Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep. 23 | The End of Life as We Know It

Episode Date: October 27, 2018

 The End of Life as We Know It: Ominous News from the Frontiers of Science, takes us behind today’s scientific explorations and acheivements – and into the dangerous future ahead of us. Unlike his last book, this book is solid fact and serious science -- scientific reporting.   In The End of Life as We Know It, Michael Guillen explores… THE ROBOT   THE SPY THE WEB   THE FRANKENSTEIN Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Blaze Radio Network On Demand. You know, I am fascinated and have been fascinated by artificial intelligence, especially robots, for the past five or ten years anyway, for sure, as we've more and more news has come out about them. But we're at a point now in our society globally, really, that is exciting, thrilling. and at the same time,

frightening. I have four headlines in front of me, right? And I just looked over to the stack of the fat pile. And robots are serving soups at restaurants. Restaurant train opens new sites where chefs and waiters are replaced with robots, boosting crop yields by using genetic engineering, dehumanize acts of sex

because they want to have sex brothels with robots, the bot brothels. All over the world, we are seeing more and more jobs, more and more duties, being done by artificial intelligence. Where do we go from here? What happens to us? Do we survive? Do we not survive? I had an opportunity to talk to Michael Gillen, author of The End of Life as we know it.

ominous news from the frontiers of science. Now Michael is a genius. And we had a great time. I would have loved to have spent a day with him. But what little time I had with him, I enjoyed. And the information that he brought was scary and really fascinating. Joining me today is an author, a doctor, a scientist. Right now he's promoting his book, The End of Life as We Know It.

And I know. I know what you're thinking. I don't believe that it's the end of life as we know it either. However, what happens is everybody's eyes gets glazed over because we hear quotes from, you know, Stephen Hawking, artificial intelligence could end mankind. Vladimir Putin is talking about artificial intelligence as the future, not only for Russia, but for all of humankind. Whoever becomes the leader of this sphere will become the ruler of the world. And yet we don't have our eyes glaze over because we say, oh, it's not going to be that bad.

It'll be okay. It's not, it's always, it's always changing. It's no big deal. But, Michael, when we start plowing through your book here and we get to chapter, like, oh, I don't know, mass extinction 2.0, you start thinking and you go down the list of everything that's already happened, let alone what's going to come. We need to start thinking differently, do we not? Thank you, Jeffrey. That's exactly why I wrote the book. Look, I didn't write the book to scare people. There's no value in that, right? I wrote the book to open people's eyes to what's

here and now, not pie in the sky, not in the sweet by and by, not on the horizon, not Michael Gillen predicts the future. I'm not Karnak. This is a book about what's going on right now, okay? And more than a thousand footnotes on this thing. It's very well documented. It's not my opinion. I deal with four categories, the World Wide Web. I deal with AI robots. I deal with surveillance technology and privacy. And then finally, I deal with genetic engineering. And look, I'll see up front. There's a lot of positive stuff. A lot of stuff is going to benefit us.

No question about it, like neural prostheses and stuff like that. But there is unsettling stuff and some downright dangerous stuff, and that's what we need to talk about to prepare ourselves and to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Well, that's where we kind of fall into the trap, though, right? I mean, it's always for our safety. It's always for the children. It's always for convenience.

It's easier. I mean, I'm just as guilty as anyone else. I mean, I joke around about just put a chip in me. I just make it happen. I just want it happening. I don't really, but I almost do because I just want the convenience. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, listen, in the chat, in the book, I talk about something called IOT, Internet of Things.

Now, just bear with me for a moment because this is a really big deal, okay, and it is unprecedented. This is not just more of the same. I know things have always changed, but these changes are a horse of a different color. Now listen, the Internet of Things refers to all the devices we are now purchasing that somehow work one way or another through the Internet. So we're talking about, you know, smart TVs that work through the Internet. We're talking about even sex toys. We're talking about, you know, but now listen to this. You know those video monitors that parents buy to make sure their children are in bed in their bedroom,

Okay, these are now, these now work through the internet. So they are part of this internet of things, IOT. Now, the reason they work through the internet is because let's say you're at the office and you want to check in on Janie and Johnny. You can get on your iPhone. Okay, they're snug and bed. That's fine. It's convenient.

I just have to click on the app. It's convenient, Jeff. Let's have to click on the app. It's convenient. Exactly. You just have to click on the app. Everything comes with an app now, right? It's convenient and it's for my child's safety, right?

it's for the safety of the children. Okay. Security, right. Convenience, security, entertainment. These are the three things I talk about in the book. Now, I tell the story of a hacker who managed to use a, now there's a search engine. I don't want to say it on the air, but there's now a special search engine that enables you to have access to all these Internet of things. And I tell the story, and this is a typical story. There's not an extreme outlier story.

This is typical of what's going on right now. a hacker, hacked into the top brand name of these video monitors, and hacked the entire product line. And what they did was they splashed all those video feeds on the internet, Jeffrey, along with locations and personal information. Now, there's a postscript to this. Today, a story is breaking that a congressional report is about to come out that reveals the Chinese, the Chinese government is now determined to control the Internet of things in order to spy on us in our own homes and our own offices. In other words, they're going to use these very devices that we're paying big bucks to bring into our home for security, for entertainment, for convenience. They're going to use them.

They're going to turn them on us and spy on us. And this is not science fiction. This is a very real thing that's going on. That's why I wrote the book, Jeffie. so people are aware of this and can protect themselves and their loved ones. Well, listen, they're already doing that to their own people in China. I mean, we're already seeing that clearly. Oh, yeah.

