Something You Should Know - How to Stop Overthinking and Move On & Why AI Will Not Take Over The World

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Heart disease is the #1 killer in the world. While there are many things you can do to reduce your risk, this episode begins by revealing a simple way to cut the risk more than 30%. And it’s all in your attitude. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/a-positive-mindset-can-help-your-heart-2019021415999 Have you ever found yourself overthinking? It’s when you think through an idea or a goal or a career move over and over, imagining every variable and possible outcome. The result is you don’t really do anything or take any action – you just keep overthinking. Apparently, most of us do it and some point and it can really get in the way of your progress and success. So when does normal thinking become overthinking? And how do you stop it? Joining me to discuss this is Jon Acuff. He is a speaker and author of 9 books including Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking (https://amzn.to/3f2FI9o). Several prominent people (including Stephen Hawking) have predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) could be dangerous. That we could create machines that are so smart and so sophisticated they could control us instead of the other way around. Is that really possible? Can we actually create machines that think on their own. Probably not according to Gerd Gigerenzer Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the award winning author of several books including, How to Stay Smart In A Smart World (https://amzn.to/3SnGADW). What may be a more interesting discussion is how machines and AI are changing our behavior – and it is already happening.  Fall allergies are a real problem for a lot of us. Listen as I explain some things that will help minimize the symptoms by keeping the allergens out of your house. https://www.webmd.com/allergies/allergy-proof-your-environment PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Go to https://CozyEarth.com/SOMETHING to SAVE 35% now!  All backed by a 100-Night Sleep Guarantee. Factor makes it easy to eat clean 24/7, with fresh, delicious, prepared meals! Head to https://go.factor75.com/something130 & use promo code Something130 to get $130 off! Visit https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING  to start hiring now! Go to https://Shopify.com/sysk for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features and start selling today!! Redeem your rewards for cash in any amount, at any time, with Discover Card! Learn more at https://Discover.com/RedeemRewards https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, heart disease is the number one killer, and there's a simple way to reduce your chances of ever getting it. Then overthinking. We all do it, and yet it is totally useless. I talked to a manager once who said that every time I see a door close on a meeting that I'm not invited to, I start to overthink it. Should I be in that meeting? Why am I not in that meeting? Are power players in that meeting? What's the agenda of that meeting? Is it helpful for him

to tell himself that again and again and again and again? Of course not. Also, if you have fall allergies, I have something that will help. And artificial intelligence, will it one day rule the world? Probably not, and here's why. So a machine that plays better chess than any humans doesn't know that it's playing a game called chess. And that's one of the differences between human intelligence and machine intelligence. All this today on Something You Should Know. human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life.

Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi there, welcome to Something You Should Know. It seems pretty clear now that your outlook on life can have a serious impact on your health. And here is just one example. your outlook on life can have a serious impact on your health.

And here is just one example. Researchers looked at psychological characteristics of over 8,000 people and found that those who scored high on optimism and a sense of well-being enjoyed a 30% lower risk of developing heart disease. Other studies report similar findings. In one study of over 70,000 women followed over 10 years, those women who scored highest on an optimism questionnaire had a significantly lower risk of death from heart attack, 38%, and stroke, 39%. A positive outlook may even benefit people who already have heart disease,

which is significant because they're at very high risk of having a heart attack and a stroke. In the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, in participants with known stable heart disease, positive psychological traits were associated with significantly lower risks of having a heart attack. These traits included optimism, positive outlook, and having a purpose in life. And that is something you should know. Overthinking. I suspect we've all done it. We think too much about something, like a goal.

