Bill Gates: The Turbulent AI Era Is Here – and We Have No Plan
Full transcript
Andrew: Are you sure you can get your head in these today?
Sean: Probably not.
Andrew: Is this a big headed day?
Sean: I think the problem, I think one of the, yes, the answer is yes. But I think one of the problems is like when I sit and I check, I think I slouch. And then when I get in here, I'm like,
Andrew: Yes, you get all riled up and you sort of give a hand.
Sean: Dang it.
Andrew: And then I'm like, oh no. Now he throws his head again.
Sean: In more ways than one perhaps.
Andrew: Well, deep breath. Welcome to Thursday's recording session.
Sean: Yet again. And one thing I will say, the timing has been working out in our favor, because all of these billionaire memos and manifestos have been going out before we record of that week.
Andrew: It's clearly billionaire AI manifesto season. August is the season. Who knew? Apparently, August is the time.
Sean: But it is, again, you know, it's like, here we are having another conversation about another billionaire with their take on AI in the future. But this time, of course, we'll be talking about the Bill Gates letter, planning for a turbulent future. And because like always, again, these sort of things hit and they drop and you have all kinds of thoughts and feelings.
I will say right off the bat, before we even take our break and kind of jump into it, I will say at least this one, it did not trigger the mic drop metric. So at least it was very human readable. It was more erudite.
It's more measured. That's right. It was actually human readable.
Like when you felt points of frustration.
Andrew: This is on the plus side. Bill Gates is clearly human. That's right.
Or at least writes this one. Right, right, right. Either that or he's got a super smart AI to do.
Sean: Well, you know, you always wonder like those Project Glass Wings, all this stuff. You're like, I bet individuals like he have access to these as well. But I will, but it was one of those things where it was refreshing at least that when you felt frustration or argumentative things build, it was based on their ideas, not the way they were writing the prose, which was like,
Andrew: drop, drop, drop. Yes. For anybody that's listened to our one on, was it Sam Altman?
It was Mark Zuckerberg. It was Mark Zuckerberg, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So an episode or so ago, You can hear us rant about that.
Sean: Yeah, $18 billion ago. Right. Which we're not even talking about that today. We'll save that. We'll save the meta sort of plea deal of $18 billion for another time.
Andrew: Yeah, but today it's digging into Bill Gates, which is going to be fun because you've read it. I've watched the news,
Sean: but I haven't had a chance to read it. So I'm coming in cold. You are enjoying your sabbatical and actually giving your brain a rest from these things.
I'm reading other stuff at the moment. Reading for enjoyment. And then I come in here, I'm like, have you read this thing?
Time to tear it apart. Yeah, so why don't we just take a quick break, and then we'll just dive right on in. Okay.
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Announcer: Exploring the possible, probable, and preferable futures. Welcome to Modem Futura.
Sean: And we're back. Okay, and we're back. I'm Sean Leahy, joined by my amazing co-host extraordinaire Andrew Maynard — who's jumping the gun there. Right, we're ready to go. This is gonna be a high energy episode, which of course means you're listening to Modem Futura, the show that explores the intersection of technology, society, and the possible, probable, and preferable futures, asking deep questions like, what will it mean to be human in the future? And I can't prove,
Andrew: but I also cannot disprove that Bill Gates does not listen to this exact podcast because Actually, I'm sure he does.
Sean: I'm sure he does, or his people do or something. Because, you know, it is hard to read his letter and not go, hey, hey, we talked about, we talked about that six months ago, a year ago. So I think that's, like I said, it can't be proven or disproven.
Right, right. So it'll be interesting. So, because again, I think in this letter that Bill Gates just released on August 26th, I was like, I knew it was really close.
But yeah, August 26th, Wednesday, August 26th, he released through his personal website, the Gates Notes, an article on the turbulent era of artificial intelligence. But within there, when you read it, you know, again, so many of the things that he is raising in there are topics that we have covered at times at length. Right, right. And we were just chatting
Andrew: about this before we started recording. And it's very clear that these are things, certainly that I've been writing about for the last 10 or 11 years. And they're things that there are communities around the world that have been researching and writing about and warning about for a couple of
Sean: decades nearly now. Absolutely. And I think I may have mentioned this before, but I think this is also sometimes those frustrations that are felt by people who do work in these areas, or especially if you work in futures. You know, when you spend, when your career is living on the fringe and you're discovering all these things and you're talking about them, and then that time lag, it could be a week, it could be a month, it could be a year. And then people are like, We've just discovered this.
Andrew: There's got to be a word for this. And I don't know what it is. When your life's work is focused on something and then somebody else pops up and says, hey, I've just had this enlightened revelation.
And you're like, yeah, no kidding, man. I've been, it's so frustrating. But we've got to be measured because actually a lot of what he says actually is important.
Despite the fact that we've been talking about this for years. Yes, I mean. It doesn't make it less important.
Sean: No, and one of the things I will credit him too, right? As in the piece, one of the things that there is, So it goes through this, and I've got it sort of pulled apart. And this one, again, I will give credit. This is actually, regardless of how people might feel about what is being said, it's well-written, and it's laid out nicely, including, of course, even with some of, he even says, you know, reveals his own biases that he's like, you know.
Andrew: So it's So Sean the Professor gives him at least an A for this.
Sean: You know, the red pen.
Andrew: Maybe a B plus, but that's
Sean: Oh, yeah, good job forever. I can see where you're going. I can see where you're going with this, but I think you're missing a few citations.
Andrew: Okay, right. So almost revise and resubmit, but good job.
Sean: It's just an R&R. It's not a rejection, that's for sure. You're coming on, Bill. I mean, maybe next time we'll see a bit of improvement.
You know, I know you didn't finish the first time around. We'll work on that. But no, again, I was pleased that when I was reading it, I was not being assaulted by that mic drop style of the prose.
every other sentence being a fist pounding moment.
Andrew: And to be fair, I mean, so Bill Gates writes, he has this website where he writes his notes. So he is an accomplished writer. He practices the art.
Sean: He is. And he's had, in the latter portion of his career, I mean, he's also become quite known for his book clubs and the things. So I mean, he is definitely somebody who, you know, is in the craft of reading and writing and things.
And it shows. because it does not read as if this was AI generated and gone through the ringer of publicists and stuff like that, right? It really reads like a genuine piece from the author.
