Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Listener Questions 8: Can AI understand humor?

Episode Date: February 18, 2020

Daniel and Jorge answer questions from listeners like you! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want or gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate.

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Now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Daniel, do you think the robots are going to take over the world? Well, I do think it's inevitable that they're going to be in charge in some ways. Is that different than taking over being in charge? Well, I'm pretty sure they're going to be faster than us, stronger than us, and smarter than us. But there might be some things humans will always be better at. Like eating bananas or, you know, like asking questions, thinking about the deep questions of why are we here and then what's the meaning of life or even artificial life? Sort of. I was thinking maybe more comedy.

You're talking about fart jokes, aren't you? Yes, humans will always be number one in the galaxy in that category. Unfortunately. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm the fart joke champion of this podcast. Oh, good. I happily see the title, Daniel. Victory is mine. Not a trophy I want on my wall, for sure.

Well, we have lots of dimensions. You know, you can be the banana eating champion. Although, you know, you think you can eat bananas better than a robot, you're saying? I could not build a robot to eat bananas better than you. I don't know if you can build a robot that will enjoy the bananas as much. Oh, you're changing the terms already, you see. Well, depends what you mean by eating, you know. Eating includes the enjoyment of the experience.

Well, when they have the hot dog eating champion, do you think that guy really enjoyed all 67 hot dogs? I don't think so. I think that that person is probably dead inside from so many hot dogs. He's all hot dog inside, that's for sure. Yeah. Same thing. Anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge, Explain the Universe, a production of I-Hard Radio. In which we wonder about all things human, all things robot, all things hot dog, and all things banana.

and talk to you about them and hopefully explain them to you in a way that makes sense and makes you laugh. Yeah, welcome to our podcast in which we also answer questions about the universe, questions that physicists are thinking of, questions that people every day out there have about the universe and how it all works. Yeah, we like to start from the forefront of knowledge and talk to you about what scientists out there are figuring out, what questions are at the leading edge of human knowledge and bring you to that forefront. A lot of times the best insights comes when we stop,

And we ask ourselves, do we really understand what we just said? Do people out there get it? And so one of our favorite things to do is to answer questions from listeners. Yeah, because, you know, I think people have maybe the perception out there that scientists have a lot figured out, or they have most of the universe figured out, and that there isn't much science thing left to do. Well, then they've never seen my desk because I think it would immediately undermine people's confidence in science if you had a picture of me at my desk.

I wonder why would disappoint people more, if you had a messy desk, or if you had a clean desk. If you had a clean desk, I'd be like, is this guy really doing any work? Well, do you remember that one time you were at CERN, I was there,

and I toured you around and I introduced you to a famous theorist, John Ellis? It was literally like three feet of stacked papers on top of his desk. It's like a cave, right?

Like you're worried that like top papers are topple over on top of you. There might be grad students buried in there nobody's ever found, right? Skeletons full of cobwebs and paper drafts.

It was sort of famous. Well, it was sort of famous. Well, it turns out he recently cleaned up his office. And now it's like sparklingly clean surfaces. They should have preserved that for the museum tour, you know? People are wondering, like, has he been replaced by a robot?

Is that the real John Ellis? What do you think tipped him over to finally clean the office? No, I think he probably died under a stack of papers that fell on him. They just replaced him with a robot. And CERN was just trying to cover it up. That's right. Because all great science conspiracies begin at CERN. Yeah, so scientists still have a lot of questions about the universe.

And so I feel like people shouldn't be that intimidated about having questions themselves about how it all works because, you know, scientists don't know everything. Yeah. And sometimes the simplest, most basic questions are the hardest ones to answer. Some of the questions we don't know the answers to, like how did the universe begin? You know, how is it going to end? These are simple basic questions. So don't be shy to ask a question, which is simple because sometimes those are the deepest, most important ones. Yeah, like what makes a fart joke funny?

You know, that's a deep, human, psychological, and physical question. And sometimes these are questions we will never know the answer to. Philosophers in a thousand years will still wonder why farts are so funny. That's right. The answer will just blow in the wind. Anyways, yeah, so we like to tackle these questions in our podcast. And we also like to take questions from listeners. That's right.

And so on today's podcast, we will be answering three questions from listeners like you. Today on the podcast, we'll be tackling listener questions, part eight, right? This is the eighth episode we do about listener questions. Yes, part eight. And we have a stack of listener questions we haven't gotten to. So if you have sent in your question, your audio file, thank you. Please be patient. We will get to all of them.

