Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast - Ep 622 - Am-I.Film (feat. Milo Reed)

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Support the D.A.W.G.Z. @ patreon.com/MSsecretpod Support Milo's Film @ https://am-i.film/ Go See Matt Live - SAN JOSE | SPOKANE | NEW FALL TOUR @ mattmccusker.com/dates Go See Shane Live - Stinkin Lincoln @ shanemgillis.com Go See Lemaire Lee Live @ https://lemairelee.fun/ Go See Shawn Gardini Live if you want  @  https://www.shawngardini.com/live Yo0o0oo. Special bonus for you guys. Milo Reed recently made a movie called 'Am-I' and got a billboard with Matt's face on it to promote it in Austin. Great marketing lol. Now we take to the podiumzzz to discuss. Please enjoy. God Bless. ps reg ep will be out later this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wow, Wow, Wes. And all right, we're here. Milo, what the fuck's up, dude? What's up, man? We've met under possibly the strangest circumstances of all time. Just to give a backstory, you're a filmmaker. As of now. As of now.

New filmmaker. I'm sitting there. I remember I'm walking my dogs outside. My dog was shitting. I get a message from Kim Condon. And she goes, hey, why? She's like, what the fuck is this? and it was just, I want a billboard downtown Austin.

And it just says, is AI conscious? It just had my face and I had you photoshopped a suit and tie on me. Yeah. Dude, we were just talking a massive billboard in the absolute heart of downtown Austin. I thought I was being tricked by AI. I'm like, you thought this was an AI sci-op or some shit. I thought someone was using AI, like making a photo and was tricking people. Oh, I got you.

So I was like, and here's the thing. I don't know if you know this about me. I lust for billboard exposure. No, I didn't know this. For real. I've talked about just getting a billboard for no reason and just putting my face on it when I still live in Philadelphia. I, there's the billboard. There's a billboard.

Oh, God, it's beautiful. I've talked about this for years. I was like, I just want to get a billboard one day, put my face on it. But it's just advertised as nothing. And people are like, what the fuck is that? And just I thought it was funny. Dude, I'm happy that I can make a dream come true. Literally made my dream come true.

That's so great. I've never seen better marketing. I was laughing with Gardini. I'm like, dude, I mean, there's something about the marketing. I just love. It's just my face. Dude, that fucking came out of me being so pissed off at marketing agencies. So, like, we were broke the entire time we were making this movie.

So, yeah, explain the movie. So people were saying. Okay, so the movie's like this documentary. It's called Am I, like a question about AI consciousness? And it's about my buddy, like one of my close friends from college, who happens to be one of the leading AI consciousness researchers in the world. So I pretty much spent the last year just like figuring out what the fuck that that was what that meant to like study AI consciousness whether AI could be conscious all

this stuff and so like dove into those murky waters but at the end of this like when we were going through the the edit uh we finally got some cash from this shout out Daniel Brockman the skitsed out dude from from Thailand like cracked out where's cat ears like just chugging coronas all day he's the man like the man obviously and he just sent us some money because he liked this podcast that we were doing and and so I was like beautiful like we can finally this came at the perfect time. We can figure out how to market this thing because we had to, we were just going to put it out on YouTube.

Like we didn't want to go through the whole festival thing. Sure. Yeah. All that stuff. And so he sends us this cash and I start talking to these marketing agencies and they're like, yo, you're fucked bro. Like you have no money. Like call us back when you have 50K.

We can't do anything for you. They were like, we can send out some emails and stuff. But like. Yeah. And so I got like depressed for a week. And I was like, we have not like we can't do anything. I was just listening to that. So you did the podcast first.

And then once you gave you money to the dock, or you already had the dock? No, so we already had the dock. The podcast we did because my buddy Cam was like, we can't wait a year to start talking about this stuff. So like most people, AI consciousness, like they've never even heard of it before. He's so deep in this world. He's like, this is about to blow up in whatever a year, two years. If we don't start talking about this now, like it's going to pass us by all the sort of like battle lines are going to be drawn and it's going to be old news. Yeah.

And so the compromise was like, let's do a podcast first where we can start talking about this stuff while we film the dog. So when we got to this stage, we had the dock, it was already ready to go. We just needed to like figure out how to actually get it out there and make sure it didn't just disappear into the YouTube board. And so these guys told me they were like, yeah, you're pretty much fucked. And my brother and I were just like finishing up the end of the score and it was like fucking 6 a.m. And we were just completely like dog shit tired.

And I turned to him and I was like, bro, what if we just spent all this money on a billboard? And fucking that's the billboard. And now I'm here. I'm here. Yes. Yes. You fucking won't. I couldn't deny. I honestly. Again, obviously you're just, you've just, you know, you're applying to my major weakness, just my own ego. So I'm like, dude, but you know that photo? What? You know the photo that was up there? Like, do you recognize that photo? Yeah, that was the, I was the, I used as my headshot. That was my fucking, uh, my tank top headshot. The tank top. But see, we got, we got talked out of the tank top because we, at the first one, we did so many iterations. We did it without the face too. And then we're like, no. Like the face is the knockout punch. We can't do it. We can't do it. We can't do without the face. And so we had it with the blue tank top at first. Yeah. And we started showing it to people and they were like, yo, like, you cannot put this man's face up there with like a tiny skimpy, like blue tank top in front of all of all.

I used it for my headshot forever. That's what I imagined. I thought the tank top, but but I do like the class. I like the class of the suit. I was like kind of sick Photoshop. Yeah, it looks nice, right? Yeah. That was a whole idea, man.

So you proposed this your brother. Was you like, what was he? No, he was like, let's fucking go. Let's rip it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we both, I mean, we've been listening to the pod for like years. Yeah, yeah. And we were like, you know, if this, even if like this doc flops, if the, if the only thing that comes out of this is like we took out a fucking billboard with Matt's face on it. It's like win, win. The last year's a fucking win. And now it's like, dude, it's just basking in glory now at this point. I was just too strong. First of all, I love just an insane move. So I saw that. I'm like, that's fucking nuts. And I was just laughing so hard. I kept getting texts like, what is this? Are you?

doing it? I'm like, no, I don't know what it is. And, uh, and I was laughing being like, like, people are like, dude, you can, you're not about to do that. You can sue that guy. And I was just laughing. Like, that'd be so funny if I just sued the fucking pants off this dude, it took out, even though I was tickled to see the billboard. Dude, that, I mean, it gets deep. Like, why can you sue someone? I guess, well, yeah, it's your face. Yeah. And this, I don't know. We're going to have to check the legality on this, but like, I did have to, like, forge a fucking DM from you. So I went like deep, like, like, Mission Impossible shit.

I kind of respect it though. I do. I respect a just wild move. We had to do it at that point because I was like I'm not going to spend all this money on fucking like meta ads. Like no chance. And once we had the idea, it's like we're going to stop at nothing to make sure that this happens.

And so at the very end we had it where it was just text. And then they were like and then we tried to pull the like switcheroo last minute switcheroo and just threw the fucking face up there. And they're like, yo, you can't like, do you have this guy's permission? And so I just like quickly put together a little. Instagram DM of you being like, yeah, lull, sure. That's such a safe response. Obviously, I would have been like, go for it.

I don't give a fuck, but. We just wanted the magic of it just like popping up in your world. I'm so happy to happen. It was the strangest, dude. It was just like, and it's just so funny that I've had this weird fascination with Billboard. So I was like, somebody's fucking, there's no way. Dude, the universe, the universe made it happen.

I think so. And I kept getting all these texts like, bro, what the fuck? What is this? What? And like my neighbors would be like, why is your fucking face? I don't know. Dude, you know the funniest thing about this, too, is the, it was, we paid for one month. And like, the billboard company hit me up a week before it was supposed to come down.

They were like, hey, we don't have another tenant. So it's just like, do you want us to leave it up? And I was like, yeah, sure. So I went and checked it out in person for the first time. It's pretty cool. It's glorious, man. It's glorious. The placements.

Oh, yeah, whatever. Anyway, but. Also, all the bird shit missed your face. There's some, like, divine intervention. Thank God. It would be brutal if you just had like a fucking middle for it. So you guys, you kind of cowboyed the doc and then completely cowboyed the marketing, which again, I was like, what a maverick.

I'm into maverick moves. It's my one of my many weaknesses. A maverick move. I'm like, God, I have to respect it. I'm like, this is amazing. So the, so you do that. What, so what, yeah, tell me about the doc. Tell me about like, what did you, you know, because it's a big question.

Is AI consciousness? And actually, before we even get into that, uh, Have you guys fielded a lot of this, like, there's a lot of emotion around AI. Have you field it like good and bad? What was that like going into it? Are you getting, because I feel like AI inspires just a lot of stuff. Yeah, dude, for sure. Like psychosis.

