Everything Is Content - AI - A Deep Dive (Part One)

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

It's a beautiful day to be a human, bathing in the glorious sunshine of this week's heatwave. However, it's also a pretty good time to be Artificial Intelligence... or a bot.This week on the podcast w...e’re kicking off a two part AI deep dive. Firstly, in this episode, we will talking about the recent author protests outside of Meta’s London offices, asking whether AI can really make art, and looking at how AI is creeping into our everyday lives.It recently emerged that Meta, the tech conglomerate formerly known as Facebook Inc, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads has scraped millions of books from the pirate data library Library Genesis- more commonly known as LibGen- to use to train its flagship AI model Llama 3.Last month, icon, illustrator and Studio Ghibli co-founder, Hayao Miyazaki, was being copied and mimicked thanks to thanks to OpenAI’s latest version of its ChatGPT tool.. His water-colour, hand drawn illustrations truly are so loved across the world and bring so much beauty to those films. As creatives we perhaps have a particularly purist approach to the incorporation of AI into our work, not only from a moral and ethical standpoint, where so many people may soon be out of work, but also from a creative protectionist point of view, where the time and practise and skills needed to create valuable and adored art should be celebrated rather than replicated by machines; but what about in other industries? In education? In schools?Join us next week for part 2 where we will be diving into how the tech’s increasingly seeping into our relationships and internal worlds.O,R.B xx‘Meta has stolen books’: authors to protest in London against AI trained using ‘shadow library’The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem Why I – and other bestselling authors – are protesting outside Meta todayBen Affleck explains why it's 'highly unlikely' AI will destroy film, claims it may even enhance the industryHayao Miyazaki’s ‘disgusted’ thoughts on AI resurface following Studio Ghibli trendChristie's AI art auction outpaces expectations, bringing in more than $728,000Does A.I. Really Encourage Cheating in Schools?Is AI Turning Me Into an Obsolete Machine?Sorry, Labour, but ChatGPT teachers are a lesson in how not to transform our schools Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:01:01 If you want to stay sharp and skip the crash, visit londonnewtropics.com to try it for yourself. And you can use everything at checkout for 20% off. But hurry, it won't last forever. Thank you, London Newtropics. I'm Beth. I'm Richira. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything is Content, the podcast that delivers you the piping hot tea on any and every topic. From books to celebrity news to the global implications of rapidly advancing AI technology, we are literally across it all. This week on the podcast, we're kicking off a two-part AI deep dive by talking about the
Starting point is 00:01:37 recent author protests outside of Metta's London offices, asking whether AI can really make art and looking at how AI is creeping into our everyday lives. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at everythingiscontentpod and if you haven't already, make sure you hit follow on the show on your podcast player so you always know when there's a new app. So before we get into our three meaty juicy topics, I think we need a little bit of an introduction to AI first. AI stands for artificial intelligence and basically refers to an area of computer science that aims to make computers that can think like human beings and more recently beyond. I think it's something we're all guilty of sprinkling around willy-nilly without totally understanding it.
Starting point is 00:02:27 And it can refer to a lot of different things. So machine learning systems, artificial general intelligence, generative AI, limited memory AI, image generation, artificial super intelligence, which sounds terrifying. So there's a lot going on and it's never quite clear what people are talking about. So there's a lot going on and it's never quite clear what people are talking about. So I have referred a lot to an AI cheat sheet that I got from The Verge, which we will link in the show notes to help us out. And I'll just give you a quick overview now. So there's machine learning, which are learning systems trained on data, allowing them to
Starting point is 00:02:58 make predictions about further data and information. There's AGI or artificial general intelligence that's as clever or even cleverer than a human being. There's generative AI that is tech that can generate images, text, code and lots more. Think chat GBT or those weird art pieces as created by a written prompt. There's also language models, generative models, diffusion models, but I think it really does get more complex from there. But for our purposes, we're talking about a lot under the umbrella of AI, of computer science with human-like intelligence that learns that intelligence from existing data, writing, images, speech
Starting point is 00:03:36 and other models. And we're just going to be discussing the implications of that, what people are worried about and speculating, the three of us, how intersex with culture, daily life and everything besides. So beyond what we're going to be talking about today, AI is actually integrated and used in a lot of things that we already use today and are very used to like online shopping, advertising, web searching, digital personal assistance, machine translations, smart homes, cities, infrastructure, cars, cybersecurity. So AI, when we're talking about it today, might feel like this more futuristic version
Starting point is 00:04:15 of AI like chat GPT, et cetera, but it is actually already integrated into a lot of stuff that we feel very comfortable using as well. But I wanted to ask, what do you both make of AI, specifically AI, such as AGI and chat GPT, open AI, those kinds of resources, do either of you use it at all in your daily life, in your work, in your personal life? I've used it maybe a handful of times. I've used it maybe a handful of times and the ways I found it to be useful have been almost exclusively for me when I have been looking for a job and trying to apply for a job and trying to understand how to hit all the key markers of say a job description with all of the experience that I've had and trying to understand how to convey that because I find job applications and I find that whole process really annoying and frustrating and
Starting point is 00:05:10 I know lots of people do because it is just so prescriptive. And especially now, I've read quite a lot about how many companies are actually using AI to sift through CVs anyway, so you have to almost play a game of speaking to AI rather than a person with your CV, because it will just filter through key words rather than actually a human eye thinking, oh, this person looks like they've had a very varied experience. I can think with my mind and creatively and laterally about what an asset they would be to this company. That's something that I found previously, but more generally speaking, I have made a point to try and not use it.