But I mean, I'm sure a team of people is probably involved in editing and all that. I think it would be odd if there's just not, it was just like you hit enter and there it goes, but you never know. You do never know.
I would be curious. And with somebody like Bill Gates, potentially he would be one that would just be like, Don't worry. I got it.
Don't worry about it. You don't need to read this. I got it.
Yeah. But yeah, so we can pull this thing apart because again, what I think the piece does well is also just sort of clearly lay out his thoughts or where he's coming from around these thoughts. Because he basically, you know, sets up the era of why this is important.
Right. Which again, it's like, yep, we got it. That part's pretty self-explanatory.
But then works through it in terms of like the things that he identifies as the biggest risks, the things that he thinks are some of the biggest values. But then also then he gets to perhaps the thesis of the whole piece is what the problem is, is we don't have a plan to, as societally, we do not have a plan at how we are going to handle this magnitude and speed of change. And then starts to throw out some ideas of potentially like, well, here's what I'm thinking from his perspective of how we might be able to start doing that.
Which is great, yes. And honestly, I think, again, you know, not to jump the gun and go all the way to the bottom of the piece. But one of the things that I thought was the most refreshing was literally a section called what I'm going to do.
Okay. And so unlike the other ones that we've heard that are these
Andrew: So this is his personal commitment?
Sean: This is his personal commitment where he even lays out at the very bottom of the article, scroll all the way down to it, I've got it on my screen here, where he, I mean, it's even gives it a section called what I'm doing, which he lays out his own personal agenda of like when he's talking to you know, key members, whether those be executives or CEOs or policymakers in Washington, D.C., he literally is talking about his aim of raising this issue to the bar, not forcing his agenda. I mean, we don't know what happens in those conversations. Right, right, right. But, and that's kind of like, you know, he kind of ends this whole piece with this message to leaders, just saying that now is the chance to act before it becomes too late, is essentially what he is what he's kind of getting at. And again, so from just from that perspective, I think the pieces, I enjoyed it from that perspective. It was like, and just to underline, I, to me, this is
Andrew: so important. So yes, we can sort of dig into sort of where he's just reiterating what many of us have been talking about for years. But the fact is that this is a critically important moment in time. And I would agree with him. And anything that he can do to get individuals and organizations and institutions on board with this.
I even think we're sitting here in a university and I still think that universities haven't got the foggiest what's happening in terms of the importance of this inflection point in human history. And this is not just about learning how to use ChatGPT in the classroom or learning how to navigate cheating. It never should have been that.
This is about a profound change in human history. One of the big, well, actually, this is me editorializing now. Yeah, sure, go ahead.
But one of the biggest technologically driven things we have had to face as human society. And if we get it wrong, we have a major issue on our hands. If we ignore it or we say it's only one of a thousand things that are important, we have a major, major issue.
Sean: So, yeah.
Andrew: So good on him for actually sort of elevating the questions to that sort of level. And I hope that institutions begin to pay serious attention to this.
Sean: I do, too. And I think, you know, kind of taking a cheeky, you know, a moment to kind of like, you know, grab a star by the tail or something, too, is like, I mean, again, we in our work, but also with this podcast alone, have been raising this warning, raising this flag for a long time. And obviously, someone like Bill Gates is in a position that has a much bigger microphone, if you will.
Right. And a much bigger audience. So nonetheless, it's wonderful that this message of alarm, of that this is something we need to be, and when I say we, I mean from a societal perspective, as big as it gets, that we need to be thinking about what these changes represent, what are the challenges, the risks, the opportunities, and how do we navigate them?
I mean, our whole, everything we do at Future of Being Human
Andrew: is predicated It's about navigating these sort of technological transformations. Absolutely. In fact, actually, I'm gonna throw something out, which is very, very self-serving here.
And that is a challenge to listeners. So go into your favorite AI and give your AI a link to Bill Gates' piece, and then link to our website, beinghuman.fyi. And ask your AI what we are doing in the future of being human that aligns with what Bill Gates says. Because that gives your AI access to our full knowledge base of everything that we've been doing over the last several years. And you'll begin to see those connections.
Sean: Yep. In fact, as you were talking about it, I'm like, oh, that would be fun to do a cross-reference just between the piece and the key. Like, yeah. But again, that's one of the things.
The message that he's bringing and the ability to take that conversation to the highest levels. Because, I mean, again, this is an individual who has access to people around the world that many do not. And also, so then in encouraging anyone else who, if these ideas or even not the necessarily the individual examples, but just the conversation resonates again, look to the body of work that this podcast has done, the future of being human in general has done, Andrew and I individually have done.
I mean, there's so much content and stuff there that really go very deep into why this is so transformative, why it's so important. And what's at risk if we get it wrong?
Andrew: Right. Right? I mean...
Which is where this is so important. And again, it requires many, many voices, not just Bill Gates, not just us, but there are whole communities of people that have to be engaged in these conversations. And absolutely not just the AI community.
This is one of the challenges we've had. As soon as you have people that are technically focused on AI, suddenly realizing that there's a whole world of society and policy out there, and suddenly they become overnight experts in that, rather than talking to the people that do have expertise there, that's when you begin to see
Sean: cracks in the system. Yep, absolutely. And even, I will even credit, you know, in the paper, you know, Gates even mentions that while these big AI companies, and you name drop all the top ones, right, you've got your Anthropic, you've got your OpenAI, and Google, and Microsoft, and what, even though they may be very influential, it should not be left to them to decide how this stuff works, right? Because they only represent, even though it is a large share in terms of like the economic power of how things are done. That is just one slice of human activity and endeavor.
Andrew: And actually, to give you a slice of that, and I'll be interested to see whether Gates's piece begins to reflect this as well. From everything you've told me, I think it does. There is a tendency for these communities to think about impact just in times of science and engineering.
So when they're talking about job losses, it is engineering and technical job losses. Where they're talking about transformations, it's in those sectors. And they tend to forget that most of society actually doesn't work in those sectors.
Sean: Right, yeah. Or that those sectors, without those sectors, there is no science and technology at all. I mean, let's just be honest, right? So, yeah, so it's really interesting. And I broke it down, so I don't know if you want, I mean, if you had another idea.
Andrew: No, we should actually get to the meat of this.