And we've opened up the floodgates with our trade with them for years. So it's not a surprise that they want. I mean, it's just an easy way to already be involved in what we do and be able to start finding ways to control us. I get that. But I don't think people are... Now they're now outside of China, Jeffrey. You know, like those voice-activated assistance like the Amazon Echo, you know.

These are devices that we deliberately bring into our home. Why? Convenience. You can say, Alexa, tell me what's the temperature. Hey, Alexa, buy me a pizza. Hey, Alexa, play my favorite music. Well, these are listening devices that are sitting there listening to us 24-7. The Chinese are now going to be able to hack into those things and listen to us.

It's crazy stuff. No, and look, even with minus the Alexa. And I know we'll get this, this all, you know, is in and out of the book. But even minus Alexa. I mean, we all have cell phones sitting next to us 24-7. Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. I mean, those are, I don't know if people know this or not, but those are listening devices.

Yes. And anything, anything that you can speak into can be reversed and turned into a listening device. If you don't, if you don't believe that, we all have wives. Anyway, that's a joke. That's the joke. It's true. It's true. But I don't think people realize how, well, even with televisions and everything, they're all listening devices and they're all monitoring us.

And there's so many companies are selling, they're buying other companies. And they're not paying $5 billion for this app. They're paying $5 billion for the information that app has on you. Exactly. That's what they're paying for. That's what they're getting for. I don't think people realize exactly. You know, I found it a little frightening going through the jobs that are already.

When you talk about the first, you know, my father worked for General Motors for, you know, plant superintendent and argued with the unions for years in Michigan as when I was a kid. And he was part of setting up the factories in Canada and around the world and when they started automating. And you talk about it in your book, you know, the first, you know, the first AI. computer arm that started using, you know, down the assembly line. But I don't think people realize that we all, I mean, we're already, there are almost no job is, A, really safe, and there's no really business that doesn't use some sort of artificial intelligence.

And I even go to my job. I mean, I'm listening, I click on a news story yesterday, and I go, oh, that's an interesting story. I want to hear, I want to see what it says. It doesn't let me read it. The computer reads it to me. And as it's reading, I'm halfway through the story and I'm thinking, wait a minute. That's my job. Yeah, yeah, that's your job. Look, I talk in the book about the fact that no job is unsafe. Everybody thinks that it's all just blue collar, like with your dad. No, no, no, no, no. It's pink collar, it's white collar, lawyers, accountants. And I give specific examples now of AI software that is in development or already developed in order to replace these positions, insurance adjusters, lawyers, doctors. Doctors are getting – there's now an artificial radiologist that scores better than human radiologists at looking at x-rays and MRIs and PET scans and sonograms and are able to detect something wrong with us.

So you see the writing on the wall. And look, at one point, at some point, we do want that, right? We want the computer to say, hey, you have this. We need to take care of this. But where is the line when the computer says, instead of taking a shot at fixing you, the computer says, eh, you're not worth it? Yeah. Well, well, you know, look, that's the thing about this stuff, Jeffey, is that if you go

through the book with innovations. And look, most people, if they're well-informed, will catch headlines here and there about this stuff, right? But what I did in this book was I put it all together into a single place. And when you finish it, and it's an easy read. As you know, I'm well known for writing, engaging stuff. I try to do it in a way that really engages. I hate to say the word entertain because a lot of this stuff, yeah. It's a good read. I told you. It's a good read. I have not finished it yet, and I will because I'm plowing through it, making notes, which goes to your example of how easy it is to read since I'm actually reading it. But it is, I just fill it with a lot of stories, okay? And the point is that when you finish reading this book, you will

have a complete, big picture up to date completely of what's going on. And then that way you can decide, okay, how do I want to react to this? How do I want to protect myself? Well, look. You said a couple of things. Okay, go ahead. No, I just was, I don't know that it's possible unless you actually are, you know, Amish and I don't know that anybody is actually Amish anymore. I don't know that it's possible to, you know, really cut yourself off. I mean, you know, sure, you could buy some land in the middle of Missouri and go up there and move.

But I don't know that you could actually cut off from society and cut off from all of that. Well, unless you want to become like the Alaskan Bush. people and, you know, live off the grid. Right. Even they, you know, even they, I think, even they are kind of sneaking the technology behind the scene. I think so, too. You know, my son, I know, my son makes a big deal about, you know, wanting to, you know,

have a place in Missouri. And, you know, what he's going to drive his brand new truck up in there? I got news for you. That's all, that's all AI too, pal. That's true. Even our cars now are AI. But look, you make it, you've made several good points, and that is, what I find interesting, Jeffie, about this cutting the cord, because this is an expression now we're hearing

more and more about cut the court, cut the cord, which is to say, you know, abstain from social media, abstain from this stuff. What I find very interesting, I talk about it in the book, is that you have like the co-founders of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, all of these guys now coming out publicly and apologizing for what they have done. They recognize now that this social media, which they had hoped, idealistically, would bring us all together, are ripping us apart. And worse than that, you know, spoiling an entire generation. I have a 19-year-old son. And I tell him, you know, there's no privacy. If you're thinking in your bedroom and you're on the internet and nobody's looking, you may as well just open the front door of our house

and let the whole world in when you log on the internet. I mean, that's the truth of it. But Being, I'm a theoretical physicist. You know, I taught physics at Harvard for about eight or nine years. You don't need to talk down to me, Michael. I got it. No, no, no. I can't talk down to you. I'm too smart. The reason I tell you that is because I spent most of my life rubbing elbows with physicists.

