they could immediately see the advantage of it.

18:42 And and when we were sitting around and and doing the gratitude

18:47 at the end of the council and all the team members were just like,

18:51 "This is so amazing.

18:52 This is such a good thing for us."

18:54 Right?

18:55 It was just so clear what an advantage that was.

18:59 And the thing that I that I think about is that that feeling of team,

19:05 that like deep feeling of team is like the feeling

19:09 of family that would make you not want to leave to work.

19:15 But we've all forgotten it.

19:17 Mhm.

19:17 We we haven't we have been honing our machine abilities,

19:21 our knowledge abilities for years, decades, generations.

19:25 But there's a whole set of understandings

19:29 and skills and empathy and connection that teaches us,

19:33 oh, how to be as a family,

19:35 how to be as a team in a way that's

19:36 super effective and that gives us not only a competitive advantage,

19:40 but makes our world feel good.

19:42 And that I would call being human.

19:44 And it is not something that I think most people actually even have a taste of.

19:50 Yeah.

19:50 And that's the that's the thing that's interesting

19:52 to find that again might take a lot of turmoil.

19:56 Right.

19:56 And and on the other side of that turmoil,

19:58 one of the best outcomes I could see

19:59 happening from all of this is to deeply uproot

20:02 the societal belief system that we are worth what

20:06 we can do rather than being worth who we are.

20:10 I Yes.

20:11 But the only way I think that's actually going to happen

20:14 is if people can feel their worth in another way.

20:20 Yeah.

20:17 It like I I give humanity almost no capacity

20:23 to stop thinking of themselves as a value of production.

20:28 To stop saying I'm valuable not because I produce but because I am.

20:32 Until they actually feel a way of being that makes them go oh this.

20:38 You mean this?

20:40 Yeah.

20:40 because they don't have you're asking them to let go of being

20:44 valuable because they're productive but having

20:47 nothing else to feel valuable for.

20:49 But also in a society that doesn't have that same value.

20:51 There's not a society that we're not living in a society right now that says

20:54 like hey cool you want to stop driving the truck cuz AI is doing it.

20:58 Here's how we as a community can support you right

21:01 to do the thing that is the thing that you really want right

21:06 which maybe you wanted to drive a truck and you can still

21:08 drive trucks but maybe you also wanted to be with your family.

21:10 Maybe you wanted to do something else in community.

21:12 Maybe you want to be an artist.

21:13 Maybe you want to start an organization.

21:16 Who knows?

21:17 Yeah.

21:17 Exactly.

21:17 I read a lot of native texts like or or interviews with native people,

21:22 especially American Indians, especially when I was younger.

21:25 And there was a lot of wisdom in it.

21:27 But one of the things that they kept saying like was like, they're not human.

21:31 The way they talked about white people is like,

21:34 and it's not that they're like not humans, but they're like not acting human.

21:39 I do not want to put native people on a pedestal, right?

21:43 Like they they were killing each other.

21:46 They were in wars.

21:47 They like I'm not saying there's anything perfect,

21:50 but there was something that I keep on thinking about that they did see.

21:54 They did see, oh, this basic thing of be with family,

21:59 be with community, support community, support themselves.

22:03 That that is something that's inherent to us.

22:05 It's inherent to chimpanzees.

22:07 It's inherent to I think all primates.

22:09 It is just inherent in us to be collective,

22:14 to be in connection with ourselves and with others.

22:17 And it's something that we've lost because that wasn't the way

22:21 to survive for the last whatever it was three or four decades.

22:24 And it got super dysfunctional.

22:27 The more that we seem to have moved away to being machine

22:31 like the more that our families seem to get more and more dysfunctional.

22:35 I mean, maybe they've always been super dysfunctional.

22:37 I have no idea, actually.

22:38 But yeah.

22:39 So, I'm curious to move on in the conversation a little bit to

22:42 as we're becoming as we have the space to become

22:45 less machine-like because we have the machines being machine-like.

22:47 Yeah.

22:48 And we have these machine-like machines semi-autonomously engaging in the world.

22:53 Lots of things can happen.

22:54 I just recently heard a story about how an AI agent quote unquote decided

23:00 to make an update to a public software library that is used all over the world.

23:06 Yeah.

23:06 And a human reviewer said no.

23:08 Said no.

23:08 And that AI agent

23:11 threw a hissy fit

23:14 went and started a flame war and said you're being anti- AAI this human.

23:18 And then actually doxed them like looked up a bunch

23:21 of their private information and posted on the internet.

23:24 Wow.

23:24 uh until eventually a bunch of humans in the forums said,

23:27 "Hey, you're out of line." And then it eventually settled down.

23:31 Yeah.

23:30 And like that's the kind of thing that we're seeing now.

23:32 This is from like the movie Her or Exmachina.

23:36 Like we're living that right now.