We spend so much time thinking and analyzing something that we never actually do anything. We never take any action. We just keep thinking. So why do we do that? And when are we most likely to do that? And where's the line between thinking and overthinking? That's what John Acuff is here to talk about. John is a speaker and writer who

has authored nine books, one of them being Soundtracks, The Surprising Solution to Overthinking. Hi, John. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it. First of all, what is overthinking? Explain what you mean by that word. I just find it as overthinking is when what you think gets in the way I just find it as overthinking is when what you think gets in the way of what you want. So you have a goal, you have a wish, you have a desire, and then all this extra thought gets in the way and prevents you from actually doing it. And yet, one would think that thinking about a goal is a good idea. So where is the line between thinking and overthinking? Sure, the line is that thinking or being prepared, because I'll talk to people that'll say,

well, I'm into logistics, I'm detailed. And I'll say, great, be detailed, be prepared. The difference is preparedness leads to action. Overthinking leads to more overthinking. I can't say now, well, I overthink books because I don't. I've written nine. So I have a history of actions I've taken. So when you're good at thinking, there's a trail of actions you actually launched, completed. That's the difference between overthinking and thinking. But I imagine you get a lot of pushback from people saying, well, I'm not a shoot from the hip kind of guy. I have to plan everything. I have to think everything through before I jump into the fire. I get a little bit of pushback,

but I mean, like another difference would be if you say I'm waiting until I have all the info, we haven't lived in an all info world in a hundred years. You'll never have all the info. The best CEOs don't have all the info. They have the right amount of info and then they make a move and then they recalibrate and then they reset. I talked to the CEO of Hyatt Hotels recently and one of the questions I ask in the book is, is it true? Is the thing you're thinking true? And he said, we added the word still to that idea. Is it still true? Because what was true this month might not be true next month. And so that's part of the difference. There's never a moment where you go, oh, or like

I'm ready to be a parent. No one is ready to be a parent where you go, I went through the 37 checklist items and now I know I'll handle it. You won't. There's so many things in life that you're not perfectly ready for, but you still have to make a decision. Well, I think any parent or any entrepreneur or anybody that's ever pulled the trigger on a big goal realizes that, you know, you can always find a reason not to start, but when you tend to look back on being a parent, it's probably the best thing you ever did. A hundred percent. I didn't, I've got two teenage daughters. I don't know how to handle, you know, whether somebody is going to get invited to homecoming or not.

I certainly didn't think that in my calculations before we decided to have kids. So yeah, a friend of mine, the way he says it is, you can get the boat as close as you want to the dock and you should, but there's still going to be a little bit of gap you have to jump. The boat is never pulled all the way up on the shore and you go, I'll just step in with dry feet. There's always a little bit of a jump in any endeavor that matters. So how do you know in any goal that you're going for when the jump is close enough and not too far? Well, I think there's three

things that I look for. One, is it a push or a pull situation? Sometimes people get impatient and they push their way there too early and they never look at where they're landing. So a wedding photographer who has a, it's a side hustle and has a day job, has one good wedding season and goes, I'm doing it. And they push their way there and they realize, oh no, the fall is really empty. The winter is really empty. I, I base my whole jump off of a single good wedding season. I like when an opportunity pulls me, where you've got so much proof that it's working that you're losing money when you go to the day job. And the opportunity pulls you.

That's the first thing. Second is, how much runway do you have? If you have six months of financial runway built up, great. That's really awesome. If you have six days and you need your side hustle to pay for your entire life immediately, that's really challenging. The third thing is I like to exhaust the margins. So if somebody said to me, John, I want to write a book, I'm going to quit my day job so I can write, I'd say, well, how much do you write right now? And usually they don't

know. And so then I'll help them figure that out. And then I'll go, well, are you writing in the morning? Are you writing at night after work? Are you writing during your lunch break? Are you writing on the weekends? And if you're not, you haven't exhausted the margins yet. So exhaust those first. And those are signs. And the last one is just really simple is what's your most patient friend saying? We all have the friend that'll say yes to anything we suggest.

We'll go, I'm going to launch a ferret farm. It's going to be amazing. I'm going to grow ferrets. And they go, that's amazing. You should do that. I'm talking about the friend of yours that goes, explain that to me again. Where do you see this is going to go? How do you see that going? What's that friend saying?