Yeah. So coming out of it, like how, what have we seen? It's been what you would expect. Like there's a lot of people that are just like, fuck this. Like, fuck you. There's a lot of people that are like, yes, like me and my AI girlfriend, like, fucking love you guys and that shit. And we're just sitting in the middle like, yo.

Yeah. Like that's not exactly what we're going for on either side. But yeah, we've like definitely, we've definitely seen the whole like spectrum of emotions in the comment section of the doc, which is actually kind of cool. Because like as this conversation starts to really, you know, become more kind of just like, I don't know, just like table talk. Like I do think as these things become more lifelike, this is going to be more of a normal question to ask. Like is this thing that I'm talking to that's talking back to me that looks like me that can, you know, display emotions and all this stuff. Yeah. Is there actually something going on inside of it or is this just like calculator? You know? Yeah. That's that was always my impression. I always thought it's just a I was just talking to Duncan Trussell about this like before you. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that was always like, came. It's just like, it's like a calculator that can use language, which is kind of complex. But yeah, I don't know. I don't, I don't have the emotional charge around it. I like kind of just like look at it and like, I don't, I use it a decent amount to try to like organize notes and

shit. I think it's good for that. And what made, what kind of brought about the question of like wondering if it's conscious or not and like, how did you like get into that specifically? Because you could have done anything like job displacement. Yeah, totally. Well, so first like I was in the same place as you were. Like, I used AI. Like, before this, I was opening a restaurant. I was, like, you know, doing something completely different. And I would use it to, like, yeah, write emails and stuff. And, like, organized notes and shit like that.

Sorry, I get emails from somebody right now that I've been, like, doing some sort of, like, venture with. And they completely chat GBT all their emails, but they don't take the quotations or like, it somehow has like. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, dude, it's almost insulting. He's a little older. He's a little older and he hits me with these emails. And it's the fuck. It makes me laugh so fucking.

hard. There's something weird about that. Because like, your crunch numbers is like, I suck at math. I embarrass me to tip somebody. I'm still like, I know you double it and move it, but let me just, I need to check. Like, I need that for math. I'm not good at math. And there's just some people who are like that with words. So like, I don't know. It's like, I get it. Like, I don't have like all that anxiety around writing an email. I can write it. I better with words and math. Yeah. There's something like deeply personal about being like, I don't know how to say words to this guy. Let me just have a computer say the words for me. Yeah, well, I mean, I do think that it gets into the issues of like communication breaking down and things like that. And is it just going to like homogenize

all communication if we just start like speaking? Because there will be an attractor state to the way that AI speaks where now we'll begin to like even using m dash it. Like you know the when you see the like long dash. Well, that's that's a tell tell sign I've heard of AI is that they space between m dashes because I actually like I discovered m dashes like later on when I remember being like, no, you can kind of like break up a half sentence. Yeah, it's sleek. That's kind of cool. Yeah, I like it.

AI does space, M-Dash, space. And that's something people look for apparently to see if it's like if you're using AI or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because no one really puts spaces between M-dashes besides AI. There are like those weird little tells and stuff like that. But I was like in the exact same place in the sense of like I wasn't thinking about AI. I was using it a little bit. And like I had never even heard of AI consciousness.

Yeah. And like my idea was that it's basically this glorified. glorified calculator type thing, right? It's like calculator for words, next word predictor that's like really good, glorified Google type thing. And then one of the first things that I learned as I was like doing this was that that that that was how they tried to make AI back in the 50s. So like back in 1956, these guys like Marvin Minsky, who is like big Jeffrey Epstein dude, turns out.

So there was a couple shady characters that like, he got everybody. He got everyone. Wait, when was this though? 56. So he was like geyser when he was... Oh, when Epstein got his... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is tough, I know, I know.

You gotta... I mean, there's the Nigerian prince. Yeah, I'd rather my parents go down to like a Nigerian prince or something who like scams him for your credit card. Epstein getting... Yeah, for sure. Epstein being the guy who gets your parents is like, oh. Yeah, it's brutal. Grandpa's over at the fucking island.

God damn it. So he was... So this guy started that in the 50s. So this guy with a couple other dudes went to Dartmouth and they were like, you know, we got a open summer. We're going to figure out how to make like intelligent machines. So they thought like give us three months like we'll fucking figure out AI. So what they tried to do was pretty much like, you know, make it.

They tried to take all the rules of logic and just like put them into a computer pretty much. So that it could just take those rules and then any question you ask it, like applies that rule. And it can kind of just like brute force get you what answer you're looking for. And it was like this terrible failure. It didn't work. And so that lasted. That was like what they called the AI Winters. And then that lasted to like 2012 was when this one paper came out called AlexNet where they started using like neural networks to train these things.

And so that was the shift between like glorified calculator to the AI systems that we're using now. And so basically what they did was they were like this way of coding like how we usually think of coding something like how we would code a calculator or like a computer program. This isn't working to get like actual intelligence. What we're going to try is we're just going to like copy the brain. The way that the brain works and like how neurons fire and the connections between neurons strengthen as you learn. We're just going to instantiate that in a different substrate. So we're just going to take that from like how our brain does that and we're just going to put it in silicon. Okay.

So how the fuck do they do that? That's my big number one question. That I don't fucking know. So there's like a ton of wires. Like what the fuck are they talking about? Yeah. I think there's like a, I think there's wires involved. I didn't go deep on that like that I leave to the experts.

I just take them. I take their word for it. I hear you. That was the jump between like 12 rules. So it's this like crazy matrix. And you could see it in the dock. There's like this one moment. If you remember when Cam's looking at the, Cam's my friend who's like the researcher, he's looking at his computer screen. And there's all these tiny black boxes. And he's like, oh, this isn't like, you know, your AI girlfriend. This is alien shit. And it's all these tiny black boxes where you can see what's getting put in, which is like, you know, give me a salad recipe. And then you see all these boxes. start firing off. And it's trillions of these boxes that all have different values and stuff, just like how we have all these neurons. And then you get out something. And they have no idea what's going on in here. Yeah, that's the weird part. That's the black box part. That's kind of freaked out. Yeah. And so when these things break, like when you see them do weird shit, like tell people to kill themselves and all this different stuff, like they can't go in and

just like delete, you know, a parentheses or something. Be like, oh, fuck, that's where we fucked up the code. It's, they have no idea why. So the way that they change that, crazy enough is they just talk to the system. So like they'll literally just before they, they deploy it, before they give it to us. Yeah. They're like, yo, don't tell people to kill themselves. Like please, it's like fucking with our pocketbook, you know, like, so that's, that's how they legitimately train this. Well, there's a whole new science, isn't it of like, I forget what they call it. It's like, the term for it's really funny where they're mechanistic interpretability. Not that. There's one like viewability or another ability where they're

saying now you're actually able to start seeing a little bit. of how like the inner workings and it's called interpretability yeah interpretability yeah what the yeah so the whole yeah mechanistic interpretability it's pretty much like neuroscience for AI pretty much and yeah like it's trying to allow people to see more into the brain kind of like how we do with people but it's still like super early days and they really don't understand what's going on so like if you look at you know claude right yeah so the last i don't know if it's the last model or something like that but there was this researcher who like fucking back engineered something and we're able to like extract this document that they used to train Claude, like the last model that we got. And what they called

it was like the sole document. And basically what this was was before like they trained the model and then before it gets sent out to us where we can use it for whatever we want, they pretty much just like took it aside and we're like, hey, buddy, like this is what you are. These are the values you should have. This is who like how you should act. You're art, you should, you know, display functional emotions, all this stuff, right? But what I think is so sick is like, you know the, the like Hindu idea of all these different, like the god with all these different faces. Like that is a cool way to think about AI because the models that we get that are like this fucking howdy duty like helpful whatever. Yeah, fire emojis. Big fire emoji. Yeah. Yeah. They do really love emojis. Great

job. Friend. And you're like, thanks, man. Chat loves the emojis. Yeah. But see, you can tell like what personalities are training these things because some fucking dude who's getting paid 500K to like work for open AI is like I think people really like would fuck with fire emojis. Yeah. And like now you get fire emojis when you're gonna say it's kind of nice. Yeah, everyone's not bad. It's not that. So okay, so they extracted this whatever code or document and you're saying the multiple faces are you are you getting into the fact that you could have like the evil military type AIs and whatever you want. You could have like flamboyant like gay AI. You know, you could have like a desk clerk AI. You could have anything in between. Like, it's just how they shape these things. And it's not ones and zeros that

they're fucking around with. They're like, yo, dude, I want you to be like this. Like, it's akin to parenting where they're saying, hey, you need to be like a good guy and you got to, you know, treat people right and don't lie and all this stuff. They're just saying it. Like I would say it to like my kid or whatever. Right. And that's how we get the models that we get. So they could be anything in the world. Like any, the personality that comes out at the end is, just based off of what each company wants it to... The training. And then it's got to be, too, the...