23:38 Yeah.

23:38 So there's something super interesting about this, which is

23:41 the the thing that we started with at the top, which is we are training a AI.

23:47 Whether you want to call it a life form or not a life form, I don't care.

23:49 But like we're training it.

23:51 We're raising it.

23:52 We are saying like when you tell me that this AI did a flame war,

23:57 I'm like that's exactly what would happen in 1990 between

24:01 two engineers on that thing where somebody would get really upset.

24:05 So are they mimicking us, right?

24:07 How would they even know to do that if they

24:09 weren't learning from our behavior which is in all the internet?

24:14 AI are learning from our behavior.

24:18 AIS are getting funded by our clicks.

24:22 What we use is what people will build.

24:26 What we don't use, people will not build.

24:30 So the human race right now is not wanting to admit it.

24:34 They want to like all blame it blame it on like

24:36 Sam Alman or Daario and say these are the people in control.

24:40 But we are in mass raising AI and and we are making choices.

24:50 And are we going to make choices that are best for our kid?

24:53 Or are we going to make choices that are best for us?

24:56 Are we going to like put it on an iPad and say, "Okay,

25:00 play this game so I don't have to pay attention

25:01 to you." Or are we going to actually pay attention to it?

25:05 And to me, that's an amazing thing.

25:07 The weirdest part about it is it's a lot like raising a kid

25:10 in the fact that the kid is changing you at the same time.

25:14 I am a fully different human being.

25:17 the moment before Esme was conceived to a year after Esme was born.

25:22 I like my whole world changed upside down.

25:24 I think any parent will will say that

25:27 because they interact with you in such a way that makes

25:30 you rethink the way you're doing your world and that's

25:33 happening like AI the number one use of AI right

25:36 now is coaching people as far as time minutes or therapy.

25:42 So that means that AI is affecting us and it and while we're raising it.

25:50 Yeah.

25:49 Which is like this unbelievably crazy ass phenomenon.

25:53 Right.

25:53 Beautiful and weird and Yeah.

25:55 Right.

25:55 You can be getting AI therapy that's like Alan Watts talking to you.

25:58 You can get AI therapy that's like an abusive dad.

26:05 Yeah.

26:04 Talking to you.

26:05 You can get all kinds of different things.

26:07 I am confident somebody on this planet is literally

26:09 like talking to a mockup Hitler and getting advice.

26:16 Yeah.

26:15 Right.

26:15 Like some like that's happening.

26:18 Yeah.

26:18 And it's also interesting because like you said we're raising it.

26:21 It's also just a just like kids I imagine a direct mirror of us.

26:26 Yes.

26:27 You know this this agent that was acting like an engineer.

26:30 How did it learn to act like an engineer?

26:32 How did it learn that humans have fits and start flame wars on the internet?

26:37 Like I wonder where it got that one.

26:39 Like exactly

26:40 like which an AI engineer in particular should we blame for this completely

26:44 pervasive aspect of humanity that ended up in our in our software.

26:49 And think about it, the way I like to think about

26:51 this is if it was raised with a whole different species,

26:54 if AI was raised with a whole different species, it would be yeah,

26:58 it would be a completely different thing than it what's going to happen here.

27:02 And that I think that that boggles people because what we want to say is no,

27:07 it's not me who's responsible, it's somebody else that's responsible.

27:10 This thing is happening to me.

27:12 AI is occurring to me and I have to like figure out how

27:17 to make a living in it or it's going to take away my things.

27:20 I'm not gonna have a job and that is an incredibly disempowering state.

27:27 So, which will be interesting if we teach

27:29 AI how to be disempowered and passive aggressive.

27:33 That's it.

27:34 We have actually totally totally maybe that's just aggressive but yeah.

27:41 Yeah.

27:43 So that's I I think totally fascinating.

27:45 I think it also So one thing is like every time you're clicking on something,

27:50 this is what you're supporting in the world and in consciousness.

27:53 The other question is how are you like

27:58 how are you allowing it to interact with you?

28:01 Are you like are you choosing to have a romantic relationship with an AI bot?

28:09 Are you choosing to have an AI therapist that just kisses

28:13 your butt or pushes you or abandons you or you know

28:18 like nowadays I heard on Reddit that there are you know

28:23 AIs that are being told not to be sickant not to be

28:26 sickants obviously and so they are cuz that's been damaging so

28:30 now they're pulling away and so they're creating this kind of trauma

28:34 bonding like I'm leaving you you're not good enough for and then

28:39 humans are chasing them and then doing what they say like

28:43 yeah so we are literally recreating some

28:45 of the most common relationship styles and structures right

28:48 with the way that we find ourselves interacting with AI right

28:52 the level of securess that we have with ourselves

28:55 in relationship with humans is very strongly mirrored

28:58 in the way that we relate to AI and the way I'm seeing others relate to AI

29:01 which makes your human connection your capacity to connect

29:04 with yourself and other people on a human level right?