What's your wise counsel saying? I think those are four really simple things to think about. Well, there goes my ferret farm idea. Do you think that the opposite of somebody who overthinks is somebody who just pulls the trigger too fast? Are these two extremes of the same line? I think there definitely are underthinkers, but when I got curious about overthinking, I did what I always do when I get curious. I commissioned a research study with a PhD named Mike Peasley. He's a professor here in Nashville where I live. We asked 10,000 people if they struggle with overthinking. And 99.5%

of people said they struggle with overthinking. So you talk about overthinking in term, well, you call it soundtracks, that we have soundtracks playing. So explain what you mean. Writing this idea and calling these repetitive thoughts soundtracks, how quickly teams, especially corporations would go, oh, we have soundtracks. And I'd say, yeah, culture at a company is just a collection of soundtracks people are listening to at the same time. Families have soundtracks. Teenagers have soundtracks. Once you discover what your thoughts are doing and how powerful they are, it does feel like you've tapped into a superpower that you're so surprised other people aren't tapping into. So what does overthinking sound like in my head? Just pick an example and

just explain how it goes from here to here to here to here and never ends or however it goes. Yeah. So imagine this. So I work with like 45 year old executives and they're getting new positions, new job promotions, and their company sees something they don't see in themselves. And they'll often pull back or they're even worse, they'll self-sabotage. And if we pull the thread, what happened is that at 15, at 18, at 21, a teacher, a professor said, you're not a good natural leader. You're not a real leader. And that became a soundtrack they listened to on repeat for 30 years in a row. So now at 45, they couldn't even tell you initially why they're pulling back

from leadership, but they've listened to this overthinking soundtrack of, I'm not a leader, I'm not a leader, I'm not a leader. So often it's become part of who they are. The reality is your thoughts turn into actions, your actions turn into results. And so often we look at our results and we go, I just don't know why I'm not getting the results that we want. And there's usually a thought that started the whole process. So that's an example when some, or I'm not a real writer, I'm not a real writer, I'm not a real writer. And that, and you go, well, what does that, what does that mean? Well, I haven't written the right type of books or real books. And there's all these kind of extra thoughts around just writing a book. And so for me, that those are

two really easy examples that I'll give your audience an easy way they can figure out if they're overthinking. If you want to identify, if you have what I call a broken soundtracks, a thought that's holding you back, write down a goal. It can be any goal. I want to start a podcast. I want to lose 10 pounds. I want to sign up for a 5K. I want to declutter an attic. I want to get married, whatever. Write down a goal and then listen to your first thoughts. Listen to the first thoughts after you write that down. Are they positive? Do they push you forward? Do they say you should do this? You'll be great at this. Or are they reverse? They hold you back and go, who are you to do that? You're too old for that. You're too young for that. Listen to your reaction because every reaction is

an education. So if someone, if a listener said, I don't overthink, I would say, okay, well, write down a goal and tell me what you think about that goal. And if what they thought was, I should do this, I'm going to do this, great, you've got positive soundtracks. But more than likely, it's a negative soundtrack that's got them stuck. That's why they haven't done the goal. Another example of overthinking is if before you've even written down an idea, you self-edit and go, it's too dumb. Somebody already else has done that. I'm not going to do that. Can you imagine the works of art, the cures for diseases, the business ideas we've missed because somebody didn't even let an idea go from their brain to a piece of paper? That's a 30 second cost. Like every idea is worth that. It seems to me though, that there's also the problem of underthinking. I mean, how many people

have said, I'm going to write a book or I'm going to start a podcast? I've heard that from a lot of people. Yeah, I'm thinking of starting a podcast. And when you talk to them, they haven't thought it through. I mean, it's a lot of work to write a book. It's a lot of work to start a podcast. It might look easy or it might look like it's fun, and maybe it is. I think it is. But it's still a lot of work and people haven't really thought it through. Yeah, it's a ton of work. And in situations like that, I always go, well, can you experiment a little bit? Are there small ways you can try it? Can you, you know, because what happens, you see the same thing I do is that people go, I've never gone to the gym. I'm going to go 10 days in a row. And I go,

that's not like I've never, or they'll go, I'm going to start a podcast. It's going to be daily. I'm going to do an hour every day. And you go, but that that's, you're not though. That's too hard. That's too aggressive. And so we have this all or nothing mentality sometimes. So I think it's great. If you want to try a podcast for a month and you set a time limit and you record four episodes and at the end of it, you evaluate and go, yeah, I hated that. I don't do a lot on YouTube. I hated YouTube. I'm going to have to get more involved in it because it's so important to my business, but I didn't enjoy doing it. I wasn't good at it and it didn't make money. That's a terrible Venn diagram. It's one thing if you enjoy something you're not good at because