And here's what I find very interesting. A lot of the guys that I rubbed elbows with at Cornell and at Harvard were involved in creating the A-bomb in the 40s. These are old guys now. Some of them are already dead. But what was interesting is that right after the A-bomb, many of them had lived lives of regret, deep regret of what they'd done. Even though they ended World War II, right? They regretted. And what I'm seeing, Jeffie, it's an absolute parallel now with these guys in Silicon Valley that are coming out completely contrite and saying, you know, the addictiveness of social media is not an accident.

We built it that way. Explain that in the book, the algorithms they did. It was a deliberate addiction, Jeffie, and we're paying the price for it now. And look, I'm as addicted as anyone else. Listen, we're talking on a in parentheses radio program podcast that's Internet. Yeah. It's not. I know.

It's the new world. I know that. I know that I'm talking into the wind. But at one point, and I know I could, one of these days, you and I are going to come in and we're going to do just sit and talk because instead of, I know you're pushing your book and you've got other interviews and I can't take all the time from you today. But I do, at what point do we, can we stop it?

I don't think we, and I'll let you answer, can it be stopped now? I'm glad you gave me a chance to answer that because I do believe we can influence. Now, whether we can stop everything cold, I'm not. sure, but we can. And let me give you the reason why. It's one of the good things that comes out of all these innovations that I talk about. And it's good in all those sections that I thought. I know. But in the World Wide Web, one of the good things is, is that it has empowered the individual. And I explained that in terms of the difference between addition and multiplication in the book. I don't want to get into it. Now we don't have the time. However, just suffice to

say that the World Wide Web, unlike any other mass media you can imagine, whether it was the megaphone or the radio or television, we are not just passive receivers. We are also now very powerful transmitters. Every Tom Dick and Harry can get online and broadcast, okay, for better or worse. Now, the reason I'm saying this is... In an instant. In an instant. In an instant. And around the world.

I mean, remember the whole thing with transatlantic cables, how big that was? Yes. That was, whoa, we've connected North America with the European, well, you can get some bonehead with a low IQ in his bedroom there, and he can broadcast, you know, to Timbuk, too. Oh, you're talking about the YouTube channels. Huh. Yeah. No, but what I'm answering your question, because I think it's a good one, and it's one that anyone who reads this book will ask themselves. Okay.

Well, I get it. Boy, this is overwhelming. What can I do about it? There is something we can. because I tell the story, for example, of the Friday of Wrath. Remember that? The Friday of Wrath where people rose up, used social media to rise up against Mubarak and actually overthrew him.

And this is not just an isolated example. So what I'm suggesting to you, Jeffrey, and I can't prove this, but what I'm suggesting to is we do have the power now because of this technology to influence its direction. And that's my hope with this book, that if people read it, they reflect on it, and say, wow, okay, what can I do? You can do something. If enough of us rise up against some particular innovation and make enough noise, we can influence Jeff. I really believe that. So, and, you know, look, I hope, I hope and pray that's true. And listen, that leads into more and more people are really trying to get that word out. I mean, I work for a guy that,

I don't know, he wrote some book called Addicted Outrage or something in his latest book. And it's the same thought, right? I mean, it's the same of we're all addicted, but in the end, we can flip it. And in the end, we can flip it. But we have to be able to find some common ground. And I don't know if the common ground is hate, we're not going to, that's not going to win. But I know that's a completely different discussion. No, that's a completely, yes, it is a completely discussion.

Because you think about it, each of us has the power. irrespective of whether we agree or disagree with each other. Each of us has the power to unplug, to ditch. Let me just tell you a story because we're in Dallas, right? I tell the story in the book. I don't know if you've gotten to it yet. Of that little girl, I think she's like seven years old. She has, the parents have an Amazon Echo in the house.

So this little kid says, Alexa, buy me this, buy me this, you know. And so the parents, I don't realize it until the stuff starts arriving at home. And they're like, what? Right. But here's the punchline. here's the punchline, Jeffrey. And I quote the woman in the book, the mother, you would think she would learn a lesson from all this

and just ditch the echo, right? Right, right. No, they keep it. And then she says, and I quote her in the book, she says, well, we just have to whisper around Alexa in the house. Are you kidding me, really? That's the lesson you learn. The lesson you have to whisper.

You have to whisper. You have to whisper. We have the power to do that. We have to whisper, but I don't know, tomorrow I might need some paper, towels and I want it delivered to my front door. So, I mean, it's crazy. And look, go to your computer and punch it into the keyboard.

I know. I don't need Alexa to tell me what the temperature is, for goodness sake. Order, order me a pizza. How lazy can you get? Come on, man. Wait a minute. You don't want an answer to that. Oh, okay.

No, listen, I thought about it. And my wife shot it down. We've got, we've got phones. She's got apps. There's Alexa's no go. There's no Google home. Thank you. Your wife is a smart woman.

I love your wife, even though I have never met her. She does not, yeah. She does not want any of, she's already put a ball on. We don't have it. And there really, there really is no need. Can I tell you a funny story? Since we just moved to the Dallas area from Nashville, we wanted to buy a big screen TV, like 55 inch, right?