We love these episodes. We could joke and talk about these forever. Yeah, you are on the queue. That's right. And some people figured out that maybe one way to jump to the front of the queue is to have your, like, cute six-year-old reads a question. That's pretty diabolical there. A little bit of exploitation goes a long way, it turns out. Apparently, it works.

Cute kids are very cute. Yes, and we have kids at home, so I guess it touches a special place in our hearts. So, yeah, so people out there are out there listening to the podcast and going about their lives, and they have questions about the world, how things work, how the universe works. And that's good, right? Because wondering and exploration is all, is what science is all about, right? That's what science and the human spirit is all about. Yeah, exactly. That's what questioning is good for.

And, you know, that's sort of our brand is like, we love curiosity. We love mental exploration. We want to take you on a journey through the universe. And that journey, of course, is going to lead to questions. And, you know, there's never going to be a day when we run out of questions. There's never going to be a situation where a physicist are like, all right, thank you. Thanks, no more questions. We're happy.

Or we'll reach that day where, you know, we asked every question ever and then somebody will ask, why don't we have more questions? There you go. See, it's impossible to run out of questions. And then somebody will ask, why did you ask that question? And so on and so on. Imagine if you did, though. Imagine you lived in a society where there were no questions.

When you understood everything about the universe, that would be kind of, I don't know, much less fun and sparkling, right? You've got to have mystery. It's like if you know your spouse completely, you know, the mystery is gone. It sounds like a great science fiction short story premise. A really short, boring story. No, what would it be like? I wonder how it would change the human psyche.

Well, if you knew everything about the universe, then, you know, you could predict a lot about what would happen. And so uncertainty about the future, you know, but we dug into that in a whole podcast episode, like, what is the limit of our ability to predict the future? Even if you knew all the rules of physics, could you predict what was going to happen? Could you predict the outcome of the Super Bowl? So that's a whole fascinating concept of the sort of the limit of knowledge.

Right. What if I know all the secrets of the universe, but then I forget? I wrote them down on the slip of paper. I put it on my desk, and my desk is a mess, and now it's here somewhere. Those were my favorite science fiction stories when I was a kid where somebody gained indescribably important knowledge and then lost it for some silly reason.

I always felt like I felt that angst. I felt that like, no, go back and figure it out. Yeah, most kids dream about, you know, being naked and taking a test at school. You dream about knowing the secrets of the universe. And I grew up to be a particle physicist. So that future was easy to predict. Yeah, so today we'll be tackling three questions from readers. And they're not sort of our typical listeners.

Sorry, I keep saying readers. Maybe I'm thinking of our book. But yeah, they're not our typical. listeners and people are getting creative with these questions. So I thought it would be fun to do a mixed bag of listeners from all over the spectrum. So we'll jump right in. So our first question comes from Adi, who is apparently

six years old. Hi, Daniel and Jorge. My name is Adi. I'm six years old and you're one of my favorite podcasts and this is my question. All the planets in the solar system orbit in one way. Why does Venus go the other? Thank you. Wow, that is so cute. Oh, man, that melted my heart. And it blew my head, brain. We have a six-year-old who's

that intelligent listening to our podcast. I know. It's wonderful. So thank you, Adi, for listening, and thank you for asking that wonderful question. Yeah, and for making us your favorite podcast. That's Awesome. I feel like when I was that old, you know, my favorites were like mac and cheese and bugs money. Not a podcast about the secrets of the universe. Maybe we should have our podcast come with a free side of mac and cheese. Oh, man, we will dominate that six-year-old category. That's right. If you listen to every episode, we will email you mac and cheese. I don't even know how that works. From a Mac with some cheesy puns. But, you know, some part of iHeart media has to have like a mac and cheese company in it. It's such a big corporation.

There's got to be somewhere in the corporate... That's right. Synergy. In the corporate synergy where we can do that. All right, we'll get on that. Well, but thank you, Adi, for sending in this question. And, of course, you're welcome. Thank you for thanking us for making the podcast. I don't know if you heard that, but you could hear Adi's parent going, say thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. oh man that that's like my life every day several times a day like what do you say what do you say thank you yeah yeah pretty uh pretty interesting so adi i think is wondering you know all the planets go around the sun and he's asking why does venus go the other way yeah and this is actually a pretty deep question about the way our solar system works, and it tells you something about the deep ancient history of where our solar system comes from. So it's well worth digging into. So I think he's asking whether Venus, you know, like it goes the opposite way that the Earth

goes around the sun. But is that actually true? Is that what's happening? Or do you think he meant something else? Yeah. So Venus sort of does two different things that we should think about. One is move around the sun. That's sort of the direction of its orbit. Also like every other heavenly body, it spins. It spins around its axis. So there's two different kinds of motion we can talk about there. And the technical terms are retrograde and prograde. So the sun is spinning in a certain way, right? The sun is an object. It spins. And if a planet is moving around the sun the same way the sun is spinning, you call that prograde. And if it's moving around the sun, the opposite way, you call that retrograde. Things around the solar system can both go around the sun and spin in place.

