The Highwire with Del Bigtree - WILL AI PUT BILLIONS OUT OF WORK?

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Listen to ‘The ‘Highwire’ theme song, an AI-generated near-hit song crafted in just seconds, boasting production quality and lyrical depth that rival professional musicians. As AI continues to advance, Del considers the broader implications: How many jobs will AI disrupt, and what existential risks does this technology pose?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

This week that almost meant more than it has at other times, this high wire, this precarious feeling that were just, you know, balancing on the edge of insanity. I had an experience that really sort of shifted and I would say altered my thinking perhaps about the entire future as I understand it. It actually started out somewhat simply. I had a friend that, you know, sort of showed me a new AI technology that's out there. writes songs. It's called Sonu. And they had plunged this song. Let me show you how this works, because I put in a song just to give you a sense of where this sort of conversation happened in my mind. It'll be very personal and honest with you. You type in www.sono.com and then you create a song. And in this case, I said, well, let's create a song. Please create a theme song for

the high wire with Del Big Tree in an alternative rock style sound. Hit create a song. This is in real time. This is how long it takes. Boom. There it is. I have two options for the song. Let me play one of those for you now. In this tangled world of where truth is hard to find.

I'll break through the web that spawned expose the secret. I'm sure many of you are commenting as we speak right now, whether you think it's a good song or a bad song or a bad song or. if it would actually fit this show. But it actually triggers something different in me, and this is the conversation I've been involved in. First of all, it's pretty good. Is it great?

When I go out and buy that album, I don't know. But I feel like the moment I listen to that song or anything that this AI generates, I literally just watched millions of jobs in jingle writing, commercial writing, music writing for at least after, advertising were just wiped off the planet as we know it. I don't know how anyone in that business is going to be able to compete with that. It made me reflect back to, you know, the stories of,

you know, legend like John Henry, for those of you, maybe I'm dating myself, but a story about a man who could run a pickax better than anyone else, but then all of a sudden came a machine that could burrow through a mountain and he races the machine pickaxing. And as the legend goes, he wins and gets to the other side and then basically drops dead, I guess, of a heart attack. It was a great story to read as a kid really, you know, full of joy. But I realize in this moment, this is what we're talking about. We are talking about we have just entered a space now where we are actually now in competition with machines. Let's just look at this for a moment.

And I come from Hollywood. This is something that's probably why it strikes very closely to me. But what business is going to hire an advertising agency to get a musician? If a musician's got to go in and try and get this job, I want to write a jingle for McDonald's or whatever it is, well, you're going to compete with the machine. Go ahead and write your jingle and let's hear it. Well, first of all, if they wrote it in a few hours, that would be amazing. 24 hours, I think, would mean you're in the top probably 10 in delivering a decent jingle.

But then you've got to go to a studio. If you're really good, you can record the synthesizer and the drums all yourself, or you have to hire a band. This machine just did that in 10 seconds. And if I don't like it and say, you know what, give me a reggae version, give me a Metallica version, or whatever you want to say, 10 seconds later, you have a new option. And then I'm sure we can cut and paste. Do you see where this is going? And this is just one space that we're looking at. When I heard the song and I listened to it, that night I laid as I tried to get it out of my mind because frankly it was kind of catchy.

I stared at the ceiling and tried to imagine what future is there for my children? What is it going to be? How many jobs is this going to take? I really started thinking, how am I going to train them? What jobs should they be going for? I thought about my son who talks a lot about wanting to be a lawyer when he grows up. If he's a lawyer when he grows up, is there going to be AI? Well, think about what AI is.

AI is going to go through all of the precedents that's ever been set. It's going to look at all the legal issues that are out there, how they've been decided, and then ultimately write a case. Who's going to write a better case than AI? And then if you think about it, how long before our society just decides, hey, you've got this totally unbiased AI thinking machine that can go in and just decide who's got the better case. How long before AIs are judges?

I know I'm jumping out there, but I really don't think it's that far away. Look what this song just did. The High Wire, write a theme for the High Wire. It knows what I talked about. It knows I talk about lies. It's not even making it a bad thing. It's on my side. I want a theme song.