Starting point is 00:05:44 I haven't used it for all of this year and the latter end of last year because we'll get onto it. But I just feel like I don't want to, I just don't want to basically. For reasons that we'll talk about creatively and the ramifications for the world more generally, I just don't really feel comfortable endorsing it, I guess. What about you guys? I agree. I think I'm probably in the minority of people that have never used
Starting point is 00:06:07 ChatTPT, have never plugged anything into these like image generators. I just haven't used it. I'm, you know, like on Google with the AI overview, I use it when I can't opt out of it. But even that, I've seen way too many examples of it being flat out wrong and entirely misleading and two, like just preventing you going to the source and actually finding what you're looking for. So even then I'm like, don't talk to me AI overview, but I'm sure I have skim read it, but I'm not an active participant. And I feel a little bit like a luddite about it. And it was really interesting researching for this special because I'm like, well, I
Starting point is 00:06:36 really need to know about this. I need to be less resistant, but I don't necessarily want to use it because I don't have a need for it. And I've realized, I find it really interesting when people are saying, I can't imagine my life without AI. As if 99.999% of human history we haven't had this. It's very brand new. I already have that level of personal dependence on AI. I think massively overestimates what they can do. And two, it's like, please don't undervalue your intellect and sense. It just got here. So I am going to try not to be such a Luddite in this episode, but I'm not a user of it and I hope that that lasts as long as possible. And Oni, what about you and AI? What's the
Starting point is 00:07:18 story? I love saying I've never used it, but actually I just remembered that I have in that when it very first came out, I was with my friend Emma who has a Pomeranian called Lola and it had just been made and everyone was getting into like makeup stories and stuff and we got it to make up a poem about a dog called Astrid and a dog called Lola. So I did use it then, that was like years and years ago and it was very early stages. And I also have done the thing where it turned me into a Barbie because my friend Poppy found
Starting point is 00:07:45 it and we just found that really funny. So I love being like, I never use it, but actually I have been a fallen soldier and I have succumbed in the past. But as a general rule, I have similar to you quite Luddite attitudes towards it, almost maybe self-harmingly so, because at some point, even during the research of this, I was like, God, am I just actually being a contrarian? Am I actually being quite annoying about this? Like, is there going to come a point when actually I'm going to be doing myself a massive disservice by not employing AI to help me with so many ways? I'm sure that it could help me. But for all of the reasons that we're going to be laying out later on, I haven't. And I also don't want to find out how much it will help me. And then it becomes
Starting point is 00:08:29 a crux. Because like with anything, it's like once you find something, it's very hard to like undo habits. I'm just very resistant to it. It's interesting though, because a lot of people in my life use it regularly. And actually it has become like something that people in my family love to like wind me up about. And they're like, oh, I'm going to chat GPT that. One thing I really found, especially not to get too meta with prepping for this episode and this special was that I realized I have a really deep aversion to thinking about AI. And it's been kind of good having conversations with friends because it feels quite cathartic. But more generally day to day, I realized that I just don't want to read about it. I don't want to think about it. It makes me
Starting point is 00:09:08 feel so icky inside the after feeling of a Black Mirror episode vibe. It doesn't make me feel good. So I just, I really haven't learned much about it. It's almost like that person, you know, at work, you don't want to think about them. They make you, they give you the heebie-jeebies, but it's coming for us. So yeah, it's been important and it's also been a forced kind of ripping the plaster for me doing this. In my crusade against ChatGBT, one of the debates that came up was I used to smoke vape rather, disposable vapes.
Starting point is 00:09:39 And I always knew they're bad for the environment, but I hadn't got around, you know, investing in a real vape because in the back of my mind, I was going to quit vaping at some point. As one of my favorite arguments against ChatGPT is that it uses an enormous amount of water and energy in order to create these search results. My opponent into ChatGPT searched what was worse for the environment, a disposable vape or how many ChatGPT searches would it... Anyway, I don't have a disposable vape or like a chat, how many chat GPT searches would it like anyway, I don't have a disposable vape anymore is the end of the thing. And chat GPT is very bad for the environment. So in a weird way, AI actually did make me stop throwing lithium batteries in the bin,
Starting point is 00:10:15 which is quite good. Thank you AI. We love you. So to kick off, something very personal to me and also I think personal to the three of us, it recently emerged that Meta, the tech conglomerate formerly known as Facebook Inc. that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and threads, has scraped millions of books from the Pirate Data Library, Library Genesis, more commonly known as LibGen, to use to train its flagship AI model, Llama3. If anyone not familiar as LibGen, to use to train its flagship AI model
Starting point is 00:10:45 Llama3. If anyone not familiar, LibGen is the largest database of its kind and currently contains 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. And in a piece for the Atlantic called The Unbelievable Scale of AI's Pirated Books Problem, Alex Reisner explores this case and also includes a portal to search through the LibGen database to find out which books are on there and which books therefore might have been used by Meta to train their AI. I like most authors immediately went and had a look and I actually found one of my own books there, my first book, How to Come Alive Again.
Starting point is 00:11:19 I also found so many of the books that I love by brilliant, hardworking authors, both best sellers and authors I know who are really just scraping by at the moment. so many of the books that I love by brilliant, hardworking authors, both bestsellers and authors I know who are really just scraping by at the moment. And a lot of what Metta has been up to is public knowledge because of a lawsuit against them, which was filed by several prominent authors such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Junot Diaz, and Sarah Silverman. In internal correspondences at Meta, now public record because of the case, AlarmA3 research scientist wrote that properly licensing the books and research papers for use seemed, and I quote, unreasonably expensive. In another message,
Starting point is 00:11:56 a director of engineering wrote, The problem is that people don't realize that if we license one single book, we won't be able to lean into fair use strategy. Fair use strategy, by the way, is an element of copyright which covers the reasonable use of other authors for your work. So when I was writing my last book, Romanticize Your Life, and I'm sure you went through this with bad influence, every single quote that was from a book or a poem or a speech had to be legaled and then trimmed within an interest life because if it's too long or if you do too much paraphrasing, you have to pay to use it. Which is fair enough because that is the person's livelihood and it's their work. But as the lawsuit alleges, Meta seems to disagree.
Starting point is 00:12:34 So this is from the court filings. Plaintiffs and glass members did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training materials in any version of Llama. Despite there being a vibrant market for content for AI training data, a market which Meta participates. Indeed, while Meta internally discussed licensing copyrighted books for training data and reaching out to a variety of publishers from the very beginning of its development of Llama, it decided to cut corners and save time and money by using free online shadow libraries to source this highly valuable content. Basically Meta looked for a workaround to save money and avoid paying writers and as a result is now at the center of a growing firestorm as more and more authors and readers push back against them. As well as this
Starting point is 00:13:19 lawsuit and several more AI cases that have been springing up against places like Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and YouTube. There was also a protest outside of the London Metta offices on the 3rd of April. About 100 authors gathered chanting Metta Metta book thieves while holding signs reading things like I'd write a sign but you'd steal it and get the zuck off our books. So that is the situation at time of recording and I think we did all know that this kind of stuff was going on but to see it out in the open like this and to know how many of us are affected really sucks. So what did you both think seeing this new story break
Starting point is 00:14:01 and learning the extent of Metta's actions and also the lawsuit and the protests from the authors. So I was listening to Richard Osman was one of the authors that signed the open letter and I was listening to him talk about this because he was saying, when AI gets smart enough, if it has enough of my books, has enough of my voice, eventually it could just start churning out books written in the style of Richard W. Oddsman and selling them and basically making him obsolete. And so it can be trained. And that's such a scary idea. And he was saying that, I think he tried to
Starting point is 00:14:36 get it to do it, to see it, and it was rudimentary and it wasn't exactly the same. But I think we have to think about the real cost. I think so often people even actively will put their own writing into chat2bt to get it to be corrected. This is a massive thing that we're seeing more and more. And people don't really understand that what this is highlighting with all of these authors coming out and speaking up against this and their fear of it might hopefully discourage people from choosing to put their things down into these AI things because it is always used for training your language, your words, your intonation, your style of writing.