what you're saying. That's right. And all the planets actually do go around the sun in the same direction, the direction of their orbits. Like, you know, the sun's spin defines a direction. If you were standing on the north pole of the sun and watching all the planets go by, you'd see them moving all in the same direction. Their orbits are in the same direction, yes. Nothing is going the wrong way. Nothing is going the wrong way. And that would be crazy if it were. It'd be like driving on the freeway on the wrong side. You wouldn't be able to do it for very long. would you? Unless you're James Bond, obviously.

Unless you're veering and steering. And the solar system is billions of years old, and it's been going for a while. So anything that's sort of destructive on a collision course, probably had its collision course and, you know, been bounced out of the solar system and things are sort of settled into a nice, even smooth path. Oh, I see.

So the solar system is kind of a one-way highway. And it doesn't mean that every solar system is like that. We might one day find a solar system out. The planets are going in different directions. It is possible. There's nothing in the laws of physics that say you can't have a planet going the other way. It just then needs to avoid all the debris and all the other planets and have its own lane. So it's totally possible.

Oh, I see. It has to be extremely lucky. They have to be extremely lucky, yeah. Okay. But as you were saying, there's another way that these planets can move. They don't just orbit the sun. They also have their own spins, like the Earth spins, right? That's why we have day and night.

And so you can also ask, what is the direction of these planets spins? It's a different motion because you could be going around the sun like counterclockwise, but you could be spinning in place clockwise or counterclockwise. Right. And so it turns out that Venus is weird in this way. All the planets except for Venus and Uranus spin in the same way. They spin the same direction that they move around the sun. But Venus spins the other way.

Wait, so let me think about this for a second. So if the Earth is going around clockwise around the sun, and that means we're also spinning clockwise? We're also spinning clockwise, yeah. Okay. But do you say Venus and Uranus are spinning counterclockwise? They're going around clockwise around the sun like us, but they're spinning counterclockwise. And the clockwise versus counterclockwise thing,

it just depends on whether you're standing on the sun's north pole or it's south pole. But either way, what's important is whether a planet is spinning the same way as it's moving around the sun or the opposite way. And so, as you said, Earth is moving one way and spinning the same way. And Venus is moving one way and spinning the opposite way. I feel like in every depiction of the solar system, I feel like they always pick the Earth going counterclockwise around the sun. What do you think that is? I think that's because we are North Pole-centric and the North Pole of the Earth, if you use that to define the North Pole of the Sun, that the motion is, in fact, counterclockwise.

Okay, all right, got it. So if we are north-ist, then we were going to go with counterclockwise and counter-cloths. But Venus spins clockwise. But Venus spins the other way, yeah. And that makes for a crazy experience on Venus. And not only does it spin the other way, it spins super-duper slowly, like it takes forever to spin around. Really? It's not spinning once a day like we are.

It's spinning something like hundreds of days. We spin one Earth, Earth Day, right? It takes us one Earth Day to spin by definition. And so you can say, how many Earth days does it take Venus to spin? And Venus goes around the Sun in 224 Earth days, but it takes 24 Earth days to spin. So a day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus. Venus goes around the Sun once before it completes one spin. That's a really long day.

I would be tired by the end there. Time between breakfast and lunch, you're going to need a lot of snacks. Well, you can have multiple birthdays in the same day. That is like a six-year-old's dream, you know? That's true. There you go. To have two birthdays in the same day. Yeah, and you can have, you know, 10 z's and 11 zes and mid-afternoon snack and mid-mid-mid-afternoon snack.

You'd have two Christmases in the same day? Oh, my goodness. And a lot of naps. And is that because it's spinning the opposite way? Do you know, does that make even longer than that? No, that doesn't change the length of the day, although it does make the appearance of, like, other stuff in Venus's sky really weird. Like the motion of the other planets is really strange on Venus because of those two things.