Sean: Sure. So, again, coming to this idea, right? So, why does it matter?
Why did he write this whole bit? And that is basically that, you know, again, going on what we've talked about, you got 40 episodes at least of ours are probably tied to this exact message that this is not just something. This is not a small change, that this represents something massive because we've talked about that.
this is a technology that has the potential to completely change every aspect of human life. Uh, certainly in our modern way of thinking about our digitally connected, uh, electrotech lives, um, that it, that has that. And this is not new. We've been saying this for, we and others have been saying this for a long time. Um, but I think that the, the, the real significance here is that this describes a, uh, this transition of having, um, uh, you know, against one of the most turbulent times in human history, right? That that's his, one of, that's a pull quote from his piece is that this represents one of the most turbulent times in human history. And again, we've made, we make this argument all the time is that it is, you know, again, where we sit with this thing, if we get it right, great. We want to head towards human flourishing. The reason you hear me say the possible, probable, and preferable futures is that we want to work through the uncertainty and the challenges to get to a place of human flourishing or a place of betterment, whatever that means, because it's not going to mean the same thing to everybody, that we do that and try to mitigate as many of the risks and harms as we can.
But we are sitting at that precipice of which way are we going to go? And are we going to be active participants in designing and defining what our futures will look like? Or are we going to be along for the ride and let a select few dictate and navigate where that goes?
Andrew: Right. And of course, I come across this all the time when I use the same sort of framing and people say, you know, nothing new here. We've had thousands of years of new technologies transforming society. This is just yet another one. It's just another internet, another calculator, another printing press.
And that is, to my mind, such dangerous thinking, because you're assuming that the future will always be predicated on what has happened in the past. And yet the world at the moment is fundamentally different from how it was with any of those other previous transitions. Yes, we can learn something from them, but we are now at a stage where you can begin to see cracks in the system, which suggests that we're at an instability that will lead to a really profound and really fast and chaotic transformation.
Sean: Yeah, no, absolutely. And then again, you know, when he's setting up his piece, when he talks about it, right, it's also under this guise of, yes, this is one of the most turbulent times that we may face. Yeah.
But also that we are like critically unprepared to handle it. Right. And then he goes through and kind of really sets out why this is kind of going to be and all this kind of stuff.
And that's where I've got it broken down because he essentially labels like his three risks. Okay. So these are basically, again, from the Gates piece, and they're sort of categoried by work, bad actors, and children in relationships.
Right, right. So from a work perspective, again, this is, again, not a topic that's new. AI is coming for your job, right?
That's not something that is a new phrase. But really what he kind of in his piece really likens it more to is sort of the massive sort of impact similar to what the Great Depression had in the United States. which, you know, at that point, going back 1933, that roughly was like a 25% unemployment.
So basically a quarter of the entire working population were out of a job. And so he's equating that potentially that that level of employment disruption to happen, but that it goes deeper than that, that those are not, because if you look at historically, right, the depression and the loss of that employment, they were able to build that back slowly.
Andrew: You have bounce back because it's, in the past, it's always been predicated on human skills. So yes, the opportunity goes and the resources go, but human skills remain there. So as long as you've got that human capital, you can build back up again. But this is different.
Sean: Right. I mean, just in the United States, I mean, our infrastructure benefited greatly from the programs that came out of here, of the works programs that built so much of the highway systems and national park systems. But his point on here, too, is that those jobs will not come back.
That those are considered a, you know, there's a totality to that job loss. Those jobs, not only will they not come back, but those entire labor markets, if you will, will be completely disrupted in ways that, you know, you would not be able to just necessarily reskill. Right.
Because it also talks about the challenge of taking someone, I think he uses the analogy of taking someone out of like, who's been working, you know, they're aged 55. They've been working for 30 plus years in construction. And then you say, oh, great.
We'll just put you in, how about like hospice care? And, you know, you're just like, what? Well, yes.
And, you know, again, the arrogance of sometimes of thinking like, we'll just take you and reskill you and drop you in there without ever considering, like, would that transition be meaningful, fulfilling? Yeah, paycheck is a paycheck, but like, that's not the same thing.
Andrew: That's right. And so I would add to this. I would say that things are so turbulent at the moment.
And I love his imagery there, that it is impossible to say what this future looks like. I think there is a plausible argument to be made about this sort of one-way transition where the whole job landscape and career landscape changes irreversibly. And I think we have to take that really seriously.
But I will be hesitant to say this is absolutely what's going to happen because there are other arguments that say sort of that human ingenuity is such that even with this phase change, people will work out how to create value within that jobs market. And we simply do not know how this is going to pan out.
Sean: Right, and there's always that piece, right? That there is, and I mean, and also I will say also through the whole piece, nowhere does it mention a credibility of, again, of a possible future of such a high and intense social backlash that it actually stunts this. That's right.
Andrew: I mean And we're already beginning to see the early signals of that.
Sean: Yeah, 100%. And so the piece kind of doesn't address that.
Andrew: Which is why you need to speak to other people when you're doing these things. That's why you listen to Modem Futura. Right, right. But again, back to this point, I think it is something we have to take really seriously. And again, here sitting in a university, we have to take it incredibly seriously as we train our undergraduates and our graduates to sort of move on to that next stage of their life.
Sean: Yeah, and what does that look like? Because again, in the piece, he points to this sort of cycle, right? Of this challenge of employment as dignity plus social connection, that it's not just income, although that's a critical piece. But it's self-defining.
Andrew: It defines who you see yourself as being, as a human.
Sean: And in tying that into things that he's seeing right now, even in terms of now and in the very near future around opportunities for young people entering the job market, as you're already seeing a lot of those sort of lower entry-level positions evaporate or be offloaded to other things or consolidated, what have you. And so, you know, while the sort of middle and upper tiers of length of employed you know, what am I trying to say here? Seasoned employees have been around, more senior level people.
Like their jobs have been less disrupted compared to the entry level jobs. And he's, what he's seeing and what he's reporting in his piece is that he's seeing that increasing. And then he's, in his words, being very, growing, very concerned about the young people today moving into a job market that either will not be either very constricted or even non-existent to the things.
And as you were just mentioning, right? Coming out of a university pipeline, You enter as a first-year student thinking, in four years when I graduate, I'm going to do X. I know. And then by your sophomore year, you're like, X doesn't exist anymore.
