Episode #6: Ryan Kemmer & Josh Stovall

Ryan Kemmer is a software engineer who focuses primarily on artificial intelligence applications and data science. He is an Arizona native who currently lives in Manhattan, NYC, and loves to travel and experience new things. In his free time, he is an avid musician, composer, drummer, and electronic artist. 

Josh Stovall has a BA in music from Arizona State University. He is a computer programmer in the medical industry and a music educator. In his free time, he creates music education software designed to help people at different stages of their music learning journeys. 

In this episode, we discuss Ryan's experiences as a relatively new resident of Manhattan, NYC, specifically his observations related to living in a densely populated city and how it affects various dimensions of everyday life. We also talk about recent and future developments in artificial intelligence and touch on the philosophy of human cognition and understanding. We conclude by discussing the relationship between human creativity, fulfillment and artificial intelligence. 

© Hunter Langenhorst, creator of The Language & Life Podcast. All rights reserved. Episodes, audio recordings, original music, and artwork are protected by copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution is prohibited without written permission.

Transcript

Observations about NYC

Hunter 0:18

So you're in town from New York City, and I thought while you're here, we better get you on the podcast. And I'm so happy you're here, so you can tell us about what New York City is like.

Ryan 0:26

Oh, I'm happy to be here. I'm on the radio. No, but uh it's great to be in Arizona. I grew up in Arizona, so it's a very special place to me. And also I lived in Tucson for a very long time, and then I lived in Phoenix for a pretty long time, like almost 10 years. So I have some like pretty strong lifelong connections in Phoenix. And uh yeah, it's very important to me. There's something like very mystical and eerie about Arizona. In the nature sense, yeah, but just in general. It's like a feeling that it's hard to replicate, I think. Because I've done a lot of traveling, and there's not it's it's because we're like in a barren desert and it's a very strange ecosystem.

Hunter 1:10

Yeah, and I think it called it can also be that way when you grow up in a place and then it just takes on this sort of unique quality compared to everywhere else you go in the world, and it always like uh experientially has a different vibe than everywhere else. You never feel like a tourist, you never have that sense of of wonder, but I guess maybe you're saying Arizona does have that sense of wonder for you.

Ryan 1:31

It does. No, when I'm here, I want to explore. Like I want to go into the mountains and find crazy places because I know there's some insane scenery.

Hunter 1:42

We have the Antelope Canyon, we have Painted Desert, both of which are in the upper northeast part of the state. We have Oak Creek Canyon, which is currently on fire. Unfortunately, the great that's a great one. That's a great grand one. You hiked uh was it called Aravipa Canyon? Aravipa Canyon. Ara Vipa, that was with you know your dad and and yeah, and my friend Arlen, who's getting married. Cool.

Ryan 2:10

I'm here for his wedding. Uh yeah, no, Aravipa is really cool. Have you have you been out there?

Hunter 2:15

Nope, never hiked there.

Ryan 2:16

I would really recommend it. I think uh Southern Arizona in that like little quadrant, it it's like the I would call it like the wet Sonoran desert, where it's the Sonoran desert, like it has all the cacti. It's you know, like uh um uh all of the normal desert wildlife, but it just gets like a little bit more rainfall than other places like Phoenix or like northern Mexico, like Sonora, Mexico. Like it the Tucson area and surrounding regions just gets like a little bit more rain and it makes it come to life. And Aravipa Canyon is one of those places where it's just like a desert, but it's just incredibly alive. Like there's like running streams, there's like a lot of cacti, a lot of wildlife.

Hunter 2:57

That that contrast between the desert and then the moisture that comes in with the big trees that it allows to flourish is like really beautiful, I find as well. Yeah. What part did you grow up in in the valley, Josh?

Josh 3:10

Uh I grew up all over. So I was born in Tucson, and then I lived up in North Phoenix, and then um around high school moved down to Tempe.

Hunter 3:20

Do you would you also say it's mystical to you?

Josh 3:23

Um certain parts of it. Like when you're inner city, Phoenix, it's not so not so mystical.

Hunter 3:31

There's just corporate buildings thrown about everywhere. Shane and I talk about that quite often. How you visit places like New Orleans, uh just in my personal experience, or Santa Fe, which have like really unique histories and really unique architecture and and peoples who have been populated in those areas, and you can see that reflected. And there's been there are there are currently still restaurants that have been operated there for maybe a century or or close to it. And then for some reason in the Phoenix Valley, you look around and it's like corporate-owned restaurant, like copy and paste fast food restaurant X, copy and paste uh home goods store Y. And I think you you miss out, at least for me in that regard, miss out on some of the feeling that you're looking at something special. Um, it could be because I grew up here as well, and my eyes are just used to it. Yeah, but yeah, I don't know. So I like that you're both saying you have wonder, it gives me hope that maybe one day I'll gain some wonder back for the Phoenix Valley area. Yeah, the rest of the state, absolutely, it's super pretty.

Ryan 4:33

Well, maybe you'll move out of Phoenix.

Hunter 4:35

Well, yeah, I've never lived in the actual city part, so that's one thing. But nonetheless, I think in the suburbs surrounding Phoenix, it's still very it's not full of special mom and pop stores or restaurants, and I wish it was. Yeah, those are special to me.

Ryan 4:53

But it's wide, and there's something cool about that. It's a lot of space.

Hunter 4:58

And now you live in a space that is perhaps on the far opposite spectrum of Phoenix in terms of a United States city.

Ryan 5:06

Yeah.

Hunter 5:06

Yeah. What is that like? Like we're living in a walkable city with one of the best transportation systems and the probably the best transportation system in the US.

Ryan 5:15

Uh, it's really incredible, it's also really overwhelming. I would say it's like living in a Lego set. Like you ever build a Lego set and you're like, wow, this is really cool. Like, look at this structure I made and all these things, you know. I don't know.

Hunter 5:27

I mean, I don't know if you guys uh Yeah, I definitely built I double I did Legos and Yeah, or like or Lego.

Ryan 5:34

It's like living in like a real life like model. It's like something that it's like, oh, you know, you like built this thing and then we're just gonna throw a bunch of people in there and see what they do. Uh so it feels like you're like living in like a toy or something. It's like this is this thing that has been created by humans for like uh having fun and figuring out what to do with it, you know.

Hunter 5:57

Does it have to do with I was gonna say the lack of nature, but then again, I look at pictures of New York City and it's like there are a lot of trees. Yeah, I mean if you go to parks, Central Park and other parks.

Ryan 6:08

Yeah, but the parks are man-made too, you know. So like the parks are like uh set, you know, it's almost like you build like a model train set and you like place the trees in certain places. Like I I hope what I'm saying is coming across. Yeah, I think something I I've thought about this a little bit, and I'm trying to like figure out a good way to convey it, but it's kind of like living in like a Lego set or a model train set where it's like somebody just decided to build this thing, and yeah, and then you get to be a small little person walking around.

Hunter 6:37

And you see so many people every day, and and maybe you feel like you're in a sort of snow globe, like exactly like contained area.

Ryan 6:45

Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to describe it. Like you're living in a snow globe. Yeah.

Hunter 6:48

Everything does it feel artificial on a day-to-day basis? Because like when I went to Chicago recently, a few months ago, I was literally astonished by the the height of the buildings. For me, I guess that was the first high-rise area I'd been to in my life, an urban area like that of that scale, and I just cranked my neck upwards, and I was like, I sort of get what you're saying. Like, this makes me feel like I am so unbelievably tiny, and that yeah, maybe this is like a snow globe type of vibe.

Josh 7:17

Yeah.

Hunter 7:18

Have you been to New York City, Josh?

Josh 7:19

Uh, I went there as a kid, and we spent a couple days there, a couple hours maybe. Didn't really experience it, you know. We could we were kind of road tripping all over the country at the time, so well that sounds fun um to do that though. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. But I wish I um experienced the city a little more. It'd be cool to go back as a as an adult.

Hunter 7:39

Yeah, I've never been, never been. I mean, I can imagine what it's like because I've been to quite a few European countries and I've been to Japan recently, um, and I'm just always so grateful for the amazing transportation systems there. And I'm like, and you you were just talking about how widespread Phoenix is as a city. The closest thing we have is the light rail and the bus system here. Otherwise, you're driving miles just to get to a store or a restaurant or to go hang out with your friends. Whereas what is it like in New York City? Like, do you literally just go down the elevator from your building and walk somewhere? And then you just Yeah, I can't imagine.

Ryan 8:17

It's a lot of walking around. You I uh I have a bunch of tote bags because you obviously like if you're going around, like you can't like take something and throw it in your car. So you get some tote bags, uh, you get an umbrella because it rains, especially well. I mean, now it hasn't been raining, but from like March through May, it it rains a lot. Uh so you have an umbrella, you have your tote bag. It's kind of cute. It's like like I was saying, it's like being like a Lego figure or something, you know, like you're just like walking around. Um, yeah, and then taking the trains, I do that a lot. I feel like taking the trains, it's fun, but at the same time, it can be really annoying, especially when you actually need to be somewhere. Like I'll take a train to work and it's just jam-packed, like we're like sardines in the train. And the worst day that I had taking the train was or the subway. I mean, like the subway system is uh there was one day in like October of last year where there's just like a ton of people, and it was like 9 a.m., really close to when everybody starts like the nine to five corporate jobs, and I I was down there and I could not get on the train. I had to wait, uh, I had to wait three trains until I finally got one that I could fit on. And even that one I had to like cram on.

unknown 9:30

Yeah.

Hunter 9:30

See, and they say in Japan, I've heard this from other people. It didn't happen to me, and I didn't see at first hand, but that they have workers who will gently nudge you and push you further, push people and pack you in further because the people who are on the outskirts of the train car toward the door are like usually maybe in the US. I I think in Japan people might be more cooperative based on what I've seen. But in the US, I can imagine people not being cooperative and just standing their ground, and you know, I'm already uncomfortable enough. I'm not gonna let someone else come in and push me further into the middle of the car. But hey, everyone's gotta get somewhere. It's the most populous city in the United States. How many millions of people there live there? Do you know how to talk about it?

Ryan 10:07

Yeah, yeah. I think the the full metro area, including New Jersey, parts of Long Island, uh upstate New York, I say upstate with quotes because it's not really upstate. Some people call it upstate, but it's basically just a part of New York that's north of the city, like uh Westchester County. There's another county up there. So, like if you uh count all those areas and Staten Island, which I mean doesn't have that many people, but uh if you count like all those areas, like the metro area, I think it's around like 22 million. Don't quote me on that, but it's more than 20 million, yeah, total. Manhattan alone I think has like a couple million, which is crazy because Manhattan tip tip to tip, it is like 13 miles. Wow, so it's it's very small. And then uh that that's like tip to tip. If you just like uh do the width of Manhattan, that's only like two or three miles, maybe even a little bit less than that. So it's a it's an incredibly dense area. Um and the neighborhood that I live in is in the east village, it's like the lower part of Manhattan, uh on the east side, and it's the most populous or most dense area of the city. Probably of the country. Probably of the city. Oh, yeah, no, of the country. Yeah, I mean like we're all just like stacked on top of each other in the in the east village.

Hunter 11:29

How many floors is your building? Sorry, go ahead.

Ryan 11:31

Yeah, what is the living condition like? Like how many people are in your apartment building? In my apartment building alone, I think there's probably like uh probably 50.

Hunter 11:42

Oh, okay, that's that's a lot less than I was gonna say.

Ryan 11:45

Yeah, yeah, but I live in like a four-story walk-up. Gotcha. Or five-story walk up, five-story walk-up, but on my street for like a block, like I live on the street, 11th Street, yeah, and in between the two avenues, that street alone probably has thousands of people. Wow. Because there's multiple walk-ups, and like the the size of my walk-up, like the width is is like probably from uh this part of your kitchen, Josh, to like the living room. So imagine like a floor that's like this big and you have four apartments stacked. Oh, that's not even a lot of things. Yeah, and then yeah, and then like six floors of that. Oh my god.

Josh 12:23

So you have a bed, yeah, you have a fridge. Yeah. But it's not it's not about the apartment, it's about the experience, it's about being there where the actions happening. Exactly. That makes sense.

Hunter 12:34

Yeah, that's one thing I'm definitely gonna ask you about like what you what kind of sacrifices you see people making to live there, uh where that they don't have to make in other parts of the country, and why you think people are drawn to make those kind of sacrifices there. And I guess we can start by asking you why you were drawn there in the first place among all the different places you could move to in the United States.

Ryan 12:55

I I just thought it was interesting. I thought that it was like very extreme, and I felt like, well, you know, you only live one life, so you know, you gotta go somewhere extreme. I mean, I probably could have gone somewhere more extreme, like I could have gone to like um like uh Shanghai, but I don't speak Chinese, so that would be really hard. I also could have gone to like I don't know, Mexico City, but which actually would be sick. I would totally live in Mexico City, but it would be kind of hard. It would be like just a harder transition because I don't speak Spanish. But I I it would be a hard transition nonetheless because I'm just like not acclimated in that culture. And like in New York, I'm definitely not, I don't feel very acclimated because there is like a very interesting culture there, and I think it takes a long time to like fully understand it. Like a lot of people says it takes years. Um, but I've been there for a little bit over a year, and I like kind of get it, and it's fun to learn, so it's definitely a learning experience. It's kind of like being in college, like first year of college vibes for me at least. Um but yeah, I guess I wanted to go there because it's just really extreme, and other extreme places are far and involve speaking other languages. So I think New York is probably the craziest place to go.

Hunter 14:14

Although when we think of extreme, there like extreme could be different things on a on a spectrum. Like maybe a a really remote place like central Alaska is extreme in a different sense.

Ryan 14:27

Oh, that would be so extreme.

Hunter 14:29

So, what drew you to the really highly populated, dense, busy, loud, happening, artistic, multilingual, multicultural zone?

Ryan 14:40

Yeah, I mean, you meet a lot of people. Like, I I mean, yeah, you're you're definitely right. There's definitely there's more extreme places you could go. Like I could go to Florida and like live with a bunch of alligators in the middle of the swamp grove. Yeah, yeah, that would be very extreme. But in New York, it's extreme like socially, like it there is uh a huge social scene there, and uh it's absolutely nuts. It almost like makes you think about human evolution a little bit, or you think about like why people like humanity exists because you just like end up in these swarms of people and you're just like an ant. But it's cool to interact with people, it's like wow, this is like a conscious person that has lived an entire life, and I'm next to them, and I don't even talk to them. Or sometimes you do talk to them. That's the fun part, is like it's very easy to talk to people there because there's just so many people, so you meet a lot of people.

Hunter 15:37

Is there like a super big difference between Arizona and and New York City in terms of being like approachability of the average stranger?

Ryan 15:44

Or um yeah, probably. I'd say people in New York are more approachable or more willing to be approached.