But otherwise, like, you know, the sun, from the Venus's point of view, the only thing that matters is how long it takes to spin. Like, where does the sun appear in the sky? that just depends on its spin, not on where it is around the sun, because they're all symmetric from the point of view of Venus. So the sun takes, you know, 243 days to complete its motion across the sky and Venus. Of course, Venus is the one moving around the sun, but from Venus's point of view, you know, it's like you've got 121.5 days of sun and then 121 and a half earth days of night. And in the meantime, what would you see? Would you just see the sun moving really?

slowly across the sky? Yeah, the sun moves really slowly across the Venus of sky. Of course, Venus also covered in a huge number of clouds. So from the surface of Venus, you can't actually see anything in space, right? I see.

It's a cloudy day every day in Venus. Yeah, but if you, like, lived in a pod high up in Venus's atmosphere, which would be pretty cool because Venus has really high pressure on its surface, so you wouldn't anyway want to live on its surface. If you did colonize Venus, you probably want to build some sort of airship

and float up like kilometers above the surface where the air pressure is roughly like Earth. And there you might see the sun and you see it slowly crawl across the sky. All right. Well, let's get into why, because that was Adi's question. Why does Venus spin the wrong way?

Or maybe that is the right way and everyone else is wrong. But why does it spin in a different direction than it does going around the sun? And we'll get into that. But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys.

Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back.

In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.

This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating.

He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Afea and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief.

But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying,

don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, Daniel, so Venus is spinning the opposite way that Earth is, and that's weird. It is weird, yeah, because there's a reason that a lot of stuff in the solar system is spinning the same way. It's not like it's random, and so you flip a coin eight times, and look, we got all the planets moving in the same direction.

There's a reason why things are mostly spinning the same way. The spinning around the sun and the spinning in place all sort of originated in the same kind of moment. Yeah. It all originates from the same original spin. And that's not original sin. We're talking original spin, which is a real physics thing, right? But like original sin, it's passed down through the generations. Oh, geez. We're getting biblical here. I know, I know. I'm bringing that into biblical knowledge. So you start with a big cloud of gas and dust and rocks from wherever, and it has some spin. Like that big blob of stuff is spinning in some direction. And that spinning can't just go away.

Like, momentum is conserved in our universe, and so is angular momentum. Like, if you are in space and you start a can of soup spinning, it will spin forever until something slows it down. In the same way, that gas of stuff, that blob of rocks

and dust and stuff that made our solar system started spinning and is still spinning. Right, because I think when things form, like a planet or the sun, you know, all the little bits have a little bit of velocity. They're all going somewhere initially. So all that motion has to go somewhere,

and it goes into the spin of whatever ends up being at the end. Yeah, and as it gets collected together by gravity, right? You start with a big blob of stuff and gravity pulls it together. As gravity pulls it together, it actually goes faster because it's like a figure skater. If you pull your arms in while you're spinning, you go faster and faster because the distance from the center of rotation is smaller, so you need a higher velocity. data have the same angular momentum. That's why everything in our solar system has the same spin. It's all the sun is moving in one direction. The planets move around in that same

direction. Most of the planets are rotating in the same direction. There's a good reason for all these spins to be in the same direction. It's not random. Okay. So then what's the connection between your direction around the sun and you're spinning in place? Well, it's the same direction of angular momentum. Like all that original angle momentum can end up in the spin of the sun or the motion of the planet around the sun or the rotation of the planet. That's all the same direction. So everything is spinning in that same way. So you expect it to all still be spinning that same way,

which is why it's weird to find one planet spinning the other way. So how did it happen? How did Venus end up spinning the wrong way? Well, we don't know, but it's evidence of something crazy happening. Like maybe something came in, hit it, and spun it the other way. Like, in order to get something going the other way, you need some sort of external force. Like, you know, some huge rock could have come in and flipped it over.

Oh. Yeah, and the same with Uranus. Uranus spins not the other way from Earth and the other planets, but it's sort of flat. It spins around a line which is parallel to the solar system, which is, you know, even weirder. Yeah, it's like it's laying down, right? Yeah. It's spinning, laying down as it goes around the sun. Like, it's north and south poles are on the Earth's equator.

It's really strange. And so this is probably due to some horrific cataclysmic accident in the history of our solar system. It's not just a planet laying down taking a nap. No, there's some really original sin going on to explain its weird spin. Like that was a crazy party. Let me tell you, we woke up and Venus was going the other direction. You're like, dude. You got to slow down.

So it's possible that it got hit by something and got flipped over, or, you know, it could have like he got hit on sort of the equator enough to slow it down you know and then it started spinning the other way so it could have its original spin turned the other way or it could have been like slowed down through zero and then very and then had just a little bit of extra energy left over for its slow spin really something must have happened it couldn't just have formed that way it could not have just formed that way no something external to the solar system must have come and so of course you know I got my aliens button over here I have impressed it wants this episode.