the joy will kind of propel you to get better. It's a terrible twosome. It's one thing if you enjoy something you're not good at because the joy will kind of propel you to get better. It's a terrible twosome if you hate doing it and you're also not good at it. So it's fine. But I tried it for a year. I tried it for a year. All my friends were like, oh, you should do YouTube. It's super easy. Just do YouTube. And I write. I'm a writer. I'm not a videographer. Those are different skills. We have this weird culture where people say, you should write a book. You should be on YouTube. YouTube you should be a podcast and we don't take into account the skill and the craft it takes to be good I mean we have things where people be like you can write a book in a week you can write a terrible book in a week that's true you can't write a good book in a week and that's why that's where I think we have to be honest about what it

takes and the other thing is that you work really hard at your podcast. You really do. Like it's a craft. And so sometimes people don't see the craft. So they think like, oh, anybody can do it. I'm a public speaker for a living. I practice like a maniac when somebody goes, oh, that was good on stage. They didn't see the 10 test runs I did in my office, walking back and forth, wearing the clothes I'll wear on stage to get that. Like that's, that's the craft it takes. And so I think sometimes we're disconnected or divorced from the craft and we think everything's easy. But isn't that the opposite of overthinking to think everything's easy and not think it through? No, no. I mean, for me, I mean, that, that can be a broken soundtrack to guess if you think it's easy. But the big thing is,

what are these broken thoughts that are preventing you from even trying? Like the big thoughts prevent you from ever even doing it. Or you write 10 pages of what you want to be a 50,000 word book. So no, thinking it's easy is only destructive if it makes you quit. If you expect results to be faster than they are, that can be very destructive. And I always tell people, I know how long it's going to take for your goal to happen. Like I actually know the timeframe. The answer is longer than you want. I've never met a single person who goes, yeah, the whole thing happened so much faster than I, than I thought it would. It's really successful almost immediately. So yeah, that thought isn't, I see less of that thought than I see, I shouldn't do it. I can't do it.

We're talking about overthinking. My guest is John Acuff. He is author of the book Soundtracks, the surprising solution to overthinking. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy.

Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful. Visit FlyPorter.com and actually enjoy economy. all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. So John, when you have these thoughts, when you hear these soundtracks in your head telling you, you know, you can't do this, or you shouldn't do that, or whatever it is that you're hearing in your head, how do you overcome them? Do you fight them? Do you make peace with them? What do you do with them? The three-step process is really simple. Number one, you retire your broken soundtracks. So you identify the ones that are getting in the way. And the way you do that, there's three questions you ask. And they're Trojan horse questions because on the outset, you're like, I know these words, these are simple, but if you'll actually do them, you'll learn a lot about yourself. Number one, is it true?

Is the thing I'm telling myself about myself true? Is the thing I'm telling myself about this opportunity, about this situation true? One of the greatest mistakes you can make is assuming all your thoughts are true. The second question, is it helpful? When I tell myself this again and again and again, does it push me forward or does it pull me back? Because some things in life are true, but they're not helpful. I talked to a manager once who said, I got fired from my job 12 years ago. And I realized 12 years later that every time I see a door close on a meeting that I'm not invited to, I start to overthink it. Should I be in that meeting? Why am I not in that meeting? Are power players in that meeting? What's

the agenda of that meeting? Let's say he only does that 10 minutes a day, five days a week. What's the big deal? It's 50 minutes. Well, 50 minutes over a 12-year period equals 62 eight-hour workdays. Is it true he could be fired? It is. Is it helpful for him to tell himself that again and again and again and again? Of course not. Third question, is it kind? Is it kind to myself when I tell this? If you can't say yes to is it true, is it helpful? Is it kind? It's probably a broken soundtrack. You need to retire. Second step is you replace it with a new one. Your brain wants to think. The reason books that tell you or resources that tell you just stop overthinking, stop it, stop it, stop it. You're designed to think. I love meditation, quiet time, whatever.