Andrew: Of course, you think about this. So university timeline, if you decide you want to change the way you're preparing your students for the future, it takes about two years to go through the internal bureaucracy to get there. And then you start bringing students in, and four years, they begin to graduate.
So that's a six-year sort of transition time. at a point in history where the landscape around jobs and careers is changing on a monthly basis. So in six years, who on earth knows what this is going to be like?
You've got to completely change your mindset with how you prepare students for that future.
Sean: Oh, absolutely. And I think very easy, because you can just feel the disruption as you think about somebody who, you know, in 2021 was like, I'm going to become a software engineer. And just how different they might be thinking about that trajectory now compared to when they were in high school. But, you know, so, yeah, I mean, things move very, very fast.
Andrew: Yes.
Sean: So that was one of his big risks was, of course, the sort of like the economic impact of the employment. The other one was this concept of bad actors in control. So again, right, with every tool and capability, in fact, we were just talking about this a couple episodes ago when it was dealing with bioengineering.
Of course. Yes. Yes.
So same concept, right? So he just kind of, again, builds on this capability of, hey, with these great, you know, from from a software perspective, right? When you can identify all these vulnerabilities to patch, you can also identify those vulnerabilities to attack.
Andrew: You've got the single actor terrorist organization. You don't need a whole sort of community now. It's just you and your AI.
Sean: It's literally, I mean, it's like the balances of power of evil and good, where it's like, you have the one person unicorn company. You also have the one person terrorist organization. Right, right. Right? And so there's
Andrew: Yeah, we're joking, but this is deadly serious with what you can do with these tools.
Sean: And again, what you can do with minimal reach and expertise to be able to get your hands on stuff that could have outpaced, again, good or bad. And that's kind of the idea is what he kind of raises there is sort of that duality of that, you know, it gives and it takes away from that.
Andrew: And again, so for goodness knows how long now, decades, we've talked about dual use technologies. And there are whole suites of regulations around what you do with technologies that can be used for good and for bad. Apart from the fact that everything we've built around dual use completely evaporates when you see what the capability of AI is. I don't think we even have the mental models to begin to think of AI in terms of those constraints.
Sean: Yeah, and that level of, I mean, even just in the cybersecurity space, right? I mean, just how every single, what used to be like a single node was limited in terms of what they would be capable. Because, you know, same thing.
They'd be limited to the same human level output of anything. Right. But now that node has infinite potential in that sense of, you know, how they go.
So, yeah. So, again, that's one of his big risks that he identifies there. Yep.
But again, just, again, highlighting that is like this is a concern because it's the control and how and who decides when you get those sorts of access to that power in that situation. Right. The other one was around, again, the headline for this as it kind of pulled it out was like children and relationships.
But more deeply, it was sort of like, you know, essentially the personal and psychological impact of these tools. So both in terms of learning, right, like students learning less based on capabilities. Again, this idea of where, you know, if you can use these tools to learn everything in the world, are you also using these tools to just offload and take the easy button as we've talked about countless times?
Yep. And again, this falls right under those categories of, you know, with all of these things, what do they give us? And what do we lose by surrendering to them and that kind of stuff?
Andrew: And I, whoop, that was an empty coffee cup, luckily. Luckily, it was empty. So let me just ask you this, because again, I haven't read this.
And I like these risk categories. And I'll preface this by saying, if you're writing a piece like this, you have to edit, you can't put everything in. So you have to be judicious about what you put in.
But I'm wondering whether in that last category, he gets to this thinking about how AI is beginning to change us internally, how we think, how we behave, how we sort of develop our own worldviews and attitudes. Not too deep. I mean, where it does start to cross that border is he does invoke
Sean: Haidt's sort of social media impact stuff. In the sense that he's comparing it to like AI companions. And basically he's like, you know, the challenge, And he has a nice anecdote about his own awkwardness as a kid and all this kind of stuff. But that he, through tough experiences and hard work, learned how to communicate with other humans and find friends in the real world. And then he also brings up with these AI companions the dangers of growing up in a bubble where you're always told you're the best and you're the brightest and you're the greatest.
Andrew: So he begins to get to that. The reason I ask is, certainly from my own work, one of the things that worries me a lot is the erosion of not only social cohesion, but our understanding of who we are, our self-identity and our self-ideation. And that's important because if you treat AI as an external technology, something that happens outside us that we might be able to control, that's one thing.
when you see it as something that is already integrated into our own sense of self, that is a very different technology because now it's part of our psyche. It's part of our consciousness. And we're already seeing this happening.
And the way you even begin to talk about a technology like that is fundamentally different from something that is external to who you are or who we are. Yep.
Sean: And one of the other things he kind of points out in this analogy he uses is a greenhouse, right? So a tree that's grown in a greenhouse doesn't experience wind. It doesn't experience weather. And it's sort of that same thing. I sort of use that analogy of technologies
Andrew: about 20 plus years ago, I think. I can't remember whether I wrote about it, but certainly that was part of my teaching.
Sean: And then this comes back too, right? It's like, it's experiencing those low, small level risks and challenges and setbacks that give you the grit and the resilience as you mature to handle things without full on panics. And you have a measure of, I understand how to withstand this.
Andrew: Yeah. So actually, it's the equivalent, digital equivalent or the AI equivalent of the hygiene hypothesis. So if you work in public health, you know there is this hypothesis that you have to be exposed to a little bit of bad stuff so your body builds resilience against it.
The same with allowing your kids to sort of go out and play in the dirt. But there's also the social equivalent with kids sort of experiencing things, experiencing a little bit of risk so they learn the boundaries and barriers. And so now we're extending to this sort of, this hygiene hypothesis to AI.
You've got to experience a bit of grit in your life if you're gonna sort of develop as a functioning, fully rounded human being that can not only contribute to society, but you can also live a life well-lived.
Sean: Yeah, exactly. Well, it's funny as you're talking about that, I have these flashbacks to like, just being on the subway or the tube. And I'm like, whatever, in my own mantra in my head is like, "Whatever you do, do not touch your eyes. Do not touch your eyes."
Andrew: You're going to get pink eyes. It was formative in a different way. Well, I just think about that too.
Yeah, but no, you had to touch them. So the next time sort of you were more immune to pink eyes. That's right.
You have to go through the pain.