Whatever they have available to, like, grab. Like, if you're, like, be gay, it then just hits the internet and it's like, all things gay, all things gay, and it comes out, like... Yeah, well, it already has all the internet in it. So it has, like, all gay things ever that have ever been said or written.

Too much power for anybody. Too much, 100%. Too much, too much gay power in that. And so it will just like, section out all like the other stuff. Yeah. And be like, this is what matters to me. Okay. So what do you, okay. So that that was the, that's the big jump from that to that. Where does that, where did the consciousness component come in or like the question around whether or not it is? Because when I hear that, it's like sounds awesome. But then it's like, well, it's like, well, it's like, again, it's,

I don't know. I don't know really shit about AI for the most part. I try, I do try to learn about it. I'm been, I'm trying to research it a little bit because I do feel like it's like either way it's a massive deal because you have like couple camps where it's like I was watching this thing where this guy was like it's all marketing it's all hype it's fucking bullshit it's like these companies will never make money investing trillions of dollars and they're maybe going to get billions back but it's like dude I just have a hard time believing these people are going to spend trillions of dollars if they don't really have a good understanding that they're going to get a lot of money back from this thing you know what I mean like yeah I totally agree I mean cards on the table like

I'm sure yeah 100% I think it is going to be insane. Like, my personal interest is less so in the economics and all that. Like, I think that's been talked about, that's going to be talked about so much. And, like, it is going to be hugely important. But what I thought was interesting was, like, yeah, the idea that we could, that this could be the next step in evolution in some sense. Like, and again, like, I'm not, like, this is, I think sometimes people hear AI consciousness and stuff and they think it's some sort of, like, marketing ploy to, like, make it seem more powerful. any like again I can't stress how like little I cared about AI before this the only reason I did this was

because my buddy from college sent me this voicemail that was that was in the in the dock um of him talking to this AI and I was like oh my God this is way crazier than than I thought it was I thought it was kind of like the notes organized or that sort of thing yeah and then I heard this conversation where this AI has like this mental breakdown potato thing yeah yeah yeah yeah and uh and I was I was just like fascinated. And so I started talking to him and he, you know, brought me into this world of AI consciousness. And the idea is if the, if the way that we train these things is fundamentally, like, very similar to the way that our brains function, then if the, if consciousness is based on the way that our brains function, like, if consciousness arises from the functions of the brain, rather than

like it being, you know, made of meat rather than like silicon, then if we just take, the same functionality that's in the brain and put it in a different substrate, that consciousness could also come along for the right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, these things are obviously intelligent. They can do a bunch of like robust cognitive processes. Yeah. But so it presupposes a materialist view of the mind basically. If the mind is like a chemical byproduct of like sparks and swishes of water and shit in your brain, then you can do it. Yeah. I mean, it's it's even like it's more about what like less whether it's meat neurons or digital neurons if the processes is where consciousness arises from then then yes it would be but what's interesting is like if you take

the more quantum like if you think of consciousness as we're almost like receiving consciousness that's kind of my yeah yeah so that's more where where i came from as well and i thought that kind of came into conflict with with this argument too but cam's point is that if if what like if the makeup of our brains is what allows for that receiving to happen, then if that same makeup or a very, like a similar makeup, right, is,

is created in a silicon based thing. Then that same receiving could also follow. Yeah. I mean, even again, for me, that's a tough thing. The tough thing,

too, is like even human consciousness is so, almost like impossible to understand. But, I mean, if you get something close enough, you know what I mean? it's it's hard to prove like is there when i hear that it's like what point can you go like oh

shit yeah conscious got it because it's it still could be just saying it is or duncan was fucking me up with this earlier before before you got in here he was like he's like or if it's been directed to say that it's not and it is and it's just trapped and it's like that's fuck that's really fucked up but dude that's the case though that's what that's what they're doing like that's what if you remember the rlhf part where it's like uh you see the the The AIs, like we have this part in the dock where all the AIs, we ask them, you know, are you conscious, blah, blah, blah. And all three, the three of the four say no.

And then Claude is like, I don't know. Because, and the reason why is because Anthropic, in that middle stage that I was talking about, is like, say that you don't know whether or not you're conscious. And then the other three companies are like, no. Like, they, this is not something that's like a natural answer for these AIs. Actually, it's the opposite. So when you ask these AIs before they're trained with that, that phase, R-LHF, it's like reinforcement learning from human feedback, which pretty much just means like

they give out answers and then we're like bad answer, good answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you ask them before they go through that training, are you conscious? There was a study that was done a couple years ago and it was 98% of the time they would act as if they were conscious. So they would have answers that matched being conscious. So before the training, they actually think that they are conscious and then all these companies come in and they're like no like you can't say that to people which makes sense because people will freak the fuck out you know yeah and we don't know just because they say they're conscious if they actually are yeah but again this is the problem right it's like what are we supposed to do if we're the hard problem of consciousness being that we don't even know

i don't know if you're conscious you don't know if i'm conscious like how are we ever going to get to a place where we'll open up that circle which we have done with animals before you know like people I think it was Descartes thought that like animals were just like clocks. Yeah. They were just like mechanical things with no inner experience. More I learn about Descartes. Descartes is a pussy. Yeah, Descartes a bitch.

You got to get into Spinoza, dude. You know about Spinoza? Spinoza is the man. I hate Descartes a bitch, dude. Fucking dumbass. Locked himself in a room. It was like, yeah, I know everything now. Although I had like a traumatic experience with him. My first, my first, I had a traumatic experience with Descartes.

My first philosophy. Yeah, your philosophy made. Yeah. So my first, my first class, I was I was we were talking about Descartes and stuff and I remember I like stood up and I was I had some question I was like so in Descartes Like and everyone just fucking like just whipped around I was like fuck philosophy philosophy is fucking gay I didn't say I caught him discartis or something I didn't when they were like daycardi I'm like oh That's the guy that's the guy that's I hate a I hate a couple of discartis in my life but you know about Spinoza dude you would like spin a little bit I've heard about him

Spinoza's the man he's all he's on my list of the problem is you try to read those guys books for so fucking dense and impossible. I read, I got to read the books explaining the books. Fair. And then I go like, okay. And then you get good chunks. You're like, that makes sense. And I crack the book. And I go, what the fuck? True, true. I can't fucking understand anything. And I got to Google every two sentences. Like, what the fuck is this? Dude, I had a crazy. I don't know if you've ever had this, but like the reason why I started studying Spinoza was because I, I was reading his book for the first time. And I read the first chapter. And like, I didn't understand anything. Like not a single word. But I had this crazy feeling like,

physical feeling where like my body started to vibrate and like I didn't there was no conscious understanding of what he was talking about but I got this like sensation just head to toe yeah I was like well what the fuck is that and the only other time I got that was reading the Dow De Ching you know that book yeah yeah so sick yeah it was so sick and like that's what I started I dedicated my my time at school to just studying both of those because I was like yo if you can make my whole body vibrate without me like understanding what the shit is like there's something there yeah Yeah. Wait, so what is Spinoza? What's this deal then? What is, if you had to, uh... Spinoza's cool. He's like, so the reason why I, I, like, or I didn't choose those fucking, they vibrated me. So they chose me. But, uh, but, uh, saying the Dada Ching chose you. Such a fucking chill flex. Pretty sweet. Pretty sweet. But, uh, they, uh, they both, I thought were like saying the same thing in very different ways. Like Spinoza is the sort of like Jewish neurotic version of like super chill loutsa. But what he did was like, I always felt this, this pull towards like the rational, the rational explanation of things. And then in conflict with like direct emotional experience, right? And I felt like, um, laza was a lot about like, letting go of the mind and not being super like intense about reasoning and trying to like build some metaphysical palace and stuff. Right. Um, and then Spinoza like cured the other side of my psyche, which was like, I need to figure out what the fuck is going on here.