Of course. So we go to the 80s are better. The 80s are better, but I'm just letting you know. It's all right. Stick with 55. You'd be happy with that. Now you tell me. No, I should have consulted with you. So we, so a friend of mine who lives in Flower Mound said, you've got to go to the Nebraska furniture mart. It's the biggest furniture store

in the world. I said, really? So I got there and I'm like, whoa, I told my wife, everything is bigger in Texas. I know. This is a, this is a Nebraska Furniture Mart Dallas, Texas version. I mean, it's gigantic. Yes, it is. So I go up to the section where they're selling TVs and there's young guy, 20-something guy. I said, listen, we want to buy like a 50-5. inch TV, but we don't want a smart TV. We don't want one that has a little camera and a little microphone that could bug us if, you know, we're not careful. And now with the Chinese, we're intending to do that.

What are we cavemen? Yeah, no, no, no. So the kid looks at me like I have two heads and he scratches and said, he says, well, sir, I don't know if they make those anymore. I said, no, I just want a plain, dumb television. Right. Just a plain 55. So I urged him.

He was giving it. I said, no, no, no, there's got to be. So finally found me one model. We got it. It's here. I don't need to worry about them bugging me. It's a beautiful thing. It's even got a built-in DVD.

And that's all I need. I don't need voice activated, this voice that. No, no, no, no. I'm not that lazy. And given the downside, Jeffrey, I'll go with the dumb TV every day. It's a beautiful picture. I know. And there's devices that you can use.

I mean, we have some dumb TVs in the house that we put devices on the Roku, separate Roku devices or the internet thing. That's exactly what we do. But I will say that the Roku on it. I will say that the smart TVs are nice, Mike. I mean, they're awful sweet. And they do. I know, I know.

We had a Samsung, trust me, brother. We had a Samsung smart TV in Nashville. I left it behind it for the new owners to worry about, you know. I understand. And I love the idea, really. I mean, I'm almost not joking about the guy waiting, you know, Nebraska's like, what are we cavemen?

No, of course we don't have that. Oh, yeah. No, no. I know. He couldn't believe when I asked him. He was like, what planet are you from? You know, it's like, I don't think it even occurred to the kid that there would be just, what is it? What do you mean by just an ordinary TV?

Because these kids grew up like my 19-year-old. They grew up on this stuff. We're right now. They don't know from before. Right. Are we at, I think we're close now, right, to the point where the parents of children that are getting into high school. or ending high school, now so you're getting into lives that have not been around without computers. We're close to that.

Oh, yeah. I mean, we're pretty close to that point now where we have now, we're looking at generations. Well, you think about it this way. Jeffrey, think about it this way. And I tell the whole story in the book about how the worldwide was invented by this kind of no-name scientist working in an Adam smasher in Switzerland, right? Tim Berners-Lee. And that was in 1989.

You do the arithmetic. 1989. Now, he came out with it. He came up with the idea in 89, and then he deployed it in 91, gave it to the world for free. So you did the arithmetic. That's like, what, 9 plus 18? That's like 25 years ago. So kids, you know, kids definitely grew up on the Internet. They don't, look, when I was going to college, if I needed to know the answer to them, I had to go to the library. These kids don't go to the library. They Google. Right. I mean, it's a different world to them. And so to try to sit down. and explain to them, no, this is how it was. Right. This is how it was before the dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Right. Well, right. I mean, grandpa or grandma would say, look it up. But today it's just Google it. Look at it. Google it. Google it. And, of course, as you and I both know,

Google just gives you access to the surface web. Now, there is also the deep web and the dark web, and that's a whole different conversation we can have. But that stuff gets scary. And again, people need to know about this. They can't bear it. their head, Jeffie, because if they do, if they say, nah, I don't want to hear it, it's going to ruin my day.

Well, you know what? Then you're going to get slapped upside the head, or your kids or grandkids are going to get slapped upside the head by this stuff, because it is going on right here, right now, in labs all over the world. Well, we already, we have, form yourself. I just saw, I just saw a huge story and read some articles that, uh, how in South America,

we're already, uh, having cloned horses for their polo matches. And these big farmers, These big polo guys are already using cloned horses. Like he had a champion horse. And that's the, he uses, he uses clone number 14. And tomorrow he might use clone number 20 because 20 usually is sometimes better than 14. I mean, there's a guy in Texas that's part of that deal. And he said that he wasn't going to make the deal with humans.

Yeah, right. Listen. All right. Thank you, sir. When I was at AB, yeah, if you believe that, I've got some of the top plan to sell you. No kidding. Okay. Now, when I was at ABC News, remember when that Scottish biologist Ian Wilmot cloned Dolly, the sheep.

Yeah. Now, what was interesting about that is, and people may not realize this, but before that, every biological textbook printed, uttered the dogma that it would be impossible. It would, now listen to this. It was impossible to clone a mammal. Up until then we had cloned salamanders, you know, amphibians, that we had cloned tomato plants. But the dogma was that you could never clone mammals. Why? Because mammals are too complicated. Well, Ian Wilmot pretty much blew that up.

So they rewrote the textbooks. But then the new mantra became, well, that's a mammal. Nobody can ever clone primates. Okay? Well, guess what? January of 2018, and I talk about this in the book, some Chinese scientists were able to successfully clone long-tail macaque monkeys. Okay, those are primates. So now the expectation among all the experts, and again, I discussed this in the book, I had more than a thousand footnotes,

Jeffie. I mean, this is very deeply researched, okay? Now the expectation is, yeah, of course, for primates, there are closest living. We are, we are a primate. Yes, we are. So the last barrier has been demolished, okay? So it really is now, the clock is ticking. It's only a matter of time. Can I say something? Look to China, Russia, Korea, or Italy. That's where my bet is where the first clone human being will happen. There's a lot of action in those countries. They don't have the, how should we say, the ethical firewalls that we may have here. They don't have the regulations, either the government regulations. So that's my bet. But it's either the Koreans, the Chinese, the Italians or the Russians. You mark my word, Jeffrey.