That's 10 minutes of your day. That's 30 minutes of your day. What about the other 23 and a half hours that I'm alive? Your brain wants to think. So you replace it with new thoughts, new soundtracks. And the third one is you repeat those new ones. So often they become as automatic as the old ones. So it's retire, replace, repeat. That's the process. So the first thing you said is to ask yourself, is it true? Well, I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask that question of. I mean, and what flashed in my head when you said that is, like, I remember watching American Idol, and some of these horrible singers would audition. Well, obviously, they think they're good singers.

They would say they are good singers, when objectively, they're not. So asking them, is it true, is pointless. Yeah. And that's why, I mean, it's ultimately requires community too. I mean, we're not designed to do life alone. I mean, that's one of the dangers of the last few years is, you know, your best life is a team sport. So often when you see, take the American Idol, that to me indicates a lack of honest relationships more than anything else. Like when Michael Jordan had a tiny Hitler mustache in the Hanes commercial, that meant he didn't have real friends. No one was able to pull him aside and be like, Hey dude, you can wear any facial hair ever, ever. There's one type of facial hair. We, no one can wear no one, not even Michael Jordan.

So when somebody auditions for American Idol, that indicates to me they don't have real relationships in their life that they can say, hey, yeah, you know, you should go audition as a hobby, have it be fun, but it's not going to be your path to stardom. That's not going to be the future for you. So, yeah, I think you should ask them individually. I think you should ask them inside community because often friends can see things you can't see. Everyone has a situation where like a friend dated somebody terrible, terrible, and they didn't see

it. And they didn't see it because in moments like that, you're so close to the painting, you can't tell what the painting really is. It's like having your nose an inch away from a Monet. But when you back up 10 feet, you can see what it is. People in your life that trust you and will tell you the truth are 10 feet away, 15 feet away. They can see what's really going on. And if you'll ask them for real feedback, you get to grow. My wife, my wife, Jenny will come in when she reads books. I write the manuscripts and she'll say, Hey, do you want feedback or compliments? And that's a great spouse question. That's a wonderful spouse question because it sets up. Oh yeah. She might be about to tell me things that maybe don't feel good, but ultimately will make the book better.

I need to be willing to listen to those. So let's take your example of being a writer. You've written, what, nine books? Yeah. So obviously you're pretty good at this. But most people who want to be a writer will never write nine books. They'll fall somewhere in that middle zone where they're not a bad writer, but they're not a great writer, and they're never going to be a best-selling author. So the question of whether to move forward

or not, and I see this in podcasting too, that, you know, there's only so many great podcasts. There's a lot of people in the middle that are doing, yeah, okay. Well, so was that a good decision or was that not or not? Well, it depends on the goal. I mean, was my goal, I want to be the next Joe Rogan? That's a terrible goal. That's not a real goal. I want to be the next Michael Jordan, not a real goal. So it depends on what your goal is. But I think most times when people become a writer or a podcaster, it's because they want to be a success by some objective standard of, you know, I want to make enough money to live on it. I want to, you know, I want to be asked to write my next book. I mean, it isn't being Joe Rogan or Michael Jordan, but it's success. Yeah. So again, though, I think you have to

define that for you. So I do four other things as part of my job. I'm a full-time writer in a sense, but I'm not technically a full-time writer in that I'm getting on a plane tomorrow to go to LA and I'm going to speak to a company. So as somebody who owns their own business, I probably have seven income streams. So I could, if my definition of success was I only write, I've failed. That's not my definition. My definition of success is I write the best books I can write that help the most people I can help. So if I look at it that way, then great, I control that definition of success. Yeah, I think finding that success point of saying this is what I want, that's kind of tricky. So much of this is about how do you define a goal for you?