Starting point is 00:15:10 It's stored in the database and then used for the AI to keep learning. I think it's terrifying in so many ways. I think it's good that people are bringing attention to it and that people are protesting. I was out for dinner with a friend the other day, it was funny, and she said she's not worried because she really doesn't think that AI, what people really want from stories is that human storytelling and AI is never going to be able to come up with a new original idea or whatever. And I was saying that if AI has access to every single book, every single academic paper, things that we couldn't access without spending money on or finding a way to get access to certain academic files, then it could easily replicate. Fine, it's not coming
Starting point is 00:15:50 from human sentience or real emotion, but it could absolutely create art and work that we would see as good as or even better than something that a human can create. Some people view that as an incredible advancement. Coming from a creative point of view, that really terrifies me. What about you, Richira? I first saw this whole situation pop up on Instagram because a writer that me and Beth have brought up on the podcast before, Carmen Maria Machado, incredible writer behind Into the Dreamhouse, one of the books we recommended last year. She actually had her books as part of this issue as well that was taken without her consent and used as part of
Starting point is 00:16:31 this training for AI. I was so outraged on behalf of all of the writers, just seeing more and more and more and then hearing that you were involved in it, Beth. I don't know, the scale of it is just so shocking and the scale of it is so outrageous. It feels like it should be one of the biggest scandals of our time right now. The fact that writers across the board globally had no idea this was going on and then are finding out through their own research. I don't understand how this isn't news breaking, headline breaking. It feels like copyright law extraction, creative theft on a huge level. And it is completely outrageous that one of the most financially successful tech companies of our
Starting point is 00:17:12 time is doing this. And there is no financial reason that they cannot be in talks with these writers. I mean, I don't for a second think these writers would want their work being used in this way. But the fact that these insidious means are happening before our eyes to just steal creative works and use them to basically make writers and creatives obsolete is so outrageous. It's so scandalous. I think this should be bigger than it is. I know it's a big deal when people are protesting, but it seems to be within creative industries. I feel like everyone should be stopping right now and there should be a big talking point.
Starting point is 00:17:48 It is so crazy to me. Yeah, I echo all of that and it's the anger, I think, anger on behalf of myself. But do you know what? Like, I'm not a prolific author that has definitely been used. There are writers on there with all of their books, five, six, seven, eight books on LibraGenesis, which therefore, you know, it's quite likely that they will have been scraped and used. And I think multi-bit, no, it's a trillion dollar company that is doing this. And I saw someone posted on X a clipping from Caitlin Rand's piece about this. And she wrote about them saying that licensing fees were too expensive and she wrote quote,
Starting point is 00:18:26 as meta is valued at one trillion dollars we might dub this Schrodinger's economics where a company is both the most valuable on the planet yet also too poor to pay for the materials it profits from. It's a neat trick and one you have a chance of pulling off if you own the majority of communication platforms in the world and I think that is the bloody kicker. This is a huge company. Their pockets are deep as hell, which means yes, they can afford it. But it also means that taking them to court, and I will be watching this court case with like bated breath, very, very interested to see what happens. It kind of feels like who's the little guy in Goliath, Joseph and Goliath, Adam and Goliath. It feels like even though it is like big, big authors taking them on, it's like
Starting point is 00:19:05 they still feel like the underdog in this. And I think, I don't want it to feel hopeless. And I think how to them definitely raise your voice, but like they're so unbelievably rich and like nobody I know really makes much money off writing or they don't expect to. I think the average salary or the average yearly earnings for a writer in the UK, an author in the UK rather, is seven grand from the books. It's a very small percentage of us who make the big money. We do it because we love them. This is a passion. We believe in writing. We have that drive. And so for these big companies to believe that they can do what they want with these words that we have poured our heart and souls into for the love of writing and to do that for free just makes me sick. And I think a
Starting point is 00:19:49 lot of readers will feel the same way because it's there's something sacred about it that they have totally missed. And I guess thought we're too big to fail. We can do what we want. We don't need to say like there's no value there for the thing as Kaylin said, that is making them richer and richer? Kaylen Hodge There's so much to say about it. One thing it kind of feels tangentially related to, which we've said before, I believe, is even with the rise of Substack, even the fact of posting on TikTok, it feels like these companies only exist because of creatives, but they have such little respect for the creatives themselves.
Starting point is 00:20:26 I'm not talking about Substack, I actually don't know very much about the history of that company, but I mean more generally speaking, X for example, the fact that it is littered with comedians, unofficial comedians, analysis, all of these kind of interesting parts of culture and society. But time and time again, these tech billionaires show they have complete disrespect, no regard of, you know, acceptance that they only exist because of creatives in my mind or interesting people. They just take, take, take, take, take, and there is nothing, no semblance of just
Starting point is 00:21:00 acceptance that they are alive and exist in culture and society off the back of that work. I think what's so sick about it as well is the fact that I do think most authors would turn this out, but they do have so much money and so many creators are struggling that I'm sure that if some authors got offered the opportunity to share their work in order to train AI and they were offered a lump sum, some of them might have taken it and at least that would have made this was, I think a lot of people would have quite a purist view on that and maybe not agree with it, at least share some of the pie rather than just decimating basically a whole industry and absolutely leaving their nowhere to go for those people that started it.
Starting point is 00:21:38 On a kind of like hopeful idea, I was thinking about this the other day and I'd love to know what you think, but I was wondering and I don't know how long this would take to happen. If say we are going to see sort of like an obliteration in some senses, like a lot of scripts are going to get written by AI, maybe a lot of books. Again, I don't know how good it is yet that people who are quite shrewd and really into those kinds of things won't find it a bit brash and not good enough yet. But when it is good enough, I wonder if what will happen is there will then become a premium for work made by humans and everything will have to be declared
Starting point is 00:22:11 like AI has had no part in making this film, this book was written by a human. The only other problem is probably by the time we get to that point, the only people able to create and make art are again, the really rich people even more so than now because there won't be any money in doing it so it'll create even more of that kind of class system within the arts which already exists but maybe at some point it'll come back around because people will be like actually I want to know that this has come through a human brain rather than a machine which is a nice way to think kind of but we might not be allowed to see that. I love that you can locate some hopefulness. And I think that's the point. You're right, though, that the human impulse to create will always persist, but it's like, will these economic
Starting point is 00:22:53 factors, will the gates just close around us? And will it be a novelty to have something that was primarily or totally written by a group of humans? Will that be just something you tell your great-great-grandkids in the dust bowl of the future, like, great-grandnie and only she was an author and they'll go fuck off and eat your locusts. Like, I just, I think I'm having quite a doomer view on it. And I think if anyone at home actually has any reading that suggests there is some sort of hopefulness to be had and that we can, there will be actually a resurgence of people valuing art as human made. Please send it in because I fear I really need to read it. You know what this also reminds me of? I feel like, do you remember that New Yorker article about romantasy and how romantasy is so trope driven?
