گفتگو

CONVERSATION LESSON

ETERNAL LIFE

Dan: Can do Campbell, that’s what they call you.

Aaron: Really? That’s what they call me? You sure about that?

Dan: I think you call yourself that.

Aaron: No. Although I do believe that if you believe you can, you might be able to.

Dan: Do you believe in the singularity?

Aaron: I don’t know, what do you think about that?

Dan: Well, I’m not really sure what it is.

Aaron: Then why are you asking me if I believe in it?

Dan: I think it means a point in time where AI becomes conscious or maybe it’s the point where humans merge with artificial intelligence or it’s some tipping point to do with the internet and living, becoming immortal, like Eugenia Kuyda.

Aaron: Right, this is the woman that created the Replika, right?

Dan: Right. SheAaron: Replika app or something.

Dan: Yeah, I think she did that after the fact. She was working on Chatbots and artificial intelligence and when her best friend died, she really missed him and she thought is there some way that I can use what I know about artificial intelligence to bring him back in some way, so she mined all her text messages and she dug up all her, all the contacts that they had in common and she asked them for text messages. And then, she input all this data into the Chatbot and apparently this Chatbot has the, not just some of the memories, but some of the mannerisms, the idiosyncrasies, the attitudes, the personality.

Aaron: The personality would kind of be in there.

Dan: Right.

Aaron: So I guess talking with this, or interacting with this bot would mimic in some ways the interaction that you would have had otherwise, had that person been alive.

Dan: Right.

Aaron: Okay. Would you want to do that, like with a loved one that passed away?

Dan: Well with you I would do it.

Aaron: I don’t know.

Dan: I would do it for the world because then we could put you in an app and everyone could have a little piece of can do Campbell.

Aaron: No, I don’t want that. No but seriously, if your daughter or your wife passed away, would you really want to have that digital version to interact with still?

Dan: No, I wouldn’t want a … Yeah, actually I think I would. I think I would.

Aaron: You would. I don’t know how I feel about that.

Dan: You know there was, when my father died, my mother kept for a very long time this message on the answering machine and then she would listen to it over and over again. It was kind of sad, but it was like a little piece of him, that sound, something about that sound really allowed her to connect and me too. I liked listening to it too.

Aaron: Do you think that helped with the healing process or the grieving process or was it just like looking at old photos, that kind of feeling or old videos or something like that?

Dan: I don’t know that it help speed things along or helped heal in any sense, but I think it made me feel good. I think it made my mother feel good and sad at the same time, a bittersweet sort of thing. Yeah, so I think that I would want that, if somebody close to me died, I would treasure any videos I had much more so than a photo. I think a Chatbot maybe even more so.

Aaron: Right. It’s hard to imagine actually. I guess because I’ve never interacted with a Chatbot, so I don’t know what that experience is like.

Dan: I’m sure you’ve used poor quality Chatbots.

Aaron: Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, but I’m imagining like in the future.

Let’s say that you’re able to create these very realistic digital replicas of people you know or even yourself. You could actually create a replica of yourself.

Dan: That’s what Eugenia’s company does.

Aaron: That’s right, but it’s still at it’s very, not a very technologically advanced, in terms of what I’m imagining now. I mean, it’s still just text right?

Dan: No, I think it’s audio.

Aaron: It’s also audio?

Dan: I think so, yeah.

Aaron: Oh. I didn’t realize that. I thought it was just text only.

Dan: Actually I’m not sure, but I had the impression that it was audio.

Aaron: I’m like imagining an actual physical replica, like a clone almost, but it’s digital. I don’t know if I’d want to go that far. That would be kind of creepy.

Dan: I think when you add that physical element into it, yeah it would get a little scary.

Aaron: Yeah. I mean this stuff is coming fast. Even in our lifetime, we may see things like that.

Dan: I feel like you really have to keep up on technology or 20 years from now you’re just going to be lost. You’re just going to feel like a caveman that woke up from a time machine and you can’t even go to the doctor because it’s all in the ether.