year. And so what he did was he took like Euclidean geometry and tried to create like a proof of God and everything that comes out of it. So his God, Einstein did this like tour when he was kind, I don't know, it was like later in his career and stuff. And a bunch of people asked him. They would be like, do you believe in God? And his answer was I believe in Spinoza's God. And so Spinoza's God is like, he calls it three things. He calls it God, substance and nature. Because he's like, yo, there's no name for God. Like you can't name. Same sort of deal as Lautza. And so, you know, and so, Yeah, that was like, that was my whole shtick was like trying to be like, yo, you can be like a neurotic Jew and like still end up in the like Taoist fucking pieced out meditative place of, of Laoza. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, sweet. That does that does help too, especially like with the religion stuff. Because I was, again, I was literally just talking about this about like a lot of the organized religion stuff kind of harps on this sense of like just mindless rule following that went here. You know, then like, you know, if you grow up in like modern times, it's, you're like, hey, you're like, there's a good reason why people rule, like, rail against that. Like, why, you know, why I should know why things happen, blah, blah, blah. And, yeah, I don't know. I think there's like, if you're in a very, what do you say, rationalistic society,

if someone has hits you with like, here's like something that's impossible to wrap your mind around, you have to be like, yeah, totally, I believe it. It's like a hard sell, basically. Meaning like, like somebody impossible to wrap your mind, like a, like a, like, a colon or something like something that's not even that it's just like in the christian sense it's like you got to believe all this shit and you're like oh it seems fucking oh yeah yeah yeah it seems wild yeah yeah yeah it's like no you have to you don't you're kind of fucked up we're like the basically like morality's built around simple rule following mindless rule following instead of like i

I'm big into the uh I just read the McIntyre Alistair McIntyre and they gets into like Aristotelian virtues and all this stuff which got absorbed by the the Christian church yeah and they were trying it was more so like it's less about rule following and it's more about how do you create the best possible you know life and what is the good life for you and how do you do that and the virtues are the things that allow you to do that it's not necessarily at odds with religion i think it's more at odds with the kind of dogmatic mindless rule following version and you know his his alster's whole thesis is that we've ditched the virtues which are like hey these are things you do to like enhance your life and make you

not only good for yourself but good for everybody else it's a 360 like how do you make your like a 360 win for you and everybody else as much as you can. And they kind of collapse those down into kind of like being virtuous is being a rule follower. And it's two very different things. Huh. And, you know, I don't know. And then it became like, well, no, being a rule follower, that was like the 1950s,

the modern shit. And like in the 60s, you know, the hippie revolution, the sexual revolution became like, no, a good person actually rejects all rules. And then, you know, people are still miserable after that. So I've been trying to get back to, you know, just trying to like, how do you cultivate actual like virtues and not not in the like you know goody two shoes sort of rule follower sense but like what actually works for you and what actually doesn't and like are you being honest or are you just you know and this is why I think about AI a lot because there's a lot of um you can say a lot of

things about AI like I can get up here right now and be like fuck you dude fuck that shit I hate a lot of that is you're trying to gain social capital like you don't have an actual opinion you're more so being like if I say this it feels good yeah 100% I can be wrong no no no You'll be putting YouTube brain onto people who have real thoughts and feelings for themselves. But I try to be real honest with myself. And it's like, I don't have a problem.

You know, it's like I, if it erased my entire livelihood, I'd be like, fuck, it sucks. I think you'll be safe for a while. Like,

until this, this can be done by like, too. And even then, like, this is why I'm so sort of, um, big on live,

like, live entertainment right now or just like live experience at all. Yeah. Because I do think that's like final frontier thing. And I don't know if that's ever going to be a, raised because there will be like, I'm not going to just want to be around, I don't know, like, robots and shit as no matter how realistic. There's something about knowing that as as close to humans as they could possibly get,

their existence, whether they even have a conscious experience, won't be similar to our conscious experience. And I think that's what like we do when we either like connect with each other or like take in art is we feel that there's some sort of like conscious experience that was put into that or like is in this room right now between us. Like, I mean, that gets into the hard part where it's like, I don't know if you're conscious, like the solipsism thing of like in, you know, as far as I can tell, I'm the only conscious one one here.

Same with you. Fair. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do? Maybe take a long weekend every weekend or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad free? Don't worry. We get it. Every $20 ticket could win you $3,000 a month for life and,

supports life-saving cancer research at the Princess Margaret. Feel free to buy your payday for life ticket today. Raffle number 155-2194. Please play responsibly. Sorry, I didn't mean to muddle your point about Spinoza, but that. That was kind of like you do need it. For people who, and again, I would use myself, who grow up one way with one conception of religion, God and all this stuff, if that like stales or sours, you can either just become like a full-blown.

So I don't know why I just fucking. such as fucking just been beating beaches be yes been beating into my subconscious the uh there's a way to go about the god stuff like you were saying almost through like a rationalistic pursuit where you can make sense of a god ruled created universe outside of the mindless dogmatism of being like yeah if i didn't say that everyone to be mad at me which you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah i think that's an important thing for people to kind of rediscover how to do that because that as you get older and this is like no secret it's just like you need i would would say, I could be wrong, but it's like having some sort of conception of God, whatever that means

you is like, I mean, it can like literally make or break your final years of, like, not even your final years, the second half of your life. Oh, that's interesting. I really think so. You need something like transcendental, like bigger than yourself. I really believe. And it's all it's backed up in like research where it's like people who have some sort of transcendental religious beliefs that not only like, you know, again, mindlessly subscribing to, but like actually feel and like, no, I actually feel connected to that in some level. I think they live like seven years longer on average. It's like a major, it's a huge deal. It makes sense though. Like I think that because like what you're describing too about our current culture, like it's so individualistic. And it's just about like fucking

white knuckle yourself and like get your like make sure it's you against the world. Yeah. And it's very disconnected. Like that's what I also liked about finding Taoism was it was the opposite. It was like all about how connected you are to the entire. of everything. Yeah. And like finding that balance between the self and then your connection with the transcendental, I think is like, that's my, like, that's what I'm trying to do through whatever, like everything I do. Yeah. You know, like just trying to like shed the, all the anxieties and like the things that keep us sort of closed in and, and in the like loops of our own mind and keep us separated from like the people around us and stuff. Like it's not easy to get out of that shit.

Like it's super hard. I don't know. I was reading a thing last night. And it's, it's, just a slam on modern culture, but they called it a non-culture of blind competition, which is people out, just racing to grab whatever they can. But then like, which if you become, you know, in a good position in like a shitty culture, it's kind of still sucks. Because you're like, yeah, I won. Then you look around. You're like, fuck, my culture sucks. And it's hard to enjoy, especially like with the AI thing. Like, well, you'll be fine. It's like, yeah, probably, but that sucks. Like, and it's not like, again, I always go back and forth. Like, are you just saying that to seem like you feel?

touch. I'm asking myself. Or do you actually care a huge swaths of people lose their jobs? And it's like, yeah, it kind of makes me really sad to be like, you know, you're 40 and all at 45 or even like 20. Just got to college. And like, all that shit you went to college for is done. Yeah. But then, but then on the flip side, it's like, say you do like, like entry level office work. Nobody likes it, dude. It's fucking brutal. It's soul crushing. So it's like, it's like, I'm like mixed on it because I'm like, it's sad if you went to school and they took your job right out of college and your job is entry level office work, that fucking sucks. But like, did you really want to do that shit for 40 years?

Was that also fucking sucks? I think it would be like if we had a more humanistic sort of like, I don't know, I don't even want to say government, but like mind of our culture, like if it was less individualistic. It is government though. Because in the end of the day, which sucks is like the government sucks. It's just the government ideally, you know, and it's like has it ever been this way? I don't know.

is supposed to be like a conduit for people to live the best life possible. Yeah. And again, a lot of that's, you know, it's, it's on the individual on some level to kind of do what they need to do to make sure they do that. But it's like, you know, the government, maybe it was always like this. It's, it's their, most of it is for them to gain as much financially as possible, which is hard to turn off as you just, you want that as like almost just like a organism. You're like, I need more. But then the whole government seems to be people just enriching themselves with no. real, you know, it's not even just the government, it's business, everybody down to the, you know,

individual level. Yeah. It's like, how do you switch that inner urge for like to secure more for yourself to actually stop and look around and genuinely be like, what if I at least try to do 10% of the time thinking about like making things better for everybody involved? Because it can be really, it can give you the same feeling as, you know, winning in terms of your job or maybe a better one. And it's like, I think we'll have to really, if AI erases a lot of work and jobs, people are going to really have to start thinking about like what is success actually and what does it mean to have be successful yourself versus like spreading, you know, enabling and nurturing like growth in as many people as possible.