Starting point is 00:23:38 In that, I can't remember if the writer explicitly said this or basically that same writer was on Anne Helen Peterson's podcast Culture Study. So it was either on there or in the piece itself. She talks about the fact that because the fandom of Romanticie have almost made the writers obsolete some parts of it, because they're so obsessed with the tropes specifically, they almost shop for a Romanticie book based on what they're looking for. So it could be, you know, enemies to lovers arc with, um, fairy with this, this, this, and this, and then they'll find the book they're looking for. It's making me think about the idea that the thing that would keep writers alive and protected from AI is the fact that you have somebody like a Sally Rudy,
Starting point is 00:24:21 whatever she puts out, because the person is so interesting. The fandom is so obsessed with her specifically and what she thinks, she would be fine. But with something like the Romance Case, and in that piece talking about the fact that the fandom have almost decided what they want, they shop for a book based on what they feel in that moment rather than the writer itself, that kind of shift in the market and almost the power of a reader rather than the writer. That kind of trend makes me feel like that's the open goal for AI to come in because it could just craft exactly what you want based on what a reader is looking for that day. And that worries me, honestly. You're right. I think that was in that piece,
Starting point is 00:25:02 because they were basically saying what they do now is the publishers will use all of the algorithmic things that are pointing towards what people are interested in right now to then retrofit a book out of that rather than a story being born out of an idea. So I think you're completely right. That kind of industry, interestingly, one that's really booming and actually has really brought literature back to the fore and helping the book industry might just be the very thing that gets eaten alive first. On the Sally Rooney point, I completely agree with you and I think that she's such an individual voice and she has such a big fandom. But when we think about which we're obviously going to be talking about more like productivity and the rate of which we're used to consuming
Starting point is 00:25:42 things, if you could train an AI bot off all of Sally Rooney's current works to write 10 brand new Sally Rooney books in a year, which it sounds like AI is going to have the capability to do that. Imagine there's enough of her interviews with her, enough of her books that potentially it could write. I mean, how good it would be, I don't know at this stage. People, there would be, I'm sure people, perhaps even like legions of fans who are so clamoring to get that next Sally Rooney book that they would buy an AI imitation if that meant that they could get their hands on it one every three months or something rather than waiting. However, often she releases them, which is quite infrequent me. infrequent me. And I do wonder actually because of our, I think we've gotten quite comfortable, our rate of consumption for everything has increased fast fashion, like we just have an expectation of newness nowness and there is a piece which I won't go into too much detail about
Starting point is 00:26:34 but it was on Bloomberg and it's called the AI Romance Factory and it covers the genre fiction publisher called Ink It who basically have a vision for customizable AI driven content and the piece asked basically what would be left for human creators. There's a case study in it about a writer called Manjari Sharma, who wrote this novel on a whim, uploaded it to their platform, did really well. And they said, sign a contract with us, you can get royalties. And then they said, we want more books. Can you write them in a couple of weeks? And she went, well, obviously not. In the contract, it meant that basically they could be handed over to other writers and also partly AI.
Starting point is 00:27:06 Basically, they use AI in a big way. In their operations, I think stories are developed by AI, plot developments are kind of conjured up, copy editing is done with it, audio book narration is done with it, translations and book covers. And it just paints a picture where AI, and that's now, where AI is capable of doing so much more to create the story, write it out, get it on the shelves and do it very quickly. And that idea now where AI is capable of doing so much more to create the story, write it out, get it on the shelves and do it very quickly. And that idea is quite frightening. And I think this insatiable appetite we have for new series and new books is feeding this machine wherein maybe a lot of readers wouldn't question that a follow-up could come out a mere handful of months after the last and that it was maybe a little bit off in tone
Starting point is 00:27:42 and whatever else because we are not asking questions. I think we are. We're so good as consumers and I think they love it these big companies really really love it. And just to clarify on a final point most writers I know don't have any beef with Libgem because it democratizes learning and access to books and research papers. What people are sick of is meta big company using this for profit and actually being very anti-intellect and learning. And there is a change.org petition which we'll link in the
Starting point is 00:28:11 show notes if it's still live, calling for Lisa Nandy, EGR Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, to make sure that Metta is held accountable for these alleged actions by the UK government. So please do go and sign this if you can and if it's still live because it really does help amplify the voices of authors in the UK and around the world. So one of the most controversial elements of AI in the creative world is AI art. Whether we like it or not, it's already littering the internet. Even on my Instagram discover, I don't know about you guys, but I have been absolutely sickened to see AI cat videos and they're super lifelike in the way that AI can possibly make. So not really lifelike, just kind of almost like parallel universe AI like. Showing cats whisking eggs and flipping pancakes, it's really honestly quite hideous. I keep saying I'm
Starting point is 00:29:04 not interested and they keep posting them on my explore feed. I need to figure that out. Anyway, last month the issue of AI art came to a head when icon and illustrator and Studio Ghibli co-founder Heio Miyazaki was being copied and mimicked thanks to OpenAI's latest version of its chat GPT tool. His incredible water incredible watercolor hand-drawn illustrations are honestly so loved across the world I don't think anyone listening to this hasn't already seen the beauty of them. They are a sight to behold. So much like we were talking about earlier on, the lack of consent from him for the use of AI to rip off his life's work is really awful. This was made even worse by the fact that he has absolutely shat on AI in the past.
Starting point is 00:29:46 A semi-viral video from a 2016 documentary of him shows his team showing him what is now probably a very crude version of AI and how it can be used to create images of zombies for a video game. Miyazaki says quite succinctly, quote, whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself. So even back then he gets to the heart of the issue. Yes, you can copy and mimic any artist's work in theory, but without any authentic feeling or lived experience behind it,
Starting point is 00:30:19 what does it really mean? What's the point of it? Still, clearly not everyone in the art world even agrees. British auction house Christie's came under fire for hosting an AIR auction this year. An open letter posted online got almost 6,500 signatures and called on Christie's to cancel the auction, but they didn't. The auction brought in more than £700,000 and a spokesperson said that Christie's wanted to quote spotlight the brilliant creative voices pushing the boundaries of technology and art and they said that the auction results confirmed that the wider community appreciated AI's influence in the art landscape.
Starting point is 00:30:56 But while loads of creatives and artists are fearing for the future, actor, director and meme fodder Ben Affleck has said it's highly unlikely AI will ever create film from scratch. He basically argued it can only copy and isn't sophisticated enough to make anything truly novel which means in his eyes it could even be a good thing. He says the more laborious, less creative and more costly aspects of filmmaking can be helped by bringing costs down through AI, which will in turn lower the barrier to entry and allow more voices to be heard. Also, one thing I found absolutely staggering is we can already see the tentacles of AI
Starting point is 00:31:32 in film already. I don't know if you guys knew this, but several Oscar nominated films including The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown and Amelia Perez used AI in their production. So AI is already in the art world, it's here. How does that make you feel? The videos of the cats were making me laugh because you know what really sucked me in? Because for a while AI was quite bad and you could really distinguish it, but I kept getting these videos that looked like it was Britain's Got Talent and it would be like a person with a dog and then the person would be painted, they sort of fold over and they'd like turn
Starting point is 00:32:04 into an actual animal. And I'm not joking for about three videos. I got like three in a row. I was like, oh my God. And then I realized it was AI because now it's weird. Sometimes they look so hyper realistic, but you just have to trust your gut that there's something a bit uncanny about it. And then you'll read the comments.