Aaron: It’s exciting in some ways to see this type of, it’s almost like a blending or a merging of humans and technology, but at some point, maybe this is that singularityDan: I think it’s the singularity, the merging ofAaron: Yeah, at some point though, it’s almost like the identity of what it means to be human becomes very blurred because then what are you? If your consciousness is so wrapped up and enveloped in technological devices that are super advanced and smart and intelligent, it’s almost like your brain is connected to a much larger source of intelligence. And then, you’re drawing upon that. It’s drawing upon your abilities. And then, that becomes you in a way and you become part of it.

In a way, the Internet’s kind of like that. We have our smart phones now, look at how glued we are to them.

Dan: Carl Jung would say that we’re always connected to a collective unconscious and that the internet browser is an extension of that and the coming singularity is maybe just another step down that line of inner connection.

Aaron: Yeah. It’s coming fast. There was a, I saw in the news just the other day that they’re doing test now in San Francisco, and I would imagine they’re doing this in other cities around the world, but they’re testing these driverless cars.

Right now, the tests have live humans in the car as a safety measure and maybe they’re doing something experiments as well, I don’t know, but people have recently attacked the cars. Humans have gone up and physically attacked the cars. I guess as a statement againstDan: You mean while it’s driving down the road, somebody throws a brick at it?

Aaron: Run up and throw their body into it or smash the window or that kind of thing.

Dan: Throw their body into a moving car?

Aaron: Well, I don’t know if the car was moving, maybe it was parked.

Dan: Oh.

Aaron: But, this was just in the news and this has happened numerous times recently and but maybe that is a manifestation or representation of people’s fear towards what’s to come, like machines are taking over. The drones flying in the sky and people have this fear.

Dan: Is that what these people say or are these just crazy lunatics?

Aaron: No, I think this is a political statement, but it’s out there and it’s going to be interesting to see as this rapidly progresses, and people will start losing jobs that they have because machines will do it better and more efficiently and cheaper.

Dan: Yeah, well that’s coming for sure and that’s why they’re talking about UBI, universal basic income.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: That any society that wants to survive and not erupt into revolt.

Aaron: Some sort of chaos and revolt.

Dan: They need to take care of all the people who aren’t going to have jobs.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: So Eugenia, she went on to take some of this technology that she worked on with the app, the Chatbot of her friend and created a app called Replika.

Aaron: Right, Replika, and that’s the app that anyone can use?

Dan: Yeah, and apparently it’s to create a replica of yourself.

Aaron: Of yourself, so by interacting with it, it’s collecting data on you, what your thoughts and what your speech patterns are or language patterns are and it becomes more like you the more you use it. And the idea is thatDan: You can talk to yourself.

Aaron: You can talk to yourself and become friends with yourself, right, and understand yourself better.

Dan: Get in touch with yourself.

Aaron: Yeah right. What if you fell in love with yourself? I mean, I guess that could happen to some people or you become addicted to yourself. That’s a bit odd.

Would you use this?

Dan: I would like to play around with it just to see how terrible or how good it is, but no, I can’t imagine getting into that.

Aaron: No, it just seems like a total waste of time when you’ve got friends you can talk to.

Dan: But some people though, I’m sure everybody knows people like this who love to talk about themselves.

Aaron: Yeah, that’s true.

Dan: So, this would be a perfect opportunity for them.

Aaron: Yeah, I actually have something “listen” to them.

Dan: Yeah, have somebody super interested.

Aaron: And ask questions back and tell me more.

Dan: But if it was a replica, it probably wouldn’t want to listen to you. It would want to talk about itself.

Aaron: That depends on how it’s designed, right?

Dan: If it was trying to mimic your personalityAaron: Oh, I see what you’re saying.

Dan: And you’re an egomaniac that loves to talk about yourself, you would hate this app.

Aaron: It would turn into a conflict.

Dan: A battle.

Aaron: Yeah, it would be a battle.

Dan: To talk about yourself. “No listen to me! I got a better story. I heard that story.” It would probably like, “I heard that story, let me tell you this story, when we were eight and we were playing baseball …”

Aaron: Oh man. That’s really interesting.