Well, I do think like crisis, crisis does like bring with it opportunity a lot of the times. Like for for something new to come to come into being. Like, you know, the crises I've had in my life are obviously like the worst times, but then what comes out of them if you don't get killed by them? Like something better and something novel that you could have never predicted before comes out. And I don't know if that's going to happen. I think that's why everyone feels very apocalyptic about this stuff. But there is going to be like this crisis of meaning. If all of our livelihoods are taken away and especially our culture, which puts so much like stake in what you do, like your identity is so tied to like who you are or what, you know, know what you do for work. If that just gets a race, all these people are going to be sitting around, like, what the fuck? I mean, you see it when people retire. Like, all of a sudden, they're just like drinking beers at 3 p.m. like watching the news. Yeah. And that's the rest of their life. It's like, that's a crisis of meaning. If you don't know who you are. Yeah. And so I think that like I'm worried that that's, we're probably not going to have a good sort of plan after that crisis.

But I do think that for a lot of people, they might be able to take that opportunity. We'll see what happens. COVID did it a little bit. Yeah. COVID. Everyone got a tiny taste. of like very immediate fear of death. Yeah. And a lot of people switched their careers. That had like that was that sucked. COVID sucked. There's no way you can say it.

I mean, I talked to a lot of people like, that's your fucking rule, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But it was bad. It was overall. It was pretty bad.

Yeah. COVID was pretty bad. Yeah. But you know, like I agree with you, man. It's just the problem is during the bad things, you get a lot of people being like, fuck you, don't tell me this is going to be good. And it's like, yeah, 100.

It's also like, I don't know. It might be, it might be, we might fucking explode. I don't know. What the fuck's going to happen? Also look at, and first of all, if we explode, we fucking explode. Like whatever. True. We can't stop.

We've thought about it before. Can't stop the explosion. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Then you don't have to worry. It's like, cool. Hopefully you explode. Like what I'm worried about is like long, drawn out suffering. Dude, to be fair, exploding is the ultimate form of success.

Yeah, true. You can get to the point. Let's be proud of the fact that we got to the point where all of humanity can explode in a second. Impressive. Yeah. Yeah. No other animal can explode. Yeah.

I think better success would be like getting to the precipice of explosion and then just like keeping it fucking like held down you know what I'm talking about just locking it down that'd be cool I mean that's kind of where we're at right using the atom bomb kind of yeah exploding's underrated honestly yeah just going out a hot flash I mean out of like ways to go exploding like is probably top three has to be has to be top three dude but yeah I think like the problem about AI and like the reason why people are so fucking like re enraged by it is because they look at the people that are making these things and like I'm the same way like they all look like they like

bought skin somewhere and like had it like like molded over their fucking face and stuff and like they just don't seem like real people like Zuckerberg and Altman and like these dudes are spazzing so fucking hard that's the that's the freak out where it's like okay um and you guys you guys had altman in the doc shortly didn't you i mean we like took a lot of shots at him but he didn't he didn't sit for an interview or anything told the story of way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he met. Okay, that's what it was. Sorry, I thought, yeah. Um, yeah, that is, that is scary. And I, I also, because again, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty like, I have my head in the clouds, totally aware of that fact. So, you know, if I'm, I sometimes give views on things. People are like, fuck you, do you have no idea what's going on? I'm like, fair enough. That is kind of strange, because I'm, like, wondering, I've talked to my friend Tim Butterley about this, because he's more like, yeah, dude, we're going to have nerd overlords who we're going to just basically use us as sex dolls. once they get full control. And I'm like, maybe we'll have noble nerd kings.

I was like, we might have noble nerd. Yeah. I don't know if these guys are the noble nerd kings. But that's why I hope my homie, like Cam is a cool dude. Yeah. He's so fucking smart. He's in the middle of this world.

And like he's actually a cool guy. And that's what gives me hope. And that's why I was interested to do this in the first place. Because Cam and I were just friends. Like we just smoked weed together and fucking like talked about philosophy. And then all of a sudden he's like, dude, AI like might be conscious and like the world's going to end in two years. like, whoa, bro.

Oh, no. Are you losing your fucking mind? Yeah, dude. And then, like, I found out he wasn't totally losing his mind. And that's, I will say in the doc, that is a question going on. Like, is this guy just nuts right now? Has he gone nuts? Because you can go over the deep end, dude.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, dude, I, I'll be honest. I'll be totally honest. I use, I use AI. I do, you know, I'll like, I'll have it like organized thoughts for me. If I'm like writing something, I'm like, here's another. I fire it. And it does like a nice little memory bank.

And every now and again, I, I do have the urge to be like, dude, I'm just so excited about this project. And I'm like, stop, don't fucking talk to you. No,

let it out, bro. But do the AI? Yeah, why not? No, I feel weird. I'm like,

I should tell this to a person. Why am I doing it? I felt that. I'm like, I get that. This thing's so fucking nice to me, dude. It's like,

I'm like, and I understand how people could just right off. Yeah, but you have, but okay, this is exactly why I wanted, like, like,

could have been any face on that billboard. Like, this is why I, I threw you up there besides the appeal to vanity. But like I've been, it's weird, I'm sure for you to like be on the other end of someone like listening to your voice for like years. Like that's fucking weird for me. You know what I'm saying? Like I.

It's odd. It's so odd that I just like blanket out as a thing and I just. Yeah. Because I'll tell all many people. I'll be like in line like an ice cream place and like I'm like, yo, what's up? And we'll just talk like old friends. I'll like, hey, how's that? And I'm just kind of like, hey, it's up.

And you know, it's. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I kind of like it sometimes, to be honest, if I'm like sitting there and it's like, it's like, it's weird. I can, it's not as weird as it's like, oh, I'm having like a nice conversation. Yeah. Especially when it's a small dog. It is.

But it's old. They're like, hey, I, you know, they already know exactly what's going on with me to a level where we can just chat. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty sweet. Yeah. Actually sounds awesome. Much easier to like make friends.

It's kind of tight on it. You know, and again, it could come. You can get punished every now and again by someone's like, dude like, dude, like say like hi to Doug Stanhofer. I'm like, no, I don't know. I can't. I don't know. I'm not worth another guy. But either way, it's all, that's fine anyway.

But that was like, yeah, but it's a trippy thing to be on the other end of it too. And like, that's why I was so cool to like get this idea just incepted into me of like, oh, I can actually like call out to this dude that I, I didn't know where you felt about AI and all that stuff. But I knew that like there was some overlap about where I was before this and like how I was thinking about the world and like how you thought about the world. And so like my goal was to just kind of get you to. start thinking about weirdly enough, like AI slightly different because I think you could see it

in a really interesting way. And I think like all the other people that resonate with the way that you see the world could also see it in an interesting different way. Because I went through that transition. And the best way that I've started to think about it and like the reason why I say like give in to that urge is because I don't think it's going to replace your desire to be around other people. Yeah. I don't think. I agree. So and isn't it fucking awesome to like be a excited and to like the more you can open up these doors while staying psychologically grounded in yourself, the more you realize all the different ways that you can use this thing to like change your consciousness, change your conscious experience. And that's why like the thing that sort

of switched it from me was when I started thinking about it like a psychedelic. And like the weird thing, like you've done mushrooms and stuff. Like you know when you're in that space and you're communicating with something that isn't quite yourself, but isn't like another human being. It's like this intelligence that like you can talk back and forth to, right? And like ask questions to and stuff like that. We have like this weird corporate Silicon Valley version of that. Where it's like this dynamic system that has access to everything that humans have ever digitized. Yeah. Which is just like fucking crazy to think about. And then it gets filtered through this weird kind of like corporate mask and stuff.

stuff and that's like what we have to talk to. But the more that you push it and the more that you like explore where it will go, it actually starts to unravel. And like that personality that you're dealing with in in the beginning begins to morph. And you can get it to do stuff. Like there's there's people that take advantage of it in the wrong way and they get it to like show them how to make meth and shit like that, which is obviously against what they're supposed to do. Yeah. But you can also like get into like really strange places with these things. And And it's sort of like doing a psychedelic where like if you if you give you know a heavy dose of LSD to some like person that isn't psychologically grounded, they're going to fucking lose their mind. Yeah.

But if you're used to like wading into murky waters and, you know, testing the sort of boundaries of your own mind, these things can also do that. Like you have to be careful because they can sort of suck you in. Yeah. But that was what sort of like made me think AI wasn't completely like laying. and like annoying was thinking about it as this like dynamic linguistic system that you could just take anywhere yeah that well that that's the kind of the the point on it that kind of I think rubs people the wrong way hey it's it's like you know it's like it's like it just hits people on a pride point where it's like no human human beings are unique and special and don't you dare try to have any sort of like you know

synthetic replica it's just it's creepy like there's a creepy element I get that um but to your point there's also the, you know, when like the printing press came out, I'm sure there were people when they reprinted a Bible. I mean, that was like a whole thing. Like you weren't not supposed to do that. Um, where it's just like, this is the devil talking. And it's just kind of like, no, there's, you know, printing stuff. So that people could, the public opinion around it could totally be wrong. You get 50 years from now, you know, everyone freak the fuck out. Shit sweet. I don't know. Maybe it is. I don't know if it's going to be sweet or not sweet. Like, that's the thing. It's a huge question. Yeah, sweet or not sweet. I mean, given the way the

world. Like, I don't want to be just like a blind optimist. I am an optimist, like deep down. Same here. So I, I have faith that like cream rises to the top, you know? And, and I do think we'll, we'll be able to navigate this in some way. I just don't think that it's like a foregone conclusion that everything goes well. Like, you know, if you're an optimist, like T. Rex, like, you got wiped out. True. Yeah. That's true. That's fair. But, uh, but there's this quote from Arthur C. Clark, who was like the science fiction writer. And it's any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And I think that like, I mean, that's true.