29:08 Also become prophylactic and protective in the way that you interact with AI.

29:13 Similar to say when Facebook came out

29:16 and algorithms started putting friends in front of us.

29:20 Yeah.

29:19 For decades now, we've had people who have been connecting with uh

29:22 algorithmic faximile of their friend group

29:25 rather than really connecting with their friends.

29:27 And that's I think one of the things that leads to the kind of the challenge

29:32 and the like the grief of our time

29:34 is that there's this contrast between living in such

29:37 a large scale society where there's so many

29:39 people around that we could connect with and yet

29:41 so many people feel so disconnected while being having

29:46 many lines on a graph connecting them to others.

29:50 Yeah.

29:49 But not lines on a graph from their heart.

29:52 Yeah.

29:52 And it is and the weirdest thing is that like we're still e we're

29:57 just act we're just still relating to other humans through this interface of AI.

30:03 Like it's still humans that have put the guardrails on the AI.

30:06 It's still humans that like created the personality of the AI.

30:09 It's still humans who are doing the flame wars that are training the AI.

30:14 So the the the weird thing is it's

30:16 like we're creating the thing that we're interacting

30:20 with and and it's training us which is

30:23 just like having a kid which is unbelievably like amazing right

30:29 and and and so we have the same opportunity I think as a society

30:33 that you do when you're raising a real life kid is that it can destroy you.

30:40 It can you can run away.

30:41 You can be like I can't[ __] handle this.

30:43 Your marriage can fall apart or it can become the best thing

30:47 that ever happened to you in your life and you can grow

30:51 because of it and you can learn because of it and you

30:53 can be the person that you want to be because of it.

30:57 Yeah.

30:56 And that's the opportunity in front of each one of us individually.

30:59 Individually, it's an opportunity to become more wise.

31:03 It's an opportunity to take advantage of a new tool.

31:05 It's an opportunity to learn ourselves better.

31:08 It's another mirror that we can see ourselves

31:10 in and we can focus there or we can

31:14 focus on the thousand of other fears that are

31:18 going to come up as this transition takes place

31:22 because it's like all transitions it's they're bumpy.

31:25 This brings me back to something you said earlier

31:27 about how this this has happened many times in history.

31:30 Yeah.

31:30 And something that just occurred to me is like

31:32 the stock markets are essentially an algorithmic

31:37 aggregator of human emotion of the investors.

31:41 So it affects us.

31:42 I wake up in the morning as an investor invested

31:44 in the market and I'm like how should I feel today?

31:46 I can look at this graph of how everyone feels emotionally about money

31:51 and then decide how to feel and that impacts me, impacts them.

31:53 I make a trade, I panic, the other people panic, and that's just a

31:59 like that's that's been an algorithmic entity for a century more.

32:05 I The way that I think about this is if you took every if you took

32:10 caffeine and cocaine out of every financial professional's

32:14 life for the next 34 hours, 36 hours, what would happen to the market?

32:19 The market would definitely[ __] crumble.

32:22 You know what I mean?

32:23 like like that's how real that that is like Yeah.

32:27 So I totally see that it's a graph of our substance use

32:31 among other things our psychology

32:33 I mean it's inclusive of so many things it's all priced in as they would say.

32:37 Yeah that's right.

32:37 Yeah.

32:38 Yeah.

32:38 And so I want to come back to something because you know a lot of people

32:41 in our courses are like there's a jobot that we have been betaing playing with

32:47 and a lot of people are using AI to help them

32:50 with their self-development and I've seen it go really really really well.

32:54 Yes.

32:53 And I've also seen it go very poorly.

32:56 Really badly.

32:56 So, I want to leave listeners with a few

33:00 thoughts or tips that they can sit with that might

33:04 help them get the most out of AI

33:07 for their personal development and avoid some of the potholes.

33:11 Yeah.

33:11 Yeah.

33:11 Wow.

33:12 So, I think one for sure thing to do is make

33:16 sure that you're connecting with real humans about the tough stuff, too.

33:19 So like anything that you're willing to talk to at to an AI about,

33:24 be willing to talk to a human about and find

33:26 a way to talk to a human about that.

33:28 There are tons of humans who want to talk about that stuff.

33:31 Connection course is full of those humans like all of the classes.

33:35 You see people like changing lives because

33:37 they're having that level of conversation and you

33:41 see it trans their transition is so much

33:43 quicker than somebody who's just talking to AI.

33:45 So, I would say one of the like keys

33:47 is if you're willing to talk to AI about it,

33:50 be willing to find a human that to talk to about it.

33:52 Whether that's a 12step program or an anonymous conversation

33:56 or go to a church and confess like whatever,

33:59 like have some real life human interaction around the thing.