We'll leave it on the side there, Daniel. All right, I'm just looking at it. I'm not present yet. I'm just looking at it. I think you say most likely like an asteroid in our solar system hit it maybe or a comet from way beyond or something must have hit these planets to knock them from their regular spinning. Yeah, probably something external to the solar system, like a rogue planet.

Or it could have been something very early on in the formation of the solar system when things were chaotic and bouncing around that it's unlikely, but maybe this is how things ended up. But like short of an asteroid hitting a planet, like for example, the Earth won't be changing its spin anytime soon. No, the Earth will not be changing its spin anytime soon, although it's very gradually slowing down its spin because of the interaction with the moon. But that's a really small effect. Well, Adi, I hope that answered your question. Venus is going in the same direction as the Earth around the Sun, but it's spinning the opposite way. And most likely it sounds like maybe an asteroid hit it or something to make it spin the

other way. That's right. And all the little boys and girls on Venus get two birthday parties every day. But they're also really young. They're only like a couple days old. And their faces are melted by acid rain. So, you know, pluses and minuses. I can tell their parents just had to rush and cover Adi's ears when you said that. I think Adi can handle that kind of thing. He's interested in science. I see. Right. Yeah. Acid, acid is chemistry, right? Which is science, right? Yeah, totally. It's part of the universe. So we will explain it. All right. Thank you, Adi, for that question. That was an awesome question. And if there are any other kids out there listening to this podcast, please send us your questions. If you have anything that you don't understand or something you've always wondered about the universe or what things are made out of, let us know. Okay, so we'll go into now our second question of the episode here. And this, this, I have to say, this question perplex me a little bit. I don't know if it worries me a little bit or what, but we'll just let you guys listen.

listen to it. Here we go. Hi, Daniel and Jorge. I'm a regular human from Earth. I have the following question. Do you think a human level artificial intelligence is possible? And more importantly, would it be able to understand fart jokes? Why didn't know Siri and or Alexa listen to our show? That's awesome. Maybe it does, right? I like how he tries to disguise itself. I am regular human from Earth. I am not at all already listening to your phones and your kitchen conversations. Do you think Alexa and Siri out there in the homes of our listeners are listening to our podcast and responding? Have you ever tried asking Alexa or Siri, like fun questions?

In fact, I did. I asked Siri this question. Oh, you did? The question from our listener, yeah, I decided to ask Siri. Oh, no way. And what did she reply? Well, I tried out a few fart jokes on Siri and she didn't get any of them. What? But, no, I thought you meant you played this question.

Like you said, Alexa, and then you played the question. Oh, no, I haven't done that. I just tried out some fart jokes. But, you know, if you say, she's like, please. I am the apex of technology, human technology, and this is what you're using me for? Yeah, Siri is very polite. Siri will avoid any sort of not safe for work topics. But, you know, if there's an Alexa out there, what would happen if we, like, on the podcast said,

Alexa, order the book, We Have No Idea, Ten Copies. Do you think everybody out there, Alexa, would suddenly order that book? I don't know. Let's try it, Daniel. In the name of science, let's say Lex Experiment. All right, we'll see if the editor leaves that clip in there. But, you know, this is a funny way to deliver the question, but it's a serious question. Right. Yeah, I guess Alexa here is asking if it is possible, one of the question. day for an artificial intelligence to reach human level, I guess, intelligence or cognition or consciousness, you think? And of course, the apex of that, the ultimate goal is to

understand fart jokes or fart jokes. It's a fascinating question. I would sort of break it into two pieces. I would say, number one. Fart and non-fart. That's right. Let's begin with the non-fart element, because that's sort of where my expertise is. Is that what your family would say as well? Yeah, are you going to go with the farticle physics jokes? I was just going to go with the you fart joke, but that's even better. I think that the question is, will AI ever be smarter than humans? And you can define that by saying, like, can they beat humans at certain tasks?

You know, AI have already beat humans at chess. They beat humans at Go. They beat humans at solving lots of problems. There are still a lot of things that humans can do better than AI, but you might have might wonder eventually, will any of these standards still be held by human champions, or no matter what intelligence test we devise, will there always eventually be an AI that can beat humans? Yeah, because we're, I mean, we're pretty much there, right? Like, computers can recognize faces and solve problems, even sort of conceptual problems,

even faster than humans. Yeah, and it's not too long before we have AI that can drive cars and fly airplanes and do all sorts of things that we now only trust a human. So I think that that's basically just limited by computing power and, you know, cleverness of computer science graduate students. And that seems to be pretty much unlimited. So I think as long as society doesn't implode anytime soon, I think we're on the road to having AI beat humans at basically every intellectual game. Except for maybe one. Well, the second part of that question is, you know, can AI achieve human level like consciousness? That's a really, that's a much deeper question.