Starting point is 00:32:20 Okay. It is AI. We are quite good at detecting it. You can tell it's not a human, but at first glance, because they've really figured out hands now, which was like the main tell. Some of it isn't very obvious, but I think you still know. For all of the reasons we kind of already outlined, I find it so scary about this because it is, it's innovation, it's creativity, it comes.
Starting point is 00:32:40 I think that point that you said, you quoted about what is the meaning of it really is so important because just because an outcome, which I think is such a late capitalist productivity idea, all about outcomes and answers and reaching the end point completely distills what it means to be human, to live alive, to create, down to actually the thing that doesn't matter. To quote Miley Cyrus, it's the climb. Do you know what I mean? It's all about the journey. It's how you're getting there that's really important.
Starting point is 00:33:10 And I think that there are some people that will be happy with just having a really quickly produced cheaply, depending on how you cut up, you know, cause AI is very expensive in its inception and then it can be a cheap creator. Depends where you're coming at it from like an ethical and moral standpoint. And to go to Ben Affleck's point, because AI is very expensive in its inception and then it can be a cheap creator. It depends where you're coming at it from an ethical and moral standpoint. To go to Ben Affleck's point, I actually decided to try and start reading Karl Marx's theory on machines just as a backup for
Starting point is 00:33:34 this because he predicted so much of this and so much of what is in that theory is all about how the more that capitalism uses machines, all it does is get rid of the labor class and then about how the more that capitalism uses machines, all it does is get rid of the labor class and then give this idea that you're giving the labor class then more free time, more fruitful time to do what they want, but actually all you're doing is stripping them away of means to create capital in order to earn money to live to do those nice things. And so Ben Affleck's point about it lowering the barrier to entry is true on one count, but that also means when he says all of those boring fiddly jobs, those are people's jobs, real people's jobs. And because they're maybe more difficult or because they're not as
Starting point is 00:34:10 bright and shiny, those jobs might be slightly easier entry than those really high parts of the movie industry, which are notoriously difficult to get into. So I think what's so complicated with this is whichever way you cut it up, there are winners and there are losers. There are people that subscribe and people that don't, but it's already the people that systemically are oppressed, that are not as advantaged, that lose out and the people that gain are the people at the top and all the AI seems to do in every single practice and every single area that we've seen is create that gap, making it bigger between the rich and the poor, which is exactly what Karl Marx said. So I won't say that that was
Starting point is 00:34:46 just from me. It's very rosy tinted glasses from our friend Ben. And like, I think he's a very smart guy and certainly knows more about the film industry than I do. But I think considering the scale and length of the strikes last year, year before, must have been the year before, which were centered around demands for protections from AI, I think it shows some degree of hubris and maybe willful denial to say, well, they won't be able to create films from scratch. Even if they are technically copies, they can still do it to a degree that people will consume them. We already have feature length AI films that are going to festivals. I remember last summer,
Starting point is 00:35:26 I think it was when our beloved Prince Charles Cinema like fave in the world, but come on, they hosted the world premiere of a film called The Last Screenwriter, which was the first film to have been written entirely by AI. And it was a bit meta, it was about basically AI taking over screenwriting, but people were not very happy understandably. So yeah, it exists and I think we know, I've seen so many user generated AI short films, I've seen little scenes here and there and like, yes, it is dog shit. But the thing is, is rapidly advancing and also people quite like dog shit, you know, people will consume almost anything. So I think I'd like him to be right. But I don't think it's really reassuring him saying
Starting point is 00:36:05 that Marvel just invested $400 million to craft AI tools for film. OpenAI have hosted their own film festival. And as you said, Ruchira, Oscar nominated films were implementing work by, you know, was Adrian Brody's accent was worked on by AI. Like it's just, the creep is very real. And I think you have to maybe look at the worst case scenario and work backwards. Even if you don't ever get every film in the box office is a hundred percent AI generated,
Starting point is 00:36:34 there's still quite a lot of very bad things that could happen as you said, and only people losing their jobs. So I think we maybe need to be a bit more clear-eyed about it, but I would love for him to be right. I completely agree with you both. And you said about this idea that we're freeing up the labour class to be able to think more creatively and pitch big movies because suddenly they don't have to do the b-roll for a film is so ridiculously optimistic and it's just so unrealistic.
Starting point is 00:37:04 It's been proven time and time again that that just is not how things work. This will ultimately benefit, as you say, people who are already rich, people who just want to eradicate labour costs. It's kind of frustrating. It's been so difficult already to make these creative industries accessible. I think most people feel that doing their dream of producing a film, writing a book, being an artist, whatever it is, if they are creatively minded, is so difficult. It already feels like we're making negligible progression in these fields to make them truly inviting to everyone or even just
Starting point is 00:37:42 plausible to have a career in them. If anything, it feels like the past year with the economy has made doing any kind of writing job just feel like a pile of shit, quite frankly, and just impossible. And then now AI has come into the picture and it just, you know, hearing messages about how we're all going to be free to pitch more and, you know, we're going to be open to doing our dreams. It just feels kind of like a slap on the face actually. And I don't really love that. It's being used as this kind of dream scenario to make us get on board with it. I don't love that. I don't think it's the truth. I don't think it's honest. I think Ben Affleck's not coming at it from a place of trying to deceive us, in my opinion. I think he
Starting point is 00:38:22 probably is just being very optimistic and he's on the right side of being able to be shielded from those issues so probably doesn't see it in the same way that we do. And also part of the reason that I really don't want to use chat GPT or kind of engage with AI now is a lot to do with Miyazaki's point about what is art if it doesn't have meaning behind it. And it sounds so trite and sorry for how kind of earnest and lame that might sound, but it really does boil it down to me. The point of things that I consume and the point of things that make me feel something is the knowledge that it comes from lived experience and people behind it have lived a life, they've been shaped by their own experiences and they've turned that into something that I'm seeing on screen or I'm reading or I don't know.
Starting point is 00:39:06 I can feel the humanity behind it. We've all watched something shit on TV, not going to name any names, possibly some IP stuff and you just feel a bit dead inside. It's kind of entertaining, but it doesn't make you feel anything. You don't come away incorporating that message into your life or feeling like a changed person because of it. And there is a difference to me. There is a difference. So I'm going to stop endorsing a world that could kind of prioritize people, things,
Starting point is 00:39:34 content that hasn't got that humanity behind it or that beauty of life, that lived experience. That's a big part of my issue with engaging with AI. I feel like I'm almost endorsing a world that I don't really agree with that would put AI above real people if I do so. I don't think that's trite whatsoever, or I completely agree. Something else I was thinking about as you're talking was when I last year was looking for like freelance copywriting work to go alongside my other work has more more streams of revenue, you've got to have multiple income streams in this freelance life. All of the jobs that came up, so many of the jobs were to train AI.