Sean: And you know when you touch that railing and it's already slimy or like, you're like, oh, what is on here? And then you just, in my mind, I'm just like, whatever you do, do not scratch your face.
Andrew: Okay, so you've got to embrace the dirt and then extend it to embrace the AI dirt.
Sean: Yeah, exactly. Right, you got to get dirty, I guess, right? You can't build up your immune system if it doesn't have any exposure.
Andrew: Yeah, but that gets quite serious. I'm so riffing now, but even just thinking about how we sort of prepare students to thrive in this world, that idea of getting your AI hands dirty, this is not going to a formal class that has lectures telling you how to prompt engineer or how to do stuff. This is getting your hands dirty, learning, experimenting, failing, building again in playgrounds that have safety rails, but within those safety rails, they allow you to learn through experience.
Sean: Yeah, well, and we talk about this all the time, right? Like if you want to really understand the transformative properties of this tool, you've got to play with it. You have to play. Again, all you're sitting back is watching what other people do or falling victim to the hype reels that come on about like, you know, you want a website, boom, website. And it's like, that's all fine and good until it's one that you need, or you want to work, or how can you leverage this? You know, again, if you don't play with those, you've got to play. If you're not getting your hands dirty, you don't understand exactly what you can craft with it.
Andrew: Yes.
Sean: Or where its limitations are, where you can push back on, you know, I've seen firsthand, it cannot do as promised and therefore, you know, hey.
Andrew: So, so far, I'm actually quite liking what he says. I think it's limited, but it's good stuff.
Sean: And again, he's pointing these things out when you're like, you know, I don't think anybody would argue that this is not a risk. Right. Right.
Yes. The question, of course, is in the nuance of this and also the unpredictability of where this will go. Yeah.
But, you know, that's, that's going to be kind of where it goes. So then he goes and flips. So he outweighs the risk.
And then of course is quick to say, well, it's not all bad. There's good stuff, of course. And then, so I'll just kind of rip through these really fast.
Cause again, these are, these are things that I don't think any of anything on here is surprising. With the exception, he says in his own writing that, that other people are surprised when they ask him, you know, what do you think will be the most, the most impacted sector of AI? And he goes right to agriculture, which is interesting.
But also, if you know how, again, if you think about agriculture as it is today, especially with like big agriculture, I mean, so we have, you know, fewer and fewer farmers globally than we've ever had before producing more and more of the actual, especially if you just pick on the United States, right? We've had few farmers that we've probably ever had in the history of the country, yet those few farmers are producing all of the food. Right.
And so the science and technology behind this large agricultural, but it is
Andrew: It is profound. And yes, anybody that studies this and sees the difference between a small holding, which is all manual versus even a moderate size farm where they've implemented digital technologies, utterly transformative.
Sean: Oh, I mean, it's amazing because, you know, I think a lot of kids when they grow up, they think farming, they don't equate that to the technological command center that is some of these machines as they're connected with GPS, that they have data monitoring soils, drones. And again, using all that data, which where does AI flexing can be so powerful is ingesting all of those data.
Andrew: So a viewing recommendation. So anybody who has access to Amazon Prime, the TV, Clarkson's Farm, Jeremy Clarkson's series. The latest series, he not only starts experimenting with some of these AI-driven and digitally-driven technologies, but there's an interesting episode where he goes to farms in Europe.
Sean: Wasn't there, there was a Dutch farmer.
Andrew: There was a Dutch farmer. Yes, I saw that one. And you begin to see the level of productivity increase as you use these tools. It is phenomenal.
Sean: Yes. Well, I was thinking of that exact clip where he was talking with one of these Dutch farmers who was explaining, he's like, through all this data, we can do 10, I forget how much it was, but it was something like 10, 20x, what we were able to do before.
Andrew: It literally was that much.
Sean: It was potatoes. I think it was potatoes. It was potatoes.
And it was like, you know, And I just, of course, in that way, it's either the clerks that are just like, just, you know, jaw just on the floor. It's pretty entertaining. But yeah, so agriculture, I think, is one of these places that can be massively, positively impacted by the leverage of the tools.
Of course, we have, you know, health and, you know, health care, government services, which that one I was sort of like, I don't know. Because it's like, you know, you could easily sign up for, use these tools to help you fill the paperwork. I'm like, you know, what would be a better solution?
Make the process easier.
Andrew: See, that's it. And if you're not careful, you fall into the trap that Elon Musk did with DOGE, thinking that the solution to good government is to just cancel everything. That's right. It doesn't work. You've got to understand the intricacies of the system.
Sean: But what always can work is make it more customer-focused, right? What is the person's experience? And start there.
Take the Steve Jobs approach, right? Start with what the experience of the customer is, and then move backwards there and how the technology can facilitate that. not start with the technology and figure out, how do we figure this one out, right?
Education, of course, right? This productive struggle mechanism kind of
Andrew: Although even there, because we're both in education, this is really complex because yes, very naively you can say, oh yeah, we can replace all of these sort of outmoded professors or teachers with super smart AI. We know that that doesn't work. I think we both would acknowledge there are powerful, incredibly powerful ways you can use AI, but they are non-trivial and non-obvious. And if you do not understand how learning and education works, you're likely to miss the mark.
Sean: Yeah, and that's a big piece. I mean, that kind of goes, you know, again, his piece, while it was like 6,000 words, I mean, there's still a lot he's like putting in. And I will give him credit for many of these things.
He'll say, well, there's a lot more here. This is just the surface. This is just my idea.
And even he'll say like, I plan to write more about these topics, right? So again, I really appreciated his approach because it was not a, I know everything. Here's the pathway.
It was, these are the challenges as I see them, knowing that each one of these things has an incredible amount of depth and nuance to it. I'll get to those later. It's not, you know, you can't fit all of this into one 6,000 word piece.
But then, you know, of course, research and development, all these kinds of elements as well. But then one thing he calls out in particular is his own foundation, the Gates Foundation, saying that they have 19 out of 20 years left that he's planning to give away $200 billion. Wow.
Right? And so the idea here is to, you know, give this money out in terms of creating a better world for people.
Andrew: You might actually get it right this 20th time. You know, I hope so. That's a little unfair because I think Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation have done phenomenal things, but there are so many things that they've done that look good on paper and have fallen flat because they do not understand the society they're trying to implement.
Sean: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just going to throw it out there.