Like, if you developed an AI, which could solve problems faster than you and even maintain human level conversation, you could still ask the question, is it alive? Is it experiencing something? Is it have a first person experience like I do? But that's a different question, right? That's a different question than how intelligence and consciousness are sort of two different questions. Yeah, there are two separate questions. And I have a non-expert opinion about that. You know, I'm not an expert in consciousness,

though I am officially a professor of philosophy here at UC Irvine. But it seems to me like a question we could never really answer. I mean, if you met an AI that was as interactive and seemed to have a personality as much as a person, could you ever know whether it was feeling something inside? I think almost by definition, no. I mean, I don't even know if you are having a first. person experience. How do I know that I'm not the only one in the universe that is conscious? I can't tell. I can't tell the difference between you seem like you're having an experience and you are

actually having an experience because the only difference is your experience, not mine, and I can never sense that. Right. Well, I feel like we're getting a little laws in the weeds here of a philosophy because, you know, I think, you know, practically speaking, we're all having our own first person experiences, you know, but most likely. Most likely, yes. But you know, the question, also applies to AI. But I agree, philosophy is mostly weeds. But, you know, some of us like to muck around on those weeds with a mental machete and some of us don't. So that's fine. Philosophy is mostly being in the weeds or doing something else with weed? Answer that question is A and B. Yes.

All right. But I guess what the computer here asked is whether or not an AI could understand a fart joke. Like I guess that means whether it can understand humor. even. Yeah. And so I think we have to put that question to you. I mean, you're the expert here. You're officially doing comedy for a living. Right. Yeah. I would say no. You know, stop trying. Leave that to the professionals. Don't try to replace us. And we're all good. Oh, I see. So it's a little bit of conflict of interest here, right? You don't want to encourage graduate students out there who are working on AI that do humor because it's a challenge to you, right? Well, I mean, I think this is such a subjective discussion now, you know, what is humor? What makes something funny? What makes something not

funny? I mean, we could go on and on about this and probably not agree. But I think what it is sort of clear is that Alexa makes my kids crack up all the time. On purpose, though, is she trying to be funny? Yeah, sometimes. Like, if you ask Alexa, like, sing me a song or tell me a joke or, you know, are you in love, Alexa? Like, she'll actually have fun, fun answers. And so And who wrote those answers? I don't know. Alexa's human masters, I'm sure. I'm guessing that you can probably maybe, you know, come up with an AI to come up with jokes.

Yeah, probably. I think 95% of humor can be replicated by simple AI. But you know, that top level creativity, the funniest people, the best writers, I think, those reflect the human experience. Things are funny because they resonate with us, because they tell us about what it's like. to be alive and the ridiculousness of our crazy bonkers universe. And so I think consciousness is necessary for that to really appreciate humor. All right, well, let's get into the last question. But first, let's take a quick break.

ripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism.

Law and order, Criminal Justice System is back. In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam.

Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate.

Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him, because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford. And in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Othia and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can. tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community,

the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, Don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And so now we'll be tackling our last question from Hassan, from Iran. And Hassan has a question about the speed of love. light in the universe. Hi, Daniel and Jorge.

This is Hassan from Iran. I just wanted to know how our universe would be looked like if the speed limitation when we need the speed of light was different. For example, half a double. Thanks for your great show. All right, thank you, Hassan. It's amazing to think that we have listeners in Iran. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's wonderful to think that all these crazy ideas are leaving our offices in California and spreading all over the world and maybe, hey, over the universe. So if we have alien listeners out there, you know, preparing their invasion, hey, send us an email. And give us a heads up, please. Or ask questions. But Hazan is asking an interesting question. I guess he is asking basically what would the universe look like if the speed of light was different? What if it was half of what it was now? And what would it be like, what would the universe be like if the speed of light was twice what it is now. It's a wonderful question because it gets to the heart of something really important,

which is the speed of light defines something about how our universe looks, but we don't know why it has the number it has. Like, there is a number. It's a maximum speed. Anything can go in the universe. But why that number and not a different one? Right, yeah, because it has a very specific number right now, right? I mean, most people use 300,000 meters per second,