We're talking to Michael Gillen about his new book and a lot of other things. The book is called The End of Life as We Know It, ominous news from the frontiers of science. And Michael, one of the things that has been so prevalent in talks about AI is that we need to come together and come up with some sort of, you know, moral thoughts about it. And not just, you mentioned four countries that are not going to be a part of that. whether they say they are or not.

They're just not going to. Their frontiers are going to be pushed. And so I don't know at what, I don't know where, you know, it's almost Google. We're mad at Google because they're trying to create Dragonfly in China. But look, you know, look, they're going to create that.

We're going to have two or three search engines. We've already heard that from the head of all the computer worlds. That's what they're thinking already. So at what point, I mean, But most of the studies show that, and this might be later on in your book, but most of the studies show that people are okay with robots if they know their robots. So the servers or you have a robot in your house and you, and it kind of looks like a human, but you know that it's not. It acts. It doesn't talk exactly like a human.

So it says something off and you go, ooh, that's a robot. And you're okay with that. You go, that's a robot. You're good. But when we start getting to the point, and we probably, I mean, we already are there, I believe, just it's not out in the open, where robots are, you won't be able to tell. And when that happens, I don't know, the word doomed comes to mind. Well, look, I mean, again, we're not talking, no. Look, I talk about this extensively in the book.

There's a place called Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong. The guy who runs it used to work at Disney with audio animatronics. You know, the Hall of Presidents, the president, so lifelike and they give little speeches. All right, well, this guy took all that knowledge and now has really embellished it and then added artificial intelligence to it. He has created a robot named Sophia. Now, Sophia is making way.

She's right. She's become a celebrity. Yes, she has. She interviewed by Roe, probably Rose over 60 Minutes. Right? She went on a date with Will Smith. I saw her do a conference, but I was a little, you know, I thought that the conference was kind of downplay or they made more of it,

but she still had answers given to her for that conference. Oh, yeah. Look, I mean, there's no question. It wasn't a back and, it wasn't a real back and forth. Correct. No, no, no. Much of this is a publicity stunt. But watch what's, but watch the trajectory.

That's the point I'm making right now. Yeah. So a lot of this is just, you know, hype to get attention to Hanson Robotics. But listen, she addressed the United Nations. She was given citizenship Saudi Arabia. The point is, look how eager we are. Look how, even with something as, as you say, very marginal kind of AI. But look how eager we are to confer these kind of human-like status on these things.

It's like we're falling over ourselves to say, oh, yeah, you're just as good as we are. Oh, boy, don't know. Look, in another 10 years or so, these roles, Sophia will become even that much more formidable. You already have talk in California about taxing robots. Well, they're going to have to find a way to, they have to find a way to embrace that for, to make money, right? I mean, there's no question. Of course. If we want to stop for just a second, I mean, I'll get to that because I do want to talk to you about that.

But, I mean, we already have the company in California real dolls. I mean, he's been making the sex dolls that are darn near close to what your boy is making with Sophia. I mean, they're close to that. Matt McMullen, yeah, Matt McMullen, and the company is Abyss Creation. He does real dolls. He's created Harmony. Harmony is the first commercially available sex doll. about $15,000, depending on how much you trick her out with the very dexter.

Right. Used to be you could get one for about five or six, but I didn't know that. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. We're way past inflatable dolls. I mean, this. Oh, my gosh, yes. Oh, right?

I mean, but here's what's interesting. And again, I talk about it in the book, I'm not sure you've got to that point yet, where I talk about, you know, these sex dolls and the sex brothels and so forth and so on. But with a lot of these dolls now, what they have different settings. So you can, in a chipper mood, a cheerful mood, but then there's a setting that's a frigid mood. And so the concern here is that you're basically creating a sex bot, a very real, realistic sex bot with whom you can rape, I mean, who will resist you. And so, and then what's even more worries. Is that really rape, though?

I mean, I know we're walking down the road. We don't need to walk down. No, but what I'm saying is. is you're encouraging that kind of behavior. There's a lively discussion about that. Some people say, well, you're allowing them to kind of get it out of their system on a doll. It's better that than humans. Are you?

Or are you encouraging that kind of stuff? The other thing that's very disturbing is in Japan, especially there's at least one company. And again, I talk about this in the book, who's making childlike sex bodies. So that, you know, you have pedophiles. Right. I mean, the point is, look, look, this is not the technology. fault. Okay, let's be honest. Let's step back and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, these are destructive impulses we all have, and we've always had since Old Testament time, okay? But what this

technology is doing in many instances is it's magnifying, it's amplifying, it's indulging these dark aspects of ourselves. And so what, we're, we're not reading ourselves, we're not making ourselves better with this technology. We're just indulging our darkest, ugliest aspects with this technology. And is that really the world we want to create? And that's one of the questions this book asks. And it's up to each of us to answer. I mean, some people are okay with these sex dolls. By the way, did you know that they have a sex, all sex bot brothel already in Madrid, Spain? Yes. Well, there's, they had to fight tooth and nail, but they're trying to get one in Houston, Texas. Yeah, that's already been shot down, though. They shot that down. I know it's been shot down, but let me tell you something. They shot down the one in Madrid for a while, but then it popped back up again, and it has this clandestine location where you can only find out if you make a date with these sex spots. I thought there was another one as well in, I want to say Germany, but it could be.