Dan: But it would be great if it was able to mind, I’ve got a terrible memory, and if it was able to come up somehow connect with your unconscious memories, and then you could talk to it aboutAaron: Now see, that would be quite useful actually.

Dan: Yeah, like when I, I love getting together with old friends and I hear stories, it’s like I’m hearing it for the first time. It’s like I’m hearing about my grandfather or something, so that would be great if I could talk to a Chatbot and learn all about all the stuff I’ve forgotten.

Aaron: Yeah, or a Chatbot that mines your entire history of email and all your online interaction, including things that you tell it, and maybe it even mines with the permission of people that know you. It mines your interaction with them somehow andDan: Sells it to the CIA.

Aaron: Yeah right.

Dan: CIA is probably already doing that.

Aaron: That’s right. Interesting, so that was the one story. The other story was about a manDan: The other story was a, MartinAaron: It was like a transgender person.

Dan: Right, he was Martin and then he became, she became Martine Aaron: And she founded a very famous media company?

Dan: Sirius Satellite Radio.

Aaron: That’s it, yeah.

Dan: I think when she was still a he, and maybe only 20 or early 20s, he had this idea that if they could make satellites more powerful, then the dishes could be, you know they used to have these gigantic dishes and the receivers could be much, much smaller if the satellites were more powerful, and apparently that was an incredible breakthrough idea and that was what led to the advent of satellite radio, which I’ve never used.

Aaron: Me neither.

Dan: But I know it’s a big thing and people have it in their cars. So, Sirius Radio, I think he had something to do with the startup of that because of his technological breakthrough. People say he changed the world with that. I don’t know enough about-

Aaron: Me neither, yeah, I don’t know enough about that whole industry.

Dan: It certainly made him a multimillionaire at a very young age and then just a few years later, his daughter came out with a fatal disease, pulmonaryAaron: Edema or something like that or was it?

Dan: Yeah, something like that.

Aaron: Well that’s the amazing part of this story for me, is the fact that she quit, just dropped everything and started a new company.

Dan: Well she didn’t start a new company right away. She went to a library and started researching andAaron: Quickly became an expert on the subject.

Dan: She worked on satellites, so she must have been some kind of engineer and all of a sudden she’s researching medical papers and she finds something and she thinks this maybe could save my daughter. And then, she founds a company, gets involved in some sort of negotiations to get the rights to some experimental drugs, develops it and save the life of her daughter and thousands more.

Aaron: That’s incredible.

Dan: I mean, most people they just leave it up to their doctor, and then somebody super industrious might do some research and take it to their doctor, but who does the research and says I’m going to start my own company and make this thing happen.

Aaron: And cure this disease. Wow, that’s incredible.

Dan: That was the second time that she changed the world, and some people say she’s on her way to changing the world with artificial intelligence and uploading, not just memories, but the attitudes and the beliefs and the personality of people into robots.

Aaron: Right, and she’s starting with herDan: Her wife.

Aaron: Her spouse.

Dan: Right, Bina.

Aaron: Bina.

Dan: And the robot version is Bina48.

Aaron: Bina48. I wonder why she named it 48?

Dan: Yeah, I wonder, but … Do you know what electricity tastes like?

Aaron: Do I know what electricity tastes like?

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: I have, probably, yeah. It’s been a long time since I stuck my tongue in the socket.

Dan: What does it taste like?

Aaron: Or bit down on a battery.

Dan: You bit down on a battery?

Aaron: When I was a kid, I got shocked a bunch of times and IDan: Really?

Aaron: Yeah, and I used to make things with batteries and wires and experiment with little engines and things like that. So yeah, I’ve been shocked. It’s very metallic. It’s kind of a metallic taste.

Dan: According to Bina48, it tastes like a planet around a star.

Aaron: Oh, okay yeah. That’s not what I thought.

Dan: Not how you remember it?

Aaron: It’s not my experience.

Dan: I was listening to this interview with Jon Ronson, a British writer who writes about eclectic odd things and he was sent to interview Bina48 and he was talking about, for some reason, when you’re dealing with a Chatbot or a robot you find the need to start asking profound questions like, do you have a soul and what’s the meaning of the universe and things you would never ask a regular person.