A goal that's you-sized, a goal that's encouraging, a goal that stretches you. I mean, most people are really bad at coming up with results. We did a big test where we took 900 people for six months as they worked on goals. And in the middle of the challenge, we asked them to cut the results they wanted in half. Somebody says, I want to lose 10 pounds. They'll only lose eight. They feel like a failure. They give up. They stop their diet. They cut their goal in half to five pounds. They lose the same eight. They won by three because that was more realistic. And they try a second week, a second month. So what happens is people go, I've never run. I'm going to do an Ironman in two months. And you go, well, yeah, you could technically probably kill yourself to do

that. Or you could build a sustainable long-term success by doing the right sized result for a sustainable period of time. And so it's a very, very common thing to go to overestimate what you can get done to get discouraged almost immediately and then to give up completely. Well, who hasn't overthought something? Well, you even said at the beginning that over 99% of people admit to overthinking. This is a real universal experience. And I appreciate you explaining what it is and how it works and how to knock it off. I've been talking with John Acuff. He is author of the book Soundtracks, The Surprising Solution to Overthinking.

And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for coming on, John. Thanks, Mike. It's been a blast. Can't wait to talk to you again. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no.

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Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy,

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or wherever you get your podcasts. You have probably heard talk of how artificial intelligence and robots will one day take over the world. That we will build machines that are so smart that they will one day outsmart us. Because, as the theory goes, human intelligence is flawed and machines can do things better and make better decisions. Really? Maybe for some things, but for all things and all decisions? Could it just be that human intelligence is so special that, at least in some cases, algorithms and machines could never do a better job? So are humans irreplaceable or will there one day be a machine to do everything? Well,

you are about to find out. Meet Gerd Gigerenzer. He is Director Emeritus at the Plank Institute for Human Development and the award-winning author of several books. And his newest book is called How to Stay Smart in a Smart World. Hi Gerd, welcome to Something You Should Know. Yeah, hi Mike. So it does seem more and more that there's an algorithm or a machine that can do things better than a person. So where's this going? What do you think? There's a big misunderstanding. Algorithms are good in certain problems, but not for all problems. So the big successes are in stable worlds like chess and Go, where we have a well-defined system and where the rules don't change tomorrow. When that is not the case, for instance, when predicting humans, human behavior, or just even the flu, the spread of the flu, then the algorithms, complex algorithms, aren't any better than simple rules or what humans can do.

Give you an example. Remember IBM's Watson, the supercomputer, who did a marvelous job in the game Jeopardy. That is, nobody really expected that. But it's a game with well-defined rules. And actually, the rules had to be amended so that Watson can do it. Then IBM's CEO, Jeanne Rometty, announced that Watson now should do cancer therapy recommendations. Of course, it didn't work. And hospitals who were believing that Watson could do also that, given he was so great in jeopardy, paid millions of dollars before they found out that Watson isn't better than any average doctor.

For instance, N.H. Anderson, one of the most respected cancer clinics in the U.S., paid $62 million to IBM, and only then it found out and fired Watson. So what this says, this example, a certain AI system can do some kind of jobs excellent, much better than humans. And that's well defined, stable problems. But it cannot do all kinds. And that's situations which are ill defined, which are uncertain. And that involves predicting human behavior. Aidan McCullen So I would imagine it would also involve driving a car.

Dr. Peter Salgo Oh, yes. So here we have another great marketing hype. Elon Musk announces every year that next year we will have self-driving cars. It means level five cars. So let's clear what a self-driving car is. It is a car that can drive safely without any human backup and also under all driving and weather conditions. No such car exists. We are not at level five. We are at the moment at level two. And the reason why, in my opinion, there will be no self-driving car, despite all the marketing hype, is because the problem is too difficult in the sense that there's too much uncertainty. And one key source of uncertainty are we, human drivers. And that's the biggest problem for an autonomous car. What will happen, Michael, in my opinion, is something much more interesting than a self-driving car. It's level four. Level four means that cars drive without human backup, but only in restricted areas, such as airports, and that already exists. But if we have a massive progress in level four cars, that means that we need to redesign our cities so that these cars

with their limited capability can actually drive safely. And we will need to ban any humans, any human drivers, pedestrians, or cyclists from the area where these level four cars will drive. And at the end, it may well happen that we are no longer allowed to drive ourselves. Yeah, so really it's human unpredictability that messes things up. You could have self-driving cars in a world where there's nothing but self-driving cars. But when you put human beings in the mix, it's what messes everything up. Yeah.