Starting point is 00:40:15 Some of them were really well paid. And there are every single kind of LinkedIn, Indeed, all of those are littered with these jobs for training AI. And what I was thinking is what does happen to the people that get eradicated by AI taking over jobs? We all become people that then work in training AI, which means the whole society becomes centered around creating a machine that can do what we used to do, but at much higher productivity rates and without that satisfaction of knowing that it's come from the story of people. And what does that do to a society? And we spoke about this in the episode when we were talking about morning shed, weirdly, about what makes a healthy person, what does wellness look like?
Starting point is 00:40:53 What makes a healthy society or has done historically throughout history is having all of these different facets and the ways that different people's brains work and how, even though I know it's silly, but those kind of like psychometric tests that you do to tell you which personality you are, they are real. And we have all of these little light ants working together. We all work together to build this society, which has all of these beautiful and interesting different ways of thinking, different ways of doing. And that is what builds and creates society. And that's what makes humans happy, I think. What this seems to be leading towards eventually is a very big, lower class of people who are all fundamentally bowing down to this machine, which gives a
Starting point is 00:41:32 boundless amount of freedom to a very small percentage of people. And then very little diversity of thought, very little diversity of opportunity because of the fact that everything is being streamlined through this one machine. And that's obviously like a really long term way of looking at it. But that does seem to be where it is going. It's just productivity for productivity's sake, whether or not that will burn everyone out. And actually, that's something that will come on to later. But I just I just completely agree. And I think we need to basically think about that more.
Starting point is 00:41:59 I think that there's been, for instance, even me saying, you know, doing those like AI generative Barbie things, they've been so many like funny and silly ways that AI has felt very harmless. And we're kind of getting primed to getting used to seeing things. The first time I saw kind of like deep fakes or the first time I saw AI imagery, I was very shocked by it. It's so commonplace now that I have to double check if everything is AI and you know, you're meant to label things. I think that we need to like use servitura.
Starting point is 00:42:23 Actually it has to be an active choice in our day to day life to not participate. And if you use it for your job and you're in a different capacity, you know, I'm not saying that every single application of AI has to be bad, but I do think that we can't just let it slowly take over and kind of lose our own proprioception of the world, our physical understanding of what is true art, true meaning, and just go with the flow of it because I think that leads to quite a scary discombobulating future. I think that's a great point and I think what is so insidious about this is that they're using, they're kind of crowbarring their way in by saying, well, art is so important, access to art is so important, which is so true, but it's access to real art, it's access to the trying and failing of art, the access to the tools to make art and the time to make art. And I read a great piece for
Starting point is 00:43:11 the New Yorker by the sci-fi author Ted Chiang, and the piece is called, Why AI Isn't Going to Make Art? And in it, he argues basically art, good and bad human art, is the result of so, so many choices. And this choice making is alien to these AI programs. And basically saying, if you consider yourself an artist, when you make these things, reconsider, because actually what you are is a prompt writer. If you write 20 words of a prompt, that's 20 choices. If you create a piece of art, it is a lifetime of choices, and it's the choices that go into the creation of that thing. And I think people who consider this are, is that like
Starting point is 00:43:45 modern adults desire to be extraordinary, to have a go and to just have access to everything and, you know, do what they want almost. And I think people aren't as comfortable now just being consumers of art and kind of in awe of it. You go, well, I want to go and I want everyone to say that I'm amazing at it. And I think it is a wonderful impulse to want to create and let's nurture that with children and adults and just, you know, to actually democratize art and artisticness, but not this way because we know the history of art. We have, as human beings, we've been making art for, I think some people say like 75,000 years, other people say, no, that was just
Starting point is 00:44:18 a mistake, that kind of scratch on the, it's actually 20,000 years. But even that, that argument about what is art and did this person make it? Is this bison art? Is this scratch art, you know, like chiseling shells and creating little sculptures? Like to now say, to remove the human aspect, to go even someone whose life was not very long, who lived a short and dangerous life in a cave, they were making art. To now say, well, I'm in that great tradition. I'm writing a prompt and I'm clicking. I think that's very, it's foul. And I think you didn't do anything of interest and I will not co-sign the madness of saying, this is art. It is an abomination. I said I wasn't going to be a luddite. I said I wasn't going to be a purist,
Starting point is 00:45:00 but I think I am. On the flip side, it's really ugly. It's all really cringe It feels like very like Facebook anti-coded It feels very cringe and I think we have to lean into that to remind people don't make this it feels like whatsapp scam Coded it feels very much like share this or you have bad luck. It's so butters I can't believe more people aren't embarrassed making this No, it's like I was at a talk the other day just to what you're saying about, you know Everyone wanting to have a piece of that pie to be part of the party. I think everyone who creates anything is fantastic and interesting and, you know, every piece of art is worthy. That's why art is so interesting. It's so subjective. But at this talk the other day,
Starting point is 00:45:36 the person speaking said, if you're not that good at writing, just put it into chat GPT and it'll write a story for you. There you go. You're a writer. And I sat there and I was right in the front and I was really trying not to make a face. Thankfully someone else did say something, but I just didn't want to put my hand up. Someone did, you know, the person was then asking like, does anyone use AI in their work? And someone gave a really interesting example that as a dress designer, what you can do is get aid to recreate the fall of a fabric and you can literally see how it would sit if you cut it in a certain way. And that was like, that's really interesting. They were like, that way you don't need to waste the product. You don't actually have to recreate the fall of a fabric and you can literally see how it would sit if you cut it in a certain way. And that was like, that's really interesting. They were like, that way you don't
Starting point is 00:46:07 need to waste the product. You don't actually have to buy the fabric and you can before you cut the material and make it. I was like, that's really interesting. Actually, that feels to me like a good use of AI in a way that's actually, you know, that just felt helpful. But this person speaking just kept using examples of if you do not have the ability, simply get a robot to do it. And that's just really upsetting as someone that has such a desire and drive to eventually make it in a creative industry who's like worked really hard as every other creative person has. I think that's where the brunt of it really comes in for us where it's like, oh, well,
Starting point is 00:46:39 don't worry. It doesn't matter. You don't have to be good at it. You just pop it into a computer and then it'll do it for you. And that's the same thing. It's like, how do we get people to be good at it. You just pop it into a computer and then it'll do it for you. That's the same thing. It's like, how do we get people to realize it's not the same thing? That's what's the brunt of it.
Starting point is 00:46:52 I know. Yeah. For your point of it being absolutely butters, it's so true. It's so foul and ugly. It is truly shocking to me that Christie's's, you know, a huge kind of voice in the art industry has indicated that the art world is accepting if not encouraging of it. That is so shocking to me. That's one thing.