Oh, yeah. Now they're proliferating in Europe, but this was supposed to be the first one. Now they're trying to get a foot in North America. And I don't know why in the world they would pick Houston, Texas. Would you pick Houston of all places? I would, and I'd pick like California. We'd go for it in a New York minute. I think that's possible. Also, there was one in, I think they were going to put one in Toronto that they've been fighting in Toronto. And Houston, they had talked about trying to come up into the DFW area as well, but they didn't. But Tarrant County is one of the toughest counties. See, in Houston, that's a really liberal area.

I would think Austin. If you're going to come to Texas, I would come to Austin. But Houston and Austin are both, and so is Dallas. really. The mayor is really liberal, but you can't. Oh, I didn't know that. The overall area is pretty conservative. In Austin and Houston is really, in the cities themselves are very liberal. So those are the cities that. I didn't realize that. And it would be great for some place like that to get a foothold in Texas.

Okay. See, now you've explained it because I was like, why Houston? I just had the impression it was very conservative, but it isn't. Okay. So the cities are not. But I think that what this raises is also a bigger issue of, Jeff, if I may, and that is that it used to be, you know, and I'm not a dinosaur. So when I say it used to be, I'm not like talking about the darkies, right? I mean, it's like I'm not that old, okay? So, but I mean, even when I was a grad student, most scientific and technological research, academic research, certainly, was funded by the guy. government, either through the National Science Foundation, NSF, or through the NIH National

Institutes of Health, if it was biology-related, so forth, right? What's happened now in just the last like, I don't know, 10, maybe 15, but more like 10 years, is that we have all these billionaires now, and they all have their own agenda, and they're funding a lot of this stuff. I mean, look at what's going on in space. I was raised on NASA when NASA was a government agency. Now all the action in space is being funded by people like Branson and Bezos and Musk. This is private money.

And so they are not subject to the same kinds of restrictions and regulations. So I quote a Nobel Prize winning scientist in my book who says, yeah, you know, it used to be published or perish in academia. Now it's profit or perish. And so like with these brothels and other things, What we're seeing is that there's a profit motive in all of this. I don't want to knock the free market. No, no, neither do I. But what I'm saying is that when it comes to some of these kind of sketchy innovations

or sketchy developments, you have to take into account that this is not just pure research no more. This is no longer pure research. This is now research being driven by, in many cases, dark money, or billionaires with their own profit-driven agendas. I'm not against the marketplace, and trust me, and I'm against government regulation. I want government to stay the heck out of my life. But what I'm just trying, the point I'm trying to make is that there has been a sea change in terms of how much of these innovations are being funded.

And that's relevant. That's relevant to know that a lot of this is not being driven just by pure curiosity like it used to be in the old days. Right, right. It is now being driven by profiteers, people who see. Little dollar signs and all this stuff. I know. I know.

It's not always good, Jeffrey. I'm for capital. I know. But it's not always good. It goes back to, you know, you mentioned Jeff Bezos. Look, I'm, you now live in DFW, all right? That is a stronghold for Amazon. Get it within two minutes or you get a refund almost.

I mean, it's they, they, they, you can get it here immediately. The only thing missing is, which they're working on, by the way. is drone delivery. I mean, that's the only thing missing. They will, you can get it to your home tomorrow, sometimes, many times, two day right now, well, from Amazon, because this is one of their hubs. So, okay.

And again, I want to say, wait, wait, I could wait two days for that pair of socks I wanted. But, you know, I'd bro go ahead and deliver it. Bring it. No, I know. Listen, I just finished ordering a few things this morning. And I told my wife, How long is it going to take to be here?

She says two days. I said two days. It's too long. Right. It was the one day. Two days. You're kidding me? So I get it.

Somebody get Bezos on the phone. Let's set this thing down. Yeah. Get that mothership coming in here and deliver that thing like this afternoon. No, but listen, listen, listen, I tell Jeff Bezos's a story in my book. Okay. And God bless him. You know, he, you know, he, all he, he, he, he, all he, he,

He was a walk. He was a nobody. But he had this idea when the World Wide Web first started. He thought, well, maybe I can sell some books. That was his big idea. Let's sell some books. That was his big idea, Jeffrey. Let's sell some books.

He sold books out of his garage. I tell the whole story in the book. It's fascinating. And now he's the richest man in the world. I know. Just less than 20 years later. God bless him. And look, I mean, I know I try to,

I try to be a good neighbor. I try to be a good community member. So I try, if I can, to find what I'm looking for in the local stores in my, in my neighborhood. Okay, I really do. That's hard to do. Like I have a local ACE hardware, right? It's hard to do.

Like yesterday, I went to my little local ACE hardware. Okay, this is just a true story, typical. And I'm looking for a certain electrical box. I need it to be a slim. I don't, I can't use the deep box. I need the slim box. I go there. I make the trip.

I get in the car. It's driving rain. and I'm driving, and just because I want to patronize my local merchant. I get there, the guy welcomes me. He's a terrific guy. And I said, this is what I'm looking for. Yeah. So he says, well, follow me.

Let me show you what we got. So he takes me to the aisle, and there they are, all the electrical things, and I'm looking, and I'm looking, and I can't find it. Really, you don't have this? No, I'm sorry, we can, but we can order it. Well, how long will it take? But we can get it to you next week. I'm like, oh, my God.

I go home and against, I don't want to do this, Jeffie, but I get online and I see it on Amazon for like half the price and it can get here tomorrow. That's right. It's already leading up against your front door. I know. I know that. You could have ordered it from your car outside of the Ace Hardware and it had been there by the time you got home.