Hunter 15:51

Yeah, that's a nice feeling. Yeah, like if you're at a restaurant or a bar or like a jazz show, I don't know. Like that they're willing to talk to you, not just shut you down or be like, oh my gosh, why is this person talking to you?

Ryan 16:03

Yeah, yeah. I don't think anybody in New York would be like, oh my god, like what is this person doing? I don't think anybody will just be your friend, but I think everybody would be like willing to chop it up with you if you were just like started shooting the shit with them and and saying, like, oh, you know, like how's it going? Like, what are you up to? I they would totally chop it up with you. I don't know if they would, you know, be your best friend, but um, I I don't think people would shut you down. If they did shut you down, it would be really weird in New York, whereas like here it would be normal, I think, to shut somebody down because you're like, I don't know, you like get away from me.

Hunter 16:39

Is it sort of the sense that people there understand what it's like to pack up your life and move there and go out on a limb and try something really new and adventurous? So they generally treat people the way that they hope to be treated or that they are appreciative that they were treated when they first moved there? Is that that kind of general feeling? Like pass it on. I was once this adventurer, and now I'm gonna help you out in your in the initial steps of yours.

Ryan 17:07

Yeah, I think so, but also I think it's just inherently human to have empathy and sympathy for people. And I think like being in a place like New York, it's very human, quote unquote, where you know you're just like stuck with a bunch of humans, whether you like it or not. You know, if you're if you're living in a crammed apartment building, you know, you're gonna have a lot of interactions with people against your will, because I I mean, unless you move somewhere else, you're just forced to interact with people all the time. So it's a very human thing when you're forced to interact with a lot of humans. Like, I don't know, if we were just like if you were stuck in a box with like 10 people, you'd even if you were even if you weren't like gonna be like best friends with everybody, you know, you'd you'd start talking to people, you'd be like, Oh yeah, who are you? What are you doing here? Right. And that's just like a very human thing to do. Like it's like curiosity and empathy, yeah, and uh a lot of different things.

Hunter 18:01

That's a good point. And there's a sociologist who I read a lot of named Irving Goffman, and Goffman says that even when we're in the mere presence, physical presence of somebody, there is a social situation that has been born. And I imagine that when you're in a place like New York where you're constantly in physical presence of others, they can see you. And like as soon as you step out of your apartment, there's probably people in your home. This is just how I imagine it, right? Like the really intensely densely popular populated apartment buildings, or you walk out from the main lobby and go out onto the street, and there's just like hustle and bustle, and you don't have what we might call in sociology, like a backstage to mind your own business and to do the things that you want to do. You're constantly seen. And so do you ever do you get the sense that you are like, do you get a sense of stress that you constantly have to put on like your best interactional self to the world there because there's so many people around you?

Ryan 18:56

I mean, yeah, there's no backstage. I I think that's kind of cool in a way. Yeah, there's not, but I mean, like the the one place where I feel like I do have a backstage is my bedroom when I'm sleeping. Hopefully, right? Uh-huh. Yeah, that's like the one place is like when I'm asleep, it's like, okay, that's like me time. But other than that, you know, I mean, like, you know, you you can hear neighbors through the wall, you can hear people outside, and then you go outside, and even if you do something stupid, like you go and you're like, Oh, I really want to get uh, you know, a Dr. Pepper. I don't know. I I personally haven't had the urge to just go get a Dr. Pepper, but I'm just making an example. Right. I have one right in front of me. That's probably where I got it from. Yep. In my brain, I made that connection. But if you want to go get a Dr. Pepper, it's like, oh, you know, you're gonna have to go outside and you're gonna go out there, and somebody's gonna be, you know, wearing like a $2,000 dress as soon as you like walk out on the street, and there's gonna be people there like having the time of their life, and you're just there getting a Dr. Pepper. So it's kind of like a lot of pressure sometimes. I mean, I think it's fun. It sounds fun to me, yeah, yeah.

Hunter 20:03

And I agree with you that oftentimes in life, not having that backstage can actually be a little bit like relieving in an interesting sense. Like once you give up the feeling that you have to constantly manage or put forth your best self to the world, and everybody has issues, and everybody looks a little disheveled in the morning. And if you run out to get your Dr. Pepper at at 11:30 p.m. after a nap or something, no one's gonna judge you. And if everybody is so tightly compact, then everybody is aware a little bit more acutely of people's problems and and and and discomforts and insecurities, and so maybe that becomes less of a preoccupation for yourself.

Ryan 20:43

Yeah, yeah, you have to be like really sure of yourself, and I feel like that's like something that I've learned and was like a good experience for me in New York, and something that I'm still like working through, to be honest, is like excuse me, you you being in those situations all the time, you have to be like very confident in yourself and be like, Oh, well, this is who I am, and it doesn't really matter what other people think of me, because yeah, some days you're gonna go downstairs and you're gonna be all disheveled and you're gonna go get a Dr. Pepper. Yeah, and we all have those days, yeah. That's just like who you are. So if you're if you're gonna be a fake person, you know, you'd be like, Oh, you know, I'm gonna like dress up and look nice and like go get a Dr. Pepper, but it's like, well, that's not who you are. And if you if you try to do that for too long, then that's just gonna wear on you. Yeah, my my biggest thing right now is like I I have a lot of uh uh FOMO in social situations where I feel like there's always some sort of social event or something going on, and it's hard. Yeah, you sometimes me personally, I always want to go to everything, and I can't because it like burns me out, like being in those social situations all the time. So I've had to like get better, and I'm working on this currently, being like, oh no, like I can't do that, and being like chill with that.

Hunter 21:59

That makes sense. I mean, goodness, if there was constantly flyers or emails or however you find out about these events, or just messages from tech text messages from friends saying like there's not only one event happening this Friday, but there's like seven you can choose from because it's New York City and like the best artists in the world. Reside there. Yeah, you have to make choices. Among the best artists. Yeah, you have to make choices. Um, it's just so different. And that's I think I would also fall victim to that kind of FOMO. Like the sensation that you're missing out because you're at the precipice of the most interesting place in the world and you don't want to be doing the wrong thing and using your time white uh unwisely. Um but just going back to like what we were saying about being seen in public. I mean, in Arizona here, I can go on a walk like in the neighborhood by my apartment complex and pretty much like not be seen by anybody. I can just enjoy a peaceful, somewhat solitary walk. It's mostly darkly darkly lit. That's a kind of interesting way to say that, but no one really sees me. And can you go on a walk like that in the in Manhattan and just get some no?

Ryan 23:07

No, uh it's not possible. Maybe at like three in the morning, but even then you'd cross some paths with people, I think.

Hunter 23:14

Yeah, I imagine 3 a.m., 4 a.m. people are always doing something. That's really cool though, I think. It's so different, and I can see knowing you. I mean, you've been to Antarctica. Hello, you've been to you studied abroad in Singapore, right? You've been to countries like uh um have you been to Malaysia? Yeah, yeah, I've been to Malaysia. Yeah, you've been to Malaysia and Cambodia, yeah, yeah. Yeah, what when you were in Singapore, you did these like side trips, right?

Ryan 23:44

I just went to Indonesia. I just got back from Indonesia at the end of March. I was there for a couple weeks just going island hopping. Yeah, strong.

Hunter 23:53

Saw some what are the what are those lizards called? Komodo dragons. Komodo dragons. Yeah, those are good pictures you took of those. Those are some big boys.

Ryan 24:02

Yeah, no, what's crazy about Komodo dragons is um so there's this one island in Indonesia. Uh, it's literally called Komodo. But Komodo dragons have been there for thousands of years, probably. Just you know, hashing it up, being Komodo dragons, they just eat deer. Yeah, they're just like giant lizards. They they they eat deer, they'll they'll eat like big mammals, like whatever comes in their path. They like humans. Uh they okay. So here's the thing with Komodo dragons and humans. I feel like this is where it gets really interesting, is like humans settled on that island like a very long time ago. I don't know the exact time frame, but let's let's just say like thousands of years ago, humans got to this island with Komodo dragons. Uh over the years, like they just developed this kind of uh symbiotic relationship where it's like, I'm not gonna mess with you, you're not gonna mess with me. So Komodo dragons don't openly attack humans, they're also not really openly scared of humans. Humans, I mean, you and me would probably be pretty scared of Komodo dragons if you saw them. Like they're scary looking things. If you just like approach one on the street, you would be like, Oh my god, get me away from here. But the humans living there are kind of like, oh, you know, that's just like a big lizard that lives here. Uh so they have this weird relationship where they're not scared of each other, they don't really mess with each other. The thing is, if you really piss off a Komodo dragon, like they will attack you and they will uh I mean they'll they'll bite you and the bite is deadly. Uh they have this saliva that has a lot of bacteria in it, and basically they'll start eating away at you, and that bacteria eventually just kills you. Uh, and then you'd you'd probably just have a terrible death of a bunch of Komodo dragons feasting on your body. Sounds absolutely horrendous. Yeah. But uh that that probably won't happen. There, there was a a story. Uh, when I was there, people were telling the story of a couple years ago. Some Singaporean guy went out into the woods in the middle of the night, and he won he wanted to be like a Komodo dragon whisperer person, and he had like some sort of potion that he was gonna tame the Komodo dragons with. Like it was something like not really based in reality. Like he was kind of not doing uh the right thing, you know. And so he went out in the woods in the middle of the night, and uh he got killed by Komodo dragons. Oh shoot. Yeah, but that see, that's the thing, is like he was he was asking for it, you know. I'm I'm sure it's like very sad, and I'm sure like his family um is like um, you know, uh not happy about that, and it's a very sad situation. But but still, it's it's kind of like, well, don't mess with them.

Hunter 26:53

That's the general mentality. Like, hey, we have generally coexisted with these creatures for a while, and the news stories only pop up when people try to like mess with them or do something annoying, like provoke them basically. That's really interesting. I wonder if like are bears similar? Because I mean, you don't see typically bears going out of their way to like see a human being on a trail and immediately start chasing them and take them down. It's like mama bears provoked, they get too close to the cubs. Um, in a way, I think bears might be similar, I guess.

Ryan 27:26

Yeah, yeah, I think most bears. So I I only really know about like black bears and brown bears. Black bears, you're supposed to scare away because they'll they'll kind of like uh become cowardly and they'll they'll think like, oh, you know, this is a big human, I'm not gonna mess with them.

Hunter 27:45

They're sort of like big raccoons, yeah, exactly. They like trash and they like like scavenging and whatnot.

Ryan 27:51

Yeah, they just wanna they're just curious. But uh grizzly bears or like brown other brown bears, those ones, if they see you, they'll try to attack you. So you have to kind of or polar bears above all. Oh, yeah. So the the the what I've learned is like if it's um if it's black, attack because you they'll run away. If it's brown, get down, because they're gonna try to kill you, so you should just like pretend like you're dead. So they just get they exactly.

Hunter 28:18

So they think they won already and they don't have to like actively try to like claw you and whatnot.

Ryan 28:23

Exactly. But if if it's white, good night. Because polar bears, if you saw a polar bear in the wild, it does not matter what you do, it's gonna kill you. Like it's gonna try to kill you. So if you if you go out into the Arctic, uh specifically like the in the northern hemisphere, that's where polar bears live, is only in the Arctic Circle. If you go into the Arctic Circle and you're just wandering around uh in an area where there's polar bears, you have to carry a gun. Because if you don't, uh yeah, you're you're gonna potentially be killed by a polar bear. And if if you're out and about and you see a polar bear, you have to shoot it because otherwise it's gonna a hundred percent kill you.

Hunter 29:02

Or drive away fast and be by your vehicle.

Ryan 29:04

Yeah, exactly.

Hunter 29:06

Yeah. Thank goodness that we don't live in like a majority of us don't live in territories where we're actively hunted by other large megafauna, like these creatures that can take us out. I think about that sometimes. What would life be like if we had like pterodactyls flying around that could pick us up with their claws and fly away to their big nest and just that's it? Thank goodness we don't have that would suck an existence like that.

Josh 29:31

Ryan, I've got a question for you. Yeah, you're a successful guy. I don't know, but in New York, um you know, sometimes in Arizona, I feel like there's not there's opportunity here, right? But maybe not at the scale of these big mega cities. Like like you you get an email from Netflix or something, and uh you scroll to the bottom and it says New York City. Like all these companies are headquartered in New York City. And whereas in Arizona, maybe we have Intel, Carvana, State Farm, but there's maybe a dozen of these big companies. What's the corporate life out there like out there? Do you do you find like what's people's work ethic like? Do people work harder out there? Do you think um yeah, maybe you could just talk about that? Like, what's the work life like?

Ryan 30:19

Yeah, yeah. I I think people a hundred percent work harder in New York, and I don't know if it's always a healthy thing. I think it's almost like uh an environmental thing where if I I don't know, like I do you guys know about uh social construct theory? It's like uh it's like a a philosophy. Basically, the the philosophy from what I remember about social construct theory is wherever you're from, you turn into that type of person. So like we're from the US, so we're probably Democrat or Republican politically, or somewhere in between there, maybe somewhere like a little bit outside of it, but you're kind of in that realm. Uh you probably speak English to a certain extent or Spanish, uh, maybe another language, but you're exposed to English all the time. Maybe a little bit of Spanish, but like mainly English, because it's primary primary language. Um, so so you're gonna end up being a certain way. Like your brain is gonna be like talking to you in English, you know, when you have dreams, and you're gonna be exposed to this kind of political struct spectrum and this kind of uh environment, and you're gonna do things in your little fishbowl that you're from. I think that in New York, it's a I mean, obviously it's still in the the US, but it it is like a fishbowl, like it's it's its own little like microenvironment where people uh have a culture and then that culture kind of becomes contagious and it just becomes normal. One of those things that I think is really normal, especially like in my world, specifically in New York, is people work really hard, and it's it's not uncommon to hear people bragging about like, oh, you know, I do like an 80-hour week, I do like a 100-hour week, and it's almost like a rite of passage where uh it's like, oh my god, okay, that's like a a very important person, you know, they work 100 hours a week, or like basically their work is their life. So I think um, yeah, that's uh that it it the work culture is different. People associate their identity a lot with their work because but you know, a lot of people they work hard to get to New York, so once they get to New York, they just want to sprint. Yeah. There's also like very specific jobs, especially in finance, where those jobs really only exist in like one of these mega cities, like you could be like in Hong Kong or New York or London and uh maybe a couple other places in the world, but it there's like very specific jobs where people that are like managing a lot of capital, so they take it very seriously because it's almost like, oh, I got the keys to the kingdom, I'm I'm not gonna fumble it, so I'm gonna work a ton.

Josh 33:12

Do you know anyone personally that works at any of those financial firms?