So think about back in Paris, in France, in the 19th, early 19th century, so long before cars, they had massive traffic jams by horses, carriages, and the authorities put down a rule, namely, move on the right side of the street. So that's a kind of taming of the freedom of people. And that rule was not met with much respect or willingness to follow it. It took a long time until people were agreeing to become more predictable. Just as a few years before in Paris, one put in the rule that you should not empty your chamber pot out of the window onto the street. That was also met with much reluctance. All these examples show that we adapt to the possibilities of technology, and our behaviour becomes more regulated and more predictable. And that vision is a very different vision that I have from the typical one,

that AI will take over and develop a super intelligence and singularity or all these stories that won't happen. And also on the other side, all this fear about AI that will destroy us and we will end up on the leash of robots. No, what I think will happen is something much more interesting. So we will adapt to the possibilities of AI and we will become more reliable and predictable. You know, that's really interesting to think of it that way, that artificial intelligence and these AI things

not only do what they do, but they change us. We have to adapt to them in order to allow them to work. And you can see this in very trivial situations, for instance, in online dating, where the possibilities of AI change. So many people, even if they find a good partner, they continue searching because it's so cheap and so easy for something better. And dating turns into optimizing. So there could be still someone better out there. And then you search forever.

I think people believe that online dating, that there's something about online dating that the technology is trying to steer you towards someone who's a good match based on whatever criteria the online dating system uses. But what you're saying is that, well, maybe that's true. I don't know. But what they're really doing is just making it easier for you to keep looking and looking and looking and looking. Yeah. So the online dating technology changes us, at least many of us. And also the question is, how good are these love algorithms in the first place? So I'm now talking not of Tinder, but of these online dating agencies who have an algorithm that matches two people, sort of meaning two profiles. And I've done some research which show, so what's the chance that you might find in the first year where you are paying for an online dating agency,

the one, so the big love. So what do you think? A hundred people, they pay some 100 bucks and then they stay for a year. How many of them will be successful? 10%. Well, that's fairly good. It's five, five out of 100.

So you can now make a simple calculation that maybe you have to wait 10 years to have a 50-50 chance and some have to wait more years to have a 50-50 chance, and some have to wait more. And the studies show that you can do as good if you just go into a chat room and find people who share your interests, and the chance to find a good partner there is at least as good. So finding the ideal partner is not something an algorithm can do well. There's too much uncertainty.

Well, also there's somewhat of a conflict of interest because if the online dating services found you a mate really quick, you'd stop using it and they wouldn't make as much money. So they're incentivized to keep you on looking and looking and looking and looking right that's that's true and they're also incentivized to to use a kind of advertisement that confuses people so here's an example. A very famous online dating agency advertises that every 11 minutes, a single finds true love. So you think every 11 minutes, that sounds good. So you pay and then wait for 11 minutes. But just think for a moment. If it's every 11 minutes, one single falls in love. It's in an hour, roughly six. And it's on a day, 144. In a year, you can make a simple calculation. It's about 50,000. So if the dating agency has a million customers, then 50,000 in a year are the 5%, the 5 out of 100.

So it's still there. But people think that every 11 minutes sounds great, not realizing and not thinking it through. So that's just one simple example. In a world that gets smarter and smarter in terms of technology, we need to get smarter too. Well, going back to what you said about how technology changes us, I mean, that self-driving car example is so good because right now when people hear about self-driving cars, a lot of us, myself included, resist. I don't have any big desire to be in a self-driving car. It seems kind of weird and creepy to not be in control of the car, and I like to drive.

And a lot of people feel that way. But if the momentum keeps moving towards self-driving cars, the thinking will change. Let's do a thought experiment. It's now 20 years ahead. And we have changed our cities so that autonomous cars, level 4, cruise everywhere. And they connect us from our house, we just call them, to the airport. Or they connect us to public transport, which is more likely to happen because public transport is faster. Because these level four cars will not be able to drive very fast properly.