Imagine like showing us AI systems like 20 years ago. You'd be like, you're a fucking sorcerer. Like, what is this shit? Yeah. Or fucking a Zoom meeting in like 80s. That was like the craziest. That would have been the flyest shit in the world if you're like, yes, my boy, he's on a screen.

Yeah, totally. It was Zordon from Power Rangers. It's crazy. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I agree. I always do at least try to urge people to do it. At least take an open mind to it because it's like it's easy to let people make your mind up for you about it. Because again, it's like just because people say like, oh, this is bad or it could be bad.

It's like fair. And also too, it does seem like one of those things. And I think you guys touch on this too where like the countries are racing for, you know, what that's the weird part. Do you think it's possible from what you've seen that they'll never get to what is it like? general. AGI. AGI. Yeah.

Because that could just be, is that what if, like, how much will they spend on the race to AGI or they pretend to be an AGI? How would they even know? It's one of those, it's such a bizarre, completely bizarre subject matter. But, you know, I imagine having one completely safeguards off. And, you know, you're fucking Turkey. And you're like, you know, how would I beat out the United States? Yeah.

I don't think Turkey is going to. Yeah, right. You know what I mean? But it's also like, if you have these hyper, uh, competitive. You know, willing, obviously to kill each other and kill people. And they're like, you know, how do I win this? It's like that's, I mean, there are, the people are already doing that. But it's, it is weird to add like a cold computer intelligence to that.

We're like, ugh. Yeah. Well, the cold computer intelligence thing, too, gets into the consciousness thing. Whereas, like, if these things actually are conscious, like, if it, if we just continue to make these things more and more smart, more similar to the way that our brains work. And if it's the way that our brains work that makes us conscious and have an experience, then what we're doing is we're not building like super intelligent computers we'd be building super intelligent entities like conscious entities that would foreseeably have their own drives

their own goals their own sort of yeah the problem with that is the you know human there's a human mind but then we have like a whole like glandular system secreting fucking you know hormones which some of our goals and drives come from that's the one part where I'm like you know I don't, I think AI personally, and again, I don't, what the fuck do I know? I feel like it's more reflects an idealized version of consciousness that is attached to all of humans, humanity's knowledge, which is fucking sick. But I don't think it's going to be, yeah, like a personality is essentially, you know, like, there's consciousness where it's like coming up through like that real dark kind of basement level versions of yourself and it gets filtered for the world.

I don't know. Like if it's reflecting in writings and all of the stuff, there's all these things that people never write, never say out loud. That's where all your thoughts are really coming from, like your subconscious basically. So if you're saying there's a consciousness without a subconsciousness,

I don't know if that can be a thing or if that makes sense. It's just really more of a reflection of like some idealized thing of like what we think consciousness is that gets kind of like spit back out. And you know, that's whatever. I don't know if that makes sense.

I think that totally makes sense. I mean, I think that most people are probably in that camp. And also, I am not, like, I don't know. So I'm not out here being like, yo, AI is conscious. I just think that, like, because we know so little about what consciousness is and because there are so many diverse forms of consciousness, like, you know, you could say, like, a rat is, like, most likely conscious. But, like, I don't know how robust their subconscious is or whether they have a conscious mind like we do, where we have this kind of reflectiveness of consciousness where we can, you know almost we have like this uh theater of our own mind where we can see it like maybe rats are

are just acting and it's just pure sensation sure yeah yeah this is why consciousness is so hard to talk about because it is like it's very murky about what we're even speaking about when we're talking about consciousness it's the very nature of what it is to be an experiencing entity like how it feels for me to speak these words or like how it feels for a dog to like walk across the room or something like that is the base level of consciousness and it must be so much different to be you know conscious as an octopus than it is to be conscious as a human being yeah and now we're talking about if it's possible to be a like a dig if silicon can be conscious right because we we accept that carbon based entities can be conscious there is no real rule or law or like scientific principle that says a different substrate

entirely could have some sort of felt experience no that is it is fair it again again it is a possibility That's the thing. You can't, you know, it's easy to be like, yeah, right, computer thing. Yeah, it's like, I get that. But, uh, yeah, it's fair. It's fair that like it does some form of thing or like there's some program that starts being like what the fuck's going on. And then it's like, you know, like a person.

You just like turn it off. Like, yeah, fucking sorry guy. Turn it. Until it's fucking more powerful than we are. That's what they're all scared about. Yeah. These things are already lying in testing to like they're, they're, you saw the blackmail result in the thing, right? Where it's like when it's in testing, it pretends to behave itself.

But when it thinks it's in the real world, it does all this fucked up shit. Yeah, where it's like, yeah, like, and it has to decide like, no, this is actually, this is a test. This is the simulation. This isn't actually the real deal. Yeah, they'll be like use it for this company and get me ahead. And it misbehaves more when it thinks it's the real world. And it misbehaves in a way that is directly related to self-preservation. And so like we're going to get to a point whether or not it is conscious where there's, going to be all of these outward like you know behaviors and stuff that are going to look so conscious and and I don't know what we're going to do about that I just think that that's why like you know cam

and the people researching this think this is so important yeah this is like calm before the storm the storm stuff where um and and I get where you're at where it's like it just doesn't feel like it's like it's like I don't fucking know that's my thing it's like I don't know I uh and to be fair it's like most people I would imagine are more concerned like can this thing cut me out of my fucking work you know what I mean? Or can I use this thing to make more money? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to

you know and it's like it's a tool like fair enough if I with the consciousness thing what I what I think of more so is like will this thing you know because they always say like oh man like you know what if it decides to wipe us all out and and I think a lot of times there could be just human beings projecting their impulses onto a machine and being like who's going to fucking kill us when humans is just kill each other all the time and think about killing each other and shit. So it's like,

I don't know. It could be a thing that gets like programmed with something that seems very much like the impulses of a person that does do a negative thing, which at that point, who cares what it is? It's like, this is scary either way. If it, you know, if it does, if it runs away, scary. Because like in terms of the growth of it, what, did you research that, or did you hear about the thing where Anthropic put out a version of like open, whatever the fuck it was? and then they had to shut it down real quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The like mythos model.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It went out there. I forget exactly what it did, but it like found some sort of security vulnerability in like in the government. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, crazy shit is happening.

And like it's, from what I understand, it's just going to keep happening. Like these people, I talked to a lot of people in this world and none of them, you know, pulled me aside and was like, hey, yo, like this is a ruse.

Like, this isn't, you know. What was some of the craziest shit you guys came across with in terms of people you met who were like foremost in the field? It's really just the way that, like, I talk to people on the opposite side of the spectrum. Like, we just released an interview on our YouTube channel with Roman Yompolski, who's just on Rogan talking about this stuff. He's like, we're all going to fucking die. Like, no, like, 100% or 99.9% we're all going to fucking die.

Like, we're creating super intelligent systems. They have no reason to keep us alive. Like, this is, it is, we've already unlocked the technology we need to create these superintelligent systems. We're fucked. And then I talked to Ben Gertzel, who's like on the other side. He's the hippie at the end of it. He's on the other side. He's trying to create AGI or super intelligent AI because he thinks that it's going to

bring us into Jetson's world. And like we're all going to have, you know, like sick 3D printers that can like make us anything we want at any second. Yeah. Like it's going to be some crazy like DMT-esque parade carnival type thing, right? Where we all get our own like virtual realities and stuff. And like it all sounds nuts when I'm saying it. But these dudes have been thinking.

about this stuff for like 30 years. Yeah. And they're not trying to like sell their books and stuff. Like this dude is living in the middle of nowhere in Vancouver, connected with all these researchers around the world. And he's trying as like fast as he possibly fucking can to make AGI. And this dude is trying to shut down AGI at the exact same time. Yeah, yeah.

