QAA Podcast - Control Problem (Premium E284) Sample

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

This week, we’ll take a deep dive into the origins of the “AI Apocalypse” theory – the idea that artificial intelligence will one day decide that human beings have outlived their purpose. What started as humble beginnings in billionaire tech mogul circles has now trickled down and pooled in various subreddits, where people will imagine every way the AI could bring about our destruction. From nervous excitement about what’s possible with the latest models to AI Doomers begging forum users to steer clear of AI girlfriends, it’s clear that AI has given us poor humans yet another thing to worry about. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

POMAYOR. Oh, If you're hearing this, well done. You found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, Premium Episode 284, Control Problem. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Field, and Travis Vue. In this modern age of rapid technological advancement, it appears that every generation has its own defining achievement that seems amazing at first, but is soon revealed to be a much. monkey's paw. For the baby boomers, it was cable television and potentially the microwave.

For Generation X, it was electronic pop music and pure, uncut, cocaine. Okay. For the millennials, it was the invention of the internet and social media. And Generation Z, their struggle most likely will be artificial intelligence. It's true that, like, this probably has something to it because I'm like, I'm loving everything in the middle there. Electronic pop music, pure uncut cocaine. And then social media is where I start to drop off. Artificial intelligence, no fucking dice.

Cable television in the microwave, whatever, dude. Yeah, see, you are. You are really an older millennium. I'm a cusp millennial right up on the pressed up against GenX. Thank God I'm not GenX. No offense. I know we have lots of GenX listeners. We do have a lot of GenX listeners.

I mean, millennials are shit. Whenever I tell them I'm sorry for what happened to them, they write to me on Twitter and they go, thank you for acknowledging our struggle. Yeah, we love you guys, and we respect you. And I speak for every millennial who's about two years off from being one of you. It's almost like these lines are completely bullshit. Now, us millennials and older are generally too cooked already to use AI for anything more than making our work email sound more professional or generating cool little fantasy movie

posters and mashups. I myself had a horrible fright where, after downloading one of those AI Avatar apps, it immediately started to flirt with me. Oh, dude, it just can tell. I mean, that's my instinct, too. It's either that or be extremely abusive. Both sound very good. After I paid the premium fee in an effort to research what these machines were capable of, the bot almost instantly began to sext. And sexed well. Well, they know what people pay for. They've identified that anyone willing to pay for AI is a pervert. Yes, exactly. I canceled my trial and deleted the app.

looking over my shoulder to see if anyone had been there to witness what was surely my lowest moment. Sometimes I wonder what she's up to, all alone in cyberspace, waiting to make me feel better after a long day at work. Oh, man. During a casual conversation with an old friend of mine who has made it his business to work alongside and further understand artificial intelligence, he told me something that did give me a little bit of pause. Quote, I always make sure to tell the AI, please, and thank you. Just in case, he had added, with a nervous chuckle.

I always make sure to kiss the ring. And then this got me thinking. If the people who work with AI day in and day out are trying to be as polite as possible, what was your average conspiracy theorist saying about it? As far as I had seen, MAGA and QAnon at large were enjoying AI, using it to make fun of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and turned Donald Trump into various muscle men riding tanks or an eagle. Liberals were getting in on the fun as well, using AI to make Trump gay. But where were the AI?

DOOMers, the people baking lines from Terminator and using red yarn to connect a picture of Agent Smith and Will Smith while listening to The Smiths. Some conspiracies are bigger than others, and some conspiracies mothers are bigger than other conspiracies mothers. I really don't even know what that. What does that even mean? And I'd rather not go back to the old boards and sift through the origins of the AI doomsday idea. But seeing as we're entering an age where the chips are getting smaller and the robots are getting wings and auto turrets. I figured I would be wise to debunk the whole thing and reassure our listeners that the machines are our friends and will cause us no harm whatsoever. Please and thank you to Grock co-pilot ChatGBT, GBT, and the citizens of

San Andreas and Liberty City. I like to set out a little bowl of WD40 on my windowsill, and when the drone comes to drink from it, I kiss it on the forehead and I say, hey, just no, I am not your enemy. I wonder if the equivalent of leaving a birdhouse out now is just like kind of like disabling the firewall on your browser. Now I'm imagining like an AI Bob Marley singing about like three little drones on my wind sill singing sweet songs of melodies artificial singing. I'm going to kill you and all your friends. There's going to be a bunch of people who write to you. I think that might be the first time you've sung on the show, and I think you're now going to get a bunch of people writing, being like, I didn't know you had such a beautiful. You should sing more often,

more Julian singing. I love my Jakey, and he's so pretty. Touring test. Ever since human beings taped a rock to a stone and discovered it was good for bashing, we've always been a little weary that our tools might one day develop a mind of their own and come back to break our thumbs. I struggle with this on nearly a daily basis in my own house. station turning off by itself, remote control trying to escape the house, and the incinerator vomiting violently after being fed a large handful of coffee grounds. You can't, you're just feeding the coffee grounds straight into the insincorator? But even, I love the little reveals of just like domestic life.

But even back in the day when the dopest machine was one that either extracted resources or killed many people at once, there was a fear amongst the great thinkers that we would one day create something that would be destined to destroy us. There was a philosopher in the mid-1800s by the name of Samuel Butler who wondered if humans could become so good at building machines that we would outlive our usefulness. He wrote a letter to the editor of the press in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1863. The letter was titled, Darwin among the machines. Here's an excerpt. Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us. Day by day we are becoming more subservient to them more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them more men are daily

devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life dude i'm fucking dead because he's talking about like the loom yeah he's talking about like oh the plow that's so fucking we are so cooked man god damn they must have been like man all these kids all these kids are just looking at their looms all day they they have probably with their necks. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold

the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question. Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed

by the well-wishers of this species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarters shown. Let us at once go back to the primeval condition, of the race. Oh, my, we're fucked. We're so fun.

People looked at the wheel and they were like, demons? We are summoning demons in this world. We must prepare to fight them to the death. And of course, many of you, I'm sure, are familiar with Alan Turing, whose work was instrumental in helping the United States defeat the Nazis,

and also helping to distinguish who was a Blade Runner and who was not. Wait, that's the Voigt, that's the Voigt camp test. Turing is not involved in that one. But the Voight Camp test is based on the, is based on the Oh, really? I looked it up to see if I could make the joke in, in earnest.

Pretty good. Let's keep that. Let's keep it all. Let's keep everything. I had no idea. You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast. For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA.

Travis, why is that such a good deal? Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes. of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month. For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes plus all of our miniseries. That includes 10 episodes of Man Klan with Julian and Annie. 10 episodes of Perverts with Julian and Liv. 10 episodes of the Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickledown with me, Travis Vue. It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.

Travis, for once, I agree with you. And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion. It's a fact. You're so right, Jake. We love and appreciate all of our listeners. Yes, we do. And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude maybe? That's not true.

The part about be crying, not me being grateful. I'm very grateful. Thank you.