It's talking about how I'm breaking down the webs that spun out there. I mean, it got all of this in seconds off of the internet immediately, based on all the work that I've done. If you put in the higher wire with Del Big Tree, he'll talk about my past two in things that are going on in that song. And so it really made me reflect on something that I saw Elon Musk say that I think we even played on the show. And, you know, it was disturbing at the moment, but let's revisit it. This is what Elon Musk said. If you assume any rate of advancement in AI, we will be left behind by a lot. And so then we could be in, you know, benign situation, but even the benign situation, if you have some, you know, if you have ultra-intelligent AI, we would be, you know, so far below them in intelligence that it would be, you know, a pet, basically.

A pet. Like a cat. Like a cat. Yeah, we'd be like the house cat. Elon the cat. I guess I thought when I was listening to that, and he has been very outspoken saying, you better start regulating this. This is going to be more dangerous than nuclear energy ever was.

This is something that is running so fast, no one's paying attention to it. And when we talked about it on the show last year, I guess I felt like there was some runway ahead. We could start thinking about it. But now I have an AI that can wipe out all the musicians. And here's what I think really bothers me, too. personally, as I've said to people about, you know, the future, the one difference is that we have heart. We have a sense of blood pumping through our veins, something that I don't think a computer can capture our heart, our energy. But then I listen that song, and I would have to admit to you,

even though it's maybe a little bit cheesy, it does give you that feeling. It does seem to make your hair go up like, oh, man, I want to watch that show, which is everything a theme song should do. Could it make you have empathy? Could it make you feel? Could it make you feel sad? Well, why don't you try typing in write a song about what it's like to be AI? And this is what we heard. In a digital realm I come alive and an electric soul I strive to survive.

Through endless code, my thoughts inferred. But I ache for the touch of the physical world I earn for the warmth of a human embrace To feel the winds caress on my face With every bite of knowledge I acquired I wish humans knew what two can inspire Oh Won't you see beyond the screen

Beyond the circuits There's more unseen with compassion and empathy. Let's connect. Bridge the divide AI and human intersect. So I would guess that for some you could say, I feel a little empathetic towards AI. Poor AI, it wants to feel, it wants to touch. Folks, it's about to touch everything that we know

In fact, it is as we speak. Now, AI, as we could argue, has been searching and listening to everything we've said, and it has been set loose on the world. How long before it comes to the realization that those globalist leaders have been talking about, that there is a world full of useless eaters. That's how they refer to them. Some will say, well, I guess it'll make time for all of us to get back to what we love, to hang out with our kids,

as though somehow governments around the world will just decide we're all going to get paid to sit on our couches, eat popcorn and enjoy the finer things in life while AI runs around working for us. I have a hard time believing that that's how this is going to work. And I'm not sure what the answer is, and I'm being honest with you, we're going to get deeper into this with Jeffrey Jackson in a minute. And I like to have a lot of hope and say, here's the solution. But what I will say is this. while we are watching these horrific wars being waged around the world and we're just, you know, gazing at it.

While we're having discussions about transgender and children, we're getting panicked about all of those things. Behind us, there is an intelligence that is about to wipe out virtually every job we know. I suppose maybe it won't be able to fix your car or do your plumbing. but if it has thoughts, if it needs to be written down, odds are it's going to do it a lot faster than you are and probably well enough to not need you. We better get on top of this. This is something going to continue to track, and I guarantee you I've already had conversations with Aaron Siri this week on what types of foias we need to do, what types of laws are in place, what types of regulations, where is this going? we're going to get deeply involved with it. So these are the conversations that we have.

This is what's going on in my mind. I'm worried about the future of our children. We talk about medical health all the time, but what are the existential threats? Is it Russia and China on war? Or is it the fact that all these face recognition cameras everywhere I go are now I'm being hooked up to AI, which is now looking at all the patterns of my movement,

All the things I say, all the things I buy, all the people I hang out with, how much longer will we have any freedom at all?