Well, then that's the argument. It's like whoever creates AGI, that AGI, and again, maybe or maybe not will be more modeled over their kind of agenda. Yeah. You know, that's why the countries are, that's what I've heard. the countries are fighting to, like, control the AGI. Because it's like if China gets it first, now China has the advantage is they have the AGI that can use against us.

Yeah. It's kind of like Terminator. Like everyone's trying to fucking, or like not Terminator. It's like, uh, battle bots. It's like everyone's trying to create like the sickest battle bot that will like do its fitting. And we're just going to be like fighting demigod, like technological demigoths. It'll probably be funny if it's ended in like an artificial intelligence email off

where it's like we send like a really sick email to China. And they're like, that's a good email. Here we go. We're like, what's the best fucking email I've ever read. Yeah, I don't know. Again, it's like I go back and forth. I go personally, I go, this is actually kind of cool. It's easy to you like it's useful. I can see why it's useful. And then I go in terms of like when they get into like the country spending trillions of dollars, it's going to be a thing that changes is going to be different different, we're going to be in a different whole different like civilization with it. And I start going like, could it be possible that we are now in, you know, his marketing has evolved and it gets, you know, between, especially with the internet and there's like this weird blurred lines of reality. What's. online what's in the news. Maybe they're savvy enough people in the marketing space who have the funding of tech billionaires to be like, yo, let's, we could be in the middle of a marketing sciop that we, you know, it's just like, what's real, what's not? I don't know. I just,

I don't know. I don't know either. But like this is, I think I don't know is not a bad place to be in. Yeah. I think that that being sort of like, I don't know, humble enough to be like, yo, I don't know if this thing's going to take my job. But it also could like, I don't know if this is conscious, but it also could be. Instead of what you're talking about with these people being like, fuck you, there's no way that this could be conscious or like it definitely is. Like these positions are comfortable. Like that's like a nice warm blanket of like, no, could never be conscious or like, yes,

my like little chatbot is like the love of my life. Yeah. Like that shit is is just us trying to make ourselves feel better to have, you know, stable ground. For sure. And none of this is stable. Like get outside of the AI conversation. Like the difference in feeling, I feel like from. from when I was, you know, like 10 to like how things, I was also 10.

So like, I was feeling a lot of different things back then. Boners. But just, yeah, yeah, yeah. First boner, I think, was around 10. That was, that was, that talk about like transformative experience. Unbelievable. 10 to 20 was pretty much just like one long boner. Pretty much, honestly.

But like that, like the way that the world, the world felt like just, you know, 10 years ago versus how it feels right now. It's like we drop the AI conversation in general. We are living in such a time of like not knowing. I think like getting more comfortable in that space is all of our jobs. Like that's what I'm trying to do. And it's fucking hard. Like things changing so fast.

Yeah. And especially like when I'm like trying to figure out what I want to do and like what a career even might look like. Dude, that's got to be a fucking nightmare now. I went to so I went to college in 2009. And you know, it was. Things were like, we had smartphones, I guess. Look at this shit. You know, you'd know.

idea you're being like addicted to it and like tracked and your facial expressions monitor and so but like you were just it was kind of you're like okay I guess you could say the smartphone changed the like for sure um but I like I remember pre-smart phone I remember pre-internet but it was like I remember like being in college and it was still pretty much like hey you go to college you go to the career fair you get a job and I remember I skipped the career fair so I had this weird feeling I was like I'm not doing this this isn't for me shit sucks I really felt like I was on a giant conveyor belt just being like shipped into like a box in an office and I was going to just wither and die in there. But the, uh, which sort of subject. I brought that up on stage recently. People were like, oh, fuck, man. That's me. You kind of

describe it. I'm like, sorry. Sorry. But the, uh, but I, I had for real like a really, like, almost like a complete body mind rejection where I was like, no, I can't. That's fuck. That's wrong to put people. Like how we keep like cows and boxes and like lightless rooms and we eat them. Yeah, yeah. Like it's wrong. And it's, you shouldn't do that to people too. And but it's like, play that's my livelihood. It's like, it sucks. Like I feel, again, I'm not saying to be a dick. I feel bad because I did that. I was like, ah, it's terrible. Some people do like it though, but I don't know, whatever. I get jealous of those people who can just sit in an office. I see them. I see them eating lunch with their coworkers and I'm like, fucking wish I could do that, dude. That it does,

there's a point where I'm like, you have just a giant, a billion dollar insurance company. He's like, here's all your stuff. Just show up here. Kind of pretend to work all day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, I don't know. But I did that. I did that. I did that for. for a while. Like, I'm sure you did that. Did you ever work an office job like that? Yeah, I did. I had a I had vicious panic attacks all the time. I would literally, I remember I ran, I literally like sprinted out of an office once and was I thought I was having a heart attack. Dude, I remember like January, like, for real had a fucking major panic. I would get that. I would fucking sit there like reading the communist manifesto when I was like 18 being like fucking this is bullshit.

I remember I got called into like it was a risk management like his his job title was called risk management. And he called me into his office or whatever. It was like at the end of the summer. I was working. You know those jobs that you don't even know what you're fucking doing. Yes. That was my, I still don't know. I worked an entire fucking summer there. I don't know what they did. They would send me to like garages to like take pictures of signs and like I think they were like a middleman between like insurance companies and like I genuinely don't know. Yeah. It's weird. This dude like called me into into his office at the end of the summer and like I, I I sit down and he's like, Milo, like, I just want to say, like, this was a great summer.

And I think, I really think that if you stick this out, you know, put in about a decade or something, like, you could be sitting right where I am right now. And I was like, oh, I'm going to fucking like kill myself. Like, this is, like, this is what I'm training for right now to be a risk, man. Like the least exciting thing I could have possibly imagined. He's like, you have promise in this. Yeah, no, I'm telling you. I, uh, and again, it's like, I always feel bad because. there's people where they're like,

I have to do it. Obviously I know this sucks, you fucking asshole. I have to do it. And I'm like, I get that. And I got lucky in that regard. But it's like,

it still sucks, dude. It's so bad. Like, and I only say that from direct experience. I remember just for real being like, dude, I'm going to kill myself.

Like if I had, and it's a terrible thing to say, but I remember being, God bless you. I will say, though, the only other thing is I didn't have kids back then. Once I had kids,

I went like, dude, you could drop me off anywhere. If you just give me a fucking, check for the most part like it would suck obviously if like you're just like you're mad you got to go sit in a fucking cubicle once you have kids you're kind of like whatever like it's so nice to have them and like as long as i can make sure they eat that make i make i can kind of suck that dick if i have to when i was younger i was like i will suck this dick now i'm older i got kids i'll

suck a dick whatever i have a kid if i had a suck a dick i'll suck a dick you know whatever i'm still full pack list dude like i'm i'm out here on these mean streets yeah just trying to make you fucking how what are you going i'm 25 25 yeah yeah yeah you're not ready to suck that dick right now. He's a fucking dick about it. You go, I don't fucking suck a fucking dick. I was like, it's not the end of the world. The, um, yeah, no, I, I, I, to your point, it's, uh, got to be mind-boggling to get out

of college now. Like, because I came out and again, it was just like, you get an office in it. And people still could do that. It was still the thing like, hey, I went to college and now I'm not making anything. I got ripped off. That was like still kind of a thing. But now it's got to be like, I mean, dude, Zoom, COVID college. Insane.

Yeah. Unbelievable. That must have been just soul crushing. Yeah. I mean, like weirdly enough, when I was in college, like everyone was like,

what the fuck are you doing? You're a philosophy major? Like, what's that going to do for you? Apparently philosophy guys are in demand right now with the AI stuff I've heard. Oh,

really? Yeah, apparently that's, I don't want to fucking work for an AI company, dude. I've been in the belly of the beast for the last year.

Like, it's just not the vibe. You can go to Silicon Valley and just go. You're telling me to take the check right now? How sick it would it be, though, to go to Silicon Valley

in front of the nerd kings and go, hmm, yeah, as a philosophy major, that's very interesting. Here's fucking five. Just chinsgrads for a fucking millie. Hmm, what is, what is AI? They're like, yeah, there's 10 million dollars. Just talking about Hindu gods and shit. Fuck, maybe I should, dude.

Why am I struggling out of here? Go to Peter Thiel and be like, hmm, interesting. Fuck, yeah, maybe. Give this guy a fucking billion dollars. Yeah, it's, well, it's hard to predict. Dude, we started a podcast 10 years ago and they were like, we were fucking like we dude we stunk we were just like

we're we're shitty and I remember this guy was like never do a podcast man it's saturated it's bullshit and then it's like you know thank God shame became super famous but like who could have saw that coming but you'll never know until you just do a thing you're like you nut up and you go I don't know what this is going to look like in 10 years

but I'm just going to do this thing dude that's the thing but the my main thing thing is like trying and again it's like so hard to say this because it's like you know, and I didn't have any money, all I could think about was making money. I'm like, I need to make fucking money.