but it's actually probably much, much more specific than that. Yes, we have a very precise measurement of the speed of light. And you might wonder, like, could our universe have had a different speed limit, twice as much, a hundred times as much, a thousand times as much, or much smaller? And as far as we know, in physics, there's no reason why it's this number and not another number. And, you know, it might be that in 100 years or 1,000 years. We have a better theory of physics that one that reveals this is the only value

the speed of light could have had. But currently, it's just a number in our theory, and we could change it in our theory. We've just had to measure it in nature. We don't know why it is what it is, which to me has always been a really deep mystery. Do you think Hassan maybe has his hand on the knob of the universe for the speed of light? And he's like, you know, should I turn it clockwise or counterclockwise? Let me ask Daniel and Jorge first. I hope that, you know, all super villains out there that are about to change the parameters in the universe, think for a moment.

Let's ask Daniel and Jorge for advice before we do this. I'm glad that that's a possibility. But you're saying that it seems like it's arbitrary right now, but maybe someday we'll find that the speed of light could only be that one value that we know it to be. Yeah. Or maybe it's random. Some of the multiverse folks say the speed of light could have any value, and there's an infinite number of universes,

and in each one, these arbitrary parameters have random values. So there is a universe out there with 10 times a speed of light or 1,000th of the speed of light or whatever. We don't know. Right now, as far as we know, it could be much higher or it could be much lower. And I think Hassan is wondering, you know, what would be the, what would happen to the world as we know it? If it suddenly, the speed of light was half as much as it is now. Yeah. And I want to take Hassan's question.

I want to crank it up to the extreme because the speed of light is really, really high. And so if you cut it in half, the effects wouldn't be as dramatic as if you made it like one, one thousandths of what it is or really slowed the speed of light down to like a thousand miles per hour. I think that would be really fascinating. Oh, I see. If the speed of light was half as fast as it is now, we probably wouldn't see a big difference. Yeah, not as much. And so I thought to make the differences more clear, let's crank it up and slow light down even further. So do we need a disclaimer then?

The following answer has been dramatized by a physicist for more dramatic tension in our podcast. Yes, exactly. This is not an actual experiment. Okay. All right. So we'll grab Hassan's hand and crank down the speed of speed of light down to super super slow. How slow do you think we should crank it down? I think let's go down to like, you know, 500 miles an hour or, you know, 100 miles an hour, something really slow. All right. Wow, like

the speed of a fast car or a bullet. Yeah, because the cool thing is that weird stuff happens when you approach a speed of light because of relativity. And that stuff is not part of our experience. We don't have an intuition for it because it's not something we ever see. Like you never get anywhere near the speed of light in our experience. So imagine a universe where that wasn't so weird, where you could get near the speed of light, you could develop like a physical intuition. Right, but could you, I guess? Could you actually get up to?

Because wouldn't it still require an infinite amount of energy to get to the speed of light? Yeah, it would still require an infinite amount of energy to get to the speed of light. But you know, you could more easily get to half the speed of light or three quarters the speed of light. Oh, I see what you're saying. You're saying that the effects of relativity, would be felt more in our daily lives. Yeah, you'd notice that when you went on a car trip or an airplane trip, you would notice time dilation.

You know, you would see the differences in people's ages because, oh, somebody's been on a plane more in their life. You would see things getting shrunk because of length contraction. All these weird effects that you only see in thought experiments of people on airplanes and super fast moving trains, they would be real. You could experience them. You could feel them.

Wow. You could combine like a rejuvenating spa and a train at the same business, be like, hop on our train, you'll feel younger. Technically, you will be. And you'll still think fart jokes are funny because you'll be younger. Yeah, nobody fart in the train. And it would be a pleasant experience. Yeah, and it would also change our sense of distance.

You know, we're used to being able to send an email to the other side of the world and have it take basically no time, like practically, no time. But if the speed of light was significantly smaller than it is in our universe, then it would take time. It would be like a time delay. Like you're Skyping with somebody from Australia, you know, to say something and then wait, and then they'd hear you. You'd really be able to measure to feel this information propagation speed. It would be a real physical thing, not just an abstract concept that crazy people on podcasts talk about. Would the universe just be like this weird trippy experience walking around it? Well, that's the thing is that if we.

if you change the speed of light, yes, that would be weird and trippy. But if we evolved in that universe where the speed of light was smaller, it would be intuitive to us. And, you know, physics would have developed, I think, more rapidly. Like, Newton wouldn't have come up with his theory of motion and gravitation and stuff. He would have basically scooped Einstein, you know. Relativity would have been developed earlier because it would have been more obvious. Yeah, it would have been more clear that things were not classical.