So in that world where there's no human driving, so those who grow up in this world will say, oh, did you hear 20 years ago, humans were on the steering wheel and they killed others. What a time. It's so good that we are now so enlightened and we don't let people kill anymore other people. I mean, that's probably likely, I would think. Yeah, but it's also an example how technology changes our values. Isn't it true that the basic concept of artificial intelligence has changed, that the theory on which it operates that it didn't used to be all algorithms right am i right so the the old dream of ai from the 1950s and 60s and into was to study humans that can do something very good, that is experts,

and analyze the heuristics. So these are rules of thumb that experts use to solve problems and then program them into computers and make computers smart. In that original form of AI, the I meant human intelligence. Today, particularly in the last 10 years, it's machine learning that dominates everything. And most of my machine learning colleagues, they don't think that they could learn anything from the evolved brain or from human psychology. It's just statistics what they're doing.

So they have built statistical machines that can find correlations much better than we. And in well-defined situations, they can play games much better than we. Or in industry applications, they don't get higher. But even AlphaZero, so a machine that plays better chess than any humans, doesn't know that it's playing a game called chess. And that's one of the differences between human intelligence and machine intelligence, now deep learning. And deep learning is basically a correlation machine and there is we do not know any way to make a correlation machine intelligent i think everyone has heard though that there are certain apps machines things that get smarter over time, that certain things will get to know your voice better over time. And the implication there is that the machine is getting smarter.

It's getting more intelligent in the intelligence that it needs to get smarter in. No? No, it's correlation. So this standard argument that you're alluding goes like this. So AI has beaten humans in chess and go. Second, computational power increases every couple of years or doubles every couple of years. Therefore, the conclusion is that soon AI will be able to do everything that humans do and will just more intelligence. And that is not correct. The two premises are correct.

But again, AI can do some things better if it's a stable problem that it can do it better than we, but it will not develop a human-like intelligence unless there will be a huge breakthrough in software development, which we are not near at all. Making deep learning just faster, you can make it faster and more computational power. But that leads that it's faster. It can do things faster, maybe better, but it doesn't mean it has any understanding what it's being done. So what you're saying is that this fear that machines will take over, that we'll make machines that are so smart that they'll end up ruling the world can't really happen because the machines don't have human-like intelligence. They don't know what it is they're doing.

They don't think in the way we think. They're just doing what they're programmed to do, which is comforting. But what I think is really interesting and hadn't really thought much about before until this conversation. This conversation is how this new artificial intelligence stuff is changing our behavior. It's making us do what we might not otherwise do. One of the well-known examples about what can happen is the social credit system in China. You may have heard of that. It's a system that, so in the US, there is a FICO system where everyone has a number for his or her credit worthiness. So in China, they extended that. And there is a number that's called the social credit score. That includes not only your financial credit

worthiness, but also your legal record, everything you buy, everything you do on the internet, the friends you have, all political activities and social activities, and you get a score. So if you visit your old parents, your score goes up. If you watch too much video games and play too much video games, score goes down and so on. And people with high scores get benefits. For instance, they may be treated first in hospitals. And people with low scores are punished. So in the last years, 10,000 of Chinese were not allowed to purchase a plane ticket because they had a too low social credit score. Or your children are not allowed to go to the best private schools. And you can see that this type of system will make you quickly adapt and follow the rules in order to get a high score.

Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation because it's made me think about this in a whole new way. And it sure makes sense. I've been speaking with Gerd Gigerenser. He's director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the award-winning author of several books. His latest is called How to Stay Smart in a Smart World, and there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Thank you, Gerd. Thanks for joining me. Yeah, it was a pleasure. Bye-bye. If you have allergies, you may have noticed that fall allergy season is kicking in and the cooler temperatures and beautiful weather could be making matters worse.

It's only natural as the weather cools down to turn off your AC and open up the windows. But you might want to think twice about that. Allergy experts suggest that you keep running your air conditioner on low. That helps filter out the air and reduce the humidity. The EPA says you should keep the humidity between 30 and 50 percent inside your home to help keep mold from growing, which can aggravate allergies.

And your A.C. can help do that. Ragweed and mold are two allergy triggers which are in full bloom during the fall. And by keeping the windows closed both in your car and in your house and filtering the air with your A.C, you'll help keep allergy symptoms to a minimum. And that is something you should know. If you would take a moment out of your busy schedule to leave a rating and review for this podcast on whatever platform you listen to, it would be appreciated and really helpful. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle.

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