I mean, like, hey, you can toss one of those Bs over to Modem Futura and Future of Being Human. We'll be happy to, you know, again. Or even an M, not necessarily a B. Yeah, a couple M's, I don't know, you know.
We'll certainly take a B. You know, 20 bucks for a lot. You know what, honestly, you know, lunch is expensive. You could treat us to a nice meal.
How about that? But so, yeah, so then he goes in and again, sort of kind of wrap that part of the piece up is just, again, reiterating that it's not all bad. There's lots of positive stuff out here.
However, the positive stuff is not the solution. The solution is in this sort of like prescriptions section that he sort of carves out, which is like, okay, so what do we do about this? Because we do not have the institution or a plan to address this.
And that's kind of really the next part. So his paper sort of, again, sets up why this is important, why this is not just in his view, why this is not just another, you know, another technological transition. the risks, the benefits, but now also this is when the real punch comes in is in like, from his perspective, how are we going to, how are we going to navigate this?
And so that's kind of where he really steps in with this, this, this idea of what we need are to think in some cases a little bit more radically about new institutions on how to handle this stuff. So really coming back, you know, highest priority domestic plus international frameworks, right? that there's no institution that exists today was designed to handle something this big, this transformative, this fast moving.
And so what that means is we can't expect them to ever do this right. We need to rethink this. He even kind of shows just as an example, we've done this before.
We've done this in the United States. This happened after 9-11. Massive institutions were shifted, reorganized.
After World War II, massive things were shifted and organized to face a new world, a world that was fundamentally changed because of things, for good, for bad, for whatever, but that recognizing that the institutions that were existing at that moment were ill-equipped to face the challenges of tomorrow. And so this is, again, this is a human thing. This is something we can elect to operationalize.
Andrew: That is the crux of this. This is not, first and foremost, a technological problem. It is a human challenge.
which means that you need people and organizations that understand humans and human behavior. They've got to understand the technology as well. They've got to understand that the futures and foresight sort of approaches, the landscape in front of them, but you cannot factor out humans from this.
Sean: Yep, absolutely. And right on top of that too is this, you know, he labels it as a fiefdom problem, but it's something we talk about all the time, right? It is like, it is not a sector by sector challenge.
It is a cohesive global challenge that cuts across all aspects of human life. So across labor, education, healthcare, government. I mean, and this has historically been a challenge because we are siloed.
I mean, we have departments of, right? All those kinds of things. And oftentimes they don't seem to work together.
But then, of course, then international element, recognizing that this is not a US-centric problem, right, this is global. So how do we figure all that kind of stuff out? But also recognizing and knowing the challenges that have existed so far.
I mean, again, if you think about the way the globe has come together to address certain issues like climate change, sustainability, global pandemics, we have not had a good track record of this, right?
Andrew: It is. So even just sort of invoking climate change. Yes, there's a lot of global activity on multiple fronts.
Sure. Yes. But in terms of progress, it is painfully slow.
And so if that's the benchmark against which we're working, we are doomed.
Sean: We got some work to do. Right, right. And so kind of laying all those kind of things out, you know, and then being honest.
I think this was a nice point too. Being honest about the timeline, right? Not trying to sugarcoat this, not trying to do a Musk DOGE kind of thing where it's like, don't worry, in six months we'll have this thing turned around.
It's like, no, this is going to take years, maybe decades, maybe longer. But the point is, is that we need to start that process now, but being honest with ourselves and with the public, you know, whoever that, again, country by country, region by region. But being honest about what that means in terms of how long this might take, knowing that this is a very difficult, this is a huge ship to turn when it's these organizations or recognizing new institutions are needed and things like that.
The other big, so then I don't want to spend too much time on it because he goes also on one of the solutions is about addressing the economic piece, which is, we've heard this before, taxing, you know, with all the automation replacement of human endeavor, just tax the robots.
Andrew: And there, I've got to say, this must have been about 10 years or so ago now when I was working very closely with the World Economic Forum, we were proposing exactly this. And we were working with tech companies saying that there needs to be a tax on what we do because of its economic disruption.
Sean: Yep. That it's offsetting. I mean, that's the thing, right?
If you build it, because, I mean, the case can be made, right? When you hire an employee, you, the employer, have to pay part of their taxes as well. But when you buy a robot, that's just a write-off.
Right. And it's not. And so it's like, well, you know, that's not fair.
Right. So that, again, that's the human part of this. But again, if you're facing this massive offset, what is the responsibility of people in that society?
Because again, it's not a siloed, isolated thing. You might think in my business, why do I care if I put out, you know, whatever, 25% unemployment in this other sector? I don't care.
But you do because what you don't or may not realize is how integral they are even in to exactly your business and all this kind of stuff. So as much as you want to think you're out there doing it by yourself, you are not. But then the biggest piece, I think that will probably gain the most attention out of his paper was this concept of the human reserve.
Or human reserve, right? So this concept that he kind of puts out here of like, what we need to do is figure out some level of human activity that is precious enough that we preserve it from ever being overtaken by AI or automation.
Andrew: I might just have written about some of these concepts before. I mean, maybe my essays on the artisanal intellectual, for instance, or maybe a book, AI and the Art of Being Human, for instance. Might be.
Again, we can't say he did not read it. No, apart from the fact he's talking about a reserve. Is this a physical reserve or an intellectual reserve or a mental reserve or a social reserve?
Well, you know Are we going to sort of go to the bars and look at these humans? Say, this is pre-AI human. Watch how they behave.
This is human A doing it.
Sean: I think it's intended to be like just a psychological approach. But also you could see the dystopian version of this, which is like, hey, look at them. They're still doing it the old fashioned way.
Andrew: Got Richard Attenborough. So in his final years and months.
Sean: Or just the cloned AI version of, you know. But again, the idea, so if you're thinking like, hey, I know about nature preserves or reserves, it's like, yes, same idea. So basically this idea that the societal roles are deliberately
Andrew: I'm sorry, I've now got images of the Terminator and Skynet. Oh yeah. Except an even more dystopian one where you've got sort of human reserves with the machines hunting humans. I mean, it's a mixture of sort of Terminator and Predator and goodness knows what else.
Sean: Oh my God. Or what's that novel, "The Dangerous Game"? Do you know this one?