Starting point is 00:47:13 The other thing, I completely agree with you, Anoni. It is so baffling, this idea that you can just become a writer just by utilising this machine. I don't think, I honestly do not think that is the case at all. Being a writer is learning, being a writer is spending those hard hours forcing blood from a stone from your mind onto page. I think all of those things is being a writer. I think also being a writer is thinking and you know also growing. I know that I just sound like such a trite freak every
Starting point is 00:47:42 time I keep trying to answer stuff on this episode but it is just like like such a trite freak every time I keep trying to answer stuff on this episode but it is just like I had a moment like two years ago where I wrote a piece, a freelance piece and it barely had any notes from the editor. I don't think anything had been changed and that was so rewarding, so incredibly rewarding and I could feel this feeling of I've put years into this and I'm getting better. I feel like I can write. This is like the first time I feel so good about this and it's taken years to get here,
Starting point is 00:48:10 but it feels so fucking good. And I got there, but then it changes again, because you keep striving for more, you keep wanting to be better. And the climb literally like you said, is exactly what the joy of doing something creative is. And my final point is, I have seen chat GPT writing, it's not good writing. I'm really sorry to break it to anyone who might be
Starting point is 00:48:31 listening to this. And I doubt there are people but maybe there are. It's not good writing. It's not funny. It's not incisive. It doesn't have a voice. Good writing has a voice. You think of your favorite writers, your favourite journalists, your favourite authors, they bleed their personality through sentences constantly. ChatGPT just cannot do that. I'm not even coming from a biased point of view. It's really terrible. I've spoken to loads of people who work in semi-creative, if not you know, kind of marketing and advertising. And they constantly
Starting point is 00:49:06 tell me the writing that comes back from younger people who use chat GPT is really shit. In this world, I know this sounds like a funny tie-in, but it's making me think of a Zempic. And now I think Zempic is really useful for people that, you know, need it. But it also, we grew up in a world where there's no magic pill, money can't grow on trees, you can't just like click your fingers and be thin or whatever. And what the tech world is kind of doing is inventing ways where actually you can bypass that middle bit that we've been told our whole lives as I said, the climb, the journey, the getting from A to B, the thing that's meant to be really important. I know some things quite random, but I mean in the application
Starting point is 00:49:41 of people that like just are using it in a way that maybe isn't like the most healthy, there is something to be said for making a big lifestyle change, changing the way that you eat, changing the way that you move, changing the way that you approach life, that that might be the thing that actually, you know, really helps you get to a place of more wellness for some people as empathic really is a miracle cure. But it seems that it's just that acceleration, that complete abandonment of the importance of experience, it's productivity and money over everything. And I just do really wonder what that is going to do to our brains over time. So as we've probably quite obviously outlined as creatives, we have a particularly purist
Starting point is 00:50:28 approach to the incorporation of AI into our work and not only from like a moral and ethical standpoint because as we've said, you know, so many people might be out of work, but also from that creative protectionist point of view where the time, practice and skills needed to create valuable and adored art should be celebrated rather than just replicated by machines. But what about in other industries? What about in education and in schools? In a piece for the New York Magazine in its offshoot Intelligencer titled, Is AI Turning Me Into an Obsolete Machine, Eric Levitz wrote, in the near term, AI won't fully replace humans in any profession, but it will likely
Starting point is 00:51:05 increase productivity and thus plausibly reduce the need for human workers in a wide variety of fields. What once took a team of coders might now only require two. A small law firm that currently pays several paralegals to synthesize vast troves of information into a legal brief might be able to get by with AI and one human supervisor. And the same may be true of companies in the fields of market research, customer service, finance, accounting, graphic design, even medicine might not be immune. It's plausible that we will soon have AIs that read x-rays better than human radiologists. And in fact, the
Starting point is 00:51:37 advancement of AI in medicine, if we set aside the obvious human cost, as just mentioned, could be a huge positive in the progression of modern medicine. And so applied correctly, again, AI does not have to be entirely the enemy. That said, it is really quite startling how as a now kind of like digital native nation, we adapt and introduce new tech advancement into our lives. Based on research from February 2025 from SEMrush, ChatGPT ranks number eight in the world's most visited websites. And according to Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's chief operating officer, ChatGPT has 400 million weekly users, and it plans to hit 1 billion users by the end of 2025. So whilst this late comes as well, as we said, productivity is key. What does happen when we outsource all of
Starting point is 00:52:25 our workings out to machines? What will happen to our brains? Perhaps an adoption of this tech may advance our careers in the short term, but will it be good for our careers and even our brains in the long term? In another piece for The New Yorker by Joy Caspian Kang titled, Does AI Really Encourage Cheating in Schools? She writes, setting aside the obvious offence of dishonesty, the problem with cheating isn't so much that the student skips over the process of explaining what they learned, it's that they deprive themselves of the time-consuming labour of actually having read the book, typed out the sentences and thought through the prompt. One of the fundamental crises that the internet brought to classrooms was the sense that because
Starting point is 00:53:05 references to facts and history no longer needed to be stored in your brain, nothing really needed to be learned anymore. As the Beats points out, which I guess hadn't necessarily thought about, we have already started eroding some of our traditional ways of learning through our use of the internet. Researching doesn't need us to go into libraries or even read books. We can simply use Google or read summaries online. And some people argue that this isn't that different from AI. This is just an advancement in us getting to the answers even quicker, which does sound good in some ways and quite terrifying in others.
Starting point is 00:53:36 So what do you think is going to happen with a brain that doesn't really know how to actively work through problems, how to problem solve? Will it begin to atrophy? Will children grow up with a very different set of skills than generations before them? Or does that even really matter if the future is AI? What do you both make of this? I mean, to point out something very obvious, but children at school don't write essays because they're good essays or because the world is in desperate need of what a 14-year-old thinks of Romeo and Juliet. You write essays in school because you want to get better at writing, because
Starting point is 00:54:13 it's important to get better at writing, because it's important to flex those critical thinking muscles to find your voice, to sharpen your opinions, to be able to agree and disagree. And again, to draw on the Ted Chiang piece from the last segment, he uses in it the analogy of weightlifting. He says, you know, writing essays yourself is like you're an athlete lifting weights. You are strengthening something that will make you better at lifting weights, but also so many other things in your life and your career. Using GPT in your learning, and this is his analogy, is like bringing a forklift into the weight room. Yeah, the weights get lifted,
Starting point is 00:54:48 but you get no stronger. The point is you are the one to do it, and it's a workaround for something valuable, and it's something valuable in the construction of a human being. I think there's so many examples of this. It's not necessarily like if you're not good at writing essays at school, you will not be a full and well-rounded human being. That's not what I'm saying, but thinking and working through problems, that matters.