I mean, it's tremendous. But it's also bad. It's not a bad thing. I know. It's not a bad thing. And, you know, malls are having to reinvent themselves, okay? They're having to become more entertaining. They have to give people reasons to go there, right?

So it's not necessarily going to be a bad thing. No, we do evolve. Not everything in the book is bad. There is, I know, there is evolving. And I get that. It definitely isn't all bad, and we've covered a little bit about that. I know I'm going to go on for another day or so with you, so just get a drink. One of the things that we can do in this interview, and then we'll wrap it up, and we're talking to Michael Gillian, the end of life as we know it.

Tremendous book, about halfway through it, and we've covered a bunch of it here in this interview. One of the things that I'd love to discuss with you a little bit is what the world is starting to discuss is when robots start taking too many jobs. And people don't have jobs, and people need to survive. and we talk about, you know, basic minimum income. And there's so many, I mean, both sides of that is a huge argument. Absolutely, yes. What are your thoughts on that? Roughly, Reader's Digest version, and nobody knows what Reader's Digest is.

So just a short email version. The short email version, because I want people to buy the book. If I give it all away for free, then what's the point? Okay, right? No, just kidding. Honey, is that you? Here's the Reader's digest version. Here's the elevator version.

There have been four industrial revolutions by anybody's reckoning. The first one was steam power. It replaced the horse and buggy. Right. And then the second was electricity. It replaced mechanical hand-crank devices. It replaced oil lamps. Boy, that's something.

And electricity really did change the world. Oh, yeah. Huge. Let's not forget. I mean, this is not the first time we're facing huge changes that are going to change our lives as we know it. Third one was the computer revolution, right? And it replaced typewriters and everything that went with them.

Sure did. Now, here's the thing. The fourth one is this artificial intelligence or robotics. But here's the difference from all the others. This one, AI and robotics, is intended to replace not horse and buggy, not typewriters, not oil lamps. It's intended to replace you. Us, you and me. That's the first time.

That's unprecedented, Jeffie. Now, people will say, well, yeah, but look at the computer revolution. It killed three million jobs, but it created 20. But it wasn't out to replace us. Right. It was out to replace typewriters. It was out to help us. I mean, it was out to assist the humans, not assist the humans in getting rid of themselves.

Yeah, and I tell the story of a woman in the book from Georgia. the poor woman, she's just trying to make a living and she's been replaced by a robot not once, not twice, but three times in recent years. So you need to keep away from her. What is a person like that to do? I mean, really, Duffy. I know. I know.

And seriously, I don't know. I mean, I guess you, their argument will be that we need to adapt to, you know, adapt to the, adapt to the AI and be able to fix. and control the AI as humans. No, the AI will control itself. Right, we're already at that, right? I mean, we're, and what's interesting, Jeffey, is that, no, listen, listen, even the tech giants are very coy about this, but they see the writing on the wall. They're already, they're writing, no, they're suggesting, no, they're suggesting universal basic income.

Right. They're saying, okay, yeah, we get it. You know, robots will put people out of. work. One study indicates that for every robot, a corporation, or a company or an industry hires, they're replacing on average 5.6 people. Okay. So the writing is on the wall. Now, listen, they're saying, okay, oh, well, we get it. Well, let's just give people a basic income then to live on. Really, is that the kind of society we're heading towards? But it's already happening, you know, in Stockton, California. They're experimenting. And there's plenty of places.

They're experimenting. If we talked longer, I mean, I believe I have a theory on how that could actually work, but everybody would call me crazy. Yeah. Oye, aye, oy. I know. But I mean, we already have, we already have, we already, I just read a story about a guy in China, one guy, one guy.

Yeah. In charge of this entire warehouse of robots. And that's his job. Yeah. And he's, and he's even, he's like, yeah, I'm going to do this as long as I can. You know, I just, oh, yeah. I'm out here all by myself. And he's, you know, out in the middle of nowhere in China running this huge, huge warehouse

all by himself. Yeah. And we're seeing that in agriculture. You know, they talk about migrants wanted to bust into our country because they want jobs. Well, guess what? I mean, even in agriculture, and I have a whole section on the book about this in California, and Florida, elsewhere, the strawberry pickers, and they're creating a robot that will pick strawberries.

Every imaginable fruit and vegetable, all going to be done by robots. And it's going to be like your Chinese guy. What you're going to have one guy in charge of a casino. billion acres with all these little robots getting around collecting your strawberries and your turnups and your beats and God knows what else. Ruta Beggis. And the one guy there with a big control board in case, God forbid, one of the robots would go down, then he's just going to dispatch another robot to go fix it.

I mean, seriously, this is, I mean, we're laughing about it. I know. I know. For a lot of people, this is hitting them in their pocketbook, Jeff. You know that. Absolutely. Absolutely. My 19-year-old son this past summer got a job with Sonic.

You know, the burger, bigger burger joint. Now, well, Cali Burger, which is this big California Burger chain, just announced that they've created this Flippy robot. Flippy will now do all the things that my son did this summer. And by the way. What are the teenagers supposed to do for entry levels? Listen, we've already... We've bypassed that.

Look, we've already... First off, the Flippy... The Flippy actually did what it was programmed to do. I know they shut it down because they said it couldn't do its work. That was wrong. It did do its work. It was just... It did do its work.

did exactly what it was told to do. It just did, they didn't have it, they didn't tell it to do enough. It was, it reached its max and they should have, they should have had two. If they had two or three flippies, the world had been fine. But we've already, we've already passed that. It will be like the terminated. He'll be back. Trust me.