Ryan 33:15

Yeah, I know some people that work at hedge funds. That's cool. Uh, some like pretty prestigious ones. Um certainly a lot of people that work at tech companies. I mean, I work for a tech company, but uh I feel like I'm a little bit of a like a pawn sometimes, you know, like working at a big tech company in New York, it's like, well, that's kind of just like cookie cutter, like, okay, whatever. And then people, people, you know, start their own businesses. They they come from generational wealth, they work their ass off and get into like a very prestigious thing. I mean, there's also like a lot of people that like went to Ivy League schools. It's very I I don't know, part of it, I think, is like New York specifically, but also like even surrounding areas on the East Coast. Uh, there's more of this like kind of like old money mentality where it's like, oh, you know, you have you have a legacy, you have to you have to uh like live up to the legacy that you've been born into, like almost like a hierarchical thing or uh like a you know, your like it's uh your own family's monarchy type situation. Uh I think that's very common. So I people take their corporate jobs very seriously.

Hunter 34:26

I can imagine.

Ryan 34:27

Yeah, even if they're really not that important, you know, they just take it seriously.

Hunter 34:33

So what are some of the signs or like signals or symbols, rather, that someone is in the in-group or one of the in-groups? Like when you think when I when I say in-group, maybe it's the people who seem cool to most people, or the people who seem like they quote fit in New York City, or like they have the right vibe, or they seem like they've lived there for a long time, or they have a really deep understanding of the culture. What are some of the symbols, like the the cultural, the the social capital that you need to like to have one one, needs or feels the urgency to show off to other people as a sign that I belong here? Like what are some of those things?

Ryan 35:18

Yeah, yeah. I think I think there's uh two different sides of it that I've seen personally, and I'm sure other people have a lot of different opinions about this, but for me personally, I think if you want to be uh fitting into this like crazy city with a ton of people and kind of like stand out per se, or just you know, be proud of who you are and like really fit in, be like cool there in New York. I think the yeah, I think there's like two paths. The what one path that I think is the most common kind of like you know, rat race type path is uh making a lot of money. I think like if you make a lot of money in New York, that's like very impressive, and a lot of people there are trying to chase money. So like if you make a lot of money, that's like impressive to them. So it's kind of like, oh, this person's cool. Like they figured out somehow how to make a lot of money, like it must mean that they're smart, even if they aren't, they aren't smart. Maybe they just have a lot of money. But like, um, but it's like kind of like a signal, you know? It's like, oh, you know, that's the signaling, a very clear signal, and it's like that everywhere in the world.

Hunter 36:26

But how do you how do people like go about letting others know their salary? I mean, because in my social circles, I mean I don't know how much most of my friends make. Like I but people share this openly there?

Ryan 36:39

I don't know if you share the salary, but I think like if you if you meet somebody and they work at anthropic, it's like, oh, okay, well, you have uh probably millions of dollars in the bank. Uh if you meet if you meet somebody and they, you know, work at one of the prestigious hedge funds, like let's say like Jane Street, you know, if you're just wearing that shirt, it's kind of like, well, oh snap, like this person works at Jane Street, that's pretty impressive. Like they probably could retire right now if they wanted to, even if they're like 30. So there's things like that. And I mean, I mean, there's other things. I mean, like having a nice apartment, having nice clothes, there's like other ways to kind of signal wealth. And that's like common everywhere, but I think just in New York, it kind of like it feels like it matters more. Where like in Phoenix, if you see somebody like uh, you know, wearing like a super dapper suit that might be like ten thousand dollars, you might just be like, oh, you know, fuck this person.

Josh 37:30

It almost seems out of place.

Ryan 37:31

Yeah, it seems out of place. It's like, oh, this person like doesn't actually get society because they're like trying to flaunt them, they're trying to flaunt, they're like out of touch from the majority, yeah. Yeah, but in New York, that would be like, oh my god, like who is that person? I gotta talk to that guy, like maybe he could fund my business, you know. Like, you know, maybe that's like an important person. So uh, but I okay, so like I digress. I I think that's one path for that. It's like money, but another path, which I think is objectively way cooler, but way harder, is if you are somehow able to um, you know, escape the matrix and say, Oh, I really don't care about money, I really don't care about any of this, and actually not care about any of that, and then just do your own thing, whether it's like art or uh something on the side, or giving back to the community, like uh social justice or teaching or social work. Uh, I think that's like the other way to kind of make it, quote unquote, in a place like New York is being like so inherently true to yourself and your values that you generally do not give a fuck about what other people want and what society wants you to do. And I think that's part of the reason why New York breeds so many like creatives, like artists and musicians and people come from all over the world to be like artists and musicians in New York because it's a place where like you can really have that true like fuck you mentality because you're face to face with all these people who are in the rat race, so you have it's a lot harder for you to be like, Oh yeah, fuck this. I'm doing my own thing. It's almost like being like the one contrarian and contrarian in the room of like 200 people disagreeing with you, and I think that's like why New York has like a really really great artist.

Hunter 39:17

Sounds inspiring. Is there like a clash between those two approaches that you personally witnessed? Like, does one look down on the others?

Ryan 39:26

No, not at all, which is which is also like kind of the beauty of it.

Hunter 39:30

Yeah, no, that is beautiful.

Ryan 39:31

Yeah, it's kind of like uh choose your own adventure. Um, you could probably live like the hundreds of different lives in New York, I think. You know, where you like live in Chinatown for a year and do that, and then like live in the West Village and work at a hedge fund, and then like live in Brooklyn and be like an underground DJ Raver or something. I I don't know. I I think like uh a lot of people uh obviously like people find their life and they stick to it, but there's no um there's no real like judgment between that. Like um maybe I mean like uh general like just like anywhere else, like kind of like oh you know, like screw rich people because they're ruining things. But I mean if you're like kind of well off in New York, you're still like middle class, so I don't know. You'd have to be like really, really yeah, you'd have to be like Mark Zuckerberg level to be at the point where people are like, oh screw that guy. Or like Ken Griffin, like uh Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, he recently did this campaign. A lot of people really like him, by the way.

Hunter 40:40

But yeah, I can tell it's a huge like movement of support for him, and yeah. I think more like people are voicing support and showing support actively for him than I've seen for a political candidate in a long time, honestly. Yeah, really effortful, like energetic um just actions and people talking.

Ryan 41:02

Yeah, yeah. I think he has a really good PR team, and I think him he personally is very good at PR and he knows that. But um he recently had this video that he posted online where he uh was in front of a billionaire's apartment, this billionaire Ken Griffin, he's the guy that runs this hedge fund Citadel, which they basically create a lot of the options markets in the US. So, like if you ever trade like a call option or a put, um, especially I don't know, especially if you're just like on Robin Hood trading naked options, um that guy's probably profiting off of you in some way because he's the market maker. So, anyway, he's a billionaire and he has a big presence in New York, he has a huge apartment in New York, and Zoran Mamdanny was in front of his apartment saying, Oh, we want billionaires like Ken Griffin out of our city. Wow. And or at least some of their properties, maybe. Yeah, because he and he doesn't even spend time at his property.

Hunter 42:08

Yeah, that's that's it. I can see why that frustrates people in New York if you're already paying so much money for an apartment that's tiny, and then you see people around you renting or owning multiple properties, which only drives the cost up because there's more demand and less supply. Like, I can really understand people's desire to like stop.

Ryan 42:28

Screw those people, yeah, yeah. So I think there is some level of wealth where it's like, okay, that's like too much, like get out of here. But I think for the most part, people in New York like respect the hustle, you know, like they're like, oh, you know, a fair game, you know.

Josh 42:43

You talk about that, how the the ceiling in New York maybe is a lot higher than it is in um here in Arizona or maybe anywhere else in the United States. What is that like in like I'm guessing the floor is also lower? Like what what are the what are these social classes look like in New York?

Hunter 43:04

That's a great question.

Ryan 43:06

Yeah, I mean I think social classes per se are very basic based on like the neighborhood you live in. I think a lot of people that just move to the city um maybe are like transplants, like they don't have like a a big family base in New York and the East Coast will live in uh like East Williamsburg or Bushwick, kind of like these parts of Brooklyn that are a little bit further out, uh that are cheaper. Um I mean that brook Brooklyn and Queens is also just huge, massive sprawl that I don't fully understand because I haven't seen tons of it. I mean, I try to get out, but uh it's so huge that being there for a year, it's hard for me to talk about it a little bit because it's like, oh, you know, it's so big. But you know, you you'd probably like live in a a neighborhood a little bit further out from all the like hustle and bustle. And then um, you know, if you have a corporate job or you have like family support or you're like on your feet, you could live in Manhattan or like close to Manhattan, like maybe like right across the bridge in Williamsburg. Or like in downtown Brooklyn. So that's like a like a different cast, maybe. It's like I think being in Manhattan. I mean, it is very this is all like very uh generalized, by the way, because you could be like crushing it and you just love Brooklyn and like live in like a sick place in Brooklyn. Yeah. Uh but I mean just generically, maybe that. And then within Manhattan, there's a lot of different neighborhoods. Like there's like the the east side, I would say is like um historically kind of more like raunchy and grungy, and it's a little bit cheaper, uh, maybe a little bit more uncomfortable, uh, or there's just like not as much cool dapper things, so that's like a little bit um, you know, like less wealthy people. But then if you live on the west side, like if you live like in the West Village or Tribeca, or you even like Upper West Side, uh, depending on like where in the Upper West Side, but you know, maybe that's a little bit more it's like, oh, you know, especially like West Village, I feel like, or Tribeca, it's like, wow, that's uh expensive.

Josh 45:28

Do you see these different classes of people um interact with each other much?

Ryan 45:34

Yeah, yeah, I do. I think there's a lot of like commonalities that bring people together. Like one thing that I've been a part of a lot is like fitness. I think like running, there's a lot of like running communities. Uh the New York Marathon is huge, and everybody likes the New York marathon. Uh so like there's people from all different types of backgrounds doing the New York Marathon. Some people pay to do it, other people volunteer to do it. Uh, but they still want to do it, they want to run and they want to meet people through running and be like a running person. So that that's like a big thing that brings people together. Just like I mean, fitness in general, uh, also just like going out, like drinking for sure. And brings people together.

Hunter 46:16

Unless there are class specific bars that people go to, or sometimes your average drink is gonna be like 50 bucks or yeah, yeah, maybe maybe to maybe a little bit.

Ryan 46:26

But um, yeah, I mean, if you're going out, you probably frequent the same places. It's like I I mean, I know people that have like celebrity sightings all the time. I personally have only had like one celebrity sighting, but uh I'll see if I saw Leslie Bibb, this uh girl, she was like in the White Lotus. Okay, yeah, I didn't even know, but I I see people all the time like post on their Instagram, it's like, oh, there's like Seth Rogan just like outside a bar. It's like oh okay. He's he's with the gen pop today.

Hunter 47:03

The general population. Usually they're on a different level, uh not even communicating with people from other backgrounds. That's how I imagine it. Like they got their own lounges, they got their own uh restaurants, and they're priced out from the gen gen pop, as you say.

Ryan 47:23

Yeah, but in New York, everybody's like on the same playing field as long as you're in the location. Like in Manhattan, people are all yeah, that's that's my impression in Manhattan. Brooklyn, I would think yes. I mean, I'll go out in Brooklyn, but not as much, and I don't know as much about it. I actually like have this joke where uh like me and my friends, we we went uh out to Brooklyn and we weren't having a good time, and we ended up just going back to Manhattan, and we have this joke where it's like, oh, it's like have you seen the movie Groundhog Day? So it's like this uh movie with uh I forget the actor. He's like a really famous actor. I think he was on SNL. Have you seen it, Shane?

unknown 48:05

It's not a good thing.

Ryan 48:07

This is actually like embarrassing to know this actor. But but so there's this movie Groundhog Day, and the guy like he he wakes up every day and it's Groundhog Day again, and he's like reliving the same thing over and over and over and over again. And like he he tries to like do everything to get out of it, like he'll literally like kill himself and he'll like drive off a cliff, and then he just wakes up and it's like Groundhog Day again, and he has to relive the day over and over, so he's like stuck in the day, but like that's like uh me trying to leave Manhattan. Like, I part of it is I'm just like not cultured and I just don't know that everything that's going on in Brooklyn because it's just very big, or like Queens, even yeah.

Hunter 48:46

I mean, a year is not that long to build your your cognitive map of the place to feel for where things are, like, yeah, I I can definitely understand that. Such a sprawling, multi-dimensional place.

Ryan 49:01

Yeah, yeah, there's so many different boroughs, but it it's like, oh, I'll I'll be in uh Manhattan and then I'll go out in Brooklyn or somewhere else, and then I somehow I just like magically appear back in Manhattan.

Hunter 49:12

I you know, I've never been there again. I just want to like repeat that for people when I ask these types of questions. But what is the Bronx and where is that?

Ryan 49:20

Oh, the Bronx is a huge neighborhood, and there's a lot going on there. Another place that I have not explored a ton. Uh, it's just north of the island of Manhattan and like north of Queens. Um huge neighborhood. Uh I just have to do it.

Hunter 49:39

So there's like another neighborhood. Is it what called is that one of the boroughs?

Ryan 49:43

Yeah, it's one of the boroughs. There's five boroughs. There's the Bronx, there's Manhattan, there's Queens, Brooklyn, and then Staten Island.

Hunter 49:49

Gotcha.

Ryan 49:49

Yeah. Staten Island uh is very far away, so people don't really talk about that. Uh but like Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn are all basically connected. Yeah.

Hunter 50:02

And within these boroughs, it's super international. I mean, we were talking about this before we started recording. It's super multilingual as well. In different places around the world, there's like little Italy. I know this exists in in New York City. What other little like countries, little microcosms of other cultures and communities are there? And have you visited any of them?

Ryan 50:25

Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a it's a huge melting pot. I mean, so historically in Manhattan, there's been a huge Chinese community. So there's a big Chinatown, it's it's kind of like in the lower east side or like lower eastern part of Manhattan. There's Chinatown, there's yeah, Little Italy um is is also huge. It's a fun area to walk around.

Hunter 50:52

Um is it just like people selling food items and and like crafts or yeah, like what makes it called that? What is it about the place that gives it its name?

Ryan 51:03

I mean, peep I mean in Chinatown, people will be talking in Chinese everywhere.

Hunter 51:09

Really? Okay, like it's just it's actually like Wow So is it's a place where people from a different community come together and like congregate and find community with the each other in the US?

Ryan 51:21

Yeah, yeah. Like if if I was uh I don't speak any Chinese, I wish I did, but uh if I spoke Chinese and I just like showed up in the US and I came to Chinatown in Manhattan, I would be completely fine. I could probably just be fine. I mean it's like a very it's a small neighborhood in comparison to everything else, but like it's a micro community. Uh and there's a lot of micro communities like that. I mean, even uh in my neighborhood specifically, uh I live like in a part of the East Village called Alphabet City. There's a lot of uh Puerto Ricans there, and like historically there's been tons of Puerto Ricans in that that part of Manhattan specifically. So like yeah, I mean if you only spoke Spanish, you'd be fine. Um what other interesting microcommunities are there? I mean, like I just feel like uh like you find them through food.