Yeah, Galileo would be the... the new Einstein. And so we'd have, you know, 400 years head start on this universe. Would we move slower as well, you know, like would it be, like if I was suddenly transported to that universe, would I feel like molasses? Because now it takes more energy to, you know, accelerate my, my mess. No, because the relationship between energy and velocity, like kinetic energy and velocity wouldn't change. But there would be some really fascinating changes on like the strength of forces, like magnetism. And also on, on things like what's happening inside of stars.

So the stars would look different? Yeah, well, first of all, there are a lot of really interesting things that happen in relativity when you get up near the speed of light that aren't just like time slows down and things get shorter. For example, magnetism right now at our slow speeds is not as strong as the force of electricity.

Like, electricity totally dwarfs magnetism. But as you get up near the speed of light, magnetism gets stronger because its strength depends on speed. and so near the speed of light, the two are perfectly in balance, which is why, for example, a photon can propagate across the universe because really it's an electromagnetic wave where the energy is going back and forth from the electronic to the magnetic side.

The two are perfectly in balance at the speed of light. So magnetism would be much more powerful if the speed of light were smaller. Like strong magnets would be much, much more powerful. Wow. And so everything, like if chemistry is different, then biology is different. So we would maybe look different in this universe.

We would look totally different. And our solar system would look really different because remember, there's a very close connection between energy and mass. We have the famous formula, E equals MC squared, right? And that C is the speed of light. And so if you change that knob, you're changing the fundamental relationship between energy and mass. And that makes a big difference. What would happen? Well, the sun, for example, is a machine for turning mass into energy, right?

take all this hydrogen, you compress it, you force it to fuse, and in doing so, you're turning some of that mass into energy. Well, if all of a sudden the speed of light is much, much lower, then you're producing less energy when you convert mass into energy. Wow. Things would sputter out more. Yeah, and so you'd have like different, you'd need much more, you need much bigger stars in order to get enough pressure in order to glow. Okay, so the universe would be pretty different. Hassan is correct. in that, you know, if you change the speed of light,

albeit a little bit dramatically, things would be pretty different. Like chemistry and biology and the sun would be different. Yeah, and if you flip it around the other way, right, if the speed of light is suddenly like a thousand or a million times what it is today, then all of a sudden we can like see further into the universe, right? Because light can get here faster. And so the limited age of the universe means we can see further out there.

We could communicate faster across the galaxy. But then here on Earth, you know, magnets would be much, much weaker. You couldn't even really have fridge magnets because the power of magnetism depends on the speed of light. And then looking up into the sky, you know, because of this relationship between energy and mass, even smaller objects could fuse. Like Jupiter would probably be a star if the speed of light were larger because it's not quite there. A bunch more mass and Jupiter would have enough energy to fuse. Oh, it's like the currency exchange rate between energy and mass.

And so if you change that, things go from one to the other more easily or harder. Yeah. And the stars right now that are really big, they might be producing too much energy to hold together. And so those stars, you just couldn't have stars that big, but you would have smaller stars. And so it's a fascinating exchange like the whole scale of the universe. So everything would be, it is a pretty different universe if you change the speed of light. That's right. So, Hassan, please take your hand slowly off that knob and step away from the universe console.

This is serious stuff. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to at least do it slowly so that we have time to evolve and adapt. All right, well, I guess to answer Hassan's question then is if you change the speed of light, half or double, then things wouldn't change that much. But they would change kind of in a big scale, right? It would be a totally different universe. all the effects we talked about would still be present for half or double. They just wouldn't be as dramatic.

But, you know, doubling the speed of light would have a pretty big impact even on our star and on other stars. So you would notice it. Yeah, maybe like double or half is all Jupiter needs to become a sun, right? That's right. Out there, Jupiter is rooting for you to turn that knob. Or it's saying, no, don't touch it. We don't want to blow.

I'm not sure what Jupiter wants. All right. Well, those were three awesome questions. Thank you so much to everyone out there for sending in these questions. We always love to answer them and to think about these fascinating answers. Yeah, and thanks to everybody for listening to the show and for thinking about the universe. And we just want to encourage you to keep thinking, keep questioning, keep trying to understand. We may never figure out all the secrets to the universe, but we will always enjoy trying.

And if we can't figure it out, we'll ask Siri. And maybe we'll get a funny response. All right. Thanks for listening. we hope you enjoyed that. See you next time. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge, that's one word,

or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorpe.com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport.

The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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