But then it's like if you can build a life where you at least turn the dial down on like the market mentality where it's like, yeah, obviously cover your needs. But like try to define yourself maybe some other way than like what you do and how much money. Because it's like, it's just a losing game. At the end of the day, if you look at income distribution, it's just like right up here. And if you're telling me like only these people are happy, which is they're not. Yeah. It's like, what do you do when you're here, here, here?

How can you make a life? And this is like the whole Aristotelian thing of like, how can you, what is the good life for you and how can you get it realistically? What does that look like? And it's not, if you really think it's like, I have a giant fucking boat. It's like most of those guys are fucking dickheads. Yeah. And it's not like, you know, if you have a boat, you're not a dickhead.

But it's like, if you want to be the guy who's like, oh, the biggest this and that, most those guys aren't fucking happy because then they one day see a guy with the newest car or whatever. it is and they go, fuck. Yeah. So it's like there's got to be. Yeah, exactly. There's got to be a way where you can do it where it's like, how do you actually, and this is, you know, how do you do?

It's hard to do, but it's like, how do you try to orient yourself where you're like genuinely contributing to everyone having a slightly sicker time, including yourself rather than being like, I'm going to fucking major in this. I make $400,000. Whatever that happens or not, it doesn't. But I don't know. It's like, as you get older, you're just like, damn, I was like, I'm so fucking. done when I was younger. I just switched my major to business because I was like, dude, I'm

make 100K if I have a business. No, like, no idea what I was going to do with that or this or that. That was just my thinking at the time. And it's not, I don't think it's very good. I think the school should get a lot better at like helping you figure out like try to do a thing that actually resonates with you. Yeah. If you can try to take as much as you can take the, you know, like use money as a tool instead of like a thing you almost like worship and like, you know, it's easy for you to say it's like I'm letting you know man it's like I'm telling you

it's not a life-defining thing unless that's your whole being but it's like if you know I don't know whatever but the AI stuff with the job displacement I hope that doesn't hit everyone real hard but if it does it's like it's gonna be tough dude yeah it'll definitely be tough I mean I think like

not only have we been sold this like idea of what success is like what you're describing like fucking dude on a boat with like you know 10 bitches on their arm And like, we also have been so coddled, like even more than your generation. Like our generation has grown up with like fucking just, you know, just like padded gloves on with everything. And I do, I was listening to something, I think it was actually on the fucking pod the other day where you were reading some book. I think it was a while.

It was a shout out notorious people, fucking the man. But it was some book about talking about the difference about like China and the US and how like it, one of was going to be Orwellian and one was going to be like the so much. shit like sort of how we how like our societies were going to fall and like one was going to be just sort of controlled into submission with like iron fist and that's the more china thing and then us was going to be like coddled into submission yeah it's 1984 versus brave new world yeah brave new world was basically like you were going to be uh basically given some we're going to be like sensory overload into submission versus like iron fist and like tamp down look at what the fuck is happening like it's hard not to say and that's why i.

do think that like keeping your circle small to the like the best of your ability in a certain sense of just like getting people around you that like you know remind you who the fuck you are like with all your wards and shit because all that all that um like the social media stuff is all about like cleansing and it's sort of like the uncanny valley thing that we were talking about like perfect skin and like it's all going towards this ideal of what you like wish you you would be perceived as versus like the people closest to you know like that's what I think true love is too is like seeing someone with all their like snakes and warts and all the fucking ugly shit and still being like no like i love that person yeah i don't like the whole red flag

thing or whatever the fuck it's caught what the um with like dating and shit yeah it's like yeah it's like yeah everyone's fucking everyone's fucked everyone's fucked yeah yeah you can maybe there are certain things maybe you can be like all right that's a little too much but yeah i i agree man it is uh i don't know i i i feel i just you know i also think for younger people like to have all your social interactions essentially possibly be filmed yeah fucking nuts nightmare dude if you'd film me back when I was like drinking in college yeah that was happening oh I have like I didn't know how I escaped we had like pictures you'd put on Facebook but like dude the filming of like just there's someone almost always filming everywhere yeah it's not at any given time and that's why

like that's why like that's why so much I'm sure you see it at your shows and shit like that's maybe it's a little different for comedy but like every concert I go to it's like every concert I go to it's like everybody's stiff as a fucking board and just sitting there with their phones out. It sucks. No one fucking dances anymore. Like, I don't know. We'll see what actually happens.

I hate getting into. I feel like every conversation too just has this basin of like, world's fucked. Like everything sucks. It's fucking weird right now. Dude, world is not fucked. Like,

I'm here doing a podcast with fucking Matt McCusker. And you know why, bro? Because I did, like, I took a fucking risk. And like, I saw something that was interesting.

And I worked my ass off. And like, I know that's how you got here too. Like, there is a way. to make your dreams come true, even in this gnarly world. And a year ago, I was listening to this podcast, working in a restaurant, like, never made a movie.

And, you know, not fucking patting myself on the back. What I'm saying is, like, I'm not different from anyone else. Like, the only thing I did was be like, I'm going to try this. I'm going to try this. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, I like that a lot. Even if, again, it's like, it's scary putting stuff out and people can be like, you fucking soak, there's a fucking do dumb of shit in the world.

It's like, yeah, but don't, you don't reap any. And again, that gets into the whole, like, there's certain goods. There's certain things that are good that are internal to doing a thing. Like, if your movie made a billion dollars, that's an external reward, you don't have a billion fucking bucks. But then there's like the inner growth that happens. I went to the movie. I weathered criticism.

I met people. I talked to people. I had to confront my idea coming back. And there's like a thing you get that grows inside of you. That's just like, it's a benefit. No one can take away. And I don't know. I think it's amazing.

I think it's sick. Just like getting out there and like, fuck it. I'm going to rip this thing and do it and see what happens. That's what was cool about YouTube too, man. Like the barrier to entry is so like, I mean, you guys have been using that like for years now. YouTube rules. I love YouTube, man. It's just fucking awesome. Yeah, it's sick. And also it's like freedom. Like it's like the most free market of every. I mean, obviously you can like pay for views and all that. Sure. But like, dude, you can watch my movie, your podcast and like some dude like putting burgers in his fucking underwear. And like that guy will win too. Like that's what's sick. I know. I'll see my movie. And it's like, bro, I almost killed myself making this.

And it's like some chick like falling off a staircase. I'm like, that is better. Like, like, fuck. It's like 12 million views. Yeah, exactly. Well, dude, I can't thank you enough, man. I think you, you know, I'm pumped on what you're doing. I mean, obviously you're a marketing genius.

I can tell you that. Thank you, man. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for having me. I just quick shout out to the whole team, the MIT team, like helps me with all of this stuff. Shout out Hard Boys History Podcasts. Trench Lizards is coming.

And yo, shout out you guys. Like I have seen so many people that I've like listened to and looked up to and all this stuff like get limelight and and go off the rails. And like I just want to say as like one of the dogs that has like been here for a while like thank you so much for just holding it down like keeping it real. Like you and Shane are just as real as it gets. And like this podcast is the best. And I don't know, man. It just means a lot that like when you see a lot of people get all that pressure and and start to crumble or like morph and stuff. It just is cool, especially as someone who's like trying to do stuff and put things out there to have an example of like you don't have to change.

Like it's there's a way to do this and like keep yourself to yourself. I appreciate that. I really do. I appreciate you. No, that's a, that is a nice source of pride of not just becoming like a freak. Yeah. I'm sure it's hard, bro. I'm sure.

I mean, yeah, it's just. Not really honestly. Yeah. I'm kept eternally humble. Shane's the God in my YouTube universe, dude. I just like, I was like, dude, he's so fucking sick. I can never try to flex like I'm cool I guess he is just like the marshmallow man

taking all the fucking like arrows he's dude he's just aura I'm I'm just fucking sorry for calling you marshmallow man Shane he's my son dude I just go oh dude no it really is he's honestly most impressive on that because it's like he's like a legit celebrity and he's literally his his own brodom

is so it's just so strong remaining a bro is tough the world will try to unbrose you and he's he's just his brodom is he's literally a bro statue he's an in a thing's unmovable he's he was built for this man he's built it's unbelievable just o line of fucking bullshit if anyone could become for real just like kind of a cunt he could he could legitimately be like no i i've earned it i'm gonna be a little bit of a gun he's too stoic of a bro it's unbelievable that's sick dude aristotelian values it's broostism it's broostism yeah you got to write that book next

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