Hunter 52:11

I was about to ask that's like the easiest way to find them. Is this like you put it in your phone and then you like let's say you want to go get some I don't know, Chinese food and you put it in your phone. Is this where they tend to pop up, this area?

Ryan 52:23

Yeah, I mean you'll I mean if you go to a Chinese restaurant that's a real Chinese restaurant, very likely that you could talk to them in Chinese and talk about life in China.

Hunter 52:34

And like same with Little Italy, you're gonna find your Italian restaurants and your pizzeria's around there.

Ryan 52:39

Yeah, yeah.

Hunter 52:39

I mean, um Of course there's probably every they're probably everywhere.

Ryan 52:43

Oh my god. I mean, there's this amazing Italian restaurant that's on my street, and everybody there speaks Italian. And there was one time that I went there and the waiter didn't even speak English, and I, you know, I were just trying to talk to him in Italian, and he was really grateful that we were trying. Yeah, but it's like stuff like that where it's like, you know, you go to a you go to a restaurant, like an Italian restaurant, and it's like, oh, you don't speak English, you know, you're speaking Italian, okay. Like that's fine. Like I came. I came for the food, so we can bond over that.

Hunter 53:12

Uh isn't it interesting that so many people okay? I don't want to like exaggerate this too much, but there's a number of people in the United States who have the mentality that like we should all speak English. Clearly, we see this in like reels on social media. Like, this is in the United States, speak English. But for me, I love experiencing new things and learning about new things and seeing other people live life differently than me. And it just like helps me comparatively understand myself better when I see other ways of living and and speaking and understanding and food items and clothing. And I think I would be like interested in New York City for that reason. Just the sheer diversity of sound sights, scents, like yeah, activities sounds awesome.

Ryan 53:59

No, it's awesome. I mean, even on my street, like uh there's this bodega right across, like corner store right across from me, and you know, they all speak in Spanish. I'm pretty sure they're Puerto Rican because we're in like a Puerto Rican part of town. Uh, but I'll try to talk to you should you speak good Spanish. No, I I mean I try, I'll talk to them in Spanish or like say little phrases, but then right next door is this uh coffee shop, and the guy is Georgian. Oh, yeah, and um, you know, he I've seen him, he's really cool. His name's JK, and um there's been a couple times I've been like hanging outside of his place, and people will like talk to him about Georgia and stuff, and yeah, actually another like uh microcommunity that I live really close to is I live by uh the Ukrainian village. So there's tons of Ukrainians, and uh, you know, historically they've been there for like around a hundred years uh in that neighborhood specifically, and there's like some uh big like community centers and churches, restaurants, like you know, I feel like the restaurants are just like the the easy like access point because it's like, oh, of course, like you're gonna want food, and it's like I love Ukrainian food. There's this really good restaurant, Veselka, and uh it's open like 24 hours a day, which is kind of ridiculous, and they just have like pierogies and sound borscht that's like crazy popular in Pennsylvania, right?

Hunter 55:27

Yeah, yeah. Does it fill you with a sense of wonder just walking around seeing so many new things all the time? Oh, yeah. I think human beings are hardwired to be attracted to learning and seeing and being involved in and participating in and being engaged in new things. Because I think the more things we learn, the better off we are at survival and thriving. And I think humanity is defined by movement toward new things in so many ways. Yeah, like survival is movement, but not just in a physical sense of walking on your feet, but moving toward new experiences, and it's hard to do, I imagine, in rural areas, and so it's cool that you have gotten to grow up in Tucson and live in Phoenix and now in the most populous city in the United States.

Ryan 56:17

Yeah, yeah. I feel like uh you live to learn, and that's like an important thing you can't let go of, is like you have to be like, oh, you know, I I know nothing. And that's a good mentality, it's like surrender of being like, Oh, I actually know nothing. Even if you're like in a leadership position or like you're in charge, it's still important. Like you could guide people and help people out and like teach people what you know, and that's a great thing, but I think you still should accept that you know you don't really know that much. It's impossible. You know, we you're just stuck in your brain and your body. So what do you know?

Hunter 56:55

And your world, and that's one thing we one thing we can change is where we're at in the world, our immediate physical environment, and we can learn a lot so much by just adapting to a new place. And I that's what I mean when I say I think that we are curious for a reason. I think the more skills we have, the more experiences we have, the more different, diverse things we're exposed to, the better we uh better equipped we are to adapt as beings who fundamentally survive by adapting. And we're hyper pro-social beings. We need to constantly make connections with others in order to feel that we're safe and and doing the right thing and and it lowers our stress level, lowers anxiety, the more people uh we have who support us and we feel connected with. And I imagine it's easier to feel connected in such a tightly knit place.

Ryan 57:50

Yeah. Okay, we've been talking about New York for a while, but you guys were talking about something really philosophical when I walked in. And we're kind of what you were saying, AI, really.

Hunter 58:00

That's how it started.

Ryan 58:01

Well, you were talking about what you were just saying, I thought was really uh interesting and philosophical, where it's like, oh, you know, this is uh uh something, you know, people do this and people like learn and have experiences to be adaptable, and that's like a survival thing. And I think survival is uh something obviously it's like very hard-coded in us. But yeah. You guys were talking about something.

Artificial Intelligence

Hunter 58:28

Well, we started talking about AI, and that led us to talking about whether machines, whether we can use the word understanding to describe what a machine, an AI machine, does when it um like a an LLM interacts with us. Does it understand what we say? And I think the question, the answer to that question can't be answered just in the realm of like data science or coding. It ultimately extends into like the philosophical realm of what it means to be a being who understands something and what if understanding is purely cognitive, if understanding is embodied, um, if it requires a world or if it doesn't, uh that's what we were kind of talking about. So it started from AI above all.

Ryan 59:16

Like what understanding is.

Hunter 59:18

Uh well, yeah, and that led us into like free will. Like oh, free will, that's what I was saying. Yeah, but you're talking about free will. Does an AI system have agency? And then from there it it came into the question of free will. And you work on artificial intelligence as part of your career, your your day-to-day life.

Ryan 59:39

Done it for years before before it was cool or cool, quote unquote. I remember I don't know if it's actually cool, but I I mean it was now everybody talks about it, and it's like, yeah, we people we've been looking at this for a while. You know, like now you're gonna come to the party.

Hunter 59:54

Early in college, I remember you were doing stuff with artificial intelligence before 2022 when it was mass launched across the United States with Chat GPT. And I mean, in various ways in my life, you've always been the person that's been like, in my eyes, like one step ahead. You're telling me about you're teaching me what a non-fungible token was back when those arose. I'm like, what on earth is this? Cringe. You're no you're you're just teaching me what it was. I think you're knowledgeable about stuff, and same with cryptocurrency, and back when I had absolutely not even a toe dipped in those waters. You were super knowledgeable, so it's not surprising that even before the AI curve hit the masses, you're interested and knowledgeable about that.

Ryan 1:00:37

Um but understanding, understanding.

Hunter 1:00:40

Well, I think we should scaffold our way there to understand it because okay, as someone who works on AI as part of your career, like what I mean, what what did you think about AI before we got ChatGPT? Yeah, versus in college, and then yeah, how has your opinion or perspective shifted since it hit the masses and how we've been using it since 2022?

Ryan 1:01:02

My opinion about it has not changed that much at all. It's this it's always been the same thing fundamentally, which is um, I mean, really just like a lot of probability and statistics. So when you think of something in a statistical lens, let's say uh the weather, like forecasting the weather. It's like, okay, you know, it's it's Phoenix, Arizona, tomorrow, it's probably gonna be sunny. Uh obviously, there's a lot of factors you can look at. You can look at like historical data where it's like, oh, we're in the we're in the desert, it's the sunbelt, it's gonna be sunny. Uh also you can look at you know, radar systems to see like where storms are and where clouds are. So you you could come up with a prediction where it's like, oh, you know, like 97% chance tomorrow it's gonna be sunny. There's probably like a 3% chance that maybe it's not, because who knows, maybe like an El Nino storm from the Gulf will just like come up and just overtake everything, but very low probability. So you're looking at this outcome in terms of probability.

Hunter 1:02:04

Um those are called parameters. I was talking to Josh before this, like the different types of data or the date sources of data by which you can make a prediction or may maybe like uh probably like features is people. I probably just misremembered the term. Yes. Yeah.

Ryan 1:02:21

Yeah, feature features is what like a lot of people call like the inputs. Like, oh, but these are these are your features in your statistical model. But okay, so like we're we're at the like kind of like real understandable realm, human understandable realm of like probabilities, where you know, we're looking at like something like the weather and what's gonna happen tomorrow. Uh, you can even look at the lottery where it's like, oh, you know, historically uh, you know, there's maybe like a 0.0001% chance that if you like buy a lottery ticket, you'll win the lottery. So you can kind of like see these trends over time. I mean, like the companies for the lottery, like they make those trends. They purposely set it up based off of probability that like, you know, only like one person out of like X amount of people are gonna win. If they make this much prof profit, they can make the jackpot this much number. When it comes to AI, there's like a lot of different forms. Historically, AI was just like a uh better prediction engine where you you uh you don't just do something deterministically, but you like factor in a probability to make like a smarter decision, or you have the computer make a smarter decision. So, like a good example of that would be um back in like 2016, Google started doing a lot of image recognition where like Google Photos could recognize like people and images, and you could say, Oh, that here's a person, and you could like click on an image and you could see uh all the images of that person. So, like in my camera role, I could see like people's faces, and I could say they could click on their face and I could see all the images of that person. So, but what that was was essentially like based off of probability, you know, and there's like a lot of like mathematics involved in making that decision, but ultimately like it's a probabilistic decision where um based off of a photo, is this specific person in the photo 90% chance? Maybe this one it's like an 80% chance, and then like over you train the model and you you make some human is making a decision to say like everything after 90%, we're gonna say that that is a strong enough prediction that that human's in there, just like you know, with the weather, if it's like, oh, you know, tomorrow it's like a 97% chance that it's gonna be sunny, your Apple uh weather is gonna show up that it's gonna be sunny.

Hunter 1:04:36

So just to connect the vocab term you taught me, features, yeah, could one feature be like the AI system using some sort of metric to gauge the I don't know, the nose size of the person, and then like the distance between their eyes, and then the distance between the curve of their like all those are individual features, and it uses those mathematical calculations um to collectively decide like a probability number and make a determination.

Ryan 1:05:09

That's pretty much spot on, is exactly what it's doing with images. With images, yeah, it's it's looking at like individual pixels and it's looking at the relationship between all the pixels to come up with like is this person an image? But okay, so then so you have that, and then you expand to beyond that, which is predicting the next word in a sentence.

Hunter 1:05:32

See, this is where it starts to get squirrely for me, logically. Like I lose so I'm interested to see how let's work through this together.

Ryan 1:05:39

Okay, so there's a lot of data about predicting the next word in a sentence. I mean, humans have been writing literature for thousands of years, a lot of that literature, including the Bible, including that book right there about jazz, including uh this Corona can and the ingredients on it. Yeah, that is on the internet. So, what the massive AI companies of the last five years decided to do is they had a really good idea. They said, Hey, look at these prediction models, look at these um neural networks, they're called, which is like uh basically a very fancy way to say like a ton of linear algebra to come up with. Like, oh, you know, here's the relationship between these two pixels, here's the relationship between these two things in multi-dimensional math space. Um, they decided okay, how about we take that and to come up with these probabilities, and uh we just do it with the entire corpus of the internet and all of human words, everything documented on the internet, and potentially images too. There's ways so you could feed those in to make like multimodal models. Uh so like let's take all of that, throw it at a shit ton of computer power, like like literally just the most massive computers possible that have ever been created. I mean, like when uh when some of the initial versions of GPT were trained by OpenAI in San Francisco, um, they bought this computer from NVIDIA that was like the most powerful, unrealistic computer that had ever existed. NVIDIA had no customers for it. And uh, I forget exactly what it was called. It was like um it's like a H100 cluster or something like that. I don't know. Don't quote me on that. I I feel stupid not knowing the name. But like so they they had this computer and they ship, you know, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, like went to San Francisco, dropped it off at OpenAI office, being like, Thank God, like you know, we have a customer, like, do something cool with this computer. And OpenAI, what they wanted to do is just throw the entire corpus of human information in that computer and uh train a model to predict the next word in a sentence, and they made something pretty freaking good, and that's what language models are. And so you we think about um, you know, a simpler example, like predicting the weather and like how you have features to predict the weather and say, like, okay, here's this input, here's an output. What language models do is they do that, but just at a much bigger scale, where they literally take a word in a sentence and compute it in a gigantic multidimensional space about that relationship between that word and every single word in the entire corpus of humanity, and then come up with what is the best word that comes next. There's some other techniques that get applied uh to make it better, uh, like reinforcement learning, where like humans will read the output and be like, oh, that was good, or like this one was better, and you can use that, and you can use that as a feature to train the model and make it better. Um, but ultimately it's it's kind of uh it's really just predicting the next word in a very fancy, gigantic way. So when you say like something like, Oh, you know, write me an essay about jazz, it's taking a ton of data and it's creating relationships between it and it's spitting out an essay about jazz. And uh yeah, it's it's mil it's mostly like just the corpus of humanity, but it's also like some post-training techniques to you know factor in like humans that have looked at it and like enjoy an answer better than the other. I mean, that's part of the reason why we see like an M-dash all the time. Like the AI models output an M-dash is because people years ago, well, before it became AI slop writing, uh, people were like, oh, the M-dash is nice, like that reads really well. And that got fit in the world.

Hunter 1:09:37

It's really popular, it has been popular for a long time in academic writing.

Ryan 1:09:40

Yeah, yeah, in academic writing. Yeah. Um, so like people read it and they're like, oh, that's like really good. I like the M-dash, and then that got trained into the AI models, and now they all output that. So it's so it's a it's a big feedback loop. There's no no new knowledge happening, it's just it's synthesizing a ton of knowledge that's already been created and synthesizing it together.

Josh 1:10:01

Do you think it can with some new breakthrough synth start synthesizing new knowledge? Like start coming up with cures for diseases or maybe these new physics problems?

Ryan 1:10:13

100%. Yeah, because it has the entire corpus of human information. I can't read the entire corpus of human information. So, like, but okay, like it can do that. Does that mean that it like understands and it's like conscious? Like, no, because it's it's just a big math problem. But I mean, it has the entire corpus of human information, and I can't read that. The best scientists in the world can't read that. So, like, of course, it's gonna come up with some crazy stuff.

Josh 1:10:40

Do you think it's going to take because I I've heard there's there was like this big breakthrough, like transformer architecture. Yeah, I don't know exactly what that means, but I've uh listened to some podcasts. Um, and that's what made Chat GPT possible. Yeah. Do you think it's gonna take what it we're sorry to interrupt?

Hunter 1:10:57

What is transformer architecture?