It's a short story where it's rich people go to an island and hunt humans. Right. I think it's called "The Dangerous Game".
I'll see if I can find it. But now it's like
Andrew: I'm sure this isn't what was in his head, but as soon as you start talking about reserves and humans
Sean: Oh my God, that's just got even worse. Have you seen the recent videos coming out of China of these, like the Olympic games with the robots and how scary fast those things can run? Can you imagine being put on an island and that's what's chasing you?
Andrew: It's the AI hunger games.
Sean: Oh my God. Or the running man, AI running man,
Andrew: like, oh, we are doomed. We get into dystopia so fast with this idea.
Sean: Well, also then I'm thinking too, I'm like, yeah, you literally could, like you could twist and torture this idea to the point where you have human zoos of these preserved, like, don't, that's the artist. Watch him work.
Andrew: No, no, no, you're gonna have the academics. So this is the academics cage. And you look and you've got the desk and the person in the scruffy tweed suit with the books, no sort of computer in sight, the pen there scribbling away, unkempt. Yeah, exactly.
Sean: And then the funny is the most ironic twist, you'd be like, that poor wretched soul. And they're going, this is great. I finally can focus on my work.
Andrew: But that's the nastiest ironic twist. You sort of offer this to an academic and they'll say, yeah, what's wrong with this? I get my own office. Nobody disturbs me. No faculty meetings perhaps?
Sean: Count me in.
Andrew: Food delivered three times a day.
Sean: This is my dream. Yeah, you know, sadly, there would be a large group.
Andrew: It's just the future of universities.
Sean: Oh, my God. The faculty zoo. Oh, my goodness.
We all want big windows, but little did we know, they were put on there for the observer. Right. They're all going to be one-way windows.
Yeah, exactly. Oh, my goodness. But anyway, back to Bill's idea here, was basically like, hey, we need to set aside roles and functions in society that even if a machine can do it, they shouldn't do it.
They protect them, which makes more sense. Yeah, and he goes and he shares his personal anecdote too about his own father's last sort of years suffering from Alzheimer's and the care and generosity, by those human caretakers. And it's like, yeah, even if a robot could deliver you bad news or diagnosis, that's never a role that they should do.
Andrew: Yeah, and so even as you're saying this, I mean, I think this is good. I'm so glad that he's sort of exploring these ideas, but you again, seriously go back to our book, "AI and the Art of Being Human." These are exactly the things that we explore and grapple with and give people a toolbox and a toolkit to be able to implement.
Sean: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, and again, So the metaphor here with this sanctuary of the world is literally drawing on this idea of the nature preserve. And, you know, that, you know, but that triggered me because again, I think I've mentioned a lot.
We are, my family, we are trying to enjoy as many of the national parks as we can. And, you know, there's so many and they're amazing. But you go there and, you know, having just come from, you know, we were just recently in Yosemite and Zion and all these kinds of places.
amazing places that just are incredibly awe-inspiring. But there's a sadness to them in the sense that the way that they're corrected is from using those preserves. I keep saying preserves, they're reserves. Reserves, yes.
There's nature reserve, but the reason why they have to be reserved is because the rest of it is being gobbled up by selfish, proprietary, me, me, me, I want this resource, no one else can have it.
Andrew: preserving of something which would go otherwise. It's isolating it from those market forces.
Sean: Yeah. And so what's interesting about this, and I don't think it was intended in this way, but when I read it, it's almost a defeatist way of approaching it where it's the submission that unless we carve out this little sad spot of land, it's just private interest. It'll go to whoever
Andrew: has the most money. And laudable as the idea is, I don't think it's workable. You've got to completely change your whole mindset and worldview and think about what does it mean to thrive as a human in an AI age? Not as an isolated sort of group of people, but as society as a whole. What does thriving mean when AI becomes so powerful? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, and to his credit
Sean: in the paper, he acknowledges too that these things are not static, that they're moving and all this kind of stuff. But I would just, even though that metaphor, like I understand that metaphor of like, we need to protect this, but I think the reserve is the wrong choice because what it then it is basically just copping over is that like, well, that's our only, that's our only option because it will inevitably be completely overrun by automation and everything. And that's the only path forward. And that's the part I, I sort of have an issue with. And I don't think that was the vision or the intent behind it. I think it was more literal of let's just protect these groups of functions so that we, you know, maintain the dignity aspect of it with human-to-human
Andrew: connections and prioritizing that. So it's like, you know. And I would say, even though we've been having a bit of fun with it, I think it's important to take the spirit and not get caught up in the specific framing. Exactly. Because I think that the spirit is there, but this is a conversation or a seed of a conversation that needs to grow and be much bigger than this.
Sean: Yeah. And I mean, there's a great pull quote from it, which is just his line that they're, you know, when talking about the capabilities of AI in certain elements is that the quote is, there is no technical reason why it couldn't, yet it shouldn't. And so it's just kind of, again, that piece and how we get to that. But again, that kind of comes full circle all the way back to how we think about these things and what does it mean as we think about the fundamental shifts.
And I realize there's a tension that, you know, as someone like Bill Gates is writing these things, he's also addressing very much the here and now business, technology community, policymakers, that traditionally and historically do struggle to think deeply about the future. Because there's, you know, if your whole world and your whole worldview lives within, you know, the six months to three years, you have a hard time reading, engaging with material that is asking you to decouple from that, think broader, deeper, harder, because you may not find the value in that. And so I understand that too, that because when I look at this, it's like, well, you know, he's hitting some of those notes, which is like, we really need to be thinking about how do we handle this monumental shift in everything that we are, do, think, play and experience.
But yet some of the very, like the anecdotes and the things are very like, they're for today, right? Like today, what are the things that we would circle, you know, circle the wagons around. Of course, and that's where you need to start.
Yeah, and so I get that. And so also there's a tension now that this is not intended to be a futures piece. This is not intended to be anything other than
Andrew: And actually, when we were talking about this before we started recording, we were feeling a little cynical about it. Actually, the way that it's unfolded as we've talked about it, I think it's a really important piece. Yes, forget about the fact that many of us have been saying this for years. I think the fact that Bill Gates is saying it, that it's getting traction are measured and important, are all really relevant here. And hopefully we'll see this not only stimulating new conversations, but actually action, because this needs to go beyond just talking.