Aaron: Ask a normal human being.

Dan: If you wanted to make a real connection.

Aaron: Right, they’d think you’re crazy or something or justDan: But you’re so desperate to try to find something meaningful in a conversation that can seem either random or very shallow or very scripted. So yeah, the EE interviewed Bina48, I think years ago, maybe five or six years ago, and he was quite disappointed that he felt like he was getting lots of random responses.

Aaron: Right, so I guess it wouldn’t pass the, what’s it called, theDan: The Turing test.

Aaron: Turing test. I wonder if that Sophia robot or that Bina robot now would pass those tests with certain people.

Dan: Yeah, maybe. I mean certainly other Chatbots already have years ago.

Aaron: Oh really?

Dan: We did a lesson about one year ago. Cleverbot, I think.

Aaron: Oh that’s right, Cleverbot.

Dan: Was the first to pass the Turing test and others have.

Aaron: But I would think it would be easier to pass the test as a Chatbot because it’s so low context that it might be hard for you as an examiner to, because it’s such a low context medium that you could easily be tricked to think that okay, that’s actually a human being.

Dan: I think their voice, since this is not advanced enough to fool someone.

Aaron: And especially the facial features and the expressions.

Dan: Forget about it.

Aaron: But you said that you’ve seen the movie Ex Machina?

Dan: No.

Aaron: Okay, now that is a movie that you should see. It’s probably one of the best movies out there on AI, and it’s a really good story. It’s about this guy whose kind of like one of these multibillionaire like Google founder type people who lives out in the middle of nowhere. You have to take a helicopter to get to where he is and he’s doing some secret research and he brings in this really smart programmer young guy to a Touring test on the AI that he’s created.

Dan: Okay.

Aaron: And it’s a woman. I’m not going to tell you all theDan: Oh, this is an actual robot, it’s not like a Chatbot.

Aaron: It’s a robot that he created and he wants this very smart young guy that came in to do a series of interviews with her to see if she would pass the Touring test. He ends up falling in love with this robot. It’s really powerful, really well done. I won’t tell you what happens, but it’s a cool movie. It’s a cool movie. I could see, the computer graphics or the special effects nowadays are very advanced obviously. It really brought this robot to life. Even though you could see right through, it’s definitely a robot, because you could see right through it in certain areas, to the other side. It appears so real that you could easily think that, that is its own being and highly intelligent kind of thing.

Dan: Cool. I’ll check it out.

Aaron: Yeah, it’s a good movie.

Dan: The last story was the tragic first emperor of China.

Aaron: Oh right.

Dan: The story I did not know.

Aaron: This wanting to live forever.

Dan: Yeah, and he ended upAaron: It’s a very human thing, right, it’s just been around forever. Some people don’t want to die.

Dan: And sometimes it can be our downfall.

Aaron: Yeah, and in his case he consumed mercury, which is we know today is a highly toxic substance. I wonder what led him to believe that, that would … I mean you would think you would just test that on another animal before you ate it.

Dan: I think mercury was used in the middle ages in Europe for alchemists trying to turn different metals into gold, would use, or maybe they would use it to gold plate things and apparently the fumes would drive them mad. I think maybe that’s the origin behind the expression mad hatter. Yeah, I think something to do with hats involved mercury in the middle ages and we call a crazy person a mad hatter. Anyhow, so I mean even a millennial later, people were dying or going mad from playing around with mercury, and this was far before that. I think it was, when was it, 200 BC?

Aaron: I don’t remember the dates, but it was a long time ago. But really, it could be seen as a metaphor for what we might be, we might be eating the mercury right now withDan: Right, by making these sentient machines that are going to be eating us.

Aaron: And Elon Musk, he’s most concerned about the danger of what we might unleash. So yeah, this could be our mercury.

Dan: Right. All right, stay safe out there.

Aaron: Okay, don’t eat mercury.

Dan: All right can do Campbell.

Aaron: All right man. We’ll talk to you later.