Josh 1:10:59

That's maybe Ryan understands better than just before he gives an answer.

Hunter 1:11:02

I think we need to understand.

Ryan 1:11:03

Yeah, so like um a trans I was talking about like a neural network, right? Earlier, where it's like, okay, here's like it's uh it's a basically just a bunch of like multi-dimensional math where it's like, okay, we're gonna come up with all these relationships and you're gonna have a model that learns based off of probabilities of the relationships to learn inputs and outputs. Um, transformer models are uh specifically for natural language.

Hunter 1:11:29

And what they do, I mean, you can I technically you could apply them outside of a natural language, but like a linguistics perspective, as in like messy, non-syntactically like pretty language, like natural language. What does this mean too?

Ryan 1:11:42

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it would be um uh I I mean, natural language just means like language. I don't know why. For whatever reason, in this realm of like AI, people refer it as natural language, because there's a whole field called NLP, which is natural language processing. It's about like determining like the math behind language to be make computers predict you know what to talk about and like how to talk. Um so like a transformer model basically uh takes if you apply it to language, what it does is it takes a word and it comes up with all the relationships of that word to every single other word that it's exposed to, and then it will come up with an encoding, which is basically like a representation of what it has seen. It's completely numeric. But then what it does, so that's like an encoding part of a transformer, then there's a decoding step where then after that it takes like the this like encoding, this like numerical thing that it's come up with to understand the space that it's in, and it decodes that back into natural language to come up with like okay, what makes sense to come next. Because basically, like the way that computers understand words is like these uh gigantic like embedding spaces. So, like if if there's a word like history, you it would come up with like an embedding, or no, here's a better example, like the word man, the word man is uh is the computers would represent it as like a group of numbers, and then the word woman computers would understand that as a group of numbers, but then the word king would be vi would be another grouping of numbers, but it would be closer to the word man than it would the word woman, and then queen would be another grouping of numbers that's closer to woman than it is man, so it's like this it's linear algebra, but it's basically like this way of like modeling uh text, or I mean you could also like apply it to images in like multimodal sense as well, uh, or videos. But uh essentially like transformers are like this architecture where it's um it's doing that process of like this like encoding and then decoding at like a big scale. So that's that's okay.

Josh 1:14:01

That's a great great definition. Yeah, hopefully that made sense. I'm following. Now, do you think it's going to take another revolution like that, another breakthrough in order for us to reach? I mean, we're we're already advancing so fast, but oh I hear people talk about this world where it's you know curing diseases, it's you know um making life better or worse. Um do you think it's gonna take another breakthrough, or do you think we just need to use these new tools in more creative ways, you know, spin them in a loop for a longer period of time, uh, you know, put four LLMs all in a circle and like have them talk to each other. You know what I mean?

Ryan 1:14:46

Yeah. No, I think the LLMs that we currently have are already like really good. I I think that the craze of making them better is like a bit much, honestly. Like, I think we've we've already we already have a lot. There's already like a lot of opportunities if we could get them in like the right fields to actually like make a difference and like do things, like come up with how to cure diseases. With with the current models that we have, I mean they're already like incredibly smart. Like, not only are they uh able to take the entire corpus of human knowledge, but they also have been like uh fine-tuned to like reason through things that like so like when you interact with something like Claude, like you'll see like reasoning where um you know it's it's trained to like before it comes up with a final answer, like output a bunch of text to like in the way that a human would write out a reasoning, uh kind of like logical reasoning, and then output an answer. So like they're pretty they're pretty dang good at solving problems because they have they've been trained to do these specific things with text. So I I think like what we already have, we could probably do a ton with and not even need to like invest in AI. But the thing is, people are so freaking obsessed and addicted to AI because it's crazy and it's like actually mind-blowing. It is, yeah, yeah, and it's like a huge shift. Absolutely. People are so obsessed with it that they're like, no, we need to make this thing better, which I mean, you could totally make it better if you want. I don't know what it really solves, but sure, make it better. Uh, I think if we really wanted to make it better though, we'd have to like come up with a new model architecture.

Josh 1:16:29

So, what what are they doing? Because I know you know, I do I use claude code, um, and every other month there's a new model that comes out. Yeah. And obviously there's no new fundamental breakthrough that's happening. Yeah, yeah. Like the transformer thing. Yeah, yeah. Are they just adding more data to it? Are they what are they what's new about these models that's actually making them better? I remember like nine months ago, you know, it would it could kind of code, it could kind of make a little sampler that I could press a button and play sound, but it would kind of like glitch out and loop weird. Yeah, nowadays I could just one-shot it and it can just it can make anything.

Ryan 1:17:07

Yeah, like a whole website in one prompt.

Josh 1:17:09

How is it what what are they doing with these new releases? I know I'm sure next week there's gonna be another new one.

Ryan 1:17:15

Yeah, yeah. I mean, um a small part of that I think is uh coming up with uh the like small breakthroughs in architecture research, where you know you you have a transformer model, underlying model, and you're you realize that, oh, you know, if you add this thing or you tweak this thing, it has a better output. There's a very small part of it that's that. But I think the the bigger breakthroughs that are coming, like incremental breakthroughs that are coming through these releases, where you like see a model like Chat GPT uh just came out with uh a new model today. I think it's like soul or something like that. They have a 5.5, yeah, 5.5 soul or 5.6 maybe, but it's literally just came out today. Um most of the breakthroughs for those models, like the incremental releases, is with the data that they're trained on. So um you could you can obviously there's been a I mean, there's been a lot more data created on the internet since the time that the last release came out with. You have that, you have all the interactions of the users to go off of. Oh all the historical conversations. The more the more that you use chat GPT, the more that chat GPT gets better because it knows how to talk. And when you say, fuck you, chat GPT, that was the wrong answer. That's literally something that you chat GPT could learn from. That it's like, oh, you know, don't say things like that. That's the wrong answer to that question when I see that question. Yeah, so it's it's learning from that. Um, it's learning from other kinds of like human feedback as people interact with them. Um, the big thing though, that a lot of people are betting on to make like the current language models better is just having very, very specific data sets to train on where it's beyond just like articles on the internet, like Reddit and Facebook posts and research articles. And I mean, there's a lot of great info on the internet you can learn from, but let's say you want to make a model better at coding, you could literally just um have a bunch of people in a room solving coding problems, and you could just take the entire traces of that and then just feed it to the next version. So that's that's like what the Frontier labs are trying to do to like make these models better is they're just like getting curated, yeah, curated specific data sets. Um, Meta is has been doing this recently because they're trying to like catch up. And one thing that they did is they took like I think like 10% of their engineers across the entire company, just cherry-picked them, like literally just like plucked them off a team that they're on. Like maybe you're it were you were working on Instagram for years and you were like a big hotshot, like developed a lot of architecture behind behind Instagram. Meta and Mark Zuckerberg just like cherry picks you from that team and sends you to this new um like AI org. I forget what it's called, but they have this like new like AI division, and uh they just have these engineers that are very good coders come up with coding problems and then come up like very challenging coding problems and then come up with the solutions to them, and then they just use that to try to train the next uh meta frontier model because they want to catch up to like clawed code and like anthropic. So they're they're just getting like very curated data sets. That's like kind of what you're doing. The the architecture is like the same. There hasn't been a breakthrough in architecture since uh really like um since the Transformer came out, and that was proposed in 2017, so that's like 10 years ago. It's just people have just been throwing more data at it.

Josh 1:20:51

I've seen that on like job boards where it's like there's people right now and they're just contractors and they just answer coding problems, yeah. Or they rate the output of coding problems and then they have to describe why they I don't know, why they answered that. Yeah. Um, and that's some people's full-time gig right now. They're just training their replacement.

Hunter 1:21:10

Yeah, it's it's kind of um I've heard a lot of stories about people like that in different fields where they feel that they're training their replacement, or like drivers like Waymo's, they started with someone at the wheel. Yep. Oh, yeah, no, now there's no one there. See, as an applied linguist, I what I'm thinking about what that makes sense with code having curated like highly um polished input to where the machine says like the AI can then take that as its cleaner basis. But if it had done that with language itself, I don't think it would be nearly as good as it is. I think it had to take the internet because the internet is messy, and that is what people that's how people communicate. That's how human beings type on the internet, chat with each other, speak. We make errors all the time. Um, if we if we fed it a dictionary or an encyclopedia of of some sort, or only academic writing, right? What would happen when the average user goes to interact with Chat GPT and it suddenly is like, whoa, this is not syntactically intelligible, because I've only ever been fed quote unquote standard or highly scientific or academic writing structures or speech sounds. So it's interesting that that's what's led it, is the the imperfection has led it to be so good at interacting with people.

Ryan 1:22:38

Yeah, because it sounds more human.

Hunter 1:22:40

Yeah. And you can, I when I interact with it, I make errors in my typing, and I don't even bother correcting them because I know it'll understand what I'm trying to say anytime. Yeah, sure. Like I never correct a typo. Even if the word is completely like it auto-corrects to something totally different, I know it just will understand it. What's interesting to me is like I get the notion of the I behind the idea that everything is a mathematical prediction, like the next word based on the context surrounding each individual word. Like you're you're showing how king and man and queen and woman are connected. That makes sense, especially when you put the transformer, what is it called?

Ryan 1:23:17

Trans Transformer Architecture.

Hunter 1:23:19

Transformer architecture, where it goes into its own little cloud space and does a different calculation and then comes back and puts it into natural language. But like what I do sometimes is I'll I'll ask it um to like compare or synthesize two two books I'm reading, like ideas between them, ideas that might be commensurable with each other or that overlap. And sometimes, like it, it not even sometimes, it often produces ideas that I that are not in either book, um, but that surpass the arguments made in each individual book to go on a on a next level uh in terms of abstractness that does synthesize them. So it's like it's hard, I think, for a lot of people, not just me, to understand how this thing that looks like true intelligence, like looks like true thinking, is ultimately just boiled down to mathematical predictions. It is, you know, like I'm not saying like when I'm not I'm not doing, I'm not challenging what you're saying. I'm just trying to speak on behalf of what I feel like is the masses. Yeah, it feels like magic. It it does feel like magic, and it feels like an entity that has understanding. But from what you're saying and from what I'm reading on the internet, how could it be understanding if it's all just really complex algebra algebra and and mathematical like calculations connected to each other?

Ryan 1:24:41

Yeah, yeah, it's it's not I mean, you could argue it's understanding, but it's the same kind of understanding that a computer has when it sees a 97% prediction versus a 3% prediction. That's like the understanding that's going on. It's like where it's when it's coming up with these really abstract arguments, it has a lot of data to come up with them beyond the two books that you like implement or that you say like come up with an argument between these books. It's it's looking at a lot more than just those two books, it's looking at like a lot of related books, every potent potentially like every single book in the corpus. So it has that, but like when it comes up with these things, um yeah, I mean it's really just predicting that like this word makes the most sense to come next, this word makes most sense to come next, and then like in a bigger scheme of things, it's like, oh, I'm gonna write this sentence and this sentence, then this sentence, and maybe that will take some things from this book, this book, maybe another book, a little bit. Um like it's it's just a gigantic math equation with like a ton of different probabilities. I mean, maybe that is understanding, but you could argue that the human brain is doing something similar because when humans come up with what to say next, they do it based off of all of the things that they've previously said and heard, and they use that like in their current space, like what we're doing right now, like we're talking. We we learn to talk because when we were kids, we like heard our parents talk and then we heard other people talk, so we have that in our training data, and then we're just making a lot of like cognitive relationships to come up with what the next word is, but that's in uh like a biological sense where like that's happening with cells and DNA, like in our brain, a lot more than cells and DNA, like so many things, and some of it we don't fully understand, but it's like in a biological sense. Uh, computers, I mean, really what that boils down to is like an abacus, like ones and zeros. We just have ones and zeros, trillions and trillions of them at the same time making these predictions.

Hunter 1:27:00

Yeah, it I mean for thousands of years, philosophers have been positing that we are the mind is disconnected from the physical world, from the body and the physical world, and that ultimately the essence of self and the essence of understanding is reducible to the cognitive. But uh since then, I mean that goes back to Plato with his distinction between forms and I and essences. Hopefully, I'm not getting that incorrect, and then um fast forward uh centuries to Rene Descartes, who posited that I think, therefore I am. Cognito ergosum, I believe it is, and in the original form. And he he said that I that mind is there's basically the mind is disconnected from the outside world, and that he he posited that, well, if I if my senses are the only thing connecting me to the outside world, how can I even trust that that is true? And so the only thing I can think is true is the fact that I think. And since then, the field of phenomenology has kind of come back to try to argue uh hey, how could we possibly be reduced to only the mindset? When uh like thinking on an experiential level is very embodied and very tethered to the physical environment in which we're situated. I think children learn not because they just hear words and then upload them to a sort of computer-like system in the mind in clouds. This is actually classic exemplar theory in linguistics and second language learning, um, that we that we get tokens of words and basically build exemplar clouds in the mind of what they mean, what their definitions are, how they connect to other words. But from a different perspective, the perspective I mentioned earlier, that we are highly adaptive beings and we learn in order to keep surviving. Our learning is is always embodied and environmental. And uh, are you familiar with the with the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, who worked on artificial intelligence back in the 1960s? He back when, like you, as you said, it was originally conceived of just computer calculations that incorporated some form of probability, and that people at the time imagined that essentially something like what we have today would eventually come to fruition, where if you could train the computer to make tons of calculations with available data at the same time and then get them together, you could start to function, have something that functions like the human mind. And and and Hubert Dreyfus, um drawing on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponti, French phenomenologist, and uh Martin Heidegger, uh another phenomenologist, says that thinking is inherently embodied. We're not separate from the body, we're not separate from the environment, we are one collective, unified organism. And in order to truly understand something, we have to be conscious of something. We have to be situated in a world. Because if you think about it, if you suddenly can't see anything, can't hear anything, can't feel anything, can't feel pressure, temperature, nothing, is that do you have consciousness? And how would you understand anything if you don't have a something of like something to understand? We're conscious and we understand something. It's like a direct object pronoun. We understand the thing. If that thing is not there because we're not in a physical environment with it, then is that understanding? To the phenomenologist, AI wouldn't be understanding, I don't think. But to to the person who does think that the human mind is ultimately just a string of calculations and predictions we make and that that the different neurological compartments we have allow us to function essentially like in a computer, then maybe you can adapt the understanding term and apply it to a computer. But if you if you do think that understanding requires a relationality between you and an object in a space, or in that space can be online or whatever it is, but you have to have a body basically to the phenomenologists, which is interesting.

Ryan 1:31:25

Yeah. That's that's insane. It's fairly interesting. Yeah, I I mean I would go with the the former argument where you know the human mind is like not a bunch of calculations inherently. Like we're more than just that because we're like in this biological realm and we have sensory inputs and outputs. Um yeah, I mean that I think I feel like that alone kind of proves that like human consciousness is different and like specific to us, or like maybe even beyond humans, like biological consciousness, because we're doing a lot more than just calculating, like we are are like walking around. Like, you know, we like we're born out of other humans, right? That doesn't happen with computers.