Starting point is 00:55:07 And AI use in everyday life, I think, reveals a lot about what people are struggling with about modern life. And this goes right back to beginning, Rachira, when you said what you've used it for, it is job seeking. It is trying to find employment. It's the finicky, irritating things, the organizing of the endless slog of modern life. And that is hard. And so I don't feel in any way, you know, you're a bunch of lazy people for using it. I think it just reveals what is very hard. But on the other side, it's where it replaces like common sense and intelligence and like effort and like really determining things. I think that's my point of concern that it might with like really early adoption,
Starting point is 00:55:49 turn us into these like ease seeking automaton iPad baby adults. And that I can't shake that as a belief of like why it's so terrifying that it's got such this big uptake in schools. No, I agree. And I think the main word that is coming through for this whole episode, and it is just the kind of cohesive thread, is effort. It just feels, or struggle, I should say, the kind of I'm realizing through what you said, Beth, a lot of the tasks that we have at school, it's not really about the product,
Starting point is 00:56:20 which is obviously a great part of what AI is designed to do, create product, you know, be productive. But many of the tasks that we're told to do at school, they're more about kind of rounding you off as a person. They're very like lateral and abstract. It's more about encouraging you to think through things, as you said, or just kind of, I don't know, teaching you that you can complete tasks. You are a person who can work through difficult things.
Starting point is 00:56:48 You kind of come out of them, not really just having answered a question in that essay. You come out realizing that you can absorb things about the world. You can go in search of answers. You can distill them back in a way that has your voice coming through. They are just like, actually in hindsight, school's pretty lit. go in search of answers, you can distill them back in a way that has your voice coming through. They are just like, actually in hindsight, school's pretty lit. It's like a very interesting thing, isn't it? Being asked to do these things and only in hindsight through this, I'm realizing that
Starting point is 00:57:14 you kind of grow as a person through that process. It's not even about becoming smarter necessarily. You obviously do that too. The idea that AI could just quicken that process is kind of, it makes me feel like you're just circumventing a lot of the growth of becoming a human being. An interesting person who is forced to work through difficult things and also because of it becomes more resilient, sharper, thoughtful, considerate, sympathetic, empathetic because of it. I mean, we love referencing the Luddites, but what does, does it matter if the world is going the way we're saying, if everything is gonna be AI,
Starting point is 00:57:50 are these children simply gonna learn the tools for this new world that they're gonna enter into? In the piece, she also talks about that maybe schools, what they should actually do is just get kids writing with a pencil on a piece of paper and handwriting. And that made me realize, God, I can write a list, which I do every day handwritten, but try and write anything beyond a page of writing. And I simply do not have that muscle. I'm not good at writing anymore because I have been primed and
Starting point is 00:58:16 adapted to a world which uses technology. If I don't have my laptop with me, I think I can't do any work if I don't have my phone. And I lament that fact. I think it's really sad when I see someone with beautiful handwriting, when I watch old film where they're writing letters, I really long for that capability. And I'm sure I could just sit and write in the evenings, but I'm going to scroll and drop my face on my phone instead. But so I think it's that thing of, we're sat here so fearful and we are really on, we're that side brain, the people that are, you know, worrying about what this means. Maybe all that's going to happen is actually, it doesn't matter because they're not going
Starting point is 00:58:54 to need any of those skills in this brave new world that they're about to graduate into. It's so spooky. Something that I, something that always makes me laugh. And I'm obviously terrified of this future where we've handed all the good bits of life off to AI and we're all just AI maintenance robots. But I always think whenever I see people with certain jobs be like, I know I'm safe, AI will never wax a butthole. I'm like, that's so true.
Starting point is 00:59:15 There are industries, including butthole waxing, which will endure. And that said, I am going to retrain. No, but that doesn't have to be, that could be a robot that's trained by AI to appear sentient. Oh God. It could be a robot.
Starting point is 00:59:28 Because at the minute, yes, lots of those manual tasks can't be done by AI because AI exists in a computer. But once you can give, you know, a really dexterous robot, which I know they haven't done yet, even though Kim Kardashian was posing in the cover of a magazine with that ugly Tesla one. Once you, they got, you know, the capability, and they do use robots in surgery and stuff already, they can be incredible. I think you do have to have someone controlling it. But if you could get the surgeon robots into a waxing salon, I'm sure they'd be in and around
Starting point is 00:59:54 the butthole. Right. I'm withdrawing from beauty school already. That didn't last long. Beauty school dropout. Beauty school dropout. Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't know if this is too optimistic. And I think as I'm just trying to formulate the sentence, it's definitely way too optimistic. But if we had a different kind of society, what this could open the avenue for is the
Starting point is 01:00:19 fact that, okay, AI takes over the very menial tasks. Even in schools, you can get an answer, you can learn maths through AI, it's very computer driven. So this opens up a whole new world for us to really prioritise things like history, philosophy, English literature, reasoning, debating, all these kind of different things which are more humanities and creative. But I don't think that's what's going to happen if AI is incorporated into schools more, but it should do. Well, that's a whole initial idea of the machine, like I said, to go back to the beginning.
Starting point is 01:00:52 If we didn't live in such an advanced capitalist society, there is a world where actually there's this beautiful utopia where all of the things that need to get done. I mean, ideally what you'd have is AI doing all the banking and those kind of bullshit jobs and leaving the humans to create, we're learning soft social skills, building community, building, doing really beautiful things that make up humanity. But that isn't what's going to happen. It's just going to be squeezed to an inch of its life for extra productivity. And actually, there was a really interesting piece about how having AI to help in work.
Starting point is 01:01:24 So they were saying that they used it in certain hospitals. And so the nurses would then be really quick at getting through certain bits of paperwork, which then meant the doctors all became really burnt out because they couldn't keep up with the load of patients that they then had to see because there was a system in place which kind of kept everything flowing. And once AI was implemented and product productivity went really high, the doctors then couldn't cope with the workload. So again, it's like we just want to run, run, run.
Starting point is 01:01:50 And there is a reason people are already burnt out. What happens? What's the kind of human cost on the end of it? If AI is partaking, like with a bit of the work, are we all just going to be like, shit, I can't keep up? Thank you so much for listening. Remember, as well as these Friday episodes, you can also listen to us every single Wednesday, which is when we release Everything in Conversation,
Starting point is 01:02:12 which is an extra deep dive into a topic or discussion with all of your opinions included. Please also do follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Everything is Content Pod. That's where we decide potential topics, share weekly videos, and invite you to slide into our DMs with your opinions. And last thing, reviews and ratings are so helpful for getting the podcasts out there. We read them all, treasure them all and love every single one of you for doing them. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:02:37 And please consider doing it again. See you next week for part two. for part two. Bye! This episode is brought to you by London Neutropics. Their delicious Adaptogenic coffee is made with premium heaf-festered terroir mushroom extracts and designed to help you stay balanced and elevate your day. As a huge procrastinator, I love the Flow Blend because it helps me to stay focused without the crash. I usually have a normal coffee in the morning, but a second one would make me way too jittery. So instead, Flow has been the perfect hack for my afternoon slump.
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