Sean: Yep. No, absolutely. And I think, and again, the way he kind of wraps up and closes out the piece, I think is really interesting.
Because again, this is where, when I'm reading it, I'm like, he must be a listener of our show or the work that we do. Because, you know, I mean, when he's kind of, again, outlaying these elements, I mean, he's really hitting, he also starts to hit on some of these key critical elements of, you know, who is, who, again, he doesn't use the term, but he's talking about the unintended consequences, making sure that this is something that is, you know, the right people, like who, you know, he pulls out, I forget, I'm trying to look for where it is in here, but he literally pulls out this stuff where he admits, he's like, the bigger questions here are the tougher ones that aren't being answered, which is who gets to make these decisions, right? Oh yeah, right here.
It's the end of, it's like second to last section where he says, the idea of the human reserve raises a host of questions I don't have answers to. Then he goes on to say, who gets to decide what we reserve for humans? What criteria should we use?
How do we keep companies from cheating and using robots anyway? What happens to international trade when the country, one country lets it, one country, you know? So he starts to crack into these questions where you're like, yes.
And the real power is in that exploration of those questions. Yes. But I really appreciate that.
He put them there and he addressed them saying, I haven't tackled those yet. Right, right. But I am aware that those We need to be looking at them, yes.
And so for that, I applaud the paper that he did. And actually, you know, having kind of taking it section by section, section by section and stepping through it. I actually have a lot more,
Andrew: you're going to get an A on this one, Bill.
Sean: You're in a better mood now than you were when you started.
Andrew: Yeah. But it's also interesting listening to this. I think two of my takeaways just from this conversation are, first of all, my informal title is Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions.
And it's informal because ASU has never seen any relevance to actually sort of formalizing that at all. So I have been sort of building up this framing and this expertise for years now. And this is exactly what he is talking about.
How, as a society, do we navigate these incredibly disruptive, turbulent technology transitions, specifically instigated by AI? The other thing that I take away, and again, I've written about this and proposed this, I see no way around the absolute need for at least at one major university, probably several, institutes for navigating advanced technology transitions. This feels so important that you've got to be able to use the convening power of a leading research university to bring together thinkers from very, very different areas, not only to map out the knowledge landscape, if you like, of what we know, what we don't know, what we need to know, but also the practice landscape of how, as a society, we begin to move forward.
So I would put it as a challenge out there. Not for me, because I'm sabbatical, so I don't have to do this. But I would say, if we do not see these powerful, influential sort of thought centers and action centers around navigating advanced technology transitions embedded within universities, we have missed something incredibly important.
And any university out there who's listening to this or any university leader or faculty who thinks we should build this, go build it because society needs it.
Sean: Absolutely. And I think that's a good way for us to kind of wrap up and close out, too, is, again, with the reach and access of Bill Gates putting this memo out, too, what I hope is that people will look at this and go, yes, something needs to change. We need to look into this.
And then hopefully even by that, right, as they start to look into that, again, the work that we do, Future of Being Human, there's many others out there as well working for Technology for Good that are, that so many of these pieces and parts that are briefly touched on in this paper have years, if not decades of work and expertise behind them. And it is time really for institutions across the board to sit up, take notice, and start taking action. Step up to the plate, yes.
I mean, we make this comment a lot. And I think sometimes it gets taken as like, oh, that just becomes like a tagline of sorts. But really it is like, we should have been thinking about this 20 years ago.
Andrew: And can you imagine looking back 10 years from now where we see how monumental a transition this was? And people look at universities that were saying, you know, this is one of a thousand things in our play. We're not really interested.
It's not that important. What not only a missed opportunity, but a travesty in terms of how we are preparing students and society and leaders for the future that's emerging before our eyes. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, and again, I think there's,
Sean: I just would say with one last kind of piece on this too is, you know, oftentimes we hear people will push back again with this idea of like, well, you know, this, when we do other, these major transitions, let's look at the industrial revolution. Let's look at these pieces, right? You know, those may have had different affordances and different challenges and things that we're facing today. But what a shame to not learn from the chaos and the disruption.
And you can point to those things and you can say, yeah, that is potentially some degree of that is a natural consequence of those changes. However, the travesty is, have we not learned from that? And from that, it's not that we can't, we can prevent them, but why can we, we should be, and again, this is kind of resonates with what Bill Gates is saying, is that we need to start taking action today to reduce those unintended consequences, to reduce those risks and harms that are perhaps inevitable to certain degrees. But it is, it should be our role to ensure that we're doing the best we can to minimize what those risks and damages.
Andrew: I think so, as well as maximize the opportunities. And maximize the opportunities. Again, with that focus on what it means to flourish and thrive as humans, as a human society.
Sean: Absolutely, absolutely. And so, yeah, so if this resonates with you, give it a listen, but also, hey, this is our opportunity to share with Do something, yeah. And to share with all your friends.
Yes. I listened to Modem Futura. I already knew about all this stuff because they've been talking about it forever.
And the best way that you can do that, of course, is to give us, we don't have $200 billion to influence change. So we got to do it the old grassroots method by word of mouth and having people like, share, and subscribe to good old Modem Futura. And I will put out that.
So again, if you don't like subscribing
Andrew: the old fashioned way, you can also Go to modemfutura.com slash sign up. And it just means that if you sign up there, you'll get a weekly email saying there's a new episode to listen to.
Sean: Absolutely. And that's a fantastic way to stay in touch. And for those of you who are feeling perhaps even more inquisitive, visit beinghuman.fyi.
Andrew: It's beinghuman.fyi again. And you'll see what it does. It basically gives your AI access to a massive knowledge base of what we do, what we think, what we're planning, sort of how we see the world. And it will be such an interesting experiment to sort of go there and then feed your AI both that link and Bill Gates' piece just to see where the resonances are.
Sean: Or anything else that you might ask. Or anything else, yes. Because what's cool about that, I mean, from our perspective, what's cool about that is it has basically the essence of what we do.
It does. And in a way where we don't have to be the ones to explain it over and over and over again. It explains us way better than we do ourselves.
So yeah, so that's, I feel like, you know, go have fun with that. And yeah, and I guess that's, we'll just pull the plug here on that one and we'll see everybody on the next episode of Modem Futura.
Andrew: We'll see you then.
Announcer: Demodulating Signal. Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human Initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects, please visit us on the web at futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu.
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