Hunter 1:32:19

Yeah. Well, I think a lot of it boils down to what do you think the purpose of cognition and thinking is. If you're in the camp that thinks cognition and thinking is just to ultimately store information and to hold it like a mental library of things, then maybe the mind does function more like a computer, and you could take our notion of understanding it and apply it to artificial intelligence. But if you think cognition is primordial primordially, or first and foremost, for adaptively integrating ourselves into our environment in a coordinated way that allows us to remain alive and thrive and maintain well our well-being and essentially keep being an organism in this world, then I don't think that uh it functions like a computer. I think it it's it's a an environmental integration device. It's not to extract information from the world, but to adaptively integrate ourselves into it further in a way that allows us to continue existing and being comfortable and safe and warm and all those things.

Ryan 1:33:29

Survival.

Hunter 1:33:30

Exactly.

Ryan 1:33:31

Yeah, it's a different, it's a completely different game. And that's why like I don't like that people think that AI is conscious or like could ever be conscious, because and I'm curious what you think too, Josh, on this.

Josh 1:33:45

Well, yeah, uh, me and Hunter were talking about this, and he was talking about how as a human we have senses, we we have sight, you know, um, we can hear things, we can touch things. And I told him maybe these features or these parameters in a model are their senses, you know, in a weird way. It's an interesting thought. Like maybe they're more conscious than us because they're taking in more information. I'm not saying I believe that, but just kind of devil's advocate. Yeah, I think it's a great question to pose. I mean, we still don't really have a definition of consciousness, I think, as a society, so it's it's hard to um talk about these things as like a yes or no, but oh yeah, like yeah.

Ryan 1:34:30

Um yeah, people do not understand consciousness, that's for sure. Nobody nobody knows about it. I've I've heard that the the one field in medicine that really knows about consciousness are um anesthesiologists, and really like all they figured out is like how to turn on and off. Yeah, they don't they don't even understand it. No, no, no, they just they just know how to turn it on and off, and like when a surgeon is like you know, cutting a artery by accident and the blood pressure drops, they know how to like oh snap the blood pressure's dropping. Okay, give this person drugs and then they're gonna be unconscious and they won't feel that, and hopefully they live.

Hunter 1:35:08

But like that's like all humans know about like neurologists, yeah, cognitive scientists, sleep scientists. Uh no one has there's absolutely no consensus on what consciousness is. Some people think that there is a realm beyond what we can sense, that either be it be it some spiritual realm or something like that, from which we draw almost like the mind functions as an antenna, and we like gain some sort of consciousness via that external ethereal realm. Whereas I think the opposite end perhaps of that spectrum is the phenomenological view that we are simply conscious when we're conscious of something. There's a word for this called intentionality. We in intend, I know it's this isn't how we typically use the word, but we intend something like this bottle I'm holding. I can say I'm conscious because I am conscious of this object. Beyond that, of course, I'm in a physical space. If I try to, I can perceive in greater detail the chair beneath me, the shoes on my feet, the socks separating my feet from those shoes, uh, my hand resting on my knee, the air can air temperature, the sound of my voice, etc. But we're conscious because we have all these things to be conscious of. And I think be organisms in general uh share this quality. Uh, things that are alive share, share this quality. Not in the sense that a human might, but they're showing adaptivity to their environment. A plant bends toward the light, even fungi will grow away from uh dry areas in the soil and toward moist areas so they they can proliferate. Uh bacteria under a microscope can be shown to do activities to support their survival and and you know, is that mean they're conscious? Well, I guess according to some definitions, but does AI, does an AI system have that ability to make itself to adapt to survive?

Ryan 1:37:19

That's an interesting, it has no concept of survival at all. You could literally just turn it off. And also, I don't like the uh the ideas that people are like, oh, you know, AI is gonna get so smart, it's gonna take over the world. And it's like, come on, just shut it off. It's literally connected to the power grid grid, like just literally like unplug the computer. It's not like it's this like insane thing that like exists in outer space and is like around us like germs or something, where it's like, oh, you know, like we're gonna have a pandemic of AI. It's like, no, it doesn't work like that. It's not like it's gonna spread and just like infect the entire computer realm and like take over the world. It's like, dude, you just turn it off, it's on your computer. It's a computer program, it's the same, like obviously there's a lot of math going on, but like inherently it's like the same thing as like running a calculator on your computer. It's like, oh, you don't want to see like one plus one equaling two on your computer? Close the calculator app.

Josh 1:38:17

Like, it's not that big of a deal. You don't think some like futuristic computer virus could like um make a mesh network of like machines and what's it gonna get?

Ryan 1:38:29

I mean, the worst thing that's gonna happen is all the computers on the internet will be infected with the virus and then you just turn them off. Yeah, and you turn them off, you just make new computers, and it's like, ah, you know, we really messed up. We made this we we everything was vulnerable and someone a virus infected everything, so all the computers are are done. And like, I mean, obviously, there might be some other economic implic implic uh implications because like all the financial systems on the internet and stuff, but it's like, okay, well, we were asking for that, like everything in the actual materialistic world would be like the same.

Josh 1:38:59

Isn't it funny how we or I've heard people say, like, oh, once we have super intelligent AI, let's make sure they're not connected to the internet. But the first thing we did was like connected to the internet.

Ryan 1:39:11

Yeah, well, I mean, that's crazy. I feel like it's fine. I mean it's fine. No, I agree. Unless you're like actually making like a computer virus, yeah. Then which is like malicious, then it's like not gonna do anything. It's not like you're gonna create an AI that's meant to be safe and you trained it to be safe and then it decides to like take over. It can't even take over.

unknown 1:39:34

Right.

Hunter 1:39:35

Do you think people's fears in that regard are due to how they perceive it as a being with agency?

Ryan 1:39:41

Exactly. They perceive it as a being, they see movies like The Terminator, uh-huh. It's good movies, but like I mean, like they see it as a being. If we had uh robots that we did not have a off switch to, and they could like learn in their own environment theoretically, maybe they could do something, but that's like because it's a being. But i i it's probably still not conscious. But the thing is, like a robot, unless it was like so dangerous that you could literally like not go up to it and shut it off because it like has a gun and it's pointing a gun at you, which would be stupid. And also, like, why would you train a robot to ever point like a gun at a human? Then it's like I mean, I mean we're starting to get more philosophical, but like we're doing that right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right, you're right. But like it's hopefully they have an off switch for it. Yeah, like a kill switch, like the same way that you have like a safety for a rifle. Right. It's like you're not gonna just you don't you as a human being, even if you you're building a weapon, you don't want a weapon that you pick up and you accidentally shoot yourself with it. That's why you have a safety on a rifle. So, like ideally, the people that are building robots, even the ones that are like war robots, god forbid, but like people are doing it and like okay, whatever, you know, defense industry, build it. Uh the the people that are doing that, like they're hopefully they're smart enough to like be able to turn it off. As long as you can turn one of these things off, then like there's no way it's gonna take over.

Josh 1:41:07

I think those are the smartest people on the planet.

Ryan 1:41:10

It's like they better be smart enough to build a off switch.

Hunter 1:41:13

I mean, yeah, I think that's reassuring to know it's really that simple. Perhaps do you think do you think it would be any different once these gigantic data centers get built and then that this and this program, I guess to call it that, exists in multiple giant data centers across the country and world, or what you're describing is the internet. That is fair.

Ryan 1:41:36

It already exists.

Hunter 1:41:38

Yeah.

Ryan 1:41:40

You know, yeah. Yeah. So, like, I mean, it's it's the same thing. Um I mean, get a program, you can access Facebook from any computer because you're accessing Facebook out of a data center somewhere. Yeah, that's where it exists. So I mean, uh, artificial intelligence will probably exist in a data center. It's the same thing. You just access it, you know, use it as your calculator or your word solver, or like let's say it gets a lot smarter and it like generates a lot more for you. Use it for that.

Josh 1:42:10

Can I ask Yes as something?

Hunter 1:42:12

Sure. Maybe switch the subject slightly. Well, I'm I sorry, I'm interested to continue this. Sure, okay, okay. Um have you and your colleagues ever talked about like game theory as applied to the notion of AI development?

Ryan 1:42:25

In what way? Because I know about game theory.

Hunter 1:42:28

But usually I'm not misremembering this, this concept of the of Mullock. I I'm not I hope I'm not totally sabotaging this, but I think game theory has been retroactively, retrospectively applied to understand why things like mass weapons of mass destruction get made, um, despite it not being something people around the world want. Like it's a it's something a small group of humans want for very specific reasons, yet once it exists and it comes to fruition, the enemies of society A recognize that it exists and recognizes its potential for malicious use, and then begins to proactively develop their own version of it so they can survive as a society in the event that it they need to use that weapon. And and both Society A and Society B keep escalating the malicious capabilities of this technology as we're witnessing today, ever since Oppenheimer developed the atomic bomb. We're we now we see ones that are like 500 times, if not greater, more powerful. Yet who asked for that? It's just because our enemies keep building a powerful one, and then we have to keep building a powerful one. So I think that's a worry that society has with this, because there is potential for malicious use, like with the virus thing you mentioned, with hacking, getting people's uh um private data doxing people, whatever it is.

Ryan 1:44:02

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, um, no, I mean there's been a lot of uh discourse recently with some of these AI labs and the Department of War, Department of Defense, US government, and like where we go from here. One thing that's interesting about AI, which is a very overloaded term to be very clear. But like let's just say AI in the sense of like these large language models that we uh currently use. So uh most really groundbreaking technology has come from the government. I mean, like GPS came from the government, the internet came from the government. Yep. Um nuclear bombs. You were just talking about Oppenheimer. Like that was like a you know, like a secret government scientific mission, and they hired a ton of very talented scientists to develop that. AI just kind of materialized out of a bunch of tech companies and people that work on tech. And obviously, the government thinks like, oh, you know, this is could be threatening, which it is potentially threatening. So uh then it we get into this really weird, like unprecedented state where uh currently, like, I mean, there's there's this really huge discourse that happened between the US government and anthropic um a couple months ago, where the US government wanted to basically have full control over anthropic models to do whatever they want with. And Anthropic said, which is uh anthropic is not even a public company, it's a private company, privately owned company based out of San Francisco, from uh old open AI employees that decided that they wanted to make a company that focused more on AI safety. They literally told the government, no, you can't use anthropic models for everything, you could use them for pretty much everything, except you can't use the models to make um fully autonomous weapons. And the US government obviously is like pissed at that because they're like, didn't they end up seizing something and going with it anyway?

Hunter 1:46:27

Or I I could be wrong here.

Ryan 1:46:28

Uh well they ended up just using another like AI company. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, it's it's a weird when it comes to that like games theory thing that you're talking about, like in terms of defense and like how technology relates to defense and governments. Uh, it's a weird time, and it's gonna be interesting to see how that evolves because yeah, like the the US government really doesn't have control over this stuff. Um whether they need to or not, I guess is debatable, but it's just like unprecedented. It's like, well, this is a different time period, and yeah, who knows what the heck's gonna happen. Like, yeah.

Hunter 1:47:08

It's basically like if if you and I are uh hunter-gatherers and I have a spear that's one size, and you see it and then go, oh, he can hurt me with that. I better get a bigger spear that can poke him from farther away. Yeah, and then we just keep increasing the size of the weapons we have. And it's just class, it's just human instinct to want to survive, really. Yeah, but when these these resources get on this grand scale and can impact all of humanity, like the atomic bomb, it just it it really does initiate a paradigm shift. And uh I'm uh I'm hoping the cup is half full here, like with the potential for AI to do things like cure diseases or be become really good at reading like MRI scans and find detecting cancers, or I mean my dentist already has AI like for cavity detection and and whatever they whatever else it's used for. That's a great use because it functions off those features we were talking about earlier. Like if it can get all the data from previous x-rays and and then it can come become super, super good at that. That's one wonderful development. And I hope it continues in that direction.

Josh 1:48:15

That's gonna be awesome. Yeah. The image recognition and the radiology.

Hunter 1:48:19

Yeah. Yeah. And then the last question I have in regards to AI is like um be in living in New York, I think, is interesting because so many jobs are knowledge-based and information-based. And for for quite a long time, actually, I don't want to say quite a long time, but for a while, society in the United States has been geared toward getting an education to perform um scarce jobs, which recently, in the last few decades, several decades, have been in the knowledge and information space. Like I can learn something and be really good at it. I can learn how to analyze or synthesize data and convert it into some sort of artifact or product that other people can't because I'm specially trained.

Ryan 1:49:05

Yeah.

Hunter 1:49:07

And for like I've been saying, those have been the scarce jobs. But now that AI can do those tasks, what's going to become the scarce jobs? Is it going to inevitably just become the jobs related to physical labor that no that fewer people are passionate about and that fewer people actually want to go do? And I just I just think about this because like AI was something I thought about or like dreamed about even in high school, as like changing society to where all the jobs nobody wanted to do were taken and done by robots, and then the creative stuff was done by humans, and that was just their living their fullest life. But it seems um it's the opposite.

Ryan 1:49:56

I mean, uh, first of all, I think that uh jobs that involved human labor have always been very important. Like maybe they've like been paid less historically, uh like over the past like couple hundred years because like you know, people in upper class you know sit on their high pedestal. And are like, oh, you know, I'm gonna be an intellectual, and like you can build my house for me, and I will like do research and people will value that, which is cool. But like there's still been like hundreds of people that built the world. I I just saw this documentary about uh how people built the Brooklyn Bridge, and they literally like were getting paid $2 a day, but uh they would go like like 70 meters underground in this like tiny little chamber, like literally underwater, uh, to like lay the foundation of the bridge, and it was like crazy. But I mean that bridge would not exist unless like people did that, so like it's very important work.

Hunter 1:50:57

No doubt.