Oh, we've already passed that, though, with looking for employment, though. I mean, the days of, of, my 16-year-old son, my youngest son, going out to, you know, mow the neighbor's lawn. That ain't happening. It's not happening. Got robot mowers, lawn mowers. It's not happening. It's just not happening. People just don't do that. Hey, listen, Bloomberg has a story today that the Asia's biggest restaurant chain, okay, in three days on October 28th, they're going to open an all-robot restaurant in Beijing, China, with the idea that they're going to blow it out to more than 5,000 of their restaurants.

Okay. How many people are you putting out of work there? All those waiters and the cooks and everything like that. I know. So we have to take this seriously. This is not like the computer revolution. This is not like electric. This is not like steam. This is a horse of a different color.

If anybody tries to tell you otherwise, they're lying to you. And so now we need to think seriously, what are we going to do to people who are put out of work for this thing? I know. I suggest that in the book, seriously, Jeffie, that, you know, you have all these science fiction scenarios about the robots rising. up and taking over the world. Well, I think there's a greater likelihood that it's going to be humans that are going to rise up against the machines. Well, I hope that's true.

And there's going to be a revolt of some sort. I hope that's true. But then, you know, we've seen the documentary, I Robot. We saw what happens with that. We've seen the documentary with Bruce Willis way back, I mean, back in 2009, 10 years ago, I think it was now, with surrogates. Do you remember that movie? Surrogates.

No, I didn't see that one. With Bruce Willis? No, I've got to check that one out. You should watch Surrogens. I'll write that one down. It's a fascinating documentary. Some people might not call it a documentary. That was just me.

It's not really a documentary. Oh, okay. But it should be. I'll check it out. But it's all robots. People staying home with their robots out in the world. Yeah. And so it's people separating.

People separating. I'll give you a rough draft of the movie, right? You have your home. You have your robot go out. You can pick whatever robots you want. You have your robot go out and be you in the world and your home with the, with the face screen. All right.

Now, you have the group of people that are humans in parentheses that are fighting against, you know, that want to live as humans and are not embracing the robot world. And then that's where the twist comes in, Michael, rent the movie. Oh, gosh, I've got to watch this weekend. Are you kidding me, brother? With my new 55-inch dumb TV, I'm going to sit there and watch it. If you had a smart TV, you could just order it and it'd be on your TV right now. No, no, I don't want to do that.

No, it's too high a price. Now, listen, now, just less people think we're all gloom and doom. Look, you mentioned something that reminded me of something I also talk about in the book. Like in Japan, they've got a very aging population, and they don't have enough caregivers. So they've, you know, they've created like a little robot pepper. For our safety and our health. And pepper is going to be programmed to be caregivers. I think that's a good thing.

It sure is. Also with Alzheimer's patients and things like that. So it's not all gloom and doom. But you and I both know you can have 99 wonderful, glowing, beautiful consequences. from our technology, right? But all it takes is one stinker, and it overshadows the whole thing. It sure does. And so that's why it's worthwhile for us to kind of dwell on the unsettling

and the outright dangerous innovations that are already here and are knocking on our door. I think it's because people need to be prepared and to protect themselves. But remember, we have the power. Nobody's forcing us to bring this stuff into our homes. Nobody's forcing us. No, no, they're not. It's a willing decision, right? No, they're not.

So there's hope there. There's hope there. Jeffie, because we have the power to change that. The flip side of that, though, is when you, if you, you're right, we have the power to decide and nobody is, is forcing us to do it. However, however,

when I want to do something on my phone, all right, so you say nobody's, nobody's forcing you to do this, all right, but they are kind of. They are kind of, because if I want to use something on my phone, let's say, if I want to take pictures, I want a camera app

on my phone. Yeah. No, I can decide not to use that camera app. Absolutely my choice. But I can't take pictures without that app. So I say, okay, just take my information. I don't care. I just want to take a picture of the stupid chair in my living room. I don't care.

And so. I know, but, but, Jeffrey, come on now. Come on now, my brother. I can't let you get away with it. I bet we, you know, because we made this move from Nashville to the Dallas area, we've been unpacking. And guess what I unpacked the other day? My old digital camera.

I know my wife's a photographer. I get it all the time. You know people take a picture with their phones. Don't know what you're talking about. I got it. No, listen, I'm going to make a prediction. And I'm not a businessman, okay? I'm not a businessman.

But if I were, I would start investing money in old school technology because I really believe, I really believe people are going to go back to some of the old stuff that didn't come with all this baggage and all these. dangers because as these dangers become more and more exposed like the discussion we're having today, then I think people are going to want to go back to the old school stuff. Just just a little stock. Right. Right. And look, and look, you know, while I'm not opposed to that, I have two antique typewriters in my garage as we speak. I will sell to you, Michael, at a fair price, and it could be at your home tomorrow. Michael Gillen, Michael, thank you very much. I, man, I want us to

spend so much more time with you and I know you've got to go and I get it. The new book is The End of Life as we know it. Ominous news from the Frontiers of Science. And I'd like to say it's been good talking to you, but I'm a little stuck in doom right now. So I'm a little stuck in doom. I am. I really appreciate it. Michael, it was great talking to you.

And I hope that we can spend some time together in the future. Count on it, brother. It was a joy. I'm glad we're neighbors now. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. God bless you. Thanks, Michael. Peace.

Thank you.