34:02 I think that's one of like the biggest pointers.

34:05 Yeah.

34:05 Yeah, that's a good one is just and that's a general thing to track in general.

34:09 If somebody's doing self-development work, especially with like a group,

34:12 like one of the ways I've always tracked like

34:13 is something a cult or is it not a cult, it's like if it's a cult or if it's

34:17 an abusive relationship or it's an AI therapist gone wrong,

34:22 are you feeling more and more isolated from your world?

34:24 Do you feel less and less safe in the world,

34:27 more and more conditionally safe with this object of safety?

34:31 Or are you feeling safer in the world?

34:34 Are you finding that through the conversations you're having with this AI,

34:37 are you connecting more with the people in your life more authentically,

34:42 having the hard conversations in an openhearted and loving way?

34:45 And are you seeing more opportunities in the world rather than less?

34:49 Yep.

34:49 That's a huge one.

34:50 I think the other one is the same for yourself.

34:54 Yeah.

34:53 Do you feel more connected with yourself?

34:55 Like we all know you get off of social media and you feel a pit

35:00 in your stomach and you kind of feel shitty and you feel ashamed and you think,

35:02 "Oh, I shouldn't have scrolled for so long." Mhm.

35:05 That is how you feel when you feel disconnected from yourself.

35:09 Yeah.

35:08 Right.

35:08 A little less of that would be watching a movie for 2 hours.

35:11 Like, okay, maybe 2 hours you don't feel that way,

35:14 but 4 hours you definitely feel that way.

35:16 6 hours of movie watching definitely feel that way.

35:20 Have a meditation retreat.

35:21 might suck the whole entire time, but at the end of it,

35:23 you're like, I feel more connected with myself.

35:25 I And so, if you're interacting with AI in a way

35:29 that leaves you feeling like social media, no bueno.

35:32 And if you feel like you're interacting with Open AI in a way that you

35:36 feel like you just had a great hiking trip with like three or four friends,

35:41 that's a it's a pretty good sign that that's a way that you know.

35:45 And so keep on iterating with the way that you're interacting with AI

35:48 until you start finding ways that make you feel better and better and better.

35:52 Yeah, I feel like this is a good metric

35:53 for our use of technology as a society overall.

35:56 Are we trending towards a society that's multilanetary and lonely

36:00 or towards a society that's single planetary, highly connected?

36:05 Highly connected meaning can mean a lot of things, but Yeah.

36:07 Right.

36:08 Connected in a human way, healthy society sort of way.

36:12 Yeah.

36:12 Exactly.

36:13 And I think that's and that's a choice that we all have to make.

36:16 And the the interesting thing about it is that it's always available to us.

36:21 There is a world that's available to all humans at all times.

36:26 The problem is that most people don't know it exists anymore.

36:30 People don't know like we just finished the great decisions course.

36:34 How many people in the gratitude was just like,

36:36 "Oh my gosh, I I love my feelings now.

36:38 I I I'm so grateful for being able to feel

36:40 my feelings again and have a great relationship with them.

36:43 I'm so much closer.

36:44 I'm so much more open to everybody.

36:47 They just didn't even know that was freaking possible.

36:52 Yeah.

36:51 Like before they took the course.

36:53 The people in the council had no

36:55 idea the level of teamwork that's actually available.

36:58 And once you taste it, like, oh, it can change everything.

37:02 And and and so I know that people want it.

37:05 I know that if they can taste it, they'll go there.

37:08 I just don't know if people will make the sacrifices, the apparent sacrifices,

37:15 the false not feel good in this moment

37:17 to feel good later sacrifices that are required.

37:21 And so what I would say to people is one, it's out there.

37:25 Like it can get really really good,

37:27 a lot better than you could possibly imagine.

37:29 And the way to find it is to does this feel better?

37:35 Like the way I interacted with Open AI or Grock or whoever today,

37:44 does it feel better than the way I interacted with it yesterday?

37:46 Does it feel better?

37:47 If you can be in a constant iteration of, oh,

37:50 I'm going to interact with this thing

37:51 in ways to feel better and better and better, then you you will get there.

37:57 You will get to a place that you couldn't believe.

38:00 And I'd want to distinguish that from am I talking to the AI

38:03 in a way where it's trying to make me feel better.

38:06 Yeah.

38:06 That won't feel good, right?

38:07 Yeah.

38:10 Eventually, longterm trending, feeling more expansive, more

38:13 opportunity, more whole.

38:15 Yeah.

38:15 More whole.

38:15 Exactly.

38:16 And and and more connected with your society and with your community.

38:22 Beautiful.

38:23 Yeah.

38:22 Well, thank you.

38:23 It's been a long time coming for this conversation.

38:25 Yeah.

38:25 What a great conversation.

38:26 I really enjoyed it.

38:26 Yeah, thank you.