Ryan 1:50:58

Yeah, maybe it's like undervalued, but it's like always been super important. Um nowadays, though, it's very interesting because it's like okay, if you actually know how to build things and like do things in the real world, that is incredibly valuable. Like, if you can run like an HVAC company in Arizona, yeah, I would argue that like those people have like a way better career projection than like some of my friends in New York, even you know, like you know, they actually like know how to do things, and if you can scale that into a business, that's freaking huge. Uh AI cannot replace cannot do that right now, at least. Uh, when it comes to like more of the intellectual, like white-collar jobs, though, uh, I don't think that those jobs are like done. I don't think like intelligence and human intelligence and expanding that is done. It'll just like evolve into something else. And this is just like a very big shift. Uh, but the this industry of like all white-collar jobs, like computer jobs, intellectual jobs, uh finance jobs, desk jobs, whatever it is, like quote unquote white collar jobs, it has seen like a lot of um a lot of changes over the years, especially with computers. I mean, like when computers came out, a lot of people were like, what the heck? I'm gonna lose my job because a computer can do calculations, but we still have a ton of accountants because it turns out that you actually need people to supervise those calculations. And then now people are working on like way bigger calculations and like way bigger tax strategies and accounting strategies that like would not be possible unless computers existed. So we're in this current shift where like people are freaking out being like, oh, you know, AI is gonna like automate my job, and there's gonna be like no jobs for white-collar workers, and like what's the point about getting an education and like learning finance or um or like liberal arts or like computer science or English because it's like, oh, you know, like a computer could just write. But uh, it turns out that like I think I I don't think that'll be the case. I think maybe in the short term people are just freaking out. And I mentioned it earlier, but like I think people are just freaking out about this stuff way too much, and they're just too obsessed with it. I mean, we've been talking about it for like an hour at this point, like we're obviously obsessed with it because we're like, whoa, this thing is crazy. But like eventually we're just gonna get bored with it, and then we're gonna move on to the next thing, and it's just gonna like lay the framework for like uh bigger things. I was talking about like computers coming out, and a lot of people thought that they would lose their jobs from that. Another thing that people thought they were gonna lose their jobs from was when Microsoft Excel came out. It ended up being that like that it came up with like a huge like a huge expansion of jobs, because then like that became like a skill that people wanted to learn where it's like, oh, I actually want to learn about Microsoft Excel and like how it works, and then you know I could get hired by a company because I know about it, and there's like so many people their jobs are based off of Excel, like it didn't take their job, it created a bunch of new jobs. So I personally think that in in the like intellectual realm, like AI will actually long term like probably create more jobs. That's where I'd like to be, that's yeah, yeah. Uh or like it'll force people to be more intellectual because it's like, well, we already have this intellectual thing solved, so we have to think bigger than what computers can think about. Yep. Uh, but I mean it's definitely weird, but uh yeah, I I think it'll it'll just continue evolving. It's not like those kind of jobs are done.

Hunter 1:54:26

That's what definitely where I would like to be. And as an educator, I think I mean we've noticed we've been woken up to how the essay no longer really functions how it used to, as like a a window into student learning, because it can be done entirely. Like you could just tell this AI system to do it and present it as your own work. But I think that's actually exposed an important and valuable problem and like an and a valuable lesson to educators, and like all the way from post-secondary education at the university level, all the way down to like primary school. Like, what is true evidence of learning? And if we do think it is adaptive, if we do think it is uh asking good questions, being curious, like being able to like observe a system, whatever that system may be, whether it's an interaction between two people, whether it's the features of AI that we're talking about, asking good questions about how it works and doing something with it and applying something with it. I think it could be a better way. First of all, I think we need to get our students to ask better questions. And to do that, we need to have more conversations with them, uh, really expand our curiosity and leverage their curiosity, not just upload information to them like passive recipients of knowledge. That system is no longer working in a system where AI can do things for us. It's like the calculator. Why teach somebody how to do these mathematics problems when you have a calculator? Why teach people some of these skills like correcting? I mean, I don't want to say something that could, you know, I might regret later, but grammar is not the most important thing in the world. Asking good questions and being a good observer and being attentive and being uh um able to engage in a wide variety of of tasks and activities is an education, I think. And I think we need to think about how to do that better for our students all the way down from kindergarten through the university system.

Ryan 1:56:32

Yeah, for sure. What did you want to talk about, Josh? Now I'm very curious.

Josh 1:56:37

Um so we're all creative people here, right? We used to be in a band together, good times, right? There's been some obviously we've been talking about these large language models, but there's a lot of other things. There's image generation, there's um audio generation with Suno. You guys have heard about it? Oh yeah. It'll write it. Hunter, you're one of the best songwriters. You're the best songwriter I know, period. Oh well, thank you. That's pretty good by far. Um what do you guys think about that's that stuff? Like, what what do you think the future of I guess um I guess art in general, but specifically with music, like do you think we're just gonna be generating our own songs all day instead of listening to artists? Or do you like do you think this stuff's gonna take off, or do you think it's gonna kind of die?

Ryan 1:57:28

I think it's that stuff is gonna die out.

Hunter 1:57:31

Yeah, I think I do too, for a couple reasons. It's been out for a while and it hasn't flooded like Spotify or Apple Music or even YouTube. I mean, it's it's there, like you'll come across some AI stuff.

Josh 1:57:43

And it does chart on the on the charts, it can.

Ryan 1:57:46

But like ironically, though, exactly. What song what songs have charted that are AI generated slop songs that like actually people I could show you some.

Josh 1:57:56

My dad sent me some songs, and he's like, Josh, it I don't care if it's AI. And he found it on the Apple Music charts, and it's like this AI artist, and he didn't even know it was AI. I'm like, Dad, you know this is AI? Like, and he's like, I don't really care, it really touches my soul. Well, that could totally be true.

Hunter 1:58:14

I mean, if the message, like the lyrics carry an important message and make someone like are relatable to someone.

Josh 1:58:19

And I listened to it and I'm like, I can see how his life he related to these lyrics.

Hunter 1:58:23

There are a couple of observations I've had. Like, one side of the AI music production thing uh has me worried just because I I think that it's one creative area where like soundtrack writers and like that type of work might be like pushed aside or like marginalized by companies who ultimately just want to like push out creative content for a cheaper cost. And that's sad to me because I think what is what what are we doing as human beings if we can't go do things we're passionate about? Like, are we essentially just keeping ourselves physically alive, like to where we breathe and to where we're have a stable body temperature and have food and water in our system, but we can't go do things that breathe true life into us and like a broader aesthetic sense. So that worries me, and I hope that doesn't happen. I think the big companies like in Hollywood would receive backlash if they did, and I think they'd become less popular, but maybe not, maybe 50, 100 years from now, that's totally normal. The other side of it is uh I've seen like artists get a little sad, almost as if like the value of their own songwriting is less now because it's not as special anymore, if an AI system can do it. Um and to me, I can see why people would be sad or feel like their work is less valuable or less meaningful, but that's really only if you're looking at what your work, your art means to others. But if you think about what it does for you as like a form of raw human expression and like as a cathartic practice, then I mean you should everyone should keep doing the art they're doing, no matter what kind of mathematically based AI system is doing. It's ultimately for us, I think, to find depth, depth and richness and vibrance in the world. Uh, and I think above all, when that kind of vibrant, rich, raw art is made, people really connect with the story behind it.

Ryan 2:00:36

Um people care about the artists. It's like the whole, it's like literally just storytelling. It's like when you see somebody that is a really good guitarist, it's not just about the fact that they're a really good guitarist, it's about the fact that you look at them and you're like, holy shit, this guy spent years of his life learning how to play guitar. He probably sacrificed his life to be this good at guitar because he had to spend so many hours practicing and learning these songs. It's it's almost like you don't only care about the output and hearing cool music, but when you hear the cool music, it's just like the first input to this like larger thing about like, oh, this is a person that literally like sacrificed their entire life to make this, and I could have done that, but I didn't. So you have this like sympathy and this this whole like you know, like human relationship when it comes to art. I I mean I I think like with AI music, it's like, yeah, it could sound cool, but it will never it'll never be like up to par with other artists. And the the thing is too, is like I was talking about like Excel and like how people thought they were gonna like lose their jobs from Excel. Um when the camera came out, painters thought that they were gonna lose their jobs, and they thought that painting was just done. Because it's like, why would you need a painter when you could just take pictures of everything? Like, you don't need to paint anything. This was like in the late 1800s, like cameras became really popular. In the early 1900s, guess what happened? Uh, there was a huge explosion of painters, and they started painting all this abstract crazy shit, and it was like basically like the the beginning of like the surrealism era in art, uh, where you had like Salvador Dali and like Jackson Pollock making these insane pictures that like a camera could not take with like elephants with gigantic legs. So I mean like people are are like first of all, like people care about the humans. Second of all, people are just gonna make way better music than AI could make. And I mean, obviously, like AI will just like take that as training data, but it's still not the same. Like it's not gonna be like it's not gonna be innovating, yeah.

Josh 2:02:43

I do still I do think there might be a future, and I agree with like we like to follow the artist, we like to follow the lore behind the pop star, right? We all love that stuff, but I do think there's a future where we're just generating our own music, sort of, or like the algorithm learns our music tastes and just gives us songs that we absolutely love, and we're the it's only made for us. I don't know. I maybe we're like 30 years out from that. I mean, that's kind of like the TikTok algorithm, sure, yeah, yeah.

Hunter 2:03:14

I could see that for like a running playlist or like studying music or something like that, especially if it's instrumental, and then you can just like tell it what vibe you want, like, hey, this is too much, just focus on these types of pads or this, you know, really reverb heavy uh large spaces. So you just get lost in the sound and just focus. But I really do think, I mean, what Ryan said is really inspiring and it's like cool to hear that and be reminded of that history of behind painting and its persistence over time. People are people are way too attached to the artist, and it's really the human, we are so hardwired to root for the underdog. And I'm not saying artists are all underdogs, but getting to a certain level in your art is a form of overcoming this huge challenge that we all want to be able to overcome ourselves. And when we see another human do something incredible, we're just like infatuated with it, whether it's an athlete, like an Olympian, or uh a violin player or a painter, or you name it, like we're just drawn to stories of success. I think, again, for those sociological reasons I mentioned a long time ago, that we want to surround ourselves and be associated with people who are successful because those people will in turn help us be successful. We're hyper pro-social beings at our core. And I don't think as of now, at least in our current evolutionary state, that a computer will suffice like satisfy those those hyper pro-social needs. Maybe one day, uh, but it's too new for right now. Yeah. What do you think? Ever? Or you think we'll just get bored with it?

Ryan 2:04:57

No, humans are hardwired to be human.

Hunter 2:05:00

Well put. Yeah. I mean, it in language learning, like the reason research has shown that like with AI chat bots or whatever, people will interact with them a little bit at first, or quite often, depending on their specific level of interest or whatever and motivation. But over time, they quickly become bored with it in compared like when compared to interacting with another human being, like on a on a chat platform. And I think that just shows that we invest in other human beings because they in turn invest in us, and it's like mutual feelings of specialness.

Ryan 2:05:38

Yes. I I do have a really interesting counter argument to sure. Let's so I I I personally am like team human, like humans are hardwired to be human. I think it there's like a lot of uh, you know, genetic reasons for that. You know, we we we live to survive, we live to mate, we live to like find community. Uh a lot of that comes down to like survival and like passing on your genes. Biology, basically, is like what I'm saying. Like humans deeply are you know, we're animals, like we're biological beings, we're very advanced, uh, but we you know, we come up with our society structure and we have rules in society, and we uh we have desires and we have um human needs and wants, and if somebody broke into our house, we'll do anything we can to protect it and like try to survive and like persist. That's just biology. But think about the next generation. If you're a baby and you and your mother is a chatbot, would you still have those same human instincts? And would you care about talking to humans versus chatbots if your mother was a chatbot?

Hunter 2:06:52

I think we would need to turn our attention to like previous research on animals that have been like adopted by other species, maybe as a good starting point to understand what happens. I think there are there have been instances where like a coyote is like raised by some other animal. I mean, I don't know any specific instance, and it does feel part of the kin.

Ryan 2:07:13

Um because the thing is, like our kids are gonna grow up with AI models that they could chat with all the time. So, what what's the difference between them like chatting? If you're like I get it for us, like we are like we got raised with only people, but like let's say that you know you have a robot in your house named Leela that does your dishes and it can have full-on conversations and talk to you about whatever, yeah. And you got exposed to that when you were literally a baby and then two years old, and once you started talking, not only were you talking to a human, but talking to a robot. Would you feel this same human biological instinct, or because of the way that you were raised, would you be different? Like, would you like potentially like fall in love with a robot or like have these like intense feelings about robots like the same way that we do about like artists, where it's like, dang, when I look at like Salvador Dali painting, I'm like, damn, like what a creative guy. Like that guy was so cool, like he made these crazy pictures.

Hunter 2:08:20

But yeah, I think it's possible. Yeah, I mean people anthropomorphized so many things. I think I as you're talking, I'm thinking about Star Wars and like C3PO and R2D2, and how when we look at those characters on the screen, we like feel we want to root for their survival, even though they're that's like a robot, but they're treated by the characters like Anakin as he's a kid. He treats C3PO like he's his what brother, uncle?

Ryan 2:08:44

I mean, he does have like a distance to the robots, though. He's like closer to the humans, and he ends up being like a human. But could it be that especially like maybe not in like the first generation of people talking to robots all the time? But imagine like multiple generations of that. Could that evolve into maybe?

Hunter 2:09:04

But then you would think to yourself, like, the parents would like let's say the robot falls down and just disintegrates like down a staircase, right? If a human experienced that, they're special, they're not coming back if they if they die. Whereas the let's say the robot, the family C3PO falls down the stairs and its head comes off and just shatters or whatever. The the mom or dad's like, oh, don't worry, like it's backed up. We'll just you know upload the the backup to a new one and he'll be back in no time. Yeah, so they start to lose their novelty aspect, and then the human nonetheless remains irreplaceable.

Ryan 2:09:47

Yeah, I I it was a really interesting thing you were talking about of like animals that were raised by different species. Because I feel like it's it's the same thing where it's like, okay, this is like humans. Like, I mean, obviously, we know it's just we have this conversation, we know it's just like computers doing matrix multiplication. But to like a kid, this is probably like an another species. So then like we get into the discussion of like what happens when you like intermingle species.

Hunter 2:10:16

Yeah. Yeah. I think it it would be fascinating to do research on that. Yeah. And I I I do think that the expend lack of expendability, or no, the expendability, rather, of the robot beings would this is just my prediction, decrease the extent to which humans, even children, would want to invest in those beings, because it's um I I don't know. I'm just speaking off on on the whim here, but there is a a pack sensation uh we have as humans. And if we know that that model can just as easily like be programmed to care about any other human being, like instantaneously, it's like, oh, is it me that you care about? Is it us that we have going on here? Is it you and me together against the world, or are you just programmed to do this with any human that purchases you? And then suddenly it's like, huh. I mean, we experience this with friends who like we think they're our best friend, and then we find out they've been on these trips with other friend groups or whatever it is, and it's like, oh, I I don't know. I thought we were like really close, yeah.

Ryan 2:11:32

Or like and then you feel distanced from them, yeah, or like your spouses or like loved ones. It's like, oh, like here's this person I'm dating, I'm like super into them, and we're gonna be like live happily ever after, and then it's like, oh, you know, actually they like have uh other people on their roster, you know, where it's like, okay, well, actually, I don't like that person as much. Or like maybe they like dropped a couple points on my roster. You know, uh, so yeah, I mean, that is a good point. It's like um, yeah, there's something about that that's like inherently like it's not the same like unconditional love that like humans that are like temporary.

Hunter 2:12:08

Yeah, I think potentially are. It all comes down to how humans instinctively understand sociality as a survival. Game. Every human can potentially be an asset to me or a threat to me. And if I can build a bond with somebody and trust that it's really us against all other, we have each other's backs, that is something we naturally invest in. And we even give up our own resources and our own time and our all of it to support that because it's so important for reciprocally our own survival. But if a robot's giving it out to everybody, dishing it out to everybody, it's like, oh, I don't know if like that's worth if that's worth my time. But humans always change and evolve, and 300, 500, a thousand years from now, it could be so I could people listening to this, if it still exists, could be laughing, just oh my gosh, how off the mark was he? He thought that robots could never rise to the level of humans. Look at now. Who knows?

Ryan 2:13:12

Yeah, but what's the point? Like, because we are in control of AI and like intelligence and robots. So, what would be the point of having robots like surpass us? We're because we are in control. We have the switch. So, like, I get it that you would want machines that like could like cure cancer or do the dishes or like help you with your homework or like do this, but what's the point of being like, oh, I'm gonna make like the next species that is better than humans, and then like I'm just gonna let them roam free.

Hunter 2:13:45

I think it's right now about wealth transfer. Yeah. Uh like if you can get a system to do work that currently tons of people are on salary for, and then say goodbye to those people and sub and usurp that money, those funds, and still produce the same output. It's just now those people who were once middle or maybe even upper class are now scrambling for work, and all that money has been usurped up back towards the top one percent, the CEOs and their whoever's in charge of of the AI. So it's it's really that's what I think it it's just that right now, as I see it. And there aren't many people in Congress speaking up about that. Uh yeah.

Ryan 2:14:32

So you're saying that like the the reason why we would humans would want to build super intelligent beings is basically because people want to screw a lot of people over.

Hunter 2:14:48

No, that's that's an after effect of wanting more money for themselves, I think.

Josh 2:14:54

Just capitalism, yeah, I think is what's fueling it right now. I think I think if it wasn't for that, we would all say, let's pause it.

Hunter 2:15:01

Right? And unless I am like a cancer researcher and I'm like, hey, this could change lives. That's there are micro uses and and micro groups, of course, with the right reasons, I think. But at the very, very top, what was the original reason that like Nvidia and OpenAI made like made that purchase, had that transaction? To make money. Yeah, and I think that's still feeling it. I think that the day the massive data centers posing discomfort to communities across the United States, not currently, but at least when they're going to be built, if they're being built by neighborhoods, these massive, loud, energy-consuming structures being built at the dis at the expense of human beings who are just trying to live lives is a really good manifestation and reflection of this trajectory towards just people doing it for money, like against what people want.

Ryan 2:15:49

Yeah, you'll like sacrifice humanity for money, basically. Yeah. But um what was I gonna say? You were talking about capitalism and like how capitalism is driving this, but like what other what other like good form of society do we have?

Josh 2:16:08

No, I guess it's capitalism in uh us uh in at least in America, we're afraid that we're gonna fall behind China. That's kind of what I mean. It's like we're in this like race to like make the best thing because we want to stay on top in in terms of a country.

Hunter 2:16:24

Uh well, game theory has been applied to understand how capitalism works as well. And it's like if one company who has the potential to take this technology and make use of it doesn't take the opportunity, another will. So we better. Um, but I think it could happen in other forms of government too, not just capitalism. I think it could ultimately like uh yeah, it could take on many different forms and still have negative consequences for people, whether it's invasion of privacy, whether it's people not having the ability to go do the types of jobs they feel passionate about anymore, for the same exact reasons. But yeah, one one interesting thing that the co-founder of Perplexity was recently mentioning is the idea of giving dividends to the people, like almost like universal basic income. Uh-huh. Uh, but he he frames it as like a dividend based on the fact that, as you mentioned prior, the AI models run on the corpus of the internet, which is created by humans. It's human knowledge. So somewhere in this picture, humans should probably get rewarded in some form or another, or or assisted. Like, I don't know. It makes sense when it's framed as a dividend or like a bonus for them using all like I publish research articles, the AI system uses the knowledge that I helped produce. What do I get from that? Not that I'm trying to be selfish about it, but just posing that question.

Ryan 2:17:52

I mean, you could it sounds very dystopian, but right now you could go online and get a contracting job as a data annotator in the field of linguistics. I'm sure that the frontier AI companies would love to pay you for your knowledge and sit at a computer and annotate data for going to train the next AI model. I mean, that's what it is. I mean, that's if the only thing we care about is AI and making it better and like getting dividends from it, then we're all just gonna be data annotators, which I don't like. That's why I just like I wish people were just like done like with the whole AI craze. It's like, okay, we have some pretty good models, just like do some stuff, like let's do some other stuff, you know, like let's like move on. And like I get it, like they're gonna continue to evolve and they should continue to evolve, but I just hate that everybody's just like drop everything. And like I see that like at my job where people like literally we had like a product roadmap this year, and like a lot of leaders decided to just throw it out, and they're like, Oh, we don't want a vision for our product and company anymore because we want to just see what happens with AI and just build off of whatever happens with that. And it's like, Well, you really think this is gonna end up somewhere good? Like, it's just gonna, we're just gonna be aimlessly doing stuff and like waiting for new AI models to come out. That's like pretty stupid. You're not gonna come up with anything that cool if you just do that. It's like just like think on your own for once. Like, stop being stop having like you know, like the term AI psychosis, yeah, yeah, where people like interact with AI models so much that they think that like whatever it tells them is just truth. Yep. Like all these people like in America and China and like all the powerful nations, they just like are infected with AI psychosis. They're like talking to AI models trying to help them brainstorm what to do and what to do next and what to build. And uh everything is tainted because like nobody wants to think for themselves anymore. And it's like, dude, just like I I mean, sure, use AI as a tool, but think for yourself and like come up with your own vision. Like, everything doesn't have to be whatever like the AI model wants you to do, or or it doesn't have to be like building AI things to impress people.

Hunter 2:20:09

So the counter-argument is relates to class and power, though, because what if people who haven't had the opportunity to get an education feel that they can leverage AI to write at the level expected of them to be successful and get jobs and like convert their resume into something truly like powerful, uh, or like I don't know. I just see I see the other side like as an educational tool or a means to create artifacts that level the playing field to people with people who can on their own, without the use of AI, create really impressive artifacts based on their education they've received. So I get it, like people's desire to want to do it. And another aspect, like you raised the point, why do we need to keep keep inflating and increasing and getting stronger? It I mean, Josh mentioned capitalism, it's basically the one company company A will worry that if they don't keep increasing and improving every single quarter, that all the contracts will go to company B and then suddenly they'll be screwed because company B will keep progressing and improving. So it's just it's survival again at a different level, on a different scale, different level of granularity uh at the level of the company and the corporation. So yeah. I I I wish we could all just collectively be like, hey, this is good enough. When I see social media comments, people are always like, We didn't ask for it.

Josh 2:21:34

No one wants it, or most of us.

Ryan 2:21:37

I think we would want it if it did cure cancer, and if it if it does do those things, yeah, but like at this point, like shouldn't the models uh on paper be good enough to like do things like that and like come up with vaccines? And it's like, why don't we just invest in people using the models that exist? Like, I just feel like there should be more interest in other things that are valuable, you know. Like I get it that like expanding knowledge and it and making computers smarter is like collectively going to like probably do a lot of good in the long run, but there's also like a lot of other things that could do a lot of good in the long run.

Hunter 2:22:15

Yeah, for sure. I mean, more tax dollars could be used to actually help people in need. Um, I I I go to I visit Europe and I visit Japan and I see them the wonderful infrastructure they have just in transportation and like the tax dollars that go to building and maintaining these trains, just the subway stations alone. I'm like, each one of these things is such a massive project, and they devote resources to doing that to make the lives of their citizens better and more efficient and easier. And it makes you wonder like where we could be doing something similar here, yeah. But I am uh I I do strive to maintain a perspective that the glass is half full and that one day we will live in a society where medical interventions are much more successful, much they they catch possibly disastrous diseases much earlier. People are still creative, people still can get a living doing what they are drawn to do. I mean, I feel so fortunate to live a life where I get paid to like investigate questions that are interesting to interesting to me, like as a human being. I mean, I wish everybody could could live that life. I mean, I'm not I'm by no means rich, but I make enough to you know pay my bills and I do what I probably would do no matter what, even if it wasn't my job, because I just love it. And everybody should get the right, I think, one day in an ideal society to do that. Um, and if robots are the ones constructing houses one day and and doing plumbing and electrician work, and and not to say nobody doesn't enjoy those professions, because I think people do, but and it can open the space for people to do what they love, uh, it could be potentially good. Although I do think, like I said before, we we're challenge overcomers at heart. And if we don't have challenges anymore, I wonder what we would come and turn into.

Ryan 2:24:17

But yeah. Yeah, if you just had uh like universal basic income all the time, you'd probably just be bored. You'd want to do something else.

Hunter 2:24:27

Yeah, it's that the fulfillment we get from overcoming challenge and hardship that makes life meaningful, and that is a very that that comes on different levels. I understand that that my challenges are nothing compared to others, and there are people who do face challenges that absolutely don't feel the same way that it's not like a fulfilling, like life-riching experience to them. But uh, I think what I think people get what I'm trying to say that some level of overcoming challenges is imbues one with a sense of reward.

Josh 2:25:01

Yeah.

Hunter 2:25:03

Yeah. What are your uh next hopes living in New York? Do you have? Are you good are you planning on moving to a different part? Are you planning on is there something you want to do or or see or experience?

Ryan 2:25:15

Um it's a good question. I don't know. I I've been uh pretty career oriented over the last year. I think that's like not necessarily a bad thing, but I'd like to focus on other things and kind of like live other lives where I'm doing other things. Like I think there's just like you know, a lot of different communities that it would be cool to get involved in. Like music is one thing that um I haven't been super involved in, but I'd like to be more involved in. Um, I just joined a cover band. I think I mentioned that.

Hunter 2:25:48

Like, do you want to drop the name or it's called Not That Famous? Not that famous?

Ryan 2:25:53

Yeah, I think it'll be cool. I want to, I mean, it'll be good to just like be a drummer in a band. I feel like I that's like a very uh like uh what do you call it? Like a steady state for me. It's like you know how particles reach like uh their equilibrium. That's like me. Like when I'm a drummer in a band, it's like oh that's like my like you know, steady state.

Hunter 2:26:10

Homeostasis or yeah, homeostasis, exactly.

Ryan 2:26:13

So I think that'll be good. Um, I have a girlfriend. Oh, great, and she's from New York, so I've awesome. That's awesome. Uh, but yeah, I mean, I I think right now being in New York, what I'm thinking about is like permanently, like for like the rest of my life, I feel like probably it would be New York or somewhere in Arizona. I want to do a lot more traveling, and I could totally see myself living in like Abu Dhabi for like a year or two years, but I don't want to like open up another door into a world where it's like this could be like permanent, because I think that's like a it's a lot, and I've kind of realized that like moving to New York, it's like, oh, you know, being in a new place and being like, oh, I could live here forever. It's like, well, what happens to all the people that like live where you used to live? You're just gonna like I don't know, like you still will have to maintain those friendships, and obviously, like I try to maintain my Arizona friendships, like my family's here, so it's like um yeah, I'll definitely want to do a lot more traveling, but um, I'll probably stay in New York as long as I can, and then long term probably there or Arizona or somewhere close. I mean, I guess like LA is kind of close to Arizona, but uh I don't know. I've never lived in LA. Gotta be cool to try though.

Hunter 2:27:35

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope to visit New York one day and experience it for myself.

Ryan 2:27:40

Aren't you coming in September?

Hunter 2:27:41

We gotta plan that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm planning to, as long as it works out for you.

Ryan 2:27:44

So yeah, you just like come and crash. Cool. I'll probably be sort of busy, but we'll at least get together a couple times. So like that could work out. So like you could you could come crash.

Hunter 2:27:55

Cool and walk around and experience the life, the buzz.

Ryan 2:27:58

Yeah, I have extra keys too, so I could if I went to work, I could literally just give you the extra keys. Cool. You like use it like an Airbnb. Yeah, I'd be happy to. I do that for a lot of people because I think it's cool. It's like, okay, I I pay a lot of rent and it's like a lot of money. It's like, well, gotta pay for it for a reason. I mean, I haven't been home for the last like week, and then I'm gonna come home for literally like a week, and then I'm going to Spain. No way. Where are you going to Spain? Barcelona. Barcelona.

Josh 2:28:27

For the World Cup? Or is that?

Ryan 2:28:29

No, I mean, oh my god. I mean, the World Cup actually I guess that's not in Spain, is it? Yeah, but technically Spain could be playing. Did they win? There was a game today. I've never.

Hunter 2:28:40

Shane we looked that up. We gotta see who won. Yeah, but I don't know. Just Barcelona?

Ryan 2:28:45

Uh Barcelona and Ibiza. Cool. Yeah.

Hunter 2:28:49

You're meeting up with friends?

Ryan 2:28:50

Yeah, yeah. Two of my buddies from New York from this gym that I go to, we just decided to do a vacation. I think it'll be a great like friends trip, like friend bond trip, and then uh yeah, we'll have a blast. And practicar porque it's no SPN.

Hunter 2:29:10

No, you do speak good. You just gotta get back into it. It's all about again, your mind, your cognition is just an environment integration.

Ryan 2:29:19

Yeah, that's true. And language is actually a really good example of that, I think. Yeah. That it's like that's a because I know for a fact, even though I speak no Chinese, it would be incredibly hard. But if I literally just was in China for like a decade, I would just speak forced to learn it. Like my brain would figure it out. It would probably be very stressful, but like you would have figured it out. Yeah.

Josh 2:29:42

So Spain beat Belgium.

Hunter 2:29:44

Spain did.

Ryan 2:29:46

Oh, okay.

Hunter 2:29:46

Yeah, spoiler right there.

Ryan 2:29:48

All right. Well, they could be actually, I think the the final would be around the time that we're there. Cool. Well, people are gonna be really excited.

Hunter 2:29:57

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, what a cool experience that would be if they're in it.

Ryan 2:30:01

That would be crazy. Yeah, the bars would be so packed. They're already probably gonna be packed.

Hunter 2:30:07

Well, I hope you enjoy that. Um, and yeah, it's been really fun talking to you guys. This is really interesting, and I'm gonna be thinking about these ideas for a long time, but but yeah, I mean, you're definitely, I think the two of you are the most knowledgeable friends I I know personally on this topic on AI and and whatnot. So it's been a pleasure learning more about it.

Josh 2:30:28

Likewise.

Hunter 2:30:29

Yeah.

Ryan 2:30:30

Thanks, Soldier.

Hunter 2:30:31

Yeah, safe travels wherever you're you end up. Uh, New York, Spain, uh, thank you, Josh, for hosting us at your Hubble OBS, of course. Yes, appreciate that. All right, well, we're gonna wrap it up now.